4
The approach
One London parish experienced major conflict in mid-century: Saint Botolph Aldgate. Historians have written about it for years, uniformly explaining the trouble as a struggle between reformers led by the senior churchwarden, Robert Owen, versus conservatives led by William Green, chantry priest and farmer of the benefice. There is a general accuracy to this analysis, but such a narrow interpretation ignores many significant aspects of the conflict, including the social dynamics a local community might endure when faced with the daunting challenges required by the Tudor Reformations. Moreover, by focusing on a theology-based explanation, other questions remain unexplored, such as why should only one parish out of about one hundred have experienced such turmoil? A microhistorical analysis of the evidence presents the conflict in a new way: contextualizing the information by examining the parish setting, adding biographical information regarding significant parishioners, referencing the historiography, and seeking a more nuanced and detailed reading of the conflict’s narrative. A close reading of the primary sources encourages reflection on the various forces that influenced their production. The result indicates that local personalities (almost all of whom were non-theologians), and their sometimes-misguided efforts to implement change might have had as much a role to play in this parish’s problems as did Reformation-era teachings.
The parish and the 1547–48 churchwardens
Saint Botolph Aldgate was located outside the old city wall, north of the Tower, and the parish was over 45 acres in area (Figure 4.1). Its jurisdictional boundaries had been blurred by the events of 1535–50, leaving the various groups within the parish’s four precincts to negotiate compromises to problems as best they could. The sources reveal a complicated social situation in which the local elite lacked unity and the succession of a weak national government under Edward VI further fragmented parish leadership.
Figure 4.1 St Botolph Aldgate parish, 1520
The churchwardens’ accounts begin with the election of Robert Owen and Anthony Jonson on 23 December 1547, and their tenure lasted until 23 December 1548. The first payment occurs on 16 March: 10 s. to John Gaywood for whitewashing the two chapels.2 The first receipt is dated 24 April, when George Haryson, the previous senior churchwarden, delivered 26 s. left over from his tenure in office “as yt maye appere in the ffote of hys accountes.”3 Haryson’s accounts no longer exist, but Robert Owen served as his junior churchwarden as documented on the Edwardian Inventory of 1552.4 So, about ten weeks into their term as the new churchwardens, Owen and Jonson made their first expenditure and about a month later they received the money usually delivered at the previous audit. If the accounts are accurate, they had done very little in the one-fourth to one-third of their allotted time in office. This lengthy period of inaction combined with money being paid prior to any being received are just two of the anomalies expressed in these accounts.Since the churchwardens’ accounts begin in 1547–48, the reader is thrown into idiosyncrasies and conflict with only selective explanations supplied by the wardens, who did employ a technique to emphasize the drama of it all: specific dates. Dates are a very rare characteristic for this genre of records and they only appear in this one year for this set of records. If those dates were part of the original accounting, made at the audit, then they allowed for the chronological development of a story that tells of a tension-filled escalation of a struggle to control the parish. Evidence from other sources indicate that the parish’s problems had long-standing precedents, which undermines the picture provided by Owen and Jonson.5
Robert Owen, a gun maker, was one of three brothers named Owen, “Gunfounders,” who were granted land in Aldgate, which they enclosed, and soon began casting brass ordinance.6 The creation of this new factory pushed poorer folks out of their homes, most of whom sought out and sold used clothing for their livelihood. The brothers “were at work at Houndsditch before 1531” and were granted “the ‘Bellfounders house’ … in 1540.”7 By 1548, the Owen brothers had lived in Aldgate for almost two decades, although Robert and John had spent some time in Calais in the 1530s, and John had also spent some time in Ireland. The manufacture of guns and cannons was a relatively new industry in England, and the Owen brothers produced a double cannon that attracted the interest of Henry VIII, but they also enjoyed royal patronage generally.8 Within the parish, the brothers were part of a recently introduced and privileged group associated with guns, ordinance, and royal appointments to the various offices at the Tower.
Insight into the personality of Robert Owen is hard to find, but an interesting series of events occurred in 1536 when Robert and John oversaw a delivery to Calais of a large amount of ordinance.9 A letter to Lord Lisle from Sir Christopher Mores, a clerk of the Exchequer, dated 29 April 1536, requested that a “fair double cannon” be sent to London for inspection and promised that once the King had seen the artillery, he would grant more favor upon Robert and John Owen.10 On 7 July, Mores sent another letter to Lord Lisle asking the Deputy of Calais to forbid his Master Gunner, Henry Johnson, from gaining access to the cannons.11 Johnson had previously tested the new cannons and one or more of them cracked. The suspicion grew that he had purposely packed too much gunpowder into the guns to undermine the brothers’ royal favor. Who spread this story and probably informed the king is unknown, as is the identity of the person behind a request that Henry Johnson be provided with no further powder, but it is a curious story with lots of participants, perhaps an appeal to the king, and the charge of sabotage against the work of the Owen brothers.12 All three of those themes also appear in the churchwardens’ accounts of 1547–48 and the one connection between the two conflicts is Robert Owen.13
These insights into records, parish society, and personalities add perspective to an analysis based simply on larger narratives of the Reformation. First, a theologically based analysis tends to de-emphasize other influences. Second, it also ignores the legitimating process that record-keeping itself provides. Third, it personalizes, as do the records, what was surely a contentious, nearly parish-wide issue. Most importantly, labels such as reforming, conservative, and traditionalist tend to be vague and misleading. Traditionalist must be applied to something specific in the parish of Saint Botolph Aldgate in 1548, and the same observation applies to reformer. But the way they have been employed in the historiography tends to refer to metanarrative explanations of the Reformation, or (as Lucy Wooding has cautioned against) they employ “ideal types” of Catholicism or Protestantism.14 Without a doubt, a conflict did occur in the parish, but the churchwardens’ accounts privileged the churchwardens’ view of the parish conflict and misrepresented or ignored others.
1547–48 was a part of a long-term period of religious change. Before 1535, the parish church had contained a chapel dedicated to Saint Mary and another to Saint Katherine, an altar dedicated to Saint Nicholas and another to Saint Botolph, along with an image of the patron saint.15 There was also a parish fraternity dedicated to Saint John and an altar dedicated to Saint John, a fraternity dedicated to Jesus, and a fraternity of Saint Anthony and Saint Katherine.16 The church was adjacent to Holy Trinity Priory, and the Augustinian house was highly influential in parish culture prior to its dissolution in 1532; the priests came from the priory, and the prior was the parson, who also served as the alderman of Portsoken Ward, but, after the dissolution, the ward received a secular alderman just as the other city wards possessed. By 1552, the saints were gone, the altars were gone, and the chapels had been whitewashed. Saint Botolph Aldgate was a parish church that employed an English liturgy with a vicar who probably read homilies from the approved Book of Homilies, and the parish celebrated communion at a communion table. Then the Catholic Restoration under Mary occurred, followed by the Elizabethan Settlement. The parish possessed an estimated 1,130 communicants in 1548, which would have meant an estimated population of ca. 1,503.17
When “the Reformation” came to this parish is difficult to discern because of the absence of earlier records. In 1509, a parishioner evidently told the curate “to ‘leave his preaching’ and received the Sacrament in his hand, saying that he could do so lawfully ‘as well as the curate.’”18 The action demonstrates individual conviction, but remains anecdotal. By 1540. small groups of evangelicals were known to meet for private prayers—the government arrested several people that summer—but the numbers were fewer than 1 percent of the parish population.19 The Aldgate area did eventually become a devoutly Protestant area, but that is true for all of London.
The priory of Holy Trinity had controlled the benefice of the church prior to the 1530s, but after the dissolution the king transferred the benefice “exclusively” to Sir Thomas Audley, so that upon Audley’s death in 1543, the control of the parish returned to the crown; in fact, the king was listed as the rector in 1548.20 Given this fact, the struggle with the farmer of the benefice as a conservative needs some further explanation since Green was, in essence, an agent of the crown in the parish. He was also a member of the Court of Augmentations and had taken “a twenty-one-year lease on the rectory of Saint Botolph Aldgate” after the death of Thomas Audley.21 Part of the reason why this parish fell into turmoil resided in the convoluted history of the advowson, which devolved to the care of William Green for the years in question. In a society in which status mattered, Green hardly possessed the social significance of most of those who controlled the benefices of London’s parishes. So, with one significant parish office, the senior churchwarden, filled by a gun maker who enjoyed royal patronage and existed in a privileged sub-group of the parish, and with another major parish office occupied by a long-established chantry priest who collected the tithe, because he had been granted a long lease on the benefice, there is evidence that the parish’s social divide had moved into the institution, and that neither of these camps possessed sufficient status to command authority in conflict resolution.
