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The importance of dying earnestly: the metamorphosis of the account of James Bainham in ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Readers of the second edition of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, or any of the subsequent editions of that massive history of the persecutions inflicted on the Church, popularly known as ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, would have found a coherent, lucid description, filled with circumstantial and often dramatic details, of the ordeals of James Bainham. According to this account, James Bainham, a member of the Middle Temple and the son of a Gloucestershire knight, was accused of heresy in 1531, arrested, and transported to Lord Chancellor More’s house in Chelsea. There he was tied to a tree in More’s garden and whipped; subsequently he was taken to the Tower and racked in More’s presence. Eventually, after repeated interrogations and under the threat of burning, Bainham abjured and did penance at Paul’s Cross. Yet Bainham’s conscience tormented him and, a little over a month after his release, he prayed for God’s forgiveness before an evangelical congregation, meeting secretly in a warehouse in Bow Lane. A week later, Bainham stood up on his pew in St Austin’s church, clutching a vernacular New Testament and William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man to his chest and tearfully declared that he had denied God. He prayed for the congregation’s forgiveness and exhorted them to die rather than to submit as he had done. If this defiance was not sufficiently public, Bainham sent letters proclaiming his doctrinal convictions to the Bishop of London and others. Rearrested and re-examined, he was inevitably condemned to death as a relapsed heretic.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997
Footnotes
*
I am grateful to Maurice D. Lee, William Connell, and Susan Wabuda for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper.
References
1 Foxe, John, The Ecclesiastical History, contayning the Actes and Monuments of Thyngs passed in every kynges tyme in this realme especially in the Church of England…, 2nd edn (London, 1570), pp. 1168–72 Google Scholar. Hereafter each of the four editions of this work published in Foxe’s lifetime will be designated by the year in which it was printed (i.e., Foxe, 1563, Foxe, 1570, Foxe, 1576, and Foxe, 1583). All of these editions were published by John Day in London.
2 John Foxe, Rerum in ecclesia gestarum … commentarii (Basle, 1559), pp. 126–7.
3 Foxe, 1563, pp. 492–3.
4 Foxe, 1563, pp. 493–5.
5 Foxe, 1563, p. 1703 [recte p. 1730].
6 Foxe, 1570, pp. 1169–70.
7 Foxe, 1570, pp. 1168–9.
8 Foxe, 1570, pp. 1170–1; also see Foxe, 1563, p. 486.
9 Foxe, 1570, p. 1172; compare Foxe, 1583, pp. 492–3.
10 Foxe, 1570, p. 1199. Also see Hall, Edward, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, ed. Ellis, H. (London, 1809), p. 806 Google Scholar.
11 Foxe, 1576, pp. 999–1002, 1027; Foxe, 1583, pp. 1027–30, 1055.
12 See Bale, John, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae … catalogus (Basle, 1557), p. 763 Google Scholar.
13 Bale, John, The Epistel Exhortatorye of an Inglyshe Chrystian … (Marburg, 1544)Google Scholar, fol. 13v, and idem, Select Works of John Bale, ed. Henry Christmas, PS (Cambridge, 1849), pp. 394, 586.
14 Foxe, 1563, pp. 448–9.
15 ‘Ex certa religione, vivoque testimonio propriae ipsius coniugis’ (Foxe, 1570, p. 1153).
16 See Thomas S. Freeman, ‘Research, rumor and propaganda: Anne Boleyn in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, Hist] [forthcoming].
17 James Bainham was the youngest son of Sir Alexander Bainham, the head of the most prominent family in the Forest of Dean. James’s mother, Elizabeth, was the sister of William Tracy, whose distinctively Protestant will provoked the ecclesiastical authorities into exhuming his body in 1531 and burning it for heresy. The affair became a cause célebre, particularly after Tracy’s will was printed by William Tyndale and John Frith. James Bainham’s cousin, Richard Tracy, assisted Hugh Latimer in destroying that celebrated object of veneration, the Blood of Hailes, in 1538, and became an ardent Protestant pamphleteer. See Litzenberger, Caroline J., ‘Responses of the laity to changes in official religious policy in Gloucestershire (1541-1580)’ (Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1993), pp. 79, 81 Google Scholar.
