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FOXES, FIREBRANDS, AND FORGERY: ROBERT WARE'S POLLUTION OF REFORMATION HISTORY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2011

DIARMAID MacCULLOCH*
Affiliation:
Saint Cross College, Oxford
*
Saint Cross College, Oxford, OX1 3LZdiarmaid.macculloch@stx.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

This is an analysis of the extensive forgeries of Reformation history by Robert Ware of Dublin in the late seventeenth century, one of which, Archbishop Cranmer's speech at Edward VI's coronation, is still widely quoted and used as historical evidence. Ware's activity is explained in the context of Popish Plot agitation in Ireland and England, and John Strype's part in preserving some of the forgeries in the historical record is delineated. The survival of Ware's forgeries in English and Irish historiography over three centuries to the present day is exposed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Toby Barnard and Robin Usher and to the two anonymous readers for their comments of drafts on this article; all errors that remain are of course my own.

References

1 There is no account of Robert Ware in the Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB), but there is a good entry in J. McGuire and J. Quinn, eds., Dictionary of Irish biography from the earliest times to the year 2002 (9 vols., Cambridge, 2009), s.v. Ware, Robert, ix, pp. 799–800. It makes him die in 1696, but he died Mar. 1696 Old Style, i.e. 1697.

2 The definitive account of Ussher is now A. Ford, James Ussher: theology, history and politics in early-modern Ireland and England (Oxford, 2007).

3 Margaret Statham has pointed out to me that this Reformed scholarly ethos extended as far as the community of Robert Ware's great-grandfather, the Suffolk haberdasher, Ambrose Briden, one among the puritan elite of the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds, who was one of a consortium of Bury worthies who in 1637 presented to the newly founded library of St James's Bury a set of M. de la Bigne, ed., Bibliothecae veterum patrum et auctorum ecclesiasticorum (8 vols. and supplementary vol., Paris, 1609–24).

4 An excellent treatment of this is A. Ford, ‘The Irish historical renaissance and the shaping of Protestant history’, in A. Ford and J. McCafferty, eds., The origins of sectarianism in early modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 127–57, with discussion of Sir James Ware at pp. 152–7.

5 Sir James Ware is listed as resident in Castle Street in St Werburgh's parish in the 1659 Dublin census: J. T. Gilbert and R. M. Gilbert, eds., Calendar of ancient records of Dublin (18 vols., Dublin, 1889–1903), iv, p. 564.

6 Bodleian Library, Oxford (Bodl.), MS Carte 30, fo. 634: Sir James Ware to the duke of Ormond, 9 May 1660.

7 For a useful short discussion of Sir James Ware's meticulous antiquarianism in the tradition of William Camden, and also his friendly relations with and patronage to scholarly Gaelic historians, see Herity, M., ‘Rathmulcah, Ware and Macfirbisigh’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 33, (1970), pp. 4953Google Scholar.

8 O'Sullivan, W., ‘A finding list of Sir James Ware's manuscripts’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 97 section C (1997), pp. 6999Google Scholar, at pp. 84–99. For a sample description of one of the unsullied manuscripts from Sir James's collections, see Hughes, Kathleen, ‘A manuscript of James Ware, British Museum, Additional 4788’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 55 section C (1952–3), pp. 111–16Google Scholar.

9 W. Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland revised and improved, in three volumes (3 vols. in 2, Dublin, 1739–46), iii, pp. 155–6, augmented in J. Burke, A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain (4 vols., London, 1833–8), iv, p. 498. Robert's first appearance on the public stage appears to be an incident in Apr. 1664, when he struck a Dublin waterman and was roundly abused, subsequently with his father's aid securing the man's imprisonment and abject apology: Bodl. MS Carte 159, fos. 237r, 239r.

10 McGuire and Quinn, eds., Dictionary of Irish biography, s.v. Ware, Robert, p. 799.

11 J. Ohlmeyer and E. Ó. Ciardha, eds., The Irish statute staple books, 1596–1687 (Dublin, 1998), p. 155. The range is 13 Dec. 1666 to 17 Nov. 1669, with one £400 sum as creditor on 5 Jan. 1684. Robert's father was a creditor in the enormous sum of £10,000 on 12 May 1665, which is likely to have been in connection with the settlement on Robert.

12 Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC), Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormonde, K.P., preserved at Kilkenny Castle (n.s., 8 vols., 1902–20), iv, p. 170: earl of Arran to duke of Ormond, London, 20 July 1678. The index to this volume identifies ‘Mr Ware’ as Robert's elder brother James, but on 18 Oct. 1681, Ormond writing to Arran described Robert Ware as ‘your landlord’: HMC, Ormonde, n.s., vi, p. 200.

