Heretic Hunting beyond the Sea

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Heretic Hunting beyond the Seas: John Brett and His Encounter with the Marian Exiles Author(s): Sarah Covington Source: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn,

2004), pp. 407-429Published by: The North American Conference on British StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4054366Accessed: 02-05-2015 14:42 UTC

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Heretic Hunting beyond the Seas: John Brett and his Encounter with the Marian Exiles

Sarah Covington

The story of beleaguered Protestants who fled to the continent during the reign of Mary Tudor in the 1550s is well-known, but less familiar is the attempt by the queen and her representatives to order some of those exiles apprehended and brought back home for confrontation or punishment. One agent placed in charge of tracking down a few of the more prominent exiles and serving them with papers was John Brett: over the course of several months, in which he himself was pursued, insulted, beaten, and ultimately chased from Frankfurt and Strasbourg by protestant sympathizers, Brett persisted in his attempt to reach figures such as Katherine, the godly duchess of Suffolk, and her family; the result however was utter failure, described in an account of the tribulations written by Brett himself after his empty-handed return to England.'

Brett's adventure constitutes a tale of drama in its own right, but more important are aspects within the narrative that illuminate larger issues of the law, jurisdiction, exile, and strategies of resistance on the part of a community grow- ing more confident and intellectually justified in its opposition to the queen (and her agent). Not only does Brett's narrative capture a tense moment in the lives of notable Marian exiles with a vividness and intimacy that supercedes other exile accounts;2 even more, it unwittingly provides a complete portrait, at a specific and significant moment in time, of a community that is self-sustaining yet fearful, and one that directly relates in its behavior to resistance tracts such as fellow exile John Ponet's Treatise of Politike Power, written in the same year as Brett's visit. At the same time, Mary's decision to dispatch Brett overseas was not necessarily outside the law either, and neither was it especially persecutory in the larger context of Tudor behavior over the course of the sixteenth century. Brett's attempt to deliver his letters to a select list of exiles was simply an attempt to assert Crown privilege over wayward (indeed, politically dangerous) subjects, in an age when legal understandings-specifically concerning land law and international law-were undergoing profound transformations, and

IBrett's account is contained in I. S. Leadam, "A Narrative of the Pursuit of English Refugees in Germany under Queen Mary," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 11 (1897): 113-31 (here- after cited as Narrative). The most extensive comment on the document has been provided by C. J. Garrett in the introduction to her now-dated The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 1938).

2See William Whittingham A Brieff Discourse of the Troubles begonne at Frankfort (Zurich, 1574).

Albion 36, 3 (Fall 2004):407-429 C North American Conference on British Studies 2005. All Rights Reserved.



408 Sarah Covington

therefore uncertainties. Brett's journey was therefore not undertaken for com- pletely unjustifiable reasons; still, the timing was wrong, and the exile communities too unified, for him to achieve anything other than getting out of the area alive, if not, in the end, unbloodied.

Brett's mission occurred at a particularly charged juncture in the reign of Mary, since the summer of 1556 resonated with the fresh memory of a conspiracy that had begun in December 1555, when Henry Dudley and a group of other disgruntled noblemen hatched a plot to depose the queen with French help and to install Elizabeth on the throne instead. Over the course of March and April 1556 the conspirators were arrested and interrogated, resulting in the in- dictment of thirty-six individuals and the execution of ten-a much higher number, as David Loades has pointed out, than were punished under Northum- berland's failed attempt to change the rules of succession in 1553.3 While the extent of the danger was ultimately questionable, it nevertheless remained, in Loades' words, that "the council, and the queen herself, were desperately worried in the spring of 1556" for the "appearance of instability" that enshrouded the government, especially in the eyes of continental observers; moreover, the queen's subsequent behavior would represent, on the domestic front, Mary's "[disillusion] with the practice of clemency" that she had undertaken previously.4

The conspirators' refuge in France led in part to Mary's intensifying efforts to control, silence, or apprehend notable individuals who had fled overseas-the mission with which Brett was charged. As will be seen, other more pecuniary motives mingled with these efforts, but the spring of 1556 represented a shift in her larger persecutory policies, of which the exiles were, at least partially, a target. Exiles, whether they fled for political reasons to the court of France, or for religious reasons to the realm of Geneva or Frankfurt, nevertheless remained legal subjects of the Crown; that many of them were noble was even more of an indignity and offense, and cause for the paranoia that would fuel a renewed and more intense policy of harassment. As the French ambassador put it, Mary reacted to the Dudley conspirators with "[rage] against her subjects, for she is utterly confounded by the faithlessness of those whom she most trusted, seeing that the greater part of these miserable creatures are kith and kin or favoured servants of the greatest men of the kingdom, even of Lords of the Council."5

3David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Cambridge, MA, 1989), p. 262.

4Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, ed. R. Lemon (London, 1856), 7: 23-26, 76; 8: 2-6, 22-23, 52, et al, pp. 79-85. David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government, and Religion in England, 1553-1558 (New York, 1979), p. 281; Loades, Mary Tudor, p. 262; see also idem, Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 176-217.

5R. A. de Vertot, Ambassades des Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre, 5 vols. (Paris, 1763), 5:361-63.



John Brett and his Encounter with the Marian Exiles 409

The Dudley conspiracy thus provides a clue as to why Brett was dispatched to the continent at a relatively late date in Mary's reign, for a mission that had not previously been attempted, at least on such an ambitious scale. Other de- velopments, however, were occurring on the domestic and intemational front that impelled Mary to intensify her efforts to impose religious and political control onto her realm. It was Stephen Gardiner's death in late 1555 that changed the Privy Council and its policy toward persecution; where before Gardiner had been reluctant to undertake actions that reflected what he believed to be policy failure, his successors on the council complied with the determination of Mary and Pole to enforce new persecutory policies where old ones had failed.

Persecutory efforts in fact were reaching a peak-and revealing themselves as somewhat ineffectual-by the summer of 1556, nearly a year-and-a-half after the first Marian martyr, John Rogers, had gone to the stake. Mary's pursuit of protestant heretics, it should be noted, was not indiscriminately obtuse: for one, the realm was not yet a protestant one, and those who did profess such beliefs were given, for the most part, multiple opportunities to recant, even by such notorious tormenters as the bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. Nevertheless, it was believed by Mary and her advisers that burnings provided a necessary measure of punishment for the severe crime of heresy, while deterring others from following a similar crooked path. As a result of this policy, the years 1555 and 1556 would constitute something of a watershed in Mary's reign in terms of the noteworthiness of individuals burned, beginning with Rogers, John Hooper, and Robert Ferrar in the spring of 1555 and continuing through the fall and winter of 1555 with the deaths of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley in October and John Philpot in December. The last of the martyrs from this group, Thomas Cranmer, would die in March 1556, the delay due in part to his many recantations; while burnings of less eminent individuals continued through Mary's reign, the effect of these burnings on the realm was contrary to Mary's intent, for rather than being seen as justifiably killed obstinate heretics, men such as Rogers or John Bradford were upheld as heroes, and mythologized through writings and letters printed overseas by the continental exile community.

