Political Consciousness and the Uses of the Past in Reformation England

Dan Knauss

Chapter 1 – Robert Crowley

Like many of his peers, Robert Crowley took advantage of what Diarmaid MacCulloch
has described as the brief period of “glasnost” after the reign of Henry VIII.1 Between c. 1547
and 1553, Crowley took on the roles of poet, prose writer, proto-puritan polemicist, and
preacher.2 With respect to the book trade, he is commonly thought to have been only a
bookseller, but it is likely that he was in fact a printer directly engaged in the production of the
numerous social and religious reformist texts that bear his imprint, including three editions of
Piers Plowman in 1550.3 Under the direction of Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford (1537-47),
duke of Somerset (1547-52), and Lord Protector during Edward VI’s minority, the new regime’s
“abolition of the heresy laws” and “lapse of censorship” enabled, as MacCulloch writes, “an
extraordinary degree of theological discussion, both formal and informal.”4 Strident reformers
like Crowley, Thomas Lever, Thomas Becon, and Hugh Latimer were suddenly tolerated and
even supported in their efforts which made the era one of “genuine idealism, [...] righteous anger,
[...] and excitement.”5 However, just as Soviet glasnost gave way to the messy aftermath of the
post-Soviet Russian Federation, reality ultimately did not live up to Crowley’s hopes and
expectations. Historians have generally agreed that the idealistic spirit of English social and
religious reform in the late 1540s was as short-lived as the young king and died with him. The
most recent trend finds even Somerset’s tenure as falling far short of evangelical ideals.6
John N. King’s influential account of Crowley’s Edwardian career represents him as an
unambiguously partisan supporter of a reformation from above and a member of a “united
Protestant front” that was directly and indirectly supported by Somerset, particularly in the print
trade, from c. 1547 to 1549.7 In King’s view, as late as 1550, Crowley “confidently envisioned
Edward VI’s reign as the time of peace and justice preceding the millennium,”8 since for those of
Crowley’s religious persuasion, the boy king was a “second Josiah” who would sweep away
idolatry and restore true religion.9 Even during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, King claims
that Crowley continued to idealize Somerset and demonize John Dudley, earl of Warwick (1547-
51), duke of Northumberland (1551-53) and Somerset’s rival, well after Somerset’s fall from
power in 1549 and his execution in 1552.10 Finally, it is only late in Crowley’s life that King
detects disillusionment with the failure of reform to bring about a truly godly church and nation.

1
Under Elizabeth, in King’s view, Crowley ultimately “question[ed] the royal supremacy that had
been axiomatic under Edward VI.”11 However, as this chapter will demonstrate, Crowley’s late
Edwardian publications and his own retrospective, revisionist account of the era are suggestive
of a much more complicated man who, early on, was keenly aware of the extent to which the
official sources of support for reform continually compromised and contradicted his vision for
the English church and nation.
***
The psychological boundaries by which the old culture had sought to understand
the nature of man and predict his behavior were useless when he was no longer
inhibited by the pressure of traditional community; and, experienced concretely
in a more complex setting, human acts proved too ambiguous for neat
classification. […] When man still clung to the old culture, he seemed to have
become, in spite of himself, a trespasser against the order of the universe, a
violator of its sacred limits—literally’ no man’s land—he had been conditioned
to avoid. But his predicament was even worse if this experience had taught him
to doubt the very existence of boundaries. He then seemed thrown, disoriented,
back into the void from which it was the task of culture to rescue him. And this,
I suggest, is the immediate explanation for the extraordinary anxiety of this
period. It was an inevitable response to the growing inability of an inherited
culture to invest experience with meaning.

–William J. Bouwsma, “Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture”12

Crowley and other proponents of reform issued forceful critiques of the contemporary
social, economic, and political scene that were driven by the belief that the reformation of
religion should bear good fruit and also by the counter-claims of the papists that present ills were
a result of English apostasy.13 At a time of economic crisis and political instability as large-scale
rebellions broke out in East Anglia, Yorkshire, Sussex and the southwest in 1549, the progress of
reform was hard to quantify in persuasive terms, particularly in light of the dissolution of the
monasteries, chantries, hospitals, and other church institutions.14 The despoiling of these
properties was perceived by papists and protestants like Crowley alike as a cause of social
disorder and increased economic hardship that hardly portended the coming of the reformed, true
catholic commonwealth of the godly.15 Thus a frank, critical stance toward the abuses of the
wealthy and the loss of communal social capital necessitated additional affirmations of degree
and good order, condemnations of rebellion, and the argument that it is charity that knits the
social fabric. Such arguments were especially important since those in the reforming camp were
always prone to be labeled Anabaptists and libertines—levellers avant le letter—“who would
have all things in common,” as, for instance, Somerset’s detractors said of him.16

2
 In this situation, Crowley’s vision of a reformed, godly society had to negotiate between
the rival exigencies of obedience and his desire to attack what he and many of his
contemporaries saw as the worst manifestations of the individuating, secularizing tendency of
protestant solafideism; that is to say, in Crowley’s words, not only the rebellious “poor
commons” but also the “gredy cormeraunts,” a group that could easily include profiteering
iconoclast-opportunists like Somerset.17 As Henry’s reign ended and Edward’s progressed,
naturally there was an increasing pressure on the most zealous reformers to push the monarch
and ruling elite (who both enabled and impeded their desires) in the right direction, even though
any criticism of abuse and disorder under the “new religion” inevitably played into the hands of
the papists and anti-reform conservatives,18 while also making the reformers vulnerable to
charges that they were spreaders of sedition. Such a tense psychological and rhetorical situation
that both denied and authorized criticism of the king and ruling elite could and did become
impossibly deadlocked, with rebellions sparked by anti-protestant reaction, economic hardship,
and repressive behavior on the part of the wealthy who were then justified, according to a
publicly unquestioned political orthodoxy, in responding with further repression.19
This double-bind was accompanied by others embedded in the logic of reform. On the
one hand, if a reformer like Crowley opposed the rapacious rich by issuing threatening warnings
of damnation (behind which lies the notion of the spiritual equality of all people), then the
demolition of the intercessory system and the ascendance of election theology over salvation by
human effort generated a conceptually latent problem that seriously weakened the force of his
argument. On the other hand, if one appealed to the proper, hierarchical order and a theology of
stewardship, as Crowley frequently did,20 this bolstered the ideology and structure of power that
enabled oppressive economic behavior, so criticism of the abuse of wealth and status carried
little weight unless one suggested, perilously, that rebellion should be the expected, if immoral
and justly punishable, result.21
The threat of punishment in the life to come was clearly the safer choice of goads in
Crowley’s efforts to reform the moral economy. Langland—a chantry priest—naturally had
purgatory at his disposal in Piers Plowman, and it is noteworthy that Crowley preserved the
following passage in each of his editions, glossing it with the commendation, “how piers
councelleth ye knight wisely:”
Loke ye tene no tenaunt, but truthe wol assent

3
 And though ye mai amarcye hem, let merci be taxour
And mekenes thie master, mauger Medes chekes
And though pore men proffer you, presents and gyfts
Nym it not on a venture, ye maye it not deserue
For ye shal yelde it agayne, at one yers ende
In a ful parilous place, Purgatory it high
And misbed nought thy bond men, ye better migh ye spede
Though he be thi underling here, wel it may happen
That he were worthelier set, & with more blis in heuen
Than thou, but thou do bet, and liue as thou shoulde
Amice ascende superius
For in charnel & in churche, cherls be ful euel to know
Or a knight from a knaue there, know this in thi hert22
Crowley evidently felt no need to eliminate this and many other references to purgatory in
Langland’s poem, but more surprising is his apparent approval of it. While protestants officially
could not condone intolerably papistical rituals and doctrines pertaining to purgatory, even
magisterial reformers, like Tyndale and, for a time, Luther, followed Wycliffe in preserving a
residual belief in it.23 Perhaps Crowley was most concerned with Piers’ righteous intentions
irrespective of his formative religious culture: Piers’ message of spiritual equality and his
emphasis on the need for charity from the rich and powerful are what resonate with Crowley’s
own writings. Wycliffe, too, had experienced the same underlying sense of injustice under the
old religion, as he once remarked that “It may fall that the pope grant to rich worldly men that
they should go straight to heaven without pain of Purgatory and deny this to poor men, keep they
never so [i.e., however carefully they keep] God’s law.”24 But Wycliffe’s sense of injustice was
not eased when purgatory was abolished because it was clearly rooted in his perception of
enduring social inequities. The official closing of purgatory made it more difficult to designate a
wealthy and evidently providentially favored person as damned, especially if he was a protestant.
Indeed, differentiating the nation’s godly from the ungodly was a problem whose
complexity for Crowley is belied by his prefatory quotations from Matthew 25 on the title page
of Pleasure and Payne, Heaven and Hell (1551), a book that denounces enclosure,25 the
predation of the poor under the monastic dissolution, rising prices, and the lack of spiritual and

4
physical sustenance in the land:
O ye that be my fathers blessed ones come and posses thy
kyngdome that was prepared for you befor the beginning of the
worlde.

Goe ye cursed sorte into the everlasting fyre that was prepared for
the Devill and his Angelles.26
Despite the stark division in these lines, Crowley was never willing or able to apply it with great
specificity.
The other choice of reformist goads—the implied threat of rebellion—was even more
problematic. It played into the hands of papists and nominal Henrician protestants who both
justified their positions on the same traditional grounds as the reformers but who could also
emphasize their obedience and loyalty to concrete, authoritative, institutional embodiments of
tradition in the English and Roman churches.27 Crowley did in fact suggest in The way to wealth,
wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion (1550) that rebellion could be
expected as the well-deserved divine judgment for oppressing the poor, which puts in doubt
somewhat Patrick Collinson’s claim that the moral discourse of social criticism at this time
actually “underwrote the social and political order, offering no challenge to it.”28 But Crowley’s
incipient “radicalism” in this regard is the exception that proves the rule—a slip rather than a real
desire for revolution—yet it is also a slip that reveals the intense pressures and tensions of the
time which he generally attempted to channel and resolve by reconstruing and re-presenting the
past, and thus the present, and with them both the whole social and political order.29
The nature of this struggle and what it indicates about Crowley’s political thought is
difficult to describe without substantial anachronism. But while it is equally inadequate to
declare Crowley (as has often been the case) a mere “radical” (which has “progressive”
implications) or a “medieval-minded conservative” (which has “regressive” implications), both
characterizations have some truth to them. A conflation like “conservative radical” may be
fitting, especially for its tendency to suggest a paradox and thereby problematize the convenient
stereotypes of post-Enlightenment politics that have been conferred so often on “early modern”
figures who are very unmodern, if not antimodern, with respect to their presuppositions and
habitual reasoning about authority and social order. However, this recognition indicates that the

5
terms “conservative” and “radical” are altogether meaningless without a sense of the norms
relative to which Crowley can be described as having been a “radical” and/or a “conservative.”
Further, it is unlikely that Crowley had a coherent “position” that can be named, and it is less
likely still that he could resolve his conflicted speculations about the direction and meaning of
English history, the authority of the monarch and ruling elite, and the proper order of church and
society.
This point merits further consideration, since scholars of sixteenth century history and
literature typically have either praised Crowley as a prescient “progressive” who opposed
economic individualism and predatory elites, or else they have dismissed him as a naïve,
regressive moralist who failed to grasp economic and political realities.30 Following
approximately the same assumptions and critical habits, medieval scholars have fixed their
attention on Crowley as an editor of a canonical Middle English text and thus tend to
characterize him as either a pioneering proto-modern textual critic or else a propagandist who
marred the text of Piers Plowman out of ignorance and deceit. In both cases, the categories
“medieval” and “modern” are often deployed in ways that minimize, sympathize with, or
criticize the fundamentally religious, theocentric basis for all of Crowley’s thought and writing.
These critical judgments often reveal more about the dominant prejudices and ideological
conflicts of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries than they shed light on Crowley and his
era. Even attempts to locate a middle ground that recognizes Crowley’s unique position between
“medieval” and “modern” have been rather strained and unhelpful, if not contradictory.
Like William—or Robert Langland, as Crowley knew him—Crowley struggled to
understand and represent the past and present conditions of his society while maintaining fidelity
to reality as he saw it; that is, in relation to what scripture, his manuscripts of Piers, and his own
experience with the words and deeds of “the various several estates.” What these things
suggested to Crowley about the spiritual and social order—or disorder—of the English
commonwealth—how he understood his culture—was naturally much affected by the often
contradictory pressures of political and religious imperatives acting upon him or within him,
principally the imperatives of obedience to divinely established, temporal authorities and the
imperative to follow what he perceived as his divine calling as a prophetic reformer. These
competing pressures might restrain or broaden the horizon of possible meanings in a text like
Piers and English history itself, and thus the way they could be represented in print.

6
Consequently, Crowley’s configuration of Piers as a printed book or recent history in chronicle
form can be read back to the mind and circumstances that produced them and of which they are
partial traces.
Crowley’s editions of Piers, like his other Edwardian publications, illuminate the
political mentality of the mid-Tudor reformers as one of attenuated traditionalism; that is, it is a
mindset that attempts to support while also undermining and moving away from “the
traditional.” By “the traditional” and “traditional mentality,” I mean a habitual state of mind in
which authority to which one properly owes one’s fidelity and obedience, especially textual and
political authority, is understood to rest on “the sacredness of an order whose origin [is] shrouded
in the deep past” and thus “the claim that the order had always existed.”31
Regardless of whether “religious” or “social” doctrines were in question (as these
categories were not yet differentiated), the reformers’ appeal for the truth and authority of their
cause was couched in a sensibility that instinctively denied innovation or “newfangledness”32
and wished to find itself in seamless continuity with a true catholic past. They intuitively
subordinated the present to the past and individual opinion to the wisdom of the community of
the living and the dead; the past was not in the past—it abided in the present as the source of
order, stability and truth.33 This was the dominant attitude of the day, cutting across confessional
lines that were less clear in the sixteenth century than they are now; it was a sentiment shared
equally by Crowley and his antagonist, the papist Miles Hogarde.34
Unlike what Hogarde and others thought of him, Crowley did not see himself as a
schismatic, or at least he persistently rationalized the case for his true catholicism. Even near the
end of his life, Crowley argued that it was the Church of Rome that was “Schismaticall,”35 while
“true religious protestants,” like himself, were “in deed the right Catholiques,” and he
differentiated “catholic protestants” from “antichristian catholics.”36 Undoubtedly this was a
sincerely held view, and perhaps it is an entirely transparent expression of his self-understanding
if, as Debora Shuger writes, “[m]ost religious thinkers” throughout the century “were not aware
of being caught in any […] paradox” between their “desire to find a rational ground for belief in
order to resolve religious conflict” and its effect of throwing “into question the authority of
tradition.”37 But if “the copresence of rationalized and traditional habits of thought” generated
contradictions that were clearly problems dwelt on by “such conservative establishment figures
as Hooker and Andrewes”38 (it was Andrewes who succeeded Crowley as vicar of St. Giles,

7
Cripplegate) then it is likely that these contradictions were at least as evident to a far less
doctrinally “conservative” thinker and churchman (relative to Hooker and Andrewes) like
Crowley.39 Yet despite what now appears as a “cultural revolution,”40 the “great disembedding”41
of the Reformation, and, as Keith Thomas writes, its “dramatic rupture with the medieval past,”
was something that protestants like Crowley and Hooker could not fully admit to sustained
consciousness. They staked the identity and authority of their commitments on appeals to the
past with the utmost conviction to deny and forestall that “sense of separateness and of an
unbridgeable divide.”42
That divide was clearly felt and expressed by the likes of Crowley’s contemporary, John
Stow, in his typically understated yet pervasive bitterness toward the disorder and damage of
“reformation,”43 but it was also intensely felt and expressed by Crowley who was preoccupied
with and often quite explicit about the negative outcomes of reform that he perceived and wished
to mitigate. Regardless of Crowley and Stow’s opposed religious sentiments, they shared the
same fundamental value for the sacred order of society and the same fear of losing it. If, as
Margaret Aston has written, “the very process of casting off the past generated nostalgia for its
loss,” and “with nostalgia came invigorated historical activity,”44 it is important to recognize
such historical activity as a way of coping with, resisting, or even denying the loss. Eric
Voegelin’s cautionary comment regarding facile generalizations about the “casting off” process
is well-taken:
In the sixteenth century does not begin, as is conventionally
phrased, a separation or differentiation of politics from a religious
context; what actually begins is the elimination of the life of the
spirit from public representation and the corresponding contraction
of politics to a secular nucleus. In this process again we cannot
distinguish clear-cut phases; we can speak only of a trend toward
such contraction.45
Apposite is Shuger’s insight that sixteenth and seventeenth-century protestants were motivated to
deny or otherwise resist this contraction by a sense of sin as secularization of the desacralization
of society.46
Crowley’s work, and protestant texts of the period in general, are dogged by the spectre
of secularization. Protestants had to challenge the traditional insofar as it supported a church

8
centered on Rome or an insufficiently reformed English church, yet their goal was not to
decisively break or demystify tradition as a mode of consciousness but merely to redirect it or
change its contents, primarily its objects of loyalty and devotion. However, the initial,
iconoclastic trajectory of this project naturally threatened to resist redirection, for if papistical
traditions could be debunked as mere “social construction,” as Crowley argued against Miles
Hogarde, so could all others:
You compt it no strange sight to se the sacrament honoured with
deuine honour, becaue in your time it hath ben so nonoured. In ded
to the bodilie eie this sight is nothing strange because it is a
continuall obiect and dayelye renued Image.47
Shuger elsewhere notes the self-destructive nature of this argument:
[A]lthough the Reformation eventually led to the privatization of
religion and the secular state, its short-term effect was nearly the
opposite. Protestantism rejected the papal church’s claim to be the
earthly kingdom of Christ, and abolished or demoted all the
traditional loci where the sacred had penetrated the temporal order:
anchorites, relics, shrines, images, holy water, consecrated Host.
Protestant responses to this second withdrawal of the visible gods
and holy shepherd diverged along multiple trajectories, but almost
always in search of those loci where the sacred remained or might
be reconstituted.48
Redirecting and reconstituting a tradition and the mentality fostered by it without a concomitant
desacralizing, secularizing contraction was a difficult maneuver subject to charges of anarchy,
license, innovation, newfangledness, novelty, anabaptism, atheism and machiavellianism—terms
that all reflect a widespread fear of upsetting the fundamental, sacred order of society by pitting
private principle or individual conscience against the community of the living and the dead in a
contest over authority.49
To try to reconstitute the sacred order of society was clearly a political act, and as Shuger
writes, “along one path or another, most searches ended up in the state, which is why so much
early modern political reflection takes theological form, and also why so much early modern
religious debate concerns issues of temporal power.”50 Yet rather than “ending up” with a pre-

9
existing, fully articulated concept and institution, i.e., “the state,” it is more accurate to say that
the search for the proper definition of the state (or, in the more expansive term of the day, the
commonwealth) stood, or perhaps threatened, to constitute the state. (Indeed, the commonwealth
literature of this period comprises the first sustained, analytical and prescriptive discourse about
political and economic policy in England.51) Such searching was a speculative, world-making
enterprise engaged in without precedent by minor clergymen and unordained intellectuals like
Crowley who had access to a literate public through the London print trade.
This political dialogue and its participants sound revolutionary in the modern context
where the idea of revolution has a positive, or at least not wholly negative connotation. Not so
for Crowley. It is the dilemma of a traditionalist in a post-traditional situation to have to choose
for himself and declare to others what is true and authoritative—whom he will obey and what
doctrines he will adhere to—since it is precisely the existence of choice on such fundamental
matters that enables and defines individualistic and rationalistic habits of thought and conduct as
opposed to communally established, tradition-based habits which are not chosen at all but instead
are conferred on all members of a traditional society. Caught on the horns of this dilemma,
Crowley’s work is marked everywhere by a desire for the traditional and therefore denies and
resists intimations of its dissolution and his own complicity in choices that could be—and in fact
were construed by many of his contemporaries—as supportive of the dissolution of the
traditional, sacred order of society. Hence the odd mixture of seemingly “radical” and
“conservative” traits in his edition of Piers and his other Edwardian publications, as well as his
habitual rhetorical stance where an appeal based in scripture and historical precedent is directed
toward a larger public and only obliquely against those whose powerful action (or inaction)
creates the very problems Crowley seeks to redress. This last trait—Crowley’s oblique, hesitant
commentary on political power—was motivated by his concerns with authority, individualism,
obedience and disobedience, and it contributed to the articulation of a mid-Tudor public
sphere—a discursive space where such concerns could be deferred to and addressed by a public
that might stand as a secure and legitimate basis for political authority.52

The Crowley and Cooper editions of An Epitome of Cronicles:

Revisionist History as Political Commentary and Criticism

10
 While Crowley and others like him certainly benefited from the relaxation of restraints
under Edward VI and, in some cases, direct support for the protestant press in London, there is
no compelling evidence for a direct relationship between Crowley and the Somerset regime, as
John King has claimed, or for Crowley’s wholehearted support of Somerset at any time in his
career.53 In fact, Crowley’s publications strongly suggest that he was deeply ambivalent about
and certainly critical of the Somerset regime, as well as the ruling elite in general, by 1550-51 at
the latest. And in the spring of 1559, shortly after Crowley’s return from Frankfurt, presumably
with other Marian exiles like John Bale and John Foxe, Crowley certainly did not idealize
Somerset, since in that year he published a revised and continued version54 of Thomas Cooper’s
Epitome of Cronicles (1549),55 which had been dedicated to Somerset and Edward VI. Crowley’s
version retrospectively stripped Somerset of much honor and godliness that had been imputed to
him by Cooper. Notably, Cooper had been a fellow and evangelical convert with Crowley and
Foxe at Magdalen, and all three were among those evangelicals who resigned from the college,
probably under coercion.56 But Cooper, unlike Foxe, Crowley and others, weathered the Marian
regime in England and became a moderate bishop under Elizabeth who did not see a need for
further reform.57
Crowley’s 1559 version of Cooper’s chronicle, which ends with the accession of
Elizabeth, was printed and sold by William Seres and Thomas Marsh. Seres had just been
restored by Elizabeth after suffering imprisonment when Mary came into power as well as the
loss of his patents on primers and psalters, which had been granted to him by William Cecil in
1553-54. Seres and Crowley’s cooperation in 1559 thus marked the reunion of old friends and
the resumption of an old cause, as Seres had printed Crowley’s earliest work some thirteen years
earlier when Crowley may have been apprenticed to him.
Crowley’s chronicle was, for the most part, a reprinted version of Cooper’s text with
subtle alterations preceding entirely new material in the last 19 pages. Much of this material
concerns the Marian persecutions and became Foxe’s main source for his account of Mary’s
reign in the Actes and Monuments.58 Crowley uniquely departs from convention and makes an
entry each martyr, regardless of their typically low social status and even martyrs whose names
are unknown are included.59 Revised and greatly expanded editions with a new, international
scope were published by Cooper in 1560 and 1565 in the wake of Crowley’s version, and
evidently Cooper was not at all pleased with Crowley’s appropriation of his work. Concerned

11
about the “reproach and sclaunder” that might be “fathered” upon him, in “An admonition to the
reader”60 at the beginning of his 1560 edition, Cooper denounced “certaine persons utterly
unlearned” who had, “for lukers sake contrarie to honestie,” made alterations and foreign
annexations to his text, bringing in almost 500 “faultes and errors,” particularly “in those thynges
… chiefly to be regarded.”61
If Cooper was offended by Crowley’s partisan revision of his chronicle, it is likely that
Crowley would not have approved of Cooper’s pretence of non-partisan moderation in his 1560
chronicle, which Cooper announces “must of necessitee speak of alteracion in religion, and
mencion those that have bene mainteyners of contrarie doctrines.”62 This, Cooper says he will
“doe without reprochefull woordes of eyther partie;” instead he will “reherse the thing as it was
done: adding therto no odyeus judgement of myne owne, but leaving indifferent to the reader to
judge of things as he shall thynke good.”63 Nor would Crowley have approved Cooper’s bid for
patronage in this preface, which undoubtedly has no small relation to Cooper’s liberality of
opinion regarding “alteracion in religion.”64
Cooper’s preface in 1560 was addressed to Lord Russell, the second earl of Bedford, and
Queen Elizabeth. Bedford’s father had been a favorite of Henry VIII and one of his executors,
and while both father and son supported the Reformation, both took up Mary’s side easily
enough after having backed Jane Grey. The Russell family is infamous for having established
itself in prestige and wealth through the monastic dissolution, acquiring estates that included
London properties forfeited by Somerset. In fact, it was with Warwick’s rise and Somerset’s fall
that the earldom of Bedford was established;65 this was precisely the kind of behavior that
Crowley had routinely denounced as that of “gredy cormeraunts.”66 Initially the second earl of
Bedford proved a hotter protestant than his father: he was imprisoned by Mary, became involved
in Wyatt’s rebellion, and escaped to the continent, spending time in Venice and Geneva.
However, in a turn that demonstrates the power of aristocratic status to transcend religious
division, Bedford returned to England before the end of Mary’s reign to become lord-lieutenant
of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and the city of Exeter, and on the accession of Elizabeth he was
admitted to the Privy Council. It is probable that it was this sort of “liberality” and “neutrality”
that Cooper was appealing to: royal power, regardless of alteration in religion, must always be
respected. Crowley, by contrast, did not care much for that principle.
Cooper’s reference to Crowley’s “faults and errors” must refer to his meticulous and

12
clearly partisan account of the religious persecution and general malice of the Marian regime as
well as his treatment of Somerset. Crowley recognizes Somerset as “the king’s good uncle”
once,67 but elsewhere minimizes his achievements. Crowley places blame on Somerset for the
failures of his protectorate and characterizes the corruption of the era as precipitating Mary’s
reign. Crowley, followed later by Foxe, interprets Mary as a divine scourge for a wayward
nation.
Where Cooper had introduced the reign of Edward, he had given high praise to Somerset:
Under our soveraigne lorde the kyng in the tyme of his minoritee,
his moste deare beloved uncle and right excellent prince, Edward
Duke of Somerset, lorde protectour, with the residue of the kynges
most honorable counsaile, governeth this realme with great mercie
and gentilnesse… [my italics]68
Crowley altered this passage by removing the laudatory content at the end:
Under this kynge, in the tyme of hys minoritye, hys uncle Edward
Duke of Somerset, Lorde protectour, with the rest of the counsel,
governed this realme.69
Then, where Cooper gave an account of the battle of Pinkie in 1547, where the English force led
by Somerset and Warwick was surprised by the Scots, Cooper’s 1549 version reads: “our
horsemen [...] were fain to recule backe,”70 while Crowley has it that they “were enforced to
recule.”71 Cooper had described how the English recovered and prevailed “but yet by the great
wysedome and diligence of my Lorde protectours grace, and the valiant hert and courage of the
noble Erle of Warwick, and the good stomake of our souldiours.”72 Crowley again denies
personal credit to Somerset as well as Warwick: victory was achieved solely “by the great
wysedome and pollicye of the captaynes, and the good stomake of our souldiours.”73
Crowley’s original continuation of the chronicle where Cooper’s had left off in 1549 is
sympathetic to Somerset’s brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, lord high admiral and Baron of
Sudeley. Crowley leaves open the implication that Thomas Seymour’s fall and execution were
engineered by Somerset by mentioning that “it was sayd, that [Thomas Seymour] sought to
destroy the yong kynge Edwarde his neuewe, and to make hymselfe kynge, but moste men
thynke he dyed innocent in that matter.”74 Cooper, in 1560, is much more circumspect.75
Crowley then notes that blame was placed on Somerset by the Northumberland faction for the

13
French capture of the English fort between Bolougne and Calais in 1550:76
In this meane whyle dyd the French kyng invade and wynne the
forte whyche kyng Henry had buylded beetwene Bologne and
Calice, called Newhaven, the losse whereof was layde to the Duke
of Somersettes charge, for that he beeyng protectour hadde not
seene that piece better furnished.77
Crowley had alluded to this event in 1551 in his allegorical poem, Philargyrie of Greate
Britayne,78 which M. M. Knappen called “a most penetrating poetical analysis of Reformation
history [showing] that the doctrine of justification by faith could be more serviceable to the cause
of greed than the doctrine of salvation by works:”79
Then Philaute solde
For redy golde
Fortes that were builded strong
And made so sure
Forto endure
That they had stande ful long
Greate landes also
Philaute let go
For golde that was full fine80
Philargyrie recounts how, barring the intervention of the godly monarch who hears the
voice of Truth, papistical corruption has been exchanged for nominally protestant corruption.
The protestant minister, Philaute (self-love), supplants Hypocrisy, who stands for papistry, and
the latter’s method of feeding Philargyrie (lover of silver), the great avaricious giant or “god,” as
Crowley also calls him, is replaced by Philaute’s plan to sack the monasteries. Although John
King has argued the poem criticizes Thomas Cromwell and the Henrician dissolution, he also
concedes that Philaute stands for “the New Protestant aristocracy,”81 noting that “Somerset and
his associates profited from their land acquisitions”82 which were enabled by the Acts of
Dissolution in 1536 and 1539 and later, under Edward, the Chantries Act in 1547. Since the
above-mentioned passage from Philargyrie follows some time after the section corresponding to
the Henrician Dissolution—which is said to have occurred in “.vii. yeres spase”83 during which
Philaute feeds but is unable to satisfy Philargyrie—and given that Crowley’s version of Cooper’s

14
chronicle treats Somerset and Warwick coolly at best, Philaute’s sale of the English forts may
well condemn Warwick, Somerset or both, as Ralph Maud notes.84 The latter interpretation
seems most likely, with Philargyrie as a kind of “social history” where “the Vice-figures
represent not a political group but the ruling class as a whole,”85 or as Crowley wrote in The way
to wealth (1550), “men that have no name because they are doares in al thinges that ani gaine
hangeth upon.”86 By contrast, Cooper’s revised and updated version in 1560 presents the loss of
Newhaven as having been precipitated by sedition in England that encouraged the French to
attack the English garrison. Cooper says outright that the loss was blamed on Somerset, but
“moste men in those dayes thoughte that the displeasure of the Earle of Warwyke conceyued
against the Lorde protectour in the tyme of the rebellion was a great cause of his trouble at this
tyme.”87 Cooper places Somerset’s flight to Windsor with the king and his subsequent
imprisonment as events that took place prior to the sale of the fort.88 Later Cooper mentions the
negotiated sale of the garrison territory to France while Somerset is just getting out of tower—
implying the loss ultimately was not Somerset’s responsibility.89
From here things go steadily downhill in Crowley’s version, with accounts of resurgent
papistry, rebellion, murder, earthquakes, and sweating sickness, the last of which did bear
“muche fruite of the repentance of former lyfe” for some Londoners who “abated their
unreasonable rentes, and many sought for the poore and nedy in prisons, and els where, to relieve
them. But so soone as the sweate was ceased, they felle to their wonted synnes agayne, and as it
seemed, repented them of their former repentaunce.”90 Then, between accounts of Somerset’s
imprisonment and death, Crowley explains how Edward “was enticed to passe time in maskeyng
and mumminge”91 so that he took no notice of what was happening around him. At this point
Somerset is recalled in a positive light, and it is on this passage that Crowley’s supposed
affection for the “good duke of Somerset” and disdain for Northumberland has been staked:92
And to that ende there was piked oute a sorte of misrulers to deuise
straunge spectacles in the courte, in the tyme of Christmas to cause
the yonge kynge to forgetter, yea rather to hate, hys good uncle,
who had purged the courte of all suche outrage, and enured the
kynge unto the exercise of vertuouse learninge, and hearynge of
sermons. This was the high waye, first to make an ende of the
kynges uncle, and after of the kyng hymselfe.93

15
Cooper’s 1560 edition, by contrast, tries not to step on anyone’s toes. Cooper writes that the king
took his uncle’s troubles heavily and brought in the Christmas merriment to lift his spirits.
Following his account of Somerset’s execution, Cooper also asserts that:
manye that bore affection to the Duke talked that the younge kynge
was nowe to be feared, seyinge bothe his uncles were dispatched
oute of the waye : other, that favoured hym not, sayde it was the
punishment of God, because he had bene so extreme againste his
owne brother the Admirall.94
As we have seen, the latter interpretation—belonging to those who (unlike Cooper) did not favor
Somerset—was Crowley’s interpretation.95
The narrative thrust of Crowley’s chronicle adopts the pattern of the prophets and
chroniclers of Israel, suggesting that Somerset was one player in a general plot of corruption and
political intrigue that ruined the era’s potential for godly reform and brought on the scourge of
Mary as divine punishment. Somerset makes a tragic but honorable end in Crowley’s version,96
and the story proceeds quickly to the last ditch attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne.
Crowley writes that this plot was “contrarye to that order that was taken in parliamente for the
succession of the Crowne in the later daye of kyng Henry the eight, pretendynge the feare of that
whiche followed in dede, that if Mary sholde raigne, she wold bring in foren power and the
bishop of Rome.”97 For Crowley, this politic “wisdom” on the part of the Protestant nobility was
“confounded” by God and “the common people” because God (and implicitly the commons as
well) “wil not have his truth mayntayned by puttyng heyres from theyr right.”98 Thus it was “by
that woman who they wold haue shuldred from her right, [that God] punished their unsaciable
gatherynge of tresure under theyr good kyng” by “turn[ing] the hertes of the people to her &
against them, that the [sic] overcame them without bloodshed.”99 Cooper’s own continuation
through the end of Edward’s reign to the early years of Elizabeth has none of this, and Crowley’s
populist-royalism where the people follow God’s will for lawful hereditary succession despite
Mary’s religion is significant for how it aligns the popular and divine will as a single authority
above the religious and political factionalism taking place among the aristocracy. For Crowley,
history bends according to a providence recognized by the people and whose chief agent is the
monarch, yet the monarch’s authority is implicitly dependent upon the English populace’s choice
to recognize it. The self-interested machinations of protestant elites—whose religion seems

16
rather suspect in Crowley’s view—has no bearing on the truth of history except to demonstrate it
by failure as negative examples.