13 British Library (BL), MS Additional 4813, fo. 3r.

14 Bodl. MS Carte 45, fos. 210 (Ormond to archbishop of Canterbury, 11 Feb. 1667), and see a less personal letter about the reversion from Ormond to the duke of Albemarle (whose secretary Matthew Locke was seeking the post, MS Carte 45, fo. 204), same day and place, MS Carte 49, fo. 389. For the archbishop of Canterbury's request on Locke's behalf, 31 Dec. 1666, MS Carte 45, fo. 204, enclosing Locke's own petition, ibid., fo. 206. Earlier Ormond had described James as ‘a person very uncapable of dischargeing it [the auditor-generalship] in his own person, but that defect is supplyed by a very able and a very honest officer, bred upp by the father’: MS Carte 51, fos. 263–4, Ormond to Arlington, Dublin, 17 Dec. 1666.

15 O'Sullivan, ‘A finding list of Sir James Ware's manuscripts’, p. 73 and n, but see the careful but still too sympathetic analysis of a manifest forgery in Robert Ware's history of Dublin, R. Gillespie, ‘Robert Ware's telling tale: a medieval Dublin story and its significance’, in S. Duffy, ed., Medieval Dublin V: proceedings of the Friends of Medieval Dublin Symposium 2003 (Dublin, 2004), pp. 291–301. For Ware's pride in Dublin, see ibid., p. 300.

16 Armagh Public Library, ‘Ware's history and antiquities’, p. 6, qu. Gillespie, ‘Robert Ware's telling tale’, p. 292.

17 Armagh Public Library, ‘Ware's history and antiquities’, p. 94, qu. Gillespie, ‘Robert Ware's telling tale’, p. 301.

18 Bodl. MS Tanner 114, no. 5, fo. 4; Tanner 90, no. 56, fo. 181. Tanner notes at the end of the latter ‘Out of Sir Ja. Ware's MSS Collections Vol 20. fo. 35 etc.’. It was this same material which deceived Philip Wilson a century before, via a different source-collection: see Wilson, P., ‘The writings of Sir James Ware and the forgeries of Robert Ware’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 15 (1917–20), pp. 8394Google Scholar; and compare his acknowledgement of having being deceived, ibid., p. 88, with the deception at P. Wilson, The beginnings of modern Ireland (Dublin, 1912), pp. 325–9.

19 These examples from BL, MS Additional 4797, fos. 131r, 135r.

20 Strange and remarkable prophesies (1678: see Appendix).

21 Cf. N. Bernard, The life and death of the Most Reverend and learned father of our Church Dr James Usher … (London, 1656; Wing B. 2012), pp. 38–40. Bernard's account is unclear as to whether he is describing two sermons, one in 1602 and a second in 1641–2, and unsurprisingly the redactor of Strange and remarkable Prophesies has simplified his account.

22 Ford, Ussher, pp. 30–1, and cf. his comments on the prophecies and their afterlife at ibid., pp. 274–5. A. Ford, ‘Ussher, James’, ODNB; ‘Death and afterlife’, seems to accept all the prophetic material more or less at face value, which is unwise.

23 The Oxford copies of various 1678 editions are Bodl. Vet. A3 e.237 (19), Vet. A4 fo.1427, Wood 646 (14), Ashm. 1070 (21), Ashm. 1062 (3), Pamph. C 140 (6); Pamph. G. 1364 (1); New College BT3.199.5(6). See Appendix for subsequent editions in 1679 (Cork), 1681 (no place of publication), 1682 (London), 1687 (London; significantly paired with other Ware forgeries of material relating to Sir William Boswell and Bishop Bramhall), 1688 (London; same pairing), 1689 and 1691 (London). Later editions were 1697 (London), 1701 (Dublin), 1702? (Dublin), 1708 (Edinburgh), 1717 (Dublin), 1734 (London), 1745 (London), 1770 (Dublin), 1779 (Leeds), 1780? (Dublin), 1793 (London), 1797 (Bristol), 1800 (Edinburgh), c. 1825 (Dublin), 1843 (Dublin), 1860 (privately printed, Middle Hill).

24 [Anon. and Robert Ware], Bishop Usshers second prophesie (1681; see Appendix).

25 The examinations of Faithful Commin Dominican fryer (1679; see Appendix). Wing is not certain in attributing this to Dublin, but Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware, iii, p. 256, gives it a Dublin place of publication, while nevertheless misdating it to 1671.

26 On Jones, see ‘Jones, Henry’, ODNB; on his role in the plot, J. Gibney, Ireland and the Popish Plot (Houndmills, 2009), passim.

27 Barnard, T. C., ‘The uses of the 23rd of October 1641 and Irish Protestant celebrations’, in Barnard, Irish Protestant ascents and descents (Dublin, 2004), pp. 1142Google Scholar, at p. 115. It might be thought significant that the Irish publication of the prophecies came not in Dublin but in that rather amateurish edition in Cork, but Dr Barnard has reminded me that the edition advertises itself as a reprint, and this may indicate a previous edition in Dublin of which no copy has survived.

28 Gibney, Ireland and the Popish Plot, pp. 13–14, 20.

29 Bodl. MS Carte 39, fos. 146–70r is a file of papers from June and July 1680 intended for Bishop Jones but intercepted by agents of the duke of Ormond and copied for his son the earl of Ossory, concerning Mansell and Ware and their dealings with Shaftesbury. On Mansell and the contact and chief agitator in the ‘Irish Plot’ fabrication, William Hetherington, whom Ware mentions in this correspondence, see Gibney, Ireland and the Popish Plot, pp. 80, 88.