As will be seen, it was an attempt to quell the exiles' propagandizing efforts-efforts which were reaching a new sophistication of print and dissemi- nation-that also compelled the council to sponsor Brett's journey overseas; and in Brett the council found a willing agent, one of a number of quasi-official servants who stream somewhat anonymously through the machinations of Tudor governmental enforcement. Little is known about the life of Brett himself, apart from his narrative and a brief re-appearance during the reign of Elizabeth, when a promoter by the name of "John Brett" is reported in the State Papers of 1561 as receiving "a note of fines [from] eleven persons named on surrender or trans- fer of lands."6 If the official in question was in fact Brett, then his Elizabethan

6Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, 1601-1603 with Addenda, 1547-1565, ed. M. A. E. Green (London, 1870), 6:527.



410 Sarah Covington

cameo not only suggests a continuity of office held by many mid-level func- tionaries over the course of the century, despite the religiously divided monarchs in power, but also an association with land seizures or land transfers that would bear direct relation to the exiles. Brett's immediate supervisor in his tasks was the Chancery Court, which utilized both civil and common law procedure, and had as its disposal a number of powers-including subpoena powers-that made it one of the more effective courts of the land.7 Suits in a Chancery Court were addressed to the chancellor-in this case, Nicholas Heath, also the Archbishop of York-and it was to Heath as well as the Privy Council that Brett detailed his attempts on behalf of a commission to deliver "certeyne letters and com- maundementes" to nine prominent exiles in the German territories. What these "letters" and commandments were is not precisely known, but their sheer ex- istence was noteworthy, and at the forefront of the exiles' concerns.

The general self-portrait that emerges of Brett, the "Gentyllman servaunt," is one that entails a man who proceeds in the name of the "King and Quenes moste excellent Maiestyes" and "with my beste dili ence in mannour and forme" to deliver letters to the queen's rightful subjects. The office that he took so seriously-that is, as an agent charged with serving papers, searching out and reporting on religious offenders, or even capturing those offenders if necessary-was prevalent throughout the century, and in fact Brett joined a veritable pantheon-some would say a rogue's gallery-of agents who ranged from free- lance informers of dubious credential to neutral quasi-officials working without a predominating monetary concern. Such figures were absolutely necessary in the workings of sixteenth-century enforcement, as Cynthia Herrup and others have pointed out, and while Mary's pursuit of protestants was hardly beneficent, her use of agents, commissioners, and informers was itself standard practice utilized by all the Tudors. Though not constituting members of a bureaucracy per se, Brett and his colleagues nevertheless ensured the will of the monarch, and individuals such as Thomas Cromwell or Francis Walsingham, were distinguished in great part by their ability to exploit and coordinate them efficiently.

Certainly those who contravened Mary's policies or escaped overseas were wary of the possibility of informers and agents in their midst, as was the case with the Marian protestant Thomas Mowntayne, whose own flight abroad was shadowed by news of a heretic-hunting promoter on the ship-revealed to him by another "searcher"-who he managed to escape from upon landing in Dunkirk.10 Even worse was the prospect of outright physical seizure or kidnap-

7W. S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 9 vols. (2nd ed.; London, 1914-1938), 5:335-36, 284-86, 300-1.

8Narrative, pp. 114-16.

9Ibid.

10See Thomas Mowntayne's story in Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, ed. J. Nichols.




ping, which was not out of the range of what monarchs were capable of sanc- tioning. In Mary's reign the story of John Cheke serves as one of the more extreme (and legally questionable) examples: as Stephen Alford has written, Cheke's distinguished career as Edward's tutor granted him a luminous status at court, and allowed him to open doors for his brother-in-law, William Cecil; 11 when the reign changed, Cheke began his sojourn overseas lawfully enough, when he obtained a license to leave the realm in 1553 and was subsequently able to travel freely through Strasbourg, Emden and other parts, contributing to an anti-Marian propaganda campaign along the way.12 The moment of his capture came in the spring of 1556-a few months before Brett's arrival-when Cheke, falling for a ruse of Privy Councilor William Paget's, was suddenly seized on the highway by an official of Phillips's and, in Strype's words, "blind- folded, bound, and thrown into a waggon, and so conveyed on shipboard, and brought over sea unto the Tower of London.',13 Shortly after, he was interrogated and proceeded to recant, leading to the pathetic spectacle of his being paraded about as the most famous betrayer of his fellow heretics; it would become a traumatic turning point in the story of the Marian exiles, and one they would not forget, especially a few months later.

Despite the example of Cheke, Brett's task was not, at least overtly, to compel those who had taken flight to return to England for purely religious reasons. The more pressing factor, and one overlooked by anti-Marian polemicists such as John Foxe, concerned the lands left behind by exiles-especially wealthy and high-status exiles on Brett's list-when they chose to depart the realm. Mary, like her sister Elizabeth, was intensely interested in the fate of those abandoned lands, for the economic bounty they could provide a court in perennially straight- ened circumstances.14 That threatening the exiles with permanent confiscation of their land back home could provide another tool in the persecutory arsenal was a by-product of the queen's efforts, albeit one that held almost as much power over the exiles as the prospect of burning. Confiscation of land abandoned by individuals who left England was not new: since the fourteenth-century stat- ute of 5 Richard II, st. 1, c. 2, individuals who willingly chose to flee, legally or not, risked being punished by the forfeiture of their lands and moveable goods, which reverted, albeit temporarily, to the possession of the government.

Stephen Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 80-8 1, 127-28; for Cheke's larger intellectual and political career during the reign of Edward, see Alford, Kingship and Politics, pp. 143-45; for a larger picture of Cheke, see Paul S. Needham, "Sir John Cheke at Cambridge and Court," 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University,1971).

12Garrett claims that Cheke was actually a kind of director of propaganda, though E. J. Baskerville disputes this and makes more of a case for Ponet in that role ("John Ponet in Exile: A Ponet Letter to John Bale," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 [1986]: 445-46).

John Strype, The Life of the Learned John Cheke (Oxford, 1821), pp. 95-101.

14Loades, Reign of Mary Tudor, pp. 291-316



412 Sarah Covington

Thus, even before Cheke himself was apprehended, according to Strype, "his demeans, lands, and estate were confiscated to the Queen's use," much to the ire of his brother-in-law and defender-and upholder of other exiles' lands back home-William Cecil. 5 To enforce the laws that justified these practices, commissioners had long been appointed to investigate the possessions of exiles, noting their findings through the visitation and presentment process, albeit with not always effective results.16

In the sixteenth century, however, land and property law underwent enormous transformations, most dramatically in Henry's reign when the Court of Aug- mentations was initiated in part to manage the sale of monastic lands and thereby increase-or augment-Crown revenue.

7 The Court of Augmentations was not unique in the management of such lands, though after 1539 it served as an essential governmental agency in land surveying and the employment of commissioners charged with coordinating accounts, grants, and purchases in the cen- tral as well as more localized regions. While much of the land would fall into the hands of the notable individuals, not all grants or monastic dispersals were rendered in an exclusive manner, but were rather open-if not quite on a "mar- ket" level-to individuals who could pay.19 Once purchased, however, the land in question underwent a thoroughly legal process as it was subject to transferal of ownership, becoming enshrouded with so many layers of law as to appear nearly impenetrable to competing claims, even on the part of the Crown itself.