Anthony Jonson, the junior churchwarden, was a wealthy man for the area, appearing on the 1541 tax subsidy for Portsoken ward with an assessment of £100.22 There are several churchwardens’ entries that imply that parish leadership was working to some degree even as they documented the trouble that was beginning to appear. The second entry under receipts acknowledged 5 s. from William Green, farmer of the benefice, for his contribution toward the purchase of the Paraphrases of Erasmus (24 April 1548), most likely the edition by Nicholas Udall which was published in 1548.23 This innocuous entry masks the fact that the churchwardens’ struggle with William Green had already begun, and, it also illustrates that Green was maintaining his obligations in the parish and working with the churchwardens.
Evidence of trouble
The first clear sign of trouble begins with an entry recording a payment of 4 d. to the beadle in compensation for warning/requesting the churchwardens to finalize their report for the Royal Commission on the surrender of church/chantry lands.24 The beadle, as part of London’s government, sought compliance with the parliamentary statute that confiscated the possessions of chantries, colleges, and free chapels, and which provided for the royal appointment of commissioners to survey and gather information on such land.25 The parish’s response to this act appears to initiate the conflict according to the information in the churchwardens’ accounts. Local leaders had months to prepare and reflect on the problems associated with this bill, but there is no indication of activity.26 The churchwardens, however, noted on 19 March 1548, that John Morganson, deputy alderman, “would make a disturbance among the parishioners” because he and William Green, the farmer of the benefice, had concerns about presenting the evidence to the commissioners, “despised the churchwardens,” and claimed that they “were no churchwardens.”
Be it knowen the xix day of marche John Morganson beynge the aldermannes depute wold a made dysturbans amonge the p[ar]ysche for that he & Wyll[a]m Grene farmer myght not presant the evydence a foresaid in dyspysynge the churche wardens a fore named saynge that they ware no churche wardens.27
The entry represents Green and Morganson as breaking the peace and unity of the parish, while the phrase “they ware no churche wardens” is either an accusation that Owen and Jonson held their offices illegitimately, or it meant they were not doing their jobs. Owen and Jonson may have been slow to do things, but they had been following directives. The King’s Council had ordered all images to be removed in February 1548, and whitewash was placed on the walls of the chapels in March.28 The 1547 Injunctions required all parishes to obtain a copy of the Paraphrases of Erasmus, and, as we have seen, the parish obtained one in late April 1548, partly paid for by William Green.29 It is difficult to understand the exact meaning of the charge against the churchwardens, but in response Owen and Jonson sought to rally support and “thirty of the honest men of the parish” signed a statement “certefynge the counsell & the churche wardens aforesaid was chossen by the hole consent of the peryscheoners” and that the deputy alderman agreed to cease and desist, even paying the cost of the deposition signed by the men.30 Because Morganson paid for that bill, he hardly seems to be an unreasonable partisan. The very participation of the deputy alderman in the controversy suggests that whatever the original point of disagreement might have been, it was neither frivolous nor lacking in merit, and he was open to a peaceful resolution.
The churchwardens project unity with phrases that frequently appear in churchwardens’ accounts, such as the idea that the churchwardens were “chosen by the whole consent of the parish,” even as they are having to justify their position. The use of such phrases, despite their obvious lack of applicability, indicates a writing strategy as well as a general cultural assumption about the nature of the parish community, an assumption that ignored the influence of status, gender, and economic significance in empowering some over others. As with all parts of Tudor society, some people mattered more than others, hence the presence of thirty honest men of the parish. A vestry meeting on 25 October 1545 at Saint Martin Outwich acknowledged the presence of “the most part of the discreet parishioners.”31 Some people, obviously, were worthy of including in certain tasks.
Owen and Jonson focus on two or three people as the cause of their woes. By so doing, the disagreement becomes a personalized struggle that really cannot be solved without some drastic action being taken against the problematic men in question. Since William Green expressed no eagerness to leave, the conflict would only continue, yet Morganson does recede a bit from the accounts. Consequently, everyone involved would turn to other, more powerful people outside the parish for help. As for William Green, his version of the conflict is implied by his actions as represented by others in the records.
The legislation in question was neither the first legislative move seeking to confiscate chantry lands, nor were these commissioners the first ones to deal with the topic. In the last year of Henry VIII’s reign, a commission seeking the same sort of information had been busy, only to be dissolved upon the king’s death. The Henrician commission had included the London bishop, Edmund Bonner, but he was absent from the Edwardian one.32 With the change in regimes, the world changed for Edmund Bonner just as it changed for everyone else in the diocese. When the bishop resisted new ecclesiastical policies and protested both the Injunctions of 1547 and the Book of Homilies, he ended up in jail. He was released by the beginning of October 1548 but sent back again in 1549.33 This lack of consistency from above—neither the royal government, London’s government, the Province of Canterbury, nor the diocese of London were in accord—exacerbated tensions within the divided parish. Still, the churchwardens slowly began to implement the Injunctions of 1547 without the encouragement of their bishop.
Evidence of parish trouble from other sources
Parish leaders of Saint Botolph Aldgate also faced other issues, including questions concerning the parish’s legally defined physical boundaries (Figure 4.2). First, on 16 November 1547, the Patent Rolls record the commissioning of four men, “doctors of law,” to examine a complaint from William Green that parishioners were not paying their tithes and that strife and controversy had developed within the parish, but further details are lacking.34 Second, the parish had once been associated with Holy Trinity Aldgate and had sat adjacent to the Abbey of Saint Clare, located in the jurisdictional liberty known as the Minories, but both monastic institutions had been dissolved in the 1530s. William Green had taken his lease on the rectory of Saint Botolph Aldgate apparently under the impression that the inhabitants of the former precinct of the Abbey of Saint Clare would be absorbed into the Aldgate parish, but the Minories had subsequently been granted to the Bishop of Bath and Wells.35 When a former chapel once connected to the convent emerged as the new parish church of Holy Trinity Minories, the clear separation between the two areas became obvious.36
Figure 4.2 Area around Saint Botolph Aldgate Church
In 1546, Green complained to the Court of Augmentations that, since Bishop Knight had been allowed to restore the altar and font at the Minories, he had lost income and “was unable to pay the farm of the rectory of Saint Botolph Aldgate.”37 Bishop Knight died on 29 September 1547, and the new bishop, William Barlow, was appointed in February 1548.38 Barlow immediately began exchanging land from the Minories for other properties, which probably further bothered Green.39 Thus, Green’s planned disturbance may have been motivated by an attempt to undo what he saw as an economic injustice and a transgression on Saint Botolph’s legal rights, and his frustration with two lackadaisical churchwardens simply made things worse. Likewise, John Morganson would hopefully have been aware of the line between the ward’s jurisdiction and a liberty’s, but given the recent changes, such issues were unclear. The appearance of a new parish and the reduction of resources would certainly have raised anxiety just as everyone’s attention turned to the task at hand: the creation of an inventory of traditional mortuary endowments. These factors produced a complex series of legal and political issues that required some attention.
A tangle of rents belonged to the parish to support prayers for the dead.40 Numerous wills from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries requested such mortuary endowments, most not perpetual.41 One will, that of William de Haverynge (1298), was contested and may never have been implemented.42 Matilda Weston (1348) left instructions for a chantry to be established for one year only, with a portion of her worldly goods going to a son named Thomas Weston, undoubtedly the same Thomas Weston whose perpetual chantry was listed in the 1548 certificate.43 Other bequests were received for a mortuary endowment to operate for specified periods. John de Romeney’s will established multiple chantries in the church but for only three years of operation.44 Even accounting for bad record keeping, depleted funds, and moribund endowments, in 1548, there should have been many more chantries at Saint Botolph Aldgate than there were.
Prior to 1547–48, eighty-two properties supported four chantries at the church.45 The Nicholas Dereman/William Cosyn chantries began when Dereman endowed one that operated for ca. twenty-five years before the tenements fell into decay, ceased to generate sufficient revenue, and fell back into the hands of the Dereman heirs. They eventually passed to William Cosyn, who once again left instructions for the establishment of a chantry for his own soul, that of his wife, and those of others “to whom he was duty bound.”46 A third mortuary endowment, for Alexander Sprout, appears in the report by the royal commissioners, with stipends going to three priests, including “£2 9 s. 6 d. to Sir William Grene in augmentation of his wages.”47 A fourth, for William Norton, leaves little evidence. Given the jumble that appears to have defined the parish’s rights to rents, there was ample opportunity for disagreement over what to tell the royal commissioners concerning chantry lands. Simple confusion may have formed some basis of this conflict.
