Introduction

In 1633 a young man from Shropshire cruelly butchered his ‘loving brother’ and ‘indulgent

mother’.1 First he decapitated his brother sleeping at the kitchen table and then, upon

discovery by his mother, he took the axe to her face and ‘ragingly dragged her wounded and

bleeding body to the threshold of the doore, and thereon at five strokes more hee divided

her head from [her] brest’.2 Whilst this account would seem extreme even in a present day

tabloid involving revenge or illegal substances, this unfortunate young man was driven to

commit the crime over a simple argument regarding the correct way to receive the Holy

Sacrament.3 This account highlights the primary motives behind this investigation of the

transmission of Protestant doctrine via the medium of the murder pamphlet: to what extent

did this genre of cheap print convey the ideology of the Protestant church, and was the

doctrinal content explicit enough to allow the uneducated masses to correctly interpret the

reformed doctrines and accompanying rituals? If the pamphlets quoted above are

considered in isolation then the answer would surely be a resounding no. Yet if we place

these in the context of the religious content of all the murder pamphlets printed between

1580 and 1640 it becomes evident that this genre may indeed have helped the Elizabethan

and Jacobean common man to better understand the rapidly changing religious landscape in

England.

1 Richard More, A True Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther, Committed by one Enoch ap Evan (London, 1633), sig. A3v.2 Peter Studley, The Looking-glasse of Schism (London, 1634), pp.38-41. 3 More, A True Relation, sig. A3v.

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Whilst there is no shortage of scholarly analysis of the dissemination of Protestantism via

print (both cheap and otherwise) in the decades post-Reformation, there is little research to

date regarding the appropriation of the murder pamphlet as an agent for this purpose. In

Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England Ian Green attempts to identify the most

enduring, and therefore most popular and widely disseminated, features of English

Protestantism by examining all religious works which ran to more than five editions in thirty

years.4 However, Lake and Questier have argued that this approach discounts cheap, time-

sensitive texts such as those relating to recent events, as there is ‘no market for reprints of

last week’s tabloid’.5 Consequently it can be argued that Green’s measure of popularity

equating to numbers of editions of a particular text is inadequate for discovering which

elements of Protestantism could be classed as truly popular, as it disregards a large selection

of early modern cheap print. Tessa Watt’s mighty Cheap Print and Popular Piety covers

almost all forms of cheap print used for dissemination of post-Reformation doctrines, yet

even she fails to cover the medium of the murder pamphlet as her investigation

concentrates on the yearly percentage of religious and moralising titles in the Stationer’s

Register.6 However, as Watt herself admits, to probe further into popular belief would

require looking for oblique references to ideas of God, sin and death in a wide range of

ballads, pamphlets and chap-books, not simply those which appear to deal directly with

religion.7 This supposition provided the central aims of this thesis, namely to attempt to

discover whether time-sensitive, cheap print which included edifying or moralising

Protestant ideology could be considered as useful in the dissemination of Protestant

4 Peter Marshall, Reformation England 1480-1642 (Arnold, London, 2003), p.163. 5 Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (Yale University Press, London, 2002), p.14.6 Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991), pp.42-49. 7 Watt, Cheap Print, p.125.

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doctrines amongst the semi-literate and illiterate lower orders of society between 1580 and

1640.

As Watt has suggested, it is necessary to look further than just the texts in which the

overriding theme was religious in nature and, as there was a new found interest in printed

accounts of current affairs during this period, this genre appears to be an area which

warrants further research. Lake and Questier assert that these pamphlets ‘were far from

explicitly Protestant’, and that as publication was for profit the aim was simply to pander to

public taste.8 Whilst it is undeniable that this genre of pamphlets would have been produced

primarily for profit, this investigation will address whether, as Lake suggests, this excluded

them from being produced with the intention of disseminating specifically Protestant

ideology. As we shall see in Chapter One, the rise in popularity of the murder pamphlet can

be attributed to several factors. In Cheap Print, Watt has given a comprehensive survey of

religious broadside ballads and their decline, along with the development of the chapbook

trade and ‘penny godlies’, which led to a separation of texts considered to be edifying and

those considered purely sensational.9 Margaret Spufford also assesses the chap book trade

in Small Books and Pleasant Histories, investigating the scale of the operations of the chap

men and how the chap book was distributed throughout the country, which is useful for

inferring the extent to which cheap print could be disseminated throughout rural England. 10

These will be considered in this chapter as a means to ascertain which groups in society were

likely to have consumed cheap print and, therefore, been influenced by any Protestant

8 Lake and Questier, Lewd Hat, p.4.9 Watt, Cheap Print, p.64 and Passim.10 Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981), pp.45-83 and pp.111-129.

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doctrine contained within. In ‘Reporting Murder’, Malcolm Gaskill suggests that the rise in

both the output of the printing presses and popular literacy can account for the rise in

popularity of the murder pamphlet, and also that this popularity meant that cheap print

must have reflected the attitudes of the population at large to some extent.11 However,

Gaskill also posits that whilst this gives us access to the mentality of the authors, it does not

necessarily follow that this reflected the attitudes of the general population.12 This highlights

our first problem when surveying murder pamphlets for religious content, as in the majority

of texts the author either remained anonymous or simply signed his initials, making it

impossible to ascertain what religious motives, if any, lay behind the content of the

pamphlet. Thus, the religious content of the pamphlets will be considered under its own

merits, with emphasis being placed on how the content could be interpreted in relation to

dissemination of religious ideology. Along with the popularity and distribution of the murder

pamphlet, Chapter One will also discuss the implications of rising literacy levels, the

influence of Northern European Humanism and the consequences of the conservative

approach to religious reformation in late Tudor and Early Stuart England.

The parameters of this investigation lay between 1580 and 1640 in England, and the

pamphlets consulted will all be accessed via Early English Books Online and will contain the

word ‘murder’ in the pamphlet title.13 As this investigation is concerned with the time-

sensitive murder pamphlets, any titles which were either play texts or were obviously

unrelated to a common homicide (such as the many pamphlets written about the

11 Malcolm Gaskill, ‘Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England’, Social History, 23:1 (1998), pp.5-7.12 Gaskill, ‘Reporting Murder’, p.7.13 http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home. [accessed 28/09/2013 for initial Title search]. This shall be referred to as EEBO in any future references.

4

assassination of Henry IV of France, or the Irish Rebellion) will not be considered in this

investigation. Similarly, any broadside ballads which contain the word ‘murder’ in the title

will be discounted, with the rationale for this being discussed in Chapter Two. Chapter Two

will also consider to what extent the murder pamphlet was a suitable medium for the

dissemination of Protestant doctrine. For the purposes of this thesis, Protestant doctrine will

be taken to mean the official doctrine of the Church of England, as opposed to the more

radical Puritanical Protestantism. This chapter will consider the survival of Catholicism after

Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, and the consequences of this for dissemination of

Protestant doctrine. In his edited essay collection The English Reformation Revisited,

Christopher Haigh presents the revisionist perspective, proposing that the survival rate of

Catholicism was much higher than previous Whiggish histories have suggested and that the

pre-Reformation Church was a ‘lively and relevant social institution and therefore the

Reformation was not the product of long term decay of medieval religion’.14 Eamon Duffy

has also contributed to this debate, arguing that the Reformation represented a ‘violent

disruption’ of late medieval piety which, contrary to previous scholarly conclusions, showed

no signs of decline or decay.15 This supposition is reflected in the principal theory presented

in Chapter Two: that the continuation of the recognised Christian belief in providence

provided the framework in which the reformers were able to introduce the more

complicated doctrines of justification by faith alone and predestination.

14 Christopher Haigh, The English Reformation Revisited (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987), ’Introduction’, pp.1-19 and p.4.

14Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C.1400-c.1580 (Second Edition) (Yale University Press, London, 2005), p.4; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), p.3.