Much of the monastic lands dispersed under Henry fell into the hands, as it happened, of Marian exiles-a fact that made them as important as the heretical religious projects they supported. A sample exploration into Brett's list, for instance, would reveal that Thomas Wroth received grants of abbey lands in Mid- dlesex and Essex and Edward Isaac accumulated vast church lands from Suffolk and other domains, while John Hales-who was even surveyor of lands under Henry -was said to have "accumulated a great estate in monastery and chantry lands, most notably in Coventry, where he set up a free school in the former St John's Hospital."21 When Mary came to the throne, a papal dispensation had

s5Strype, Life of John Cheke, p. 99.

16For a description of lackadaisical or reluctant inventory-taking jurors, see J. E. Oxley, The Ref- ormation in Essex (Manchester, 1965), pp. 199-200.

17Statutes, 27 Henry VIII, c. xxvii, 1536.

18See for example Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. Gairdner, et al, 21 vols. (London, 1862-1932), # 282, 5:103-18.

19Joyce Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London, 1971), p. 119.

20Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, 1555-1557, 4 vols. (London, 1936-39), 3:75.

21S. T. Bindoff, The House of Commons, 1509-1558, 3 vols. (London, 1982), 2:276; Calendar of Patent Rolls, preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward VI (London, 1924-1929), pp. 86, 90, 135.




already made official the surrender of such lands, which the queen in turn grudg- ingly recognized; but the need to permanently regain those lands for the Crown at least for monetary reasons-and not to simply hold them temporarily or in trusteeship, pending a court appearance by the returned exile-was intense, even if she had to adhere to tradition and work through legal mechanisms to do so. In the important and contentious fourth Parliament of 1555, the queen did in fact attempt to rework the law by introducing a bill that would have ordered those who had fled overseas without a royal license to return and face court proceedings, as required, or to forfeit their lands as a consequence. Though the bill passed the Lords, it was defeated in the Commons, due in part to the ex- ertions of Sir Anthony Kingston and William Cecil, with the latter especially upholding the issue of property rights, no matter how much, as Conyers Read once put it, he "[fancied] himself as facing martyrdom for the cause."23

Though not as transcendent a matter as religion, the issue of property rights was nevertheless of great concern to the exiles. In his Short Treatise of Politike Power, written partly in response to the question,24 John Ponet described private ownership of property as a right proceeding from natural law, and any attempt by the authority to usurp this right as constituting a severe infringement by tyrannical rulers who "[claimed] all their subjects' goods for their own, who allege[d] for them this common saying: 'all things be the kaiser's, all things be the king's, all things be the Prince's."'25 As Barbara Peardon has pointed out, however, Ponet's stance on property rights-including his discussion of the right to kill in defense of one's property was entirely out of keeping with sixteenth-century legal thought, which asserted that final rights over lands and goods belonged, in the end, "immediately of the Crown."27 In this sense, Mary's assertions were not as outrageous as many exiles and their supporters would have it, especially when those before her and Elizabeth after-would similarly claim many of those prerogatives and privileges for themselves.

22David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1959), 3: 421-24.

23Conyers Read, Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1955), p. 111.

24Other factors also shaped the treatise, of course, including Ponet's experience of the 1553 succession crisis. Barrett L. Beer, "John Ponet's Short Treatise of Politike Power Reassessed," Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990): 376-77.

25John Ponet, A Short Treatise of Politike Power... (Strasbourg, 1556), sig. cviv. Spelling modern- ized.

26See Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978), p. 224.

27Barbara Peardon, "The Politics of Polemic: John Ponet's Short Treatise of Politic Power and Contemporary Circumstance, 1553-1556," Journal of British Studies 22 (1982): 35-49. See also David H. Wollman, "The Biblical Justification for Resistance to Authority in Ponet's and Goodman's Polemics," Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 34; Gerry Bowler, "Marian Protestants and the Idea of Violent Resistance to Tyranny," in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth- Century England (New York, 1987), pp. 124-43.



414 Sarah Covington

Despite the bill's failure in Parliament, the year 1556 was especially significant as Mary went ahead with commissions and measures, now of sequestration, to address the issue of the exiles' property. Further inquiries were conducted in regions such as Essex, with juries declaring the value of various lands and goods, often with reluctance;28 directives were issued stating that since the exiles have "in contempt thereof & of our lawes withdrawn themselves from their severall habytacions & dwellinges and remayne abrode in places secret and unknowen," an inventory of all their "landes, goodes and catalles" was to result in their continued temporary seizure by the government.29

In terms of religion, those who left the realm in the beginning of Mary's reign were perceived as somewhat isolated and troublesome elements whose departure would in fact benefit an England that could then restore itself fully to a Catholic identity. Such was the reasoning at least of Stephen Gardiner, who outwardly condemned those who fled, even if he had secretly sanctioned their flight; according to the Spanish ambassador Simon Renard, Gardiner once bragged of his apparent cunning, claiming that "When he hears of any preacher, he sum- mons him to appear at his house, and the preacher, fearing he may be put in the Tower, does not appear, but on the contrary absents himself."3 A warrant would then be issued by Gardiner, coincidentally timed to arrive after the of- fender had fled. Though the more notable exiles were not treated in precisely this manner, Gardiner however could also exercise a certain amount of flexibil- ity, granting the duchess of Suffolk's husband Richard Bertie, for example, sanc- tion to leave the realm, based on somewhat questionable claims of an unpaid debt. 31

Despite Gardiner's expectations, it became quickly apparent that the exiles were becoming adept at reconstituting themselves into a movement, and one that exploited its plight well through the printing press and an extensive network in which money, communications, and writings were circulated.32 Though the burnings had commenced in 1555, by 1556 the publication of prison letters and disputations of the martyrs had already begun on the continent, while exiles such as Miles Coverdale, Henry Bull, and John Foxe were already well into a program of compiling and editing documents that would culminate in the Acts

28Oxley, Reformation in Essex, pp. 199-200.

29David Loades, "The Essex Inquisitions of 1556," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 35 (1962): 87-97,

30Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain (London, 1862-1954), 10:217.