Piers Plowman’s Prologue: Royal Power and the Edwardian Public Sphere

Clearly, Crowley’s commentary on Edwardian history and its difference from Cooper’s
version undermines the idea that the royal supremacy was axiomatic for Crowley in a way that
implies simple-minded obedience; rather, it points to fissures in the concept below the surface of
politically orthodox public discourse. This should come as no surprise, since John Bale, a key
member of Crowley’s circle, is representative of the reformers in chafing under the royal
supremacy from its inception. Bale did not fail to notice that the Act of Supremacy (1534) made
Henry VIII and subsequent monarchs effectively the popes of England.100 “The bloody whip
with six strings,” or, in Bale’s words, Henry’s “vi blasphemouse articles collected out of the
Popes decrees”101 in 1539 was a severe blow to evangelicals like Bale and Crowley; in fact, the
Act’s enforcement of clerical celibacy precipitated the probably coerced withdrawal of Crowley,
Foxe, Cooper, and other evangelical converts at Magdalen from the university.102 No doubt that,
“having gone through a personal religious conversion and, having experienced great change
within themselves,” they were later “inclined to see great change in the external world as also
possible,” as J. W. Martin writes.103 Yet at the same time, they had also experienced firsthand
that actual outcomes were generally far less than what was possible and desirable, and surely
many, like Crowley, would have sympathized with Bale that Henry’s “whip” had been “enacted
and established with more tyranny than ever under the Romyshe Pope or any other tyrant.”104
Although the evangelical camp typically directed their polemic at evil counselors who
misguided a presumptively good monarch and in this way criticized the king only indirectly,
thereby reserving for themselves a “plausible deniability,” Christopher Bradshaw has argued
that, during Bale’s exile under Henry, Bale used subtle biblical imagery to assert that the king
was not “merely deceived; rather he was a willing accomplice in the irreligious policies formed
against the godly, a king whose acts stained the sanctity of his royal office.”105 In Bradshaw’s
view, Bale’s position was motivated by his awareness that “[i]f the godly could be brought to
admit that the king was right, and that they owed a duty of religious obedience to him, then there
was the danger that they would be persuaded to accommodate themselves to Henry’s church and

17
accept its Catholic doctrines.”106 Therefore, “the godly had to be taught that the king’s authority
was insufficient to command religious obedience to a Catholic settlement.”107
Bale’s ambivalence about royal authority probably reflected and no doubt influenced the
minds of readers and members of Bale’s circle like Crowley. Bale’s audience while he was in
exile under Henry VIII was primarily the protestant clerics and reformers in England like
Crowley and Foxe, both of whom he assisted in the London print trade when all three converged
on London after Henry’s death. Bale’s influence must have had an energizing effect on the
reformist cause when, under Edward, policy shifted in favor of the evangelical reformers. As
Bradshaw notes, Bale’s influence on them can be seen in the reformers’ strategy of identifying
English monarchs with biblical figures, such as Edward VI and Josiah. These were not idealized
constructions but rather politically double-edged images that often suggest deep “misgivings
about the definition of royal authority in regard to religion.”108 Indeed, if the royal supremacy
was axiomatic in theory under Edward VI, it was also problematic in practice and sorely strained
by Somerset’s effective assumption of it for himself. As Stephen Alford has written, “In the early
years of Edward’s reign royal authority was, in effect, naked and exposed. Sovereign power was
exercised by others on Edward’s behalf. He was king in name and blood but in practice only
collaboratively and corporately.”109
The nakedness and vulnerability of the king is emphasized in Crowley’s quarto editions
of The Vision of Pierce Plowman (1550),110 whose text that Bale seems to have procured in the
form of several manuscript versions for Crowley and whose political volatility is well known.111
George Puttenham labeled its author a “malcontent of that time […] who bent himselfe wholy to
taxe the disorders of that age and specially the pride of the Romane Clergy, of whose fall he
semeth to be a very true Prophet.”112 Although it is not clear, as some have thought, that Piers
had been a banned book,113 its utility to the evangelical cause has been widely noted by scholars,
though not so much for its political valences that might disturb rather than simply support the
Edwardian regime.
On the first page of the second and third editions’ “briefe summe of the principall poyntes
that be spoken of in thys boke,” Crowley notes that Piers addresses all estates, rebukes corrupt
churchmen, and:
Nexte it declareth some what of the power and office of kinges and
Princes, and than secretly in latine verses it rebuketh their

18
 cruelness and tyranny. Than under the parable of Rattons and mise,
it rebuketh the foly of the commune people that cluster togythers in
conspiracies against such as god hath called to office under their
Prince, And here in it lamenteth the state of that realme, wherin the
kynge is childishe, & so everye wicked man getteth rule under
hym.114
This last point, which had holy writ as its source,115 cut against the interpretation of the king as a
new Josiah that Hugh Latimer had preached116 and which Archbishop Cranmer, in cooperation
with Somerset, had emphasized in the king’s coronation. (Cranmer had also stressed Edward’s
divine right and omitted parts of the ritual that referred to the monarchy as having elective
origins.117) Furthermore, the same biblical text that Crowley draws to his readers’ attention was
employed by Bishop Gardiner to oppose Somerset carrying out “innovation” before the king was
in his majority,118 a position that Cranmer himself adopted to restrain the zeal of the “reforming”
nobility for plundering the chantries.119 Crowley’s editions of Piers may also be seen as
responding to the same vicissitudes of power and policy in 1550 when, following another year of
popular rebellions and general political instability, the prospects for real social and religious
reform were clearly slipping away.
Crowley’s summary refers to the allegory at the end of the prologue in Piers where a
wise mouse opposes a rabble of rats who wish to bell the cat but are afraid to do so. Although the
mouse says worse will come if the “commune” or, in Crowley’s text, the “commens,”120 kill the
cat, the mouse observes:
Where the cat is a kitling,121 the courte is full elenge [i.e., wretched]
That wytnesseth holy writinge who so will it rede

Ue terre Ubi puer Rex est122
Whereas Latimer had explained away this biblical text by emphasizing the verse that follows it—
“Blessed is the land where there is a noble king”123—Crowley’s gloss on the “secret” Latin
which “rebukes” the prince merely states that all learned men say that puer is to be taken as a
metaphor for lassinis, fatuis, aut ineptis principibus, non de etate tenellis.124 Further, the gloss
concludes that puer is a metaphor that can be literalized as puerilis and thus revise the
troublesome text: Quasi dicat, ubi rex puerilis est. Hence Crowley’s use of “childish” in his
summary rather than ubi puer rex est. If this strained gloss is indeed an attempt to explain away a

19
troublesome scripture that appears to rebuke the prince, as King contends,125 why would
Crowley emphasize it in the summary and prologue in such a way that alerts non-Latin literate
readers to its presence?126 Why leave it in the poem at all, since the political point of the text is
entirely clear by itself and was in fact glossed by a late sixteenth-century reader as “prophycy
paste”?127 That is, when there is not a strong king, the rats and mice will play, and the court and
the country will fall into disorder, with each estate sabotaging itself and victimizing the other, as
the mouse goes on to warn his audience. By following his A-text, Crowley could have omitted
the scene entirely, or else he could have followed the C-text (presumed to be a late authorial
revision), which removes the emphasis on the commons as the basis of royal power, as Sir
Adrian Fortescue did when he copied the poem in the 1530s.128 Perhaps to Crowley the B-text
prologue’s warning of a “court cat” replacing another “court cat” seemed relevant to
contemporary politics, i.e., Somerset being deposed by Northumberland, and the “kitten” or
“childish king” cannot avoid evoking thoughts of “the younge kynge” Edward, whom Crowley
would describe in his 1559 chronicle as having been “enticed to passe time in maskeyng and
mumminge” while Somerset awaited his death in the Tower.
Topical applications aside, the prologue’s allegorical discussion of popular revolt and
political assassination is probably most significant for the work it does to construct a public
discourse that is dominated by the commons, or at least their self-elected representative, the
mouse. As the whole passage reflects on and expresses several possible attitudes toward the
political order, it may perform and constitute a discursive practice for its “common readers”—
individual and communal reflection on high political affairs—while also modeling politicized
attitudes toward such affairs, none of which seem particularly likely to support the sublimation
of the unpleasant realities of power politics beneath an image of a commonwealth governed by
wholly godly and benevolent patriarchs. The mouse gets the last word with his thoroughly
orthodox and paternalistic opinions, but they are markedly the opinions of the common folk and
a non-elite pater, as the comments on the puer Rex come from the mouse’s “sire … seven yere
passed”129 in a text that is self-consciously authorized by its “great antiquitie” and which came to
be the “gransier of marten marprelette” in 1589.130 As Stephen Greenblatt has remarked, “radical
protest in the early modern period appealed not to perceptions utterly alien to those expressed in
official circles but rather drew unacceptable conclusions from those same perceptions.”131 Yet
Crowley is probably not atypical in being unaccepting of the unacceptable conclusions his work

20
suggests—he enables them but also attempts to efface the most egregious possible affront to the
monarch.
Indeed, Crowley’s handling of the prologue to Piers should not be taken as evidence that
he was some sort of political radical, and still less that his representation of Piers indicates an
unambiguous political stance. Piers and English history in general could be read far more
conservatively and also far more radically than Crowley in fact reads them. Crowley’s
contemporary John Stow provides an example of a similar though substantially more aggressive
and yet nevertheless restrained editorial revisionism. Although Stow held a dim view of Crowley
and his anti-vestiarian faction under Elizabeth, like Crowley, Stow had sympathies with the
commonwealth ideal championed since Henry’s reign by men as diverse as More and Cromwell,
even if Stow was cold, if not hostile, toward the latter and other iconoclastic reformers.132 Robert
Edwards has shown that Stow, while accurately reproducing the narrative of Lydgate’s Siege of
Thebes in his 1561 edition of Chaucer’s Workes, “conflated and contaminated” the text in ways
that reveal “a pattern of representation that points to and underscores mixed forms of political
authority.”133 More so than Crowley with Piers, Stow made “independent interventions” but still
did “not rewrite the narrative of the Siege so much as relocate it ideologically by shifting the
underlying formulations of political authority [....] Stow frames kingship within a network of
institutional forces,” particularly those constituted by the commons, “that establish and
legitimate royal power [....] inflect[ing] and complicat[ing] monarchic rule by recognizing the
place of aristocratic interest and citizenship and by privileging country, land, and city as
legitimating sources for sovereignty.”134 Yet even in perhaps his most radical construction of the
historical and literary past (assuming that Stow is responsible for much of Thomas Speght’s
“Life of Chaucer”),135 when Stow represents the great father of English letters as a man who had
favored “some rash attempt of the common people,”136 he is careful to strike an orthodox note
and emphasize Chaucer’s eventual repentance and return to favor with the king.137 Though
perhaps slanting to different sides in the Reformation, Stow to what we would call “the right”
and Crowley to “the left,” both exhibit a similar, traditionalist sensibility.
Clearly Stow and Crowley are a long way from Milton, who could retrospectively see
something called “the Reformation”138 and, in a flourishing early modern public sphere, mobilize
its key authors and texts (perhaps including Piers) in his anti-episcopal tracts and his support for
righteous rebellion and the regicide.139 Other seventeenth-century readers who read Piers as an

21
anti-prelatic text140 certainly would have shocked and appalled Crowley, who would no doubt
find himself politically aligned with the likes of Stow, their rather divergent religious views
notwithstanding. Although the Martinists’ sentiment and choice of literary ancestry in I plaine
Piers is reminiscent of Crowley’s own designs with Piers and other texts, Crowley, like Foxe
(whose son Samuel ironically ran afoul of Elizabethan Puritans at their alma mater141), opposed
the presbyterian faction.142
This is not to deny that Crowley’s work, including Piers, had significant and perhaps
even radical political implications, but rather to note that those implications were largely beyond
the horizon of Crowley’s own life, particularly in the 1540s-50s. Just as his “summe” of Piers
rebukes the cruelty of kings and also the folly of the commons, Crowley’s habitual attitude
was—or at least tried mightily to be—wholly faithful to the prevailing conservative spirit of the
day. That conservative spirit cannot be overstated, not because it completely dominated
Crowley’s thinking but because it had a persistent and accepted claim on him in a way that
resists characterization as “self-censorship” when its mark is visible in such places as his
tentative gloss on ubi puer rex est. “Self-censorship” implies a failure of nerve, an unwillingness
to maintain a proper or ideal fidelity to politically heterodox opinions and values which belong to
a later age. The real nature of the misgivings of Edwardian “gospellers”143 like Crowley toward
established authority—men such as Latimer, Lever and Becon—stemmed from their position
between the rock of their traditionalism and the hard place of their desire for what was, in spite
of their own anxieties and strategies of denial, radical change.
How did this tension play out in Crowley’s practice of editing Piers Plowman, an
“ancient” text that contained material that could be (and apparently was) seen both to support
and call into question aspects of the present political and religious order? As we have seen with
the prologue, Crowley tended to stay his hand from the text and kept his own voice to the
margins. Yet the fact that he did not always refrain from altering the text presents us with the
problem of characterizing Crowley’s editorial role and mindset points to some of his
fundamental habits, motives, conflicts and concerns.

Piers Plowman: Editions and Traditions Discovered and Dismantled

22
 Although the historical and cultural significance of Piers Plowman in the sixteenth
century has been the subject of a good deal of recent scholarship, the biases of the modern
editorial tradition and its authorities have had a strong dampening effect on it. Since the
nineteenth century, when modern textual scholarship, principally the groundbreaking work of the
Reverend W. W. Skeat, generated wide scholarly interest in Piers Plowman, Crowley has been
known as the poem’s first “editor” and sometimes even as its first “modern” editor. Among the
major editors of Middle English texts who have a better claim to being “modern,” only Thomas
Tyrwhitt found great fault with Crowley’s text since he was unaware of the B version of the
poem that Crowley used as his base text.144 Thomas Wright felt Crowley had an excellent
manuscript, and Skeat agreed, going so far as to give Crowley’s text manuscript authority since
the base is lost.145 George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson maintained Skeat’s high regard for the
quality and authority of Crowley’s text.146 Alongside similar commentary concerning the skill
and insight of sixteenth-century editors of The Canterbury Tales and other major Middle English
and Anglo-Saxon texts, these scholarly assessments of Crowley’s editorial role and significance
typify one of the main processes by which English language and literature was constructed and
legitimized as a discipline.
This process has functioned as a secularized, modern (and still nationalistic) version of
the sixteenth-century protestant effort that Bale, Crowley and their cohorts engaged in to
discover a native and ancient tradition of religious authorities who represented the true church
from which Rome had departed.147 This project was supported by “ancient” texts like Piers that
seemed (or could be seen as) protestant in spirit. As John King notes, Foxe paid “tribute to
Tyndale as a bookman par excellence when he identifie[d] him as the editor of Agricolae
Praecatione, Bale’s quaintly Latinized title for The Prayer and Complaint of the Plowman Unto
Christ (Antwerp, 1531?).”148 Like Crowley’s preface to Piers, Foxe dates The Prayer to the mid-
fourteenth century, and his introduction to the reprinted version of it in the 1570 Actes and
Monuments “anticipates the editorial rationale”149 of the edition of Tyndale’s Works (1573) that
Foxe and John Day produced:
Which book, as it was faithfully set forth by William Tyndale, so I
have as truly distributed the same abroad to the reader’s hands;
neither changing anything of the matter, neither altering many
words of the phrase thereof. Although the oldness and age of his

23
 speech and terms be almost grown now out of use, yet thought I it
best, both for the utility of the book to reserve it from oblivion, as
also in his own language to let it go abroad, for the more credit and
testimony of the true antiquity of the same. Adding withal in the
margin, for the better understanding of the reader, some
interpretation of certain difficult terms and speeches, as otherwise
might perhaps hinder or stay the reader.150
While Crowley, Bale and Foxe were concerned with establishing the existence of a native church
and tradition in the deep past that was authoritative, catholic, and anti-papistical151 in order to
stave off the question, “Where was your church before Luther,” modern English philology later
faced implicit questions along the lines of “Where was your discipline before Skeat, Furnivall,
and EETS?” The answer was still to be derived from the discovery, or rather the creation, of
originary editors like Crowley and the canon of poets whose works were enshrined in the earliest
printed “editions,” just as Crowley, Bale, Foxe and others derived a tradition from Langland,
Chaucer, Wycliffe and the various texts they often erroneously ascribed to these presumptively
proto-protestant luminaries. So too, with its Caxtons, Parkers and Crowleys, the modern
discipline acquired its first generation in an editorial genealogy of fathers and sons152 united in a
common “mourning for a text,”153 as Bernard Cerquiglini puts it—a project of recovering, re-
forming, memorializing and propagating canonical texts.154 By retrospectively enfolding
Crowley into the discipline’s story about itself—the story of an editorial tradition—the discipline
acquired the cultural capital of a respectable always-and-already established status rather than the
appearance of rootlessness, instability, novelty and newfangledness.155 In just this way Crowley
and his editions were anachronistically recuperated in the nineteenth century into a disciplinary
tradition that had no existence and whose values and assumptions had little or no currency in
1550 when The Vision of Pierce Plowman was printed.
Within the disciplinary master narrative with its positivistic bias, value-laden definitions
like “editor,” “editing,” and “text” are supposed to be universal and transparent for their
meaning. The main value of a “text” is placed on its proximity to a presumed “lost authenticity,”
and the main value of an “editor” is placed on his ability to recover, as Cerquiglini writes:
an anterior perfection that is always bygone, that unique moment
in which the presumed voice of the author was linked to the hand

24
 of the first scribe, dictating the authentic, first, and original
version, which will disintegrate in the hands of all the numerous,
careless individuals copying a literature in the vernacular.156
However, it was only a matter of time before literary and textual scholars, paralleling movements
in historiography that challenged the hagiographic Foxian narrative of the Reformation, struck at
figures like Crowley whose motives and practices are by no means harmonious with those of
modern editors. As David Matthews writes:
Once wrested from the mechanism of aristocratic patronage, [Early
English] was no longer a minority practice of the self, the tool of
isolated antiquarians, but promulgated by apparently selfless
scholars as a generalized technology of aesthetic cultivation for the
masses.
The changes encompassed in this shift lend themselves to
the ascending, continuist model of knowledge, that narrative in
which scholarship goes on improving itself by increasing, through
the efforts of its practitioners, its own objectivity.157
In this view, presumed “early editors” like Crowley are prone to being charged with having
violated the objectivist, continuist model, and modern practitioners of the discipline, particularly
in the last few decades, have indeed asked if Crowley the hot gospeller wasn’t a careless copyist
and propagandist rather than a critical editor. One must ask in what sense Crowley was an editor,
or if he can even be considered one at all.
With bibliographical158 and historical propriety,159 one may say that Crowley produced
three distinct “editions” of Piers Plowman—three printings from three different settings of
type.160 However, when it comes to the sense of “edition” that refers to the genre and quality of a
text produced by an “editor” who establishes it with a “critical” or “scholarly” method, problems
arise. The earliest usage of “editor” is 1649, when it simply means “[t]he publisher of a book.”161
“Editor,” in the sense of “[o]ne who prepares the literary work of another person, or number of
persons for publication, by selecting, revising, and arranging the material,” or “one who prepares
an edition of any literary work” first appears in 1712.162 Speaking of London around 1644,
Adrian Johns notes that “categorization into ‘bookseller,’ ‘printer’ or ‘wholesaler’—let alone
‘publisher’ or ‘editor’—was relatively unfamiliar.”163

25
 Crowley did not collate his sources fully nor did he demonstrate much awareness of
humanist text-editing practices—practices which, while being more critically-oriented than
Crowley’s, were still “pre-critical,” even for as venerable a philologist as Erasmus.164 On the title
pages of some of Crowley’s books, including those containing material that he wrote himself, he
refers to the work inside as having been “compiled” by him.165 This suggests that Crowley’s
understanding of his role is continuous with a notion of authorship and textual reproduction
shared by medieval scribes and contemporary compilers of commonplace books.166 Furthermore,
although Hailey finds evidence of an intuitive awareness “of the principle of lectio difficilior,”167
Crowley used his manuscripts rather unsystematically and indiscriminately by modern standards,
making revisions to his text in the course of printing the three editions.168 It seems impossible
that Crowley would not have noticed the extensive differences between the different versions of
Piers that he consulted, but nothing he writes or does with his editions indicates he thought these
differences had any great importance. Aside from his occasional failure to read his sources
properly and errors that were introduced into the printed editions by misreadings of copy-text,169
Crowley also made creative revisions to Piers. He tried to make the poem more linguistically
accessible to a wide audience: he modernized characters, words, grammar, and syntax to make
the text more accessible, and he explained the alliterative meter in his preface. Unless he was
referring to another plowman text, the modernization offended William Turner, a member of
Crowley’s circle, who at any rate objected to modernization in principle in a letter to Foxe c.
1560-64.170 Crowley’s text is still essentially Middle English, however, and its language is not as
modernized as a Tudor English manuscript version of the poem that was made in London in the
1530s, or possibly as late as the 1550s.171
In order to provide a definition of “edition” (and, by extension, “editor”) that can
accommodate sixteenth-century Middle English texts and their producers, Anne Hudson has
suggested that “edition” should be thought of as referring to “printings of a text which, by virtue
of its inclusion of commentary or collation, appears to be more than a simple reproduction of a
single manuscript.”172 However, this definition is not very useful since it matters a great deal for
practical purposes and historical understanding whether an edition is or merely appears to be
more than a simple reproduction of a single manuscript. Moreover, it matters whether the
commentary is ideologically freighted, whether the collation is thorough, whether reasonably
good sources were collated, whether the text was interpolated, and so on. So naturally, despite a

26
general recognition of Crowley’s historically and epistemologically liminal position, the
presence of both a commentary and a collated text in his editions has generated a good deal of
confusion and debate, with the books often being described as either “uncritical” and “medieval”
or “critical” and “modern,” even though no one would argue that Crowley employed a critical
editing methodology that directed the whole production of his texts.173
For instance, John King’s seminal chapter on Crowley in English Reformation Literature
refers to Crowley’s work on Piers “as an early effort to provide a critical edition [my italics] of a
classical English text,”174 but later King asserts that “Crowley’s primary editorial effort went into
an uncritical attempt [my italics] to reproduce an authoritative text.”175 King claims Crowley’s
version of Piers contains “violent exaggerations and biting invective,” since Crowley
“kidnapped” and “convert[ed]” the poem into an anti-Roman Catholic polemic.176 At the same
time, Crowley’s effort to establish the identity of the poem’s author stems from his desire to
“strengthen its authority as a valid historical document rather than a lying fable.”177 For this
purpose King remarks that Crowley “edited and corrected his text carefully,”178 presenting it as a
classic that “he wanted […] to be appealing and acceptable as a trustworthy ancient authority,”179
yet this did not preclude “thoroughly moderniz[ing]” the poem “to accord with sixteenth-century
standards of usage and orthography.”180 Emphasizing again that “it was essential for Crowley to
print his text in as unaltered a state as possible,” King counterintuitively points out what he takes
to be several substantial ideologically motivated revisions to the text “where [Crowley] found the
original doctrinally unacceptable.”181 King then reiterates “Crowley’s reverence for the fidelity
of his text” and asserts that Crowley “disregard[ed] […] the temptation to rewrite Piers Plowman
thoroughly from his Protestant bias.”182 It is mainly at the margins of the text, “in his preface,
summary, and marginal notes” that Crowley dares to aggressively “convert the work into
Protestant propaganda.”183
This rather contradictory survey of Crowley’s editorial habits owes much to Skeat, who
made the same positive overall judgment of Crowley as an editor but also noticed several unique
readings in Crowley’s text that he thought were deliberate, protestantizing “falsifications.”184 To
these King added a few more examples, some erroneous, which have been repeated in
subsequent publications, such as the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Frequently
Crowley’s “falsifications” are cited in support of the idea that he was a rather extreme
“propagandist,”185 although the precise meaning of this hazy term in the mid-sixteenth century is

27
never specified. In this vein, A. G. Dickens, David Norbrook, Malcolm Godden, John Bowers
and others have written that Crowley emended, interpolated, censored, and even bowdlerized
Piers Plowman.186 However, most of the instances in which Crowley is said to have made
ideological revisions have been disproved or put into doubt by J. R. Thorne, Marie-Claire Uhart,
and R. Carter Hailey. Crowley appears to have added only two lines that are clearly his own
inventions, neither of which are necessarily “protestantizing” in nature.187 The cases of possible
“censorship” that remain are doubtful and at best very partial attempts to remove or downplay
single references to transubstantiation, the mass, purgatory, and the Virgin Mary as a mediator
and object of devotion.188 As for Crowley’s marginal glosses and his passus summaries, some are
clearly polemical, but as Hailey notes, there are “only a handful” of glosses (and no summaries)
in the first edition, and in the second and third editions, where the glosses were substantially
increased, “nearly half” are biblical citations.189
Crowley probably shared with Bale (and later Foxe) what James Carley observes in Bale
as “a profound tension between an inclusivity engendered by patriotic considerations, that is, an
impulse to preserve every known British author, and an exclusivity based on his religious
principles, that is, a desire to remove the most egregious papists of the past from the roster of
illustrious writers.”190 In the case of a single text’s contents, like Piers’, the tension would have
been between the desire to represent the poem fully because it was not egregiously papistical and
the desire to remove whatever traces of papistry did appear in it. This latter desire seems not to
have had much sway with Crowley. As many recent studies have shown, Bale, Foxe, John Day,
and others in their circle were capable of altering a text or narrative far more aggressively than is
the case with Crowley’s Piers, although all of them generally cannot be regarded as editorial
libertines.191 As Anne Hudson writes, “all the evidence points to a remarkable conservatism in
the sixteenth-century handling of […] medieval materials.”192 In this light, Charlotte Brewer is
right to caution that King’s characterizations of Crowley’s textual interventions are “perhaps a
little strong.”193
Brewer writes that Crowley treated “his task as editor with some seriousness”194 by
attempting to identify the author and the time in which he lived, and she notes that his “concern
for searching out separate versions of the poem indicates a sense of editorial responsibility.”195
Crowley tells his readers that he consulted “diverse copies,”196 and indeed it appears that he used
at least one manuscript from each group to produce a B-text version whose quality has impressed

28
editors from Wright and Skeat to Kane and Donaldson,197 yet Brewer rightly qualifies these facts
with the recognition that “Crowley had little notion of the integrity of any particular text or
manuscript, or how relations between them might constitute a sort of puzzle holding the key to
what the author originally wrote.”198 Thus the appearance of “editorial decisions” in Crowley’s
editions that show evidence of both “responsibility” and “carelessness,” “critical” and
“uncritical” acts, leads Brewer, among others, to draw a comparison between “sixteenth-century
reprinters of Middle English works” like Crowley and “medieval scribes.”199
This response, however, does not offer a way to reconcile the supposed “critical” and
“uncritical” aspects of Crowley’s work or the “editor” with the “propagandist,” and ultimately
the scales must tip one way or the other: toward the conscientious editor or the religious radical.
For Brewer, ultimately “Crowley’s concern with the poem has more in common with that of the
rebels of 1381: both were using Piers Plowman for its political relevance to their own immediate
ends. They made no or little attempt to interpret the poem on its own terms.”200 But aside from
the fact that Crowley was very far from using Piers to support an armed rebellion, why should he
have engaged in an autotelic appreciation of Piers if, as Brewer notes early in her chapter,
“Crowley’s work performs a very different function from that of subsequent editions” because
“it is part of a vibrant and directly relevant past?”201
Hailey grapples with this problem as well, but he relates Crowley’s work to subsequent
editions precisely because he believes that Crowley’s distinctly uncritical, non-modern motives
led to relatively critical (and thus “modern”) ends: since Crowley thought Piers was “divinely
inspired, [it] would have no need to be purged of doctrinal impurities.”202 Clearly there is much
about Crowley’s editions that resonates with modern notions of editorial work as the recovery of
a pristine, original text, yet, as we have seen, there is also much that doesn’t. Hailey himself
states that Crowley “misreads” the poem and “misleads his readers as to its meaning,” but he
emphasizes that Crowley also “conscientiously attempted to produce the most accurate text he
could, given his understanding of manuscript variation”203 and was “not constrained by his
polemical purpose to alter the text to conform to his reading of it, but attempt[ed] to present an
accurate and effectively critical edition of the poem, within the limits of his understanding of that
process.”204 The rub is that when Crowley attempts to identify and situate his author historically,
he does so, as Hailey writes, because he “sincerely believed that, during the reign of Edward III
‘it pleased God to open the eyes of many to se hys truth’ and among those so graced were

29
Wycliffe and Langland.”205 Nevertheless, Hailey’s view of Crowley’s effectively “critical”
editorial practices ultimately supplants his recognition of Crowley’s motives and leads him to
minimize their import and even question the idea of an ideological motivation altogether. But
surely this is the key to a historical comprehension of Crowley’s project—his motives rather than
their results, or the results insofar as they indicate his motives rather than his credentials for
being a modern or a critical editor.
What then were Crowley’s motives? The usual answers—to attack papistry, to
demonstrate divine truth hidden in the past, to affirm reformation as restoration—are accurate as
far as they go, but they leave some important questions unasked. Certainly Crowley and Bale had
a significant preoccupation with attacking papistry, yet this is not the direct concern of most of
Crowley’s Edwardian publications where items with moral, social and political reformist
agendas outnumber polemical and more strictly doctrinal works.206 Nor is an anti-papistical
theme emphasized half as much as it might have been if Piers was principally to be a vehicle for
teaching the English “the truth about Rome and the English past,”207 as Leslie Fairfield writes of
Bale’s own project. Crowley and Bale’s decision that Langland, not Wycliffe, was the author of
the poem208 and that some manuscript witnesses had interpolated prophecies that must be
omitted209 are perhaps understandable if they regarded fidelity to the authorial original as a
critical part of their task. Yet Crowley’s handling of the prologue’s commentary on childish
kings and his addition of a line to the poem that attacks clerical pluralism210 cut in the other
direction. Why not simply change puer to puerilis in the prologue itself rather than make a
tenuous denial of a politically sensitive reading and thereby emphasize the possibility of that
reading? On the other hand, why insert any new text if the source is sacred and to be preserved as
it is? Crowley clearly did not consistently follow a principle of intervention or nonintervention,
but his decisions were not arbitrary; they follow or at least seem responsive to a consistent
agenda and concern that has nothing to do with modern editorial preoccupations or monolithic
constructions of “the Reformation” as “Catholics” versus “Protestants.” Rather, as with his vexed
handling of the prologue and his subsequent treatment of Edwardian history in the Cronicle,
Crowley’s handling of the most politically charged and historically significant part of the
poem—the supposed allusion to the dissolution of the monasteries—again indicates his own
complex and ambivalent response to the dissonance between the realities of a reformation from

30
above and his own ideal vision for it as the latter corresponded less and less to what those in high
places were willing or able to achieve.