15 Walsham, Providence, pp.8 and 86.

15

5

Alexandra Walsham has posited that the Tudor reformers placed fresh emphasis on

providence and the sovereignty of God and His ‘unceasing supervision and intervention’, and

also a renewed sense of Satan’s power to corrupt humanity.16 This chapter will also consider

the means by which the early modern murder pamphlet found ways to reconcile pre and

post-Reformation ideas regarding providence and the agency of Satan with regards to sin,

and the ways in which the authors incorporated reformed doctrines into the narrative. Lake

and Questier have strengthened Walsham’s theory, suggesting that by stressing the

continuity with the late medieval providential framework even the hotter Protestants and

Puritans could appropriate the genre to present their ideology to the lower orders in

society.17However, it can be argued that simply presenting these doctrines to the lower

orders was not sufficient: as Haigh suggests, the English Reformations were about ‘changing

minds as well as changing laws’.18 In Chapter Three the various propagandist techniques

employed to this end will be evaluated. The work of James Sharpe and Katherine Royer has

shown that the early modern execution was used as a tool by state and religious authorities

as a means to inculcate desirable moral behaviour. Whilst Sharpe uses the stereotypical

gallows speech to illustrate how these final words were staged in an attempt to acquire

greater ideological control over the masses, Royer suggests that there was a change in the

function of the execution itself as the physical punishment aspect became less important

than the behaviour of the condemned prior to death.19 Chapter Three will look at these

16

17 Lake and Questier, Lewd Hat, p.316.18 Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993), p.20.19 J.A. Sharpe, Judicial Punishment in England (Faber and Faber, London, 1990), p.31; Katherine Royer, ‘Dead Men Talking: Truth, Texts and the Scaffold in Early Modern England’ in Simon Deveraux and Paul Griffiths (eds),

6

theories in the context of the dissemination of Protestant ideology, suggesting that this new

function of execution also helped to transmit reformed doctrines via the printed accounts of

the murderer’s incarceration and execution. Finally, Chapter Three will argue that the

propagandist pamphlets which were blatant in their anti-Catholic or anti-Puritan sentiments

were useful in the dissemination of Protestantism among the lower echelons of society, as

they helped in ‘changing minds’ by presenting the alternative as the evil other to which good

Protestants could measure themselves against.

As discussed above, discovering the intent of the authors of the murder pamphlets is

problematic. Along with the issues of anonymity, problems have also arisen with correct

authorship being ascribed to the correct pamphlet. The pamphlet which is quoted at the

beginning of this Introduction, A True Relation, has been attributed to Richard More by

EEBO. However, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that in A True Relation,

More explained ap Evan's insistently erect demeanour in church as fear of uneven spiritual

nourishment should he kneel, and his murderous behaviour was attributed to acute,

recurring melancholy.20 This is clearly not the pamphlet under investigation, as not only is

the content noticeably different but More did not receive permission to print until

parliament's order in 1641, whilst the pamphlet under investigation was printed in 1633.21 It

would seem, therefore, that there has been confusion between the pamphlet A True

Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther, Committed by one Enoch ap Evan (quoted

above), and A true relation of the murders committed in the parish of Clunne in the county of

Penal Practice and Culture 1500-1900: Punishing the English (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004), pp.65-67.20 Conal Condren, ‘Richard More (c.1575–1643), religious writer and politician’ at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19185?docPos=1 [accessed 04/04/2014].21 Ibid., [accessed 04/04/2014].

7

Salop by Enoch ap Evan, with the latter being the one penned by More.22 Further to this,

Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry was printed in 1615 according to EEBO, whereas the pamphlet

itself states it was ‘Printed by N. & I. Okes… 1635’.23 Thus it is apparent that although EEBO is

a useful internet database of early modern pamphlets, the information accompanying the

text should be verified where necessary. The final obstacles encountered relate to the

quality and quantity of the texts. Firstly, the search parameters specified the word murder to

be used in the pamphlet title, whereas a search for murder as a keyword returns over

seventeen thousand results. This is many more than an investigation of this scale could hope

to examine, yet this would produce a more accurate picture of the use of murder pamphlets

for the dissemination of Protestantism. Also, some of the pamphlets which fall within the

search parameters were unreadable, such as The Wicked Midwife and The Life and Death of

Griffin Flood, therefore these had to be discarded.24

22 Richard More, A true relation of the murders committed in the parish of Clunne in the county of Salop by Enoch ap Evan (London, 1641).23 Henry Goodcole, Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry (London, 1635) sig.Av.24 The Wicked Midwife (London, 1640), The Life and Death of Griffin Flood (London, 1623).

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Chapter 1:

The Rise of the Murder Pamphlet

Before addressing the issue of the transmission of reformed religious doctrine via the

medium of the early modern murder pamphlet, it is necessary to first examine the

emergence of the murder pamphlet as a genre at the close of the sixteenth century and the

beginning of the seventeenth century, in order to ascertain how effective a means of

dissemination this was in relation to the lower orders of society. Sandra Clark has suggested

that the most plausible comparison for the pamphleteer in early modern England would be

the modern-day journalist, and it is evident that at the close of the sixteenth century the

reporting of current affairs was gaining popularity amongst the publishers of cheap print

and, therefore, amongst the consumers of early pamphlets.25 Of course, there was an

interest in news before this, but the modes of communication were more concerned with

an oral rather than a literary population; balladeers, travelling players and pedlars would

carry stories throughout the countryside, whilst town criers ‘cried’ notices of importance

including deaths and Royal proclamations.26 News-sheets and letters arrived from abroad

and could be read to an illiterate audience in the alehouses and churchyards but the content

of such, coupled with the lack of control that the reforming government had over the

above-mentioned forms of news, meant that these forerunners of the newspaper were

25 Sandra Clark, The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets 1580-1640 (The Athlone Press Ltd, London, 1983), p.38.26 Kevin Williams, Read All About It! : A History of the British Newspaper (Routledge, Oxon, 2010), p.24.

9

unsuitable for the transmission of the authorised Church of England doctrine.27 This was to

change with the advent of the murder pamphlet.

Whilst most forms of news reporting up to the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I had

been directed at a society based on oral transmission, in the latter half of Elizabeth’s reign

interest in news of many kinds increased, and by 1620 news writing for its own sake became

a recognised genre.28 The earliest known extant news-book in English was a translation of a

Dutch ‘Coranto’ in the latter half of 1620, but prior to this the early modern pamphleteers

were publishing stories claiming to be ‘a true report’ or ‘true discourse’.29 From 1600, some

pamphlets also contained lists of witnesses, such as ‘The manner of the cruell outragious

murther of William Storre’ and ‘The Bloudy Mother’, whilst ‘The life and death of Lewis

Gaufredy’ contained an extract of the court records.30 Others claimed to have true relations

of confessions or court testimony, all of which suggests a growing curiosity amongst the

Elizabethan and Jacobean populous for true accounts of recent events. It was this emphasis

on the truth of the crime committed placed alongside the confessions and penitent

declarations made before execution that made the murder pamphlet a potential medium

through which to spread the reformed doctrines of the Church of England, as by 1580 there

was a growing gulf between literature that was considered suitable for the godly and that

which was not. Thus the pamphlets which purported to contain a true report of a crime

would have been purchased by a different consumer than those with titles directly related

27 David Cressy, ‘Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in Early Modern England’ in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (Routledge, Oxon, 1993), p.311.28 Clark, Elizabethan Pamphleteers, p.86.29 Collin Clair, A History of Printing in Britain (Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1965), p.146.30 The manner of the cruell outragious murther of William Storre (London, 1603) sigs. A4v – B2r; The Bloudy Mother, (London, 1609) sig. C2r; The Life and Death of Levvis Gaufredy (London, 1612) sigs. C3r – Dv.

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to religious topics, making them an ideal means through which to disseminate

Protestantism amongst the uneducated masses. The decline in godly ballads, the rise in

popularity of printed psalms and the separation of the edifying and the entertaining genres

in print culture all suggests that cheap print was being produced for specific markets. The

implications of this separation of godly and sensational genres for the readership will be

considered below.

This apparent growth in interest of accounts of recent events and, therefore, the increase in

publication of murder pamphlets after 1580 can be attributed to several factors; a marked

increase in literacy levels, the development of more secure and reliable distribution

networks and the spread of Northern European Humanism from the continent were all

significant factors in explaining the rise of the murder pamphlet in late Elizabethan England

and its use in the theological conversion of the masses. The impact of Northern European

Humanism on the world-view of the average Elizabethan should not be underestimated. The

term Humanism first made an appearance in the English language at the end of the

sixteenth century and was used to describe a cultural movement which turned away from

medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.31 This

revival of classical learning allowed for the bible to be translated from Greek by early

modern theological scholars, and the consequences of this regarding interpretation of God’s

word were far reaching. For example, in the Vulgate translation, the opening words of

Jesus’s Ministry are ‘Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’, whereas Erasmus

argued that a direct translation from Greek would be ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is

31http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/humanism?q=humanism [accessed 26/03/2014]

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at hand’.32 The implications of this for the study of the transmission of religious doctrine via

murder pamphlets are significant, as it explains both the developing early modern interest

in human nature in the form of current events and their outcomes (as reported in the

murder pamphlets), and the growing necessity of devotional handbooks or educated local

clergy to interpret the newly translated texts (the importance of these issues and their

consequences will be addressed in Chapter 2).