31John Foxe, Acts and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable... (London, 1583), 2080-81

32See the essays in Andrew Pettegree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies (Aldershot, 1996); and Brett Usher, "Backing Protestantism: The London Godly, the Exchequer and the Foxe Circle," in John Foxe. An Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 105-25.




and Monuments, a gigantic project that would contribute more than any other source in creating the template of protestant historiography in the centuries to

33 come. Even more alarming to the authorities, however, was the manner in which

individuals such as Ponet and Christopher Goodman were altering their political and philosophical perspectives and becoming radicalized to the point of calling for violent resistance and even regicide. While the issue of resistance was not new to English political philosophy, certain aspects of it such as the belief that even common people could commit acts of disobedience-undoubtedly were, and would have been unacceptable to any monarch inhabiting a sixteenth- century throne. This was, after all, treason as well as heresy, and the line between the two would be just as negligible for Mary as it would for Elizabeth.34

Many of the English writers who now wrote of resistance would have shunned the idea in previous reigns, due as much to their conservative temperaments as to their approval of Henry or Edward; but it was the experience of exile-and a Catholic on the throne back home that propelled them towards more inno- vative directions when it came to the subject of resistance theory. Qualifications and an evolving thought process hedged many of their stances on resistance, however. In 1554 a contemporaneous Scottish exile, John Knox, embraced the injunction of Romans 13:1-7 to obey the ruler ordained by God or suffer eternal damnation-a precept embraced most prominently by Luther. Such obedience was also in line with that upheld by Heinrich Bullinger and John Calvin who, according to Roger Mason, advised Knox that "while it might be possible to justify rebellion in the cause of God and the Word, the great danger was that baser motives would masquerade under the cloak of religious zeal."35 Even as Knox proceeded over time to reinterpret the key passage of Paul to allow for opposition to an idolatrous ruler, a reticence remained when it came to the subject of resistance to government, especially since his theory evolved "against the background," in Mason's words, "of a Calvinist ideal of a severely disci- plined society, a society in which obedience to the temporal power was of para- mount importance."36

Knox's most important writings, including the First Blast of the Trumpet and the Appellation of John Knox, would be published in 1558, though they were formulated and presented in embryonic form while he remained on the continent.

33Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (Berkeley,1979), pp. 79-82; Susan Wabuda, "Henry Bull, Miles Coverdale and the Making of Foxe's Book of Martyrs," in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. Diana Wood (London, 1993), pp. 245-58.

34Jane Dawson, "Revolutionary Conclusions: The Case of the Marian Exiles," History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 257-72.

35John Knox, On Rebellion, ed. Roger A. Mason (Cambridge, 1994), p. xii.

36Ibid., p. xiii.



416 Sarah Covington

In July of 1556-the summer of Brett's arrival-Knox was in Geneva, having returned from a mission to Scotland in which he addressed various congregations and forged connections with sympathetic noblemen across the realm, in an act that would later compel Scottish bishops to declare him a heretic and burn him in effigy. In The Copy of a Letter Delivered to the Lady Marie, Queen of Scot- land (1556), Knox responded, in a comparatively mild or polite manner, to defend himself against such charges and even advocate a kind of tolerance, thus reinforcing the idea of the monarch as the controller of religious matters.37 It was in this pamphlet and elsewhere that Knox applied different analyses and models for England and Scotland, especially since the latter had not officially accepted protestantism and therefore did not have a monarch-a Mary-who had breeched the covenant by "subvert[ing] the true religion" that had existed before. Even when he did come close, in his exile, to an idea of sanctioned resistance, however, Knox did not necessarily intend that royal governments should be resisted, and certainly not that common people should partake of resistance action in general; such an idea, which was to be embraced by Chris- topher Goodman in How Superior Powers Ought to be Obeyed (1558), was too extreme even by Knox's measure, and would justifiably bring down revulsion onto the returning exiles, correctly or not, as suspected revolutionaries.38

Ponet was himself motivated in part by outrage over the issue of land confiscation, but his advocacy of forcible resistance when necessary and his even more subversive statement that "a prince or judge is not always ordained by God"39 did much to justify as well as reflect the mood of the exile community. As Stephen Alford has pointed out, "Ponet was a bitter man, and it must have seemed to him, writing from Strasburg, three years into Mary's reign, that the godly commonwealth of Edward VI had been subverted and consumed by ambitious men determined merely to secure power and line their own pockets." Even worse were the transgressions of the model of kingship committed by idolatrous rulers no longer accountable to God, the highest power, and whose subversions thereby condoned, and even necessitated, their overthrow by the commonwealth's subjects.40

37Robert M. Kingdon, "Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580," in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700, eds. J. H. Bums and Mark Goldie (Cambridge, 1991), p. 198.

38See Knox, On Rebellion, pp. xx-xxi. See also J. H. Bums, "John Knox and Revolution 1558," History Today 8 (1958): 565-73. See also, Kingdon, "Calvinism and Resistance Theory," pp. 194-200; on Christopher Goodman, see Jane Dawson, "Resistance and Revolution in Sixteenth- Century Thought: The Case of Christopher Goodman," in J. van den Berg and P. G. Hoftijzer, eds., Church, Change and Revolution (Leiden, 1991), pp. 69-79; and Dawson, "Trumpeting Re- sistance: Christopher Goodman and John Knox," in Roger A. Mason, ed., John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 130-53.

39See Glen Bowman, "John Ponet: Political Theologian of the English Reformation" (Ph.D. dis- sertation, University of Minnesota, 1997); W. S. Hudson, John Ponet: Advocate of Limited Monarchy (Chicago, 1942), p. 104.

40Alford, Kingship and Politics, pp. 9, 177-78.




Ponet's Short Treatise was published in the summer of Brett's arrival-which coincided with Ponet's own death-and while it would be overstating the case to assume that his treatise directly accounted for the vitriolic response to Brett, the tract must also be situated in the same context that gave rise to events in the summer of 1556. As Robert Kingdon has pointed out, the Short Treatise went as far or even farther than Goodman or Knox in advocating tyrannicide and popular revolution, though the target of its ire was directed primarily at the (Catholic) church and its ecclesiastical structure rather than the government, and Mary, per se. Nevertheless, while Ponet's theory lacked the secular and overtly political shadings of later resistance theories, it did enough to lay the groundwork that would make him one of the most important proponents of the idea before the seventeenth century.

Given the mood that perpetuated theories such as Ponet's, Goodman's, and Knox's, the question arises as to why Brett even embarked upon his journey in the first place, since the Crown was surely aware by 1556 that his directives would not be accepted happily, if at all, particularly from a people who gazed over the sea at an England ruled by an unjust and persecuting queen. For Mary and her council, however, the question at stake concerned the law and her subjects' obligations to heed it by returning to England-after having illegally fled-and addressing the matter of their contested lands. The full implications of the exiles' embryonic ideas concerning resistance had not yet been felt, at least at the English court, in the summer of 1556; but even if they had, Mary and her advisers would not have recognized their validity. By the time of Brett's arrival, a state of exile had inspired the theories, which in turn fortified the state of exile; without such a circular girding, and at an earlier time in Mary's reign, Brett's experience would likely have been very different, if not necessarily successful then, either.