30 Bodl. MS Carte 39, fo. 152r (extracts of Ware's letters, 26 and 29 June 1680), 170r (memorandum about a letter of Bishop Jones, 24 July 1680). On the background, see Gibney, Ireland and the Popish Plot, pp. 88–9.

31 R. Richardson, C., ‘Re-fighting the English Revolution: John Nalson (1637–1686) and the frustrations of late seventeenth-century English historiography’, European Review of History/Revue européenne d'histoire, 14, (2007), pp. 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 16.

32 For examples, see J. Scott, England's troubles: seventeenth-century English political instability in European context (Cambridge, 2000), esp. p. 441. On Nalson and Danby, see Goldie, M., ‘John Locke and Anglican royalism’, Political Studies, 31, (1983), pp. 6185CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 67.

33 On Shaftesbury's criticism of Ussher and royalist reprints of Ussher's works in the 1680s, see Goldie, ‘John Locke and Anglican Royalism’, pp. 66–7.

34 On Nalson's conceptualization of whigs and liberty in terms of the 1640s, see T. Harris, ‘“Lives, liberties and estates”: rhetorics of liberty in the reign of Charles II’, in T. Harris, P. Seaward, and M. Goldie, eds., The politics of religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 217–41, at pp. 231–4.

35 J. Nalson, The common interest of king and people: shewing the original, antiquity and excellency of monarchy, compared with aristocracy and democracy, and particularly of our English monarchy, and that absolute, papal and Presbyterian popular supremacy are utterly inconsistent with prerogative, property and liberty … (London, 1677; Wing N.92), p. 257. For similar comments, cf. Scott, England's troubles, pp. 164–5, and Rose, J., ‘Robert Brady's intellectual history and royalist antipopery in Restoration England’, English Historical Review, 122 (2007) pp. 1287–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. p. 1294.

36 J. Nalson with Robert Ware, Foxes and fire-brands (1680; see Appendix). The publisher, Benjamin Tooke, was much occupied with official printing for the government in England and also for Lord Lieutenant Ormond in Ireland.

37 Rose, ‘Robert Brady's intellectual history’, p. 1307.

38 Nalson with Ware, Foxes and fire-brands, p. 7: the Ware and Heath materials together occupy, pp. 6–22.

39 Richardson, ‘Re-fighting the English Revolution’, p. 14, points out that Nalson explicitly distanced himself from being identified as a ‘Tory’, even though Richardson constructs a portrait of an archetypal Tory historian of his period. A fine overview of the fluid politics of this era is the review article by Harris, T., ‘From rage of party to age of oligarchy? Rethinking the later Stuart and early Hanoverian period’, Journal of Modern History, 64, (1992), pp. 700–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 J. Nalson, ed., A true copy of the journal of the High Court of Justice for the tryal of K. Charles I: as it was read in the House of Commons and attested under the hand of Phelps, clerk to that infamous court. Taken by J. Nalson LLD. Jan. 4, 1683: with a large introduction … (London, 1684; Wing T.2645), Epistle Dedicatory, and Introduction, p. xiv.

41 J. Scott, ‘England's troubles: exhuming the Popish Plot’, in Harris, Seaward, and Goldie, eds., The politics of religion in Restoration England, pp. 107–31, at p. 126.

42 R. Ware, The prophecy of Gnatus a Brittish prophet (1681; see Appendix), sig. A2v. See MS versions of this at BL, MS Additional 4792, fo. 113, and Additional MS 4821, fos. 209v–212v reversed.

43 R. Ware, The conversion of Philip Corwine (1681; see Appendix).

44 R. Ware, The reformation of the Church of Ireland, in the life and death of George Browne (Dublin, 1681), printed in London as Historical collections of the church in Ireland (1681; see Appendix). This was another longlived success, achieving a reprint by Samuel Johnson in the Harleian Miscellany, v (1745), no. lxxiii, and a translation into Latin in D. Gerdes, Scrinium Antiquarium sive miscellanea Groningana nova ad historiam Reformationis (Groningen and Bremen, 1749–65). On Sir James Ware's praise of Martin, see Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware, i, p. 157.

45 The material of this complex affair is to be found in HMC, Ormonde, n.s., vi, pp. 153, 157, 180, 189, 194, 200, 203, ranging in date from 18 Sept. to 19 Oct. 1681 and looking back to an incident of 7 July 1681. It is not clear what living or cure in Dublin Theophilus Harrison then held (from 1696 he would be rector of St John's, Dublin), but the affidavit of Fr Bartholomew St Lawrence, HMC, Ormonde, n.s., vi, p. 157, would suggest that he was associated with St Audoen's church. The events described in the affidavit seem to be set in St Audoen's parish; Harrison came to a house in Cook Street to perform a baptism, and most of Cook Street was situated in St Audoen's.

