Protestant Books in London in Mary Tudor's Reign

Abstract

Inthe popular imagination the reign of Mary Tudor still conjures up the predominant images of martyrs burning at the stake and the intellectual development of militant tendency protestantism. For the vast majority of known protestant sympathisers who remained in England during the years 1553 to 1558 reality fell far short of these extre.mes. Of those people suspected of, or arrested for, protestant activity during Mary's reign only a minority ended their lives in martyrdom. Marian protestantism was ultimately dependent not on martyrs but on survivors: not on those who were consumed in the flames of persecution but on those who lived to tell the tale. When Latimer and Ridley lit the candle of protestant heroism at Oxford they knew that they were dependent on the efforts of the unsung heroes of the reformation to ensure that this candle should 'never be· put out'. Martyrs and survivors were united in the process of providing protestant literature for distribution in Marian London. Their combined efforts resulted in the printing, and often in the circulation, of a large number of tracts. The protestant literary effort, indeed, outstripped that of the catholics. If we count individual book titles, or the number of editions as opposed to the number of pages printed the protestants printed more vernacular polemical works than did the catholics. Taking the figures provided by Dr Baskerville's preliminary bibliography as a guide, the protestants produced 114 editions of propaganda works during Mary's reign, compared with 93 editions of catholic polemic material.1 In literary matters, the protestants had the upper hand. At the beginning of Mary's reign the providers of protestant literature apparently met with few problems. Unlicensed printing was prohibited? but printing continued in the capital, although the printer John Day made use of the pseudonym of Michael Wood.3 John Bradford, the future martyr, had works ready for the press, and only modesty prevented him from rushing more of his translations of Melanchthon's works into print.4 Two editions of Stephen Gardiner's De Vera Obedientia a book frequently quoted by protestant propagandists during Mary's reign were printed by John Day, probably in London, and another edition was produced abroad.5 One of these heavily-glossed editions of Gardiner's work came to the notice of a London chronicler around Christmas of 1553, and it was later cited in several trials.6 Alongside the new compositions, John Day resurrected a work by the Henrician martyr John Frith.? The ready availability of protestant material for the printing presses at the start of the reign was partly due to a continuation of the flood of polemical works which had been printed during the short reign of the young King Edward VI, and partly a direct reaction to the perceived threat of the accession of a monarch who was known to be hostile to the cause of reform. The protestant book trade also benefited from the failure of the Marian government to take immediate action against protestant literary activity. In October 1554 the Indian summer of protestant printing in London came to an end. The striking Michael Wood types were stored away, not be used again until the printing of John Day's publication of Thomas Elyot's Banket of sapience in 1557.8 Although a small number of people had been imprisoned for distributing seditious reading matter in London before the autumn of 1554,9 and although purely secular handbills expressing opposition to the new government had come to the notice of the imperial ambassador almost from the start of the reign,10 the October arrests were unequalled in their scope. Starting on 5 October a series of seizures was made which involved a large number of people who either possessed or had sold protestant books: nearly 60 were arrested within a fortnight according to John Foxe,11whilst the French ambassador resident in London at the time of the seizures reported over 150 arrests. The imprisoned London bookseller whom the French ambassador described as having been responsible for the printing of 'une infinite de livres'12 was identified by the diarist Henry Machyn as the printer John Day. Day was sent to the Tower with one of his printing colleagues and a priest.13 John Foxe and the imperial ambassador thought that the