Resolution of the first problem
The churchwardens succeeded in their first struggle and delivered their evidence concerning the church land on 20 March 1548. They also paid another 4 s. to the beadle in gratitude for alerting them when they were “proved before the king’s commissioners.”48 The commission commanded Haryson, the previous churchwarden (1546–47), to deliver any evidence that he might still possess.49 Finally, on 28 March 1548, the churchwardens produced a final report: “Payed the same day at the presentment of the booke and all other wrytyngs of the churche lands beyng charged by the vertu of an othe for a true certyfycait … 12 d.”50 With their position firmly secured and their report delivered to the commissioners, the churchwardens addressed their relationship with the farmer of the benefice.
Trouble continues and spreads
They began with insults, referring to Green as a dead souls’ priest when they acknowledged his quarterly wage (30 March). The term was most certainly pejorative and was used once again by the churchwardens in acknowledging payment to another chantry priest.51 On 11 April, they paid 6 s. 8 d. to John Brede “for painting of two altar clothes for the side altars.”52 If Owen and Jonson were a part of an evangelical group, the evidence thus far forces a qualification of their Protestant zeal. Four months into their year in office, in the second year of Edward’s reign, the churchwardens and their supporters had not gone very far in their support for liturgical reform (unless their delay and inaction were strategic) but they were certainly working with the new policies of the new regime and, when the accounts were created after the audit, they included insults for their chantry priests.
Ad hominem attacks indicate lack of respect, perhaps even contempt, as apparently reflected in the supplication written on 15 April by Owen and Jonson to Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector, seeking his assistance in dealing with William Green, “for remedy agaynst William Greane farmor for that he coude not preche nor teache well nor noo curat for hym.”53 The issue does not really seem to have been about the ability to preach. By 1548, William Green’s—or anyone else’s—ability to preach was limited to reading from the officially sanctioned Book of Homilies, with texts approved for public edification by Thomas Cranmer, unless they had a special license to preach.54 The Book of Homilies had been published in July 1547 and was required for all parishes.55 Saint Botolph purchased one on 4 December 1548, just prior to the end of Robert Owen’s year as senior churchwarden, and the parish probably did not possess another copy as the inventory of 1552 listed only one.56 (This requirement is yet another item that the churchwardens waited a long time to fulfill.) Perhaps the parish curate, William Rafford, possessed either a license to write his own sermons or his own volume of the Book of Homilies. It did not matter, because that was not the real issue. While the supplication raised the issue of sermons, the essential issue was the curate’s association with William Green. Within a few weeks, Green and Morganson made a complaint to the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gresham, and the Aldermen of London, that probably addressed the behavior of Owen and Jonson.57 On 15 July 1548, the parish paid to obtain a copy of the complaint, which the churchwardens labeled as “falsely imagined,” but they would soon have to deal with the Lord Mayor.58
The parish also kept functioning, and the churchwardens paid for other items during the summer, including a desk upon which to place the Bible and Paraphrases of Erasmus.59 The weaving of the mundane tasks with the political entries demonstrated the churchwardens attending to their duties. More significantly, on 17 July, the churchwardens purchased “six books of the psalms in English,” which brought the parish curate, William Rafford, to the center of attention again, because the churchwardens editorialized when making that entry. The psalters had been purchased “to have the servyce of the church there upon then songe to the ende that the people shoulde understand to prayse God the better,” but that “Wyll[a]m Rafford curat resysted and wolde not so synge nor say” (“to have the service of the church there upon then sung to the end that the people should understand to praise God the better,” but the curate “resisted and would not so sing nor say”).60 Since the churchwardens did not know that the curate would not use these books on 17 July 1548, the statement was hindsight and it supported the emerging narrative of a recalcitrant William Green and his deficient vicar. Oddly enough, Saint Botolph Aldgate was the only London parish that left evidence that they were not using the English psalms in their services.
There were several publications that presented the psalms in translation, both abridged and whole, but the parish purchased an edition that contained the psalms in metrical mode.61 The most likely choice was The Psalter or Boke of the psalmes where vnto is added the Letany and certayne other devout prayers. Set forth wyth the Kynges moste gracious lycence. July, 1548. 62 Given the repetition of the phrase “book of the psalms” both in the churchwardens’ accounts and in the title, and its publication date, this seems likely. Saint Botolph Aldgate was not acting in a unique fashion with this purchase since several other London parishes also purchased English psalters:
Itm payd for viij Sawtters in Englyshe … vi s. viij d. [Saint Michael Cornhill, 1548]63
Item paid for 2 psalter books in English … 3 s. 4 d. [Saint Andrew Hubbard, 1549]64
And, of course, many accounts do not mention English psalters at all.
According to the churchwardens, William Rafford perceived that the parishioners wished “to have the service of the church in English” and so he met with William Green on 25 August 1548, and they decided that the curate would promise surety of peace and good abearing, which suggests an attempt to ease parish troubles:
Be it knowen the said William Rafford p[er]ceyvynge the p[ar]yshconers beynge bent to have the service of ye churche in Englyshe the said Will[ia]m Rafford councelled wyth Will[ia]m Grene farmor of the benefyce & determynatyd that the said curat shulde take the suryte of pease and the good abarynge … [surety of peace and good abearing] … of Robert Owen church warden wythe others and thynkyng therby to stoppe there molothes the xxv daye of August the said Robert was a restyd and bayled wyth suertyes which cost ij s. iiij d.65
But it was the churchwarden, Robert Owen, who was arrested at the direction of the Lord Mayor, and the parish was forced to pay his bail (2 s. 4 d.).66 Owen’s arrest probably stemmed from his failure to give assurance of peace and good behavior as had the curate, and his earlier appeal to the Lord Protector surely had cost him good will within London’s government. According to the fifteenth-century clerk, John Carpenter, London’s mayors were responsible “for keeping of the peace, service of the prince, and honor of the city …,”67 so it is not difficult to imagine how a Lord Mayor might have become upset at a churchwarden who appealed some parish squabble to the Lord Protector. Whatever the reasons for the arrest of Robert Owen, on the next day (26 August), the churchwardens’ accounts record payment of 2 s. for a copy of the peace and good abearing and a writ of supersedeas against Owen having to appear at Newgate, and they attended “the sessions” in case the curate declared against the churchwarden.
Payed the xxvi daye of August for a coppy of ye pease and good aberynge for to pvide a supersydyas agaynst the apperance at Newgate for soo yt was there to appere at the sessyons if the said curatt wolde farder a declared there and a requyred the same a gaynst the said Robrt Owen a gayne … ij s.68
Clearly, the curate had a complaint, perhaps against the churchwardens meddling in issues that were his concern.
Seeking to change parish leadership
After the first arrest of the senior churchwarden, the parish paid off all the financial obligations to William Green, acknowledging 2 d. “for all demands of old debts of the church,” but the problems continued.69 In October 1548, the parish paid 4 s. for a scribe to make a copy of the supplication sent months earlier to the Lord Protector to provide to the Lord Mayor and for making a copy of the book of presentment delivered to the archdeacon during his visitation. The Lord Mayor did wish to see that appeal to the Lord Protector, and there had obviously been a concern with the churchwardens’ presentations (which no longer survive). From the perspective of London’s government, it seems the churchwardens had overstepped their roles, and on 3 October Robert Owen paid 9 s. 6 d. “to discharge” the oath of peace and good abearing he had made in August.70
A new curate
The churchwardens and their supporters then sought to replace William Rafford by hiring William Dabbes “for a godde penny,”71 which translated into £10 a year.72 This move hardly seems a good faith attempt to maintain the peace, so it is not surprising that when a delegation of seven men—Anthony Anthony, John Franke, Gyles Harryson, Richard Duffeld, John Owen, Robert Owen, and Anthony Jonson—went to the Lord Mayor to seek “his good will,” the move backfired.73 The Lord Mayor sent Robert Owen to the Counter.74 Neither the Mayor, nor the wider mechanism of London’s government rushed to support the churchwardens during that summer. As for Owen’s second arrest, the churchwardens’ accounts declared the Mayor’s action to be the result “more of his … [the Lord Mayor’s] … lordliness than of his wisdom.” With their attempt to terminate Rafford, the churchwardens had moved beyond their traditional roles once again. Their records occasionally take on odd characteristics too, with entries that begin with phrases such as “be it remembered” or “be it known.”
