Making Haste from Babylon

by Nick Bunker

  23. Thomas Digges, A Briefe Report of the Militarie Services Done in the Low Countries by the Erle of Leicester (London, 1587), p. 6.

  24. Harleian MS 285, nos. 99, 102, and 126, BL.

  25. Jermyn to Davison, Aug. 25, 1585, Tanner MSS, vol. 78, fol. 73, Bodleian.

  26. Briefing paper possibly by Davison: “Reasons to Move Her Majestie to Aid the Lowe Countries” (1585?), Harleian MS 285, no. 48, BL. Sidney’s church: HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley Papers (London, 1936), vol. 3, pp. 372–74.

  27. J. D. Bangs, “The Pilgrims and Other English in Leiden Records: Some New Pilgrim Documents,” NEHGR, pp. 200–201.

  28. Jan van Dorsten et al., Sir Philip Sidney: 1586 and the Creation of a Legend (Leiden, 1986), p. 29.

  29. Digges, Briefe Report, p. 23.

  30. Original documents transcribed in Edward Arber, ed., The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1897), pp. 79–86.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ENTRAILS OF THE KING

  1. James VI of Scotland and I of England, Basilikon Doron (1603 ed.), in The Basilicon Doron of King James VI, ed. James Craigie (Edinburgh, 1944), p. 21.

  2. James I’s autopsy: Two accounts, in the manuscript memoirs of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (Harleian MS 646, fol. 77, BL) and in John Nichols, The Progresses of King James I (London, 1828), vol. 4, p. 1037. James’s health and final illness: Frederick Holmes, The Sickly Stuarts: The Medical Downfall of a Dynasty (London, 2005), pp. 49–82. Case notes: Latin text of Mayerne’s manuscript notes of 1623, in Norman Moore, The History of the Study of Medicine in the British Isles (Oxford, 1908), pp. 162–76.

  3. Speech of March 21, 1610, in King James VI and I: Selected Writings, ed. Neil Rhodes et al. (Aldershot, UK, 2003), p. 330.

  4. James I, A Meditation Upon the Lord’s Prayer (London, 1619), pp. 14–15; and Craigie, Basilicon Doron, pp. 15–17 and 77–82.

  5. Speech of May 1607, Journal of the House of Commons (1802), pp. 366–68. Jacobean kingship and the language of health and disease: Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1993), pp. 208–15.

  6. Richard Bancroft, Daungerous Positions and Proceedings (London, 1593), pp. 120–38.

  7. Christopher Haigh, “The Taming of Reformation: Preachers, Pastors, and Parishioners in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England,” History 85, no. 820 (Oct. 2000).

  8. Ann Uhry Abrams, The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origin (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 276–79.

  9. William Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference (London, 1604), p. 83.

  10. Canons of 1604: Archbishop’s Commission on Canon Law, The Canon Law of the Church of England (London, 1947), pp. 71–78. Text and commentary: Gerald Bray, The Anglican Canons, 1529–1947 (Woodbridge, UK, 1998), esp. pp. liv–lxi, 276–81, and 408–16 (duties of churchwardens).

  11. M. S. Guiseppi, ed., HMC Salisbury (Cecil) Manuscripts (London, 1938), vol. 17, pp. 5–6, 39, 46, 66, 73, 83, 92, 104–6.

  12. G. W. Marshall, ed., The Registers of Worksop, Co. Nottingham, 1558–1771 (Guildford, UK, 1894), pp. 109–22.

  13. G. P. V. Akrigg, ed., Letters of King James VI and I (Berkeley, CA, 1984), p. 3.

  14. London College of Physicians, Pharmacopoia Londinensis (London, 1618).

  15. Joseph Quercetanus (alias Du Chesne), The Practise of Chymicall, and Hermeticall Physicke, for the Preservation of Health, trans. Thomas Timme (London, 1605), chiefly pt. 1, chap. 15, from which my quotations come. Chemical medicine: Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (London, 1965), pp. 21–39 and 57–89; and Hugh Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne (New Haven, CT, 2006).