A factor in the success of transmission of religious doctrine through murder pamphlets was

the use of rhetoric, the practise of which had been revived by the Humanist approach to

studying classical Greek and Roman texts. In ‘The Advancement of Learning’, published in

1605, Francis Bacon asserted that ‘the duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason and

imagination for the better moving of the will’.33 He then goes on to categorise devices in

writing which can be used to bring about a ‘reasonable or logical conclusion’ in the mind of

the reader, suggesting that passion or affection can be used to elicit morality whilst

imagination and impression pertain to rhetoric.34 When considering the present topic of

dissemination of religious ideas this theory is particularly apt, as the ‘reasonable conclusion’

that the reader was being steered toward was the acceptance of reformed religious

practices and the murder pamphlet certainly used both imagination and passion to direct

the reader to this conclusion. It has been argued that ‘the bulk of the population responded

to Protestantism with a mixture of sullen disinterest and hostility’.35 This could be due to the

32 Alister E McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (3rd Edition) (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1999), p.55. 33 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (Serenity Publishers, Maryland, 2005), p.130.34 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, p.130.35 Peter Lake, ‘Deeds against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Early Seventeenth Century England’ in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford University Press, California, 1993), p.257.

12

complicated and alien concepts of justification by faith alone and predestination, which

would have been a challenge for the common man with limited or no formal education to

comprehend. Also, the doctrinal changes stripped the average man of most of the previous

ritual and visual stimulation surrounding religious practice which likely led to feelings of

resentment and unwillingness to fully convert. This is where Bacon’s duty of rhetoric

becomes relevant, as the general population needed to be comfortable with these new

doctrinal points in order to accept them and the murder pamphlet was a medium through

which to achieve this. A fine example of the rhetorical devices of passion and imagination is

the composition of ‘A True Discourse of the Practices of Elizabeth Cauldwell’, in which a

handsome neighbour and an old crone lead a good wife astray and convince her to murder

her negligent husband. After much discussion and delay, they finally agree on poisoning

some oat-cakes and offering them to him. By this point the reader is emotionally invested in

the story and has had all the traditional, and therefore familiar, stereotypes presented to

him, thus is comfortable enough to accept the ideas presented in the second half of the

piece in which the penitent wife beseeches ministers for guidance and turns to the scripture

to find true repentance for herself.36 This formula of stimulating the readers emotions to

arouse astonishment at the crime itself and anticipation of the discovery of the perpetrator

was evident throughout the genre, and could have been used to bridge the divide between

orality and literacy in the world of the less educated reader, as this rhetorical device in

writing could be paralleled with the way in which an orator might arouse the passions of an

audience.

36A True Discourse of the Practices of Elizabeth Cauldwell (London, 1604)

13

The necessity to bridge the divide between oral and literary culture in this period was

paramount, as the journey towards a literate society was still in the early stages. There is

much debate surrounding the extent to which the lower orders of society were literate in

Tudor and Stuart England due to the lack of contemporary sources relating to the common

man, which has led to problems with identifying and defining literacy across the period.

Whilst it is possible to consider school records to infer literacy levels, these would only be

useful to ascertain literacy amongst those sections of society who could afford to have

children in school up to seven or eight years of age when writing was taught.37 Nevertheless,

the expansion of access to schooling was a substantial factor in the astonishing expansion of

literacy in the period 1580-1640. As Watt suggests, in rural areas children may have

attended school up to the age of six before being required to work and could therefore have

acquired basic reading skills without necessarily being able to sign their name (which has, in

the past, been the accepted benchmark for historians studying literacy levels). 38 Thus it is

advisable to view any statistics gleaned from school attendance as the lowest extent to

which we can reasonably assume literacy at this time. However, it is possible to make some

general inferences by considering some social and economic factors in the late sixteenth

and early seventeenth centuries, such as the fact that literacy was a prerequisite for entry

into many guilds and thus it is likely that literacy would have been a priority in the

household of an urban tradesman, whereas it would likely have been a less pressing matter

for a rural labourer.39 Ian Green supports the theory that there was a discernable expansion

in the literacy of the emerging ‘middle class’ of merchants and tradesmen, suggesting that

increased literacy during the period 1550-1700 was most prominent in the social ranks

37 Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991), p.7.38 Watt, Cheap Print p.7.39 Lawrence Stone, ‘The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640’, Past and Present, 58 (1964), p.42.

14

below the gentry, and in a contemporary source from 1577 William Harrison stated that

‘there are not manie corporat towns, now under the queen’s dominion, that hath not one

grammar schoole at the least’.40

Still, it is apparent that this educational revolution was not confined to towns as Green also

suggests that rural areas were slowly catching up with the urban centres creating a much

broader national readership, and Cressy’s work seems to support this theory. 41 In his work

on the diocese of London and Norwich, he found a sharp rise in schoolmasters visitations in

rural Essex and Hertfordshire between 1580-1592, and similar results in Norfolk and Suffolk

in the 1590s, yet evidence from northern regions shows there was a marked north/south

divide with evidence from the diocese of Coventry and Litchfield (which included

Staffordshire, Derbyshire and parts of Shropshire and Warwickshire) showing that most

centres did not have established schools until the 1640s.42 Thus it is evident that the spread

of authorised doctrines to the masses via murder pamphlets was potentially fairly

successful; the content was sensational and therefore appealing and the style was

accessible and unchallenging. Also, the rise in literacy meant that most areas would be able

to read the printed materials available to them and the formula and rhetoric used meant

that they were suitable to maintain the oral culture of reading aloud to an audience in areas

where literacy was lowest. Nevertheless, the fact that the murder pamphlet could have

been the perfect way to disseminate the Protestant doctrines of the Church of England is

40 Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000), p.26; Clark, Elizabethan Pamphleteers, p.20.41 Green, Print and Protestantism, p.26.42David Cressy, ‘Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in Early Modern England’ in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods, (Routledge, Oxon, 1993) pp.19-20.

15

irrelevant if there were no systems in place to get the materials to the people who they

were intended to influence.

It is notoriously hard to try and ascertain where early modern cheap print ended up. Books

in this period were still an expensive commodity, with a full, bound copy of the King James

Bible costing as much as £2, therefore it is more likely that they would be passed down to

family members or be recorded in wills.43 However, a 24 page chapbook could cost as little

as 1.5d and was therefore much more likely to end up ‘down privies, into fires or into pie-

dishes as lining’.44 Consequently, trying to establish how far into rural England these flimsy

pamphlets travelled and therefore what effect they had on the masses is mostly reliant

upon educated guesswork. Tessa Watt discusses the distribution of chapbooks, which would

undoubtedly have fallen into a similar category as murder pamphlets, lamenting that prior

to 1640 there is no record of chapman’s or bookseller’s inventories to shed light on

distribution practices.45 She does, however, suggest that the ballad publishers in this period

had quite an extensive distribution network and that the chapbook trade had close

association with this, thus as we have evidence of ballads finding their way into the rural

areas it is likely that chapbooks (and, by association, murder pamphlets) also reached the

countryside villages and hamlets.46 Alongside this, the development of a regular postal

service in the mid-sixteenth century made it theoretically possible for pamphlets to reach a

wide rural market via either the Royal Post or common carriers, and we also have evidence

in the form of John Taylor’s The Carriers Cosmographie from 1637.47 He asked around inns

43 Green, Protestantism in Print, p.40.44Eamon Duffy, ‘The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart England’, The Seventeenth Century, 1:1 (1986), p.31.45 Watt, Cheap Print, p.266.46 Watt, Cheap Print, p.272.47 Williams, Read All About It!, p.29.

