Robert Crowley (printer)
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Robert Crowley also Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole, and Crule (c. 1517 – June 18, 1588), was a stationer
, poet
, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles
at Frankfurt
. Crowley appears to have been a Henrician Evangelical
who favoured a more reformed Protestantism
than was sanctioned at that time by the king and the Church of England
.
Under the more favourable conditions of the brief reign of Edward VI
, Crowley took part in a well-organised London
network of evangelical stationers to argue for the reforms he sought, particularly on behalf of ordinary people, for the spiritual and material health of the nation. In this regard he resembles his contemporaries Hugh Latimer
, Thomas Lever
, Thomas Beccon
, and others, who upheld a vision of England as a reformed Christian commonwealth
. Like these others, Crowley attacked what he perceived as corruption and uncharitable self-interest among the clergy and wealthy, land-holding elites whom Crowley saw as inhibiting the progress of true reform. It was during this time that Crowley participated as writer, editor, and/or printer in the production of the first printed editions of Piers Plowman
, the first translation of the gospels into Welsh
, and the first complete metrical psalter
in English
, which was also the first English psalter with harmonised music.
Toward the end of Edward's reign and later, Crowley criticised the Edwardian Reformation as being compromised by self-serving, insufficiently reformed aristocrats, and he came to regard the Dissolution of the Monasteries
, not as a boon to the people as was originally hoped, but as the replacement of one form of corruption by another. Upon his return to England following the reign of Mary I
, Crowley produced a revised and up-dated version of a historical chronicle in which he represented the Edwardian Reformation as a substantial failure because of the corruption of its supposed supporters such as Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley
; Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
; and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
. In Crowley's account of the Marian persecutions and martyrs he represents them as the tragic but potentially redemptive cost – mostly paid by commoners – for the failures of the Edwardian Reformation. This work became the basic source for John Foxe
's account of the Marian period in his famous Book of Martyrs.
In the early to mid 1560s Crowley held several positions in the church, and he focused his energies on effecting change from the pulpit and within the church hierarchy. In reaction to what has often been called the Elizabethan Religious Settlement
despite its failure to achieve a true consensus, Crowley led the anti-vestiarian faction in resuming the vestments controversy
which had taken place during the reign of Edward VI. This role eventually cost Crowley all his clerical offices. During this dispute he produced, in collaboration with other London clergy, what has been called by Patrick Collinson
"the first Puritan
manifesto
". Late in life Crowley was restored to several positions within the church, and he appears to have charted a more moderate course by defending the established church from both Roman Catholicism and the more extreme, emerging nonconformist and Puritan factions which espoused a Presbyterian church polity.
, possibly in Tetbury
, although John Bale
says that he was a native of Northamptonshire
, and A. B. Emden's A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford says that Crowley was twenty on 25 July 1539. Crowley himself wrote in 1578 that he was then sixty-one years old.
Crowley began his studies at the University of Oxford
in about 1534, and was listed as a demy1 of Magdalen College
on 25 July 1539. He experienced an evangelical
conversion about this time which entailed religious convictions more in line with continental Protestant reformers, but quite at odds with the Church of England under Henry VIII
and the Act of Six Articles, known to those who chafed under it as "the whip with six strings". Magdalen was then "a hotbed of evangelicals," according to Brett Usher. Four of its members during this period became bishops under Elizabeth I, and with Crowley, Lawrence Humphrey
was a key leader in the vestments controversy
that took place during her reign. Most of the Magdalen evangelicals became exiles under Mary I, and their influence was purged from the college by Stephen Gardiner
in 1554.
Crowley received his B.A.
on 19 June 1540, and became Probationer Fellow on 26 July 1541 or 1542. In 1542 he became a Fellow
of Magdalen College, but he left the same year. Crowley's departure may have been due to a purge of evangelicals, or because, like John Foxe
, he objected to the necessity of taking holy orders
which entailed a vow of celibacy
. It is known that Foxe, like many evangelicals, did not accept the rationale for mandatory clerical celibacy, and evidently Crowley did not either, as he married some years later. At this time Foxe also left the college, naming Crowley and the future bishop Thomas Cooper
in a letter to Magdalen's president, Owen Oglethorpe
, as being among his circle. Foxe described this group of his fellows as being persecuted by other members of the college, although – unlike Foxe and Crowley – Cooper did not leave the university, and while Oglethorpe himself was no evangelical, years later in Crowley's psalter's dedication letter to him, Crowley holds his former teacher in high regard.
From 1542 to about 1546 Crowley tutored for the Protestant household of Sir Nicholas Poyntz
(1510–1556/7) in Iron Acton
, Gloucestershire, his own home county. (Poyntz's aunt on his father's side, Lady Anne Walsh and wife of Sir John Walsh
of Little Sodbury
, had taken in William Tyndale
as a tutor for their sons from 1521 to 1522/1523.) At the same time as Crowley, Foxe found a similar arrangement, following a pattern whereby promising, young, university-educated men who sought greater changes in the church were supported by members of the lesser nobility until political circumstances were more favourable for public and institutional engagement.
, whose uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
, held the real reins of power as Lord Protector
during Edward's minority. Both were sympathetic to the reformist cause.
Perhaps anticipating the death of Henry VIII, Crowley had moved to London by the end of 1546, and according to William Herbert
's Typographical Antiquities he was possibly working as a proof-reader for an evangelical printer, John Day
, and perhaps later William Seres
as well. Seres and Day became partners in late 1547, and remained together until 1550. In 1547 they were working in Holborn Conduit in St Sepulchre
's parish at the sign of the Resurrection, but as William Cecil
's servant, Seres was able to acquire Peter College for his printing operation. This was a former chantry
at St Paul's Cathedral
, part of which became Stationers' Hall in 1554. Between 1549, when he became a member of the Stationers' Company, and 1551, when he was ordained, Crowley wrote eleven or twelve books, and edited, translated, or acted as printer or publisher of seven others (see below, Crowley's status as a printer).
Crowley may have been involved in the preparation and publication of several books between 1546 and 1548; he certainly participated in the production of some of them. There were two editions of A Supplication of the Poor Commons c. 1546, which may have been written by Henry Brinkelow alone or possibly in association with Crowley. One of these editions included a reprint of Simon Fish
's A Supplication of Beggars (c. 1529), which famously attacked the doctrine of purgatory as a politically and economically disabling deception inflicted on the English people. Both "supplications" presented socioeconomic and religious reform as two integral aspects of a single response to the major problems of the day. The other early imprint with some connection to Crowley was a treatise on the true, biblical meaning of the Lord's supper, with a rebuttal of Thomas More
's arguments in favour of the Catholic doctrines on that subject. This tract was printed in three editions, and is attributed to William Tyndale (it is also sometimes attributed to George Joye
). It includes an introductory epistle, "To all the studious readers", that is signed by Crowley.
The first books that are unambiguously Crowley's issued from Day and Seres' press in 1548, when Seres became a freeman of the Stationers' Company. These were a refutation of Nicholas Shaxton
's sermon at Anne Askew
's burning in 1546, in which Shaxton recanted his evangelical beliefs, a refutation of Miles Hogarde's arguments for transubstantiation
in a lost ballad called The Abuse of ye blessed sacrament of the aultare, and An information and peticion, which must have been written before December 1547, since it refers to the Act of Six Articles as being unrepeated. Crowley's response to Hogarde contains the only source for Hogarde's original poem, since Crowley quotes it in full in order to refute it passage by passage. An informacion and peticion addresses parliament on behalf of economically distressed commoners, and follows an established tradition of social complaint regarding the abuses of wealthy landlords, such as rack-rent
ing, engrossing (the consolidation of several smaller strips into one hedged farm, separated from the rest of the common land), and enclosure. Appearing in two English editions and two Latin editions translated from the English by J. Heron and possibly published by Stephen Mierdman, the full title is An informacion and peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore commons of this real me, compiled and imprinted for this only purpose that amongst them that haue to doe in the Parliamente, some godlye mynded men, may hereat take occasion to speak more in the matter then the authoure was able to write. If the wealthy fail to reform themselves, Crowley warns that divine retribution will follow, and he looks to the crown to make things right. This is the pattern of a number of Crowley's subsequent Edwardian publications, and for that reason he has been associated with other social critics of the day, such as Thomas Lever
, Thomas Beccon
, and Hugh Latimer
. Some influential 20th-century historians have referred to these men as constituting a "commonwealth party", but G.R. Elton succeeded in sweeping away this romantic designation. The existence of a "commonwealth party" is now widely rejected, and its supposed members are unlikely to be described in terms of a collective movement.