  16. Jacob Soll, “Healing the Body Politic: French Royal Doctors, History, and the Birth of a Nation, 1560–1634,” Renaissance Quarterly 55, no. 4 (Winter 2000), pp. 1267–81.

  17. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1624), p. 525.

  18. Quoted in Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London, 1977), p. 144, and chap. 9. Jacobean government: Diana Newton, The Making of the Jacobean Regime (Woodbridge, UK, 2005), pp. 98–118.

  19. Gypsies: David Masson, ed., The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1877–98), vol. 7, p. 713, and vol. 8, p. 305. The Graemes: C. W. Russell and J. P. Prendergast, Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1608–1610 (London, 1874), pp. xcv–ciii. Exiled ministers: Bannatyne Club, Original Letters Relating to the Ecclesiastical Affairs of Scotland, vol. 1, 1603–1614 (Edinburgh, 1851), pp. xxii–xxvi and 28–31; and David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1842–49), vol. 6, pp. 590–91.

  20. Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician, pp. 171–73; and Thomas Russel, Diacatholicon Aureum (London, 1602).

  CHAPTER EIGHT: DISOBEDIENCE AND CONTEMPT

  1. The chapel and the mansion at Haughton belonged to the Holles family, whose most famous Jacobean member was Sir John Holles, first Earl of Clare (ODNB). His family and the Helwyses: A. C. Wood, ed. Memorials of the Holles Family (London, 1937), p. 45; and Elwes of Roxby, in Burke’s Landed Gentry, 18th ed. Wills: William Elwes (1557) and Edmund Hellwis (1590), York Wills, BI (York); and will of Jeffrey Ellwes (1616), PROB 11/127, NAK. In 1568, Edmund Helwys became the Crown’s escheator (or collector of feudal dues owed to the queen) for the counties of Northamptonshire and Rutland: E 112/32/50, NAK. Anti-Catholic tract: Edward Hellwis, A Marvell Deciphered (London, 1589). The names Edward and Edmund were sometimes used interchangeably.

  2. Quoted in Walter H. Burgess, John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1920), p. 82.

  3. Brewster at Scrooby: Ronald A. Marchant, The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, 1500–1642 (London, 1960), pp. 142–46. Thomas Helwys: Beresford et al. v. Helwys (1594), C2/Eliz/B16/48, NAK; Green v. Elwayes (defamation), n.d, but c. 1590, AN/LB 245/2/23, and presentment bill, Bilborough (1598), AN/PB 292/6/12, Archdeaconry Records, U Nott. Assault: Sessions at Nottingham, Jan. 9 and April 16, 1604, C/QSM 1/66 1–2, NAN.

  4. Sir Gervase Helwys: MON 1/15/13, July 13, 1609, LAO; ODNB; Lists of Sheriffs for England and Wales from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1831 (London, 1898), p. 80, NAK; and the family monument in Saundby Church, Nottinghamshire. Sir Richard Williamson and Nick Fuller: Will of John Williamson (1575), PROB/11/58, NAK; personal communications from Theresa Tom, archivist of Gray’s Inn, London, Aug. 2006; and Wilfrid R. Prest, The Rise of the Barristers: A Social History of the English Bar, 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1986), p. 404. In 1609, Williamson’s daughter married one of the Culverwells, the Puritan family in question: Canon A. R. Maddison, ed., Lincolnshire Pedigrees (London, 1902), vol. 1, p. 285, and vol. 3, pp. 1085–87.

  5. Mark Girouard, Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (London, 1983), pp. 110–15.

  6. Wood, Memorials, pp. 90–92.

  7. Property inventory: Postmortem inquisition of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, Dec. 1609, C 142/312, NAK. Talbot at Bawtry: LR 2/229, fols. 172–85, NAK.

  8. For the Talbot/Bowes correspondence of Dec. 1603–Jan. 1604, see Talbot Papers, vol. K, fols. 89 and 173, and vol. M, fol. 166, LPL.