16

in London to find out where carriers come from and go to, and on what days they could be

found, and developed a comprehensive list of places up and down the country which had

regular contact with London. This pamphlet suggests that printed materials that originated

in London could find their way as far north as Edinburgh, and as far south as Plymouth and

Exeter via the carriers.48 It would seem that the network of carriers was extensive, and could

be used to reach most places across the length and breadth of England and beyond, as

Taylor tells his readers that

There are carriers from Yorke to carry such goods and letters as are to be passed any waies north, broad and wide as far or further than Barwicke… the carriers or post that goe to Exeter may send daily to Plimouth, or to the Mount in Cornewall.49

It is therefore evident that the murder pamphlet could have reached all sections of society

via these routes, and the anecdote supplied by Duffy from Samuel Pepys in which he sees ‘a

shepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses, the bible to him’ suggests that low

literacy rates in rural areas did not stop the transmission of ideas via the printed word.50

Now we have addressed in which ways the early modern murder pamphlet was a suitable

medium through which the late Tudor reformers could present the principal doctrines of the

reformed church in England, it is necessary to consider why they might have deemed it

necessary to appropriate this medium to spread the Word. A.G. Dickens has posited that

Elizabeth became queen of a nation which was already mostly Protestant as many

protestant converts were won in the early years of the English Reformation.51 If this were

48 John Taylor, The Carriers Cosmographie, (London, 1637)49 Taylor, Carriers Cosmographie, sigs. A2v – A3r.50 Duffy, Godly, p.31.51Alec Ryrie, Palgrave Advances in the European Reformations (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004), p.125.

17

the case, it would appear that the edifying aspects of the murder pamphlets were

superfluous, included to merely enhance the narrative or indulge the authors need to

profess his personal piety. However, revisionist theories have challenged this assumption,

questioning the effectiveness of Queen Elizabeth and her reforms in building a protestant

nation.52 In his chapter assessing the continuity of Catholicism, Christopher Haigh argues

that ‘survivalist’ Catholics; those who outwardly conformed to the reformed religion, were

not uncommon in the 1560s and, more importantly, that ‘survivalism’ could be a stage

towards recusancy.53 It can therefore be argued that the dissemination of the doctrines of

the reformed church was a pressing matter in the latter decades of the sixteenth century,

not only as a means to educate the common man in the theology of the Church of England,

but also to support the attempts of the clergy to fully convert those who conformed

outwardly but still practiced Catholicism in private, lest they turned fully to recusancy.

The supposition that Catholicism was still rife during the Elizabethan regency and beyond is

supported by contemporary commentators, as the author of The Late and Horrible Murther

Committed by William Sherwood illustrates when he suggests ‘Theyr [the papists] desired

time of revenge is not past, and theyr malice hath not yet vomited its gall’.54 This sentiment

is echoed by George Gifford some thirty years later when he laments that in the immoral

majority ‘the Popish dung doth sticke still between their teeth’, thus it appears that amongst

the reformed in society there was persistent concerns over adherence, or lack thereof, to

the doctrines of the Church of England and the survival of Catholicism throughout the late

Tudor and early Stuart period.55 The pervasiveness of Catholicism when Elizabeth ascended 52Ryrie, European Reformations, p.126.53 Christopher Haigh, ‘The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation’ in Christopher Haigh (ed), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987), pp.180-81.54 A True Report of the Late and Horrible Murther Committed by William Sherwood (London, 1581), sig. A2v.55 Duffy, Godly, p.32.

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to the throne is also evident in the personal correspondence of both the reformers and

catholic sympathisers. Writing in 1563, Bishop Parkhurst laments that the cross, wax candles

and candlesticks have been returned to the queen’s Chapel ‘to the great grief of the godly’,

and that ‘the lukewarmness of some persons very much retards the progress of the

gospel’.56 This statement could be referring to the apathy of the population regarding the

adoption of another change of religious direction, but it is also possible that this is a veiled

attack on the moderate approach towards reform taken by Queen Elizabeth, which will be

discussed in more detail later in the chapter. Bernardino De Mendoza also discusses the

extent of opposition to the Reformed Church. In 1586 he states that ‘discontent [is] ripe, not

only amongst Catholic schismatics, but also amongst heretics themselves’.57 Thus we can see

both the reasons for the frustrations of the reformers with the perceived lack of impetus

within the reform movement, and also the pragmatism behind the moderation adopted by

Elizabeth. With so many Catholics still present in England, and the reputation of Mary’s

religious reform still ringing in the ears of the common man, it seems that a moderate

approach to reform may have been adopted to avoid the excessive bloodshed of Mary’s

reign. It is also likely that by this time the upper echelons of society would have been

familiar with Northern European Humanism, and that this was significant in the

development of the authorised religious doctrine and the means by which Protestantism

was presented to the lower orders in society. However, this influence is not evident in the

development of the more austere Puritanical Protestantism. For example, the

predestinarian theology propagated by the hotter sort of Protestants and later the Puritan

56 Letter LVII from Bishop Parkhurst to Henry Bullinger, Dated at Ludham, April 26 1563, in Hastings Robinson (ed), The Zurich Letters, Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others, with some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1846)p.141.57Martin A. S. Hume (ed), "Simancas: August 1586", Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), Volume 3: 1580-1586 (n.p., 1896), pp.597-613, accessed via http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87150 [accessed 28/02/2014].

19

movement is not evident in the moralistic message of the murder pamphlet. Instead, the

ideology of moderate reform is prevalent in the sense that salvation could possibly be

attained through a full confession and a truly penitent heart, replacing the old doctrines of

salvation through absolution and intercessionary practices. This was evidently reinforcing

the doctrine of the Church of England in such a way that the beliefs of the reader were not

completely destroyed, or even challenged to any discernable degree, but rather subtly

replaced so that the titillation factor which invariably made the pamphlets so popular was

not disrupted by overt preaching, yet the reformed ideology was still present.

This conservative approach to reform implemented by Elizabeth and influenced by Northern

European Humanist ideology would explain the unwillingness of the pamphleteers to tackle

the more complicated areas of reformed doctrine such as predestination in favour of a

moderate approach to the inclusion of Protestant doctrine. As Huizinga points out Erasmus,

the father of northern Humanism, had a desire for simplicity and

He found… religious life, full of practices, ceremonies, traditions and conceptions, from which the Spirit seemed to have departed. He does not reject them offhand and altogether: what revolts him is that they are so often performed without understanding and right feeling. 58

Whilst Erasmus was grappling with what he sees as overly complex practices and rituals

within the Catholic Church, the concept that the over-complication of religious doctrine

detracted from the central message of religion is evident in the way in which the reforms of

the late Tudor and early Stuart monarchies were presented. The central tenet during the

period between 1580 and 1640 seems to place more emphasis on the importance of

conformity and the appearance of outward piety than the need for the general population

58 Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (New York, Harper, 1957), pp.100-101.

20

to fully understand the finer points of Protestant doctrines. However, the apparent

pragmatism of Elizabeth’s reform ideology meant that some of the Catholic ritual was

maintained throughout the upheaval of reform, such as her insistence that ministers should

continue to wear full Catholic vestments. The feeling of continuity that this may have

inspired in those unfamiliar or unhappy with the new order runs parallel to what could be

perceived as the goals of the murder pamphlet writers with regards to the continuity of

perceivably Catholic rituals in some areas strengthening religious re-education.59

It can be argued that this theme of continuity was also evident in the appropriation of the

murder pamphlets at around the time that the religious ballad began to decline, evidenced

in their heavy reliance on traditional providential schemas and regular inclusion of well-

known biblical stories. Tessa Watt has shown that in the 1560s and 1570s ballads were an

acceptable ‘cheap’ medium for the transmission of either religious or moralising messages,

suggesting that up to fifty per cent of ballads licenced in this period could be classed as

religious.60 Whilst in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign it was not uncommon to find

religious ballads containing the usual appeals to live by Scripture, renounce worldly joy and

pray for grace, there was a sharp decline in these in the final decades of the sixteenth

century.61 This could be explained by the perceived lack of success of the moralising ballad in

relation to the more entertaining story ballads, the replacement of ballads by psalms as

recognisably ‘religious’ songs, and the fact that in the eyes of the reformers ballads had

ceased to be an acceptable vehicle for the transmission of religious doctrine due to their

associations with minstrels, alehouses and chapmen.62 Thus it can be argued that by 1580 59 Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (Pearson Education Limited, Essex, 1998), p.36.60 Watt, Cheap Print, p.48.61 Watt, Cheap Print, p.20 and p.48.62 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Temple Smith, London, 1978), p.207; Spufford, Small Books, p.10; Green, Print and Protestantism, p.456.

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there was a definite division between the cheap print which was purchased for the edifying

content, and that which was purchased purely for entertainment.