During the meeting at the Guildhall on 6 October, the mayor and two sheriffs recognized that Dabbes should be curate of the parish of Saint Botolph Aldgate and that Rafford should depart by Christmas. The Lord Mayor also withdrew the earlier charges against the churchwardens, and the parish paid 3 s. 4 d. for the copy of the decree.75 Rafford withdrew his assurance of peace and good abearing, which probably symbolized his withdrawal from participation in parish culture. (“Payed the iiij. daye of Octob[e]r for a supsydeas for to dyscharge the peace and good a bearyng at newgate a fore morettyr yf nede had requyred … ix s. vj d.”76) After months of legal and political struggle, it appears the churchwardens had succeeded. The Lord Mayor apparently acted, as the churchwardens themselves testify in their own accounts, with no mention of theology or liturgy. The cost, however, was great. Without an adequate mechanism for conflict resolution in this parish and with issues having been personalized, the directives from the Edwardian government had created deep social divisions.
In between the entries that recorded the churchwardens’ interaction with John Gresham, there is a curious entry that was crossed out that deals with four marriages conducted by William Dabbes on 6 October: “Payed the vij daye of October to William Dabbes curat for marynge of iiij bryde the same daye by a promesmade to hyme for hys vayles … ij s. viij d” (Figure 4.3)77 As if a crossed-out entry in the middle of the expenditures was not odd enough, given the high quality of these accounts, it corresponds to another, similar entry, which was also crossed out, in the receipts section of the churchwardens’ account that again acknowledges the four marriages in English by Dabbys,
Receyued the vijth day of octobor of .iiij. brydgromes the whiche was maryed all at one tyme in englyshe by the mynyster William Dabbys curatt electe and chosen and appynted by the faythfull of ye peryschroners and by the consent of Syr John Gresham mayer of London by a deat byfore hym made for that Wyll[ia]m Grene ffarmer of the benefice wolde not doo a way hys unfaythfull curatt byfore placed and towards the paynes the kynge in recompence of the said Dabbys … xiiij d.78
Figure 4.3 Crossed-out entry re. marriages from the CWA St Botolph Aldgate
Source: MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 2v, published with permission of the London Metropolitan Archives, City of London
The information regarding the marriages belonged in the registers, and church rates simply went to the curate, so these entries in the churchwardens’ accounts are misplaced. The ceremony in English becomes a point of justification, and the assertion that the new curate was appointed by the faithful of the parish denies a traditional approach for appointing a parish vicar, and the responsibility for the parish’s problems were placed on William Green and the “unfaithful” curate, but the inclusion of John Gresham, the Lord Mayor, as having given his consent, is the proof that the churchwardens have entered into the realm of over-simplification.79 These “mistakes” actually offered comments that allowed the churchwardens to convey information and to frame the situation in a way that could not be easily achieved in a list of expenditures and receipts.
The curious empowerment of the “reforming” group
And then the “reforming” actions come to an end. The remaining entries for the 1547–48 accounts tend to focus on mundane items: remunerating the sexton, washing clothes, and covering graves. On one level, the conflict had been about English services and a new curate, but on another it was about control of the parish. The end to a turbulent year at Saint Botolph Aldgate came with ordinary activity, but the issues that stirred up the community had not gone away. Problems would continue into the future.
A re-examination of motives
The records document escalating tension between the churchwardens, especially Robert Owen, and the farmer of the benefice, William Green, in 1547–48. The first key point of contention centered upon the report owed to the royal commissioners. Entries from April, May, and June report appeals to authorities outside of the parish, but the actual operations of the parish indicate a slow implementation of the Injunctions of 1547. It would appear that there was a personalized contention for dominance in the parish between Owen and Green. Then came the second major point of contention: the six books of psalms in English. The curate, appointed by Green, refused to sing the psalms in the vernacular.
Services in the vernacular had been debated in the 1540s, and the movement away from Latin occurred in increments. The English Litany had replaced the old Latin Processionale for intercessory prayers in 1544.80 The Book of Common Prayer—containing vernacular services for all functions—would not be printed until 1549. 1 Ed 6 c.1, “Primitive Mode of receiving the Sacrament” granted communion in both kind to parishioners and proclaimed that the king wished to proceed from his clement nature, but it acknowledged that “fear” might be required to deal with “men most contentious and arrogant for the most part or else most blind and ignorant.”81 This line may have influenced Robert Owen more than could possibly be measured, for he was looking to official documents to frame his actions and he certainly judged his opponents to be contentious, arrogant, and ignorant.
The passage of this act became the moment for the Council to approve Cranmer’s Order of Communion (1548), released 1 April 1548 with a Royal Proclamation for inclusion in the current Latin liturgy and for use beginning on Easter.82 Between April 1548 and the publication of the first prayer book a year later, the service for the Eucharist should have been in Latin until after the priest communicated, and then it switched to English. Many parishes, especially London ones, went farther without either authorization or repercussion. The Grey Friars Chronicle attests that English services were to be found in numerous parish churches and at Saint Paul’s after Easter, 1548.83 Liturgical experimentation manifested itself in a variety of special services mandated for reasons such as the war with Scotland and the health of the king.84 While the royal proclamation spoke of the need for uniformity and called diversity ungodly, numerous parishioners might perceive different messages from the introduction of the new rubric, and the government lacked the will or the ability to enforce uniformity. More significantly, the invective employed in official legislation and proclamations targeted only traditionalists.
The change in behavior of the churchwardens at Saint Botolph Aldgate may have been inspired in part by actions and directives from the Court and from Canterbury that began about the same time. A move to English was underway across the capital, and, as Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted, throughout 1548, “there had been increasing use of English in the offices and even at Eucharist in key churches where the authorities were sympathetic or could be bullied by the government into compliance.”85 Officially, much of the liturgy should still have been conducted in Latin, but, on this point, the government was no longer putting forth a clear and uniform message, and variation characterized the city. The Edwardian Injunctions of 1547 stated that anyone hindering the use of English with the liturgical readings of the Word of God should be presented to the “King or his council, or to the justice of the peace next adjoining.”86 Was singing the psalms covered by this requirement? The Injunctions required “the Epistle and Gospel” be read “in English and not in Latin,” but failed to specify the psalms.87
It seems likely that a chantry priest and a curate would have known the theology and legal requirements better than a gun maker serving as churchwarden, but Owen most certainly moved as he deemed to be correct, influenced by the rhetoric of the age and undoubtedly mimicking other parishes and even some cathedral practices. The justification provided by the churchwardens for the purchase of the six books of psalms in English no longer adhered to the mandates spelled out in official documents or in royal proclamations, but rather insisted that “the people should understand to praise God the better”; they appealed to another standard and may even have referenced another text, 1 Corinthians 14 from the Coverdale Bible: “I wil pray ye sprete, and wil praye with the vnderstondinge also: wil synge psalmes in the sprete, and wil synge psalms with ye vnderstondinge also.” The churchwardens’ justification was actually a revolutionary change, but there is no indication that they perceived it as such.
By the summer of 1548, liturgical decisions in numerous London parishes and at Saint Paul’s Cathedral went beyond governmental or ecclesiastical directive, and so it was at Saint Botolph’s.88 By the time of the purchase of the English psalters, Robert Owen and Antony Jonson had been in their positions as churchwardens for almost seven months. This evidence still does not support the traditional interpretation that an evangelical faction had seized its moment, but it might suggest that the churchwardens were becoming more evangelical as the year passed, or that they appropriated evangelical rhetoric as a tactic in their conflict. By July, the curate had become the main target of their criticisms.
The fault of William Rafford, curate
William Rafford had only acceded to his position at the start of 1548 and so he faced this difficulty within a few months of his arrival.89 He was in the weakest social/political situation when compared to the farmer of the benefice or the deputy alderman, and so there may have been a strategic choice for focusing on him. The churchwardens judged the curate unsatisfactory because of (1) his association with Green; (2) his inability to preach or teach; and (3) his use of Latin in singing the psalms. Once again, the Injunctions of 1547 may have provided the inspiration, because if a parson was unable to serve his benefice, then “they shall leave their cure not to a rude and unlearned person, but to an honest, well-learned and expert curate, that can by his ability teach the rude and unlearned of their cure wholesome doctrine.”90 This was the situation at Saint Botolph Aldgate, and given that the wardens had asked the Lord Protector for remedy against William Green, “for that he coude not preche nor teache well nor noo curat for hym,” it again appears that at a more fundamental level the language from the Injunctions shaped the language of this parish struggle and found its way into the churchwardens’ accounts.
