Dan Knauss

Crowley Chronology and Sources for his life and associates: c. 1517 Born in Tetbury, Gloucester. Emden; Garrett, Marian Exiles, 137-8; EETS ed of Crowley; King

YLS article. 1534-42 Oxford, fellow of Magdalen. Leaves as part of probably evangelical purge. (Also Foxe, who

names Thomas Cooper as being in their number, although Cooper did not leave the university.) Tutoring for the Poyntz family, which formerly had taken in Tyndale. 1546, 1547? Moves to London 1547? Publishes An informacion and peticion, which must have been written before dec. 1547 since it

refs to the 6 Arts. as unrepealed. 1550 24 June—Foxe ordained deacon by Ridley after having taken up residence with Duchess of

Suffolk in the Barbican to be eligible. 1551 Ordained by Bishop Ridley and referred to as “Stationer of the Parish of St. Andrews, Holborn” 1553 Marian exile: at Frankfurt congregation with wife (and child?). Takes Anglican side. [History of

the Troubles at Frankfort (1846): 134, 174.] 1559 Crowley back in London; his unauthorized revision of Cooper’s chronicle printed by Seres and

Marsh in April; preaches at Paul’s Cross on October 15. (Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons –register) Made Archdeacon of Hereford (Wales)—suggests he had made powerful friends during and/or prior to his exile. Leicester one of his friends in early 1560s.

1560 Lectures at St. Atholin; John Gough and John Philpot also lecture there from 1560 on. 1560/3? Prebendary of Mora (London); resigned or deprived 1565? (Newcourt, Repertorium Ecc.

Londonense 1.181; Le Neve?) 1561 Preaches at Paul’s Cross, Oct. 12. (Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons –register) 1563/4 Dissents from Archbishop Parker’s order that ministers wear the square cap, tippet and surplice. 1564,65,66? Crowley was made Vicar of St. Giles Cripplegate. [Baddeley, Account of St. Giles (1888), 58-9,

144; Hennessey, Novum Repertorium (1898): xxxix, 172.] 1565 Alderman Sir Martin Bowes—a religious conservative and certain, identified catholic—endowed a

weekly sermon for a year to be delivered by Crowley, John Philpot and John Gough—leading Puritans who were the only men of their persuasion to survive the purges that began at this time. Bowes had been alderman since 1536; probably was only hiring the best/most popular preachers regardless of their views. Yet Bowes left an evangelicalish will…which may or may not mean anything, as they were often produced by scribes with boilerplate formulae. (See Foxe5:538-9), Narratives of the days of the Reformation (Camden 77: 40-41); Machyn’s Diary (Camden Soc 43: 68, 70-71); House of Commons 1509-58, s.n. Bowes.

1566 With one Sayer, the Deputy of the Ward, Crowley tried to abolish singing/chanting the psalms and other parts of the service in favor of reading at St. Giles; he also aimed to eliminate the surplices of the chorister. Thus he was suspended on 28 March 1566 but ignored this. On 26 March all London clergy had been summoned to Lambeth by the ecclesiastical commissioners who

commanded all the Puritans to conform. 37 refused and were suspended and threatened with deprivation. On April 1, 1566, the singers of St. Giles came to the church in surplices for a funeral. Crowley, his Curate and the Deputy stopped them at the door and ordered them “to take off these porter’s coats,” with the Deputy threatening to knock them flat if they broke the peace. The singers left, the Lord Mayor complained to Archbishop Parker, and he summoned Crowley and the Deputy. Crowley expressed willingness to go to prison—would not allow the surplices and would not cease his duties unless he was discharged. Parker said he was discharged, and Crowley said he would only accept discharge from a law court. He was then put under house arrest by Parker, but before end of year had assumed a lectureship at St. Giles vacated by the suspension of Bartlett. Sayer was bound over for £100 and to appear again if there was more trouble. Some 60 women of the parish petitioned Parker on Crowley’s behalf in person and were rebuffed in preference for a half-dozen of their husbands. Crowley stuck to his principles and was fully deprived in 3 months. Sent to Dr. Cox, Bishop of Ely, and on 28 October, an order was issued to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to settle the case. (Archbishop Parker’s Correspondence, 275f.)