The consequences of this separation of godly and non-godly forms of cheap print for the

transmission of religious ideology are substantial: the moralised murder pamphlet was not

intended for a specifically religious market and therefore, as indicated previously, the typical

consumer of the murder pamphlet is likely to have purchased it for the true and current

aspects of the pamphlet. Thus there is a strong case for the edifying content of some of the

pamphlets to have reached an audience that otherwise would not usually have considered

buying a traditionally religious text. Hence it is evident that the factors involved in the

decline of the religious ballad had implications for the appropriation of the murder

pamphlet as a medium to disseminate religious ideology, and also how we interpret the

content of the pamphlets with regards to what level of readership we expect to have been

drawn to this form of literature. It can be argued that in some instances the murder

pamphlet combined the edifying qualities of the religious ballad and the entertainment

value of the more insalubrious ballads, as was the case with A True Discourse of the

Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell. The entertainment value comes in the form of a five page

description of the unhappy marriage of Elizabeth, the neighbour who pursues her and

convinces her to poison her husband, and the tragic outcome in which her husband survives

and she poisons a little girl instead.63 This is then followed by eighteen pages in which her

extreme piety in prison is described in detail, a transcript of a letter to her husband urging

him to pay better attention to the health of his soul is recounted, and her penitent speech

63 Gilbert Dugdale, A True Report of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell (London, 1604), sigs. A4r – B2r.

22

from the gallows is detailed.64 Whilst this is an exceptional pamphlet with much more

religious content than was usual, it highlights the fact that in the aforementioned division

between the sacred and the sensational the murder pamphlet could effectively combine the

two ensuring that the basic principles of reform were diffused throughout society.

Now we have addressed how the murder pamphlet came into being, and came to be

appropriated as a means of Protestant dissemination, we must finally look at who these

little texts reached before we start to assess the content of the pamphlets themselves. As

suggested, due to the lack of evidence regarding where the pamphlets were distributed and

who bought them, it is necessary to use the pamphlets themselves to deduce who is likely

to have been reading them. A sound starting point for determining who was likely to have

been the target audience for printed materials in this period is to consider cost and quality.

As noted previously, a 24 page chapbook could cost as little as 1.5d and therefore was

affordable for even those on lower wages; and with oral culture still being prevalent among

the lower orders of society, the contents of a murder pamphlet bought by one member of a

community may reach a number of people congregated at an alehouse or in a churchyard.65

The quality of the pamphlets is another way in which readership can be inferred, as it is has

been contended that whilst Roman type was commonly used from 1590 for book

production, this was the preserve of the more scholarly or cultured reader.66 However,

black-letter or Gothic type was cheaper to produce and thus kept the pamphlets affordable

and, as children’s ‘horn books’ and catechisms were usually produced in Gothic type,

contemporaries found it easier to read thus it was the type for the common people.67

64 Ibid., sigs. B2v – D3r.65Green, Print and Protestantism, p.40. 66 Clark, Pamphleteers, p.24.67 Keith Thomas, ‘The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England’ in Gerd Baumann (ed), The Written Word: Literacy in Transition (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986), p.99.

23

Although almost all the pamphlets considered use both Gothic and Roman type, Roman is

rarely used except for in the pamphlet title and the preface or ‘Epistle’ at the beginning of

the pamphlet. Whether or not this was due to Thomas’s assumption that the lower orders

found Gothic easier to read or simply because it kept production costs low is debateable,

but it is clear that we can infer that the use of Gothic type for the bulk of the text signified a

document which was produced for consumption at all levels of society.68 Alongside cost and

quality, another means to establish what audience the pamphlets were targeting is to assess

the content of the pamphlets themselves. Of the forty-eight pamphlets considered, forty-

two contain some form of religious reference, but of these only twenty-eight contain what

could be classed as overtly religious messages (A full list of pamphlets considered can be

found in the Appendix). These differing degrees of specific religious content and the

connotations this has for the transmission of Protestantism will be considered in the

following pamphlet analysis. Nevertheless, for the purposes of determining the readership

of the murder pamphlet, the lack of specific interpretation of complicated theology seems

to indicate that the murder pamphlets were not produced for the more highly educated

members of society, instead aiming for the lower orders that would buy the texts for the

fanciful tales of sorcery and diabolical or insane behaviour.

Thus far we have seen that the murder pamphlet came into being during this period due to

an increase in interest in human nature, influenced by the thirst for knowledge based on

logic and reason transmitted by the Northern European humanists, and the ways in which

the genre was a suitable medium for the transmission of Protestant ideology. Their

68 Thomas, ‘Meaning of Literacy’, p.99.

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moderation in introducing the new religious concepts made them suitable for consumption

at all levels of society, as did their use of rhetorical devices and vernacular language.

Therefore, it is now necessary to begin to consider the content of the pamphlets themselves

in an attempt to deduce whether the potential for transmission of religious ideology was

realised.

25

Chapter 2:

Spreading the Word

So far evidence has been presented to show how the murder pamphlet became prominent

in English early modern print culture, and why this may have been an appropriate medium

for the dissemination of Protestant doctrine amongst the lower orders of society. Still, the

question remains – was the murder pamphlet an effective medium through which the

reformed religion could be spread throughout the whole of society? As discussed in the

previous chapter, by no means did all the pamphlets under consideration feature obvious

aspects of the reformed religion, but only fifteen per cent were purely sensational with no

religious message at all which suggests that some form of edifying or moralising content was

apparent in the majority of the genre. It is worthy of note that four of the seven pamphlets

which contain no religious reference at all are ballads, suggesting that Watt’s theory that

this medium had become totally disassociated with the promulgation of religious ideology

was applicable across the board rather than confined to godly authors.69 Clark takes this

supposition further, positing that during this period ballad makers were proverbial for lying

and accordingly it can be argued that this medium seems to have been deemed unsuitable

for the transmission of religious ideology whatever the motives of the author. 70 For this

reason, ballads will be discounted from the sources used for identifying the religious

messages contained within the pamphlet text itself as it can be argued that it would have

69 Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991), p.48.70 Sandra Clark, The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets 1580-1640 (The Athlone Press Ltd, London, 1983) p.175.

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been unlikely for contemporaries to consider any religious aspect contained within the

ballads with any degree of sincerity. With that in mind, it is now necessary to establish to

what extent the content of the remaining forty-two pamphlets was specifically Protestant in

nature, and if the pamphlets which did not contain overtly Protestant ideology could still

promote conformity and thus support the objective of national religious unity.

As discussed, much of the revisionist scholarship regarding the English Reformation suggests

that the survival rate of Catholicism was relatively high. Therefore it can be contended that

a moderate approach which combined familiar Catholic precepts with reformed beliefs was

the most effective way to convert the masses in a religious climate in which the changes

imposed from above during the preceding decades had left public opinion remarkably

apathetic.71 In A True and Summarie Report of the Declaration of Some Part of the Earl of

Northumberlands Treasons, the author cites that his reasons for producing the pamphlet are

both to address the false rumours circulating regarding the Earl’s treasons, and also to

prevent ‘further contagion like to grow… in the minds of such as are otherwise indifferent’.72

Thus, as previously suggested, the appropriation of the murder pamphlet for the

dissemination of Protestant doctrine was not only to engage the lower orders with the

reformed doctrine, but also to attempt to convert recusants and ‘church papists’ (Walsham

uses this term to describe what Haigh refers to as ‘survivalists’, or the outwardly

reformed).73 A means to achieve this may have been to keep recognised narrative structures

alongside aspects of reformed ideology. As Gaskill has speculated, early modern murder

71 Bernard M.G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Reformation (2nd Edition) (Longman Group Limited, Essex, 1995) p.248.72 A True and Summarie Report of the Declaration of Some Part of the Earl of Northumberlands Treasons (London, 1585), sig. A2v73 Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001) p.238.

27

literature slotted real events into a wider cosmic scene in much the same way as biblical

histories.74

The emphasis on providence contained within the pamphlets would have been a familiar

feature to the lower orders, and this continuity may have helped the common man or the

religiously apathetic to feel comfortable enough with the themes of the text to begin to

assimilate the reformed doctrines presented. This technique is evident in the sources, with

providence being used to both uncover murders and reveal murderers in the majority of the

texts, and some even inserting a biblical story to introduce the particular theme of the

pamphlet. For instance, seven of the pamphlets reference the original murderer Cain,

whose guilt was discovered upon the ‘crying’ to the Lord of his brother’s spilt blood; whilst

three of the reports in which the murder is linked to adultery mention the story of David,

whose love for Bathsheba led him to be complicit in the murder of Uriah.75 However, this

suggests that the pamphlets were simply reinforcing generic religious moralities regarding

murder and adultery, not necessarily propagating specific Protestant ideologies. Whilst it is

undeniable that these are indeed generic Christian morals being imparted via well-known

bible stories, often placed alongside a recognised providential schema, four of these

pamphlets can be seen to also have varying degrees of reformed themes embedded in the

narrative. Three Bloody Murders, The Just Downfall of Ambition, The Unnatural Father and

Enoch ap Evan all make mention of some aspect of Protestantised religion in conjunction

with moralising biblical stories; whether to warn of the dangers of those who are only

outwardly pious, the importance of reflection on Scripture and the doctrine of justification

74 Malcolm Gaskill, ‘Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England’, Social History, 23: 1 (1998), p.6.75 Genesis 4:10, Samuel 2:12.