II

Nine names were posted on Brett's list, though he would unsuccessfully attempt to meet only five-Jane Wilkinson, John Hales, Katherine, the Duchess of Suffolk, and her husband Richard Bertie, and Thomas Wroth. The remaining four-Sir Henry Nevell, William Stafford, William Fyneux, and Roger Whet- nall-eluded Brett's attention, not because of oversight but due to the precarious circumstances that ultimately drove Brett off the continent. As mentioned, at least half of the targeted individuals owned extensive property-previous monastic land obtained by purchase or grant in Henry and Edward's reign; but other factors also contributed to their wanted status, which was rendered especially visible and egregious by their prominence as gentlemen. Most had not only held notable positions in Edward's reign, but were enthusiastic evangelicals: Thomas Wroth, according to Strype, was a gentleman of the privy chamber and as such was in "greatest favor" with the king, who "knighted him, [and] heaped



418 Sarah Covington

great wealth, honours, offices, and possessions upon him."41 Henry Nevell also belonged to Edward's privy chamber, while William Stafford was a member of the Privy Council and Edward Isaac a figure of wealth who associated with his friend Hugh Latimer from early on.42

Other names on the list are comparatively obscure, including William Fyneux, who seems to have returned to England and conformed to Mary's religion before his death in 1557,43 while a figure such as Roger Whetnall was not even as prominent as his apparent relatives Thomas and George, who lent their signatures to a letter issued from Frankfort.44 The obscurity points either to hidden agendas or motives on the part of those who issued the list, or at least the arbitrary nature of the list itself, which excluded other property owning, evangelically- minded exiles who in fact presented even more of a danger-such as the aforementioned Thomas and George Whetnall.

While the nine individuals on Brett's list were dispersed across Europe, they nevertheless belonged to a larger exilic community that allowed it to close ranks against the intruder and to transmit warnings and other information along a well-coordinated underground network that extended across regional and national borders. Much of the solidarity was due to religious affiliation, but equally important was the continuation of a network of personal relations that had been strengthened during the reign of Edward, when, according to Stephen Alford, "politics and governance was small-even incestuous-[and] populated by men closely connected to one another to form] an organic, stable governing elite of men sympathetic to the regime." Without their common devotion to the reformation as well as to their previous experiences of governance, members of the overseas community, as well as their helpers back home in men such as Cecil, would not have been able to achieve the inward coherence they did in the precarious, unanchored world of exile.

By the time Brett traveled to the first stop on his journey in Frankfurt in July 1556, the English exile church had itself existed for nearly two years, after the arrival in 1554 of William Whittingham, William Williams, and Thomas Woods,

46- along with two hundred others. The so-called Troubles of Frankfurt, in which debate over liturgical issues of the Edwardian Prayer Book resulted in the expulsion of John Knox and his more radical faction, had been settled the year

41John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), 2 (1): 387-89; see also Alford, Kingship and Politics, pp. 85, 89

42Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 1: 373, 2 (1): 507.

43See Narrative, n. 4., p. 116.

44Ibid., n. 5; see also A Brief Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankfort (London, 1846), p. xxvi.

45Alford, Kingship and Politics, p. 150.

46W. M. Southgate, "The Marian Exiles and the Influence of John Calvin," History (1942): 148-52.




before, in March 1555; as a result, the victory of Richard Cox and his party ensured that a more moderate ecclesiological standard would emerge, and one in line with the other exiles' churches, as well as the church of England to come.

As will be seen, many of the exiles encountered by Brett seem to have been expecting him, and few greeted him alone; all came to the encounter prepared with a strategy, variously confronting Brett with avoidance, threats, legalisms, and if all else failed, violence. Indeed, while Ponet, Goodman, and Knox were explicating their resistance theories in pamphlet or treatise form, contemporaries such as John Hales or Jane Wilkinson were enacting disobedience on the ground, according to more improvisational, if not less effective, means. The agency displayed by the exiles and the various subterfuges they employed, was also re- flective of a community that had for the past year established itself as a coherent opposition body, since the same impetus that allowed the exiles to coordinate their responses to an agent such as Brett also gave them the wherewithal to raise and disseminate funds, establish the aforementioned print enterprises and book-smuggling operations, and above all create a narrative of their experiences that resonated with providential meaning. In this sense, it is important to detail Brett's experiences as he recounted them chronologically in his narrative, for each encounter reveals its own characteristic element indicative of a community at the height of its self-protection.

Brett first made contact in Frankfurt with Jane Wilkinson, a sustainer and close friend of Cranmer, who had urged her early on in Mary's reign to "with- draw yourself from the malice of 'ours and God's enemies, into some place where God is most purely served." 7 Still, her departure abroad had been late, due in part to her choice to stay behind with other wealthy women such as Elizabeth Vane and Anne Warcup, to aid the martyrs in prison for as long as possible.48 When the situation became too dangerous and the burnings began, it was Warcup with whom Wilkinson fled in the summer of 1556, which dates her arrival very closely to Brett's own. While she did not flee with a royal license-and it is not clear how she specifically fled in the first place-she did manage to escape with the large sum of 6,100 florins, making her the wealthiest of all the exiles in her chosen town of Frankurt.49 It was here where her monetary support and patronage of others seems to have continued, perhaps above all

47J. E. Cox, ed., The works of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, martyr, 1556, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1844), 2:444 45; see also Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, 1996), pp. 548-49.

48See Thomas Freeman, "'The Good Ministrye of Godlye and Vertuous Women': The Elizabethan Martyrologists and the Female Supporters of the Marian Martyrs," Journal of British Studies 39 (2000): 8-33.

49Garrett, The Marian Exiles, p. 334.



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after her death in 1557, when Edmund Sutton wrote that "she gave to this and other poore congregations of poore banished Englishmen a Christian liberall relief."50

As a wealthy widow and prominent member of the protestant community at home and abroad, Wilkinson, who had once served in Anne Boleyn's court, would have been appropriate for inclusion on Brett's list for the wealth of land she left behind; by the summer of 1556, however, Wilkinson was ill, and when Brett encountered her-"in the presence of one [Richard] Chambers, John Ade, and William Woode"-she was probably not being wholly disingenuous when she told him that "indisposycion and sekeness" had compelled her flight from England. Her next statement, however-that she "shoulde recover her healthe at the Bathes in those Countreys" but would "repayre towardes England with the best spede she coulde" if the Queen so wished was certainly insincere, and a means by which to free herself from Brett, who was content to leave the designated letters with her and move on to the next target of his visit.51

That target, John Hales, would prove more splenetic and physically forceful in his dealings with the intruder Brett, toward whom he directed "many hotte wordes" upon opening his door.52 Hales, joined by his loyal brother Christopher, had been warned of Brett's arrival by William Woode, who had previously appeared alongside Wilkinson but seems to have speeded ahead of Brett and now provided the third member of the resisting group. John Hales differed from other exiles in that his connections to Frankfurt and the German lands had pre- ceded those of his coreligionists. Departing England in 1550 after a brief im- prisonment in the Tower, most likely for backing Somerset against Northum- berland, Hales was already on the continent upon Mary's accession to the throne, and when she sought specific measures against him, Hales repaired to Frankfurt, not to escape her legal reach in religious so much as in secular, legalistic- mat- ters.53 As the owner of a large amount of monastic and chantry lands, however, Hales was one of the foremost targets in the drive for confiscation, as he himself well knew, and therefore the sealed letters conveyed by Brett would probably have called him home to appear in court, to deal with the matter of his property foremost, and religion only secondarily. Hales, however, had anticipated these seizures, and in 1550-while in trouble with Northumberland-had redirected some of his property to trustees, with the rest reverting to trustees upon Mary's

50Ibid., p. 334; see also Wilkinson's will, Public Records Office, PROB. 11/42B ff, 233-234v.