Piers and Prophecy: Populist Politics and Ambivalent Providentialism

John King contends that Crowley’s editions of Piers Plowman interpret the poem through
Bale’s millenarian historiography in which the English church, mired in corruption since Bede
and Alcuin, had entered the fifth age in the time of Edward III and Richard II.211 This was the
epoch of Antichrist signified by the fifth angel and trumpet in Revelation when the battle against
Antichrist began in England with Wycliffe and others like Langland, as Crowley asserts in his
preface, “The printer to the reader:”
[…] I may be bold to reporte, that it was fyrste made and wrytten
after the yeare of our lord. M.iii.C.L. and before the yere, M,iiii C,
and.ix which meane spase was.lix. yeres. We may iustly coniect
therefore, [that] it was firste written about two hundred yeres paste,
in the tyme of King Edwarde the thyrde. In whose tyme it pleased
God to open the eyes of many to se hys truth, geuing them
boldenes of herte, to open their mouthes and crye oute agaynst the
worckes of darckenes, as did John Wycklefe, who also in those
dayes translated the holye Bible into the Englishe tonge, and this
writer who in reportynge certaine visions and dreames, that he
fayned him selfe to haue dreamed:doeth moste christianlye enstruct
the weake, and sharply rebuke the obstinate blynde. There is no
maner of vice, that reigneth in anye estate of men, whiche this
wryter hath not godly, learnedlye, and wittilye rebuked.212
Piers thus emerged “as a prophecy of the English Reformation,” particularly through Crowley’s
reading of parts of passus 5 and passus 10 “as a prophecy of the dissolution of the abbeys.”213
King claims that Crowley and Bale saw their moment in English history as the threshold of the
apocalypse, and he contends that Crowley’s twelve poems in The Voyce of the Laste Trumpet
Blowen bi the Seventh Angel (1549, 1550)214 are “a versification of Bale’s ideas” as well as “a
companion” to Piers and “[a]n extension of [its] prophecies.”215 The Voyce, like most of

31
Crowley’s Edwardian publications, surely “singles out avarice as the fundamental cause of
religious and social problems,”216 but Crowley’s convictions about the near future and the
present regime’s status within providential history seem to have been far less certain and
doctrinaire than King suggests. The Voyce’s overt apocalypticism doesn’t extend beyond its title
and has no apparent connection with Bale’s The Image of Both Churches (1548? and 1550).217
Furthermore, Katharine Firth points out that in The Image Bale initially set his millennial hopes
for the English church in the near future but ended by stressing that the age of purity and
righteousness lay in the past, as did Foxe.218 Crowley’s less than deft gloss that “explains away”
ubi puer Rex est may have been motivated, as King claims, by a desire to see Edward VI “as the
millennial Davidic ruler” who saves England at the behest of Truth, as in the conclusion of
Philargyrie, but Edward is never explicitly “link[ed] […] with the kingdom of the last days” in
Piers or anywhere else, as King avers.219
In light of Crowley’s consistent hesitation when faced with the opportunity to represent
the monarch, the current aristocratic junto, and the actual process of church reform as
unambiguously aligned with the will of God, his effort to minimize Piers’ apparent prediction of
the monastic dissolution makes sense. Downplayed or overlooked by King and others, Crowley’s
conclusion to his preface to Piers likely resonates with his ambivalence about the king and his
reservations about Somerset and Warwick, who lined their pockets with monastic property.
Crowley, Becon, Latimer, and Lever all protested this rapaciousness and called for monastic
wealth to be used to relieve the poor and to establish a godly clergy.220 Unsurprisingly then, the
divine sanction for the dissolution implied by the prophecy in Piers is contained by Crowley so
that God’s special favor cannot be assumed to extend to the human agents involved in the
dissolution, and readers are again instructed to mind the lesson of sin and judgment as it applies
to their own lives:
Nowe for that whiche is written in the .l, leafe, concernyng the
suppresson of Abbayes, the Scripture there alledged, declareth it to
be gathered of the iust iudgment of God, who wyll not suffer
abomination to raigne unpunished. Loke not upon this boke
therfore, to talke of wonders paste or to come, but to emend thyne
owne misse, whych thou shalt fynd here most charitably rebuked.

32
 The spirit of god geue the grace to walke in the way of truthe to
Gods glory, & thyne owne soules healthe. So be it,221
Crowley’s distinction between “prophecy” and “truth gathered of the scriptures”222—
which he is at pains to make at other points in Piers223—may be between pagan and Christian
forms of prognostication as King suggests,224 but the main source of Crowley’s anxieties about
the prophetic mode in Piers probably lie elsewhere. King himself notes that Bale and Bishop
Cox referred to ancient secular prophecies that they saw fulfilled by the protestant reforms.225
There are also two fragments from Piers Plowman in BL Sloane MS 2578 which bring together
several prophecies that Crowley discusses in his preface and glosses, including the one taken as a
reference to the disendowment in passus 10.226 Similarly, a late sixteenth-century owner of Owen
Rogers’ 1561 reprint of Crowley’s edition227 dated his copy 1577 and copied the entry from
Bale’s Index for “Robertus Langland” into it along with the following observation: “Nihil aliud
ab ipso editum novi. Prophetice plura praedixit, que nostris diebus implevi vidimus.”228 Another
late sixteenth-century reader listed a number of other prophecies he found in the poem alongside
Crowley’s preface, including “an other prophety of dissolving of abays in the xlx life.”229
Crowley, by contrast, is clearly more circumspect and even contradictory concerning the
prophetic qualities of the poem as he both admits and minimizes the prophecy of the dissolution,
hoping to emphasize Piers’ therapeutic potential as a means of moral and spiritual “self-
emendment.”230 The Voyce opens with the same hope that by “hearing your fautes ye might them
emende,”231 and Crowley’s long poem, The opening of the words of the Prophet Joell (1567)
begins “Repent, repent / I say repent / Your misse, & it amende.”232 The urgency of repentance is
immediately stressed by “Christes prophecie,” which “Doth shew plainely / Thys world shall
shortly ende.”233 The Opening can be called “apocalyptic,” although not in the same sense as
Bale’s Image. Crowley states that it was “compiled” in 1546 but “perused againe”234 in 1566,
which suggests that if his prediction of the world’s imminent end was not added to The Opening
twenty years after its original composition, then by 1566, if not earlier, Crowley was open, as
Bale and also Foxe235 apparently were, to the idea that the hand of providence in history is not
perspicuous. Or, if he did believe in 1566 that the world would shortly end, this may have been a
new conviction he was not prepared to publish in 1546 or state in 1550 via Piers.
Significantly, when Crowley glosses the “prophetic” passage in Piers that he refers to in
his preface, all he has to say in his first edition is “Reade thys.”236 That gloss is followed on the

33
next page by another, which reads, “The Abbot of Abyngton.” The abbot is named in the text of
the poem—“& al his issue for euer”—as being destined to “Haue a knocke of a kynge and
incurable the wounde.”237 Such caution toward lines that easily seem to refer to one of the first
monastic houses to have been suppressed—indeed, one of the oldest and richest houses—is
astonishing if Crowley’s goal was to lend support to the disendowment. His later editions merely
add the gloss, “The suppression of Abbayes,” and that remark is followed, tellingly, by another
that restates a point from the text—“High degree helpeth nothing to heauenwarde”238—at which
point the poem elaborates its social gospel. Here Crowley again guides readers to see the central
lesson of Piers as an exhortation to true conversion and godliness that extends to charitable
works, a calling that is no less and possibly more important for those of high degree. Had he
emphasized Piers as a prophecy fulfilled, then it would have had no such relevance for and
efficacy in the present. The moral and spiritual force of the poem’s exhortations would have
collapsed, as they are bound up in the eschatological tension of Piers’ quest for what Crowley
states in his sum as the “perfite state the worlde shall be in, in the tyme of renouation.”239 The
loss of that vision’s power in a deferred future to compel people to pursue its realization is
precisely what Crowley feared had happened in the wake of the abolition of purgatory and the
dissolution, hence his tendency to find alternative goads to righteous living—either outright
damnation240 or more immediate ruin from rebellion and immorality.
What Crowley does in The Opening is instructive in other respects too for how it
contrasts with his editions of Piers, whose political and prophetic potential could have been
cultivated at least as much as it is in The Opening. Generally Crowley interprets his biblical texts
in The Opening to find “signes” with a spiritual, moral, and political meaning. For instance, a
famine points to a dearth of “ghostly food”241 caused by corrupt clergy who remain unreformed
by crown policies and who would rather seek their own material gain than teach the laity the
gospel. If the clergy followed their proper vocation, Crowley claims that the spread of the gospel
would cure material and spiritual famine by teaching the poor and the rich their proper
relationship in mutually supporting service and gratitude.242 Typical of Crowley’s Edwardian
publications, there is much in The Opening that addresses the plight of the poor and the vices of
the predatory rich and other “private men”—except for the godly sort of private men. This is a
striking new note, particularly if Crowley actually wrote it, as his title page suggests, in 1546, as
criticism of reform under Henry VIII that remains valid now under Elizabeth.

34
 Elsewhere in his writings, Crowley is typical of his contemporaries in disparaging all
private men, private profit and private ambition,243 but here he strikes out on a highly
individualistic path, perhaps indicative of his new role as a leader of anti-vestiarian dissent. He
defends the authority of the godly individual and mocks those in traditional positions of power
who call for humility and submission:
They say we must,
Their iudgement trust,
And obey theyr decrees,
Although we see,
Them for to bee,
Against Gods verities.
They say how can,
The priuate man,
Discerne Gods veritie . . .
For God they say,
Giueth always,
The truth to the rulers.244
After explaining how wisdom and godliness come to the poor and unlearned but seem
conspicuously absent among the rich and the educated, Crowley then asserts that “Princes
Prelates, / All Magistrates / Could not destroy the pride: / Of Rome till that, / Poore men sparde
not, / To speake till some were fried.”245 Only after the blood of martyred commoners was
spilled for the gospel did the abbeys fall, which was supposed to be to the material and spiritual
benefit of the commons. Although the actual benefit to the commons was far less than he desired,
Crowley never goes so far as to express regret that the dissolution occurred; in fact, he uses a
good deal of space in The Opening to decry monastic buggery. But when he accompanies the
prophetic warning of the dissolution in passus five246 in his later editions of Piers with the gloss
“Due correction must be had” as well as “The suppression of Abbayes. Good counsel,”247 the
significant difference between “correction” and “suppression,” between a reconstructive and
merely iconoclastic, destructive event, suggests again the tension Crowley experienced between
his ideal, desired reform and actual outcomes. Was “suppression” “due correction” in his mind?
This is not clear by any means. Notably, what Crowley glosses as “good counsel” in Piers

35
became the counsel of Philaute a year later in Philargyrie. Protestant Philaute, writes Crowley in
his preface to Philargyrie, is actually worse than the papist Hypocrisie. Philargyrie has
flourished in Great Britain under both:
fyrste by Hypocrisie,
And nowe by selfe Loue
he doeth all destroye.
The Hypocrites had gotten
Into theyr owne handes
All placis of Pleasure
in euery coaste
So had they the good
and profitable landes
Which nowe by selfe loue
are spoyled and loste
No good thynge at all
remayneth welmoste
The thyngis that were best
are nowe made so bad
That where much thynge is
there nought can be had.
The Hypocritis were All
but worse is selfe loue248
Similarly, the fifth section of The Opening moves from the triumph of the dissolution to
the persistence of papistry in England and finally the problem of avaricious rulers, leaders,
princes and kings. Their unscrupulous use of power for personal gain oppresses the poor249 but is
often justified among the offenders by subtle glosses on God’s word.250 Pyers plowmans
exhortation, unto the lordes, knightes, and burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse (1550?), which
may be Crowley’s work, puts a study of economic processes into the mouth of Piers Plowman
who responds to problems that are perceived as the consequences of the dissolution.251 Pleasure
and Payne, Heaven and Hell (1551), also denounces enclosure, the plight of the poor under the

36
monastic dissolution, rising prices, and the lack of spiritual and physical sustenance in the
land.252
Given this larger context of concern with the actual implementation and direction of
reform, Crowley’s version of Piers Plowman, with its ambivalent prologue, passus summaries
and glosses, constitutes and is part of a substantially populist public discourse, a space of
questions that are implied as often as they are explicitly posed, reflecting and reflecting on
widespread concerns in the middle of the sixteenth century according to uniquely protestant
anxieties and habits of thought. However, these concerns and anxieties were not merely directed
toward the ruling elites, as if the failings of official reform were not also failings in which
Crowley and his associates were (no doubt at times self-consciously) complicit. There was a
distinct disadvantage and no doubt a good deal of discomfort that came from underwriting and—
in the case of many protestant preachers and printers—profiting from a reformation engineered
by supposedly godly monarchs and a ruling elite who sponsored iconoclasm in ways that were
difficult to see as being motivated by anything other than private ambition.253
Conspicuous for being absent from direct, recorded comment, it is inevitable that
Crowley and others like him experienced some measure of doubt and guilt with what they had
wrought. As Brett Usher writes of Crowley’s close contemporary, and perhaps his friend, John
Foxe, money is typically discussed in a negative light and as somebody else’s problem: “[t]here
is no real sense” in either man’s pages “that the most outward-looking metropolis in Europe
teemed with wealthy and influential citizens and merchants who helped launch the reign of the
‘godly imp’, ‘sustained’ protestantism under Mary and then, under Elizabeth, ensured that the
new regime and its leading ecclesiastics were adequately financed.”254 Crowley, too, “was
concerned solely with The Truth—the universality of the protestant message—ignoring the
uncomfortable fact that money was a vital ingredient in its dissemination and ultimate survival.
The ministrations of Mammon might be heartily welcome in private but they were not to be
celebrated on the printed page.”255 Perhaps that was in part because Truth had its price.

Protecting Protestantism from the Ministrations of Mammon and Private Men

Although the Dean of Wells, William Turner, complained about the expense of the
massive Actes and Monuments being produced by Foxe and Day,256 which had become an

37
establishment text by 1570-71, apparently Foxe refused to produce it in the smaller, cheaper
formats that were popular after his death.257 John Marbecke’s Bible concordance mentions in its
dedication to King Edward “that [Richard] Grafton had insisted the work be kept to a reasonable
length, otherwise copies ‘would beare so excessive price, as fewe of your highness loving
subiectes should be able to attain unto theim.’”258 One wonders if it was in part commercial
rivalry and uneasy awareness of Day’s collaboration with the Marian regime259 that led Foxe to
praise Day and print in The Actes and Monuments that Grafton had survived Cromwell’s fall by
being fearful of trouble and “making excuses for himself in all things.”260 Day, Foxe’s heroic
protestant printer lauded and monumentalized in the Actes and Monuments, stressed his
investment in print in his own epitaph: the capital risks he undertook were repaid by God with
profit, which Day claims to have returned again to the poor.261 Ian Gadd has recounted John
Wolfe’s legal and illegal battles against Day and others who held multiple monopolies on
books.262 Day was also sued in 1559 by his former partner, William Seres, for printing psalms
without a license, and “In 1582 Seres’ son petitioned Cecil for his assistance to prevent piracies
of his patent by John Wolfe and others, reminding him of his former assistance in procuring the
patent.”263 Peter Blayney has graphically illustrated the story of Day’s attempt to use his
influence with Archbishop Parker (another Marian survivor) to fight city hall and acquire a
property centally located in St. Paul’s Churchyard for selling books.264
In the London print trade, protestant printing houses like those of Day and Seres might be
seen as carrying out a sacred vocation despite their often cutthroat nature, but their designation as
“chapels” belied their private and secular structure, as well as the fact that many of them were
established within or on the former premises of chantry chapels and monastic houses. In 1538,
the Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Gresham, and aldermen of London petitioned Henry VIII for
ownership of the London monastic properties that were being surrendered to the crown.265
Gresham had been making the case for the City’s ownership of the hospitals for the health of the
population, and he argued for keeping some of the monastic churches open because of a lack of
space in the parish churches.266 The next year (and again in 1540) the appeal was repeated in a
petition to the king from the mayor, aldermen, and the commonalty of the City, as well as a
sermon at St. Paul’s.267 Cranmer, Latimer and Nicholas Shaxton (whose later recantation of
Protestant doctrine at Anne Askew’s burning was attacked in print by Crowley)268 qualified the
king’s attempt to confiscate the properties in question by suggesting that he not take the estates

38
that were founded by private persons but only those that had been endowed by previous
monarchs. The private houses, it was argued, should remain public as schools, hospitals and
reformatories.269 In 1539, with Cromwell’s support, the king had allowed Richard Grafton to
print out of the recently surrendered Gray Friars, whose anonymous chronicler expressed great
dismay at such changes in Reformation London.270 Acting as the king’s printer, Grafton’s
colophons read “the late dissolved House of the Gray Friars in Newgate” and “the House late the
Graye Freers,”271 but after 1546 they read “Christ Hospital” for the new institution Grafton was
instrumental in establishing and then overseeing.272
Under Edward VI and the second Chantries Act, other printers were less obviously
community-minded than Grafton; confiscated properties became and stayed wholly commercial
enterprises. At St. Paul’s there were 35 chantry chapels with 54 priests when they were
suppressed in 1547, about when Crowley came to London.273 The building that became
Stationers’ Hall in St. Paul’s Cross churchyard in 1554 was formerly the chantry known as Peter
College.274 William Cecil acquired it in 1548 and allowed the use of it to William Seres, who
was granted a lease on the premises in 1549.275
Reyner Wolfe276 and his holdings in the churchyard are another example of the
conversion of the “vast mausoleum”277 of St. Paul’s from the old sacred (though still
commercial) space to secular purposes. Blayney notes that Wolfe uniquely “seems to have
realized the full commercial potential of the Cross Yard a little earlier than his native rivals,”
establishing “the first (and only) printing house known to have existed in the Cross Yard, and he
was printing, publishing, and selling books in a large property rented from the Bishop of
London.”278 Some of Wolfe’s rentals alongside the north wall of the Cross Yard were on the
former ground of a cemetery that, after the twelfth century, had been developed into a crypt or
charnel house with a chapel and chantry built above it.279 Following the 1547 Chantries Act, the
property was surveyed for Wolfe on 24 April 1548,280 and he purchased it as a freehold from the
crown through a pair of brokers to whom it was granted on 9 September 1548.281 In 1549 the
chapel and tombs were demolished, presumably by Wolfe rather than Somerset, as has often
been reported.282
John Stow records the razing of the charnel chapel after mentioning that, also in 1549,
Somerset had demolished the Beckett and Sherrington chapels in Pardon Churchyard and by the
Great North Door. Stow memorably recalls “the Dance of Machabray” in Pardon Churchyard

39
“with its picture of death leading all estates, painted about the cloister” and accompanied by
“metres, or poesy […] translated out of French into English by John Lidgate, monk of Bury.”283
After this image of the continuity of death and life, Stow recounts “the old foundation” of the
charnel chapel and how its intercessory purpose supported a chaplain and two brotherhoods.
Given the dramatic changes brought in by Somerset and Wolfe, there is a subtle irony suggested
by Stow’s mention of the unlimited, eternal quality of the foundation and its careful regulated
boundaries, particularly those that protect it from profane commerce outside the churchyard
walls:
In the year 1282, the 10th of Edward I., it was agreed, that Henry
Walles, mayor, and the citizens, for the cause of shops by them
built without the wall of the churchyard, should assign to God and
to the Church of St. Paul ten marks of rent by the year for ever,
towards the new building of a chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and also to assign five marks of year rent to a chaplain to celebrate
there.284
Next Stow names some of the notable people who were buried in the charnel house: “Robert
Barton, Henry Barton, mayor, and Thomas Mirfin, mayor, all skinners, and were entombed with
their images of alabaster over them, grated or coped about with iron before the said chapel, all
which were pulled down in the year 1549.”285 The bones, however, were summarily “conveyed”
in 1549:
into Finsbury Field, by report of him who paid for the carriage,
amounting to more than one thousand cart-loads, and there laid on
a Moorish ground, in short space after raised, by soilage of the city
upon them, to bear three windmills. The chapel and charnel were
converted into dwelling-houses, warehouses, and sheds before
them, for stationers, in place of the tombs.286
Wolfe eventually had three buildings erected where the charnel chapel had been. These
were subsequently occupied by printers, and a fourth property adjoining on the east was rented
by Wolfe from the bishop of London. Wolfe himself operated out of The Brazen Serpent to the
west of the charnel chapel site from 1543-73, alongside three other shops he leased to others.
Thus, according to Blayney, “By the time he died in 1573, Wolfe not only owned the shops on

40
the site of the charnel chapel but also held leases for (at least) all the properties between those
shops and the Bishop’s Head. All told, his known holdings formed a continuous stretch of more
than 120 feet of the best bookselling frontage in England.”287
Crowley never directly addressed such rampant self-advancement and the often zero-sum
economics of his contemporaries and associates in the print trade.288 However, he did make a
general attack on the greed of Londoners in his One and thyrtye Epigrammes (two editions in
1550; reprinted in 1573), writing of:
…this is a Citye
in name, but, in dede,
It is a packe of people
that seke after meede,
For Officers and al
do seke their owne gaine,
But for the wealth of ye commons
not one taketh paine.
An hell with out order
I maye it well call
Where euerye man is for him selfe,
and no manne for all.289

Yet at the end of his life in A deliberat answere made to a rash offer, which a popish
Antichristian catholique, made to a learned protestant (1588), Crowley rebutted his recusant
opponent’s charge that there would be no religious or educational institutions without “papistry”
by enumerating the fruits of “the Protestants Catholique church” which “hath not bin, neither is
slack in dooing these works when hability, and oportunity may serue them.”290 Under Edward
VI, Crowley cites the charitable foundations that Richard Grafton had been involved with:
[…] Christs Hospitell, for the education of fatherless infants, S.
Bartholmews Hospitall in Smithfield, and S. Thomas Hospitall in
Southwarke, for [the] curing of diseased persons, did not the
protestant Catholikes make those charitable prouisions, & doo not
they still maintaine the same? This Offerer may remember, that his
Antichristian catholikes did (in the time of queene Maries raigne)
attempt to ouerthrowe those foundations agayne.
Who were the founders of Christs Colledge, S. Iohns, &
Trinitie Colledge in Oxforde, of Emanuell and Marimagdalen, &

41
 Caius Colledge in Cambridge, did they not beare the name of
protestant Catholikes that founded them? Many grammer Schooles
also might be named, & diuers other prouisions that protestant
catholikes haue made, and also for the succouring of the poore and
needy.291
Yet of course the hospitals had existed prior to the Reformation, which transformed them into
secular entities.292 Patrick Collinson and Ian Archer maintain, as did Crowley, that Stow’s sense
of the loss of traditional charity was unfounded, as philanthropy increased.293 Nevertheless, as
Paul Slack and, more recently, Susan Brigden, point out, despite the fact that the hospitals
received almost half of charitable bequests in London in the 1550s, it was grossly inadequate to
the task,294 as Crowley would have known, having been assigned in 1575 to a commission to
hear the petitions of poor prisoners in Ludgate and the two Counters in London, Wood Street and
the Poultry.295 Additionally, Crowley, unlike many of his oldest friends and colleagues like Foxe
and Day, appears not to have profited in any great material sense from his career in the church
and the printing trade, although it appears he became a pluralist under Elizabeth despite his
criticism of the practice under Edward.296 He had caused his tithes from his living at St. Giles
Cripplegate to go to the poor of Christ’s Hospital in 1582.297 His will indicates he had few
possessions when he died in 1588, which made two charitable requests on the condition that
there was more than ₤120 left for his wife after all his debts were paid.298 His remaining money
was to go to debtors and his wife, Margaret, but she was apparently left with very little. The
aldermen granted in her tenure the lease of a house and garden Crowley had built in
Southwark,299 and in 1592 the Stationers’ Company granted her a stipend of a noble a year, since
she had fallen into poverty.300

Crowley’s Edwardian writings do reflect, as John King writes, a vision of the true
Christian commonwealth that is modeled on “the medieval ideal of a hierarchical society strictly
governed by obedience to the monarch,”301 though not, as we have seen, without reservations.
Crowley’s vision of the godly commonwealth was no doubt a recollection of Langland’s “fair
feeld ful of folk […] / Of alle manere of men, the mene and the riche,”302 with each person
following his own vocation and serving those of higher and (especially) lower degree out of a
mutual bond of loving service and fidelity to God.303 But if Langland’s vision itself was an

42
embattled attempt to re-mystify or re-sacralize the image of church and society as coextensive
members united in a corpus mysticum bound by the consensus fidelium, the passage of time since
the late fourteenth century had seen this effort draw much nearer to its endgame, making it all the
more urgent to a mind such as Crowley’s.304
As William Bouwsma writes, the “political pluralism” of the early sixteenth century
“together with geographical and spiritual distance from Rome, the symbols and champion of
universalism, posed an insuperable obstacle to the full recovery of any conception of a single,
holy, and cosmic order.”305 The already tenuous nature of Langland’s vision at the time of the
Rising of 1381 was all the more acute for Crowley. In the wake of Anabaptist peasant revolts in
Germany that were driven by a belief in the imminent return of Christ, Luther’s own
eschatological thinking had withdrawn from speculation about politics in the present and future.
As Robin Barnes writes, “Nothing more was to be expected before the end,” yet “Luther’s
Reformation did not dissolve the extreme [apocalyptic] tension of the late Middle Ages. It
actually heightened the tense expectation by declaring inane all hope to the imminent return of
Christ.”306 Amid this tension, Crowley strove to avoid its polar extremes of immanentist politics
and political withdrawal in order to combat the individuating thrust of protestantism as the
official protestantization of the culture—amid severe socioeconomic polarization and conflict—
rendered what is perhaps Langland’s central idea all the more volatile in light of spirit-filled
champions of poor plowmen like Thomas Müntzer: “Piers the Plowman—Petrus, id est,
christus.” 307 This line superimposes, as Elizabeth Kirk writes, the “economic and social scene;
the vast and paradoxical structure of the medieval church; and the metaphysical nature of the
Christian God.”308 Furthermore, “[t]hree highly disparate kinds of authority”—all of which were
in great disarray in 1550—“are juxtaposed in the poem’s chameleon hero: the experiential
authority of the worker on whose labor all the rest of society depends; the intellectual and
sacramental authority of the medieval church; and the Word which was with God and was
God.”309 But, as Eric Voegelin reads Piers, the “eschatalogical transfiguration” of “the humble
plowman within the confines of the realm of England” occurs “without reference to any
institutional suggestions for its embodiment.”310 This is the problem that came to a crisis in
Crowley’s time and which he attempted to resolve in his gospelling exhortations to build a godly
commonwealth where solafideian belief entailed and did not inhibit charitable social obligation.