The actions of Robert Owen
Owen was arrested because he was not acting legally—Green and Rafford were—but with most of the city’s parishes moving to the vernacular in their liturgies, settling for peace may have seemed a better path to Gresham. So, the year unfolded as follows: after a period of inactivity, Owen and Jonson selectively followed the Injunctions of 1547, with some items ignored for months, while other changes got prioritized. Owen was clearly intelligent, but he could not have known theology as well as William Green, a chantry priest, and that probably left Owen frustrated. The changes occurring in neighboring parishes had to have been obvious, and the churchwardens acted accordingly. But Green knew his rights and the letter of the law. Ad hominem attacks increased. Owen picked up on the violent and divisive language of Reformation polemics, introducing a combative strategy into a genre of writing, the churchwardens’ account, which seldom expresses anything more than projections of unity and compromise while noting the purchases of nails and tiles. The churchwardens sought to justify the elimination of their main opponent from his parish office with charges of incompetence. Instead, the senior churchwarden was arrested twice by the city’s government. Finally, at the audit on 23 December 1548, Owen told everyone just what had caused the trouble: the Lord Mayor lacked wisdom, the deputy alderman made a disturbance, the “deed souls preest” undermined him, and the former curate was unfaithful. It must have been a riveting moment. Owen knew unfaithful people, as William Rafford, the parish curate, and Henry Johnson, the Master Gunner at Calais in 1535, had learned. Owen’s personality was a major part of this parish squabble, as was Green’s. Still, the churchwardens won the battle, but at a quite high cost. Owen (and Jonson?) had employed a scorched-earth policy that left little room for the various groups in this large parish to debate, ally, form power blocks, and resolve conflicts.
A toxic atmosphere?
The parish had difficulty filling the churchwarden’s office. Robert Owen finished his tenure as senior churchwarden at the 1548 audit, and Anthony Jonson rose to the senior position while Edward Rousely became the junior warden. The following year, Rousely refused the senior position. The vestry gave the candidate eight days to change his mind and, when he still refused his duty, they named John Owen, Robert’s brother, to the senior position.91 The vestry then produced a statement denouncing Edward Rousely’s “great dishonor” to God, King, and parish; it was signed by thirty-three parishioners who sought to secure better behavior on the part of future candidates.92 Despite this act of churchwarden-candidate-shaming, parish peace continued to prove elusive. The ineffective use of shame as motivational technique adds further evidence of the hyperbole employed in the churchwardens’ accounts. The representation of the honest men of the parish unified against a troublesome farmer of the benefice and his unfaithful curate was as superficial as most of the rest of the accounts.
Of all the people whose names appear in the 1547–48 churchwardens’ accounts, Anthony Anthony left further documentation that elucidates some of these parish relationships. He was, most famously, the creator of “The Anthony Roll” in the 1540s, a compendium of information and illustrations of Henry VIII’s navy.93 He is also mentioned in numerous state papers, including Privy Purse Expenses, Acts of the Privy Council, and Letters of Denization. Anthony was appointed Survey of the Ordinance in 1549, replacing Henry Johnson, the once Master Gunner of Calais suspected of trying to sabotage the work of Robert and John Owen.94 Both Anthony Anthony and his father were Dutch by birth, and so the younger Anthony received a series of special licenses to serve as a gunner at the Tower in 1535 and as a clerk in the office of the Master of the Ordinance in the Tower in February 1536. He later occupied the office of the Master of the Queen’s Ordinance until his death in 1563.95 Anthony’s father, William Anthony, was a brewer who left a will witnessed by William Green, in which he left goods and tenements to his son, and money to be distributed to the poor. When the senior Anthony wrote his will, on 28 August 1535, he declared that his son was in debt to him for the sum of £80, but half of it was to be excused.96 In addition, Anthony Anthony inherited several personal items, along with a tavern known as The Shippe. In 1538, four men, including Anthony Anthony and Henry Johnson, established the Fraternity of St. George for the Company of Archers.97 Despite Anthony Anthony’s debt to his father, serving the king in the new field of armaments proved to be a lucrative business, and he died a wealthy man.98
Another witness to William Anthony’s will was Gyles Harryson, brewer, who also accompanied Anthony Anthony and the churchwardens to see the Lord Mayor in 1548. According to the 1583 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Giles Harrison was a brewer to the king and was fined for having performed a carnivalesque mass for friends at his tavern called The Red Lion in 1541.99 The religious divide in this parish does not appear to have been generational, but the influence of profession or royal patronage does appear to have been quite significant.
What occurred in 1547–48 could not be forgotten quickly. The accounts from 1549–50 show that William Green refused to pay the new curate. This impasse, too, was appealed to the Lord Mayor.100 There appears an entry later in the year that indicates the parish had sub-leased the benefice from William Green, and he disappears from the churchwardens’ account for a few years: “It[em] to Edward Branhod for making of the writings Betwene Will[ia]m Grene and M Anthony Anthony wth divers other of the parish conferming the Lease of the benefice of St Bottolfs wth out Algat London … xiij s. iiij d.”101 The churchwardens’ attention then focused on constructing a “church house.” In August 1550, the parish sold the old wood from the rood screen.102 The altars had probably been removed about a month prior to the order for London churches to remove them, but then many of London’s churches were pulling them out in 1549–50.103
The parish also sold off a large amount of its cloth, some of which had once belonged to Holy Trinity Priory. To offer two examples,
It[em] Gylles Harryson brewer dwelling in the parishe of Saint Buttolfs with out Algate a cope of blewe velvet of the gyfte of Richard Chester the said cope sould unto the said Gilles for … xxiij s. iiij d.
It[em] Anthony Anthony a vestement of blew velvet with two tunacles of blew velvet for the same of the gyft of Richard Chester the said vestement sould to the said Anthony for … iiijli. v s. vj d.104
The entries go on for several pages: vestment after vestment, cope after cope, and altar cloth after altar cloth, some listed with minute details. The 1552 inventory, created when John Owen was the senior churchwarden, reproduces the information once again, but with less detail.105
The parish government appeared to enter gridlock in 1551 after the churchwardens sold a great quantity of church plate, raising £62 12 s. 8 d. 106 Their original plan had been to purchase some houses adjacent to the churchyard but, still lacking sufficient money, it was proposed to sell the church bells, but many objected because they doubted the legality of the plan.107 Once again, it was the confusion over government policies and the future that caused uncertainty, debate, and conflict within the parish. The decision to sell the church plate appears to have been motivated by a plan to convert parish wealth into a new sort of investment, one that could generate income, but it failed because of lack of unity among the parish officials. The inability of the churchwardens and the vestry to solve the problem of yet another divisive issue became another political problem. Parish leaders eventually decided to build two tenements in the churchyard for fear of losing their newly acquired money to the king’s commissioners.108 The toll of Reform on parish relationships by 1551 had been great, but no one replaces William Green as the focus of frustration in the records (except for the brief shaming of Edward Rousely) but neither does it appear as if evangelism inspired unity. In fact, the evidence points to disunity.
The change in regimes
Soon after Mary’s succession in July 1553, Edmund Bonner was freed from the Marshalsea and returned to the bishopric, and parish politics at Saint Botolph Aldgate transformed once again. William Green is presented as one of the major patrons who has long worked for the good of the parish. Edward Rousley finally agreed to become a churchwarden. Changes in the Tudor monarchy changed the political culture of this peripheral London parish, which, in turn, changed the tone of the churchwardens’ accounts and even the representation of certain individuals. It was, oddly, a short political distance between these parishioners and their monarch.
The government encouraged parishes to create a list of people who had profited from the spoliation of the church during Edward’s reign, but the churchwardens at Saint Botolph Aldgate made note of a rash of donations, “certain gifts … freely given unto the said Church of Sainte Botolph without Aldgate,” including from Anthony Anthony, for a blue velvet vestment, an altar cloth, “a table pyctured wt the passion of Christe and other ymage pictured in the same wch standeth upon Sainte Nicholas awlter on the sowth side.”109
Anthony Anthony had purchased these items, and more, in 1550.110 The blue velvet vestment and altar cloth that he “donates” to the church in the first year of Mary’s reign he and his family had kept for almost five years. The transfer of these sorts of items to private houses allowed for the domestication of sacred objects either to serve reformers’ interests—to show they were objects like any others—or those of traditionalist—to bring sacred items into their homes and as an act of preservation.111 Numerous objects return, but most were gone. The 1554–55 accounts also reveal that “certen women of the paryshe that dyd gather upon hocke mondaie for a crosse cloth which was bought.”112 This collection and the rather significant amount it raised indicate some cultural depth to the restoration of old customs. The Edwardian churchwardens’ representation of the parish as unified (parishioners bent to have services in English and psalms in Latin that people could not comprehend) fails to account for the spontaneous appearance of traditional pastimes such as Hocktide celebrations and the return of items sold in 1550.