18 Foxe observed that marginal comments to the articles were written in Bainham’s hand (Foxe, 1563, p. 494).
19 In the 1563 edition, Foxe printed a list of people who had abjured in a sweeping persecution of Lollards, and evangelicals in the diocese of London, which began in 1527 (Foxe, 1563, pp. 418–20). But in the 1570 edition, he not only listed these individuals, he also printed the charges against them along with whatever background information (age, vocation, place of residence, etc.) the records provided (Foxe, 1570, p. 1184). At the same time, the 1570 list contained a number of names apparently overlooked by Foxe in 1563. Finally, the 1563 list included the names of people who are described (correctly) as having been persecuted in the wake of the Act of Six Articles and who abjured in 1541 (Foxe, 1570, pp. 1378–80). It is clear from all of this that the list of abjurations which Foxe printed in 1563 was cursorily compiled from the London records, and a lack of time between the unearthing of these records and the publication of the first edition is the most logical explanation. Similarly, Foxe first printed documents from Bishop Tunstall’s records pertaining to Humphrey Monmouth (a London alderman who supported Tyndale and who was arrested for heresy in 1528) in the appendix to the 1563 edition, while in the next edition these documents were incorporated into the main text (Foxe, 1563, pp. 1737–8; Foxe, 1570, pp. 1133–4). Again, this suggests that documents in the London diocesan records from around 1528 were being discovered as the 1563 edition was being printed and were incorporated into it with difficulty.
20 If this seems to be hyperbole, compare the various names, occupations, and geographical origins given to the three people executed along with Anne Askew in John Bale, The lattre examination of Anne Askew (Wesel, 1548), fol. 67r; idem, Illustrium maioris Brytanniae scriptorum … summarium (Wesel, 1548), fol. 229v; idem, Catalogus, p. 6709; The Grey Friars Chronicle of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Society, 53 (London, 1852), p. 51; Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, ed. William Douglas Hamilton, 2 vols, Camden Society, ns 11 (London, 1875), 1, pp. 169–70.
21 It is worth pointing out that despite some errors in the account of Bainham in the Rerum (such as Bainham’s first name), it was quite accurate about the charges for which he was condemned. Even the erroneous statement that Bainham was burned holding a book may be a garbled version of Bainham’s declaration of remorse at St Austin’s.
22 Another good example of this is Foxe’s expansion in the 1563 edition of his account of the burning of a rood in a church at Dovercourt, Essex. In the Rerum, Foxe stated that three young men were hanged for having destroyed the Dovercourt Rood in 1532 and that a fourth participant, one Robert Gardiner, had fled (Rerum, p. 126). Once again, Bale, who had detailed knowledge of this incident (see Epistel Exhortatorye, fol. 13r), was almost certainly the source for the Rerum account. Once again, Foxe was able to add significantly to this account in 1563, this time with information derived from a letter Robert Gardiner had written describing the act of iconoclasm and its aftermath, which Foxe had obtained from a Londoner to whom it had been written (Foxe, 1563, pp. 495–6).
23 The first account of Bainham’s execution states that Dr Simons, who was sent to convert Bainham to orthodoxy, fled from the stake, intimidated by the large crowd. The Venetian ambassador, in a letter written to the Signory four days after Bainham’s execution, claimed that ‘the greater part of the population was present at his death.’ The ambassador also confirmed that Bainham was praying aloud while he burned, although he did not describe the content of the prayer (Rawdon Brown, ed., Calendar of Slate Papers Venetian, 1527–33, 33 vols [London, 1868–1947], 4, p. 334). The last words attributed to Bainham in this version, denouncing More for having been both his accuser and his judge, raised an apposite point, which would have occurred naturally to a lawyer. As Chancellor, More had the authority to investigate, arrest, and detain suspected heretics, but he did not have the authority to try or condemn people for heresy; the latter task was the responsibility of the ecclesiastical courts. The fact that several of Stokesley’s examinations were conducted at More’s house (even assuming that More did not participate in the examinations) blurred, at the least, the division between the two jurisdictions.
24 More, Thomas, The Apology, ed. Trapp, J. B. in The Complete Works of St Thomas More, 15 vols (New Haven, 1963-90), 9, pp. 117–20 Google Scholar.
25 Interestingly, Foxe was quite cautious elsewhere in raising this charge against More. In the second edition, Foxe introduced an account of Sygar Nicholson (whom More had expressly denied whipping) and guardedly wrote: ‘The handlying of this man was too cruell, if the report was true, that he should be hanged by thoses [sic] partes, which nature wel suffreth not to be named’ (Foxe, 1570, p. 1184). Why was Foxe willing to assert that More tied Bainham to a tree and whipped him, but relatively hesitant to say the same about Nicholson? Perhaps because the version of Nicholson’s ordeal which Foxe heard included outlandish embellishments (Foxe’s wording suggests that this might be the case) and because the account of Bainham’s beating came from Joan Bainham, whom Foxe considered a reliable source, which may not have been the case with the Nicholson story.
26 More, Apology, p. 348.
27 Voragine, Jacobus da, The Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, William Granger, 2 vols (Princeton, N.J., 1993), 1, p. 100 Google Scholar.
28 Ibid., 2, p. 164.
29 Pantaleon, Heinrich, Martyrum historia (Basle, 1563), p. 39 Google Scholar. Foxe translated and reprinted this story (Foxe, 1563, p. 421).