1567 Resigns Archdeaconry (Hereford) 1569 Deprived or resigns from St. Giles; returns to printing for 5-6 years. One of his prefaces is dated

from his house in Southwark. 1572 John Field, Thomas Wilcox and others publish the First Admonition to Parliament -- advocates

the introduction of a Presbyterian system. Crowley visits Field and Wilcox in prison to debate them. Field had a lectureship at St. Giles. Fact check: Foxe accompanied Crowley on this visit/debate.

1574 Preaches before Lord Mayor, Sir James Hawes, and Common Council 1575 Named to a commission (along with William Wager ) to hear the petitions of poor prisoners in

Ludgate and the two Counters in London, Wood Street and the Poultry, mentioned in Wager’s play, Enough Is as Good as a Feast, 361. [Cal. Patent Rolls, 1572-75 (1973): 566] Their role was to summon the prisoners and their creditors, and decide if they could be freed on bond, since many prisoners said they would gladly compound with their creditors to get out of prison. [Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1572-1575 (London, 1973): 161, 566.]

1575/6 Collated (or presented?) to vicarage of St. Lawrence Jewry by Bishop of London. The vestry

elects him lecturer. His successor appointed 5 May 1578. 1576 Returns to his lectureship at St. Atholin’s. 1577 Lectureship at St. Mary New Fish St. and St. Saviour’s Southwark. 1578 Admitted to the Company of Stationers. A poem, Wharton’s Dream, by John Wharton, attacks

usurers, extortioners, leasemongers, and such others. Says on verso of title-leaf that it was “perused and thought well of” by John Foxe, Robert Crowley, William Wager , Thomas Buckmaister, and others.

Resigns all lectureships; returns as vicar of St. Giles Cripplegate (9 May, 1878; succeeding

Thomas Drant/Draunt who died in April 1578). Testified 3 Oct. 1578 as “Robert Crowley, preacher” age 61 that he was sent for last New year’s and gave ghostly counsel to the dying Sir John Langley, a former Lord Mayor of London. Sayys he was accompanied by “one Mr Fox a preacher.” And Dean Nowell of St. Paul’s. (C24/134/16). See (Mark?) Eccles, Christopher Marlowe in London (Cambrige MA, 1934): 18; William Ingram, A London Life in the Brazen Age, Francis Langley, 1548-1602 (Cambridge, MA, 1978): 29-37, 294.

1579 Star Chamber deposition 22. Oct. 1579 (St Ch 5, W61/5) signed “Per me Robertum Croleium” 1579-88 Licensed books for printing.

(W.W. Greg, Licensers for the Press, &c., Oxford Bibliog. Soc., NS X (1962): 27-8.) 1582 22 April—Crowley signs a lease (mentions “Quest House”) From this date to May 1588 his

signature occurs regularly in the audit of “Sworder’s” accounts. 6 July—St. Giles sexton finds Romish pamphlet in church porch and delivers it to Crowley who gives it to Dr. John Hammond (Commissary to the Bishop of London), who gives it to Sec. State. Appointed with John Field (chief Presbyterian organizer), Charke and Herne to debate imprisoned Catholic priests.

1583 Lectureship at St. Mary Lothbury 1587 Signs bond to administer a poor orphan’s estate, 19. Dec. 1587. (Journal 22, f. 146v.)

Signs as Robert Crowley, stationer with John Crowley, merchant tailor. (A son?) 1588 Dies 8 (or 18?) June 1588; buried as vicar of St. Giles; succeeded as vicar at St. Giles by Lancelot

Andrewes. Aldermen grant his widow, Margaret, a lease of the house and garden in her tenure, the house having been built by her late husband. (Repertory 22, f. 17)