43
 This was a fine line to walk, but Crowley was not in a position where Piers was more
radical than he was, as Barbara Johnson has suggested, merely because seventeenth-century
readers of the poem took it to extremes he would have refused out of hand, had he even
considered them. Rather, Crowley was a conservative in approximately the same way that
Langland was. To varying degrees, both men seem to have resisted, as Christina von Nolcken
writes of Langland, reactionary religious forces “seeking a predictable world of absolute values
[…] a secure world […] from which [one] could contemplate the contemporary disintegration
with equanimity.”311 In this vein Crowley and Langland both paradoxically tolerated and
preserved many of the potentially revolutionary elements in Piers but also took revisionary steps
to counteract them312 while also staking their hopes in an eschatological faith where the church
and nation would unite in a godly commonwealth. Nevertheless, this eschatological vision,
failing to find a sufficiently absorptive institutional embodiment, could and did become
radicalized in popular sentiments and uprisings that Langland and Crowley—but not others—
were unwilling to support.313
This tense discursive space, for Crowley, characterizes the mid-Tudor “public sphere”—
not a recognized cultural institution but certainly a thing outside any prior institutional
embodiment as it developed in the emerging print culture. Crowley helped frame and constitute
this space “between royal power and the people,” as Thomas Betteridge has written of the voice
of “Truth” in Crowley’s Philargyrie.314 This is generally true of Tudor histories and historically-
concerned printed texts, such as Crowley’s Cronicles (and their own controversial, revisionary
history), as well as his editions of Piers. For as D. R. Woolf writes,
Since its invention in distant antiquity, the written representation of
the past has, in one way or another, always been affected by
present concerns, many of which can be considered to spring from
the ideological disposition of the author. All Tudor and early Stuart
historical writing thus reflects a conservative ideology of
obedience, duty, and deference to social and political hierarchy.
Historians used the past to sanction certain types of behaviour and
to deplore others; they also used it to justify the authority
structures of their present, structures which in turn shaped and
coloured what they said about the past.315

44
Yet contrary to what Woolf sees as a monochromatic, universal and uncontroverted narrative of
the English past in historical texts before the English Civil War, works like Crowley’s Cronicle,
his original poetry and political prose, as well as his editions of Piers were not part of a “broad
consensus on the past”316 that prevailed in the Tudor era. Rather, Crowley anticipates much of
what Woolf finds in “Early Stuart political thinking” which, in Woolf’s view, “permitted a range
of opinions on questions such as the relationship of the monarch and law, of prince and
parliament, and of church and state, without ever challenging assumptions about the need for
political order, the importance of social hierarchy, and the dangers of rebellion.”317 Woolf is
correct that a consensus on English “historiography could only be sustained for as long as the
national consensus on the adequacy and appropriateness of traditional forms of religion and
governance from which it derived and which it supported.”318 However, such a consensus never
existed in the Tudor era. The troubled “consensus” that the established church may have
represented officially would break most profoundly and decisively in the 1640s, but in Crowley’s
concerns about aristocratic avarice, the monastic dissolution, the end of Edward’s reign and the
succession crisis—as reflected in his political tracts, Philargyrie, his editorial handling of Piers,
his additions to Lanquet’s Cronicle, Cooper’s retort and counter-revisions—we can see the
emergence of publicly debated, distinctive and politically significant interpretations of the
present and recent past within the fold of English Protestantism.319

45
Notes

1
MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (New York: Palgrave, 2001): 133. (First
published in 1999 by Penguin as Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation.) Crowley is
frequently mentioned and discussed in sixteenth-century scholarship, but he has not been the subject of a
comprehensive study. Although it is limited to the years 1547-1553, Frederica H. Thompsett’s “Robert Crowley:
Gospeller and Pamphleteer in Tudor England” (Ph.D. Diss. University of Chicago, 1973) is the only scholarly work
focused solely on Crowley. Roger R. Taylor’s “The Edwardian Reformation, 1547-1553: A Study of the Clerical
Reformers’ Vision for the Church of England and English Society” (Ph.D. Diss., Kent State University, 1990) has
the same limited scope but considers Crowley in some detail within the context of the objectives for the English
church and nation articulated by Crowley and other clerical reformers; i.e., Ridley, Hooper, Latimer, Becon,
Bradford, Ponet, Turner and Lever. J. W. Martin, “Robert Crowley in Two Protestant Churches,” Religious Radicals
in Tudor England (London: Hambledon Press, 1989): 147-69 provides an overview of Crowley’s life and work, as
does Albert Peel, “Robert Crowley—Puritan, Printer, Poet,” The Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society of
England 6.3 (1938): 177-201. (Peel mentions in this article that it was part of a monograph he had written on
Crowley. I have not been able to find any trace of it.) See also Mark Eccles, “Robert Crowley,” Brief Lives:
Tudor and Stuart Authors, Studies in Philology 79.4 (1982): 27-8.
2
J. W. Martin notes that Crowley was “the first English university man to set up as a printer” in “The Publishing
Career of Robert Crowley: A Sidelight on the Tudor Book Trade,” Publishing History 14 (1983): 85. John King
considers him “the most significant poet between Surrey and Gascoigne” (English Reformation Literature, 320).
Crowley also may be considered the first reformist leader identified as a “Puritan” in writing and the first to issue a
“Puritan manifesto.” John Stow’s “Memoranda” gives the first known English usage of the word “Puritan” in his
account of the vestiarian and edification crises of 1564-66, in which Crowley was a leader (143, 138-9). It is a bit of
a stretch but not entirely wrong to say, as Caroline Gordon and Wilfred Dewhirst do in The Ward of Cripplegate in
the City of London. (London: Cripplegate Ward Club, 1985): 118 that Crowley was the first person to be called a
Puritan in print. See M. M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism: A Chapter in the History of Idealism (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1939): 488; Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England 1547-1603 (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1990): 84f. Patrick Collinson, Arnold Hunt and Alexandra Walsham’s “Religious Publishing in
England, 1557-1640” in John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, eds, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol.
9, 1557-1695 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 39 refers to Crowley’s A briefe discourse against the
outwarde apparell and ministring garmentes of the popishe church (London: Henry Denham?, 1566) (STC 6079) as
“the first Puritan manifesto.” (This book was also printed in 1566 in Emden by Egidius van der Erve, STC 6089 and
again in 1578, possibly in the Netherlands, STC 6080.) See also Collinson’s, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement
(1967, 1982): 77-8, 118-20, 1983: 334-70. CHECK: Milward 1977: 26; Puritan Manifestoes: A Study of the
Origin of the Puritan Revolt, eds. W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas (London, 1907, 1954).
3
See Appendix A for a bibliography. Crowley spent his first two or three years (c. 1546/47) in London learning the
print trade, perhaps at the press of William Seres and/or John Day, who became partners in late 1547 and remained
together until 1550. The first books that are unambiguously Crowley’s issued from Day and Seres’ press in 1548
when Seres became a freeman of the Stationers’ Company. At this time Day and Seres were working out of Holborn
Conduit in St. Sepulchre’s parish at the sign of the Resurrection, but as Cecil’s servant, Seres was able to acquire
Peter College, a former chantry at St. Paul’s (part of which became Stationers’ Hall in 1554) for his operation. See
William Herbert, Typographical Antiquities (London, 1786): 2.757-62, 4.325-35; D. M. Loades, “The Press
Under the Early Tudors: A Study in Censorship and Sedition,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical
Society 4.1 (1964): 29-50; Elizabeth Evenden, “Patents and Patronage: The Life and Career of John Day, Tudor
Printer,” (Ph.D. Diss., York University, 2002) and “Biography of John Day,” in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments
[...], The Variorum Edition, [online] (hriOnline, Sheffield 2004), Available at: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/foxe/,
Accessed: 08.01.2004, n.p.; Peter Blayney, “William Cecil and the Stationers’ Company,” in Robin Myers and
Michael Harris, eds., The Stationers’ Company and the Book Trade 1550-1990 (Winchester and New Castle, 1997):
11-34; Stephen Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, 115f. Between 1549, when he became a
member of the Stationers’ Company, and 1551, when he was ordained, Crowley authored 11 or 12 books and edited,
translated or acted as printer and/or publisher of seven others. Notable items that are Crowley’s work include the
first, complete, metrical rendering of the psalms in English and the first psalter with harmonised music, the first
translation of the gospels into Welsh, and of course Piers Plowman.
When Crowley was ordained by Bishop Ridley on September 28, 1551, he was referred to as “Stationer of
the Parish of St. Andrews, Holborn.” (SRC?) John Stow refers to “Robart Crowley as (somtym a boke sellar)” in his

46
“Memoranda,” ed. James Gairdner, Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, Camden Society, n.s. 28 (London: Royal
Historical Society, 1880; rpt. London and New York, Johnson Reprint, 1965): 139; BM MS Lambeth 306, fols. 57v-
58. But Machyn identifies Crowley as “sum-tyme a boke-prynter” (269). Crowley’s imprints and colophons
typically read something along the lines of “imprynted by Roberte Crowley, dwellyng in Ely rentes in Holburne,”
which appears in some 20 books. His preface in each edition of Piers Plowman is entitled “The Printer to the
Reader.” These references certainly indicate an intention to declare himself as a printer in his own right, and it is not
unusual that his type, initials, borders, and woodcut illustrations came from other printers and were used at different
times by protestant printers including Day, Richard Grafton, Richard Tottell, Stephen Mierdman, Reyner (or
Reginald) Wolfe, John Cawood, Richard Jugge, and Edward Whitchurch. See Elizabeth Evenden, “The Leeing
Dutchmen? The Influence of Dutch Immigrants upon the Print Shop of John Day,” ed. David Loades, John Foxe at
Home and Abroad (Aldershot and Burlington, 2004): 67f.
The standard account of Crowley’s role in the print trade is given by John N. King, English Reformation
Literature: The Tudor Origins of a Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982): 96-7, which
owes much to Thompsett and devotes an entire chapter to Crowley’s career under Edward VI. See also King’s
“Protector Somerset and His Propagandists” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Chicago, 1973), “Robert Crowley: A Tudor
Gospelling Poet,” Yearbook of English Studies 8 (1978): 220-37 and “Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman:
A Tudor Apocalypse,” Modern Philology 73.4 part 1 (1976): 342-52. See also J. W. Martin, “The Publishing Career
of Robert Crowley,” 85-98.
Olga Illston’s “A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Robert Crowley” (M.A. Thesis, London University,
1953) is the basis for the revised STC (and current ESTC) identification of Richard Grafton, the King’s printer, as
the printer for many of Crowley’s books under Edward VI. Illston demonstrates that the initial blocks used in
Crowley’s books between 1549 and 1551 belonged to Richard Grafton, and she notes the frequent use of the same
type in Grafton and Crowley imprints. This led to the STC revisers, Thompsett, 175f., and King to conclude that
Crowley never had his own press but was only a bookseller. The revised STC generally follows Illston, although
Illston attributed the printing of Crowley’s Psalter to Richard Jugge with assistance from Grafton; the revised STC,
Thompsett and King identify Stephen Mierdman as its printer.
Prior to Crowley’s arrival in London, Grafton had been imprisoned three times for printing-related
offenses: twice in 1541 (for a “sedicious epistle of Melanctons” and ballads defending Thomas Cromwell) and then,
in 1543, for the Great Bible. Hence the possibility that Grafton used Crowley’s imprint “as a conduit for radical
publication, but at a safe remove,” as R. Carter Hailey suggests in “Giving Light to the Reader: Robert Crowley’s
Editions of Piers Plowman (1550)” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Virginia, 2001): 15. See also R. Carter Hailey,
“‘Geuyng light to the reader’: Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman (1550),” Publications of the
Bibliographical Society of America 95.4 (2001): 483-502. This semi-surreptitious printing was an attempt by, in
King’s estimate, Protector Somerset and his supporters “to shape public opinion in secret” (English Reformation
Literature, 96-7; repeated in King’s “The Book-trade under Edward VI and Mary I,” in Lotte Hellinga and J. B.
Trapp, eds., vol. 3, 1400-1557, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999]: 167-8.) However, this argument is for a connection to Somerset depends on tenuous links between the
Protector and Crowley via Grafton and/or Lady Elizabeth Fane (see note X below).
Peter Blayney contends that the revised STC erroneously indicates that Grafton printed Crowley’s works.
Blayney believes that the revisers realized that the ornamental ‘A’ in Crowley’s The baterie of the Popes Botereulx
(1550): A6r (STC 21613) “had once belonged to Grafton,” but they did not know that “the person from whom
Crowley borrowed it was almost certainly not Grafton but John Day, who apparently acquired it from Grafton in
1548 (STC 23004) and never returned it (2087.5, 6849.5, 7633.3, etc.)” Additionally, Blayney suggests that the
revisers were misled by another fact:
In an after 1560, Grafton’s son-in-law Richard Tottell used quite a lot of
Grafton’s old ornament stock. It has long been the received opinion that when
Mary Tudor deprived Grafton of his royal office, he immediately sold off his
printing house and equipment to Robert Caly—except, of course, for the various
bits and pieces that Tottell allegedly used to set up shop in that same year. In
fact, that is not what happened at all. What Grafton did with his printing house
was to sublet it to Caly—and when Elizabeth acceded in late 1558 he took it
back an attempted to re-start his own career (STC 16291 of 1559 was really
printed by Grafton, as the titlepage claims). By the end of 1559 he’d realized
that it wasn’t going to work—and it was not until then that Grafton stopped
paying the rent for his printing house and Tottell acquired his supply of ex-

47
 Grafton initials. (Peter W. M. Blayney, Letter to R. Carter Hailey. 5 January
2001).
The appearance of Grafton’s blocks in Crowley’s books is, in this view, insufficient evidence to conclude that
Crowley did not print them himself and, moreover, that he never had a printing house at all. Blayney believes that
Crowley did have a press and printed the works that bear his name from 1550-51, except for a few titles printed
entirely or in part by Day and/or Mierdman:
The three ‘Crowley’ books of 1549 seemingly were printed for him by others:
STC 2725 by Stephen Mierdman (only); 6087 and 6094 by John Day. Also by
Day is 6096 (dated 1550), while the double-dated 6095 was either printed partly
by Day or partly by Crowley himself or (more likely) by Crowley alone but with
a few ornamental initials borrowed from Day. All the other Crowley books of
1550-51 that I’ve seen are the work of Crowley alone—as I assume are the only
two I haven’t seen, namely 2761.5 and 19897.3. Crowley also printed STC
25852 for Robert Stoughton, but without putting his name on it. (Peter W. M.
Blayney, Letter to R. Carter Hailey. 5 January 2001)
Blayney’s revised attributions are discussed and listed in Hailey “Giving Light,” 15n16, 18 and are expected to
appear in Blayney’s forthcoming book, The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501-1616.
4
MacCulloch, The Boy King, 133.
5
MacCulloch, The Boy King, 222. For a statistical analysis of the religious (and other) printing of this period, see
Maureen Bell and J. Barnard, History of the Book Project: revised count of STC titles 1475-1640, (Institute of
Bibliography: University of Leeds, 1991); ‘A quantitative survey of British book production 1475-1700,’ The
scholar and the database: papers presented on 4 November 1999 at the CERL conference hosted by the Royal
Library, Brussels, ed. L. Hellinga (Consortium of European Research Libraries, 2001): 15-21. CHECK: A Bell &
Banard 1992 source is cited by King in CHBB 3.
6
See Catharine Davies, A Religion of the Word: The Defence of the Reformation in the Reign of Edward VI
(Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002): 5-12, George Bernard and Penry Williams’
preface to Jennifer Loach’s Edward VI, vii-xv, and MacCulloch, The Boy-King, 41f., and Ethan Shagan, “Protector
Somerset and the 1549 Rebellions: New Sources and New Perspectives,” English Historical Review 114.454 (1999):
34-63 and subsequently Shagan’s Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003) for several recent overviews of the relevant secondary literature from a “revisionist” perspective. In
sum, the older historiography represents Edward’s reign rather darkly as a time of crisis, with the possible exception
of socially-concerned “commonwealth men” who, supported by “the good duke Somerset,” suffered a tragic defeat
with the rise of the nefarious Northumberland. G. Parry discusses the origins of this narrative in “Inventing ‘the
Good Duke’ of Somerset,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40 (1989): 370-.
The “good duke-bad duke” thesis is largely drawn from contemporary accounts that have been taken as
more accurate, objective, and representative of contemporary opinion than they in fact are. Stephen Alford has
recently made this case in detail and has shown how Elizabethan histories of Edward’s reign (e.g., Grafton, Foxe,
Stow, Holinshed) progressively muted negative depictions of Dudley and moderated idealizations of Somerset
(Kingship and Politics, 5ff.). However, many of the older studies remain valuable: A. F. Pollard, The History of
England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth (London and New York: Longmans, 1910); R.
H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Harcourt, 1926; rpt. 1943, 1948, 1962); Helen White,
Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century (New York: Octagon Books, 1944); S. T.
Bindoff, Tudor England (Hammondsworth and Middlesex: Penguin, 1950); W. K. Jordan. Edward VI: The Young
King (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1968) and Edward VI: The Threshold of Power (Cambridge: Belknap Press,
1970); Whitney R. D. Jones, The Mid-Tudor Crisis, 1539-1563 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973); G. R.
Elton, England Under the Tudors (London: Cox and Wyman, 1955) and Reform and Reformation: England 1509-
58 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).
Tawney, White, Jordan, and W. R. D. Jones emphasize the existence and role of the “commonwealth”
group, but since the publication of G. R. Elton’s “Reform and the ‘Commonwealth-Men’ of Edward VI’s Reign,” in
Peter Clark, Alan G. R. Smith and Nicholas Tyacke, eds, The English Commonwealth 1547-1640: Essays in Politics
and Society (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979): 23-38 and rpt. in G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics
and Government: Papers and Reviews, 1946-1972, vol. 3 (London and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1983), the existence of a “commonwealth party” has been widely rejected, and its supposed “members” are unlikely
to be classified even as a “movement” now, but reference to the “commonwealth men” or “commonwealthsmen”
persists. W. R. D. Jones’ arguments in The Tudor Commonwealth, 1529-1559 (London: Athlone, 1970) made the

48
most thorough presentation of the importance of the “commonwealth party” and began moving away from the good
duke-bad duke thesis; his remains a valuable study and is updated by The Tree of Commonwealth, 1450-1793
(Madison, Teaneck and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000).
Both books offer a detailed account of the political tumult of Edward’s reign and its impact on social and religious
reformers, including Crowley.
Much recent scholarship on Edward VI’s reign tends to see it as a more politically and morally ambiguous
period, but Somerset’s failings and Northumberlands’s achievements are often emphasized: Barrett L. Beer,
Northumberland: The Political Career of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland (Kent: Kent
State University Press, 1973) and Rebellion and Riot: Popular Disorder in England During the Reign of Edward VI
(Kent: Kent State University Press, 1982); M. L. Bush, The Government Policy of Protector Somerset (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975); C. S. L. Davies, Peace, Print and Protestantism, 1450-1558 (London:
Hart-Davis MacGibbon, 1976); Dale Hoak, The King’s Council in the Reign of Edward VI (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976); Jennifer Loach and R. Tittler, eds, The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540-60 (London
and Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980); Jennifer Loach, Protector Somerset: A Reassessment (Bangor,
Gwynedd: Headstart History, 1994) and Edward VI (Yale University Press, 1999); David Loades, The Mid-Tudor
Crisis, 1545-1565 (London: MacMillan, 1992), Essays in the Reign of Edward VI (Bangor, Gwynedd: Headstart
History, 1994), John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, 1504-1553 (Oxford and New York: Clarendon and Oxford
University Press, 1996), and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord President of the Council (Oxford:
Headstart History, 1996); Mark Nicholls, A History of the Modern British Isles: The Two Kingdoms, 1529-1603
(Oxford and Malden: Blackwell, 1999); Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485-
1603 (London: Allen Lane, 2000); Alford, Kingship and Politics; Catharine Davies, A Religion of the Word.
Most recently, Ethan Shagan has revived the “good duke” thesis in a new form where Somerset emerges as
an unprecedented early modern social democrat. Shagan’s article, “Protector Somerset and the 1549 Rebellions:
New Sources and New Perspectives,” English Historical Review 144 (1999): 34-63, elicited rebuttals from M. L.
Bush in “Protector Somerset and the 1549 Rebellions: A Post-Revision Questioned,” English Historical Review 115
(2000): 103-12 and G. W. Bernard, “New Perspectives or Old Complexities?” English Historical Review 115
(2000): 113-33. See Shagan’s reply, “‘Popularity’ and the 1549 Rebellions Revisited,” English Historical Review
115.460 (2000): 121-33 and his recent monograph, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003). MacCulloch (The Boy King, 41-52) has followed Shagan’s lead, and David
Norbrook’s revised edition of Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002) makes good use of Shagan to prevent having to further qualify and alter the arguments that he made (cribbed
largely from King) in the first, 1984 edition, but Norbrook is still largely in line with King’s account in English
Reformation Literature.
7
King, English Reformation Literature, 431-2. Largely agreeing with King’s survey of the period and Crowley’s
part in it are J. W. Martin, “Robert Crowley in Two Protestant Churches,” David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, and
David Weil Baker, Divulging Utopia: Radical Humanism in Sixteenth-Century England (Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1999). King’s other publications on the protestant printers affiliated with Crowley and
their relationship with the government are as follows: “‘The Light of Printing’: William Tyndale, John Foxe, John
Day, and Early Modern Print Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly. 54 (2001): 52-85, “John Day: Master Printer of the
English Reformation,” “Freedom of the Press, Protestant Propaganda, and Protector Somerset,” Huntington Library
Quarterly 40 (1976-1977): 1-9, “Protector Somerset, Patron of the English Renaissance,” Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America 70 (1976): 307-26, and “Protector Somerset and His Propagandists.”
Recent studies abound concerning the London protestant and print circles of which Crowley was a part, and
the picture emerging is increasingly complex. Blayney’s “William Cecil and the Stationers” contends that Cecil was
the main government actor directly involved in supporting printers, particularly Seres, but Blayney cautions that “it
would be foolish to suggest that Cecil ever spent much of his time championing the interests of—or even thinking
about—the book trade” (29-30). See also Andrew Pettegree, “Printing and the Reformation: the English Exception”
in Alec Ryrie and Peter Marshall, eds,, The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002): 157-79; Brett Usher, “Foxe in London, 1550-87” in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments [...]. The
Variorum Edition. [online] (hriOnline: Sheffield, 2004). Available at: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/foxe/. [Accessed:
12.18.2003]. (n.p); Brett Usher, “‘In a Time of Persecution’: New Light on the Secret Protestant Congregation in
Marian London,” ed. David Loades, John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997): 233-
51; Brett Usher, “Backing Protestantism: The London Godly, the Exchequer and the Foxe Circle,” ed. David
Loades, John Foxe: An Historical Perspective (Brookfield and Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999): 105-34;

49
 Elizabeth Evenden has made important corrections to King and others in her recent dissertation, which is
the latest and most thorough account of Day’s life and work. See also her ODNB entry for Day and “The Michael
Wood Mystery: William Cecil and the Lincolnshire Printing of John Day,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35.2 (2004):
383-94. Evenden shows that Day probably saved his skin under Mary Tudor’s reign by printing catholic and
government-sponsored material after having been caught in the business of surreptitious protestant printing. Day
amassed considerable fame and fortune under Elizabeth, particularly through his partnership with Foxe who created
the myth of Day as a great protestant printer in the Actes and Monuments—while also slighting Grafton, who died in
debt and poverty (though the Stationers’ Company owed him money) after working to establish schools and
hospitals for London’s poor. On Day, see Peter Blayney, “John Day and the Bookshop That Never Was,” ed. Lena
Cowen Orlin, Material London, ca. 1600 (Philadephia: U. of Pennsylvania P, 2000): 322-43; Elizabeth Evenden and
Thomas Freeman, “John Foxe, John Day and the Printing of the ‘Book of Martyrs,’” in Robin Myers, Michael
Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote, eds., Lives in Print: Biography and the Book Trade from the Middle Ages to the
Twenty-First Century (London and New Castle: British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2002): 23-54; Elizabeth
Evenden, “Biography of John Day.” On Grafton, see J. A. Kingdon, Richard Grafton, Citizen and Grocer of
London… (London: Rixon and Arnold, 1901) and The Lives of Thomas Poyntz and Richard Grafton (London:
Grocer’s Company, 1895). Such circumstances militate against readings of Crowley and his peers as a thoroughly
united and idealistic lot supported by the government. The career path of others, such as John Cawood, are also
relevant to the total picture, as Cawood was involved in Crowley’s Edwardian protestant printing circle but appears
to have switched sides under Mary; after having set up on his own, one of his apprentices was a recusant executed
under Elizabeth.
8
King, English Reformation Literature, 356. See also Margaret Aston’s chapter on Edward VI’s reign in volume 1
of England’s Iconoclasts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
9
On the royal iconography of Edward as Josiah, see King, English Reformation Literature, 161f., 185-86, 439;
Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 1:249n83; MacCulloch, The Boy King; Stephen Alford, Kingship and Politics in the
Reign of Edward VI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 32f., passim; Christopher Bradshaw, “David
or Josiah? Old Testament Kings as Exemplars in Edwardian Religious Polemic,” Protestant History and Identity in
Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon, vol. 2, (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate and Scolar, 1996): 77-90.
10
King, English Reformation Literature, 181, 355-6n25, 430-34.
11
King, English Reformation Literature, 431. King’s assertion that Crowley eventually “questioned the royal
supremacy” is not explained further, and no references are cited, but this probably refers to Crowley’s anti-vestiarian
tract, A Briefe Discourse…, which supports passive resistance. See Knappen, Tudor Puritanism, 198-99.
12
William J. Bouwsma, “Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture,” in Barbara C. Malament, ed., After
the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J. H. Hexter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980): 215-246,
rpt. in A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990): 172.
13
W. R. D. Jones writes in The Tudor Commonwealth that Crowley and those in his circle, following in the path of
English reformers like Tyndale, John Frith and Simon Fish, “all expected economic and social improvements in
society as a corollary of religious changes” (28), and “the accession of Edward VI … saw a great resurgence of
[their] ideals and hopes” (32). See also Jones’ The Tree of Commonwealth and Susan Brigden, London and the
Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989): 471f.
14
War debt under Somerset outstripped income from the dissolution of monasteries. Voluntary charity increased, as
did poverty, with London prices rising 89% from 1544-51 in response to debased coinage. See Brigden, London and
the Reformation, 488f. for a detailed overview of the era.
Regarding the impact of the dissolution, a recent quantitative analysis by Neil S. Rushton and Wendy
Sigle-Rushton shows that “actual charitable provision on the eve of the Dissolution amounted to about 7 percent of
monastic income,” an amount “far higher” than previously recognized or indicated by the Valor Eccesiasticus of
1535. Thus, “the Dissolution was more disruptive to the lives of the English poor” than has been commonly thought,
“especially since the government was unable, or unwilling, to find a substitute for this source of aid for some time”
(“Monastic Poor Relief in Sixteenth-Century England,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32.2 (2001): 193-217.
A. G. Dickens, 240-2 and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.
1400-c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992): 454 have emphasized the material and spiritual trauma of
the dissolution, as have W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII, 1500-1547 (London and
New York: Longman, 1976) and D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Tudors, 1547-1603, 2nd
ed., (London and New York: Longman, 1992): 249-50, 404f. On the other hand, in The Reformation and the
English People (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), J. J. Scarisbrick has argued that:

50
 Chantries and guilds were suppressed, but on the whole their schools and
hospitals survived. The act of 1547 was aimed against their religious functions,
not their good works, and the commissioners sent out to implement the statute of
suppression acted conscientiously. [...] For example, the crown separated out
and continued to pay the sum of ₤6.10s.6d. to the poor of Cambridge, in
accordance with the founder’s wishes, from the income of a former obit; the
remainder of the endowment (from shops and booths) was forfeit because it
supported prayer for the dead. (112-13)
Nevertheless, concerns about abuse were surely not unfounded, and these positive outcomes critically depended
upon the advocacy and intervention of people like Richard Grafton and Bishop Ridley. See Susan Brigden, London
and the Reformation, 477f., 552-54; Paul Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (New York and
London: Longman, 1988): 119-22 and “Social Policy and the Constraints of Government,” 110-15; John Howes, A
Contemporaneous Account in Dialogue-Form of the Foundation and Early History of Christ’s Hospital, 8, 34,
13-14; 14-18; The Ordre of the Hospital of S. Bartholomewes in Thomas Vicary, The Anatomie of the Bodie of
Man, ed. F. Furnival EETS es 53 (1888): 289-336.
Recent general studies covering the reign of Edward VI that attend to the difficulties of the dissolution
include Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 70f,
156f.; Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation, 162f.; Felicity Heal, Reformation in Britain and
Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 140f.; Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in
Early Modern Britain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000): 141f.; Leo F. Solt, Church and State
in Early Modern England, 1509-1640 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990): 30f., 48f. See also
Nicholas Tyacke’s introduction, “Re-thinking the ‘English Reformation,” in Nichaolas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long
Reformation 1500-1800 (London: University College London Press, 1998): 1-32.
Other, more focused and recent considerations of the dissolution of the monasteries and chantries include:
Patrick Carter, “Economic Problems of Provincial Urban Clergy During the Reformation,” in Patrick Collinson and
John Craig, eds., The Reformation in English Towns 1500-1640 (London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin's
Press, 1998): 147-58; Peter Cunich, “The Dissolution of the Chantries,” in Collinson and Craig, 159-74; Robert
Tittler, “Reformation, Resources and Authority in English Towns: An Overview,” in Collinson and Craig, 190-201.
15
See W. R. D. Jones, The Tudor Commonwealth, 34, 39; Susan Brigden, “Religion and Social Obligation in Early
Sixteenth-Century London,” Past and Present 103 (1984): 67-112 and London and the Reformation, xxx; Ian
Archer, “The Arts and Acts of Memorialization in Early Modern London,” J. F. Merritt, ed., Imagining Early
Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001): 93f.
16
Following the rebellions of 1549 and during his fall from power, Somerset was blamed for “fomenting hostility to
gentlemen.” See Brigden, London and the Reformation, 500f.; W. R. D. Jones, The Tudor Commonwealth, 35;
Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (London: Cape, 1955): 50. In this light, Crowley is
quite daring in The way to wealth, wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion (London: Stephen
Mierdman or John Day, 1550) (STC 6096) (Blayney contends that Day was the printer of this book.) Crowley says
that if he asked “the gredie cormerauntes what thei thinke shuld be the cause of Sedition,” they would say:
…the paisant knaues be to welthy, prouender pricketh them. They knowe not
them selues, they knowe no obedience, they regard no lawes, thei would haue no
gentlemen, thei wold haue al men like themselues, they would haue al thinges
commune. Thei would not haue vs maisters of that which is our owne. They wil
appoint vs what rent we shal take for our groundes We muste not make the beste
of oure owne. [….] Thei wil caste doune our parckes, & laie our pastures open,
Thei wil haue the law in their own handes. They wil play the kinges. They wyll
compel the kinge to graunt theyr requestes.” (B2v-B3r; Cowper, 142-43)
Referring to risings and repression the year before, the “greedy cormorant” then issues a threat of violent reprisals—
“we will hang them at their own doors”—fif the commons “stirre again, or but once cluster together” (B3r ;
Cowper, 143).
While condemning the rebellious sentiments of the commons, Crowley remains equally, if not more
emphatically, critical of the repressive reactions against them. This was no small matter given how far removed
Crowley is from Sir John Cheke’s unqualified blast against rebellion in The Hurt of Sedicion (1549). As Boyd M.
Berry observes in “On the Language of the ‘Commonwealth of the Plowman’: A Prologomenon,” Renaissance
Papers 34 (1987): 11-24:

51
 That Crowley adopts the terms of the poor man’s abuse raises the question
whether Crowley is containing and resisting “sedition” or, in fact, ventilating it.
Indeed the “churl’s chickens,” as Crowley constructs them, convict themselves
in the poor man’s charges that they “would have all in their own hands” and “be
alone in the world.” For the “cormorants” say: “We will teach [the poor
commons] […] to know their betters. And because they would have all common,
we will leave them nothing. [….] We will be lords of our own and use it as we
shall think good! (B3r-v) (17)
See also Lever’s sermon touching on communism—5 eds of his sermons published in 1550; Arber, Life and
Writings of Thomas Lever-2 Feb 1550 sermon in pauls in the shrouds; 2nd sermon before king in 1550 deals
with dissolution plundering; 3rd at pauls cross on other corruption. See Norbrook’s discussion of these texts and
events in Poetry and Politics, 46. On the rebellions, see Beer, Rebellion and Riot; Julian Cornwall, The Revolt of
the Peasantry, 1549 (London, 1977).
17
The problem, as C. S. Lewis put it, was that the Reformation “lowered the honors standard of the degree of
spirituality and raised the passing level.” SRC? On Crowley and the problems of solafideism, see Thompsett, 63f.
In The opening of the wo[r]des of the prophet Ioell, in his second and third chapters, rehersed by Christ in Mathewe
.xxiiii. Marke .xiii. Luke .xxi. and by Peter Actes .ii. concerning the signes of the last day. Compiled by Robert
Crowley in the yeare of our Lord. M. D.XLVI. And perused againe by the same. Anno 1566. (London: Henry
Bynneman for John Charlewood, 1567) (STC 6089), the first section concerns the doctrinal division over
justification, which Crowley divides into three positions: those who believe in salvation by merit (Crowley’s view of
the Catholic position), those for whom divine mercy eclipses all human actions (Crowley’s view of an errant
Protestantism), and those for whom good works flow from salvation by God’s mercy. Crowley endorses the last
position and the end of the book—“No faith there is, / Where workes, / do not ensue” (E2r)—after decrying not
doctrinal division but rather immorality and corruption which he sees as part of a spiritual famine afflicting England.
He is particularly upset that the clergy are models of corruption, that access to a vernacular Bible is restricted for the
common people, and that the wealthy are not acting as good stewards with respect to their social inferiors.
On Somerset’s rapacity and the evangelical reaction to it, see Becon’s Jewel of Joy (1550): 432 , which
attacks the abuse of wealth and power, including nobles building great houses. Becon had been chaplain to
Somerset, and Beer, Rebellion and Riot, 195 says this is clearly a reference to Somerset House. John Mardelay, a
former servant to Somerset, was brought before the Privy Council for Here beginneth a necessarie instruction for all
covetous ryche men to behold and learne what peril and danger they be brought unto, if they haue their consolation
. . . in Mammon (STC 17319); Susan Brigden sees this work as clearly directed at Somerset and claims it was the
first work to bring on censorship under his regime (London and the Reformation, 473-4, 474n83). Revising A. F.
Pollard, England under Protector Somerset (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966): 315 and Jordan (Edward VI,
1.497-99), who says Somerset’s gains were “proportionate and on the whole modest,” see Loach (Protector
Somerset, 39-40). Loach describes what was done in the construction of Somerset House and how some lords
complained it was an unpatriotic undertaking at a time of—a very expensive—war. See also Brigden, London and
the Reformation, 473-4, E. J. Davis, “The Transformation of London,” Tudor Studies, ed. R. W. Seton-Watson
(1924): 87-314, and Ian W. Archer, “The Arts and Acts of Memorialization in Early Modern London.”
18
See Keith Thomas, “The Perception of the Past in Early Modern England,” (London: University of London,
1983): 12f.
19
This is the basic problem of Crowley’s The way to wealth, where Crowley represents the positions of the
aggrieved poor and rich while attempting to mediate between them. The work is discussed by Norbrook in Poetry
and Politics, 48-9 and Marie-Madeleine Martinet in “Wyclif et Piers Plowman sous le petit Josias: Le Radicalisme
medieval transmis par Robert Crowley au temps d’Edouard VI,” Olivier Lutaud, Ed., Radicaux a l’anglaise (Paris:
Centre d’Hist. des Idees dans les Iles Britanniques, 1984): 1-16. See also Stephen Greenblatt, “Murdering Peasants:
Status, Genre, and the Representation of Rebellion,” Representations 1 (1983): 1-29.
20
See Andrew McRae’s God Speed the Plow: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996): 36f. and Lawrence Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 98f. Crowley’s views of stewardship and social obligation—and
the conflict they pose for the doctrine of obedience—are essentially the same as those of Luther and especially
Tyndale. Tyndale’s “social gospel” is articulated in The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1527) and An Exposition
upon the V. VI. VII. Chapters of Matthew (1532). [For modern editions, see The Parable of the Wicked Mammon,
Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, Parker Society 36, Ed.
Henry Walter, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848; New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968): 29-126

52
and Exposition of Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of St. Matthew’s Gospel in Expositions of Scripture and Practice of
Prelates, Parker Society 44, Ed. Henry Walter, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849; New York:
Johnson Reprint, 1968): 16-132.] abbrev: Works of William Tyndale, Henry Walter, ed. Parker Society. Vols.
42-44. 1848-1850. Check Independent Works of William Tyndale, Anne M. O’Donnell, SND, ed. 4 vols. 1998.
Tyndale held that a person justified by faith would do good works. Luther, on the other hand, had difficulty
with this idea to the extent that it suggested justification could be contingent upon works. Luther’s Small Catechism
(1529) interprets “You shall not steal” to mean: “We must fear and love God, so that we will neither take our
neighbor’s money or property, nor acquire it by fraud or by selling him poorly made products, but will help him
improve and protect his property and career.” Similarly, Luther interprets “You shall not kill” to mean not only that
“. . .we will neither harm nor hurt our neighbor’s body, but help him and care for him when he is ill.” However,
Luther famously rejected the book of James, which puts a high priority on good works, as unapostolic and placed it
with other books that did not fit his theology in a bracketted, small-print section at the bottom of the table of
contents to his German Bible. But for Tyndale the gospel insists that “works are the outward righteousness [that]
spring[s from] inward love. Love is the righteousness of the heart and spring[s from] faith” (Parable 88). Love of
one’s neighbor is the fulfilling of the law (*119) and a sign of faith. True faith must be a “feeling faith” that
connects inner motives with outward service. See Donald Dean Smeeton, Lollard Themes in the Reformation
Theology of William Tyndale, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, Vol. 6 (Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal
Publishers, 1986): 156-57; 259-61.
Crowley says wealthy landowners are “but stuards of the land” in Pleasure and Payne (STC 6090): C8r; cf.
r
B2 . Obedience is a theme that appears throughout his Edwardian publications, particularly around 1550. E.g., The
Opening of the wordes of Joell (STC 6089):
This worlde call I
Gods familie
Wherein the riche men be
As stewardes stout
To rule the rout
And succour povertie. (B1v)
The glosses in Crowley’s An informacion and peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore commons of this realme,
compiled and imprinted for this onely purpose that amongest them that haue to doe in the Parliamente, some godlye
mynded men, may hereat take occacion to speake more in the matter then the authoure was able to write (London:
John Day, 1548) (STC 6086, 6086.5) reveal that it is a contemporary application of the prophetic books of the Old
Testament:
Unlesse, I saye, the possessioners of thys realme wyl repent the violence don to
the poore and nedy membres of the same, and become as handes, ministring
unto euery membre his necessaries: they shall at the daye of theyr accompt, be
bound hand and fote and cast into utter darknes, wher shal be wepyng, wealyng,
and gnashing of teeth, that is, dolour and payne, the greatnes whereof canne not
be expressed with tonge nor thought with herte. (Cowper, 159-60; A5v)
….
Consider that you are but ministers and seruauntes vnder the Lorde
oure God, and that you shal render a streyght accompt of your administracion.
Stand not to much in your own conceyte, gloriynge in the worthynesse of your
bloude ; for we are all one mans children, and haue (by nature) lyke ryght to the
rychesse and treasures of thys worlde whereuf oure natural father Adame was
made Lord and kinge. Which of you can laye for hym selfe any natural cause
whye he shoulde possesse the treasure of this worlde, but [the] same cause may
be founde in hym also whome you make your slaue ? By nature (therefore) you
can claime no thinge but that which you shall gette wyth the swet of your faces.
That you are Lordes and gouernoures therfore, commeth not by nature but by the
ordinaunce & appoyntment of God. Knowe then that he hath not called you to
the welth and glorie of this worlde: but hath charged you wyth the greate and
rude multitude.
And if any of them perishe thorowe your defaute, knowe then for
certentie, that the bloude of them shalbe required at your handes. If the impotent
creatures periseh for lacke of necessaries: you are the murderres, for you haue

53
 theyr enheritaunce and do not minister unto them. If the sturdye fall to stealing,
robbyng & reueynge: then are you the causers therof, for you dygge in, enclose,
and wytholde from them the earth out of the which they shoulde digge and
plowe theyr lyueynge. For as the Psalmiste writeth. All the heauen is the Lordes;
but as for the earth hee hath geuen to the childrene of men.”
The whole earth therfor (by birth ryght) belongeth to the chyldren of
men. They are all inheritours thereof indifferently by nature
But because the sturry shoulde not oppresse the weake and impotent:
God hath apoynted you stuards to geue meate vnto his housholde in due seasone.
And if you be founde faythfull in thys litel: then knowe that he wyll preferred
you so muche greater thynges. But if ye bee found oppressing your felowe
seruauntes: then knowe for certentie, that the Lorde your maister shall at hys
comeynge, rewarde you with many strypes. (Cowper, 163-64; A7v-A8r STC
6086.5)
Following this section, Crowley stresses the transitory nature of nobility and greatness, while also questioning the
validity of claims to a natural, hereditary nobility.
21
Altogether, this is essentially how Crowley understood and struggled with their contemporary political and
economic scene; his and other protestant writings rehearse these same patterns of logical development. Luther’s von
der freiheit eines christenmenschen / On the Freedom of a Christian Man (1520) [ref to Werke or independent
ed.] is the classic example, as it fuses the sociopolitical and religious in a single antinomy: “A Christian is a free lord
over all things, and subject to nobody. A Christian is the serf of all things, and subject to everybody.” Crowley’s
notion of good works flowing from true faith resonates with Tyndale but, in Eric Voegelin’s view, originates from
Aquinas’ doctrine of fides caritate formata, where the essence of faith is in amicitia between humanity and God
(Summa Contra Gentiles 116). See Voegelin’s discussion in Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 4 in History of
Political Ideas, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 22, pp. 248f. In “Friendship with God as Civic Virtue:
Calvin, Luther, and the Radical Reformers,” (Paper presented at the American Political Science Association,
Chicago, Illinois, September 2-5, 2004)Thomas Heilke writes:
The advent of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century brought
with it renovated or wholly new conceptions of the relationship between
religious faith and political life. These new “modes and orders” implied new
conceptions in many areas of human life and experience, including the realm of
friendship, civic life, and the intersection of the two. Luther’s explicit and harsh
rejection of Aristotle and the Christian tradition that had formed around
Aristotle’s writings, along with his consequent separation of faith from reason
and politics, Calvin’s injection of Stoic philosophy into Christian interpretation,
and the Radical Reformers’ rejection of Christendom all had varying effects on
their estimation of civic life and civic friendship. Strong traces of these effects
can be found without difficulty in contemporary debates and orientations. In
different ways and for different reasons, Luther and the radicals were highly
dubious that friendship with God and friendship as a civic virtue could be linked
in any meaningful way, if, indeed, the latter could be meaningfully articulated at
all. Calvin was more optimistic on this score, but with ambivalent results.
22
H3v (STC19907); B.6.38-49. In this, the third edition, “in heuen” is mistakenly dropped down from its proper
place at the end of the previous line, where it appears in the first and second editions. The line “Than thou…” is an
additional manuscript reading that appears in the second and third editions.
23
Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001): 26, 32f.,
passim.
24
Qtd. in Hudson, The Premature Reformation, 301n.
25
HPI & intro?Complaints about enclosure were common and could refer to a number of practices. See Roger B.
Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509-1640 (Oxford and New York:
Clarendon and Oxford University Press, 1988): 33 and McRae, God Speed the Plough, 42f.
26
Pleasure and payne, heauen and hell: Remembre these foure, and all shall be well. (London: Richard Grafton,
1551): t.p./A1r (STC 6090) (Blayney suggests Crowley may have been the printer.)
27
See Bradshaw, “The Exile Literature,” 116-17. Bradshaw notes that Stephen Gardiner’s “identification of royal
authority with Catholic orthodoxy allowed him to employ the word ‘heretic’ against his opponents in its medieval

54
sense, as a person outside the community of the Church and the State” (117). See also Stephen Gardiner’s c. 1544
manuscript, “The examination of a prowd presumptuous Hunter,” The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. J. Muller
(Westport, Connecticut, 1970): 482.
28
Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religion and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1988): 18.
29
Responding to the 1549 risings in early 1550, Crowley tries to show the poor rebel’s perspective in The waye to
wealth while also denouncing sedition. Notably, after making reference to Kett’s rebellion in Norfolk (which of
course Crowley denounces), Crowley warns rich landowners of their guilt and how God punished Pharaoh and
Nebuchadnezzar, a point he made some three years earlier in An information and petition. Calvin’s gloss on Daniel
4.25 [Ioannis Calvini Praelectiones in librum prophetiarum Danielis (Genevae: Joannes Laonius, 1561): 51a, 78a]
radicalized the verse, and it was eventually quoted by Milton in his second (1650) edition of his defense of the
execution of Charles I, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. [For a modern edition in English, see Praelectiones in
librum prophetiarum Danielis (Grand Rapids and Carlisle: Eerdmans and Paternoster Press, 1993).] The second
edition of The Tenure added “many Testimonies … out of the best & learnedest among Protestant Divines asserting
the position of this book” (t.p.), and under the heading for Calvin, Milton writes:
Hodie Monarchae semper in suis titulis, &c. Now adays Monarchs pretend
always in their Titles, to be Kings by the Grace of God; but how many of them
to this end only pretend it, that they may reign without control; for to what
purpose is the grace of God mentioned in the Title of Kings, but that they may
acknowledge no Superior? In the meanwhile God, whose name they use, to
support themselves, they willingly would tread under their feet. It is therefore a
mere cheat when they boast to reign by the grace of God.

Abdicant se terreni principes, &c. Earthly princes depose themselves while they
rise against God, yet they are unworthy to be numbered among men: rather it
behooves us to spit upon their heads then to obey them. On Dan: c. 6. v. 22.
See Merritt Hughes’ discussion of “Milton’s Treatment of Reformation History in ‘The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates,’” The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of English Thought and Literature from Bacon to
Pope (Stanford and London: Stanford and Oxford University Presses, 1951): 247-63. RECENT STUDIES on this
exegetical history?
Crowley probably knew of Calvin’s commentary on Isaiah when it was first published as Ioannis Calvini
Commentarii in Isaiam prophetam (Genevae: Ioannis Crispini, 1551). [For a modern edition in English, see
Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1948).]
[ORIGINAL COPY IN RAYNOR ARCHIVES] The first edition (1551) was dedicated “Ad Edwardum VI.
angliae regem” on the title page, and the second to Elizabeth I (1558?). (The 1609 William Cotton translation from
the earlier Latin into English is dedicated to prince Henry and princess Elizabeth; Cotton likens Henry to “young
Prince King Edward.”) Calvin’s gloss on Isaiah 49.23 (“and kings shall be thy nursing fathers”) reads “greasie idle
paunches, insatiable gulfes, & supposts of Satan are put in their roomes, (for to such, Princes distribute their riches:
that is to say, the blood of the people which they have sucked.)” Crowley makes the same point, using a similar
phrase for the predatory rich—“idle bealies”—in The waye to wealth. (Lever uses the same phrase in a
contemporary sermon.) Crowley takes on the voice of “the pore man of the countrey” who, after making a
complaint about the increase in farm rents and the disappearance of the common lands, declares:
No custome, no lawe or statute can kepe them from oppressyng us [...] In the
countrey we can not tarye, but we must be theyr slaues, and laboure tyll our
hertes brast, and then they must have al. And to go to the cities we haue no hope,
for there we heare that these vnsaciable beastes haue all in theyr handes. [...] No
remedye therfore, we must nedes fight it out, or else be brought to the lyke
slauery that the french men are in. These Idle bealies wil deuour al [that] we shal
get by our sore labour in our youth... (A3v, A4r)
30
This division pervades the scholarly literature on Crowley and those he is grouped with as a “gospeller” or
“commonwealth man.” On the one hand, Crowley has been described often as an “idealistic” and “moralistic” naïf.
These traits are sharply contrasted with the positive character of sixteenth-century social “realists,” who are often
classed as “humanists.” Historical analysis in this light is often concerned with discerning the relative success of
mid-Tudor figures at developing “modern” (as opposed to “medieval”) and “secular” (as opposed to “moralistic”
and “theological”) modes of socioeconomic analysis and coherent, practical policy prescriptions. For instance, J. W.

55
Allen found “The Idealism of Robert Crowley” both “medieval” and “pathetic” in A History of Political Thought in
the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1928): 138f. Similarly, Arthur B. Ferguson, in The Articulate Citizen and
the English Renaissance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), found favor with “humanists” and forward-
thinking, bean-counter bureaucrats like Clement Armstrong, but not the atavistic activists like Crowley. See also
Ferguson’s Clio Unbound: Perception of the Social and Cultural Past in Renaissance England (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1979): 244-6 and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 3
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978): 221-8. (Indirectly pointing out the reductionism of this sort of
approach to the past, in an ironic turn, Ethan Shagan’s “Clement Armstrong and the Godly Commonwealth: Radical
Religion in Early Tudor England,” in Ryrie and Marshall, eds., 60-83, discusses Armstrong—whom Ferguson sees
as an advanced economic policy wonk—in light of his religious writings that, according to Shagan, “are nightmares
of convolution even by the self-indulgent standards of the sixteenth-century.”)
Often the whiggishly modernist historiography appears to be a reaction to other facile interpretations of
Crowley and his contemporaries that apply the same teleological method of analysis but which start with different
premises and end up with different conclusions (e.g., Crowley was an insightful and progressive social critic), all of
which have a more or less Marxist pedigree. For instance, W. K. Jordan’s Edward VI: The Young King lauded the
“radical thought” of “the commonwealth party” as a group of “pragmatic” (as opposed to the “more theoretical”)
humanists (416f.). And while describing commonwealth men as “liberal Protestants,” A. G. Dickens claims they
advocated “a species of Christian socialism” in The English Reformation, 2nd ed., (London: Batsford, 1989): 249. G.
R. Elton makes the nature of his reaction against this sort of argument in his testy and influential article, “Reform
and the ‘Commonwealth-Men of Edward VI’s Reign.’” Elton’s view of the “medieval” idealism and general naivete
of Crowley, his associates and similar thinkers, has as its main goal the destruction of Tawney and Weber’s
interpretation of mid-Tudor economic thought, particularly Tawney’s valorization of designated populist reformer-
radicals like Crowley, whom he saw as critics of emerging capitalism and economic individualism in Religion and
the Rise of Capitalism, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (London and New York: Longmans, 1912).
See also Tawney and Eileen Power, eds., Tudor Economic Documents (London: Longmans, 1924).
Tempered by the sort of critique made by Elton, some recent scholarship has attempted to chart a middle
ground but still tends to work within the same general framework. (For a critique of this fault in New Historicist
scholarship generally see the introduction to Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, Kevin Sharpe and
Peter Lake, eds [1994].) See, for instance, Paul A. Fideler, “Poverty, Policy and Providence: The Tudors and the
Poor,” in Fideler and Mayer,194-222, which retains the stock narrative of secularization as social progress. McRae’s
God Speed the Plow, follows a similar track where Crowley and his associates are depicted as stability-seeking
moralists reacting against change and being supplanted by more pragmatic thinkers. While this view may be
accurate in general, it does little to advance a particular understanding of figures like Crowley within the context of
his own life and era. Sticking closer to Tawney’s political angle is Neal Wood in Fideler and Mayer and also his
Foundations of Political Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 160f., as well as Ellen Meiksins
Wood and Neal Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism, 1509-1688 (New York:
New York University Press, 1997): 39f. David Norbook, well aware of the political and historiographic issues at
stake, offers a fairly nuanced account of Crowley and others but still tends to stress their politically “progressive”
qualities in Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984; rev. ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Nicholas Tyacke’s “Introduction: re-thinking the ‘English Reformation,’”
in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation 1500-1800 (London: UCL Press, 1998): 16 unhelpfully
marvels over what he sees as Crowley’s “social subversion” and virtual “communism” at the conclusion of An
Informacion and peticion, where Crowley calls landlords to follow “the same spirit that in [the] primitive church
gaue unto the multitude of believers, one herte one mynde, & to esteme nothyng of this worlde as theyr owne,
ministryng vnto euery one accordyng to his necessities” (B6r-v). It should be needless to say that the resemblance to
Marx is merely coincidental. Earlier in the same text Crowley writes, “I canne fearfely truste that any reformacion
canne be had, unlesse God do nowe worke in the hertes of the possessioners of thys realme, as he dyd in the
primitiue church, when the possessioner were contented and very wyllyng, to sell theyr possessions and geue [the]
price therof to the commune to al the faithful beleuvers” (A3v-A4r), but he then warns, “Take me not here that I
shoulde go about by these wordes to perswade men to make all thinges commune: for if you do you mistake me”
(A4r). David Weil Baker’s Divulging Utopia illuminates the “radicalism” of Thomas More and other English
humanists while avoiding the facile arguments of J. H. Hexter and Margo Todd that neglect More’s social
conservatism. Baker sees Crowley as a populist and protestant version of More; he calls both “non-subversive
radicals,” but he wrongly states that Crowley toned down after the 1549 rebellions, and he accepts the baseless

56
argument that Crowley was working for Somerset and thus “the state”—a highly problematic equation. Final
chapter on progress to “liberal humanism.”
31
This is how A. J. Slavin elucidates Max Weber’s use of “tradition” and “traditional” as analytic terms that are
especially applicable to sixteenth-century studies in; see Slavin’s chapter, “The Tudor State, Reformation and
Understanding Change: Through the Looking Glass,” in Paul Fideler and T. F. Mayer, eds., Political Thought and
the Tudor Commonwealth (London and New York: Routledge, 1992): 223-53; Max Weber, The Theory of Social
and Economic Organization, A. M. Henderson and T. Parson, trans., (New York: Free Press, 1964): 124-52
and “Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, eds. and trans., From Max
Weber (New York: Basic Books, 1958).
32
Examples of this sentiment abound. Hugh Latimer preached a 1535 sermon where he argued that his doctrine was
“old” rather than “new learning.” See The Works of Hugh Latimer, Ed. George Elwes Corrie, 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844-45; New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968). A proper dyaloge
betwene a Gentilman and an Husbandman eche complaynynge to other their miserable calamite through the
ambicion of the clergye (Antwerp: “Hans Luft,” i.e., Johannes Hoochstraten, 1529, 1530) (STC 1462.3 and 1462.5)
mixes sixteenth-century material with a late fourteenth-century Lollard anti-clerical text that supports disendowment
of the clergy and barring them from secular offices. See Douglas H. Parker’s critical edition (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1996) and Thomas Betteridge’s discussion of it in Tudor Histories of the English Reformations,
1530-83 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999): 23-7, 82-3. The Lollard text is introduced as a century-old treatise whose age
rebuts the warnings of catholic clergy about “thes heretikes Lutheranes. / Whom they saye is a secte newe fangled”
(646-47). An argument for the historicity and truth of teachings against clerical passions follows. The second edition
adds another prose tract that probably was written in the late fifteenth century. See also Anne Hudson, “‘No newe
thyng’: The Printing of Medieval Texts in the Early Reformation Period,” in Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley, eds.,
Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His 70th Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983): 153-
74 rpt. in one of her books; Sarah Kelen, “Plowing the Past: ‘Piers Protestant’ and the Authority of Medieval
Literary History,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 13 (1999): 101-36; Sara Warneke, “A Taste for
Newfangledness: The Destructive Potential of Novelty in Early Modern England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 26.4
(1995): 881-96.
33
As the Bishops’ Book (1537) reminded the reformed, they were “united and corporated as a living member into
this catholic church [...] not only Christ himself, being the head of this body, […] and all the holy saints and
members of the same body, do and shall necessarily help me, love me, pray for me, care for me, weigh on my side,
comfort me, and assist me in all my necessities here in this world.” The Institution of a Christian Man, containing
the exposition or interpretation of the common creed, of the seven sacraments, of the x commandments and of the
pater noster, and of the ave maria, justification, and purgatory. Reprinted in Formularies of Faith Put Forth by
Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII, C. Lloyd, ed. (Oxford, 1825). See also C. Hardwick, A History of the
Christian Church during the Reformation (6th ed., London, 1877). Modern eds? See also Vanessa Harding,
The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500-1670 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2002); Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002); Bruce Gordon, ed., Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, 2 vols., (Aldershot and
Brookfield: Scolar and Ashgate, 1996).
On other continuities in values and habits of thought across confessional lines at a much later period than
Crowley and Hogarde’s, see Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists,
and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
34
Crowley was not unique in his affinity for bringing the medieval past to bear on the present for religious and
political ends. Protestant and antiquarian agendas were one and the same thing for him and others like Foxe and
Bale. And like Sir Adrian Fortescue under Henry VIII, there were also English Catholic antiquarians and
medievalists. (See Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Sir Adrian Fortescue and his Copy of Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of
Langland Studies 14 (2000): 29-48. One of Crowley's contemporary antagonists in London, Miles Hogarde (or
Huggard, or Hoggard—Crowley calls him “maister Hogherd”), was a Catholic polemicist and hosier in London who
evidently read late medieval English romances and allegories which he imitated in his own work. One of Hogarde’s
tracts survives as it is quoted entirely within Crowley’s retort to it, The confutation of the mishapen aunswer to the
misnamed, wicked ballade, called the Abuse of [the]blessed sacrament of the aultare. Wherin, thou haste (gentele
reader) the ryghte vnderstandynge of al the places of scripture that Myles Hoggard, (wyth his learned counsail)
hath wrested to make for the transubstanciacion of the bread and wyne. (London: Day and Seres, 1548) (STC 6082).
Like Crowley's, Hogarde’s original poetic works are in imitation of late medieval verse, and he often used
conventions such as the dream vision. Beyond mere formal imitation of medieval literature, Hogarde and Crowley