46 [Anon.], The mischiefs and unreasonableness of endeavouring to deprive his majesty of the affections of his subjects … printed by Joseph Ray at Colledge-Green, for Samuel Helsham bookseller in Castle-street (Dublin, 1681; Wing M.2238). See Raymond Gillespie, Devoted people: belief and religion in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997), p. 43, and Gillespie, ‘The religion of the first duke of Ormond’, in T. Barnard and J. Fenlon, eds., The dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 101–14, at p. 104.

47 Mischiefs and unreasonableness, 3.

48 Ibid., 3, 10–11.

49 I owe this point to Robin Usher.

50 R. Ware [and J. Nalson], Foxes and firebrands … in two parts (1682; see Appendix), sig. A3r. The second part has a separate pagination, title-page and dedication initialled by Robert Ware to the archbishops, bishops, and ‘the rest of the Reverend Divines of the Reformed Church of Ireland’.

51 Ibid., preface to Part 1, sig. A4rv.

52 Ibid., p. 120.

53 R. Ware, The hunting of the Romish fox (1683; see Appendix). William Turner's first effort in a sequence of similar titles was The huntyng and fyndyng out of the Romyshe foxe which more then seuen yeares hath bene hyd among the bisshoppes of Englonde, after that the kynges hyghnes had commanded hym to be dryuen owt of hys realme (Antwerp, 1544; A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, eds., rev. W. A. Jackson and F. S. Ferguson, and completed by K. F. Pantzer, A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English books printed abroad before the year 1640 (3 vols., the Bibliographical Society, 1976–91) (RSTC) 24354). T. Bell, The hunting of the Romish foxe presented to the popes holines, with the kisse of his disholy foote, as an odoriferous & redolent posie verie fit for his grauitie, so often as he walketh right stately, in his goodly pallace Bel-vidêre (London, 1598; RSTC 1823).

54 On Jervis, see McGuire and Quinn, eds., Dictionary of Irish biography, s.v. Jervis, Humphrey, and on Jervis and the Ormond Market scheme, Gilbert and Gilbert, eds., Calendar of ancient records of Dublin, vi, pp. 582–605, v, pp. 302–4, 313–15, 603–8.

55 The quotation is HMC, Ormonde, n.s., vi, p. 543 (Arran to Ormond, Dublin, 13 Mar. 1683). For further material on the Ormond Market project between 1682 and 1683, see ibid., pp. 421–2, 524, 530. Robin Usher suggests to me that some of the Dublin pamphlet or MS attacks on Sir Humphrey Jervis may be by Robert Ware.

56 D. Armitage, The ideological origins of the British empire (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 2 and pp. 67, 170–1; L. Colley, Britons: forging the nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), pp. 5–6, 11–18.

57 Ware, The hunting of the Romish fox, Preface to the Reader. The signatures are very confused in the preface. At pp. 233–5 is one of the very few stories in Ware's publications that is related from his personal experience and which sounds authentic, since there is nothing necessarily polemical about it in itself, relating to his employment of a Carmelite convert from Rome, Gerrard Moor, as a Latin and French teacher for his children, in the previous year.

58 Ibid., pp. [250–1]. Historical collections had already anticipated the publication of the history of Dublin as ‘ready for the press’ in 1681: Historical collections, p. 7.

59 Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware, iii, p. 256. See also the account in Burke, ed., A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain, iv, p. 498.

60 The complicated story is unravelled in O'Sullivan, ‘A finding list of Sir James Ware's manuscripts’, pp. 73–6.

61 Ibid., pp. 78–83.

62 Ibid., p. 77. The Irish publications are The antiquities and history of Ireland, by … Sir James Ware (1 vol. in 5, 1705), and The whole works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, ed. and trans. W. Harris (2 vols. in 3, 1739; rev. edn 1764). A useful compendium of MS sources for both James and Robert Ware and other members of the Ware family is provided in R. J. Hayes, ed., Manuscript sources for the history of Irish civilisation (11 vols., Boston, MA, 1965 and 1979, available on microfiche), iv, pp. 814–18, s.v. Ware (James) and Ware (Robert). These include Hayes's notice of a further apparently unpublished anti-Catholic MS by Robert, ‘Rome's monarchical power blasted’: Queen's University Library Belfast MS 1/149.

63 R. Ware [and J. Nalson], Foxes and firebrands … the third and last part (1689: see Appendix). Churchill also brought out the first and second parts separately (see Appendix). In his preface, Ware used the pseudonym ‘Philirenes’ which Nalson had used in the first part.

64 Ware [and Nalson], Foxes and firebrands … the third and last part, pp. 19–23.

65 R. Ware, Pope Joan (1690; see Appendix); it bears licence 31 Jan. 1689 Old Style. A history of Pope Joan and the whores of Rome, referred to in Ware's dedicatory preface to Pope Joan as of 1687, appears only to survive in a second edition of 1687, without place of publication, Wing H.2132.

66 For background on the English use of the Pope Joan legend, see T. S. Freeman, ‘Joan of contention: the myth of the female pope in early modern England’, in K. Fincham and P. Lake, eds., Religious politics in post-Reformation England: essays in honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 60–79.