In 1549 Richard Grafton
and Mierdman published Crowley's The Psalter of Dauid newly translated into English metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and with more delete of the mynde, be reade and songe of all men. Wherunto is added a note of four parties.... There is an introduction in English, and a dedicatory epistle to Owen Oglethorpe
, president of Magdalen College, Oxford at that time and when Crowley had been a student and fellow there. (Crowley's psalter is discussed in greater detail under the entry for metrical psalters.)
Crowley's next publications included a large number of polemical social works, often poems, some of which appeared in several editions:
There are also two books of uncertain authorship published during this period which may have been Crowley's work:
Authorship of Pyers plowmans exhortation is speculatively attributed to Crowley by Barbara Johnson in Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim's Progress: Reception and the Protestant Reader (Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). Vita fratrum medicantium is a lost medieval text that was printed around 1550, perhaps with Crowley's involvement. In his catalogue John Bale
names Peter Pateshull as its author and R. Kylington as the translator. Pateshull was an Augustinian divine at Oxford c.1387, whom Wycliffe had persuaded to preach against the Augustinian friars. His text is a commentary on Hildegard of Bingen
's prophecy against friars, which was enshrined as proto-Protestant lore in Foxe's Actes and Monuments.http://books.google.com/books?id=bGoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353&lpg=PA353&dq=hildegard+propechy+against+friars&source=web&ots=T-1s9iURVc&sig=1vYrrqNnV_X9knIf0aRFO2zgP_Y&hl=en.
Next came Crowley's three editions of Piers Plowman in 1550, as well as an edition of the prologue to John Wycliffe's translation of the Bible, which was written by John Purvey
and wrongly attributed to Wycliff by Crowley on John Bale's authority. A 1540 recension
of this text had been printed as: The dore of holy scripture. Crowley's version contains a signed note "To the reader". A running head reads: "The pathwaye to perfect knowledg", and Crowley's title page for the book reads: "The true copye of a prolog wrytten about two C. yeres paste by Iohn Wycklife (as maye iustly be gatherid bi that, that Iohn Bale hath writte[n] of him in his boke entitlid the Summarie of famouse writers of the Ile of great Brita[n]) the originall whereof is founde written in an olde English Bible bitwixt the olde Testament and the Newe. Whych Bible remaynith now in ye Kyng hys maiesties chamber". Also in 1550 Crowley printed three books by the Welsh scholar William Salisbury
(or Salesbury) concerning the Welsh language, some anti-Roman Catholic polemics, and an ancient Welsh precedent for clerical marriage. In 1551 Crowley published a fourth Salesbury text, a Welsh translation of the epistle and gospel readings from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer
.
In 1551 Crowley printed a poetic work "for John Case dwelling in Peter Coledge rentes"; its title is: The knoledge of good and iuyle, other wyse calyd Ecclesiastes, ryght excelente and worthy, of all men to be had in mynde now a newe set fourth in meter. by pore Shakerlaye. Two original long poems by Crowley were also printed by him that year: Philargyrie of Greate Britayne (a political-religious allegory) and Pleasure and payne, heauen and hell: Remembre these foure, and all shall be well.
, the King's printer, as the printer of many of Crowley's books under Edward VI. Illston demonstrates that the initial blocks used in Crowley's books between 1549 and 1551 belonged to Grafton, and she notes the frequent use of the same type in Grafton and Crowley imprints. This led to the STC revisers and other scholars, most notably John N. King, to conclude that Crowley never had his own press, but was only a bookseller. The revised STC generally follows Illston, although Illston attributed the printing of Crowley's Psalter to Richard Jugge
with assistance from Grafton; the revised STC, King, and other sources identify Stephen Mierdman as its printer.
Prior to Crowley's arrival in London, Grafton had been imprisoned three times for printing-related offences: twice in 1541 (for a "sedicious epistle of Melanctons" and ballads defending Thomas Cromwell), and then in 1543, for the Great Bible
. The possibility arises, therefore, that Grafton used Crowley's imprint "as a conduit for radical publication, but at a safe remove", as R. Carter Hailey suggests in "Giving Light to the Reader: Robert Crowley's Editions of Piers Plowman (1550)" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 2001): 15 and "'Geuyng light to the reader': Robert Crowley's Editions of Piers Plowman (1550)", Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America 95.4 (2001): 483–502. This semi-surreptitious printing was an attempt, in King's estimation, by Protector Somerset and his supporters "to shape public opinion in secret" (English Reformation Literature, 96–7; repeated in King's "The Book-trade under Edward VI and Mary I", in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp, eds., vol. 3, 1400–1557, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999]: 167–8). However, this argument for a connection to Somerset depends on tenuous links drawn between the Protector and Crowley via Grafton and/or Lady Elizabeth Fane. (See below, Crowley's patrons.)
On the other hand, Peter M. W. Blayney contends that the revised STC erroneously indicates that Grafton printed Crowley's works. Blayney believes that the revisers realised that the ornamental "A" in Crowley's The baterie of the Popes Botereulx (1550): A6r (STC 21613) "had once belonged to Grafton", but they did not know that "the person from whom Crowley borrowed it was almost certainly not Grafton but John Day, who apparently acquired it from Grafton in 1548 (STC 23004) and never returned it (2087.5, 6849.5, 7633.3, etc.)". Additionally, Blayney suggests that the STC revisers were misled by another fact:
The appearance of Grafton's blocks in Crowley's books is, on this view, insufficient evidence from which to conclude that Crowley did not print them himself or, moreover, that he never had a printing house at all. Blayney believes that Crowley did have a press and printed the works that bear his name from 1550 to 1551, except for a few titles printed entirely or in part by Day and/or Mierdman:
Blayney's revised attributions are discussed and listed in Hailey's dissertation; they are expected to appear in Blayney's forthcoming book, The Stationers' Company and the Printers of London, 1501http://books.google.com/books?id=oqVi8qlPPi8C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=The+Stationers'+Company+and+the+Printers+of+London,+1501%E2%80%931616&source=web&ots=VBvPFXFtoc&sig=wjCUNwm5CQcq4uNPK6tDtBje3nQ&hl=en.
This is especially true in the case of Somerset, who fell from power just before Crowley's most prolific publishing period. Crowley cast Somerset in a less than positive light in alterations and continuations that he made in his 1559 revised and updated version of Thomas Lanquet
and Thomas Cooper
's chronicle. Crowley's Philargyrie may also offer veiled criticism of some of Somerset's perceived military and political failings from 1547-1550. Philargyrie and other of Crowley's Edwardian works take the dim view of John Bale
and other reformers of Protestant elites like Somerset who benefitted financially from the Reformation, particularly the monastic dissolutions. (See the entry for Somerset House
.) Bale, for his part, appealed in the dedication of his Summarium for patronage from the king (and indirectly, it would seem, Protector Somerset), but no such support was forthcoming until Somerset had been succeeded by his rival, John Dudley. In general, Crowley's work demonstrates a consistent and progressively emphatic scepticism toward and frustration with the nobility and clerical elites.