57
both used their view of the medieval past to shape and legitimize their contemporary religious beliefs. Because of
their traditionalist orientation, Crowley and Hogarde shared some of the same social criticisms, even though they
came at them from antithetical, partisan perspectives, and their strong, emotionally wrought and personalized
assertions of their beliefs gives them a similar individualist quality. See J. W. Martin, “Miles Hogarde: Artisan and
Aspiring Author in Sixteenth-Century England,” Religious Radicals in Tudor England (London and Ronceverte:
Hambledon Press, 1989): 83-105; Thomas Betteridge, “’Making new novelties old:’ Marian Histories of the
Henrician Reformation,” Reformation 3 (1998): 149-74, revised and included as a chapter in Tudor Histories..
35
Robert Crowley, A breefe discourse, concerning those foure vsuall notes, whereby Christes catholique church is
knowen (published anonymously, London: J. Charlewood, 1581), title page. (STC 6081) The caption title (A4r)
reads: “A briefe discourse, concerning those foure vsuall notes, whereby Christes catholique church is knowen:
wherein it appeareth manifestly, that the Romish Church that nowe is, and that hath bene almost a thousand yeeres
last past, is not, neither hath bene catholique, but schismaticall.”
36
Robert Crowley, A deliberat answere made to a rash offer, which a popish Antichristian catholique, made to a
learned protestant (as he saieth) and caused to be publyshed in printe: Anno. Do[mini]. 1575. Wherein the
Protestant hath plainly [and] substantially prooved, that the papists that doo nowe call themselves Catholiques are
in deed antichristian schismatiks: and that the religious protestants, are in deed the right Catholiques: Written by
Robert Crowley: in the yeere, 1587. (London: J. Charlewood, 1588), title page (STC 6084). Peter Milward cites this
argument as the earliest of its kind in Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1977): 127. See also Knappen, Tudor Puritanism, 489. As Thomas Betteridge notes, catholics and protestants
shared magisterial assumptions and norms; they also used the same images and tactics, sharing “identical symbolic
constructions of the role of purge, purger and purged” (Tudor Histories, 218). On the significance and larger context
of these continuities, see John R. Yamamoto-Wilson, Catholic Literature and the Rise of Anglicanism, Renaissance
Monographs 28 (Tokyo: Sophia University Renaissance Institute, 2002).
37
Shuger, Habits of Thought, 25.
38
Shuger, Habits of Thought, 25.
39
Crowley’s A deliberat answere is indeed suggestive of a good deal of anxiety about the validity of his claims
about “protestant catholicity.”
40
See James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, The Oxford English Literary History (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
41
See Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham and London: Duke University press, 2004).
42
Thomas, “The Perception of the Past,” 9. Recent discussions of the notion of the sacred in pre-Reformation
England and the secularizing effects of the Reformation, especially in light of the monastic dissolution, include: C.
John Sommerville, The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992) and Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation. The persistence of
traditional religious beliefs and practices is stressed by Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars. See also Joseph P. Ward,
“Religious Diversity and Guild Unity,” in Eric Josef Carlson, ed., Religion and the English People 1500-1640
(Missouri: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998): 77-98.
43
Richard Grafton, Crowley’s collaborator, was involved in a well-known battle with Stow as a rival chronicler,
each representing opposite sides in the Reformation and attacking each other for their partisan approach to
Reformation history. Grafton attacked Stow’s work as “memories of superstitious foundations, fables and lies
foolishly stowed together.” See Stow’s A Survay of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols (Oxford, 1908): i.ix-xii.
Stow emphasized protestant iconoclasm and omits mention of religious monuments and institutions built by
protestants, saying their builders were “worthy to be deprived of that memory eherof they have injuriously robbed
others” (Survay i.xxxi). See Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation, 421f.; A. J. Taylor, “Stow and His
Monument,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 25 (1974): 316-18; Hugh R.
Trevor-Roper, “John Stow,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 26 (1975): 338-41;
Edward T. Bonahue, Jr., “Citizen History: Stow’s Survey of London, Studies in English Literature 38.1 (1998): 61-
85; Peter Lake, “From Troynovant to Heliogabulus’s Rome and Back: ‘Order’ and Its Others in the London of John
Stow,” Imagining Early Modern London, 217-49; Patrick Collinson, “John Stow and Nostalgic Antiquarianism,” in
Merrit, 27-51; and Margaret Aston, “Iconoclasm in England Official and Clandestine,” in Peter Marshall, ed., The
Impact of the Reformation, 1500-1640 (Arnold, 1997): 167-88.
44
Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers (Hambledon, 1984): 337. (earlier ed—1973: 255)
45
History of Political Ideas, vol. 5, Religion and the Rise of Modernity, vol. 23 in The Collected Works of Eric
Voegelin (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1998): 23-4. See also Sommerville, The

58
Secularization of Early Modern England; William J. Bouwsma, “The Secularization of Society in the Seventeenth
Century,” in A Usable Past, 112-28.
46
Shuger, Habits of Thought, 203:
Sin is secularization, the attempt to avoid the drastic personal confrontation
between absolute power and one’s own guilty, wormlike selfhood by refusing to
hear the constraints such power imposes. It is moreover the Protestant sin, first
sharply articulated in Luther’s angry attack on Erasmian free will and codified in
the Law-to-Gospel spirituality of virtually all the Reformers, according to which
the recognition of one’s total sinfulness, misery, and liability to punishment
must precede redemption. And the resemblance of sin (so conceived) to
modernity seems more than fortuitous. Both in politics and theology, modernity
entails the rejection of the absolutist paradigm based on the polarities of power
and subjection and therefore of the psychocultural formation which made this
paradigm acceptable. At a certain point in Western history, guilt, dependence,
and longing for passivity and for being “in relation” to personal power—the
whole complex of archaic/infantile emotions valorized in Donne—became
offensive. As Christopher Hill remarked, “we are all Pelagians now.” But that is
another story, for although Donne lived in the last generation of full-blooded
Augustinians and sacred monarchs, he did not know it.
Cf. Shuger’s more recent comment in The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994): “Secularization, it would seem, involves the massive redefinition of ideal
selfhood as psychological disorder” (193).
47
A Confutation of the misshapen aunswer, STC 6082, A7v. See Christopher Bradshaw, “David or Josiah? Old
Testament Kings,” in Gordon, ed.
48
Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State in Measure for Measure (New York:
Palgrave, 2001): 43.
49
Thomas More used “anarchos” to refer to Luther’s movement, which he saw as pursuing “licentia” behind
the cover of an appeal to “libertas;” More referred to Lutherans as “daemonum satellites.” [see ackroyd’s life
of more, 248; The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, ed. Louis Schuster, Richard Marius, James Lusadi, and
Richard Schoeck (New Haven: Yale, 1973): 179.] On the related fears of atheism, etc. see Sommerville, The
Secularization of Early Modern England, 151f. and passim; George T. Buckley, Atheism in the English Renaissance
(New York: Russell and Russell, 1965); D. C. Allen, Doubt’s Boundless Sea: Scepticism and Faith in the
Renaissance (Baltimoe: Johns Hopkins, 1964); William R. Elton, King Lear and the Gods (San Marino:
Huntington Library, 1968); Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the
English Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975); Debora Shuger and Claire McEachern, eds. Religion
and Culture in Renaissance England (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
50
Political Theologies, 44.
51
See William H. Sherman, “Anatomizing the Commonwealth: Language, Politics, and the Elizabethan
Social Order,” in Fowler and Greene, 104-21.
52
On the application of Jürgen Habermas’ notion of the public sphere to early modern England, see David Lawton,
“Dullness and the Fifteenth Century,” English Literary History 54.4 (1987): 761-99; Thomas Betteridge, Tudor
Histories, 30f.; Bart van Es, Spenser’s Forms of History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002);
Alexandra Halasz, The Marketplace of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and “Pamphlet Surplus: John Taylor and
Subscription Publication,” in Print, Manuscript, and Performance: The Changing Relations of the Media in
Early Modern England, ed. Arthur Marotti and Michael Bristol (Ohio State University Press, 2000); Douglas
Bruster, “The Structural Transformation of Print in Late Elizabethan England,” in Marotti and Bristol, eds.
53
Without arguing the point or referring to any sources, King remarks in passing at several points in English
Reformation Literature (pp. 97, 218, 220, and 477) that Crowley had the patronage of Lady Elizabeth Fane (or
Vane), wife of Sir Ralph Fane, one of Somerset’s close supporters who was also executed shortly after the duke. The
ODNB has taken this claim at face value, but Jennifer Loach, in Edward VI (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1999): 62, notes that this is Crowley’s “only possible link, and a tenuous one, with Somerset.” (See
also King’s “Robert Crowley: A Tudor Gospelling Poet,” 222; “The Book-trade under Edward VI and Mary I,” 167-
8; “John Day: Master Printer of the English Reformation” in Ryrie and Marshall, 192-93, 193n58; “Protector
Somerset, Patron of the English Renaissance,” 320-21; “Protector Somerset and His Propagandists,” 56-7.)

59
Following King in identifying Lady Fane as Crowley’s patroness are J. W. Martin, “Robert Crowley in Two
Protestant Churches,” 157-58 and Graham Parry, “Literary Patronange,” in David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller,
eds., The Cambridge History of Early Modern Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 119.
The argument for a Crowley-Somerset connection is most extensively discussed in Thompsett’s sixth
chapter, especially pp. 321f. In sum, the evidence for Lady’s Fane’s patronage is Crowley’s dedication of his
Pleasure and Payne (London, 1551), STC 6090, to her and Andrew Maunsell’s record in The First Part of the
Catalogue of English Printed Bookes (London: John Windet for Andrew Maunsell, 1595): 1.85r. Maunsell cites a no
longer extant 1550 Crowley imprint of Lady Elizabeth Vane her certain psalms of godly meditation in number 21,
With 102 proverbs. (See also Ames, Typographical Antiquities, 271.) Other evidence for a possible connection with
Somerset (and perhaps loyalty to him at the fateful end of his career) is a 1551 publication, The abridgemente of
goddes statutes in myter, set oute by Wylliam Samuel seruaunt to the Duke of Somerset hys grace (STC 21690.2).
The title page continues, “Imprinted at London: By Robert Crowley for Robert Soughton [i.e. Stoughton],” although
the revised STC attribution is to Grafton. This work is dedicated Lady Somerset, Anne Seymour.
54
Robert Crowley, An epitome of cronicles. Conteyninge the whole discourse of the histories as well of this realme
of England as al other countreys, with the succesion of their kinges, the time of their reigne, and what notable actes
they did […] gathered out of most probable auctours. Firste by Thomas Lanquet, from the beginning of the worlde
to the incarnacion of Christe, secondely to the reigne of our soueraigne lord king Edward the sixt by Thomas
Cooper, and thirdly to the reigne of our soueraigne Ladye Quene Elizabeth, by Robert Crowley. Anno. 1559.
Londini: in ædibus Thomæ Marshe. (STC 15217.5) The colophon reads: “Imprinted at London by William Seres at
the weste ende of Poules towarde Ludgate at the signe of the Hedgehogge and are there to be solde. 1559. The. V.
day of Apryll.”
55
Thomas Cooper, An Epitome of Cronicles (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1549), STC 15217. Cooper’s text was
itself a continuation of a book left unfinished by Thomas Lanquet. There have been no intensive studies focused on
this text, Crowley’s revisionist version of it, and Cooper’s revisionist response to Crowley, but see Thomas
Betteridge, Tudor Histories, 10f., 166f.; David Scott Kastan’s “Opening Gates and Stopping Hedges: Grafton, Stow
and the Politics of Elizabethan History Writing,” in Elizabeth Fowler and Roland Greene, eds., The Project of Prose
in Early Modern Europe and the New World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 66-79 discusses
Cooper’s and Crowley’s version in passing in a study of Grafton and Stow’s competing chronicles, which also drew
on Cooper. See also Barrett L. Beer, Tudor England Observed: The World of John Stow (Phoenix Mill: Sutton,
1998): 13 and Marcia Lee Metzger, “Controversy and Correctness: English Chronicles and the Chroniclers, 1553-
1568,” Sixteenth Century Journal 27.2 (1996): 437-57 on Grafton, Stow, Cooper and Crowley. Metzger suggests
that Grafton used Crowley’s version and worked with him.
56
On Foxe, Crowley and Cooper at Oxford, see the ODNB and J. F. Mozley, John Foxe and His Book (New York:
Octagon, 1970): 23f. After leaving Oxford, Crowley and Foxe both worked as tutors for households among the
Protestant gentry—the Poyntz and Lucy families, respectively, which had previously employed Tyndale and
Latimer. Both men married during this time and came to London around the accession of Edward VI. Both were
ordained as deacons by Ridley a year apart. (Ridley ordained 25 deacons at St. Paul’s in 1550, including Foxe and
Thomas Lever who was ordained a priest later that year. Crowley was ordained a deacon in 1551.) Both fled to the
continent as Marian exiles (Crowley to Frankfurt—presumably takes Anglican side; Foxe?), and both lived in
the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate under Elizabeth, where Foxe may have assisted Crowley when Crowley was vicar
there, even acting as his surrogate when Crowley was suspended by Parker for his part in the vestiarian controversy.
Foxe died and was buried in 1587 at St. Giles Cripplegate while Crowley was rector there, and a year later when
Crowley died, he was buried under the same stone as Foxe, according to John Stow’s 1598 edition of his Survay,
Q8v.
57
Cooper was named by John Foxe in 1544 in a letter that identifies him and Crowley, among others, as members of
the evangelical faction among the probationer fellows at Magdalen College (Mozley, 23, 25, 85). Cooper survived
the Marian regime by leaving divinity for medicine. Enamored with his revisions of Eliot’s Latin-English dictionary,
Elizabeth I backed Cooper’s advancement which culminated in the bishoprics of Lincoln in 1570-1 and Winchester
in 1584. Although he initially supported Grindal’s tolerance for “prophesyings,” Cooper eventually came in line
with the queen on this issue. Thought to be represented by Thomalin (“Thom of Lincoln”) in The Shepheardes
Calendar, Cooper could be construed by Spenser as a moderate who watched Algrind’s (i.e., Grindal’s) fall with
detachment and sympathy, but he was also attacked as an establishment figure by the Martinists. Crowley, on the
other hand, was a cleric like Grindal who risked his position on principle and suffered accordingly, most famously
as a leader of the anti-vestiarian faction in the mid 1560s.
As Brett Usher writes of Foxe’s “disengagement with the fortunes of Marian survivors” like Cooper, who

60
were rewarded with high positions under Elizabeth and then backed the regime in opposing further reform, Crowley
too is likely to have been disillusioned “as the arteries of the Elizabethan regime appeared to be hardening by the
mid-1560s” and among the “protestant heroes of the 1550s […] arteries appeared to be hardening along with it”
(Usher, “Foxe in London, 1550-87,” n.p.) [see note X above] As Usher and others have pointed out, Crowley’s
fidelity to principle was not absolute, but neither was Foxe’s—all ended up conformists and pluralists, despite
Crowley’s own censure decades earlier of the later practice. [Cite Crowley on pluralists/ism; ie. His interpolation
in Piers. This needs further inquiry--what counts as pluralism/discriminate lesser and greater cases. Evidence
for Crowley’s pluralism? Looks like Martin, King and perhaps others are somewhat wrong about this; may
be a lack of data. Need exact bio timeline for RC uniformly on old/new calendar. On the history and structural
conditions off English pluralism, see R. N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989). On Pluralism among protestant clergy, see Christopher Haigh, “Puritan Evangelism in the Reign
of Elizabeth I,” The English Historical Review 92.362 (1977): 30-58 and D. Marcombie, “Bernard Gilpin: Anatomy
of an Elizabethan Legend,” Northern History 16 (1980): 20-39.] Yet this was still in the future in 1559, and from
Crowley’s point of view it would have been clear who the “conforming sheep” and “radical goats” were. (Usher,
“Foxe in London, 1550-87,” n.p.)
58
The editorial commentary for the variorum edition of The Actes and Monuments
<http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/foxe/> states Crowley’s chronicle is Foxe’s “basic source for the political history of
Mary’s reign in the 1563 edition,” and 11 extracts in Foxe are noted as having been drawn from Crowley’s 1559
Epitome. When Foxe used Crowley’s version, he did so in deliberate rejection of Cooper’s claim to historical
authenticity and authority. Foxe used Cooper (1560) only once, in keeping with Brett Usher’s observation in “Foxe
in London, 1550-87” (n.p.) that “One of the most striking aspects of Actes and Monuments, in its later recensions, is
Foxe’s almost complete refusal to engage with the reminiscences of those [like Cooper or, for that matter, Foxe’s
printer, John Day] who had contrived to survive the Marian persecution.”
59
See Betteridge, Tudor Histories, 11-12; 168-69.
60
A1v 1560 (STC 15218)
61
A1v ??? (STC 15218)
62
A3r (STC 15218)
63
A3r-v (STC 15218)
64
Kastan takes Cooper’s claim of indifference regarding “alteracion in religion” and openness to “eyther partie” as a
relatively credible statement (“Opening Gates and Stopping Hedges,” 76) when it is most likely a performance of
political positioning and a shot at Crowley.
65
Old DNB is pretty weak on Russells; get new entry. The classic 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica (1911):
At the crowning of Edward VI [John Russell] was lord high steward, and after
his defeat of the western rebels was raised, in 1550, to the earldom of Bedford.
Queen Mary, like her brother, made him lord privy seal, although he is said to
have favored that Reformation which enriched him. He died in London in 1555,
leaving to his son a vast estate of church lands and lands forfeited by less
successful navigators of the troubled sea of Tudor politics. In the west he had
the abbey lands of Tavistock, which give a marquess’s title to his descendants.
In Cambridgeshire he had the abbatial estate of Thorney, in Bedfordshire the
Cistercian house of Woburn, now the chief seat of the Russells. In London he
had Covent Garden with the Long Acre. Thus the future wealth of his house was
secured by those immoderate grants which made a text for Edmund Burke’s
furious attack upon a duke of Bedford.
The latter reference is to Burke’s A Letter to a Noble Lord, Vol. 24, Part 4. The Harvard Classics, ed. Charles W.
Eliot (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1909-14), which targeted Francis Russell, the 5th duke of Bedford (1765–
1802). The full original title is, “From the Right Hon. Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord on the Attacks Made upon
Him and His Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, Early in the
Present Session of Parliament, 1796.”
66
Gredy cormeraunts
67
Is it possible this could refer to Thomas Seymour, not Somerset?
68
4D2v (STC xxxx 1549)
69
4D3r (STC XXX 1559) Cooper did not restore the omitted phrase in his 1560 edition. Crowley’s version also
subtly revises the following section to make a more aggressive, emphatic description of official iconoclasm.
70
4D3r STC xxx 1549

61
71
4D3v STC xxx 1559
72
4D3r STC xxx 1549
73
4D3v STC xxx 1559 Cooper restores his original account in his 1560 edition.
74
4D4v 1559.
75
In his 1560 edition, Cooper reports several views about who was to blame for Thomas Seymour’s execution, but
he says he has no opinion on the matter himself:
Syr Thomas Seimat highe admiral of England brother to the Lorde protectour
and the kinges uncle had maryed Quene Catherine late wife to kynge Henrie.
She upon what occasion I know not, conceived a stomake againste the Lorde
Protectours wife Duches of Somersette, and thereupon also in the behalfe of
their wyfes displeasure and grudge beganne between the two brothers, Whiche
by persuation of friends, and the aucthoritie of the counciell was suppressed
between theim for a tyme: But eare it were longe it brake oute, to the trouble of
the Realme, and as it appeared to the confusion of them both, for it was laied
afterward to the Lord admiralles charge that he purposed to destroye the yonge
kynge and transferre the crowne unto him selfe, and for that treason being after
warde atteynted and condemned, the .xx. daie of Marche was beheaded at the
tower Hyl. Many at [ty] tyme said that the Lord Protectour wold not stande in
his dignitee long after, affirming that the faule of the one brother, wold be the
rewi[r/n?]e of the other, diverse also reported that the Duches of Somerset
wrought his death: but whether thei spake of stomak or of trueth I am not hable
to judge. (4R3v-4R4r)
76
Thomas Lever alluded to the event in a sermon at St. Paul’s on February 2, 1550. The sermon was printed
that year by… deals with obedience—how the poor have rebelled and the rich have not done their duty…
pluralism, and the supp of abbeys, cloisters, colleged and chantries—done for good intent but now abused by
rich to detriment of poor. Impl of somerset. Arber ed. Second sermon before king addresses plunder of
sedburgh school in Yorkshire—a year later, apr 1551, king refounds the school. 3rd sermon at paul’s cross
12/14/1550) before kingf’s counsellors: every secular office is truly a religious office; every Christian
commonwealth is the fold of Christ’s sheep/the church—not to be selfishly abused. Similar concern with
schools and diss generally. Called for restoration of abused monastic properties. See taylor diss; kreider
77
4E1r-v STC xxx 1559.
78
STC 6089.5. Printed anonymously but attributed to Crowley by Bale in his Scriptorium Illustrium maioris
Brytanniae Catalogus (Basle, 1557): 9.80. W. A. Marsden produced a facsimile edition of the British Library copy
as The Fable of Philargyrie the Great Gigant (London: Emery Walker, 1931). [Scolar rpt?] Only 3 copies survive.
John N. King has produced an introduction, commentary, and transcription of the Yale copy with corrections and
variants noted from the only other surviving copies at the National Library of Scotland and the British Library
[Edinburgh or previously unknown copy now at Newberry?]: Philargyrie of greate Britayne by Robert Crowley,
English Literary Renaissance 10.1 (1980): 46-75. Quotations here are from King’s text.
79
Knappen, Tudor Puritanism, 414.
80
Philargyrie of greate Britayne, D5v
81
King, Philargyrie of greate Britayne, 49; see also John N. King, “Traditions of Satire and Complaint,” in Michael
Hattaway, ed., A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000): 370.
82
King, Philargyrie of greate Britayne, 57n.
83
Philargyrie of greate Britayne, D5r
84
Ralph Maud, “Robert Crowley, Puritan Satirist,” Costerus 7 (1973): 91-2.
85
Ralph Maud, “Robert Crowley,” 92.
86
The way to wealth, wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion (London: Stephen Mierdman,
1550): A3v (STC 6096). Blayney contends that Day was the printer. Transcription from… in EETS
87
4S1v-4S2r/345 v-346 r STC 15218
88
4S1v-4S2r/345 v-346 r STC 15218
89
4S2v-4S3r/346v-347r STC 15218
90
4E2v STC 1559 Cooper gives a more detailed analysis of the disease and makes the same moralization in his 1560
edition. See Brigden, London and the Reformation, 470-71.
91
4E3r STC 1559
92
See King; earlier sources/other note; Betteridge, Tudor Histories, 166-67.

62
93
Crowley 1559, STC 4E3r
94
4U1v/353v STC 15218
95
Foxe fits into Cooper’s second group with “The tragicall History” of Somerset in the first (1560) edition of the
Acts and Monuments (STC 11222), 880-4. Yet Foxe also idealizes Somerset as much as possible in between opening
and closing comments about Somerset’s fratricidal guilt, his failure to realize his potential in the cause of
reformation, and the manifestation of Providence in Somerset’s fall. Later editions show Foxe qualifying his
portrayal of Somerset as a heroic martyr while also improving Duddley’s appearance. See Alford, Kingship and
Politics, 10f.
96
Crowley mentions without comment that Sir Ralph Fane was executed “for the dukes matter” (4E3v). correlate w/
earlier note; Fane’s wife may have been Crowley’s patroness according to King.
97
4E4r STC 1559
98
4E4r STC 1559
99
4E4r STC 1559
100
See Christopher Bradshaw, “John Bale and the Use of English Bible Imagery,” Reformation 2 (1997): 173-89.
101
The epistle exhortatorye of an Englyshe Christyane vnto his derelye beloued co[n]treye of Englande, against the
pompouse popyshe bysshoppes therof, as yet the true members of theyr fylthye father the great Antichrist of Rome,
Henrye Stalbrydge, A5v. Three editions were printed in Antwerp in 1544? By the Widow of C. Ruremond and A.
Goinus, 1544? (STC 1291, 1291a, STC 1291a.2)
102
Mozley, John Foxe and His Book, 23-5. Foxe, Crowley, Thomas Cooper, and four others left Magdalen between
c. July 1545 and July 1546 in what appears to have been a purge of evangelical fellows since another fellow at
Magdalen, William Webbe, was allowed to defer his ordination well beyond the time it should have taken place.
103
J. W. Martin, “Robert Crowley in Two Protestant Churches,” 147. See also Peter Marshall, “Evangelical
Conversion in the Reign of Henry VIII,” in Ryrie and Marshall, 14-37.
104
The Epistle Exhortatorye, 6r.
105
Bradshaw, “John Bale,”179; Bradshaw, “The Exile Literature,” 119. Cf. John N. King, “Henry VIII as David:
The King’s Image and Reformation Politics,” in Peter C. Herman, ed., Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on
Early Tudor Texts and Contexts (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994): 78-92.
106
Christopher J. Bradshaw, “The Exile Literature of the Early Reformation: ‘Obedience to God and the King,’” The
Thirteenth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, 1997, eds. N. Scott Amos, Andrew Pettegree and Henk van Nierop,
The Education of a Christian Society: Humanism and the Reformation in Britain and the Netherlands (Ashgate,
1999): 112.
107
Bradshaw, “The Exile Literature,” 112-13.
108
Bradshaw, “John Bale,” 185; Bradshaw, “The Exile Literature,” 129. Richard Hooker did not miss the
subversive, eisegetical nature of this strategy when the Puritans used it (Works 1.150), as Debora Shuger has noted
in Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics and the Dominant Culture (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1997): 29.
109
Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, 64.
110
Unless otherwise noted, all page references to Crowley’s version are to his third edition (STC 19907), and
all line references are to A. V. C. Schmidt’s edition of the B-text, William Langland, The Vision of Piers
Plowman. A Critical Edition of the B-Text, 2nd ed. (London: Dent; Vermont: Tuttle, 1995).
111
Cautious reception of pp—piers satchel. See Sharon Jansen, “Politics, Protest, and a New Piers Plowman
Fragment: The Voice of the Past in Tudor England,” Review of English Studies n.s. 40.157 (1989): 93-99.
112
George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589)
113
For a recent review of the idea that Piers was a banned book in early to mid-Tudor England, see Hailey,
“’Geuyng light.”
114
♣3r (STC 19906) check ♣
115
Ecclesiastes 10.16
116
The Works of Hugh Latimer. Ed. George Elwes Corrie, Parker Society 17-18 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1844-45; New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968): 1.117, 133. [Sermons, ed. Arthur Pollard. Manchester:
Carcanet Press, 2000; Selected Sermons of Hugh Latimer, Ed. Allan G. Chester (Charlottesville: Folger
Shakespeare Library / University of Virginia Press, 1968); Select sermons and letters of Dr. Hugh Latimer
(London: Printed for the Religious Tract Society, 1831?)
117
King discusses this and other aspects of Edward’s coronation in English Reformation Literature, 166-67. For the
coronation ritual, see Acts of the Privy Council of England, n.s., ed. John Roche Dasent, 1547-50 (London: H.M.
Stationery Office, 1890-1940): 2.29-33; volume 1 of Edward VI, Literary Remains, ed. J. G. Nichols, 2 vols,

63
Roxburghe Club (1857); Society of Antiquaries, London MS 123. For Cranmer’s coronation sermon, see vols. 13
and 29 in the Parker Society series: The Works of Thomas Cranmer, Ed. John E. Cox (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1844-46; New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968): 2.127. See also Sidney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry
and Early Tudor Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969): 294-295. UPDATE Notably, by XXX, Latimer
was preaching to the king that Absalom demonstrated God’s wrath for private authority that defied his will (“Second
Sermon Before King Edward the Sixth,” Sermons of Hugh Latimer, ed. H. Corrie [Parker Society, 1844]: 115), and
in 1549 he told the young king that Josiah “reformed his father’s ways who walked in idolatry” (“Sermon of April
5th 1549” in Sermons of Hugh Latimer, 175). See EEBO for Day? Edition of Latimer.
118
(king-164 A&m 6.38), s. alford 57f.; see J. A. Muller, The Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933):
265-6, 278.
119
Crammer tried (and failed) to get Northumberland? to hold off on dissolution of the chantries until the
king came of age—src? See Alan Kreider, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1979). Along with the conservative bishops, David Loades writes that Cranmer opposed the 1547
bill for the second Chantries Act “probably because he did not trust the avowed intention to devote the newly
acquired resources to charity and education. He had previously taken issue with Henry VIII over the secularization
of the monastic lands, and his view of the rapacity of the laity had not changed” (Essays in the Reign of Edward VI,
95).
120
A3v (STC 19906); B.Prol.187
121
Crowley’s first edition reads “killing” instead of “kitling.”
122
A3v (STC 19906); B.Prol.194-6
123
Eccles. 10.17
124
The gloss in the first edition reads “las-siuis” while in the second edition it is “las-sinis,” probably a correction of
a turned letter that went undetected in the first edition. King reports “lassinus,” which does not appear anywhere.
125
King, English Reformation Literature, 334-35.
126
Hailey has noted that some copies of the first edition of Piers were printed on vellum; they “are the sole extant
examples of English printing on vellum between 1544 and 1562”—an indicator of a very “specialized market”
(Hailey, “‘Geuyng light,’” 492). Perhaps this was intended to “indicate that this was a text of earlier times,” as X
surmises (CHBB 3.95), but printed on vellum or paper, the edition was probably directed toward a “coterie audience
of like-minded and highly literate (i.e. Latin literate) Protestant intellectuals who could be expected to expend the
necessary effort to ‘break the shell of the nutte for the kernelles sake’” (“‘Geuyng light,’” 490; Crowley, “The
Printer to the Reader,” *2v), no doubt in more than a merely linguistic sense. Based on paper types and their
distribution in the editions, along with the dramatic increase in glosses between the first and second editions, Hailey
hypothesizes that the first edition was a success “and may have provided both the capital and the motivation to
produce a second edition aimed at a wider audience” (“‘Geuyng light,’” 492-3) of middle-class readers who were
literate only in English (“‘Geuyng light,’” 497). The first edition has extensive Latin glosses but only 56 glosses in
total and only four that are biblical citations. The glosses increase to 488 in the second edition. Perhaps Bale and
Crowley saw it as a rather more elevated “toye” than the kind John Ponet approved in a letter to Bale c. 1555:
“Ballets, rymes, and short toyes that be not deare, and will easily be born away to doe muche good at home amonge
the rude peple […] The unlearned must not be ydell. Ther dayly exhortations shall incoradge the laborers, the
plowemans whisell is no vayn instrument, the horse laboreth more cheerfully when he is chereshid” (BL Additional
MS 29546, fo. 25. Transcribed in E. J. Baskerville, “John Ponet in Exile: A Ponet Letter to John Bale,” Journal of
Ecclesiastical History 37.3 [1986]: 442-47).
127
BL C.122 d.9. See Johnson, Reading Piers Plowman, 150f.
128
See Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Fortescue and His Copy of Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 14
(2000): 29-48; E. Talbot Donaldson, Piers Plowman: The C-Text and Its Poet (New Haven, 1949): 85-120; Anna P.
Baldwin, The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1981): 12-18.
129
Schmidt---B.
130
In 1589, the Martinists enlisted the support of Piers Plowman as the “gransier” of Martin Marprelate, in an attack
on monarchs, bishops and nobles on behalf of the poor, oppressed commons who are denied political
enfranchisement: “ye plowmen, ight g, tylers, and ight g [….] dere bretherne hoggherdes sheperhedes and
all youre sorte dyspysed” (O read me, for I am of great antiquitie. I plaine Piers […] I am the gransier of marten
marprelette, A7r, A8r) (STC 19903a.5). This is a reprinted version of I Playne Piers which Cannot Flatter (STC
19903a), which had been printed by N. Hill or W. Roy in 1550. The original is an apocalyptic prose work with
rhyming tags first written under Henry VIII. It alludes to More, Tyndale, and others from the 1530s and 40s but
borrows greatly from the fifteenth-century Lollard poem that was given a prologue and transformed into the

64
protestant Plowman’s Tale. Both were sometimes attributed in the sixteenth century to the author of Piers Plowman.
Parker edition. See Thomas J. Heffernan, “Aspects of the Chaucerian Apocrypha: Animadversions on William
Thynne’s edition of the Plowman’s Tale,” Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, Eds. Ruth
Morse and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990): 155-65. others on PLT
131
Stephen Greenblatt, “Murdering Peasants,” 21. invisible bullets too?
132
Stow on Cromwell ripping off his father’s land (Survay 1.179f.). See Valerie Pearl, “John Stow,”
Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 30 (1979): 132; Barret L. Beer, Tudor England
Observed, 14f.; Ian Archer, “The Nostalgia of John Stow” in David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington,
eds., The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576-1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995): 17-34 and “The Arts and Acts of Memorialization in Early Modern London,” Imagining Early Modern
London, 89-113; J. F. Merrirr, “The Reshaping of Stow’s ‘Survey’: Munday, Strype, and the Protestant City,”
Imagining Early Modern London, 52-88; Lawrence Manley, “Of Sites and Rites,” The Theatrical City, 35-54;
Brigden, London and the Reformation. The precise nature of Stow’s religious commitments are unclear, but
evidently they were much more conservative than Crowley’s in light of the dim view Stow takes of Crowley in his
“Memoranda” and iconoclastic reformers generally in his Survey and chronicles. Stow’s account of Crowley’s
leadership in the vestiarian controversy on and around April 21, 1566 emphasizes Crowley’s status as a pluralist
amid a brawling and rebellious rabble. At this time Crowley was among those whom Stow refers to as having been
prohibited from preaching, as Crowley had been suspended on March 28:
….[The] mynistars and prechars that wer prehibytyd to preche or minister dyd
mayny of them nevartheles mynystar and preache as they before had don,
yewsynge words of great vehemencie against [that] order before sayd set forthe,
as also against [the] queen, counseyll, and bishops for settynge for [the] same.
[The] lyke sedycious lybells wer written and strewyd abowt in [the] strets, and ij
sortis of sedycious bokes wer set for the in print and given at theyr mornynge
congratyngs; the one entytelyd “The Voyce of God,” set owt by one Towrs [the]
coole takar of the Towre, a smaterer in musyke, and hathe of longe tyme laboryd
to serve in Powls churche, and ther dayly to were the syrplice wer it but for xli.
The yere. Thother by [the] wholl multytud of London mynystars, every one of
them gyvynge theyr ight in writynge unto Robart Crowley as (somtym a
boke sellar), now redar at Sent Antholyns, person of S. Petar [the] Powre,
prebend of Pawlls, vickar of S. Gills with owt Criple gate, and deane of Harfford
in Wales, who compilyd [the] same in to one booke, namynge [the] same “Ye
Unfoldynge of [the] Popyshe atyr;” against whiche boke an other boke, beynge
“A Playn Confutacion,” was set for the in print with [the] quens priveledge. It is
to be notyd that [the] awcthors of thos two books before namyd were no ways
punyshid for [the] same, but only [the] printers were kepte in [the] Contar nyghe
a fortnight, tyll they had openyd who war [the] awcthors, but they had frinds
ynowe to have sete [the] whole realme together by the eares. (“Memoranda,”
138-39; Cf. Strype, Matthew Parker, 1:301; PRO E337/5, no. 101)
See Thompsett and J. W. Martin, “Robert Crowley in Two Protestant Churches,” for further discussion of these
events.
133
Robert R. Edwards, “Translating Thebes: Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes and Stow’s Chaucer,” English Literary
History 70 (2003): 325.
134
Edwards, 335-6.
135
See Anne Hudson, “John Stow,” Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, Ed. Paul G. Ruggiers (Norman: Pilgrim
Books, 1984): 53-70. Speght refers to Stow’s contributions to his 1598 edition of Chaucer’s Works (STC 5077)
(A4v). In his 1598 edition of A Survey of London (STC 23340.8), Stow also records that Chaucer’s Works were
“beautified with notes by me, collected out of divers records and monuments, which I delivered to my loving friend,
Thomas Speght; and he having drawn the same into a good form and method, as also explained the old and obscure
words, &c., hath published them in anno 1597.” [original p# and crit ed.] In Kingsford, John Stow, 2.111; cf.
Annales, 1592, pp.517-18 Stow says the edition was “by viewe of diuers written copies, corrected by myself,
the author of this history, who at that time also corrected diuers works of the said mast Geffrey Chaucers,
neuer before imprinted…”] Derek Pearsall’s chapter on Speght in Editing Chaucer, 71-92 contends that Stow only
provided records for the Life, whereas “Speght’s own additions are probably confined to the details of Chaucer’s
presumed life drawn from the writings ascribed to him” (77).

