Continental Students and the Protestant Reformation in England in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated the insularity of Oxford and, by inference, Cambridge in the later middle ages; far from the two universities being regarded as centres of international scholarship the presence there of students from the continent seems to have been something of a rarity. In the sixteenth century a series of only loosely connected events, Henry VIII’s break with the papacy, and, somewhat later, the explicitly protestant government of Edward VI which happened to coincide with the victory of the imperial forces in Germany brought about a major change in the university world: continental protestant theologians now looked at England with new eyes, seeing it not only, as is well known, as a haven for persecuted protestant leaders, but also as a suitable centre of education for their young men. The first English exiles who went abroad for the sake of their religion in the reign of Henry VIII reinforced by the far greater number who fled from the Marian persecution made no secret of their belief in the vast superiority for the advancement of protestantism of the continental schools, especially those of Strassburg, Zurich and Geneva, but a group of contemporary Swiss, German, and French students adopted a rather different attitude. To them the English universities offered opportunities they did not have at home. One or two aspired to even higher realms and nourished ambitions of influencing thecourseof the religious settlement in England. A fresh account of their experiences in England from the later years of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I may reveal new information on a rather less familiar aspect of the relationship between the great continental reformers and the English reformation.