‘A Gracelesse, and Audacious Companie’? the Family of Love in the parish of Balsham, 1550–1630

Abstract

The doctrine and membership of the Family of Love in England remain something of a mystery, despite extensive recent work. Why should such an apparently small group have been the specific subject of a royal proclamation? Between June 1575 and November 1580 the sect was referred to a dozen times in Privy Council correspondence, and was clearly the object of considerable anxiety. The Bishops of London, Norwich, Exeter, Ely, Winchester, Lincoln, Salisbury and Worcester were all instructed to conduct investigations. Puritan writers like John Rogers and William Wilkinson published books attacking the sect. The reasons for such sustained persecution over so short a period are hard to establish. One fact which must have contributed to the panic was that there were Familists in the Queen’s guard, close to the centre of the political nation. Moreover, reports of the sect in each of the dioceses listed above had presumably been received. It is likely that the Family of Love was much larger than the surviving evidence reveals. Familism, as the proclamation suggests, was also thought to involve the threat of social revolution. In a series of letters which Rogers later published, one Familist writer stated thatI had rather heare an honest poore mans report truly spoken, than a rich credible mans that is a Iyerand quoted Scripture to emphasize the point: ‘The Lorde preferueth the simple.’ Views like this were dangerously disrespectful, and implied social insubordination.