51Narrative, p. 119.

52Ibid., p. 120.

53Garrett, The Marian Exiles, pp. 172-73.




assumption of the throne. It was Hales' property, in fact, that Cecil-an old friend-defended in the Commons in 1556.5

After his testy encounter with Brett, Hales proceeded with his entourage, "Swordes aboute them," to visit a magistrate of Frankfulrt and plead his case on the basis of conscience. According to Brett, Hales "made a greate complaynte howe the Quenes Maiesty contrary to the liberties and lawes of those Countreys hadde sente to vexe hym and others that for theyr refuge and concyens sake were commed thyther to flye persecucion in Englande"; moreover, in order that he and others "mighte lyve there with safe conscyencys," Hales pressed upon the official to not only compel Brett to retrieve the letters he had left in Hales' house, but to arrest Brett for infringing on his rights, as well as Frankfurt's sovereignty.

The exchange between Brett, Hales, and the magistrate reflected an essential aspect of the Marian exile experience, for it called attention to the sensitive balancing act that overseas sponsoring governments had to face in their dealings with other national entities. Those regions such as Geneva or the German cities in Mary's reign (or Rome, France, or Spain in Edward's and Elizabeth's), did not grant refuge for any other reason than on the grounds of religion and religious asylum-if that. But while the exiled English were thus able to enjoy a measure of jurisdictional immunity, the governments that allowed them in were strict and intolerant when it came to laws about treason, and therefore nervous when the English Crown, knowing that towns had protocols against the harbor- ing of traitors from another realm, emphasized the political or seditious aspects of the refugees. For all its apparent sympathy, for example, the town of Wesel requested the departure in 1556 of a few of the EnWlish congregation on suspi- cion of conspiracy involving Dudley and Calais; as for the magistrates of Strashourg, they too could be harsh when it came to the exiles, denying residence to Edwin Sandys-imprisoned at one time in England for treason over the "Queen Jane" matter-despite the fact that his gentlemen friends asserted their presence as religious refugees.56

The arrival of Brett-a Chancery Court commissioner bearing letters stamped with the privy seal-implied that a more secular complaint by the state was at hand; to avoid bearing the possible weight of treason and thereby jeopardizing his stay abroad, Hales thus had to assert to a religiously sympathetic magistrate that he was being victimized for his beliefs-his "concyens"-and not any po-

54Indeed, so prepared was Hales-a forrmer member of enclosure commissions and a clerk of the hanaper-that in 1557, when his lands were once more inquired into for final confiscation, a jury returned a ruling of "nulla bona" (Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephen, et al [Oxford, 1917], 8: 913-14).

55Garrett, The Marian Exiles, p. 50.

56Ibid., p. 13.



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litically oriented crime. Less fortunate was John Knox, who one year earlier received a sentence of expulsion from local authorities in conjunction with his fellow exiles when he claimed in a speech and in his Admonition to England that Charles V was worse than Nero; it was this outspokenness, combined with the internal theological disputes, that compelled Frankfurt, always a sensitive city, to take action, or face the wrath of the emperor.57

According to the narrative, after Brett released himself from Hales and retired to his inn, an officer of the magistrate arrived to convey him to prison, but he insisted on seeing the authority immediately-a request that was granted. With Hales present along with the magistrate, Brett then stated that it was "no dero- gacion at all to [Hales'] libertyes that the Quenes Maiesty should wryte unto her own subjectes abyding within theyr domynyons nor no cause why I shoulde be deteyned," since "I came to moleste no subjecte of theyrs but to delyuer lettres to Englisshmen from the Quenes Maiesty theyr soueraigne Mistris to theyre great comfortes if godde gaue them grace well." The words seemed to convince the magistrate, though the legal implications remain unresolved; in any case, with that, the official released Brett, or rather "gently dysmyssed me," with an accompanying reprimand to Hales.58

The worst was yet to come for Brett, however, in his next attempt to deliver letters to Katherine, the Duchess of Suffolk, and her husband Richard Bertie. The story of the Berties' flight abroad is well-known, as are the elements in it-tales of foggy river passages, disguises, ice floes, and breathless chases-that might have been exaggerated in the retelling.59 By the summer of 1556, the couple and their entourage were established in the Palatinate in South Germany, in the town called Windsheim, where they remained ensconced for a time in an apparently well-fortified castle on a hill, buffeted by "lakeys" and other armed supporters. This was unsurprising perhaps, since Katherine constituted the most high-ranking of all the exiles and had long been a zealous protestant and patron, superceding Jane Wilkinson and other female sustainers. Though it would be overstating her influence to claim that a formal network existed around her during her period of exile, she nevertheless exerted at least a moral authority over those who encircled her-including Miles Coverdale, in her first home at Wesel, who also watched over her.60 She also, of course, owned land, and it was her holdings in Lincolnshire and around London that had partly compelled

57See John Knox, Works, 3:294-269; and Whittingham, Troubles, pp. 45, 55-59.


59See for example, Thomas Drue's Life of the Duchess of Suffolk (London, 1631); John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton, 1982), p. 444; and Garrett, The Marian Exiles, p.11.

60See the letter from Coverdale to Conrad Hubert, in which he states that Catherine "assured me that her grace, as far as money was concerned, owed nothing at all either to our excellent father Bucer, or to any other persons. But when I shall return to Wesel...I will make a diligent examination into the whole business." Miles Coverdale, Remains of Miles Coverdale, ed. George Pearson, 21 vols. (Cambridge, 1846), 14: 528.




Mary to send her bill of land confiscation through the 1555 Parliament in the first place.

Katherine's refuge was made possible not only through the support of her fellow exiles, but also with the aid offered her by significant Europeans, some of whom were great friends such as Martin Bucer; others were indebted to her after their own experience of being sheltered as protestant refugee communities in London during the reign of Edward.61 Her sponsorship of their church, and especially of the Walloon congregation, would now be reciprocated when its then-pastor, Francois Perucel, encountered her in Wesel. According to Foxe, after experiencing some hardships upon their arrival in the strange town, Kath- erine and her family finally reached the pastor at home, "whereupon Pe- russel...beholding Master Bertie, the duchess, and their child...could not speak to them, nor they to him, for tears." Within a few days, "by master Perussel's means," the family acquired a "fair house," while local preachers reprimanded the population for the initial "incivility" it had shown the wayward strangers.62 Later, when the presence of Brett would compel the Berties to flee the Palatinate, they would seek new refuge in Poland under the sponsorship of John a Lasco, the Pole who once served as the head of the church in London and was similarly close with the duchess.