  9. Normanby: Girouard, Robert Smythson, pp. 141–42. Lord Sheffield: Sheffield Papers, esp. B/1, June 16, 1591, LAO; and ODNB.

  10. M. S. Guiseppi, ed., HMC Salisbury (Cecil) Manuscripts (London, 1938), vol. 17, pp. 35, 65, 78–79, and 108–9.

  11. J. Raine, ed., The Correspondence of Dr. Matthew Hutton, Archbishop of York (London, 1843), pp. 171–75 and 247–48; and Diana Newton, The Making of the Jacobean Regime (Woodbridge, UK, 2005), pp. 84–95.

  12. Chancery act book, AB 14/1599–1605, fols. 371–78, BI (York); and Marchant, Puritans and Church Courts, pp. 296–312.

  13. Stephen Wright, The Early English Baptists, 1603–1649 (Woodbridge, UK, 2006), pp. 13–44.

  14. Account books, 1580–1609 and 1585–1604, archives of Christ’s College; college register, 1590–1698, and college order book, 1569–1626, Munimen
t Room of Corpus Christi College.

  15. Dynnys and Gosse v. Hollingworth et al. (1604), STAC 8/121/12, NAK; City of Lincoln Common Council book, 1599–1638, entries for 1600–1603 and then (Beck’s drunkenness) fols. 61–62, Li/1/1/4, LAO; List and Index Society, Heard Before the King: Registers of Petitions to James I, 1603–1616 (Kew, UK, 2006), p. 19, July 18, 1603.

  16. Norwich: Sir John Harington, A Supplie or Addicion to the Catalogue of Bishops to the Yeare 1608, ed. R. H. Miller (Potomac, MD, 1979), pp. 127–28. St. Andrew’s, Norwich: Thomas Newhouse, Certaine Sermons (London, 1614), “Epistle Dedicatory.” Newhouse was the parish minister at St. Andrew’s from 1602 to 1611, and previously a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, next above John Smyth.

  17. Registry guard book, UA CUR 4/2, Cambridge University Archives.

  18. Ursinus: Zacharias Ursinus, The Summe of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Parry (London, 1595), pp. 265–70 and 765–67. Robinson’s essay on faith: John Robinson, New Essayes or Observations Divine and Morall (Amsterdam, 1628), pp. 73–83. Robinson’s wit: William Hubbard, A General History of New England from the Discovery to 1680 (Boston, 1848), pp. 42–43. Hubbard began writing it in 1682.

  19. John Smyth, A Patterne of True Prayer (1605), in The Works of John Smyth, ed. W. T. Whitley (Cambridge, UK, 1915), vol. 1, pp. 80–82.

  20. Bishop Chaderton’s correspondence, B/2/19–20, LAO; and Lincoln Episcopal court book (1605–7), Cj 16, fols. 32 and 97, LAO.

  21. Talbot Papers, MS 709, LPL; and Walter Burgess, John Smyth the Se-Baptist, Thomas Helwys, and the First Baptist Church in England (London, 1911), pp. 170–71.

  22. Incidents in 1607: Retford: Marchant, Puritans and Church Courts, p. 157; Gainsborough: Lincoln Episcopal visitation journals, Vj 19, fols. 52–53, Aug. 6, 1607, LAO; Torksey: C. W. Foster, The State of the Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (Lincoln, UK, 1926), vol. 1, pp. lxxvii—lxxviii. The clergyman who gave the “Sodomites” sermon was a protégé of Sir Richard Williamson, who appointed him vicar of Scawby in Lincolnshire. Also, concerning Gainsborough: Jenny Vernon’s essay in Gainsborough Old Hall, ed. Phillip Lindley (Lincoln, UK, 1991), pp. 27–30.