The argument in favour of the existence of aristocratic Edwardian patronage for Crowley was first made and is most extensively laid out in an unpublished dissertation by Frederica M. Thomsett where Crowley is connected with Somerset via Lady Elizabeth Fane. John N. King subsequently remarked in several articles, and in his English Reformation Literature (Princeton University Press, 1982) that Crowley had support from Somerset via the patronage of Lady Elizabeth Fane (or Vane), wife of Sir Ralph Fane, one of Somerset's close supporters, who was executed shortly after Somerset in 1552. Following King in identifying Lady Fane as Crowley's patroness are J. W. Martin and, more recently, Graham Parry's contribution to The Cambridge History of Early Modern Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
The evidence for Lady Fane's patronage is Crowley's dedication to her of his Pleasure and Payne, Heaven and Hell... (London, 1551), STC 6090, and Andrew Maunsell's record in The First Part of the Catalogue of English Printed Bookes (London: John Windet for Andrew Maunsell, 1595): 1.85r. Maunsell cites a lost 1550 Crowley imprint of Lady Elizabeth Vane her certain psalms of godly meditation in number 21, With 102 proverbs. (See also Joseph Ames
, Typographical Antiquities, 271.) Jennifer Loach, in Edward VI (Yale University Press, 1999): 62, notes that Lady Fane is Crowley's "only possible link, and a tenuous one, with Somerset". Nevertheless, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
entries on Lady Fane and Crowley have taken the Crowley-Fane-Somerset link as a fact, with the former stating that in the dedication to Pleasure and Payne Crowley called Lady Fane "his 'liberall parones'".
On the contrary, Crowley's dedication appears to be a customary bid for patronage rather than an indication of existing support, and Crowley does not call Fane "his" patroness at all. He writes: "After I had compiled thys little treatise (ryght vertuouse Lady) I thought it my duty to Dedicate the same unto youre Ladishyppes name, as to a ryght worthy Patrones of al such as laboure in the Lords harveste. Not for that I thyncke I have herein done any thyng worthy so liberall a Patrones, but for the worthynes of the matter..."
The rest of the dedication appears to be an oblique admonishment and exhortation to the Somerset circle that is in line with Crowley's other publications at this time and in the late 1540s. Crowley writes in the dedication to Pleasure and Pain that men in positions of power who have "long tyme talked" of the gospel have been more concerned with their own worldy gain and now need to "lyve the gospell". He further implies that failure to act on behalf of the gospel (i.e., the Reformation) and the poor commons, has caused or will soon cause God to "plage" these men and all England just as God punished Israel for its unfaithfulness. These warnings are in line with the rest of the book, which speaks prophetically of judgment to come if the godly commonwealth is not established. Since Pleasure and Pain was printed during the latter stages of Somerset's fall and shortly before his and Sir Ralph Fane's executions, it appears as less a bid for financial support than a plea for a changing of minds and policies. It is notable that Crowley's 1559 continuation of the Lanquet-Cooper chronicle looks back on this period—Somerset's fall, then Dudley's, and the accession of Mary—as precisely a time of judgement that befell England due to the failings principally of the secular leaders such as Somerset.
The only other evidence for a possible connection between Crowley and Somerset is a 1551 publication: The abridgemente of goddes statutes in myter, set oute by Wylliam Samuel seruaunt to the Duke of Somerset hys grace (STC 21690.2). The title page continues: "Imprinted at London: By Robert Crowley for Robert Soughton [i.e., Stoughton]", although the revised STC points to Grafton as the printer. This work is dedicated to Lady Somerset, Anne Seymour
.
Other sources suggest a link between Crowley and key aristocratic backers of reformism, such as William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester
under Elizabeth. Crowley's associate John Day was long connected with Cecil. Some time between 1561 and 1564 Crowley was listed among twenty-eight "godly preachers which have utterly forsaken Antichrist and all his Romish rags", which was presented to Dudley.
Recently an argument has been propounded that Crowley and others like him were patronised by less elevated but still powerful figures, particularly after the reign of Edward VI. In an article for the Foxe's Book of Martyrs Variorum Edition Online, Brett Usher has emphasised the importance of previously neglected work by T. S. Willin on Tudor merchants in London, particularly those associated with the Muscovy Company
, which was established early in the reign of Mary I and traces its roots to the Company of Merchant Adventurers
. At its inception, Sir George Barne, then Lord Mayor of London
, was the principal figure in the Muscovy Company. Barne was praised by Bishop Ridley
and prior to becoming bishop of Winchester
, Robert Horne preached the funeral sermon for Barne's wife in 1559 after returning from exile on the continent. Barne's nephew and apprentice was Nicholas Culverwell whose younger brother Richard left money at his death in 1586 to Crowley as well as William Charke, Walter Travers, John Field
, Thomas Crooke, Nicholas Crane, Thomas Edmonds, William Cheston and Giles Sinclair.
Earlier, under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the Merchant Adventurers included Thomas Poyntz, brother of Lady Anne Walsh in whose house Crowley had served as tutor. Poyntz was the head of the Merchant Adventurer's house in Antwerp; it was there that he sheltered William Tyndale
as his sister had in England. John Foxe's 1563 biography of Tyndale concludes with an account probably written by Thomas Poyntz, and received from him or someone close to him. While Tyndale was with Poyntz in Antwerp, Richard Grafton was there as a merchant adventurer involved with Tyndale's project of publishing an English Bible. John Rogers, the first martyr under Mary I, whose "Matthew's Bible" later combined translations by Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, served as chaplain to the English merchants in Antwerp. Some of these merchants, like Grafton, were probably involved in producing and smuggling copies of Tyndale's New Testament and other Protestant texts into England. Another figure in the network of evangelical merchants with ties to Crowley was "the immensely rich John Quarles
", who was "twice Master of the Drapers' Company" and "a friend and patron of Robert Crowley". (See Brett Usher, "Backing Protestantism: the London godly, the exchequer and the Foxe circle", in David Loades (ed.), John Foxe: an Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 1999), p. 129; T. S. Willan, The Muscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester, 1953), p. 118.)
, and referred to as "stationer of the Parish of St Andrew, Holborn". On 24 June the previous year, John Foxe had been ordained deacon by Ridley, after having taken up residence with the Duchess of Suffolk in the Barbican in order to be eligible. The anticipated reforms that would follow from the spreading influence of men like these were deferred by the death of the king and the accession of Mary I
after the ill-fated attempt to put Lady Jane Grey
on the throne.
Around 1553–1554, or 1555 at the latest, Crowley had left England. In 1557 records state he was a member of the Frankfurt congregation of English exiles and living in very crowded quarters with a wife and child. Local tax lists registered him as a "student", and expelled him at the same time as a poor and possessionless man.
According to A Briefe Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankeford in Germany (1575), which covers events from 1554 onward, in 1557 Crowley's signature appeared with those endorsing "the new discipline" at Frankfurt (i.e., the Genevan church order), which limited the pastoral authority of Robert Horne
over the congregation. Horne objected stridently as he was pushing for a more hierarchical system, and Crowley was among those who supported the presbyterian system. However, it must be remembered that this framing of events comes from the Briefe Discourse of the Troubles which was first published eighteen years later, evidently in support of the Elizabethan presbyterian faction. (For further discussion of the significance of these events to later Elizabethan church politics, see the entry on the Marian exiles
.)
Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers
The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Stationers' Company was founded in 1403; it received a Royal Charter in 1557...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles
Marian exiles
The Marian Exiles were English Calvinist Protestants who fled to the continent during the reign of Queen Mary I.-Exile communities:According to English historian John Strype, more than 800 Protestants fled to the continent, mainly to the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and France, and joined...
at Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
. Crowley appears to have been a Henrician Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
who favoured a more reformed Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
than was sanctioned at that time by the king and the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
.
Under the more favourable conditions of the brief reign of Edward VI
Edward VI of England
Edward VI was the King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant...