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by faith alone, or the threat posed by non-conformity.76 For example, the concept of faith

having become something that one should internalise, as only a faithful and penitent heart

could hope to attain salvation, is evident in The Cruell Murder of a Young Maiden.77 The

perpetrator ‘with an outward shew of pious compassion and pitty took [the maid] into her

house’, yet goes on to rob and eventually murder the maid and thus it is insinuated that her

outward countenance is not mirrored by her soul, perhaps insinuating the dangers of

professing piety yet truly not having faith as was the case with the church papists.78

Similarly, The Unnatural Father tells of an adulterer who squanders his money on

drunkenness and debauchery, and then goes on to murder his two small children lest they

‘had to go from doore to doore to make their living’, yet the second half of the pamphlet

reflects upon the fact that ‘the Towne of Ewell hath neither Preacher nor Pastor’ yet during

his fifteen week incarceration the man was ‘a wonderfull penitent prisoner… never being

without a bible’.79 Therefore we can see in this pamphlet both biblical references imparting

the perils of adultery and murder, and the Protestant tenet that total reliance on Scripture

and (equally important in a semi-literate society) the means to interpret the Word of God

correctly held the key to avoiding perdition.

Along with the insertion of familiar biblical stories, the continuity of recognisably pre-

Reformation doctrines is also evident in the prevalence of providence, which is present in all

of the pamphlets under consideration. This traditional Christian schema was familiar to all

levels of society in the medieval and early modern periods thus, as Gaskill has posited, the

insertion of murder stories into a ‘wider cosmic scene’ not only reinforced the edifying and

76 Three Bloody Murders (London, 1613); I.T.,The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery and Murder (London, 1616); John Taylor, The Unnatural Father (London, 1621); Richard More, A True Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther Committed by one Enoch ap Evan (London, 1633).77 Three Bloody Murders, sig. Cr.78 Three Bloody Murders, sig. Cv.79 Taylor, Unnatural Father, sigs. Bv, B3v, B3r.

29

moralising messages contained within, but also potentially gave the reader a sense of

familiarity when confronted by complicated or unpopular reformed doctrines. However, in

order for the benefits of this continuity of pre-Reformation ideology to be effective it had to

be given a Protestant gloss, which meant the incorporation of the doctrine of predestination

and a reassessment of the ways in which the Devil operated within God’s grand scheme.

Firstly, as Walsham points out, there was a renewed sense of Satan’s power to corrupt

humanity in reformist ideology.80 This is evident in many of the pamphlets surveyed, and is

succinctly encapsulated by the author of A Horrible… Murther Committed at Putney when he

postulates that ‘the sweet seeming baytes of Sathan leads men (like beares by the noses) to

commit all horrid and damnable trespasses… against the Devine Majestie of the omnipotent

and eternall God’.81 Similarly, in Sundrye Strange and Inhuman Murders, a father who is

prevented from remarrying a rich widow due to his three children had ‘the devil so farre

entered into his minde, that he cast many wayes in his thought how to make them awaie’,

whilst in The Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell the author speculates on the ‘strange invasion

of Sathan, lately on the persons of Elizabeth Caldwell and her bloody lover’.82 However, in

the reformed Protestant providential ideology the doctrine of divine omnipotence would

logically conclude that God was the author of all sin which, according to Calvin, was ‘impious

and preposterous’ and therefore some elaborate theological gymnastics were required to

absolve Him from blame.83 This was achieved by the supposition that it was only the

protection of God which stood between sinful humanity and perdition, as Arthur Golding

highlighted in A Brief Discourse when he suggests the reason ‘that we stand [temptation

into sin] is the benefit of God’s grace and not the goodness of our nature or the strength of 80 Walsham, Providence, p.86.81 I.T., A Horrible Cruell and Bloudy Murther Committed at Putney in Surrey,(London, 1614) sig. A3v82 Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers, Lately Committed (London, 1591) sig. A3r; Gilbert Dugdale, A True Report of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell, sig. A3r.83 Walsham, Providence, p.14.

30

our own will.’84 Thus we can see how the reformist ideology reconciled the conflicting

concepts of an omnipotent God whose grand design had each event in every human life pre-

planned and the sins which man committed at the behest of Satan: the Almighty had to

withdraw His grace before the devil could begin his assault on the soul of the sinner. 85 Yet

the concept that the withdrawal of God’s grace led to the possibility of being enticed by the

power of Satan led to and even more problematic issue: if one succumbed to Satan and

committed murder or adultery it was through one’s own free will. On the other hand,

reformed dogma insisted upon the doctrine of predestination in which there was no free

will among humanity, and whether one was elect or reprobate was already decided before

the sin was committed thus the sinful deed itself was effectively irrelevant. Thus even the

familiar Catholic precepts that were retained by the reformers had changed in the ways in

which they were intended to be interpreted, suggesting that there was a need to both

introduce the reformed doctrines and clarify the ways in which aspects of the old religion

had been appropriated and modified. It would seem that the use of providential events and

the part played by the devil in the instigation of sin continued in their traditional forms in

the message imparted via the murder pamphlet, suggesting that these complicated

theological issues were left to the upper echelons of society to grapple with.

Whilst it was theologically problematic to reconcile the doctrines of predestination with the

traditional concept of providence, it is evident from the content of the murder pamphlets

that it was a more pressing matter to simply introduce the notion of predestination to the

lower orders of society. As Haigh has suggested, by the seventeenth century English

84 Peter Lake, ‘Deeds Against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Early Seventeenth Century England’ in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, (Stanford University Press, California, 1993) p.278; Arthur Golding, A Briefe Discourse of the Late Murther of master George Saunders (London, 1573), sigs. B3r – 5r.85 Walsham, Providence, p.86.

31

Protestants may have learned to identify themselves in opposition to Catholicism, but they

still preferred to talk and think about sex and football rather than the finer points of

predestinarian doctrine, no matter how ‘energetically of ingeniously it was evangelised’.86

Hence, once again, it is evident how the medium of the murder pamphlet could have been

useful in the dissemination of Protestant doctrine with the combination of titillating stories

and edifying content, but was it effectively appropriated for the transmission of

predestination in particular? It is worthy of note that only four out of the forty-eight

pamphlets surveyed contain any reference to the doctrine of predestination, and these

references are oblique at best. In The Most Horrible and Tragicall Murther of the Right

Honourable… John Lord Bourgh the murderer Arnold Cosby is described as being ‘borne to

mischeefe, and predestined to destroie that which his loathed life is too farre unable to

redeeme’, whereas The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther Committed by an Inkeepers Wife,

called Annis Dell it is stated that those ‘who are created to be murtherers, are created to be

remorseless’.87 Thus we can see an allusion to the idea that the life of a person is

predetermined by God as the perpetrators are born to mischief or murder, but the

intricacies of the doctrine such as the notions of the elect and the reprobate are left

unmentioned and unexplained. The Life and Death of Lewis Gaufredy tells of a Catholic

priest in France who becomes enamoured with the ‘damnable and diabolicall’ writing of

Agrippa and Tollet, and the author posits that ‘such reading benefits none but those… that

renounce the celestiall inheritance promised to all those who are regisred in the sacred

record of the everliving’.88 The final instance, in A Brief and True Relation of the Murther of

86 Christopher Haigh, ‘The Taming of the Reformation: Preachers, Pastors and Parishioners in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, History, 85 (2000), p.574.87 W.R.,The Most Horrible and Tragicall Murther of the Right Honourable, the Vertuous and Valerous Gentleman John Lord Bourgh (London, 1591), sig A2v; The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther Committed by an Inkeepers Wife, called Annis Dell (London, 1606), sig. Bv.88 The Life and Death of Lewis Gaufredy (London, 1612), sig. A2v.