Katherine makes no personal appearance in Brett's narrative since she would remain outside of the agent's grasp, hedged about with supporters ready to cite the law or even commit violence to defend their great protestant duchess-citadel against the long arm of the English government. Indeed, the response of those around Katherine-as well as the other exiles-again suggests a hypersensitive community constantly on the alert, and not-given the case of John Cheke-entirely assured of its safety. Almost immediately upon his arrival at the castle, Brett and his servant were thus battered by a shower of rocks from "the wyndowe of a lyttell Turret," as supporters "began to crye in French kyll them kyll them." After more stones were cast down-including one that "hat me so bigge a blowe on the righte hande that I colde not rule my forefynger and thombe a fortnighte after"-Brett and his servant decided that it was "highe tyme to retyre thence."63

As he returned to his inn, Brett did not simply encounter a few loyal partisans but rather a town mob that was directed by "englyshe menne [who] cryed to move the people againste me and my Man," with claims that "we were thevys and papistes commed into those partyes with purpose to cary awey the Duches theyre lady or by some secret meane to poyson her and theyr Master favourers

61See Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1996).

62John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. George Townsend (New York, 1965), 8:569-76.




424 Sarah Covington

of the Gospell and truthe." Brett attempted to placate the crowd-a few of whom took off with his and his servant's horses-but his behavior did not allay sus- picion over his intent. When he had initially approached the castle's gates and was asked for the reason behind his visit, Brett had answered "that I had letters to delyver them from certayne [of] their fryndes"-an evasive statement that he had not made earlier (perhaps out of necessity, due to animus toward the queen). The situation only worsened later when Brett, now in the presence of "the hedd offycer of the Towne called Kelder," defended himself against crowd claims that he had come to molest the duchess and her husband, and in contempt of the palgrave and "the libertyes of those Countreys." The letters in his possession, Brett stated, bore the duchess and the palgrave no ill will, but were rather a "demonstracion of favour" toward them-a statement that he would later con- tradict, when he professed not to know their contents.64

What followed in the subsequent encounter between Brett and the official was a classic case of disjunction centering around questions of sovereignty and jurisdiction, which themselves carried an unresolved and transformative status in the sixteenth century. Though the Berties now resided on foreign soil, to Brett (and the Chancery Court back home) they nevertheless remained the "Quenes Maiesties subiectes," which is why Brett could appear with official papers at their castle gate, and without consulting with the local authorities beforehand. Exiles might have been seeking asylum on religious grounds-as Hales had asserted-but no treaty or general theory of international law yet existed between (or within) sovereign states to accommodate such an idea; and though special treaties had existed between states that agreed not to harbor outlaws or criminals from each other's realm, extradition in general-and especially on religious grounds-remained a legally irregular practice, and a new branch of law that would require a Hugo Grotius, in the next century, to catch up with it.65

A further complication in the grapplings between Brett and the official-though one unknown to the parties themselves-was the fact that Kath- erine, as the daughter of a Spanish mother, could also be theoretically taken as a Spanish subject, or so it was feared; this had already been made disconcertingly clear when, during the Berties' sojourn in Wesel, the duke of Brunswick was stationed nearby with his Austrian troops, and therefore could have seized Kath- erine in the name of Charles V. The issue was moot, especially upon Mary's wedding to Philip, but it nevertheless provided enough ambiguity to in part cause the Berties to flee to a safer distance from the Austrians.66

In light of these debates, the authority's response to Brett's defense of his presence in Windsheim was to commit the agent and his servant to the inn,

64Ibid., p. 124.

65Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 8:49-50.

66Lady Georgina Bertie, Five Generations of a Loyal House (London, 1845), p. 28, n. 3, cf. p. 487.




under watch of "certen kepers," while he-the authority-traveled to the castle to consult with the Berties. When the official returned, he was accompanied by none other than William Barlow, the bishop of Bath and Wells, who now dwelled in the Suffolk household as Catherine's probable chaplain and now spokesman. Barlow's route to this point in his exile had been especially circui- tous and even tortuous, and deserves brief mention for the way it reveals yet another aspect of the exile experience. Unlike the individuals on Brett's list, Barlow made at least two attempts to flee England upon Mary's accession, though he was captured and imprisoned both times. As a result of the second apprehension, Barlow was not only pressured by Gardiner to recant before the queen-and refute his old treatises as well-but to compose a "book of recantation," which he did, in Strype's words, "for fear of his life." The recantation would earn his release, in which he took the opportunity (finally successfully) to escape; still, Gardiner got in the last word, when he ordered the book to be published and "read by all."67

Barlow reveals himself as a stern figure in the narrative, and in his exchange with Brett, he insists on inquiring into whether the letters in Brett's possession are "myssyves or processe," that is, letters or subpoenas. The distinction, as will be seen, was crucial, though Brett continued to vaguely insist that "they were letteres and gyven me for letters and for lettres wold I deliver them.. .according to theyr direccions." Barlow was not, understandably, satisfied with this answer, though according to Brett "He sawe that by no meanes he colde wreste oute of me whether the lettres were process or not." Brett probably knew or greatly suspected that he was bearing subpoenas; not only had the Chancery Court held such subpoena powers (as well as a flexible jurisdiction) for over a century, but the subpoena also constituted one of the court's most "vital weapons," according to Geoffrey Elton, in its ability to order parties to attend a dispute to answer "whatsoever may be objected."68 Still, even if the document was a subpoena, it is not clear if it would have been entirely legitimate in its jurisdictional claim, since the law was, again, somewhat vague on this. For those who had initiated the suits and sent Brett overseas, a subpoena-and by extension, the law-applied, again, to all subjects of the Crown, no matter where they dwelled or fled. But if the Berties were so sure of their jurisdictional immunity against such documents, why then did they, as opposed to Wilkinson and Hales, go to such great lengths to avoid having to be the recipients of their delivery? Apart from simple legal confusion, part of the reason may reside in the fact that while in the summer of 1556 the queen may have been rendered as a tyrannical ruler towards whom resistance was justified, the courts and institutions over which she presided remained legitimate and even God-ordained, even if they were

67John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Cambridge, 1822), 3(1): 241-43.

68Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 5: 185.



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placed, for now, at the service of that tyranny. To accept a subpoena and not answer it in court meant not acknowledging the authority of the court, and rendering themselves vulnerable to that court's punishments, which included the issuance of a commission of rebellion and raising a hue and cry that could translate onto the continent as justified forcible seizure. The Berties, who like other exiles justified their presence in Europe on religious grounds, would have been sensitive to any official accusations of rebellion, thus jeopardizing their refuge abroad as well as their standing at home.