The newly empowered churchwardens of Mary’s reign also employed subtle writing strategies as a part of organizing their accounts. Faced with a polarized parish elite, which still included the Owen brothers and their supporters, the Marian churchwardens emphasized the ease of restoration. Entries concerning various donations returning liturgical items and vestments appear, and the 1553–54 accounts do not create villains the way the 1547–48 accounts did, but, in the typical legitimating fashion of the accounts, they demonstrate a speedy and easy re-creation of a Catholic parish. The silence of the formerly empowered group, who only appear when they are assessed fines, simply proves the point. By 1554, the parish was in compliance with the policies of Mary’s government and church, and any resentment or opposition, which must have existed, is minimized to the point of near invisibility.113 The traditional side may be seen to be doing their jobs, while the “reforming faction” acquiesced to Marian religious policies. William Dabbes, the curate who replaced William Rafford and who, therefore, should have been part of the “reforming” faction, remained in his office throughout the reign.114 In fact, it appears that none of the ardent “reformers” endured either exile or martyrdom; they conformed.
The churchwardens’ supplication to Edward Seymour, 15 April 1548, denouncing William Green “for that he coude not preche nor teache well nor noo curat for hym and so,” stands out as crucial to understanding the nature of the problems in the parish. The solution offered by Owen and Jonson, somewhat inaccurately, emphasized the parishioners’ collective will as ultimately what mattered. However, the parish’s appeal to the Lord Protector makes it equally clear that emotion had trumped prudence for Robert Owen and Anthony Jonson. A typical accounting strategy would have aimed for a smooth audit at the end of the churchwardens’ tenure of office, but that goal was jettisoned for something else. As the rhetoric became increasingly strident, the churchwardens and their thirty honest men of the parish were in a political battle with the farmer of the benefice and the curate (whom Green had selected). Green must have been a force to be reckoned with when he still had a legally established authority in the parish. The churchwardens sought to delegitimize his voice because it was their only real option.
We may never know exactly what the conflict was about, but we now may say a great deal about it. This large, sprawling parish was already disordered by numerous events prior to the start of the records in 1547–48: (1) the dissolutions of Holy Trinity Aldgate and the Abbey of Saint Clare, both of which had once provided firm boundaries to this extra-mural parish; (2) the rise of a new and empowered group within the parish, associated with a new industry greatly favored by the king (gun making); (3) the death of Thomas Audley in 1543, which further removed a potentially stabilizing influence in the parish, (4) the lease of the benefice by a chantry priest, William Green, and his appointment of a new vicar in January 1548; (5) the establishment of an extra-diocesan parish in the Minories, where none had been expected; and (6) some portion of parishioners, including socially significant ones, had ceased to pay their tithes prior to 1547, prompting an investigation by the Court of Chancery. These issues are crucial to the question of why a conflict occurred in this parish. There had been a significant weakening of authoritative groups or individuals who could calm the conflict. Additionally, the government’s lack of clear policies and uniform enforcement of its laws exacerbated the situation. Against these prominent themes, Robert Owen and Anthony Jonson were selected as churchwardens, they had to deal with William Green, and none of these men seemed to respond well to debates and compromise.
As already stated, most studies have analyzed the parish conflict contextualized against the theological framework of the Reformation. A.G.B. Atkinson, curate of the parish in the late Victorian period, published a short essay in the English Historical Review (1896) in which he proclaimed:
The record books of the church of St. Botolph, Aldgate, begin in the year 1547, which marked the accession of Edward VI to the throne. We are able thus to trace accurately the change in religious services which took place in an important city parish during the Reformation.115
The very statement implies a selective reading. Atkinson wrote, incorrectly, that the troubles in the parish stemmed from an Edwardian commission that sought “to pull down images” and from other iconoclastic policies in addition to the parish’s own adoption of English into the liturgy. “The curate of Aldgate, as we learn from the record books, resented the innovation, though the parishioners were ‘bent to have the service of the Churche in English.’”116 Resent was not a word employed by the authors of the churchwardens’ accounts, but to state that he resented parish actions placed him in an unsavory—and unintellectual—position. While Atkinson did find certain tensions that existed between his reading of the evidence and some of the actual entries, his approach to the sources as presenting reforming churchwardens fighting a traditional curate allied with the farmer of the benefice in unbiased documentation was allowed to dominate not simply the essay in the English Historical Review, but another that he published in The Antiquarian, and also a book—eponymously named after the parish—that also appeared in the late nineteenth century.
In a review of Atkinson’s St. Botolph Aldgate, the Story of a City Parish (1898), Grant Richards, publisher and author, wrote: “Here, as elsewhere, it seems clear that the changes ordered under Edward VI. were easily accepted by the people, and that was little or no deep-rooted attachment to the old religion.”117 Further on, Richards does acknowledge the ease with which the restoration of the old religion was accomplished under Mary I. He concludes, “it is true that none of these changes could have been resisted: but there is no suggestion of resistance, or even of reluctance, and not the slightest sign of the religious animosities.”118 What makes Grant’s review significant one hundred years later is his dismay that those nascent Protestants did not really behave as he expected.
Over the last century as historical interpretations of the Tudor Reformations have grown in sophistication, the privileging of the Protestant/theological reading of this topic has continued. Ronald Hutton mentioned the parish in his essay “The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations.” He states that:
Two parishes show unmistakable evidence of Protestant zeal: Rye, where the images were removed before September 1547 and called ‘idols’, and St. Botolph Aldgate, where the congregation got rid of their curate in October after a fierce tussle with the Lord Mayor, and adopted an English service.119
Hutton’s essay is part of a collection of essays that introduced the profession to a revisionist paradigm for the mid-Tudor century and that included Christopher Haigh’s paradigm-shifting essay that pushed readers to reconsider their concepts of premise and conclusion in interpreting the various topics of the English Reformation. Yet the primacy of the churchwardens’ version of events remains paramount, with complexities unanalyzed.
Susan Brigden also mentions the parish of Saint Botolph Aldgate in London and the Reformation, introducing the parish with a statement concerning a general struggle over faith:
In the early Reformation very few parishioners, even those moving toward reform, were yet used to trusting their individual conscience or to finding faith only in Scripture; rather they were accustomed to authority and looked, as always before, to their parish clergy for guidance. Yet in London parishes the messages might be diverse as reforming curates contended with reactionary rectors. So it was in St Leonard Foster Lane and St Botolph Aldgate.120
Brigden then adds: “At St Botolph Aldgate a running battle developed between the conservative farmer of the parish, William Green, and his unregenerate curate, William Rufford [sic], and a reforming contingent led by the churchwardens, newly elected.”121 This representation of Green and Rafford is in keeping with the tone of the accounts themselves, and, if one has faith that the accounts are generally accurate and do not express any unique authorial perspective, then it makes almost perfect sense; the Reformation had come to the periphery of London.
Analysis of these accounts based on idealized categories of reformers versus traditionalists does not work, because such readings ignore the nature of local record keeping, the local political context, and the personalities involved. There was most certainly a religious component to the conflict, but the parish conflict involved some very flawed human beings. The churchwardens actively looked to the government for clues and directions, and they were not above appropriating language and legislation to their own benefit. The rhetoric of the new reign defined people who lacked enthusiasm for new religious policies as ignorant or obstinate, and these parish officials did likewise. At Saint Botolph Aldgate, the personalities of local leaders operating in the milieu of a fragmented parish society made a big difference. Still, Green and Rafford compromised in the summer of 1548, while Owen conformed throughout Mary’s reign, as did the curate whom he had placed in office. Their willingness to compromise indicates that the crucial factor in the parish dust-up was the reign of the boy king, the weakening of royal authority, and the evaporation of clear ecclesiastical policies. Owen may have acted enthusiastically to help the son of his former patron. His conformity under Mary proves his loyalty to the dynasty above whatever theological understandings he might have developed.
An apologia for William Green
The churchwardens’ accounts from 1553–55 take on only one specific personality, and that person was, once again, William Green. In 1553–54, he donated £10 to the parish. Along with several other men, he was appointed a “governor and overseer” of the parish by the newly restored Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. William Green, however, died between the succession of Mary in July 1553 and the actual making of the accounts in December.