67 In two of history's pleasant coincidences, Jeremiah Milles, the purchaser of the Ware manuscripts which ended up in the British Library, was a passionate defender of the authenticity of Chatterton's spurious medieval poet, Thomas Rowley, as well as being successor to John Strype as rector of West Tarring in Sussex: see ‘Milles, Jeremiah’, ODNB. Lovers of irrelevant conjunctions might also note that Chatterton was caught out in and had to explain an error about the gender of St Werburgh (a parish dedication as prominent in Bristol as in Dublin, thanks to the medieval links of the two cities): J. Rosenblum, Practice to deceive: the amazing stories of literary forgery's most notorious practitioners (New Castle, DE, 2000), p. 67.

68 A good assessment of Strype is W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, ‘John Strype as a source for the study of sixteenth-century English church history’, in D. Baker, ed., The materials, sources and methods of ecclesiastical history (Studies in Church History xi, Oxford, 1975), pp. 237–47, repr. in Thompson, ed. C. W. Dugmore, Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker (London, 1980), pp. 192–201.

69 J. Strype, Memorials of … Thomas Cranmer … London, 1694; Wing S.6024, pp. 144–5.

70 Ibid., p. ix. Strype's use of an anecdote about Archbishop Arundel from ‘an Ancient MS Fragment, … formerly belonging to the Church of Worcester’, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Archbishop Tenison, looks alarmingly like a borrowing from Ware. I am also suspicious of Strype's uncharacteristically colourful ‘Sun of Truth … through the thick Mists of that Idolatry’, metaphors characterizing the incomplete nature of Henry VIII's Reformation, Strype, Memorials of … Thomas Cranmer …, ch. 11, p. 45, but have not so far tracked this material down in Ware.

71 On Strype's dealings with in particular Sir William Hickes, see ODNB, s.v. ‘Strype John’, ‘Biographical works’, and Thompson, ‘John Strype as a source for the study of sixteenth-century English church history’.

72 [A. Collins], An answer to Dr. Scot's cases against dissenters concerning forms of prayer. And the fallacy of the story of Commin, plainly discovered (London, 1700; Wing C.5356), pp. 3–17. The ODNB account of Collins (‘Collins, Anthony’), does not notice this pamphlet, anonymous as was always the case with Collins, and makes his earliest publication one of 1706. I am very grateful to Mark Williams for alerting me to the work's existence. On the Collins family property at Sandon, see P. Morant, The history and antiquities of the county of Essex … (2 vols., London, 1768), ii, p. 27.

73 [J. Scott], Certain cases of conscience resolved, concerning the lawfulness of joyning with forms of prayer in publick worship. Part II … (London, 1684; Wing S.2042), pp. 59–60.

74 [Collins], An answer to Dr. Scot's cases against dissenters, p. 5. Collins's repeated use of the words ‘Romance’ and ‘Romantick’ is an interesting echo of Robert Ware's ‘Romantick’ in his preface to The hunting of the Romish fox, but is probably coincidental.

75 E. Stillingfleet, The unreasonableness of separation (London, 1681; Wing S.5675), p. xii–xiii, all of whose references rightly point back to the first source of the names, W. Camden, Annales rerum Anglicarum, et Hibernicarum … (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1616), p. 149. In 1694, John Scott preached at Stillingfleet's consecration as bishop of Worcester (Gilbert Ironside and Simon Patrick were also being consecrated).

76 J. Strype, The life and acts of Matthew Parker … (London, 1711), p. iv.

77 Ibid., p. iii.

78 Strype's correspondence is Cambridge University Library (CUL), Additional MSS 1–10, and Harrison's letters to Strype between 1689 and 1719 are to be found in vols. 1, 4, 6, 8, and 9. BL, MS Additional 5853, is William Cole's not altogether accurate transcripts of some of this correspondence. Harrison repeatedly describes himself as Strype's ‘Brother’, but the exact relationship is not clear, and probably refers merely to their common clerical status. Harrison makes frequent references in later years e.g. to the ‘few now at Low Layton that know me’ (CUL, Additional MS 6, fo. 808; BL, MS Additional 5830, fo. 94v, Harrison to Strype, 29 Aug. 1711), which probably relates to time spent in Strype's Essex benefice during his exile from Ireland in James II's reign. On Harrison's work on subscriptions for Strype's publications, see CUL, Additional MS 6, fos. 640, 700, 732, 741, 771 (transcribed in BL, MS Additional 5853, fos. 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94): Harrison to Strype, 10 Apr. 1710, 29 Aug. 1710, 14 Nov. 1710, 29 Dec. 1710, 3 Apr. 1711, 4 Aug. 1711; also CUL, Additional MS 5 no. 247, Additional 8, nos. 203, 263, 269, 277, 290, 296, Additional 9, nos. 327, 333, 341, 342, 343, 351 (Harrison to Strype, 26 Feb. 1709, 23 Aug. 1715, 5 June 1717, 3 July 1717, 3 Aug. 1717, 5 Oct. 1717, 25 Nov. 1717, 3 Mar. 1718, 22 Apr. 1718, 21 June 1718, 5 Aug. 1718, 28 Aug. 1718, 22 Jan. 1719; the 1717 campaign extended Harrison's subscription efforts to the West of England).