  23. Worksop priory churchwardens’ accounts, file PR 22765, NAN.

  24. The Drews of Everton: Robert Thoroton, The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (1790–96; fac. ed., Wakefield, UK, 1972), vol. 3, p. 322; presentment bill, Everton (1607), AN/PB/2/227 and AN/PB/294/2/62, archdeaconry records, U Nott; wills of Richard Drew of Harwell Hall (1617) and Robert Drew of Scaftworth (1619), archdeaconry wills, East Retford, NAN; Everton Parish register, microfilm, NAN; and Hodgkinson Transcripts, vol. 2, fol. 306, Oct. 10, 1609, NAN.

  25. Many cases relating to Gainsborough survive, but especially relevant are Hickman v. Williamson, Noble, and Aston et al. (1610), STAC 8/167/13, and Williamson v. Hickman (1610), STAC 8/293/20, NAK.

  26. Toby Matthew: Harington, Supplie or Addicion to the Catalogue of Bishops, pp. 176–77. Sermons and the archbishop’s itinerary: The Diary and Journal of His Grace Toby Matthew, Lord Archbishop of York, MS Add. 18, York Minster Archives.

  27. For example, High Commission act book, HC AB 15, fols. 42–53, June 2, 1607, BI (York).

  28. H. M. Dexter and Morton Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims (Boston, 1906), pp. 53–54 and 85–87.

  29. HC AB 15, fols. 116 and 145, BI (York).

  30. HC AB 15, fols. 103–4, BI (York).

  31. Maddison, Lincolnshire Pedigrees (London, 1903), vol. 2, pp. 711–12; K. D. Train, Lists of the Clergy of North Nottinghamshire (Nottingham, UK, 1960), pp. 82 and 146; and Marchant, Puritans and Church Courts, p. 312.

  32. Nicholas Fuller, The Argument of Nicholas Fuller… That the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Have No Power, by Vertue of Their Commission, to Imprison etc. (Amsterdam?, 1607); Philip Tyler, “The Significance of the Ecclesiastical Commission at York,” Northern History 2 (1967), pp. 32–34; and ODNB.

  33. HC AB 15, fol. 117, BI (York).

  34. For the fines of twenty pounds on Catholics and on Brewster, see HC AB 15, fol. 60 (June 29, 1607) and fol. 116 (Dec. 1), BI (York).

  35. An Act to Retain the Queen’s Subjects in Obedience, in Select Statutes and Other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, ed G. W. Prothero (Oxford, 1913), pp. 89–92.

  36. SPS 460/1/15, LAO. The document was presumably a criminal indictment drawn up for the JPs at Boston, or for the assize judges at Lincoln. It survives as a stray paper among items relating to the Spalding Court of Sewers, which supervised drainage in the Lincolnshire Fens. It appears to be dated November 1609 on the reverse, but it may have been reused, or the paper may be a page torn from a book. By November 1608, Helwys was definitely in Amsterdam. Elizabethan statutes: Note 35 above, and Prothero, Select Statutes, pp. 74–76. Will of Leonard Beetson of Boston, signed Dec. 24, 1625, archdeaconry wills, LAO.

  CHAPTER NINE: STALLINGBOROUGH FLATS

  1. Humber estuary: University of Hull, Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies, Humber Estuary and Coast (Hull, UK, Nov. 1994). History of the river and navigation on it: G. de Boer and R. A. Skelton, “The Earliest English Chart with Soundings,” Imago Mundi 23 (1969), pp. 9–16. and Arthur Storey, Hull Trinity House History of Pilotage and Navigational Aids of the River Humber (1512–1908) (Hull, UK, 1971), pp. 2–3 and 25–28. I am also indebted to a lecture about the dynamics of the river given by Jack Hardisty, professor of environmental physics, the University of Hull, on June 17, 2006, at a seminar at Barton-upon-Humber arranged by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (North Lincolnshire).

  2. The Francis: 1607 Exchequer port book for Grimsby (searcher’s book), E 190/312/1, NAK. Coal trade: Simon Pawley, “Lincolnshire Coastal Villages and the Sea, c. 1300–1600: Economy and Society” (Ph.D. diss., thesis, University of Leicester, 1984), pp. 143–44. Cold winter: John Stow and Edmund Howes, Annales, or a General Chronicle of England (London, 1631), pp. 891–92.