, Crowley took part in a well-organised London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
network of evangelical stationers to argue for the reforms he sought, particularly on behalf of ordinary people, for the spiritual and material health of the nation. In this regard he resembles his contemporaries Hugh Latimer
Hugh Latimer
Hugh Latimer was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, Bishop of Worcester before the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555, under Queen Mary, he was burnt at the stake, becoming one of the three Oxford Martyrs of Anglicanism.-Life:Latimer was born into a...
, Thomas Lever
Thomas Lever
Thomas Lever was an English Protestant reformer and Marian exile, one of the founders of the Puritan tendency in the Church of England.-Life:...
, Thomas Beccon
Thomas Beccon
Thomas Beccon was a British Protestant reformer from Norfolk. He studied under Hugh Latimer and was ordained in 1533. He was arrested for Protestant preaching and was forced to recant around 1540. He then began to write under the pen name of "Theodore Basille." When Edward VI came to the...
, and others, who upheld a vision of England as a reformed Christian commonwealth
Commonwealth
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with "republic."More recently it has been used for fraternal associations of some sovereign nations...
. Like these others, Crowley attacked what he perceived as corruption and uncharitable self-interest among the clergy and wealthy, land-holding elites whom Crowley saw as inhibiting the progress of true reform. It was during this time that Crowley participated as writer, editor, and/or printer in the production of the first printed editions of Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus"...
, the first translation of the gospels into Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, and the first complete metrical psalter
Metrical psalter
A metrical psalter is a kind of Bible translation: a book containing a metrical translation of all or part of the Book of Psalms in vernacular poetry, meant to be sung as hymns in a church. Some metrical psalters include melodies or even harmonizations...
in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, which was also the first English psalter with harmonised music.
Toward the end of Edward's reign and later, Crowley criticised the Edwardian Reformation as being compromised by self-serving, insufficiently reformed aristocrats, and he came to regard the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...
, not as a boon to the people as was originally hoped, but as the replacement of one form of corruption by another. Upon his return to England following the reign of Mary I
Mary I of England
Mary I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.She was the only surviving child born of the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547...
, Crowley produced a revised and up-dated version of a historical chronicle in which he represented the Edwardian Reformation as a substantial failure because of the corruption of its supposed supporters such as Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley
Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley
Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, KG was an English politician.Thomas spent his childhood in Wulfhall, outside Savernake Forest, in Wiltshire. Historian David Starkey describes Thomas thus: 'tall, well-built and with a dashing beard and auburn hair, he was irresistible to women'...
; Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, KG, Earl Marshal was Lord Protector of England in the period between the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and his own indictment in 1549....
; and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, KG was an English general, admiral, and politician, who led the government of the young King Edward VI from 1550 until 1553, and unsuccessfully tried to install Lady Jane Grey on the English throne after the King's death...
. In Crowley's account of the Marian persecutions and martyrs he represents them as the tragic but potentially redemptive cost – mostly paid by commoners – for the failures of the Edwardian Reformation. This work became the basic source for John Foxe
John Foxe
John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
's account of the Marian period in his famous Book of Martyrs.
In the early to mid 1560s Crowley held several positions in the church, and he focused his energies on effecting change from the pulpit and within the church hierarchy. In reaction to what has often been called the Elizabethan Religious Settlement
Elizabethan Religious Settlement
The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was Elizabeth I’s response to the religious divisions created over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559", was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England...
despite its failure to achieve a true consensus, Crowley led the anti-vestiarian faction in resuming the vestments controversy
Vestments controversy
The vestments controversy arose in the English Reformation, ostensibly concerning vestments, but more fundamentally concerned with English Protestant identity, doctrine, and various church practices...
which had taken place during the reign of Edward VI. This role eventually cost Crowley all his clerical offices. During this dispute he produced, in collaboration with other London clergy, what has been called by Patrick Collinson
Patrick Collinson
Patrick Collinson CBE was an English historian, known as an authority on the Elizabethan era. His most influential work has been about Elizabethan Puritanism. He was Emeritus Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, having occupied the chair from 1988 to 1996...
"the first Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
". Late in life Crowley was restored to several positions within the church, and he appears to have charted a more moderate course by defending the established church from both Roman Catholicism and the more extreme, emerging nonconformist and Puritan factions which espoused a Presbyterian church polity.
Early life
Crowley was born in about 1517 in GloucestershireGloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, possibly in Tetbury
Tetbury
Tetbury is a town and civil parish within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It lies on the site of an ancient hill fort, on which an Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded, probably by Ine of Wessex, in 681. The population of the parish was 5,250 in the 2001 census.In the Middle Ages,...
, although John Bale
John Bale
John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
says that he was a native of Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...
, and A. B. Emden's A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford says that Crowley was twenty on 25 July 1539. Crowley himself wrote in 1578 that he was then sixty-one years old.
Crowley began his studies at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in about 1534, and was listed as a demy1 of Magdalen College
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
on 25 July 1539. He experienced an evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
conversion about this time which entailed religious convictions more in line with continental Protestant reformers, but quite at odds with the Church of England under Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
and the Act of Six Articles, known to those who chafed under it as "the whip with six strings". Magdalen was then "a hotbed of evangelicals," according to Brett Usher. Four of its members during this period became bishops under Elizabeth I, and with Crowley, Lawrence Humphrey
Lawrence Humphrey
Lawrence Humphrey was an English theologian, who was president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and dean successively of Gloucester and Winchester.-Biography:...
was a key leader in the vestments controversy
Vestments controversy
The vestments controversy arose in the English Reformation, ostensibly concerning vestments, but more fundamentally concerned with English Protestant identity, doctrine, and various church practices...
that took place during her reign. Most of the Magdalen evangelicals became exiles under Mary I, and their influence was purged from the college by Stephen Gardiner
Stephen Gardiner
Stephen Gardiner was an English Roman Catholic bishop and politician during the English Reformation period who served as Lord Chancellor during the reign of Queen Mary I of England.-Early life:...
in 1554.
Crowley received his B.A.
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
on 19 June 1540, and became Probationer Fellow on 26 July 1541 or 1542. In 1542 he became a Fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
of Magdalen College, but he left the same year. Crowley's departure may have been due to a purge of evangelicals, or because, like John Foxe
John Foxe
John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
, he objected to the necessity of taking holy orders
Holy Orders
The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....
which entailed a vow of celibacy
Clerical celibacy
Clerical celibacy is the discipline by which some or all members of the clergy in certain religions are required to be unmarried. Since these religions consider deliberate sexual thoughts, feelings, and behavior outside of marriage to be sinful, clerical celibacy also requires abstension from these...
. It is known that Foxe, like many evangelicals, did not accept the rationale for mandatory clerical celibacy, and evidently Crowley did not either, as he married some years later. At this time Foxe also left the college, naming Crowley and the future bishop Thomas Cooper
Thomas Cooper (bishop)
Thomas Cooper was an English bishop, lexicographer, and writer.-Life:He was born in Oxford, where he was educated at Magdalen College...
in a letter to Magdalen's president, Owen Oglethorpe
Owen Oglethorpe
Owen Oglethorpe: Bishop of Carlisle was an English academic and bishop.-Childhood and Education:He was born in Tadcaster, Yorkshire, in approximately 1505-10 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was elected a fellow in 1526 and received his MA in 1529 and his DD in 1536...
, as being among his circle. Foxe described this group of his fellows as being persecuted by other members of the college, although – unlike Foxe and Crowley – Cooper did not leave the university, and while Oglethorpe himself was no evangelical, years later in Crowley's psalter's dedication letter to him, Crowley holds his former teacher in high regard.
From 1542 to about 1546 Crowley tutored for the Protestant household of Sir Nicholas Poyntz
Nicholas Poyntz
Sir Nicholas Poyntz was a prominent English courtier during the latter part of Henry VIII's reign. There is a portrait drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection and an oil portrait after the same artist based on the drawing in the National Portrait Gallery, London...