79 CUL, Additional MS 4, fo. 205v (not transcribed by Cole). The letter (unusually for Harrison) is undated, but the postmark and an endorsement by Strype reveal that he received it on 9 May 1709: he also endorsed the letter ‘Fox's and Firebrands’.

80 [?J. C. Cox], ‘Notes on the smaller cathedral churches of Ireland’, Reliquary, n.s., 5 (1891), pp. 163–77, at p. 165. Of all Dean Harrison's many letters to Strype, only one is addressed from Clonmacnoise rather than Dublin or some place in England: CUL, Additional MS 4, no. 311, 14 Sept. 1709.

81 S. C. Hughes, The church of St John the Evangelist, Dublin (Dublin, 1889), pp. 58, 97; by then, St John's parish had been amalgamated with St Werburgh's. Harrison graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, around 1672; he held the deanery of Clonmacnoise from 1682 until his death in 1720, with an interval and an intruder in the deanery (Stephen Handcock) perhaps caused by his flight under James II (J. Healy, History of the diocese of Meath (2 vols., Dublin, 1908), ii, p. 278). Harrison married the daughter of Dean Jonathan Swift's uncle in 1702, in St John's church, and the families were close.

82 Harrison's vivid narrative to Strype of the aftermath of James II's campaign in Ireland, Dublin, 23 Aug. 1690, is printed in H. Ellis, ed., Original letters illustrative of English history … (2nd ser., iv, London, 1827), no. 389, pp. 209–13, from BL, MS Additional 5853, fos. 26v–27r, old pagination 392–3 (a transcript of the original in CUL, Additional MS 1, fo. 145).

83 On Bonnell, see ‘Bonnell, James’, ODNB. His correspondence with Strype can be found in CUL, Additional MS 1, fos. 35–129, transcribed not accurately but supplying some lacunae in BL, MS Additional 5853, fos. 5v–23v, and Cole's comment on Archdeacon Hamilton's biography of Bonnell can be found at ibid., fo. 5v.

84 CUL, Additional MS 1, fo. 93r, Bonnell to Strype, Dublin, 24 Apr. 1691: ‘The opportunity of Dean Harisons hand obliges me no longer to delay answering yours of 24 past’; ibid., fo. 89r, Bonnell to Strype, Dublin, 13 Feb. 1691/2: ‘I have not heard of Dean Harison since I writ to you by him.’ Many similar examples follow.

85 CUL, Additional MS 1, fo. 110r, transcribed in BL, MS Additional 5853, fo. 20r: Bonnell to Strype, Dublin, 26 June 1693. In his letter of 26 May 1697 (CUL, Additional MS 1, fo. 124r, transcribed in BL, MS Additional 5853, fo. 21v), Bonnell was judiciously warm about Harrison's pastoral abilities: ‘He acquits himself very well to the satisfaction of his people, tho’ in his Preaching least of all, having a heaviness in speaking in the Pulpit, quite different from what he has in conversation. He is a truly good Man, and zealous for promoting goodness among his people.'

86 CUL, Additional MS 1, fos. 94r, 96r, 100r, transcribed BL, MS Additional 5853, fos. 17r, 18v, 19r.

87 CUL, Additional MS 1, fo. 104r, transcribed and shortened in BL, MS Additional 5853, fo. 19r.

88 A useful treatment of Dopping is J. Peacocke, I., ‘Anthony Dopping, bishop of Meath’, Irish Church Quarterly, 2, (1906), pp. 120–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 BL, MS Additional 4797, fo. 131r. The note appears to be in a different hand either to the entry at the head of the document, which says mendaciously ‘Ex Bib. Cottonens. I got thes memories on the 6th Oct., 1657’ or to the more formal hand of the main body of the text, both of which seem to be variants of Ware's hand.

90 G. Burnet, ed. O. Airy and H. C. Foxcroft, History of my own time (3 vols., Oxford, 1897–1902), ii, pp. 171, 174, 178–81.

91 G. Burnet, A sermon preached before the House of Commons, on the 31st of January, 1688: being the thanksgiving-day for the deliverance of this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power, by his highness the prince of Orange's means … (London, 1689; Wing B.5885), p. 15. T. E. Bridgett first made these connections: Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries: historical essays (London, 1890), pp. 213–14. W. Goode, Rome's tactics: or, A lesson for England from the past … with a brief notice of Rome's allies in the Church of England (London, 1867), p. 6, noted Burnet's reference to letters of the bishops.