Also the said accountants chardge them selves wt xLi viij s. ij d. whiche Willm Grene of his owne good will gave and dyd payd in his lyffe tyme towards the reddynnge of the saide prshe churche besyde the his gift of the highte awlter.122
Several pages later there appears a passage that those who were now empowered by Mary’s policies must have enjoyed producing:
Hereafter ensuith certan gyftes that be frele geven unto the said Churche of Sante Buttolphes wtout Algate London by dyverse and sondre personnes as hereafter ensuith.
In p[ri]mus William Grenne of the said parishe deceassed not only for the good will and zele that he hath borne ever unto the said Churche But also for the setting fourth of the same to gods glory and honuor of his owne mors motyon and ffree will at his propor costs and charges gave and Restored upon the fore parts or ffronteof the highe awter and the upper parte of the sepuker as it now standeth unto the said churche not wt standing in tymes past it dyd belong to the said churche also the saide Wm Grene paide of his owne good well towards reddyrsinge of the said churche xLi. viij s. ij d.123
William Green had been rehabilitated and this transformation is the strongest proof of the political nature of these records. If he was aware of the change in his public image in the final months of his life, then it must have helped the old man, the elderly chantry priest, find some peace in his final days. He probably felt as if a storm had passed.
Bishop Bonner appointed parishioners to oversee the parish and to work with a commissioner “for the Reparinge & reddrysing of the said prs … churche wiche was fallen in grete ruin and decay.”124 The commissioners assessed £20 on Robert Owen and some lesser amounts on others who had once been in positions of power in the previous reign; that is how their deficiency is represented in the accounts. Those who had control over the production of records could make an accounting of parish activities that served new agendas.
Conclusion
Like Robert Owen before them, the churchwardens of 1554 and 1555 looked to their monarch for direction and assumed their decisions were shaping the future and setting things right. What the Owen brothers thought about it all is not recorded, but Robert Owen would live to see the world change again. Microhistorical analysis reveals how the parish’s lack of unity, along with a lack of strong authoritative local institutions, abetted by a weak national government, helps to explain why Saint Botolph Aldgate experienced such intense conflict in 1548. It was, indeed, in the throes of Reformation—the Edwardian one.
Notes
1 Some of the information in the essay has been previously published in Gary G. Gibbs, “Saint Botolph, Aldgate, ca. 1550,” in Dee Dyas (ed.), The Story of the Church of England, an interactive DVD (York: the Centre for Christianity and Culture, the University of York, 2010).
2 The CWA of Saint Botolph Aldgate, 1547–1585, LMA MS P69/BOT2/B/012/MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 3r.
3 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 2r.
4 TNA PRO E 117 4/69.
5 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward VI, 1547–48, 6 vols (Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1970): 1: 95.
6 Some records have Owen and others use Owens. TNA PRO E117 4/69; H.B. Walters, London Churches at the Reformation (London: SPCK, 1939): 204 & 204ff; John Stow, A Survey of London, 2 vols (London: 1603, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908): 1: 128.
7 Stow, Survey, 2: 288ff; Christine Leighton, Calendar of Patent Rolls 35 Elizabeth I, Part I to Part x (c 66/1395–1404), List and Index Society, 282 (Kew: Distributed to Subscribers, 2000): no. 599.
8 Charles ffoulkes, The Gun-founders of England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 47–8.
9 James Gairdner (ed.), “Henry VIII: February 1536, 26–29,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January-June 1536 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1887), 135–60. British History Online, available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol10/pp135-160 (accessed August 6, 2018).
10 James Gairdner (ed.), “Henry VIII: April 1536, 26–30,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January-June 1536 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1887), 310–29. British History Online, available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol10/pp310-329 (accessed August 6, 2018).
11 James Gairdner (ed.), “Henry VIII: July 1536, 6–10,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July-December 1536 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1888), 19–29. British available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol11/pp19-29 (accessed August 6, 2018).
12 ffoulkes, Gun-founders, 48–9.
13 In addition to the texts mentioned below, see also Eamon Duffy, “The End of it All: The Material Culture of the Medieval English Parish and the 1552 Inventories of Church Goods,” The Parish in Late Medieval England. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 14 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2006): 381–99.
14 Lucy E. C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000): 1.
15 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 39r; The Commissary Court Wills, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, 1522–39, fo 180v; Arthur George Breek Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate: The Story of a City Parish, Compiled from the Record Books and Other Ancient Documents (London: Grant Richards, 1898): 65, 81; and, Cal Husting, 1: 137; 2: 301; Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Edward VI: 1: 352–3.
16 The Commissary Court Wills, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, 1483–89, fo. 19v; and, The Commissary Court Wills, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/8, 1489–1502, fos. 1v & 7r; The Commissary Court Wills, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, 1516–21, fos. 45v & 104v; MS09171/10, 1522–39, fos. 71v–72v.
17 C.J. Kitching, London and the Middlesex Chantry Certificates (London: London Record Society, 1980): 43, once again employing the formula x1.33. See Vanessa Harding, “The Population of London, 1550–1700: A Review of the Published Evidence,” LJ 15 (1990): 116; and E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconsideration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 566.
18 VCH London: 246.
19 Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 238.
20 CLRO, Repertory, 9, fos. 262–3; as cited in John Schofield and Richard Lea, Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, City of London. An Archaeological Reconstruction and History (London: Museum of London Archaeological Services, 2005): 165; I would like to thank Robert N. Swanson for bringing this reference to my attention.
21 Anthony Paul House, “The City of London and the Problem of the Liberties, c. 1540–c.1640,” MA thesis, Christ Church, Oxford, 2006: 78.
22 R.G. Lang (ed.), “1541 London Subsidy roll: Portsoken Ward,” in Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London, 1541 and 1582. (London: London Record Society, 1993), 96–100. British History Online, available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol29/pp96-100 (accessed August 6, 2018).
23 William Green was the farmer of the benefice, meaning he oversaw tithe collection. MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 2r.
24 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 3v.
25 1 Ed VI, c. 14. G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982): 393.
26 Peter Cunich, “The Dissolution of the Chantries,” in Patrick Collinson and John Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English Towns, 1500–1640. (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1998): 160.
27 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 3v.
28 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992): 398, 407, 450, and 458; Ronald Hutton, “The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations,” in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 120; Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017): 314–16; and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996): 384.
29 Hutton, “The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations”: 120.
30 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 3v.
31 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 136; The CWA and VM of the Church of St Martin Outwich, 1508–1546, LMA MS P69/MTN3, 1548.
32 Gina Vere Alexander, “The Life and Career of Edmund Bonner,” PhD Dissertation, London, 1960: 281–2.
33 Martin A.S. Hume and Royall Tyler (eds.), Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Vienna, Simancas, and Elsewhere (London: 1912; Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1969), 9: 153; hereafter Letters & Papers, 9: 153 ff and 513.
34 “certain controversies, strives, and dissencion.” Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI, 1:95.
35 Timothy George, John Robinson and the English Separatist Tradition (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1982): 24 and 24ff; Edward Murray Tomlinson, A History of the Minories, London (London: Smith, Elder, 1907): 80–108.
36 Malcolm Johnson, Outside the Gate: Saint Botolph’s and Aldgate 950–1994 (London: Stepney Books, 1994): 48; H. Gareth Owen, “The Liberty of the Minories: A Study in Elizabethan Radicalism,” East London Papers 8 (1965): 81–2.
37 House, “The City of London,” 78.
38 A.B. Chaplin, A View of the Organization and Order of the Primitive Church, as Presented in Scripture and History, to the End of the Second Century: with the Apostolic Succession to the Present Day (New Haven, CT: S. Babcock, 1845): 313ff.
39 Johnson, Outside the Gate, 48.
40 Henry Jordan, fishmonger (will dated 1470), established a chantry at Saint Botolph’s Aldgate; however, the financing went to the Fishmongers’ Company so that they could pay for it. This is the only perpetual chantry mentioned by John Stow. Kingsford, editor of Stow, says Jordan was a bell-founder residing in Billiter Lane. Stow, 1: 127, 2: 288; Cal Husting, 2: 543–4.
41 John le Rous (1282); Nicholas Dereman, butcher (1335); William de Haverynge (1298); John le Longge, butcher (1348); John Romeney, potter (1348); Agnes Mareschal, widow of Alexander de (1349); Matilda Weston, widow of Peter de (1348); William Cosyn, potter (1368); John de Chalton (1380); William Burford, bell-founder (1390); Alexander Sprot, vintner (1438); Henry (Herry) Jordan, fishmonger (1470). Cal Husting, 1:59–60, 137, 408–9, 550–1, 555, 593–4, 621–2; 2:129, 227, 301, 485, 543–4.