  3. The depositions are on microfilm at NAK, SP 14/32/46 and 47, dated May 13, 1608.

  4. Mary Green entry in ODNB.

  5. A. C. Wood, ed., Memorials of the Holles Family (London, 1937), p. 63; and postmortem inquisition of Thomas Hatcliffe, 1610, WARD 7/36/34, NAK.

  6. Pawley, “Lincolnshire Coastal Villages,” pp. 51–57. Political affairs in the spring of 1608: M. S. Guiseppi and G. D. Owen, eds., HMC Salisbury (Cecil) Manuscripts (London, 1968), vol. 20, pp. 112–75.

  7. Joan and Thomas Helwys: York High Commission act book, HC AB 15, fols. 144, 167, 177, and 183, Borthwick Institute, York. York assizes: Edmund Hopwood to Thomas Southworth, July 29, 1608, Lancs RO, Kenyon of Peel Papers, DDKE HMC 20. Banishment in 1609: Abstract of the Registers of the Privy Council, 1550–1610, Add. MS 11402, fol. 147r., BL.

  8. Hodgkinson Transcripts, vol. 3, fols. 380 and 387, NAN.

  9. Journal of Sir Julius Caesar, May 4–July 24, 1608, Lansdowne Papers, MS 168, fols. 297–306, BL. For Cecil’s papers, see note 6 above.

  10. John McCavitt, The Flight of the Earls (Dublin, 2005), pp. 135–53; and O’Doherty’s entry in ODNB.

  11. Add. MS 11402, fols. 140–41, BL.

  12. Pauline Croft, “The Religion of Robert Cecil,” Historical Journal 34, no. 4 (1991), esp. pp. 775–80 and 796.

  CHAPTER TEN: THE TOMB OF THE APOSTLE

  1. Sea approaches to Amsterdam: William Johnson, The Light of Navigation (Amsterdam, 1612), bk. 1, p. 12. Eyewitness account: Tadhg Ó Cianáin, The Flight of the Earls, ed. Paul Walsh (Maynooth, 1916), pp. 169–87. St. Peter’s in 1608: Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600–1750 (New Haven, CT, 1982), pp. 28–29, 111–12, and 190–93. Paul V and Santa Francesca Romana: Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (London, 1891—), vol. 1, pp. 235–37, and vol. 25, pp. 43–49 and 255–58. The date of the canonization was May 19 using the Julian calendar, in force in England in 1608, but May 29 according to the modern Gregorian calendar, which was used in Rome.

  2
. For Smyth in Amsterdam, see W. T. Whitley, ed., The Works of John Smyth (Cambridge, UK, 1915), vol. 1, pp. lxxv–lxxviii.

  3. Ó Cianáin, Flight of the Earls, pp. 9–11.

  4. Micheline Kerney Walsh, Destruction by Peace: Hugh O’Neill After Kinsale (Monaghan, 1986), p. 191.

  5. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (Harmondsworth, UK, 1970), pp. 305–8.

  6. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 334–38 and 415–17.

  7. John McCavitt, The Flight of the Earls (Dublin, 2005), pp. 200–221.

  8. Bancroft to Sir Robert Winwood, Feb. 9, 1606, in Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, ed. Edward Sawyer (London, 1725), vol. 2, p. 195.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: WHY THE PILGRIMS SAILED

  1. Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, Letters from and to Sir Dudley Carleton… During His Embassy in Holland, from January 1616 to December 1620 (London, 1757), p. 240.

  2. For whales and plague, see gazette of 1617, SP 14/95/22, NAK; Yorke, Letters from and to Carleton, pp. 89 and 96; HMC, Downshire Manuscrips, vol. 6, Papers of William Trumbull, 1616–1618 (London, 1995), p. 96.

  3. S. Groenveld, ed., De Geschiedenis van een Hollandse Stad (Leiden, 2003), vol. 2, pp. 44–48.