32

Mr Thomas Scott, tells us of the murderer, a soldier called Lambert, who is clearly quite mad

as he insists that the Queen of Bohemia had ‘daily and hourely termed him one of heavens

worthies, and heavens elect, and many the like epithites.’89 It can be argued that in these

examples references to the doctrine of predestination are implicitly embedded in the story,

and are again lacking any form of explanation regarding the finer points of the doctrine.

Thus unless the reader was considering the content with a predestinarian reading in mind,

the doctrinal content may go completely unnoticed and therefore render the pamphlet

useless with regards to dissemination of Protestant ideology. However, it is possible that the

less educated reader or audience may still inadvertently be introduced on a very basic level

to the concepts of predestination and assurance of the elect, which it can be argued was the

main thrust of the moderate reformers objective.

It would seem that an overriding concern of many of the pamphleteers was the troubled

times that they perceived themselves to be living in, therefore it follows that the main

concern of the authors was to reinforce the moral aspects of the Protestant doctrines

amongst the lower orders. Two Most Cruell and Bloudie Murders opens with the statement

that ‘the days of daunger and iniquitie are as now’, whilst A World of Wonders ruminates on

a world in which ‘mens harts are hardened, charitie chased, love lacking, trueth thrusted out

of doors… and all good and virtuous exercises either seldom used or utterly extinct.’90 Thus it

is understandable why, according to Leif Dixon, a great many predestinarian ministers either

regarded assurance of salvation as desirable but inessential, or viewed assurance as

relatively easy to gain and so emphasised the life of the saint post assurance as it could be

argued that the less educated could easily have taken the notion of predestination as an

89A Brief and True Relation of the Murther of Mr Thomas Scott (London, 1628), sig. Br.90 Two Most Cruell and Bloudie Murders (London, 1583), sig. A2r; A World of Wonders (London, 1595), sig. A2r.

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excuse to live a debauched life – if the majority of society were predestined to be among

the ranks of the reprobate, why strive to live a godly life?91 It is apparent that the

pamphleteers shared in this moderate approach to the doctrine, choosing to focus on the

more morally edifying idea of repentance combined with a notion that the doctrine of

justification by faith alone may give the penitent sinner a shot at salvation. The first instance

of this being implied is in The Manner of the Death and Execution of Arnold Cosbie, when the

prisoner had

‘learned preachers [confer] with him, shewing him that his life was but fraile and transitory, and in no sort comparable unto the life to come, for therein consisted all joye, pleasure, rest, solace and continuall comfort and that he might be assured to dwell and live for ever among the Angels of God, if so by the repentance of his former sinnes he would call upon God, and steadfastly believe that by faith in Christ Jesus, he should have free remission of all his sinnes…’92

He then goes on to lament that he could never be pardoned of the sin he had committed,

‘but onley by the mercie of God which was ready (he alleged) to rfresh all penitent sinners

that sorrowed for their offences.’93 This sentiment is echoed in The Practices of Elizabeth

Caldwell, A Pitiless Mother, The Unnatural Father and Natures Cruell Step-Dames.94 Elizabeth

suggests that if her husband continues in his abominations he has no hope of salvation as

‘mercie is to them that repent and turne’, whilst the pitiless mother’s ‘soule no doubt hath

got a trew penitent desire to be in heaven’, the unnatural father died ‘with great penitency

and remorse of conciense’ and the author of Step-Dames tells that there are ‘two manner of

ways that a man may climb up unto the toppe of Heavens holy hill, namely meditation and

91 Leif Dixon, Practical Predestinarians in England c.1590-1640 (Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, 2014), p.ii.92 Arnold Cosbie, The Manner of the Death and Execution of Arnold Cosbie (London, 1591), sig. A2r.93 Cosbie, The Manner… of Arnold Cosbie, sigs. A2r – A2v.94 A Pitiless Mother, (London, 1616); Henry Goodcole, Natures Cruell Step-Dames, (London, 1637)

34

prayer’.95 Thus it is apparent that the murder pamphlets were more explicit with their

propagation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone than in their explanation and

dissemination of the doctrine of predestination, suggesting once again that the consensus

was for moderation when it came to the conversion of the lower orders. Thus Haigh’s

analogy is useful to understand why the pamphleteers picked and chose only certain

doctrinal points to explain, whilst others were hardly mentioned, as ‘the English ate their

Reformation as a recalcitrant child is fed its supper, little by little, in well-timed spoonsful’,

thus it was better to spoon the doctrine of justification first, to avoid the whole meal ending

up on the floor.96

From the evidence presented and examined, it can be suggested that the murder pamphlet

was appropriated to some degree to disseminate Protestant doctrines throughout early

modern English society, especially among the lower orders. However, in order to unite the

nation under a Protestant banner it was necessary to go further than simply explaining the

doctrinal changes – the population at large had to embrace these changes and accept them

as part of a national consciousness. Therefore, it is necessary to now consider the ways in

which the murder pamphlet may have helped to reinforce the reformed ideology in the

minds of the masses, and the propagandist means which they used to achieve this

95 Dugdale, Elizabeth Cauldwell, sig. C2r; Pitiless Mother, sig. B2r; Taylor, Unnatural Father, sig. B3v; Goodcole, Natures Cruell Step-Dames, sig. B2r. 96 Christopher Haigh, ‘Introduction’ in Christopher Haigh (ed), The English Reformation Revisited (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987), p.15.

35

Chapter 3:Papists, Puritans and Propaganda

It has been posited that in the early modern period death and burial had the greatest power

to focus the minds of everyone involved on sin, heaven and hell.97 It can therefore be argued

that the public execution of murderers was a perfect opportunity to encourage self-

reflection, both for the condemned and for those who bore witness to their fate. J. A.

Sharpe agrees with this supposition, stating that public executions were carried out in a

context of ceremony and ritual which was ‘contrived to invoke more than just terror from

the audience’.98 It will be argued that this ceremony and ritual of execution was intended to

convey a warning to the spectators, to act as a mirror for those watching to examine their

own behaviour. However, it can also be suggested that in the late sixteenth and early

seventeenth centuries the development of the ‘theatre of punishment’ to inculcate

desirable moral behaviour was closely linked with the propagation of reformed religious

ideology.99 With the contemporary concern for the iniquity of the times, considered above,

it can be argued that the printed gallows speeches could be considered as a Protestant

propaganda effort intended to support the conversion of the masses.

The example used by Sharpe is of John Marketman, who stabbed his adulterous wife in

1680, and at the gallows proclaimed ‘although I have been the greatest of sinners, his mercy

is far above my sins, the blood of Christ is a sufficient virtue to wash away the blood-

97Martin Ingram, ‘From Reformation to Toleration: Popular Religious Cultures in England 1540-1690’ in Tim Harris (ed), Popular culture in England 1500-1850 (Macmillan Press, Hampshire, 1995), p.110.98 J. A. Sharpe, ‘Last Dying Speeches: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth Century England’, Past and Present, 107 (1985), p.146.99 Ibid., p.156.

36

guiltiness from off my poor soul’, after which he implores his wife’s lover to repent as

well.100 Sharp argues that the majority of these gallows speeches were suspiciously

stereotyped, for the most part containing a confession of all past sins (not just the

transgression which led to the gallows), recognition of the divine power of the current

sovereign (sometimes accompanied by a plea for his forgiveness), and evidence of an all-

consuming penitence which instigated a feeling of peace (and on occasion even joy) at the

prospect of achieving a ‘good’ death.101 With this in mind, it is impossible to disregard the

similarities between this account and the events conveyed in The Practices of Elizabeth

Caldwell, in which the murderess hopes that her speech may convert many of the hearers,

lists her past sins and advises others to heed her mistakes, prays for the glory of her king

and finally asks forgiveness, ‘making her selfe ready, saying her bodily death did not dismay

her’.102 She also, like Marketman, is reported to have written a letter to her spouse imploring

him to repent and strive to live a more godly life.103

Whilst the similarities between these accounts does point to a ‘suspicious stereotyping’

apparent in the reported gallows speeches, it is worth considering the theory that there was

a change in attitudes towards the form and function of public executions between the late

medieval and early modern periods. Late medieval execution narratives focused on the

dismemberment and disposition of the body parts or, in other words, the horror of the

physical punishment, whereas in the sixteenth century the accounts were more focused on

100 A Full and True Account of The Speech of John Marketman at the Ladder Immediately before his Execution (London, 1680), p.3.101 Sharpe, ‘Dying Speeches’, p.149.102 Gilbert Dugdale, A True Report of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell (London, 1604), sigs. Dr - D3r.103 Dugdale, Elizabeth Caldwell, sigs. B4v – C4v.