1592 Stationers’ Co. allows a noble a year to Margaret Crowley, as she had fallen into poverty. Crowley rose to Archdeacon and held several other offices (rector of St. Giles in 1565), but he lost them in 1566-67 after opposing--in print and in sermons--clerical vestments. His printer, Henry Denham, was fined for printing one of these works. Crowley also caused some trouble at St. Giles when clerks wore surplices to a burial, and he tried to get the choir to stop wearing habits. Crowley managed to regain some of his lost benefices in the late 1570s, around the time Edmund Spenser published The Shepheardes Calender which has much to do with these issues, and Crowley was then still a figure of controversy--popular among London Puritans and the City authorities though troublesome to much of the church establishment (King, English Reformation 432). One wonders what story lies behind the record that the Archbishop of Canterbury gave Crowley the power to license books by his own authority just before Crowley’s death. William Wager: Pluralist friend of Nowell’s like Crowley. Wrote two moral plays: The Longer Thou Livest, the More Fool Thou Art (p. c. 1570) and Enough is as Good as a Feast (c. 1570)—edition by R. Mark Benbow, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (Lincoln, Neb, 1967). Wager or “Wadger” was rector of St. Benet, Gracechurch, from 1567 to 1591 and of St. Michael at Queenhithe from 1575/6 to 1591. He died at was buried at the former on 29 March 1591 (Hennessey NR). He was presented to both rectories by Dean Nowell and the chapter of St. Paul’s. Wager is listed as about 1586 as living in his parish of St. Michael at Queenhithe, not at St. Benet, with a curate for both his parishes. (Albert Peel, ed., The Seconde Part of the Register. 1915: 2.181, 183.) A William Wager, clerk, was also presented in 1571 by the queen to the rectory of Cradley in Hereford diocese. In 1573 he was named one of the 1st governors of the free grammar school in Barnet, Herts, founded by the queen, at the suit of Leicester. John Foxe: A modern (19thC?) inscription in St. Giles says Foxe (buried there w/ Crowley) was some time Vicar of the Parish. (Repeated in scholarship…) Baddeley points out that this cannot be so. Foxe lived in the parish (Grub St.) Probably Foxe assisted Crowley and may have been called a “minister” of Cripplegate, as John Field is on the tp of one of his books, or as some curates are described in the registers from Andrewes’ time. Mierdman: On Mierdman as the printer of Reformation tracts attributed to Richard Jugge, Day, Seres, and other London printers, see Colin Clair, “On the Printing of Certain Reformation Books,” The Library, 5th series, 18 (1963): 275-87. See also Denis Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing in England, 1550-1640 (New York: Bibliographic Society of America, 1973). Andrew Johnston and Jean-Francois Gilmont discuss protestant printing in Antwerp and its significance to England in several chapters in The Reformation and the Book, ed. Jean-François Gilmont, trans. and ed. Karin Maag (Aldershot, Hants, England; Brookfield, Vermont, Ashgate, 1998). A key Dutch printer of protestant books, Mierdman (b. 1510) printed some of John Bale’s work when he was in Antwerp. About the time (c. 1547) Bale was returned from his first exile on the continent and possibly opened a bookshop at St.

Paul’s, Mierdman went into exile in England to escape charges of printing heresy. Hailey suggests that “it may well have been Bale himself who encouraged Mierdman to transplant his operation to London” (“Giving Light,” p. 23). Mierdman printed protestant materials in London until the accession of Mary I when he left for Emden. Many books Mierdman printed disguise their source with false imprints. Known, or suspected, Mierdman imprints of Bale’s works in Antwerp are STC 1270, 1274a, 1296.5, and 1297. In London, Mierdman seems to have printed at least six more of Bale’s books and four of Crowley’s. (Bale apparently supplied Crowley, himself, and others in their circle with fine, distinctive continental woodcuts that were unusual in this period, such as the famous image of Anne Askew’s martyrdom, first used by Crowley, then Bale, and then Foxe, whose editions of the Actes and Monuments were printed by Day.) Working notes: Fact check: RC and Tripp were debating catholics in Marshalsea. (source?) RC mentioned in Machyn, Diary, p. 293—covers St. Giles 1550-70, mentions 8 sermons by Crowley from 1559-63, including 3 from Paul’s Cross. See Gorham’s Reformation Gleanings, 462. Some of Crowley’s were epigrams reprinted by Strype in Memorials of the Reformation 2.2 EETS extra series (1872). Look up GLMS; Paul S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent. Stanford, 1970.