92 Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, pp. 277–8. The original Latin text of John Jewel's letter in Zürich is Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England. The third part … (London, 1715), Records no. 51, [second pagination] p. 275, which should be compared with the text of Burnet's commentary at the 6th book, ibid., [first pagination] p. 277. Burnet's account of Edward VI's coronation in the 1681 edition of his History (Wing B.5798A), pt ii, bk 1, p. 15, is notably brief, based on a single document from the privy council (Collections no. 4, pp. 93–6) and that may have inspired Ware to create the speech for Cranmer which he published as the very opening of his second part of Foxes and firebrands in 1682 (part ii, pp. 1–9) – abruptly beginning that text, it stands as something of an anomaly in a volume mostly given over to seventeenth-century ‘documentation’.

93 Gilbert and Gilbert, eds., Calendar of ancient records of Dublin, vi, p. 349: resolution of 24 Mar. 1706 (I am grateful to Toby Barnard for pointing me to this reference).

94 [J. Ware et al.], The antiquities and history of Ireland, by the Right Honourable Sir James Ware, Knt. … By way of appendix is added that rare and admirable discourse of Sir John Davis, knight, of the cause why Ireland was no sooner reduced to the obedience of the crown of England … (Dublin, 1705), and [J. Ware et al.], The antiquities and history of Ireland, by the Right Honourable Sir James Ware, Knt. …(London, 1705). For the Browne reference, ibid., second pagination, p. 147, introductory to the reprint of the two collections of spurious material on Archbishop Browne, pp. 147–55, 155–64. Dean Theophilus Harrison's name is notably not among the subscribers to the work listed in the Irish edn, preliminaries.

95 [Ware et al.], The antiquities and history of Ireland, life of James Ware, after preface, no pagination. Mary's brother Ambrose, mentioned in their father's will of 6 Feb. 1640 (Suffolk Record Office, Bury Wills, Muriell 157), has become described (perhaps in Ware family lore) as Sir Ambrose Briden of Maidstone, Kent. There is no record of an Ambrose Briden being knighted in the period.

96 Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware, and see in particular the preface to vol. i. The spurious material on Archbishop George Browne, i, pp. 349–51, is shortened and more integrated in the main text than in the 1704–5 edition. The account of Archbishop Garvey, i, p. 96, merely describes Robert Ware's publication of the treatise attributed to him. The further edition in 2 vols., Dublin, 1764, has new preliminaries. On Harris, see ‘Harris, Walter’, ODNB, and useful background in T. C. Barnard, ‘Improving Ireland's past’, in T. C. Barnard, ed., Improving Ireland? Projectors, prophets and profiteers, 1641–1786 (Dublin, 2008), pp. 89–119, esp. pp. 112–19.

97 Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware, iii, preface.

98 Barnard, ‘Improving Ireland's past’, p. 113 and n.

99 The silence was noticed (p. 499n) amid a genealogical account of the Wares by Burke, ed., A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain, iv, pp. 498–500, who also at ibid., p. 500, chronicles the law-suits that the entail continued to cause right to the end of the seventeenth century. Cf. Harris, ed., The whole works of Sir James Ware, iii, pp. 145–6 and 256–7.

100 Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, p. 215, first noticed the nexus of malice around the parliamentary castration bill and its connection to Ware. Ware's original forgery of Buckingham's proposal, embedded in a spurious privy council letter, is in BL, MS Additional 4791, fo. 38, and also in Ware, Foxes and firebrands …the second edition, pp. 127–8. The proposal is associated with a pre-Ware forged letter attributed maliciously to the Jesuits, printed in ibid., pp. 118–24, and it may have given Ware particular pleasure to be able to cite this earlier forgery from the Collections of his collaborator John Nalson's bête noire, and an historian overly favourable to dissent, John Rushworth (ibid., p. 129).

101 Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, pp. 218–21, usefully gathers together examples.

102 J. E. Cox, ed., Works of Archbishop Cranmer (2 vols., Parker Society, 1844 (vol. i in two paginations) and 1846), ii, p. 126n. The editor of Alexander Nowell's catechism judiciously ignored the anecdote about Nowell and Queen Elizabeth in his biographical preface: G. E. Corrie, ed., A catechism written in Latin by Alexander Nowell … (Parker Society, 1853), pp. i–ix.

103 J. Strype, ed. P. E. Barnes, Memorials … of … Thomas Cranmer … (2 vols., London, 1853), i, p. 205n.

104 Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, pp. 223–4. W. Goode, Rome's tactics: or, A lesson for England from the past … with a brief notice of Rome's allies in the Church of England (London, 1867); for his use of Ware both via Strype and directly from Foxes and firebrands, see ibid., pp. 5–24, 45–51, 53.

105 R. Churton, The life of Alexander Nowell, dean of St Pauls … (Oxford, 1809), pp. 71–3.

106 ‘Bridgett, Thomas’, ODNB.

107 R. Marius, Thomas More: a biography (London, 1986), p. xix.

108 It is most easily sampled in its London reprint of 1890: Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, ch. 7: ‘Robert Ware; or, a rogue and his dupes’, pp. 209–96.

109 Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, p. 245.

110 G. Warner, F., ‘A forged account of the demolition of the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury’, English Historical Review, 6, (1891), pp. 754–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Kegan Paul, see ‘Paul, (Charles) Kegan’, ODNB.