(1510–1556/7) in Iron Acton
Iron Acton
Iron Acton is a village and civil parish in South Gloucestershire, England. The village is about west of Yate and about northeast of the centre of Bristol. The B4058 road used to pass through the village but now by-passes it just to the north....
, Gloucestershire, his own home county. (Poyntz's aunt on his father's side, Lady Anne Walsh and wife of Sir John Walsh
John Walsh
John Edward Walsh is an American television personality, criminal investigator, human and victim rights advocate and formerly the host, as well as creator, of America's Most Wanted...
of Little Sodbury
Little Sodbury
Little Sodbury is an English village in South Gloucestershire, located between Chipping Sodbury, to the West, Old Sodbury to the South, Badminton, and the A46 road to the East and Horton and Hawkesbury Upton, to the north....
, had taken in William Tyndale
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
as a tutor for their sons from 1521 to 1522/1523.) At the same time as Crowley, Foxe found a similar arrangement, following a pattern whereby promising, young, university-educated men who sought greater changes in the church were supported by members of the lesser nobility until political circumstances were more favourable for public and institutional engagement.
London publishing career under Edward VI
Political circumstances changed greatly with the death of the king. Reformist hopes for the church were high under the boy king, Edward VIEdward VI of England
Edward VI was the King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant...
, whose uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, KG, Earl Marshal was Lord Protector of England in the period between the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and his own indictment in 1549....
, held the real reins of power as Lord Protector
Lord Protector
Lord Protector is a title used in British constitutional law for certain heads of state at different periods of history. It is also a particular title for the British Heads of State in respect to the established church...
during Edward's minority. Both were sympathetic to the reformist cause.
Perhaps anticipating the death of Henry VIII, Crowley had moved to London by the end of 1546, and according to William Herbert
William Herbert (bibliographer)
William Herbert was an English bibliographer, known for his revision of the Typographical Antiquities of Joseph Ames.-Life:He was born 29 November 1718, and was educated at Hitchin, Hertfordshire. He was apprenticed to a hosier, and on the expiration of his articles took up his freedom of the...
's Typographical Antiquities he was possibly working as a proof-reader for an evangelical printer, John Day
John Day (printer)
John Day was an English Protestant printer. He specialised in printing and distributing Protestant literature and pamphlets, and produced many small-format religious books, such as ABCs, sermons, and translations of psalms...
, and perhaps later William Seres
William Seres
William Seres was an English Protestant printer, starting work in about 1546, and working in partnership with John Day for a few years. Day and Seres specialized in religious works, such as those by Robert Crowley, which were largely related to theological controversies of the time...
as well. Seres and Day became partners in late 1547, and remained together until 1550. In 1547 they were working in Holborn Conduit in St Sepulchre
St Sepulchre
St Sepulchre was an ancient parish partly within the City of London and partly within Middlesex, England.For civil purposes it was divided into two civil parishes, each called St Sepulchre, although the parish in the City of London was also known as St Sepulchre without Newgate...
's parish at the sign of the Resurrection, but as William Cecil
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley , KG was an English statesman, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572...
's servant, Seres was able to acquire Peter College for his printing operation. This was a former chantry
Chantry
Chantry is the English term for a fund established to pay for a priest to celebrate sung Masses for a specified purpose, generally for the soul of the deceased donor. Chantries were endowed with lands given by donors, the income from which maintained the chantry priest...
at St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
, part of which became Stationers' Hall in 1554. Between 1549, when he became a member of the Stationers' Company, and 1551, when he was ordained, Crowley wrote eleven or twelve books, and edited, translated, or acted as printer or publisher of seven others (see below, Crowley's status as a printer).
Crowley may have been involved in the preparation and publication of several books between 1546 and 1548; he certainly participated in the production of some of them. There were two editions of A Supplication of the Poor Commons c. 1546, which may have been written by Henry Brinkelow alone or possibly in association with Crowley. One of these editions included a reprint of Simon Fish
Simon Fish
Simon Fish was a 16th century Protestant reformer and English propagandist. Fish is best known for helping to spread William Tyndale’s New Testament and for authoring the vehemently anti-clerical pamphlet Supplication for the Beggars which was condemned as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church...
's A Supplication of Beggars (c. 1529), which famously attacked the doctrine of purgatory as a politically and economically disabling deception inflicted on the English people. Both "supplications" presented socioeconomic and religious reform as two integral aspects of a single response to the major problems of the day. The other early imprint with some connection to Crowley was a treatise on the true, biblical meaning of the Lord's supper, with a rebuttal of Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
's arguments in favour of the Catholic doctrines on that subject. This tract was printed in three editions, and is attributed to William Tyndale (it is also sometimes attributed to George Joye
George Joye
George Joye was a 16th-century Bible translator who produced the first printed translation of several books of the Old Testament into English , as well as the first English Primer .-Education:...
). It includes an introductory epistle, "To all the studious readers", that is signed by Crowley.
The first books that are unambiguously Crowley's issued from Day and Seres' press in 1548, when Seres became a freeman of the Stationers' Company. These were a refutation of Nicholas Shaxton
Nicholas Shaxton
Nicholas Shaxton was an English Reformer and Bishop of Salisbury.-Early life:He was a native of the diocese of Norwich, and studied at Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1507. M.A. in 1510, B.D. in 1521 and D.D. in 1531. He was elected a fellow of Gonville Hall in 1510. In 1520 he was appointed...
's sermon at Anne Askew
Anne Askew
Anne Askew was an English poet and Protestant who was condemned as a heretic...
's burning in 1546, in which Shaxton recanted his evangelical beliefs, a refutation of Miles Hogarde's arguments for transubstantiation
Transubstantiation
In Roman Catholic theology, transubstantiation means the change, in the Eucharist, of the substance of wheat bread and grape wine into the substance of the Body and Blood, respectively, of Jesus, while all that is accessible to the senses remains as before.The Eastern Orthodox...
in a lost ballad called The Abuse of ye blessed sacrament of the aultare, and An information and peticion, which must have been written before December 1547, since it refers to the Act of Six Articles as being unrepeated. Crowley's response to Hogarde contains the only source for Hogarde's original poem, since Crowley quotes it in full in order to refute it passage by passage. An informacion and peticion addresses parliament on behalf of economically distressed commoners, and follows an established tradition of social complaint regarding the abuses of wealthy landlords, such as rack-rent
Rack-rent
Rack-rent denotes two different concepts:# an excessive or extortionate rent, or# the full rent of a property, including both land and improvements if it were subject to an immediate open-market rental review...
ing, engrossing (the consolidation of several smaller strips into one hedged farm, separated from the rest of the common land), and enclosure. Appearing in two English editions and two Latin editions translated from the English by J. Heron and possibly published by Stephen Mierdman, the full title is An informacion and peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore commons of this real me, compiled and imprinted for this only purpose that amongst them that haue to doe in the Parliamente, some godlye mynded men, may hereat take occasion to speak more in the matter then the authoure was able to write. If the wealthy fail to reform themselves, Crowley warns that divine retribution will follow, and he looks to the crown to make things right. This is the pattern of a number of Crowley's subsequent Edwardian publications, and for that reason he has been associated with other social critics of the day, such as Thomas Lever
Thomas Lever
Thomas Lever was an English Protestant reformer and Marian exile, one of the founders of the Puritan tendency in the Church of England.-Life:...
, Thomas Beccon
Thomas Beccon
Thomas Beccon was a British Protestant reformer from Norfolk. He studied under Hugh Latimer and was ordained in 1533. He was arrested for Protestant preaching and was forced to recant around 1540. He then began to write under the pen name of "Theodore Basille." When Edward VI came to the...
, and Hugh Latimer
Hugh Latimer
Hugh Latimer was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, Bishop of Worcester before the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555, under Queen Mary, he was burnt at the stake, becoming one of the three Oxford Martyrs of Anglicanism.-Life:Latimer was born into a...