As the narrative progresses, the issue of the letters' contents continues to be disputed between the authorities and Brett, who refused to relent on his insis- tence that he deliver the documents in person. Finally a compromise was reached whereby "the letteres sholde be showyd to no man withoute the Palgraves specy- all commaundement and in my presens," and with that, "[the official] gave me his hande and sayde that that sholde be performyd." After handing the box of letters to the official, Brett then requested that his horses be given back to him and his servant, but he was rebuffed, and "so I remayned as a prysoner with my kepers in an Inne where I was very evell lodged and entreatyd," waiting to hear from the palgrave. Finally, after some time had passed, he was told that the palgrave had sent for him and that he was to travel to the town of Heidelburg; the horses however remained at the castle and after much pleading for another mode of transportation, "a carte was gotten with muche adoo." After arriving in Heidelberg in this somewhat humiliating manner, Brett was further detained in yet more evil lodgings and harassed by other English exiles; in the end, he would never meet up with the palgrave but receive from "two doctours of the Palsegraves Councell the Palsegraves resolute Aunswere": the authority "had taken the saide" of the duchess and her husband, both of whom had "submytted themselves to hym, the sayde Palsegrave." It was not entirely clear what was meant by the submission, but with the judgment that the Berties would be taken in, "in fidem tutelam et proteccionem suam," the subpoena, at least, was rendered null and void, even if it did not infuse the family with any increased sense of safety.69

As part of the resistance displayed by the exile community, an effort also was made to detain Brett himself, and to prevent him from returning to England and "[making] reporte of my service and what for the same had behappynd me." Even bribes were offered to Brett's servant to stay, by, among others, "one Tremayne," or Nicholas Tremain, who had been convicted of treason back home. It is unclear, again, what was meant by the attempt to hold Brett or prevent him from issuing his report, though the action seems to suggest yet

69Narrative, pp. 125-28.

70See Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Society 42 (London, 1848), p. 103.




another instance of nervousness on the part of exiles who were not entirely certain of their own resistance, or wary of having such resistance announced back home.

After retiring briefly to Venice and Padua, where he received an update on the fate of other exiles, Brett embarked once more for the German lands, reaching Strasbourg on the last day of August. By then word seems to have well circulated of Brett's re-appearance in the vicinity, and the remainder of his journey would turn up no successful encounter at all. Strasbourg contained more than half the total number of English refugees, but Brett "cold not set eye of two englisshemen together." His primary target in Strasbourg, Sir Thomas Wroth, was elusive and would never in fact be tracked down; instead, Brett had to contend with a rather menacing "Riter knight," or heavy cavalryman, who was sent to harass him and who proceeded to chase him by horse. Brett remained persistent, however, and "leste I myghte seme rather desperat then diligent in my busynes I torned back agayne to the saide Strawseburge" and secured from the lords safe conduct to Spyres. In the meantime, Brett learned that others on his list had slipped away to regions unknown; included among them were "those that came to the said Frankford with Mistris Wilkinson," but who were now vanished, on their way to the Low Countries. With that, Brett writes, his mission was over, as "This is all that I dyd or could dooe in the xecucion of my sayde chardge and commission."71

III Like many of the persecuting measures undertaken in Mary's reign, the at-

tempt by the Chancery Court to send a commissioner abroad not only failed in its purpose but also backfired irrevocably. Subsequent accounts, shaped by the protestant bias of a John Foxe, for example, implied that Brett, if not quite a persecutor on par with an Edmund Bonner, was a sinister agent in service to evil. In fact, however, Brett's mission was as "legal" as the exiles asserted their own case to be. Though they insisted on their status as religious refugees, Brett and his documents represented a claim on them as continued subjects of the Crown-a claim which they themselves implicitly acknowledged in refusing to formally submit to the governance of their adopted lands. As a result of these confusions, the exiles floated in legal limbo, with their identity-as traitors or as the godly few, as landholders sought in court back home or as fugitives from a tyrannical queen-open to question. On the other hand, Brett's own position, as an agent representing a court with flexible jurisdiction and subpoena powers that were not necessarily annulled on the continent, may have been similarly ambiguous, which is not to say that it was as improper as the exiles would have had it.




428 Sarah Covington

In light of such ambiguity, there was little in the end for both sides to do but to appeal to the local authorities for resolution. The magistrates of the different towns were themselves, however, inconsistent in their response: in Frankfurt, John Hales' claims that he was being pursued illegally for his conscience's sake was overruled by an authority who stated that since Hales was "no subjecte of theyrs," he could not detain Brett or involve himself in the matter. With the duchess of Suffolk, on the other hand, Brett was made to rely on a more extensive chain of command that ended with the palgrave, who informed him that the duchess had submitted herself to him, thus placing herself under his legal protection against Brett's incursions. Neither of these responses, however, were conclusive in the end, as evidenced by the fact that the duchess and her family, for whatever reason, felt compelled to move on elsewhere.

The Marian government's larger position with regard to the exiles shifted throughout Mary's reign, beginning with her-or Gardiner's-initial, unspoken assent to protestant flight, in the understanding that the realm would be cleansed of its extremist evangelical fringes. By 1555, however, exile communities were unified, despite theological differences, in projecting solidarity to the world, and they were backed by printing enterprises that glorified the martyrs being made back home to bolster their own standing as the besieged godly. Twenty years later, exiled Catholics or Jesuits under Elizabeth would borrow from (and even expand upon) a similar template set by such protestants, by creating their own presses as well as schools, and plotting their direction as a movement. In this sense, exile, like martyrdom itself, constituted a force that could backfire on the authorities, providing one of the most powerful impetuses in the creation of a new kind of countervailing force-the good against the persecuting government's evil.

By 1556, and with the Dudley conspiracy fresh in their memory, Marian officials began to perceive the dangers of such a community, and in this sense, Brett's mission must be seen as indicative of a new policy to retrieve exiles on legal grounds, by targeting them where it most hurt: their land back home (and sometimes, as in the case of John Cheke, even that pretense was abandoned). While it remains questionable whether Mary actually expected the exiles to return upon receiving their "letters," the angry resistance that Brett himself faced was unanticipated, especially in an age when monarchs commanded (or at least expected) obedience in their subjects. Ponet's just-published treatise, which itself was exceptional or extreme in the context of its times, might have opened the way for resistance movements to come; but in 1556 the authorities in England could hardly have foreseen the violence to which their agent would be greeted. That no such government mission was attempted again after Brett's, and the exiles were thereafter not dealt with in any sort of coherent policy manner, attests to the futility of the apprehension-and-control policy to deal with exiles overseas.




Part of the exiles' resistance was justified on the basis of Mary's attempted confiscation of lands, as well as her more outrageous persecutions; but Mary was hardly unique in her covetousness, as her successor (or indeed, her father) would show. Elizabeth also desired lands abandoned by Catholic exiles; but where Mary failed, Elizabeth succeeded, in compelling the Commons to approve the permanent distraint of lands left behind by Catholics.72 Even more, a bill was introduced in the 1581 Parliament, proclaiming sweeping new penalties against recusants that included forfeiture of land and goods-a provision that failed to pass, but was nevertheless bolder than anything Mary had attempted.73 What Mary had instead was Brett and his list of exiles and his box of ambiguous documents; though his was a legitimate mission when viewed in the legally fluid context of the times, it was also an impossible one, as he understood when he encountered, in passing, Thomas Becan. As he was preparing to leave the territory for good, a battered and frustrated queen's gentleman-servant, Brett faced the great protestant divine, who told him that, if the tables had been turned, "he wolde not haue bene in my cote for a Thowsand poundes, to have commed to deliver any lettres in those [parts]."74

Sarah Covington is Assistant Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY. Her book, The Trail of Martyrdom: Persecution and Resistance in Sixteenth- Century England was published in 2003.

72Statutes, 13 Elizabeth c. 5.

73J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 2. vols. (New York, 1958), 2:281.




Documents

Heretic Hunting beyond the Sea