111 On Warner, see ‘Warner, Sir George Frederic’, ODNB.

112 Wilson, ‘The writings of Sir James Ware and the forgeries of Robert Ware’, in particular his note of being deceived, p. 88, as at Wilson, The beginnings of modern Ireland, pp. 325–9. Bradshaw, B., ‘George Browne, first Reformation archbishop of Dublin, 1536–1554’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 21, (1970), pp. 301–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 301–2, drew historians' attention to Wilson's work and to Ware's forgeries in relation to George Browne, but wider lessons failed to be drawn. It is also cited briefly though not wholly accurately in Rosenblum, Practice to deceive, p. xvii.

113 Dudley Edwards, R., ‘The dictionary of national biography’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 15, (1933), pp. 54–6Google Scholar.

114 W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the classical tradition (Dublin 1976), pp. 20–1, 41–2n, uses BL, MS Additional 4813, fos. 157v–158r, Robert Ware's supposed translation of Sir James Ware's Latin account of the teaching of a ‘newe grammar’ by Richard Owde at St Patrick's Grammar School in Dublin in 1587, and the ensuing controversy, arbitrated in favour of the older grammar of Lily (1540) by Archbishop Loftus since ‘diversities of grammars would be destructive of learning’. Stanford notes Robert's dubious reputation but unwisely chooses to give credit to this tempting morsel of evidence. Equally, without corroboration, it is unsafe to take the testimony of Ware manuscripts to the first instance of morality or mystery plays in Ireland in 1528, cited by Walker, J. C., ‘An historical essay on the Irish stage’, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 2 (1788), 3rd pagination (‘Antiquities’) pp. 7590Google Scholar, at 78–80.

115 S. Deane (gen. ed.), Field day anthology of Irish writing (5 vols., Derry and Cork, 1991–2002), i, pp. 264–5, qu. Robert Ware's ‘translation’ from the 1705 version of Ware's De Hibernia. R. Gillespie, Devoted people: belief and religion in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997), p. 118, is unduly indulgent in saying that ‘the virulent Protestant Robert Ware invented at least one story to discredit Catholicism’.

116 In chronological order, P. Hughes, The Reformation in England (3 vols., London, 1950–4), ii, p. 81; J. Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1962), pp. 262–3; John M. King, English Reformation literature: the Tudor origins of the Protestant tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1982), p. 167; M. Aston, England's iconoclasts, i: Laws against images (Oxford, 1988), pp. 249–50; D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: a life (New Haven, CT, and London, 1996), pp. 349, 364–5; C. Bradshaw, ‘David or Josiah? Old Testament kings as exemplars in Edwardian religious polemic’, in B. Gordon, ed., Protestant history and identity in sixteenth-century Europe (2 vols., Aldershot, 1996), ii, pp. 77–90, at p. 84; Murdock, G., ‘The importance of being Josiah: an image of Calvinist identity’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 29, (1998), pp. 1043–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 1048; J. Loach, Edward VI (New Haven, CT, and London, 1999), pp. 37, 48–9 (with some characteristic, but not absolute reservations); D. MacCulloch, Tudor church militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London, 1999), pp. 62 and 231 n. 8 (by now my faith in the speech was wavering); S. Alford, Kingship and politics in the reign of Edward VI (Cambridge, 2002), p. 52; F. Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2003), pp. 157–8; C. Skidmore, Edward VI: the lost king of England (London, 2007), pp. 61–62; A. Hunt, The drama of coronation: medieval ceremony in early modern England (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 78–98; K. Sharpe, Selling the Tudor monarchy: authority and image in sixteenth-century England (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), pp. 212, 236; E. Duffy, Fires of faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), p. 88. We should all have heeded the scepticism of A. F. Pollard, Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation 1489–1556 (London, 1904), p. 189n.

117 Bradshaw, ‘David or Josiah? Old Testament kings as exemplars in Edwardian religious polemic’, is a good treatment of the Josiah theme in relation to Edward VI.

118 In chronological order of last appearance, J. Phillips, The Reformation of images: destruction of art in England, 1535–1660 (London, 1973), pp. 127–8; W. S. Hudson, The Cambridge connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (Durham, NC, 1980), pp. 142–3 (‘the story undoubtedly was embellished in the telling of it’); P. Collinson, Godly people: essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983), pp. 109–33, at p. 132, repr. from Collinson, , ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius: St Ambrose and the integrity of the Elizabethan Ecclesia Anglicana, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30, (1979), pp. 205–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. MacCulloch, The later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (2nd revised edn, Basingstoke, 2001), p. 25; ‘Nowell, Alexander’, ODNB.

119 Bridgett, Blunders and forgeries, pp. 294–5. A more recent and rather acute amateur consideration of the work of Robert Ware is to be found on the Internet, a blog by Owen Roberts on 7 Aug. 2009, http://thisrecording.com/today/2009/8/7/in-which-a-forgery-just-breaks-our-heart.html, in which he not unjustly describes Robert Ware's œuvre as ‘crazy shit’.