. Some influential 20th-century historians have referred to these men as constituting a "commonwealth party", but G.R. Elton succeeded in sweeping away this romantic designation. The existence of a "commonwealth party" is now widely rejected, and its supposed members are unlikely to be described in terms of a collective movement.
In 1549 Richard Grafton
Richard Grafton
Richard Grafton , was King's Printer under Henry VIII and Edward VI. He was a member of the Grocers' Company and MP for Coventry elected 1562-63.-Under Henry VIII:...
and Mierdman published Crowley's The Psalter of Dauid newly translated into English metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and with more delete of the mynde, be reade and songe of all men. Wherunto is added a note of four parties.... There is an introduction in English, and a dedicatory epistle to Owen Oglethorpe
Owen Oglethorpe
Owen Oglethorpe: Bishop of Carlisle was an English academic and bishop.-Childhood and Education:He was born in Tadcaster, Yorkshire, in approximately 1505-10 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was elected a fellow in 1526 and received his MA in 1529 and his DD in 1536...
, president of Magdalen College, Oxford at that time and when Crowley had been a student and fellow there. (Crowley's psalter is discussed in greater detail under the entry for metrical psalters.)
Crowley's next publications included a large number of polemical social works, often poems, some of which appeared in several editions:
- A new years gyfte, wherein is taught the knowledge of our self and the fear of God. Worthy to be geuen and thankfully receyued of al Christen men (1549)
- The voyce of the laste trumpet blowen bi the seue[n]th angel (as is me[n]tioned in the eleuenth of the Apocalips) callynge al the estates of menne to the right path of their vocation, wherin are contayned xii. lessons to twelue seueral estates of menne, whych if they learne and folowe, al shal be well and nothynge amise (1549)
- One and thyrtye epigrammes, wherein are bryefly touched so many abuses, that maye and ought to be put away (1550)
- The way to wealth, wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion (1550)
- A myroure or glasse for all spiritual ministers to beholde them selues in, wherein they may learne theyr office and duitie towardis the flocke committed to their charg gathered out of Holy Scripture and Catholyke doctours, by Peter Pykeryng seruant to the Ryght Worshipful Syr Anthonie Neueil Knyght, and one of the Kingis Maiesties councel established in the northe, and sent to Syr Avon Todkyll vycar of South Leuerton, and other his co[m]plsis in Notyngham thyre for a newe yeres gyfte (1550)
There are also two books of uncertain authorship published during this period which may have been Crowley's work:
- Pyers plowmans exhortation, vnto the lordes, knightes and burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse. Imprinted at London: By Anthony Scoloker dwelling in the Sauoy tentes. without Templebarre (1550?)
- Vita fatrum mendicantium (c. 1550)
Authorship of Pyers plowmans exhortation is speculatively attributed to Crowley by Barbara Johnson in Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim's Progress: Reception and the Protestant Reader (Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). Vita fratrum medicantium is a lost medieval text that was printed around 1550, perhaps with Crowley's involvement. In his catalogue John Bale
John Bale
John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
names Peter Pateshull as its author and R. Kylington as the translator. Pateshull was an Augustinian divine at Oxford c.1387, whom Wycliffe had persuaded to preach against the Augustinian friars. His text is a commentary on Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen
Blessed Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and...
's prophecy against friars, which was enshrined as proto-Protestant lore in Foxe's Actes and Monuments.http://books.google.com/books?id=bGoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353&lpg=PA353&dq=hildegard+propechy+against+friars&source=web&ots=T-1s9iURVc&sig=1vYrrqNnV_X9knIf0aRFO2zgP_Y&hl=en.
Next came Crowley's three editions of Piers Plowman in 1550, as well as an edition of the prologue to John Wycliffe's translation of the Bible, which was written by John Purvey
John Purvey
John Purvey was one of the leading followers of the English theologian and reformer John Wycliffe during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He was probably born around 1361 in Lathbury, then in Buckinghamshire, England. He was ordained a priest in 1377 and was a great scholar in...
and wrongly attributed to Wycliff by Crowley on John Bale's authority. A 1540 recension
Recension
Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts, this may be a revision by another author...
of this text had been printed as: The dore of holy scripture. Crowley's version contains a signed note "To the reader". A running head reads: "The pathwaye to perfect knowledg", and Crowley's title page for the book reads: "The true copye of a prolog wrytten about two C. yeres paste by Iohn Wycklife (as maye iustly be gatherid bi that, that Iohn Bale hath writte[n] of him in his boke entitlid the Summarie of famouse writers of the Ile of great Brita[n]) the originall whereof is founde written in an olde English Bible bitwixt the olde Testament and the Newe. Whych Bible remaynith now in ye Kyng hys maiesties chamber". Also in 1550 Crowley printed three books by the Welsh scholar William Salisbury
William Salesbury
William Salesbury also Salusbury was the leading Welsh scholar of the Renaissance and the principal translator of the 1567 Welsh New Testament.Salesbury was born in about 1520 in the parish of Llansannan, Conwy...
(or Salesbury) concerning the Welsh language, some anti-Roman Catholic polemics, and an ancient Welsh precedent for clerical marriage. In 1551 Crowley published a fourth Salesbury text, a Welsh translation of the epistle and gospel readings from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
.
In 1551 Crowley printed a poetic work "for John Case dwelling in Peter Coledge rentes"; its title is: The knoledge of good and iuyle, other wyse calyd Ecclesiastes, ryght excelente and worthy, of all men to be had in mynde now a newe set fourth in meter. by pore Shakerlaye. Two original long poems by Crowley were also printed by him that year: Philargyrie of Greate Britayne (a political-religious allegory) and Pleasure and payne, heauen and hell: Remembre these foure, and all shall be well.
Crowley's status as a printer
There is some scholarly disagreement about whether or not Crowley actually operated or managed a press that he owned or leased. On the one hand, Olga Illston’s "A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Robert Crowley" (M.A. Thesis, London University, 1953) is the basis for the Revised Short Title Catalogue (STC or RSTC) and current ESTC identification of Richard GraftonRichard Grafton
Richard Grafton , was King's Printer under Henry VIII and Edward VI. He was a member of the Grocers' Company and MP for Coventry elected 1562-63.-Under Henry VIII:...
, the King's printer, as the printer of many of Crowley's books under Edward VI. Illston demonstrates that the initial blocks used in Crowley's books between 1549 and 1551 belonged to Grafton, and she notes the frequent use of the same type in Grafton and Crowley imprints. This led to the STC revisers and other scholars, most notably John N. King, to conclude that Crowley never had his own press, but was only a bookseller. The revised STC generally follows Illston, although Illston attributed the printing of Crowley's Psalter to Richard Jugge
Richard Jugge
Richard Jugge was an eminent English printer, who kept a shop at the sign of the Bible, at the North door of St Paul's Cathedral, though his residence was in Newgate market, next to Christ Church.-Life:...
with assistance from Grafton; the revised STC, King, and other sources identify Stephen Mierdman as its printer.
Prior to Crowley's arrival in London, Grafton had been imprisoned three times for printing-related offences: twice in 1541 (for a "sedicious epistle of Melanctons" and ballads defending Thomas Cromwell), and then in 1543, for the Great Bible
Great Bible
The Great Bible was the first authorized edition of the Bible in English, authorized by King Henry VIII of England to be read aloud in the church services of the Church of England. The Great Bible was prepared by Myles Coverdale, working under commission of Sir Thomas Cromwell, Secretary to Henry...