30 See for example Foxe, 1563, fol. 69r-v, where Foxe presents differing versions of the death of King John.
31 See Patrick Collinson, ‘“A magazine of religious patterns”: an Erasmian topic transposed in English Protestantism’, in his Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983), pp. 510–25; Thomas S. Freeman, ‘“Great searching out of bookes and autors”: John Foxe as an ecclesiastical historian’ (Rutgers University Ph.D. thesis, 1995), pp. 115–33.
32 Foxe, 1570, p. 1724. For a similar incident see Foxe, 1563, p. 1162.
33 Nicholas Harpsfield, Dialogi sex contra summi pontificatus, monasticae vitae, sanctorum, sacrarum imaginum oppugnatores et pseudomartyres (Antwerp, 1573), pp. 541, 696–7.
34 Parsons, Robert, The Third Part of a Treatise intituled Of Three Conversions of England (St Omer, 1604), pp. 419–20 Google Scholar.
35 Foxe, 1563, pp. 1703–7; Foxe, 1570, pp. 2298–302 [recte 2318]; Foxe, 1576, pp. 1990–2005; Foxe, 1583, 2099–166. The title varies somewhat from edition to edition.
36 Susan Wabuda, ‘Equivocation and recantation during the English Reformation: the “subtle shadows” of Dr. Edward Crome’, JEH, 44 (1993), pp. 238–9.
37 Compare Foxe, 1563, p. 493 with Foxe, 1570, p. 1169.
38 Compare Foxe, 1570, p. 1169 and Foxe, 1576, p. 1000 with Foxe, 1583, p. 1029.
39 BL, MS Harley 422, fol. 90r-v.
40 Wabuda, ‘Equivocation’, p. 240.
41 On the universal belief in this dictum see Leon-E. Halkin, ‘Les Martyrologes et la critique: Contribution à l’étude du martyrologe protestant des Pays-Bas’, in Mélanges historiques offerts à Monsieur Jean Meyerhoffer (Lausanne, 1952), p. 58. John Jewel can hardly be accused of exaggeration when he maintained that ‘It is knowen to children, [that] it is not the death, but the cause of death that makes the martyrs’ O-Ayre, ed., The Works of John Jewel, 3, PS [Cambridge, 1845], p. 188). For Latimer’s declaring that the Anabaptists were not true martyrs, despite their constancy, because they died in an unrighteous cause, see The Seconde Sermon of Maister Hugh Latemer (London, 1549), sigs L8v-M1r.
42 By far the best discussion of this issue to date is Patrick Collinson, ‘Truth and legend: the veracity of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, in A. C. Duke and C. A. Tamse, eds, Clio’s Mirror: Historiography in Britain and the Netherlands (Zutphen, 1985), pp. 31–54.
43 Donald R. Kelley, ‘Martyrs, myths and the massacre: the background to St Bartholomew’, AHR, 77 (1972), p. 1328.
44 See, for example, Foxe’s comparison of John Hooper to Polycarp (Foxe, 1570, p. 1683) or of Laurence Saunders to St Laurence (Foxe, 1563, p. 1048).
45 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL, IV, xv, 15, p. 347.
46 Compare Foxe, 1563, pp. 1376–9 with Foxe, 1570, p. 1937. Latimer’s companion, Augustine Bernher, also wrote a brief account of the executions of Ridley and Latimer as part of his dedication (to the dowager Duchess of Suffolk) of a collection of Latimer’s sermons published in 1562. Two features of this account (Latimer’s crying out ‘Fidelis est Deus, qui non sinit nos tentari supra id quod pussumus’, and Latimer’s heart bursting open and bleeding profusely during his burning) are also in the account in the first edition of the Acts and Monuments (compare Latimer’s Sermons, 1, pp. 322–3 with Foxe, 1563, pp. 1376–9; I am very grateful to Professor Susan Wabuda for bringing Bernher’s account to my attention). There is no way of knowing if these details were given to Foxe by Shipside, but it is very likely that Bernher had also described the executions to Foxe. For one thing, both Bernher and Foxe claim that the blood gushing forth from Latimer’s heart was an answer to the martyr’s prayer that he be allowed to shed his heart’s blood for the Gospel. Admittedly, Foxe could have simply been repeating the observation from Bernher’s already-published account. But Bernher made it clear in his dedication that he knew in advance what the contents of Foxe’s account of Latimer would be in the forthcoming 1563 edition of Acts and Monuments (Latimer’s Sermons, 1, p. 322). Thus it is almost certain that Foxe had consulted Bernher about his friend and mentor, and highly likely that they had discussed Latimer’s martyrdom. But even if it is not true, the fact remains that two eye-witnesses, Shipside and Bernher, each devoted to the memory of Ridley and Latimer, do not mention Latimer making his famous remark about ‘playing the man’.
47 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), pp. 74–87.