Documentary sources; early accounts: Arber, Transcript of Stat. Reg., 2:679 A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). George Hennessey, Novarum Repertorium (London, 1898): 38, 172, 375-6 London, Guildhall Library 9537/2, fol. 33r. PRO docs John Stow’s Survay and “Memoranda” John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: J. Wyat, 1711): 1.301, 436 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 2.1.217-26 Strype, Annals, (London, 1708-09; rpt. New York, B. Franklin, 1968): 1.1.200, 299, 1.2.303 Machyn’s Diary, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society 42 (London, 1848; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968) Ames, Typographical Antquities, 2.757-62, 4.325-35 John J. Baddeley, An Account of the Church and Parish of St. Giles, without Cripplegate, in the City of London (London: J. J. Baddeley, 1888): 13, 58-9, 76-8, 144 Gordon and Dewhirst, The Ward of Cripplegate, 107, 115, 118 Mark Eccles, “Brief Lives: Tudor and Stuart Authors,” Studies in Philology 79 (1982): 27-8 Mark Eccles, “William Wager and His Plays,” English Language Notes 18 (1980-81): 258-59

Crowley’s poetry and prose tracts engaged the main controversies of his time. He joined debates about church doctrine and ritual, took to the defense of the “the poor commons” against predatory elites in a time of popular revolts, and printed original poetic works that imitate William Langland and other late Middle English poets in versification and genre. Like Langland, Crowley used prophetic and apocalyptic modes of allegory as a means of social commentary and criticism. Although he invariably hedged his most controversial views by affirming his opposition to rebellion, the need for people of every degree to stay in their place, and his opposition to holding all property in common, Crowley’s frank, critical stance (in the late 1540s-1550) was an edgy one, as large-scale peasant rebellions occurred in East Anglia, Yorkshire, Sussex and the southwest. Crowley’s views were consistently hard on the wealthy, and this was no small matter in the context of Sir John Cheke’s unqualified blast against rebellion in The Hurt of Sedicion (1549), as David Norbrook has remarked in Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (1984): 54. Following the peasant rebellions, Somerset, who had made it possible for Crowley's work to be printed, was blamed for “fomenting hostility to gentlemen” and deposed (Norbrook, 52). SRC? His publications all served a religious and reformist agenda, but his Edwardian prose and poetic works have an explicit sociopolitical focus:

• A Supplication of the Poor Commons (printer unknown), which appeared in two editions in 1546 (STC 23435.5 and 10884). Its first part has been attributed to Henry Brinkelow and, according to the STC, “less probably,” to Crowley. The second part reprints Simon Fish’s 1529 Supplicacyon for the beggers (STC 10883).

• Two 1548 editions of An informacion and peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore commons of this realme (STC 6086 and 6086.5), whose title continues, affirming that the book was “compiled and imprinted for this onely purpose that amongest them that haue to doe in the Parliamente, some godlye mynded men, may hereat take occacion to speake more in the matter then the authoure was able to write.” This text was enlarged and printed in Latin c. 1548 as Explicatio petitoria adversus expliatores (STC 6085). The Latin edition is dedicated to a 1547 MP. According the the STC, the English editions were printed by Day, and the Latin edition may have been printed by Stephen Mierdman.

• 1549 and 1550 editions of 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. (STC 6094 and 6095) Both editions were printed by Richard Grafton according to the STC. Blayney contends that the first was printed by Day and the second partly by Day and partly by Crowley or, more likely, entirely by Crowley with some initials from Day.

• The way to wealth, wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion. (STC 6096) Printed in 1550 by Mierdman according to the STC or by Day according to Blayney.

• Pyers plowmans exhortation, vnto the lordes, knightes and burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse (STC 19905). Anonymous but speculatively attributed to Crowley by Barbara Johnson, Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim’s Progress: Reception and the Protestant Reader (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992): 87-8; printed by Anthony Scoloker.

• One and thyrtye epigrammes, wherein are bryefly touched so many abuses, that maye and ought to be put away. (STC 6088, 6088.3, 6088.7) Two editions printed in 1550 by Grafton according to the STC or by Crowley himself, according to Blayney. Reprinted in 1573.

• Philargyrie of Greate Britayne. (STC 6089.5) Printed in 1551 by Grafton, according to the STC or by Crowley, according to Blayney.

• Pleasure and payne, heauen and hell: Remembre these foure, and all shall be well. (STC 6090) Printed in 1551 by Grafton, according to the STC or by Crowley, according to Blayney.