. The possibility arises, therefore, that Grafton used Crowley's imprint "as a conduit for radical publication, but at a safe remove", as R. Carter Hailey suggests in "Giving Light to the Reader: Robert Crowley's Editions of Piers Plowman (1550)" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 2001): 15 and "'Geuyng light to the reader': Robert Crowley's Editions of Piers Plowman (1550)", Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America 95.4 (2001): 483–502. This semi-surreptitious printing was an attempt, in King's estimation, by Protector Somerset and his supporters "to shape public opinion in secret" (English Reformation Literature, 96–7; repeated in King's "The Book-trade under Edward VI and Mary I", in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp, eds., vol. 3, 1400–1557, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999]: 167–8). However, this argument for a connection to Somerset depends on tenuous links drawn between the Protector and Crowley via Grafton and/or Lady Elizabeth Fane. (See below, Crowley's patrons.)
On the other hand, Peter M. W. Blayney contends that the revised STC erroneously indicates that Grafton printed Crowley's works. Blayney believes that the revisers realised that the ornamental "A" in Crowley's The baterie of the Popes Botereulx (1550): A6r (STC 21613) "had once belonged to Grafton", but they did not know that "the person from whom Crowley borrowed it was almost certainly not Grafton but John Day, who apparently acquired it from Grafton in 1548 (STC 23004) and never returned it (2087.5, 6849.5, 7633.3, etc.)". Additionally, Blayney suggests that the STC revisers were misled by another fact:
- "In and after 1560, Grafton's son-in-law Richard TottelRichard TottelRichard Tottel was an English publisher and influential member of the legal community. He ran his business from a shop was located at Temple Bar on Fleet Street in London...
used quite a lot of Grafton's old ornament stock. It has long been the received opinion that when Mary TudorMary I of EnglandMary I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.She was the only surviving child born of the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547...
deprived Grafton of his royal office, he immediately sold off his printing house and equipment to Robert Caly — except, of course, for the various bits and pieces that Tottell allegedly used to set up shop in that same year. In fact, that is not what happened at all. What Grafton did with his printing house was to sublet it to Caly — and when ElizabethElizabeth I of EnglandElizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
acceded in late 1558 he took it back and attempted to re-start his own career (STC 16291 of 1559 was really printed by Grafton, as the titlepage claims). By the end of 1559 he had realised that it wasn't going to work — and it was not until then that Grafton stopped paying the rent for his printing house and Tottell acquired his supply of ex-Grafton initials."
-
- (Peter W. M. Blayney, letter to R. Carter Hailey, 5 January 2001).
The appearance of Grafton's blocks in Crowley's books is, on this view, insufficient evidence from which to conclude that Crowley did not print them himself or, moreover, that he never had a printing house at all. Blayney believes that Crowley did have a press and printed the works that bear his name from 1550 to 1551, except for a few titles printed entirely or in part by Day and/or Mierdman:
- "The three 'Crowley' books of 1549 seemingly were printed for him by others: STC 2725 by Stephen Mierdman (only); 6087 and 6094 by John Day. Also by Day is 6096 (dated 1550), while the double-dated 6095 was either printed partly by Day or partly by Crowley himself or (more likely) by Crowley alone but with a few ornamental initials borrowed from Day. All the other Crowley books of 1550–51 that I've seen are the work of Crowley alone—as I assume are the only two I haven't seen, namely 2761.5 and 19897.3. Crowley also printed STC 25852 for Robert Stoughton, but without putting his name on it."
-
- (Peter W. M. Blayney, letter to R. Carter Hailey, 5 January 2001)
Blayney's revised attributions are discussed and listed in Hailey's dissertation; they are expected to appear in Blayney's forthcoming book, The Stationers' Company and the Printers of London, 1501http://books.google.com/books?id=oqVi8qlPPi8C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=The+Stationers'+Company+and+the+Printers+of+London,+1501%E2%80%931616&source=web&ots=VBvPFXFtoc&sig=wjCUNwm5CQcq4uNPK6tDtBje3nQ&hl=en.
Crowley's patrons
As discussed in the previous section, Crowley has been linked with Grafton, the King's Printer under Edward VI, and some speculate that through Grafton Crowley had some measure of support from Somerset and other reform-minded political elites. However, it is far from certain that Crowley had Somerset or other highly placed patrons supporting his various projects, and it is in any case tenuous to assume that the existence of direct or indirect support implies a unity of thought and purpose rather than a contingent, pragmatic alliance.This is especially true in the case of Somerset, who fell from power just before Crowley's most prolific publishing period. Crowley cast Somerset in a less than positive light in alterations and continuations that he made in his 1559 revised and updated version of Thomas Lanquet
Thomas Lanquet
Thomas Lanquet was an English chronicler.He studied at Oxford, and devoted himself to historical research. He died in London in 1545 while engaged on a general history; it was a translation of the Chronicle of Johann Carion...
and Thomas Cooper
Thomas Cooper (bishop)
Thomas Cooper was an English bishop, lexicographer, and writer.-Life:He was born in Oxford, where he was educated at Magdalen College...
's chronicle. Crowley's Philargyrie may also offer veiled criticism of some of Somerset's perceived military and political failings from 1547-1550. Philargyrie and other of Crowley's Edwardian works take the dim view of John Bale
John Bale
John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
and other reformers of Protestant elites like Somerset who benefitted financially from the Reformation, particularly the monastic dissolutions. (See the entry for Somerset House
Somerset House
Somerset House is a large building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, England, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The central block of the Neoclassical building, the outstanding project of the architect Sir William Chambers, dates from 1776–96. It...
.) Bale, for his part, appealed in the dedication of his Summarium for patronage from the king (and indirectly, it would seem, Protector Somerset), but no such support was forthcoming until Somerset had been succeeded by his rival, John Dudley. In general, Crowley's work demonstrates a consistent and progressively emphatic scepticism toward and frustration with the nobility and clerical elites.
The argument in favour of the existence of aristocratic Edwardian patronage for Crowley was first made and is most extensively laid out in an unpublished dissertation by Frederica M. Thomsett where Crowley is connected with Somerset via Lady Elizabeth Fane. John N. King subsequently remarked in several articles, and in his English Reformation Literature (Princeton University Press, 1982) that Crowley had support from Somerset via the patronage of Lady Elizabeth Fane (or Vane), wife of Sir Ralph Fane, one of Somerset's close supporters, who was executed shortly after Somerset in 1552. Following King in identifying Lady Fane as Crowley's patroness are J. W. Martin and, more recently, Graham Parry's contribution to The Cambridge History of Early Modern Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
The evidence for Lady Fane's patronage is Crowley's dedication to her of his Pleasure and Payne, Heaven and Hell... (London, 1551), STC 6090, and Andrew Maunsell's record in The First Part of the Catalogue of English Printed Bookes (London: John Windet for Andrew Maunsell, 1595): 1.85r. Maunsell cites a lost 1550 Crowley imprint of Lady Elizabeth Vane her certain psalms of godly meditation in number 21, With 102 proverbs. (See also Joseph Ames
Joseph Ames (author)
Joseph Ames was an English bibliographer and antiquary. He wrote an account of printing in England from 1471 to 1600, entitled Typographical Antiquities...
, Typographical Antiquities, 271.) Jennifer Loach, in Edward VI (Yale University Press, 1999): 62, notes that Lady Fane is Crowley's "only possible link, and a tenuous one, with Somerset". Nevertheless, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Dictionary of National Biography
The Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
entries on Lady Fane and Crowley have taken the Crowley-Fane-Somerset link as a fact, with the former stating that in the dedication to Pleasure and Payne Crowley called Lady Fane "his 'liberall parones'".
On the contrary, Crowley's dedication appears to be a customary bid for patronage rather than an indication of existing support, and Crowley does not call Fane "his" patroness at all. He writes: "After I had compiled thys little treatise (ryght vertuouse Lady) I thought it my duty to Dedicate the same unto youre Ladishyppes name, as to a ryght worthy Patrones of al such as laboure in the Lords harveste. Not for that I thyncke I have herein done any thyng worthy so liberall a Patrones, but for the worthynes of the matter..."