42 Cal Husting, 1: 137.
43 “Chaplain to sing divine service: lands and tenements given by Thomas Weston for his soul for ever, £5 6 s. 8 d. p.a. Of which, 12 s. 10 d. for 2 quitrents to the king; £4 13 s. 10 d. to the stipendiary priest … [this was William Green]; total deductions £5 6 s. 8 d. Clear remainder Nil.” Kitching, London and Middlesex Chantry Certificates, 43.
44 One chantry appears not to have been temporally limited, and the Lord Mayor of London was bequeathed 6 s. 8 d. from the property rents to present the priest to the position, which he did well into the fifteenth century. Reginald R. Sharpe (ed.), Calendar of Letter-Books preserved among the archives of the corporation of the City of London at the Guild hall. Letter-Book I. Circa 1400–1422 (London: Printed by order of the Corporation under the direction of the library committee by John Edward Francis, 1909): 67 (1408), 92 (1411), and 128 (1414); and, Letter-Book K (1911): 111 (1430): and 213 (1437); Stow, Survey, 2: 288ff.
45 Volume of Collections made by William Henry Black, LMA MS CLC/270/MS00260; and Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, 81.
46 There is no evidence that the chantry ever functioned. This paragraph relies on Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, Chapter 5.
47 Kitching, London and Middlesex Chantry Certificates, 43.
48 “for warnyng of the perysche to assemble when robert owen and anthony jonson was a proved before the kynge commyssyoners.” MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4r.
49 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4r.
50 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4r.
51 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4r.
52 “for payntynge of two auter clothes for the syde auters.” MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4v.
53 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4v.
54 Gerald Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1994): 256.
55 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 372.
56 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 6v.
57 No detailed explanation concerning the supplication to the Lord Protector survives, or of the complaint made by Green and Morganson to the Lord Mayor.
58 A search for this document at both the Guildhall and the London Municipal Archives has failed to produce the document. MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5r.
59 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 4v.
60 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5r.
61 Matthew Coverdale’s Goostly psalms and spirituall songes drawen out of the holy Scriptures, for the co[n]forte and consolacyon of such as loue to reioyce in God and his worde (ca. 1535) or, the collection by Thomas Sternhold, a collection of nineteen psalms that was never officially sanctioned by the church, and Beth Quitslund argues convincingly that it must have been published between late 1547 and mid-1548. See Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins, and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008): 2, 5, 17–18, 28.
62 Printed by Roger Car for Anthony Smyth. London. STC 2375. My thanks to Beth Quitslund for this information.
63 W.H. Overall, The Accounts of the Churchwardens of the Parish of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London, from 1456 to 1608 (London: privately printed, n.d.), 68.
64 Clive Burgess (ed.), The Church Records of Saint Andrew Hubbard Eastcheap, c. 1450–c.1570 (London: London Record Society, 1999): 164.
65 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5r.
66 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5r.
67 Liber Albus, 17.
68 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5r.
69 MS09235/001, fo. 5v.
70 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5v.
71 Brigden transcribed this as “God’s Penny,” see Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 431–2; it is spelled “goodde” in the CWA and means: a “goodly penny,” or decent salary.
72 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 5v.
73 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 6r.
74 One of two city prisons under the responsibility of London’s sheriffs. Caroline M. Barron. London in the Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 167.
75 A search at the London Metropolitan Archives failed to turn up this decree.
76 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fos. 5v–6r.
77 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 6v.
78 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 2v.
79 The other possibility is that the accounts are misdated.
80 F.E. Brightman, “The Litany under Henry VIII,” EHR 24, 93 (1909): 101; James Gairdner, “Henry VIII’s English Litanies,” The English Historical Review 23, 91 (1908), 530–3; Hutton, “The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations,” 118; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 330.
81 The Order of the Communion, 1548: vi.
82 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Allen Lane, 1999): 77; Sacrament Act of 1547, available at: www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw6/1/1/contents.
83 The Order of the Communion, 1548, xviii–xix; and John Gough Nichols (ed.), Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London.(London: Camden Society, 1852): 55.
84 Natalie Mears, “Special Nationwide Worship and the Book of Common Prayer in England, Wales and Ireland, 1533–1642,” in Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds.), Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013): 85.
85 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 395; Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme, 2.
86 Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, 251.
87 Ibid., 253; cf., Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkins (eds.), Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964): 1: 398–9.
88 Kenneth Carleton, “Bonner, Edmund (d. 1569),” ODNB 6: 553; MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 82.
89 For William Rafford’s appointment, see Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, 79; and Johnson, Outside the Gate, 186.
90 Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, 249–50; cf., Hughes and Larkins, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 395.
91 Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, 204 and 204ff.
92 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fos. 6r and 13v.
93 C.S. Knighton and David Loades (eds.), The Anthony Roll of Henry VIII’s Navy: Pepys Library 2991 and British Library Additional MS 22047 with related documents (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
94 Ordinance Surveyor, 1538–1854, Institute of Historical Research, available at: www.history.ac.uk/publications/office/ordnance-surveyor.
95 James Gairdner (ed.), “Henry VIII: February 1536, 11–20,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January-June 1536 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1887), 108–26. British History Online, available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol10/pp108-126 (accessed August 6, 2018); Andrew Pettegree, “‘Thirty Years On’, Progress towards Integration amongst the Immigrant Population of London,” in John Chartres and David Hey (eds.), English Rural Society, 1500–1800; Essays in Honour of Joan Thrisk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990): 302–3.
96 Witnesses to the will: William Green, “preest curate,”; Anthony Wolfe, priest; John Hasilwood, surveyor of the King; John Frank and Gyles Harryson, two beer brewers; and, Christopher Morris, “one of the king’s gunners” and, later, a clerk of the Exchequer. TNA PROB 11/25/318 (fo. 196–198); C. S. Knighton, “The Manuscript and its Compiler,” in Knighton and Loades, The Anthony Roll, 3.
97 George Alfred Raikes, The History of the Honourable Artillery Company, 2 vols (London: R. Bentley & Sons, 1878), 1: 17.
98 Pettegree, “Thirty Years on,” 302.
99 According to the 1583 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Giles Harrison was a brewer to the king, who was fined for having performed a mass for friends at his tavern, The Red Lion in 1541. Available at: www.johnfoxe.org/index.php?realm=more&gototype=modern&type=person&letter=G.. As Ethan Shagan has argued, many people were arguing particular points—sometimes in not very sophisticated ways—about the larger theological debates of the period. See Shagan, Chapter 6. Harrison also owned a tavern named “The Bell” in the parish of Saint Katherine Cree and a store house in Saint Botolph Aldgate. The Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI, 1: 296–7.
100 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 17r.
101 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fos. 14v, 17r and 18v.
102 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 16r.
103 The accounts for 1548–49 are quite brief and badly written, unlike the years that predate and follow. MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 12v. See also, Brigden, London and the Reformation, 462.
104 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 14v & 15r.
105 TNA PRO E117 4/69.
106 Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, 70–1.
107 Ibid., 71; c.f., MS09235/001, fo. 24v.
108 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 39r; Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, 71–2.
109 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 39r; Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, 75.
110 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 39r; Atkinson, Saint Botolph Aldgate, 75.
111 Alexandra Walsham, “Recycling the Sacred: Material Culture and Cultural Memory after the English Reformation,” Church History 86(4) (2017): 1121–54.
112 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 41r.
113 MS09235/001, pt. 1; Atkinson, St. Botolph Aldgate, 74.
114 Forbes, Chronicle from Aldgate: 25; Atkinson, St. Botolph Aldgate, 79; and Johnson, Outside the Gate, 186.
115 Arthur George Breek Atkinson, “Reformation Changes in a City Parish,” EHR 11 (1896): 522; Arthur George Breek Atkinson, “Some Entries from the Record Books of St. Botolph Without Aldgate,” The Antiquary 32 (1896): 142–9.
116 Emphasis mine. Atkinson, “Reformation Changes in a City Parish,” 522.
117 Emphasis mine. Grant Richards, Literature: The American Edition 12 (April 30, 1898): 496.
118 Ibid., 496.
119 Hutton, “The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations,” 121.
120 Brigden, London and the Reformation, 403.
121 Susan Brigden used Rufford, Malcom Johnson and A.G.B. Atkinson used Rofford. My reading is that the name looks sometimes like Rafford and sometimes like Rofford; I went with the former. See Atkinson, “Reformation Changes in a City Parish,” 522; Brigden, London and the Reformation, 431–2; Johnson, Outside the Gate, 186.
122 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 31v.
123 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 39r.
124 MS09235/001, pt. 1, fo. 31r.