65
136
Speght 1598 ed. (Bvi)
137
Probably taking cues from Foxe, who called Chaucer “a right Wiclevian” in The Actes and Monuments (src),
Speght’s introductory biography of Chaucer—the “Life of Our Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer” (B2rf.)—in
his 1598 edition of the Works asserts that Chaucer was at Merton College with Wycliffe and one of his close friends.
The source for the idea that Chaucer had been involved in a popular, perhaps Lollard, uprising was based
on Thomas Usk’s account of his political intrigue and imprisonment in the Testament of Love, which was wrongly
attributed to Chaucer. According to Thomas Prendergast, “Chaucer’s Doppelgänger: Thomas Usk and the
Reformation of Chaucer” in Thomas Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority,
and The Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602.(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999): 258-69, the “Life”
presents readers with an erstwhile radical in troubled times much like their own, “a kind of proto- Protestant […]
who, despite an initial error, eventually ‘converted’ to the king’s party” (262). The “Life” states that “In the second
year of Richard the second, the King tooke Geffrey Chaucer and his lands into his protection. The occasion wherof
no doubt was some daunger and trouble whereinto he was fallen by favouring some rash attempt of the common
people” (Bvi). Under his discussion of Chaucer’s friends, namely John of Gaunt, Speght further explains:
Yet it seemeth that [Chaucer] was in some trouble in the daies of King Richard
the second, as it may appeare in the Testament of Loue: where hee doth greatly
complaine of his owne rashnesse in following the multitude, and of their hatred
of him for bewraying their purpose. And in that complaint which he maketh to
his empty purse, I do find a written copy, which I had of Iohn Stow (whose
library hath helped many writers) wherein ten times more is adjoined, then is in
print. Where he maketh great lamentation for his wrongfull imprisonment,
wishing death to end his daies: which in my iudgement doth greatly accord with
that in the Testament of Love. Moreover we find it thus in Record. (B7r)
Later, in “The Argument” to the Testament of Love in the Works, Speght’s edition adds: “Chaucer did compile this
booke as a comfort to himselfe after great griefs conceiued for some rash attempts of the commons, with whome he
had ioyned, and thereby was in feare to loose the fauour of his best friends” (C4v). See also Forni…
138
The OED cites examples from 1588 as the earliest references to a “Reformed” religion and the “Reformation” as
a movement.
139
Milton cites “Chaucer’s Plowman” in Of Reformation (1641) when he is discussing poems that have described
Constantine as a major contributor to the corruption of the church, but presumably he is referring to The Plowman’s
Tale (693-700), which was typically attributed to Chaucer, since he quotes two stanzas from it. The end of Piers
Plowman (B.15…) makes the same point about Constantine at greater length. In An Apology for a
Pamphlet/Smectymnuus… Milton refers to The Vision and Crede of Pierce Plowman, which might mean either or
both Piers Plowman and The Plowman’s Crede. Perhaps it refers to Owen Rogers’ 1561 edition that reissued
Crowley’s text of Piers with the Crede appended. See Barbara A. Johnson, Reading Piers Plowman and the
Pilgrim’s Progress: Reception and the Protestant Reader (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1992): 145.
140
Barbara Johnson, Reading Piers Plowman, 156-59.
141
Tom Freeman, “John Foxe: A Biography,” in in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments [...], The Variorum Edition,
[online] (hriOnline, Sheffield 2004), Available at: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/foxe/, Accessed: 12.18.2003, n.p.;
John Foxe complained about his son’s expulsion in 1581 by “factiosa ista Puritanorum” in a letter to the bishop
(cooper?): BL Harley MS 416, 152r-153r. C. M. Dent discusses the incident in Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan
Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983): 58f., as does Mozley, 108f.
142
Note Crowley’s opposition to Presbyterians Thomas Wilcox and John Field; Elton, Parl.Eng & Collinson,
ElizPurMov. While Crowley is harsh toward the bishops in The Opening, when confronted with a prophecy
that could be given an anti-prelatical interpretation he simply rejects it. (B3r) (STC) See J. F. Davis, “Lollardy
and the Reformation in England,” in Peter Marshall, ed., The Impact of the Reformation, 43-44.
143
See refs in King, ELR. Langland uses the term to refer to the Evangelists of the New Testament. Thomas More
used it in a negative sense to attack the “newe ghospellers” Tyndale and Barnes. (src?). It appears in the Book of
Homilies in the Sermon on Obedience (R. B. Bond, ed. Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against
Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570): A Critical Edition (1987): 191) and Erasmus’ Paraphrases as translated
by Nicholas Udall. (refs?) Latimer, too, used it in a negative sense to refer to the “great number of people [who]
pretend the Gospell, and beare the name of Gospelleres, because it is a new thing” (ref?), and Edward Underhill
mentions being derided as a “hot Gospeller.” (src?) See also the anti-protestant interlude, Lusty Juventus. (in A
Select Collection of Old English Plays, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964): 1-2.74,94.)

66
144
Charlotte Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman: The Evolution of the Text. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996): 32-3.
145
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman, 59; W. W. Skeat, ed., The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1886): X:XX.
146
See Kane and Donaldson’s Piers Plowman: The B Version (London: Athlone, 1975): 6-7.
147
Wycliffe and the Lollards, were for Bale, as Foxe would later write, the “morning star” of the reformation of the
church and the beginning of the conflict between good and evil symbolized by the opening of the sixth seal in
Revelation. See Bale’s Summarium, 154v; Actes and Monuments, XXX. [Crowley on 7th seal—true copy of a
prolog, which uses woodcut from bale’s summarium as frontispiece-king 97; A1v & ight of last trump] See
Hudson, “‘No newe thing.’”
148
King, “The light of printing,” 79; The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe: written not longe
after the yere of our Lorde. M. and thre hundred (STC 20036, 2036.5) was probably written c. 1350-1450 and first
printed c. 1531. It is a short (14pp.), anonymous prose tract and polemical Lollard prayer for reform. In it, the simple
plowman/narrator speaks on behalf of “the repressed common man imbued with the simple truths of the Bible and a
knowledge of the commandments against the mighty and monolithic conservative church” (The Praier and
Complaynte of the Ploweman vnto Christe, Ed. Douglas H. Parker, [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997]:
XXX). The pastoral-ecclesiastical metaphor of shepherds and sheep is used extensively as a number of standard
criticisms are made about confession, indulgences, purgatory, tithing, celibacy, etc. In 1662 Thomas Fuller
attributed The Praier to “Robert Langland,” based on his ight g ly with Piers Plowman and the separate
editions of The Praier and Complaint, which he believed were printed by Tyndale and Foxe. No manuscripts of the
Praier survive; it was first printed by the Protestant printer, Martinus de Keyser, in Antwerp and then in London by
another Protestant printer, Thomas Godfray, c. 1532. Godfray’s name does not appear in the edition. A preface in
both editions, “To the Reader,” dates itself 28 February 1531 and claims (undoubtedly in error) that the Praier was
written “not longe after the yere of our Lorde A thousand and thre hundred.” The preface is also signed “W.T.”
Parker and others take this to mean William Tyndale wrote it; Anthea Hume (Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet.
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.]: XXX) disagrees and suggests George Joye. Godfrey may indeed
have printed The Praier by or with the approval of Tyndale (as Foxe indicates) ca.1532-6 in London or in 1531 in
Antwerp. (Tyndale could have been involved with the first edition, since he is known to have been in Antwerp that
year. Godfrey had printing connections with Tyndale and Antwerp.) Probably referring to The Praier, Thomas More
attacked the “Ploughmans Prayour” in his preface to his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (London: William Rastell,
1532) (STC 18079, 24437, 18080). In 1546, the Praier was among the books banned by name in England, according
to Robert Steele. All works by Frith, Tyndale, Wycliffe, Joy, Roy, Basile (i.e., Becon), Bale, Barnes, Coverdale,
Turner, and Tracy were banned. (See Stow) W.T.’s preface compares the Protestant reformers to Christ. Both were
attacked as “innovators” when, according to the preface, they were only teaching the true and ancient doctrines. In
this way, the Praier is mustered up as an old proto-protestant English text showing the truth and traditional basis of
Protestant teachings. The text of The Praier (727-8, 739) echoes The Plowman’s Tale and another reformist text,
Rede Me and Be Nott Wrothe. (See Parker) W.T. also argues that those in positions of wealth and power are
corrupted by self-interest, and only the poor commons can see the truth of scripture. Some of these criticisms are
directed toward the king and other rulers. W.T. does explicitly denounce the murder of Archbishop John Fisher,
whom the king had executed 1535 for refusing the oath of royal supremacy. Helen White contends that The Praier
contains a “very radical theory of the nature of property” (Social Criticism, 27). In his 1570 (second) edition of the
Actes and Monuments, Foxe identifies Tyndale as the editor of Agricolae Praecatione, John Bale’s Latin title for
The Prayer and Complaint in his Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytannie […] Catalogus (Basel, 1557-59). The text
of the Praier first appears in the 1570 edition of Acts and Monuments, but it was deleted in the third (1576) edition
and reinserted in the fourth (1583), as well as later versions after Foxe’s death (from 1610 onward). Foxe’s 1570
introduction (STC 20036) dates the Prayer to the mid-fourteenth century and claims not to have changed any of it
since the antique language gives “credit” to it and its “testimony.” Marginal notes in Foxe’s version explicate the
most difficult words as well as the points that square with Protestant attacks on Roman Catholicism. See Bale
(1548): KKK1r; Foxe (1570): U1v-5r (2.728-47)
149
King,”The light of printing,” 79.
150
Foxe (1570): U1v (2.727-28).
151
See Trevor T. Ross, The Making of the English Literary Canon: From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth
Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998): 51f. on the formative role of the dissolution of
monasteries in this process. The Reformation’s legacy in English humanistic pursuits has been evinced by the recent
turn in “revisionist” history and canon-reconfiguration led by scholars like Eamon Duffy who have addressed the

67
elision of Roman Catholicism’s persistence in English Reformation historiography as well as Roman Catholic texts
that have been omitted from the official study and teaching of early modern English history and literature.
152
As Bernard Cerquiglini comments, “Philology is a bourgeois, paternalist, and hygienist system of thought about
the family; it cherishes filiation, tracks down adulterers, and is afraid of contamination. It is thought based on what
is wrong (the variant being a form of deviant behavior), and it is the basis for a positive methodology.” (In Praise of
the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, trans. Betsy Wing, [Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1999]: 49.)
153
Cerquiglini, 34.
154
The canonical texts are, inevitably, those that have occupied the greatest attention of the greatest editors.
155
As Jan-Dirk Müller notes in “The Body of the Book: The Media Transition from Manuscript to Print,” in
Materialities of Communication, eds. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, Trans. William Whobrey.
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994):
“The generation around 1550 realized the loss of tradition, even though printing
seemed at first to secure everything that had been transmitted and was worthy of
transmission (quamuis enim ars typographica librorum conseruationi nata
uideatur; Gesner 1966: 3r). The loss of tradition manifests itself in the
destruction of manuscripts. Nicolaus Mameranus states in 1550 that everybody
stupidly trusts the first, best print, that is, the son who replaces the father, and
hence accepts that the old manuscripts, one printed, are sold, cut up, scraped
clean, and then used for other purposes: “The books are printed,” they say; “isn’t
that enough?” Not at all, if one wants to establish the word of the author in its
original state (pristinam suam et nativam integritatem), as Mameranus himself
says in his edition of Paschasius Radpertus. To reestablish it, all available copies
must be collected; “the old exemplars must be preserved with holy zeal, and
guarded as a treasure, even if they are printed a thousand times over”
(Schottenloher 1931: 93-94). (32-44)
Many recent studies have examined the history of canon formation in light of scholarly editing. See David
Matthews’ The Making of Medieval English, Allen J. Franzen’s Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English,
and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), Ross’s The Making of the English
Literary Canon, and Joseph A. Dane’s Who is Buried in Chaucer’s Tomb? Studies in the Reception of Chaucer’s
Book (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998). Forni? Bercovitch? Lerer?
156
Cerquiglini, 34. See also Machan; McGann; Tanselle; John Thompson, “Textual Instability and the Late
Medieval Reputation of Some Middle English Religious Literature,” TEXT 5 (1999): 175-94; Jack Stillinger,
“Multiple Authorship and the Question of Authority,” TEXT 5 (1999): 283-93; Daniel Rubey, “Howell’s Venetian
Life as a Vertical Text,” TEXT 5 (1991): 315-38.
157
The Making of Medieval English, 1765-1910 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999): 158.
158
Rejecting William R. Crawford’s hypothesis in “Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman: A Bibliographical
and Textual Study” (Ph.D. Diss, Yale University, 1958) of four impressions that cannot be strongly differentiated as
editions, Hailey’s recent bibliographic analysis confirms Skeat’s view that there are three distinct editions that were
published in the following order: (1) STC 19906 (Cr1), (2) 19907a (Cr2), and (3) 19907 (Cr3). Skeat and other editors
have alternately referred to Crowley’s “editions” and “impressions;” Hailey affirms the accuracy of the former over
the latter terminology. See also Hailey, “Geuying light.”
159
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., lists 1555 as the earliest usage of “edition” as a noun referring to a
printed work: “One of the differing forms in which a literary work (or a collection of works) is published, either by
the author himself, or by subsequent editors.” Or, “An impression, or issue in print, of a book, pamphlet, etc.; the
whole number of copies printed from the same set of types and issued at the same time.”
160
See Hailey, “Robert Crowley’s Editions,” 75. Hailey refers to the definitions provided by R. B. McKerrow, “On
the Meaning of ‘Edition,’ ‘Impression,’ and ‘Issue’…,” An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1928; Winchester and New Castle: St. Paul’s Bibliographies and Oak Knoll Press, 1994): 175f.;
Fredson Bowers, “Hand-Printed Books: Edition, Issue and State: Ideal Copy,” Principles of Bibliographic
Description (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949; Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1986, 87, 94): 39,
379f.; G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Bibliographic Concepts of ‘Issue’ and ‘State,’ Papers of the Bibliographic
Society of America 69 (1975): 17-66. See also D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York
and London: Garland, 1994): 167; William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott, An Introduction to

68
Bibliographical and Textual Studies, 2nd ed., (New York: MLA, 1989): 22; Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to
Bibliography (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972): 313-14.
161
OED, 2nd ed., s.v. “editor.”
162
OED, 2nd ed., s.v. “editor.”
163
The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 59.
164
Pierre Petitmengin’s “Comment étudier l’activité d’Érasme éditeur de texts antiques?” in Colloquia Erasmiana
Turonensia, 2 vols., ed. Jean-Claude Margolin (paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1972): 1.218, points out that
Erasmus, when producing an edition of previously printed texts, always chose a printed source as his base text, and
Hilmar Pabel has found evidence that “In all likelihood, Erasmus reconstructed Jerome’s texts on the basis of the
incunabular tradition.” See Pabel’s, “The Incunable Jerome: A Possible Influence on Erasmus?” (Paper presented at
the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Denver, Colorado, November 15, 2001) and “Credit, Paratexts, and
Editorial Strategies in Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Editions of St. Jerome,” Intersections: Yearbook for Early
Modern Studies 4 (2004): forthcoming. In “Editing the Past: Classical and Historical Scholarship,” in Barnard and
McKenzie, eds., vol. 9, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 206-27, Nicolas Barker emphasizes what he
can find of “systematic” and “critical” approaches to editing in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Britain, such as
John Fell’s “mastery of textual criticism,” which Barker imagines gave him an almost ight g ly d “degree of
penetration and certainty” regarding Greek literature. Thomas Gale, however, “had a high reputation and wide
influence” due to the sheer volume of his output rather than their quality, which apparently did not impede their
popularity. Barker remarks, “[Gales’] texts were taken from previous editions, without critical assessment [….] both
he and Thomas Fulman employed copyists without collating their work against the originals.” See also E. J. Kenney,
The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1974); Debora Shuger, The Renaissance Bible.
165
See STC 6082, 6086, 6086.5, 6090, 6094.
166
Minnis; See M. B. Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of
the Book,” Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, J. J. G. Alexander and M.
T. Gibson, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976): 119-41 and Max W. Thomas, “Reading and Writing the
Renaissance Commonplace Book: A Question of Authorship?” in Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi, eds., The
Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature (Durham and London: Duke University
Press, 1994): 401-15.
167
Hailey, “Giving Light,” 164.
168
Ref. ight g’s unsystematic corrections over course of editions
169
Hailey (“Giving Light,” 162f.) catalogues basic corrections, corrections made from additional manuscripts,
restored readings and new errors introduced in Crowley’s three editions.
170
William Turner, “Letter to John Foxe concerning his Book of Martyrs.” Printed but erroneously attributed to
Nicholas Ridley in Henry Christmas, eds., The Works of Nicholas Ridley, D. D. Sometimes Lord Bishop of London,
Martyr 1555, Parker Society 39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1841): 490. The relevant passage reads:
Hoc me valde male habet, quod sanctissimi martyris domini Thorpii liber
non sit ea lingua Anglice conscriptus, qua eo tempore quo ipse vixit tunc
tota Anglia est usa. Nam talis antiquitatis sum admirator, ut aegerrime
feram talis antiquitatis thesaurus nobis perire; quo nominee haud magnam
apud gratiam inierunt qui Petrum Aratorem, Gowerum et Chaucerum, et
similes farinae hominess, in hanc turpitur mixtam linguam, neque vero
Anglicam neque pure Gallicam, transtulerunt.
Turner (1508-1568), called the father of English botany, was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and became a
fellow there. He had the patronage of Thomas, Lord of Wentworth, who was related to Somerset. Possibly under the
influence of Latimer and Ridley (later they were certainly close friends), Turner became an evangelical and was
arrested for his itinerant preaching after 1540 and went into exile, like Bale, until the accession of Edward VI when
he was Somerset’s chaplain and physician, as well as (possibly) an MP. He corresponded with Cecil and probably
had him as a client. Turner was Prebend of Botevant in York Cathedral in 1550; he was then dean of Wells from
1551 until 1553 when he fled to the continent again to stay in Weissenburg for the duration of Mary’s reign. He was
restored to Wells in 1560 and suspended, like Crowley, for nonconformity in 1564. In 1546, the Prayer and
Complaint of the Plowman was among the books banned by name in England (Others?). (See in stow’s
memoranda) All works by Frith, Tyndale, Wycliffe, Joy, Roy, Basile [Becon], Bale, Barnes, Coverdale, Tracy, and
Turner were also banned. See Robert Steele, “Notes on English Books Printed Abroad, 1525-1548,” Transactions of

69
the Bibliographic Society 11 (1911): 189-236. One of Turner’s books was published by Stephen Mierdman…
other printing circle connections… Thomas Lever gave Turner’s funeral sermon.
171
See J. R. Thorne and Marie-Claire Uhart, “Robert Crowley’s Piers Plowman” Medium Ævum 55.2 (1986): 248-
55. The 16th century “modernized” version of Piers is the latest extant manuscript version of the poem, formerly
Sion College MS Arc.L.40 2/E, now Tokyo, Takamiya MS 23. Thorne, Uhart and Hailey favor the later dating of c.
1550. Compared to this “translation,” George Kane’s “The Text,” A Companion to Piers Plowman, ed. John Alford
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 175, regards Crowley’s edition as “respectfully edited […]
impeccable Middle English.” Hudson more circumspectly calls it “a relatively accurate account of Langland’s B
version” in her “Epilogue: The Legacy of Piers Plowman,” A Companion to Piers Plowman, 260. See also Robert L.
Kelly, “Hugh Latimer as Piers Plowman,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 17.1 (1977): 13-26. Kelly
suggests that Latimer’s deliberate archaism in his plain style sermons “was a rhetorical necessity” when addressing
“[t]he Midlands yeomanry, to whom both […] Lollard and anti-Lollard tracts were chiefly addressed,” the former
deliberately affecting Wycliffe’s dialect. In the Midlands, reading was learned via “Rolle’s Psalter and other early
devotional treatises” (15).
172
“Middle English,” Editing Medieval Texts, ed. A. G. Rigg (New York: Garland, 1977): 34-5.
173
These judgments are generally based on the apparent assumption that the former categories—“uncritical” and
“medieval”—designate a substantial lack of concern for non-authorial intervention in a text, while the latter
categories—“critical” and “modern”—indicate a conscious and sincere, if not methodical, quest for historical and
authorial authenticity.
174
King, English Reformation Literature, 322.
175
King, English Reformation Literature, 328.
176
King, English Reformation Literature, 322. Malcolm Godden (The Making of Piers Plowman [London and New
York: Longman, 1990]: 19) repeats this idea, writing that Crowley presented Piers as “Protestant in spirit” and
“help[ed] his argument by censoring the most obviously Catholic elements in the poem.”
177
King, English Reformation Literature, 326.
178
King, English Reformation Literature, 327.
179
King, English Reformation Literature, 328.
180
King, English Reformation Literature, 329.
181
King, English Reformation Literature, 330.
182
King, English Reformation Literature, 331.
183
King, English Reformation Literature, 331.
184
Skeat, 2:lxxvii.
185
Thompsett found new “falsifications” which King has cited while also introducing a few of his own as well as
Skeat’s original list. See King, “Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman.” Some of the erroneous examples in
this article were retained in King’s book, English Reformation Literature, 330-31, and their emphatic presentation
was sufficient to override the otherwise cautionary tone of King’s observations that Crowley had a “reverence for
the fidelity of his text” and a “general policy of making only a few minor alterations” due to his “respect for the
authority of primitive religious documents.” Thorne and Uhart correct the erroneous instances of intentional
falsification cited by King in “Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman,” some of which were retained in his
English Reformation Literature.
186
J. W. Martin mentions the “falsifications” briefly as “emendations” in “Robert Crowley in Two Protestant
Churches,” 153, and Turville-Petre refers to “Robert Crowley’s zealous reshaping of the poem as propaganda for the
Protestant cause” (43). Drawing on Martin and King, in Late Monasticism and the Reformation (London: The
Hambledon Press, 1994), Dickens states that Crowley “also modified points of substance wherever he found
Langland’s religious doctrine wholly unacceptable to Protestant readers” (154). Ordelle Hill and Barbara Johnson
mention the “omission” of lines that in all likelihood did not exist in Crowley’s manuscripts. See Hill, The Manor,
the Plowman and the Shepherd: Agrarian Themes and Imagery in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance English
Literature (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1993): 162 and Johnson, Reading Piers Plowman, 101.
More extreme presentations of a heavy-handed Crowley appear in Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, 36-7 and
especially Godden (The Making of Piers Plowman, 19) and Bowers, “Piers Plowman and the Police: Notes Toward
a History of the Wycliffite Langland,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992): 41. The latter article was partly
corrected in its claims about Crowley’s supposed interpolations and censorship by Bowers’ “Piers Plowman’s
William Langland: Editing the Text, Writing the Author’s Life,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 9 (1995): 65-
102, but Bowers still maintains, untenably, that Crowley engaged in “editorial alterations of the text in places where

70
old Catholic doctrines were most strongly expressed. Such passages could no longer be considered authorial, as
Crowley imaged his Langland, and could therefore be emended as errors.
187
3.31—double benefices, pluralities; 3.162 (bi good reson yat is gret ruth, reherseth men what hem liketh.)
No such line in Cr1. Check K-D.
188
Crowley makes a reference to transubstantiation somewhat ambiguous: “For Goddes body myghte noughte ben
of breed, withouten clergye” (B.12.85) becomes “For bread of gods body might not be without cleargy” (Q1r). This
alteration falls short of effacing the idea of transubstantiation. Nine years later, when he altered and expanded the
Lanquet-Cooper chronicle, Crowley replaced Cooper’s reference to “the sacrament” (4D3v) with “the body and
bloude of Christe” (4D4r); see Crowley, An Epitome of Cronicles (London: William Seres and Thomas Marsh,
1559) (STC 15217.5). Cooper, a considerably more conservative churchman, subsequently revised Crowley’s
revision to read “the lords supper” in his own 1560 revision (STC 15218). Hudson notes that sixteenth-century
protestant editions of medieval texts that included “discussion of the Eucharist did not always provoke alteration”
(“‘No newe thyng,’ 172).
Regarding the mass, although Langland’s text says its power is crippled until pride is purged—“Ne mannes
masse make pees among Cristene peple” (B.13.259)—Crowley removes the reference altogether: “Then may no
man make peace among christen people” (R4v). [Check with K-D; check Brigden on mass-peace; other refs to
mass left in?] Regarding purgatory, “many a prison fram purgatorie thorugh hise preieres he delivereth” (B.15.345)
is rendered by Crowley as “mani prisoners by his praier he pulith from paine” (X2v), yet Crowley lets almost a
dozen other references to purgatory remain in the poem, and Langland himself compares it to a prison (18.391-3), as
Hailey observes (“Giving Light,” 53-4). Similarly, “Christ” (K3v) replaces “Marie” (B.7.197) at one point as “our
meane” to God, and a reference to “painting” the Paternoster substitutes “Pitie” (U4r) for “Aves” (B.15.181), [check
K-D] but this is slight evidence of an “anti-Marian bias,” as King contends (“Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers
Plowman,” 347 and English Reformation Literature, 330) since at least three other significant references to Mary
remain in Crowley’s text (Hailey, “Giving Light,” 54), and Crowley actually added a line to the second and third
editions that clearly refers to Marian intercession (F1r). See Hailey, “Geuyng light,” 501.
Skeat points out all these supposed revisions except the one concerning purgatory. [2:lxxvii; EETS 38
(1869):] (N.B.—the last “falsification” Skeat cites in his parallel text edition should actually read “xiii.259.”) The
latter is King’s finding. See his “Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman,” 348 and English Reformation
Literature, 330-31.
189
Hailey, “Geuying light,” 497.
190
James Carley, “Monastic Collections and Their Dispersal,” in Barnard and McKenzie, 340-41.
191
See Thomas Betteridge, “From Prophetic to Apocalyptic, 225f. and Tudor Histories, 20; Rainer Pineas, “Some
Polemical Techniques in the Non-Dramatic Works of John Bale, Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 24
(1962): 583-88; Benedict Scott Robinson, “John Foxe and the Anglo-Saxons,” in Christopher Highley and John N.
King, eds., John Foxe and His World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002): 54-72; Sarah E. Wall, “Editing Anne Askew’s
Examinations: John Bale, John Foxe, and Early Modern Textual Practices,” in Highley and King, 249-262; Patrick
Collinson, “Truth, Lies, and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century Protestant Historiography,” in Donald R. Kelley and
David Harris Sacks, eds., The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric, and Fiction, 1500-
1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 37-68 and “Truth and Legend: The Veracity of John
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs in Elizabethan Essays; David Daniell, “Tyndale and Foxe,” in Loades, ed., John Foxe: An
Historical Perspective, 15-28; John King, “Fiction and Fact in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,” in Loades, ed. John Foxe
and the English Reformation, 12-35; I. Ross Bartlett, “John Foxe as Hagiographer: The Question Revisited,”
Sixteenth Century Journal 26.4 (1995): 771-789; Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas Freeman, “John Foxe, John Day
and the Printing of the ‘Book of Martyrs,’” in Myers et al.
192
Hudson, “No newe thyng,” 245.
193
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman, 18.
194
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman , 11.
195
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman, 12.
196
“The Printer to the Reader,” *2v.
197
Skeat (1869) xxxi-xxxv and (1886) 2:lxxv-lxxvi claims Crowley used at least 4 manuscripts; Kane and
Donaldson (1975): 6-7; King (article): 346-7 / book– at least 3, probably 4; Alford Comp.?; Brewer at least 4,
possibly 5 mss.; Hailey finds two probables, including one not previously suggested.
198
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman, 12.
199
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman, 12. In her “Epilogue: The Legacy of Piers Plowman,” A Companion to Piers
Plowman, ed. John Alford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 260, Anne Hudson recognizes that