The rest of the dedication appears to be an oblique admonishment and exhortation to the Somerset circle that is in line with Crowley's other publications at this time and in the late 1540s. Crowley writes in the dedication to Pleasure and Pain that men in positions of power who have "long tyme talked" of the gospel have been more concerned with their own worldy gain and now need to "lyve the gospell". He further implies that failure to act on behalf of the gospel (i.e., the Reformation) and the poor commons, has caused or will soon cause God to "plage" these men and all England just as God punished Israel for its unfaithfulness. These warnings are in line with the rest of the book, which speaks prophetically of judgment to come if the godly commonwealth is not established. Since Pleasure and Pain was printed during the latter stages of Somerset's fall and shortly before his and Sir Ralph Fane's executions, it appears as less a bid for financial support than a plea for a changing of minds and policies. It is notable that Crowley's 1559 continuation of the Lanquet-Cooper chronicle looks back on this period—Somerset's fall, then Dudley's, and the accession of Mary—as precisely a time of judgement that befell England due to the failings principally of the secular leaders such as Somerset.
The only other evidence for a possible connection between Crowley and Somerset is a 1551 publication: The abridgemente of goddes statutes in myter, set oute by Wylliam Samuel seruaunt to the Duke of Somerset hys grace (STC 21690.2). The title page continues: "Imprinted at London: By Robert Crowley for Robert Soughton [i.e., Stoughton]", although the revised STC points to Grafton as the printer. This work is dedicated to Lady Somerset, Anne Seymour
Anne Seymour
Anne Seymour may refer to:* Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, née Stanhope, wife of the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and aunt of Edward VI of England...
.
Other sources suggest a link between Crowley and key aristocratic backers of reformism, such as William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley , KG was an English statesman, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572...
and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, KG was an English nobleman and the favourite and close friend of Elizabeth I from her first year on the throne until his death...
under Elizabeth. Crowley's associate John Day was long connected with Cecil. Some time between 1561 and 1564 Crowley was listed among twenty-eight "godly preachers which have utterly forsaken Antichrist and all his Romish rags", which was presented to Dudley.
Recently an argument has been propounded that Crowley and others like him were patronised by less elevated but still powerful figures, particularly after the reign of Edward VI. In an article for the Foxe's Book of Martyrs Variorum Edition Online, Brett Usher has emphasised the importance of previously neglected work by T. S. Willin on Tudor merchants in London, particularly those associated with the Muscovy Company
Muscovy Company
The Muscovy Company , was a trading company chartered in 1555. It was the first major chartered joint stock company, the precursor of the type of business that would soon flourish in England, and became closely associated with such famous names as Henry Hudson and William Baffin...
, which was established early in the reign of Mary I and traces its roots to the Company of Merchant Adventurers
Company of Merchant Adventurers
The Company of Merchant Adventurers usually refers to theCompany of Merchant Adventurers of London, founded in 1407 and London's leading guild of overseas merchants.It may also refer to:...
. At its inception, Sir George Barne, then Lord Mayor of London
Lord Mayor of London
The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of the City of London Corporation. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London is the Mayor of Greater London and...
, was the principal figure in the Muscovy Company. Barne was praised by Bishop Ridley
Nicholas Ridley (martyr)
Nicholas Ridley was an English Bishop of London. Ridley was burned at the stake, as one of the Oxford Martyrs, during the Marian Persecutions, for his teachings and his support of Lady Jane Grey...
and prior to becoming bishop of Winchester
Bishop of Winchester
The Bishop of Winchester is the head of the Church of England diocese of Winchester, with his cathedra at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire.The bishop is one of five Church of England bishops to be among the Lords Spiritual regardless of their length of service. His diocese is one of the oldest and...
, Robert Horne preached the funeral sermon for Barne's wife in 1559 after returning from exile on the continent. Barne's nephew and apprentice was Nicholas Culverwell whose younger brother Richard left money at his death in 1586 to Crowley as well as William Charke, Walter Travers, John Field
John Field
John Field is the name of:*John Field , an Australian Army officer*John Field , 19th century Irish composer*John Field , 20th Century British dancer of the Royal Ballet*John Field , 16th century British Puritan...
, Thomas Crooke, Nicholas Crane, Thomas Edmonds, William Cheston and Giles Sinclair.
Earlier, under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the Merchant Adventurers included Thomas Poyntz, brother of Lady Anne Walsh in whose house Crowley had served as tutor. Poyntz was the head of the Merchant Adventurer's house in Antwerp; it was there that he sheltered William Tyndale
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
as his sister had in England. John Foxe's 1563 biography of Tyndale concludes with an account probably written by Thomas Poyntz, and received from him or someone close to him. While Tyndale was with Poyntz in Antwerp, Richard Grafton was there as a merchant adventurer involved with Tyndale's project of publishing an English Bible. John Rogers, the first martyr under Mary I, whose "Matthew's Bible" later combined translations by Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, served as chaplain to the English merchants in Antwerp. Some of these merchants, like Grafton, were probably involved in producing and smuggling copies of Tyndale's New Testament and other Protestant texts into England. Another figure in the network of evangelical merchants with ties to Crowley was "the immensely rich John Quarles
John Quarles
John Quarles was an English poet.-Life:One of the eighteen children of Francis Quarles, he is said to have been born in Essex in 1624...
", who was "twice Master of the Drapers' Company" and "a friend and patron of Robert Crowley". (See Brett Usher, "Backing Protestantism: the London godly, the exchequer and the Foxe circle", in David Loades (ed.), John Foxe: an Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 1999), p. 129; T. S. Willan, The Muscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester, 1953), p. 118.)
Ordination and Marian exile
Crowley was ordained deacon on 28 September or 29 September 1551 by Bishop RidleyNicholas Ridley (martyr)
Nicholas Ridley was an English Bishop of London. Ridley was burned at the stake, as one of the Oxford Martyrs, during the Marian Persecutions, for his teachings and his support of Lady Jane Grey...
, and referred to as "stationer of the Parish of St Andrew, Holborn". On 24 June the previous year, John Foxe had been ordained deacon by Ridley, after having taken up residence with the Duchess of Suffolk in the Barbican in order to be eligible. The anticipated reforms that would follow from the spreading influence of men like these were deferred by the death of the king and the accession of Mary I
Mary I of England
Mary I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.She was the only surviving child born of the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547...
after the ill-fated attempt to put Lady Jane Grey
Lady Jane Grey
Lady Jane Grey , also known as The Nine Days' Queen, was an English noblewoman who was de facto monarch of England from 10 July until 19 July 1553 and was subsequently executed...
on the throne.
Around 1553–1554, or 1555 at the latest, Crowley had left England. In 1557 records state he was a member of the Frankfurt congregation of English exiles and living in very crowded quarters with a wife and child. Local tax lists registered him as a "student", and expelled him at the same time as a poor and possessionless man.
According to A Briefe Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankeford in Germany (1575), which covers events from 1554 onward, in 1557 Crowley's signature appeared with those endorsing "the new discipline" at Frankfurt (i.e., the Genevan church order), which limited the pastoral authority of Robert Horne
Robert Horne (bishop)
Robert Horne was an English churchman, and a leading reforming Protestant. One of the Marian exiles, he was subsequently bishop of Winchester from 1560 to 1580....
over the congregation. Horne objected stridently as he was pushing for a more hierarchical system, and Crowley was among those who supported the presbyterian system. However, it must be remembered that this framing of events comes from the Briefe Discourse of the Troubles which was first published eighteen years later, evidently in support of the Elizabethan presbyterian faction. (For further discussion of the significance of these events to later Elizabethan church politics, see the entry on the Marian exiles
Marian exiles
The Marian Exiles were English Calvinist Protestants who fled to the continent during the reign of Queen Mary I.-Exile communities:According to English historian John Strype, more than 800 Protestants fled to the continent, mainly to the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and France, and joined...
.)