• The opening of the wo[r]des of the prophet Ioell, in his second and third chapters, rehersed by Christ in Mathewe .xxiiii. Marke .xiii. Luke .xxi. and by Peter Actes .ii. concerning the signes of the last day. (STC 6089) Title notes that it was first “compiled by Robert Crowley in the yeare of our Lord. M. D.XLVI. And perused againe by the same” to be first printed in 1567 by Henry Bynneman for John Charlewood.

N.b., Barrett L. Beer and R. J. Nash’s article, “Hugh Latimer and the Lusty Knave of Kent: The Commonwealth Movement of 1549,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research (1979): 175-8, makes a crucial correction to the preceding scholarship regarding the identity of the “Common Welthe called Latymer” mentioned in an often-cited 1549 letter from Sir Anthony Aucher to William Cecil, then secretary to Somerset; it does not refer to Hugh Latimer as was previously thought. J.D. Alsop further clarifies the matter in “Latimer. The ‘Commonwealth of Kent’ and the 1549 Rebellions,” The Historical Journal 28.2 (1985): 379-83.]

Mozley’s account of Foxe’s life is largely drawn from the memoir assumed to be by Simeon Foxe that appears in Latin and English in the eighth and final 3 volume edition of Acts and Monuments, vol. 2, (London, 1641). The Latin version is also in MS Lansdowne 388 which contains some of Foxe’s Oxford letters, while others are in MS Harley 416 and 417, some having been reprinted in the appendix of Josiah Pratt’s editions of the The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe (London, 1853-70). Interestingly, in addition to their similar experiences from Oxford onward, Crowley and Foxe were both ordained as deacons by Ridley a year apart, and they died a year apart with Foxe being buried in 1587 at St. Giles Cripplegate while Crowley was rector there. The following year Crowley died and was buried under the same stone as Foxe.

Foxe was first employed by William Lucy, a friend of Hugh Latimer, as the tutor of his son, the future Puritan, Sir Thomas Lucy, on whom Shakespeare is thought to have based his Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Having married in 1547, Foxe then moved to London where he taught the wards of Mary Fitzroy, the Protestant duchess of Richmond—that is, the children of her late brother, Henry Howard, the earl of Surrey. Meanwhile, Crowley was employed by Sir Nicholas Poyntz’ of Iron Action (1510-56/57) in Crowley’s own home county of Gloucestershire. By late 1546 or 1547 at the latest, Crowley too had moved to London. There, both he and Foxe took up reformist religious writing. According to Foxe’s sources, William Webb and Thomas Poyntz, in Actes and Monuments, after leaving Cambridge (c. 1521), Tyndale himself had been the tutor of the sons of Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury, whose wife, Anne, was the daughter of Sir Robert Poyntz, the sister of Thomas Poyntz, and the aunt of Sir Nicholas Poyntz. It was in the Walsh household that Tyndale is reported to have said to a visiting priest, “If God grant me life, ere many years pass I will see that the boy behind his plow knows more of the Scriptures than thou dost!” Tyndale converted the Walshes to the Protestant cause, and they supported him financially in his later work. They and the Poyntzes tried to get him released from Vilvoorde prison. Thomas Poyntz, a merchant adventurer, tried to safeguard Tyndale at the English House he operated in Antwerp. It was a hotbed of reformist activity: John Rogers, the first Marian martyr, was chaplain there and collaborated with Edward Whitchurch and Richard Grafton in producing the “Mathew’s Bible” (Antwerp, 1537), which was based on the Tyndale and Coverdale translations. xxx For a direct engagement of the historiographic issues, see D. R. Woolf, “Disciplinary History and Historical Discourse: A Critique of the History of History: the Case of Early Modern England,” Cromohs 2 (1997) <http://www.unifi.it/riviste/cromohs/2_97/woolf.html>. Woolf critiques the positivist, continuist, and whiggish assumptions that underlie much of the aforementioned scholarship. He contends that the idea that there is a “gradual, incremental progress in the state of historical knowledge and the methods by which such knowledge is attained” is the main blinder of modern historiography.”A similar but more thoroughgoing critique of positivism, particularly as it was espoused by Max Weber, is made in Eric Voegelin’s New Science of Politics, 4f. Others? Intellectual History…