71
“Crowley was not a critical editor in the modern sense,” but neither does she explain in what sense he was any kind
of a “critical editor.” Elsewhere, she briefly suggests that scribes who produced Middle English manuscripts were
their earliest editors (“Middle English,” 34). Hailey makes the same comparison but also calls Crowley “proto-
critical.” Yet despite that attribution, Hailey still regards Crowley’s as a “critical edition” and the product of a
“diligent […] attempt to present a reliable text” (XXX). Eric Dahl, “Diuerse Copies Haue it Diuerselye: An
Unorthodox Survey of Piers Plowman Textual Scholarship from Crowley to Skeat,” Suche Werkis to Werche:
Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor of David C. Fowler, ed. Miceal F. Vaughan (East Lansing: Colleagues, 1993):
XXX, reverses Hudson’s idea of scribes as medieval editors to suggest that Crowley be described as a “modern
scribe.” Nevertheless, Dahl ultimately aims to recuperate Crowley into “the tradition” as a “scholar” and also as a
father with legitimate offspring in the form of his ideas about the poem. Accordingly, Dahl, whose argument is
repeated by Brewer (Editing Piers Plowman, XX), tendentiously claims that Crowley was an early proponent of
the multiple authorship theory simply because Crowley notes that one of his manuscript sources gives part of the
text “the face of a prophecy” but “is lyke to be a thinge added of some other man than the fyrste autour.” Nothing
Crowley writes implies that he considered the “other man” to be another author or even that “the other man” is
responsible for more changes to the text than the one he cites. However, for Dahl, Crowley’s remark is construed as
evidence that Crowley faced a problem that later concerned “[h]is scholarly descendents in our own century.” The
lack of a “consistent method” is what makes Crowley’s edition “unsatisfactory,” in Dahl’s words, but Dahl argues
against dismissing Crowley as a wholly uncritical editor. Instead, for Dahl, Crowley should be seen as a partly
critical editor despite the fact that he “suffered” from, as Skeat wrote, an “inability … to read the text correctly” and
a tendency to alter the text “arbitrarily.”
200
Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman, 19.
201
C. Brewer, 7.
202
Hailey, “Giving Light,” 62; “Geuyng light,” 489; cf. Anne Hudson, Legacy; King; Kelen, 102; Ross, The
Making of the English Literary Canon, 60. As Bale wrote of ancient authors in his Laboryouse Journey,
“undoubtedly, authoryte it woulde adde unto them, to apere ight of all in their owue [sic] simplycyte or native
colours without bewtie of speche. . . . Their ages are as necessary to be knowne as their ight g l, and the tytles
of their bokes so wele as their ight g actes, to them that wyl ight g ly judge things as they are, & not be
deceived by colours” (Cvr-v; ie. C3r-v, H5v).
203
“Giving Light,” 167.
204
“Giving Light,” 72; “Geuyng light,” 501.
205
Hailey, “Giving Light,” 62; “Geuyng light,” 489.
206
See Appendix A; from c. 1547-1551, not counting books of questionable authorship, Crowley’s social and moral
reformist publications number X out of a total of XX.
207
Leslie P. Fairfield, John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press,
1976): 97.
208
Bale’s attrib. pof PP to ‘robert langland’ in his notebook: Bale’s Index Britanniae Scriptorum (STC 1295),
which Bale must have been compiling for many years previously, was printed in its first edition in Wesel in 1548
and was later revised and expanded in Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Britannie […] Catalogus (Basel: Oporinus,
1557 and 1559). See Index Britanniae Scriptorum: John Bale’s Index of British and Other Writers, ed R. Lane Poole
and M. Bateson, reissued with an introduction by C. Brett and J.P. Carley (Oxford, 1902, rpr. 1990), 383, 509-10.
209
In “The Printer to the Reader” (included in all 3 editions) Crowley notes an instance of a non-authorial revision in
one manuscript, and is concerned that it “geueth [the poem] the face of a prophecy” (*2v) (STC 19906).
210
pluralism—one of his pet peeves. Ex… ; Joel Arthur Lipkin, Pluralism in Pre-Reformation England: A
Quantitative Analysis of Ecclesiastical Incumbency, c. 1490-1539, (Catholic University of America, PhD diss.
1979); Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church, 1968;
R. N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989):
Initially, all parishes had been rectories; but following the establishment of new
religious orders in the twelfth century, and the creation of the sinecures of
prebends this situation changed. The system of appropriations --whereby the
benefice's main revenues would be taken by a religious house or sinecurist, a
small portion usually being reserved for a vicar who would assume
responsibility for the spiritual tasks--clearly reduced the status of many
incumbencies. These appropriations continued throughout the fourteenth century
and into the fifteenth, with considerable impact on the ecclesiastical map.
Between 1291 and 1535 the number of appropriated Churches in England and

72
 Wales rose from under 2,000 to over 3,300, their revenues being transferred
mainly to religious houses or (a feature of the fifteenth century) to newly
founded colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. The change in the benefice’s status
affected more than the incumbent’s income: whereas a rector could exploit his
revenues whilst non-resident, vicarages were different. (44)
211
King, English Reformation Literature, 324.
212
*2r (STC 19906)
213
King, English Reformation Literature, 322, 353; see also John N. King, “Traditions of Satire and Complaint,”
370.
214
Printed in two editions: STC 6094 and 60965. Full title: The ight of the laste trumpet, blowen by the seuenth
angel (as is mentioned in the eleuenth of the Apocalips) ight g al estats of men to the ight path of theyr
vocation, wherin are conteyned .xii. lessons to twelue seueral estats of me[n], which if thei learne and folowe, al
shall be wel, and nothing amis.
215
King, English Reformation Literature, 325, 342.
216
King, English Reformation Literature, 325. Similarly, the table of contents in Philargyrie is headed with
Crowley’s versification of Timothy 6.XXX: “The rote of al mischief that ever dyd spring / is careful Couetise, and
gredy Gathering” (XXX).
217
The 1548? Edition was printed by Richard Jugge (STC 1297). Two editions were printed in 1550, one by Day
and Seres (STC 1298), one by John Wyer (STC 1299).
218
Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530-1645 (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979): 43; Andrew Penny, “John Foxe, the Acts and Monuments and the Development of
Prophetic Interpretation,” 252-77 in John Foxe and the English Reformation.
219
King, English Reformation Literature, 334-35.
220
See note 17 above.
221
*2v (STC 19906) –in some copies, ♣2v
222
D4v (STC ) see also D4r and Crowley’s preface. Other refs to prophecy?
223
Other glosses and sum on gathering/not prophecy
224
King, English Reformation Literature, 335-37.
225
King, English Reformation Literature, 337. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 408.
226
Sharon L. Jansen discusses and provides a transcript of the fragments in “Politics, Protest, and a New Piers
Plowman Fragment: The Voice of the Past in Tudor England,” Review of English Studies n.s. 40.157 (1989): 93-99.
227
STC
228
Silverstone, “The Vision of Pierce Plowman,” Notes and Queries 2nd series 6.142 (1858): 229-30.
229
BL C. 122 d.9. See Johnson, Reading Piers Plowman, 150.
230
This is in keeping with John F. Wilson’s argument in Pulpit in Parliament: Puritanism during the English Civil
War 1640-1648 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969): 198 that “In its classical usage ‘prophecy’ did not
primarily signify ‘prediction’ but rather the delivery of a ‘word’ from the Lord. The ‘word’ was usually one
embodying both judgement and mercy.”
231
A1v (STC 6095)
232
A2r (STC 6089)
233
A2r (STC 6089)
234
t.p. (STC 6089)
235
Betteridge contends in “From Prophetic to Apocalyptic: John Foxe and the Writing of History,” in David Loades,
ed., John Foxe and the English Reformation, 210-32 and Tudor Histories, 207f. that Foxe’s 1563 Actes and
Monuments is prophetic, patterned on chronicle compilations, and assured of continuity with the past and the
certainty of the future, whereas the 1570 edition is an apocalyptic narrative history belying a sense of discontinuity
with the past and uncertainty toward the future. See also Glyn Parry, “Elect Church or Elect Nation? The Reception
of the Acts and Monuments,” 167-81 in John Foxe: An Historical Perspective. This is not to say, however, that Foxe
and the others ever thought it was fruitless to attempt to discern the hand of Providence in history or to calculate the
end of the world. This was a pursuit Foxe engaged in to the end of his life. See David J. Keep, “John Foxe’s Last
Word,” 94-104 in John Foxe: An Historical Perspective and Andrew Penny, “John Foxe, the Acts and Monuments
and the Development of Prophetic Interpretation,” 252-77 in John Foxe and the English Reformation.
236
N2r (STC 19906)
237
N2v (STC 19906); B.10.325-6.
238
N2r-v (STC 19907a, 19907); the gloss refers to B.10.332-4.

73
239
*4r (STC 19907a, 19907). Barbara Johnson notes that the reader who glossed the ubi Rex passage as a prophecy
past also glossed Conscience’s speech about Reason reigning and making the law a laborer with “This is to come”
(D4v; Reading Piers Plowman, 152).
240
In An Informacion and Peticion… (xxx) Crowley had warned “possessioners” that:
unless they repente the oppression wherewith they vexe the pore comons
and shew themselves thorough love to be brothers of one father & members
of one body with them: they shal not at the lasted aye enherite with them
the kingdom of Christ. (p. 159 in Works)
241
A7r (STC 6089)
242
A7rf. (STC 6089)
243
Crowley against private men; Bradford in prison under Mary: “O this is a sin, dear Father, that I always
have been a private man more than a commonwealth man; always I seek for mine own commodity,
contemning that which maketh to the commodity of others.”
244
F5r-v (STC 6089)
245
F6v (STC 6089)
246
At this point the poem instructs “prelates and priestes” to:
[…] preach to the people, preue on your selfe
And do it in dede [….]
Lest the king and his councel, your commens apere
And be stuardes of your steeds, tyl ye be ruled better (B.5.41-4, 46-7; F1r STC
19906)
247
F1r; also in the sum, *4v (STC 19907a, 19907); cf. N2r.
248
A2r-v (STC philarg)
249
G2vf. (STC 6089)
250
G4v (STC 6089)
251
Pyers Plowmans Exhortation unto the Lordes, Knightes, and Burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse (London:
Anthony Sk/coloker, c. 1550) (STC 19905) (Sk/coloker, a protestant, was in partnership with Seres and Day at
the time—check; was as of 1548—evenden odnb.; had denam and n hill as assigns—rc connections)
Attributed to Crowley by Barbara Johnson and John King; Parker also finds this view plausible. (cite his ed.)
Apparently unable to rest on his old reputation, in the Exhortation Piers feels compelled to assert
continually that he is one of the poor and oppressed, rude in speech and “ignoraunt of the arte of
rethorycke.” He has “not conningly set furth this matter but onely layde before you the naked truth” (B2).
However, this supposedly unlearned Piers happens to be well-versed in Aristotle's Politics. The Exhortation
opposes enclosure and the aristocracy’s misuse of confiscated monastic property. Other problems stemming
from the dispossession of the monastic houses are also decried, an ironic development in the Piers tradition
since Piers was noted for prophesying the dissolution of the abbeys, and The Plowman’s Tale called for the
secular powers to humble—and so reform—the church. John King notes that the Exhortation does express
views congruent with the reformist social ideals of Crowley and Crowley. The author is critical of not only the
rich elites but the “fatte merchauntes” who collaborate with them. His appeal to parliament calls for true
reformation which is not content to replace the greedy worldliness of the Roman Church with a greedy,
worldly English church. In this view, the ill-gotten gains of the clergy is transferred to aristocrats and
merchants. The Exhortation explains that the increase in the price of land has been caused by an increased
demand for it is caused by the upsurge in available land due to the suppression of the monasteries. The
diminution of wages for farm laborers is attributed to the increase in the supply of labor and the decrease in
demand for it (Avv-Avr). In a common argument about unemployment or “idleness” (latimer, becon?), the
growth of individual estates due to the redistribution of the monastic lands is blamed for causing the
conversion of these lands from farmland to pasture for sheep and other livestock--operations that require far
fewer workers than farming, thus displacing workers, increasing unemployment, and driving down wages
(Aviv).
252
STC pleas and pain—cited above
253
Ex qts from RC, essays in Material London, Grafton, Slack, Hoskins, Palliser, essays in Collinson and
Craig.
254
Brett Usher, “Foxe in London, 1550-87,” in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments [...], The Variorum Edition,
[online] (hriOnline, Sheffield 2004), Available at: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/foxe/, Accessed: 12.18.2003, n.p.

74
Exception in Crowley’s late guild hall sermon? Why does social gospel drop out of crowley’s later
publications? See peel, etc.
255
Brett Usher, “Foxe in London, 1550-87,” n.p. See also Usher’s “Backing Protestantism: The London Godly, the
Exchequer and the Foxe Circle,” in David Loades, ed., John Foxe: An Historical Perspective.
256
Same as Turner as the “rural clergyman” or not? Turner in the Crowley circle? Same letter in which he
criticizes modernization of old texts? Evenden diss., 204; David Scott Kastan, “Little Foxes,” in Highley and
King, 120; C. L. Oastler, John Day: The Elizabethan Printer (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1975):
27; Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas Freeman, “John Foxe, John Day and the Printing of the ‘Book of
Martyrs,’” in Myers et al.
257
Damian Nussbaum, “Whitgift’s ‘Book of Martyrs’: Archbishop Whitgift, Timothy Bright and the Elizabethan
Struggle over John Foxe’s Legacy,” in Loades, ed., John Foxe: An Historical Perspective, 135; see Evenden
258
a3v (STC 17300); qtd. in Pamela Neville-Sington, “Press, Politics and Religion,” The Cambridge History of
the Book in Britain, vol. 3, p. 600.
259
See Evenden diss.; “The Michael Wood Mystery: William Cecil and the Lincolnshire Printing of John Day”:
wm cecil and the Lincolnshire printing of john day.
260
A&M 4th ed under 1540 entry; other eds?
261
Day epitaph
262
Ian Gadd article in Lives in Print--in advance of ODNB entry on J. Wolfe.
263
ODNB Elizabeth Evenden’s entry for William Seres (MS. Lans. 48/80, fol. 184r).
264
Blayney, “John Day and the Bookshop That Never Was.”
265
City Records, Jor. 14 fo. 129.
266
London Encyclopedia, 228-9, 155, 694.
267
Sermon details—at the cross?
268
Protestant turncoat—Crowley, bale and foxe on shaxton
269
Kingdon 1901, p. 7; Henry 8 .14.1: 402 No. 867—lack of successes in appeals
270
Grafton bible project; grey friars chronicle.
271
(1545—45/6 grafton became kings printer)
272
Grafton was the principal figure in the establishment of the hospitals. Kingdon (1901) writes that Grafton was
coadjutor with Ridley and possibly the inspired him to help establish the royal hospitals of Christ’s, St. Thomas, and
Bartholomews under Edward VI—a time when, according to Kingdon, 110 hospitals were suppressed. Grafton
then labored to protect the hospitals from being repossessed by the church during Mary’s reign. Christ’s hospital
owed Grafton almost ₤1,000 when he was its treasurer, and there is no record of it ever being paid. Grafton
seems to have assumed personal responsibility for the hospital’s debts, and this no doubt contributed to his
financial problems when his wife died and her estate was kept out of his hands. When his accounts with the
Grocer’s Company were investigated, he was found to owe the company ₤40, and his house had to be sold to
cover some of this debt. See Kingdon; ODNB; Brigden, London and the Reformation 458.
273
W. R. Matthews and W. M. Atkins, eds., A History of St. Paul’s Cathedral (London: Phoenix House, 1957): 110;
see also 75-77, 122f. on the chantries before and at the time of their suppression. See also Sparrow Simpson, St.
Paul’s and Old City Life.
274
See Peter M. W. Blayney, “William Cecil and the Stationers’ Company;” The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross
Churchyard, Occasional Papers of the Bibliographic Society 5 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990): 3, 4,
68; Ann Saunders, “The Stationers’ Hall,” in Myers and Harris, 1-10; Evenden
275
see note x above; shift some of big early notes down here; mentioned earlier—seres briefly in partnership
with Day, Seres was, on occasion, Crowley’s printer, business associate, and perhaps had Crowley as an
apprentice. Evenden for ODNB: “Amongst some of Seres’ most important publications were Sir John
Cheke’s ‘Hurt of Sedition’ (1549 and 1569) and Sir Geoffrey Fenton’s ‘Monophylo’ (1572). In 1548 Luke
Shepherd’s poem ‘John Bon and Mast Person’ (for which his co-printer John Day, if not Seres himself,
appears to have been threatened with imprisonment) was said to have offended the catholic Aldermen of the
city of London (Underhill Autobiography, cited in Tudor Tracts (1532 – 1588), ed. A. P. Pollard, p. 195).
Seres collaborated with Day on many works, including Tyndale’s New Testament, dated 27 October 1548 and
on Becke’s Byble the following year (17 August 1549).”
276
Wolfe bio info., ODNB; slight Crowley connections--See note 3 above; shared type, etc.; spec.? Pierce the
Ploughmans Crede was first printed by Wolfe in 1553 (STC 19904). Robert’s Stoughton’s 1548 volume (STC
20842) was actually printed for him by Wolfe; Stoughton’s two 1551 books were printed for him by Crowley

75
(STC 21690.2, 25852). Stoughton and his brother were left bequests by William and Anne Hill, who both
requested funeral sermons from Crowley in their wills.
277
A History of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 77.
278
Blayney, The Bookshops, 19.
279
A newly built “Chapel upon the Charnell in St. Paul’s Churchyard” is mentioned in the will of Roger
Beyvin, c. 1277-8 (Ct. H.W I. 29). [Cal. Hust. Wills. Calendar of Wills in the Court of Husting, London, ed.
Dr. R.R. Sharpe. 2 vols.] and referred to as “The poor chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary over the charnel
house [super ossamenta mortuorum] in St. Paul’s Churchyard in 8 H. VI. (Cal. L. Bk. K. 115). [Calendars of
the Letter Books of the City of London, ed. by Dr. R.R. Sharpe for the Corporation of the City of London.
(Numbered A-L.)] The chapel was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary (H. MSS. Com. 9th Rep. 33)
[Historical Manuscripts Commission. Reports and Appendices. (In progress.) Cited by the number of the
Report.] and was again described as “standing in the churchyarde at Powlys, over the Charnell house” by
Fabyan in 1516 (Fabyan's Chr. p. 297.) [Chronicles of England by William Malmsbury, Matthew Paris,
Florence of Worcester, Grafton, Fabyan, Holinshed, etc. (Various editions.)] Strype calls it the “chapel of All
Souls over the charnel house,” Rich. II. (ed. 1720, 1. III. 148). [Strype, eds. 1720, 1755. Survey of London by
Johyn Sotw, ed. by Strype, 1720 and 1755. 2 vols.]
The building has been referred to as both the “charnel house” and “charnel chantry,” which has caused
some confusion. John Schofield clarifies that these were contiguous sites in a single structure: the charnel or crypt
being below the chapel, which was referred to as the “chapel of the bones of the dead” in 1418. Stow records that it
was “a large charnel house for the bones of the dead, and over it a chapel of an old foundation” (Survay, X). The
chapel had a chantry added within it when it was rebuilt c. 1275. (John Schofield, Letter/email to Daniel Knauss. 21
January 2004) Agrees with Blayney but off on date and dimensions. From forthcoming (check late April) entry
in History of St. Paul's, Derek Keene, ed., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004): xx. G. H. Cook’s remarks
about the charnel chantry are complete and correct in Old St. Paul’s Cathedral: A Lost Glory of Mediaeval
London (London: Phoenix House, 1955): 54, 64, 67. However, the blame Cook places on Somerset for razing the
building is probably incorrect (77). See note X below.
280
PRO, E 318/29/1663, m. 7.
281
PRO, C 66/811, m.37; Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI 1.394-6.
282
Blayney has corrected his statement in The Bookshops (5) that Somerset demolished the charnel chapel. The
earliest source for this idea is Dugdale, who probably “conflated Somerset’s demolition of the Becket and
Sherington chapels […] with Stow’s unadorned statement that the [charnel] chapel ‘was pulled downe, in the
yeare 1549’” (Letter to Daniel Knauss. 16 January 2004; refs to Stow, Survay, 328, 330). Apparent example of
this mis/reading in Sparrow Simpson’s History of Old St. Paul’s, 67—no citation but evidently from stow &/or
dugdale; dugd cited on 66. Look for refs for story blaming somerset in John Timbs, Abbeys, Castles and
Ancient Halls of England and Wales (1870). Is there a documentary source for somerset razing the charnel
chapel? ODD that Dugdale would say the usable stone was taken for Somerset House, since Stow says nothing
of this, unless Dugdale is conflating the other refs to such de/construction from distant parts of the Survay.
??? W. R. Lethaby cites a British Museum MS account [stow?] (5809 f. 98) of “the destruction of the chapel
over the charnel by the Duke of Somerset” in “Old St. Paul’s—VII” The Builder (10 October 1930): 614—
mention to blayney. The whole suspect account is that the charnel chapel stone was used for SomHs along
with material from the Priory Church of St. John Clerkenwell. Sm Hs. was being built on the site of the razed
inns of the bishops of Chester and Worcester, Strand Inn, and inn of chancery, the Church of the Nativity of
Our Lady and the Innocents. See Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, eds., The London Encyclopedia
(Bethesda: Addler and Addler, 1986): 795. Ironically, Somerset House’s opulent construction was later cited by
Somerset’s enemies as part of the case against him—see Loach; unpatriotic, impious?
283
Stow, A Survay of London, S6v-7r (Kingsford 1.329-30). On the Dance of Death and Pardon Churchyard, see
W. R. Lethaby, “Old St. Paul’s—VI” The Builder (5 September 1930): 394-5.
284
Stow, Survay, S6v-7r (Kingsford 1.329-30). In the original foundation, the mayor and citizens also agreed
to make or cause to be made all manner of drops of water of the said shopes to
be tourned away towards the kinges hieway, least any do distille into the
churche yearde or upon the walls […] and we shall not permite butchers,
poticares, gould-smiths, cookes or common women to dwell in the shopps by
whose noyse or tumulte or dishonestie the quietness of the ministers of the
church may be troubled; nor shall suffer those which dwell in the said shopps to

76
 burne any seacoles in the same, or such other thinges which doe stinke. (Cal. S.
Paul’s, Hist. MSS. Com.; qtd in Cook, Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, 65)
See Vanessa Harding, The Dead and the Living and Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead.
285
Stow, Survay, S6v-7r (Kingsford 1.329-30)
286
Stow, Survay, S6v-7r (Kingsford 1.329-30) Earlier in the Survay, Stow had identified “who paid for the
carriage of those bones from the charnel to the Moorfields” is identified earlier in the Survay when Stow
discusses a monstrous “shank-bone of a man” hanging in the cloister of St. Mary Aldermanbury which “is
said to be found amongst the bones of men removed from the charnel-house of Paul’s, or rather from the
cloister of Paul’s Church.” Stow doubts the stories because Wolfe, now dead, never told it to him and
probably would have kept such a bone for himself, “being the greatest preserver of antiquities in those parts
for his time.” [-check different editions-]
287
Blayney, The Bookshops, 19.
288
Need to check his Elizabethan pubs; guildhall sermon…
289
A7v-A8r (STC 6088, 6088.3, 6088.7)
290
L2r/42r (STC 6084)
291
L3r/43r (STC 6084)
292
See M. J. Power, “John Stow and His London,” Journal of Historical Geography 11.1 (1985): 15.
293
Patrick Collinson, “John Stow and Nostalgic Antiquarianism,” 37; Ian Archer, “The Nostalgia of John Stow,” 27.
294
Slack, Poverty and Policy, 120-21; Brigden, “Religion and Social Obligation,” 107f.; London and the Ref;
others?
295
William Wager also on commission; Crowley named, mentioned? in Wager’s play, Enough Is as Good as a
Feast, 361. (Interesting title!) Cal. Patent Rolls, 1572-75 (1973): 161, 566. Their role was to summon the
prisoners and their creditors, and decide if they could be freed on bond, since many prisoners said they would
gladly compound with their creditors to get out of prison. Crowley signed bond to administer a poor orphan’s
estate, 19. Dec. 1587. (Journal 22, f. 146v.) Signs as Robert Crowley, stationer with John Crowley, merchant
tailor. (Son?)
296
See the ODNB.
297
A Transcript of the Stationer’s Company 2.770.
298
His books and other literary items were to go to the deanery of St. Paul’s, if his successor at St. Giles (Lancelot
Andrewes) did not purchase them within forty days. PRO, PROB 11/72, sig. 50.
299
Repertory 22, f. 17.
300
Somerset House Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, Rutland, fol. 50.
301
King, English Reformation Literature, 322.
302
Prologue B.17-19.
303
Crowley presents the Aristotelian view where each class of person properly follows its own entelechy in A new
yeres gyfte, wherein is taught the knowledge of our selfe and the feare of God (1549) (STC6087):
In fine, all estates, what so ever they be,
That do know them selfe, & thinke on their end,
Wyll seke to walke right in their owne degree
And all their enormities for to emende. (7)
304
Langland scholarship on this? Commenting on the inevitable failure of “political theology in orthodox
Christianity” where sacred and secular institutions are coextensive, Eric Voegelin remarks:
The spiritual destiny of man in the Christian sense cannot be represented on
earth by the power organization of a political society; it can be represented only
by the church. The sphere of power is radically de-divinized; it has become
temporal. The double representation of man in society through church and
empire lasted through the Middle Ages. The specifically modern problems of
representation are connected with the re-divinization of society. (The New
Science of Politics, 106)
On the corpus mysticum in relation to the English notion of the commonwealth, see Voegelin’s discussion of Sir
John Fortescue in The New Science of Politics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1952): 41f.,
which is elaborated in terms of “The English National Polity” in chapter 19 of History of Political Ideas, vol. 5, The
Later Middle Ages, in The Collected Works, 21.127f.:
[Fortescue] transferred the Christian symbol of the corpus mysticum to the
realm. This was a momentous step in his analysis, of interest in more than one

77
 respect. In the first place, the fact that it could be taken at all was symptomatic,
correspondingly, of the increasing consolidation of the national realms, of their
closure as self-centered societies. The step indicated, second, that the realms had
acquired a peculiar ultimacy of meaning. In the transfer of the corpus mysticum
to the realm we can sense the evolution toward a type of political society that
will succeed not only the empire but the church. (New Science, 43)
Fortescue anticipates the problems of the Reformation (see Voegelin, Collected Works, 23.74f.), for while he
“accepted the order of estates in the Christianitas” and “was far from conceiving the idea of a sovereign closed
state,” he “intruded the new corpus mysticum into the mystical body of Christ by attributing a double function to the
royal representative. . . . Fortescue quotes St. Thomas: ‘The king is given for the realm, and not the realm for the
king’; and then he goes on to conclude: the king is in his realm what the pope is in the church, a servus servorum
Dei; and as a consequence, ‘all that the king does ought to be referred to his kingdom’—the most concentrated
formulation of the problem of [political] representation” (New Science, 44-5). Cf. Stephen Greenblatt’s discussion of
More and his understanding of the consensus fidelium in relation to the threat of protestantism in Renaissance Self-
Fashioning (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980): 60f.
305
Bouwsma, “Changing Assumptions in Later Renaissance Culture,” Viator 7 (1976): 421-440, rpt. in Bouwsma, A
Usable Past, 92. Obermann, kristeller, trinkaus
306
Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1988): 44, 52-3.
307
B.15.212.
308
Elizabeth D. Kirk, “Langland’s Plowman and the Recreation of Fourteenth-Century Religious Metaphor,” The
Yearbook of Langland Studies 2 (1988): 1-2.
309
Kirk, “Langland’s Plowman,” 2; cf. Voegelin, Collected Works, 21.175-84.
310
David Walsh, “Editor’s Introduction,” The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, 21.15.
311
Christina von Nolcken, “Piers Plowman, the Wycliffites, and Pierce the Plowman’s Creed,” The Yearbook of
Langland Studies 2 (1988): 97.
312
On Langland’s revisions
313
EV on “absorptiveness.”
314
Betteridge, Tudor Histories, 1-2. See also Boyd Berry, On the Language of the ‘Commonwealth of the
Plowman.’”
315
D. R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990): xiii.
316
Woolf, The Idea of History, xiv.
317
Woolf, The Idea of History, xiv.
318
Woolf, The Idea of History, xiv.
319
Cf. Woolf, The Idea of History, xiv.

78