37

the behaviour of the condemned.104 Thus Sharpe’s assertion that this stereotyping of the

gallows speech was a means by which the authorities used the execution spectacle to

inculcate a certain behavioural model does appear credible. Nevertheless, it can be argued

that this appropriation by the authorities of the actions of the condemned was rooted in

post-Reformation Protestant ideology, with the first instance of a staged gallows speech in

the texts surveyed being in 1591, almost a full century before the example used by

Sharpe.105 The gallows speech of Arnold Cosbie, as reported in a pamphlet authored by the

same, reports how he

Did openly confesse before all the people, and shewed him selfe sorie for the same, asking forgiveness of both God and the worlde, and desired hir majestie to forgive and forget his offence… Then after praiers which the prisoner seemed to poure foorth from a penitent heart, confessing that he had before committed sundry hainous offences.106

The pamphlet reporting Cosbie’s execution also contains the events prior to this, in which he

had learned preachers come to Marshalsey and tell of his ‘continuall comfort’ in the life to

come, and that ‘he might be assured to dwell and live forever among the Angels of God, if so

by repentaunce of his former sinnes he would nowe call upon God’.107 He then proceeds to

speculate that he could never be pardoned ‘but by the mercie of God which was ready to

rfresh all penitent sinners’.108 It can therefore be contended that this first example of a

printed gallows speech including the behaviour of the accused during incarceration (within

the present sample of pamphlets) had a distinctly Protestant tone in as much as it alludes to

the doctrine of justification by faith alone and the importance of ‘godly conferences’ with

104 Katherine Royer, ‘Dead Men Talking: Truth, Texts and the Scaffold in Early Modern England’, in Simon Devereaux and Paul Griffiths (eds) Penal Practice and Culture, 1500-1900: Punishing the English, (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004), p.65.105 Sharpe, ‘Dying Speeches’, p.147.106 Cosbie, Execution of Arnold Cosbie, A2v.107 Cosbie, Execution of Arnold Cosbie, A2r.108 Ibid., A2r

38

‘learned preachers’.109 The next instance, in the 1604 Elizabeth Caldwell pamphlet, shows

even more evidence of the Protestant influence on the behavioural model being impressed

upon the spectators and, subsequently, the wider audience reached by the reporting of

these speeches in the murder pamphlets. As suggested, it is the perfect example of the

stereotypical gallows speech, in which she talks of previous sins, prays for the King, calls for a

prayer book and sings psalms ‘with a good spirit’, and finally declares that her bodily death

does not ‘dismay her’.110 However, the reporting of the speech in the context of the murder

pamphlet, in which a full catalogue of her sins and behaviour during incarceration is

included, provides a shining example of a murder pamphlet intended to inculcate a certain

moral behaviour with the intention of influencing the apathetic masses.

The author of Elizabeth Caldwell is Gilbert Dugdale, and whilst we know virtually nothing

about him, the dedication in the pamphlet is signed Robert Armin who was not only an

acclaimed comic actor but he also penned the commendation from A Brief Resolution of a

Right Religion, and was Dugdale’s kinsman.111 It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the

moderate Protestant stance taken by Armin (his commendation is equally scathing of papists

and ‘Martinestes’, the followers of the puritanical Martin Marprelate tracts), would have

been shared by Dugdale, especially when the contents of his pamphlet are examined.112 In it

is described Elizabeth’s ‘constancie’ in prison in using ‘all possible means… to convert all the

rest of the prisoners’, she did not ‘omit any time… in serving of God, and seeking pardon for

her sinnes’ and was continually meditating on the Bible.113 However, it is the report of the

109 Ibid., A2r.110 Dugdale, Elizabeth Caldwell, Dr - D2v.111 C.S., A Brief Resolution of a Right Religion, (London, 1590), A2v.112 Ibid.113 Dugdale, Elizabeth Caldwell, B2v.

39

letter to her husband which truly reinforces the Protestant ideology being propagated

through this pamphlet. In it she calls her husband to repentance as ‘none can have salvation

without true Reformation, both inward and outward… which till you feel in your soule… you

have not repented’, and urges him not to be deceived by the idea that ‘to say a few prayers

from the mouth outward a little before death, or to cry God mercie for fashion sake, is true

repentance’.114 She then beseechs him to ‘presently bee acquainted with the Scriptures’, for

‘the word must judge us… to those that imbrace it, it brings life, to those that will not be

reformed by it, it brings death’.115 Thus this pamphlet contains all the Protestant tenets that

the Reformed Church was anxious for the masses to accept: reformation of moral and

religious behaviour, justification by faith alone, and that the reliance on Scripture and the

Word of God was the only means to attain salvation.

It is also noteworthy that in her gallows speech Elizabeth talks of Papistrie, saying that

She ever hated it, knowing it contrary and flatly opposite against the truth of the great God of heaven, and his holy word… most devoutly and sincerely praying for the current passage of the Gospell of Christ Jesus throughout the whole world.116

This anti-Catholic sentiment is evident throughout the period, with nine pamphlets printed

between 1580 and 1640 being concerned with the evils of Catholicism, of which the Dugdale

pamphlet is the least vehement. As Haigh has suggested, it may have been expedient in the

religious unification of the nation for English Protestants to learn to identify themselves in

opposition to Catholicism, and the murder pamphlets seem to have been a useful

114 Dugdale, Elizabeth Caldwell, B4v; Cr.115 Dugdale, Elizabeth Caldwell, C2r; C2v.116 Dugdale, Elizabeth Caldwell, sig. Dv.

40

propaganda tool through which this may have been achieved.117 A True Report of the Late

Horrible Murther Committed by William Sherwood discusses how papists are ‘hotte in

cruelty’, malicious, and how they will ‘washe their hands in the blood of their owne

bretheren’, whilst in A True Report… of a Popish Priest, named Robert Drewrie it is stated

that papists are of a ‘traytrous nature, tending to the abuse and corruption of poore simple

soules’.118 In the anti-Catholic vein there is also The Declaration of the Earl of

Northumberlands Treasons, The Parricide Papist, The Divell of the Vault, The Examinations…

of George Sprot, The Life... of Lewis Gaufredy and A Pitiless Mother.119 This group of

pamphlets can be sub-divided into two further categories: those which vilify Catholics, and

those which commend the behaviour of those who return to the Protestant fold. Both Divell

of the Vault and Lewis Gaufredy are purely anti-Catholic diatribes which contain no

Protestant doctrine or ideology. However, this does not discount them as a means to instil

Protestantism amongst the lower orders: as suggested it was profitable to use Catholicism

as the evil ‘other’ by which Protestantism was defined in opposition to. It is interesting to

also consider that neither Divell of the Vault nor Northumberlands Treasons contain

accounts of actual murders, whilst the murder in Lewis Gaufredy is a separate account of

witchcraft tagged on to the end of the main pamphlet, yet all contain the word ‘murder’ in

the pamphlet title. Thus it can be contended that the genre itself was considered popular

enough for it to be appropriated as a propaganda mill for the diffusion of anti-Catholic

sentiment or the propagation of Protestant ideology.

117Christopher Haigh, ‘The Taming of the Reformation: Preachers, Pastors and Parishioners in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, History, 85 (2000), p.574.118 A True Report of the Late Horrible Murther Committed by William Sherwood (London, 1581) sigs. A2r – A2v; A True Report of the Araignment, Tryall, Conviction and Condemnation, of a Popish Priest, named Robert Drewrie (London, 1607), sig. Bv.119The Declaration of the Earl of Northumberlands Treasons, (London, 1585); George Closse, The Parricide Papist, (London, 1606); I.H., The Divell of the Vault, (London, 1606); William Hart, The Examinations, Arraignment and Conviction of George Sprot, (1608); The Life and Death of Lewis Gaufredy, (London, 1612); A Pitiless Mother, (London, 1616).

41

With this in mind, it can be argued that some pamphlets within this overtly anti-Catholic

sub-division could be used for propagandist purposes by those whose goal was to

disseminate the ideology of the Reformed Church. The texts regarding Robert Drewrie and

William Sherwood both give accounts of the evils of their popish sect and their personal

transgressions, but also use the recognised structure of the gallows speech to their

advantage. At the gallows Sherwood persisted in his denial of the crime, proclaimed the

Pope of Rome the supreme head of the church, when the preacher implored him to lay his

hope in Christ he ‘vehemently cried out, away with the woolfe, he perverteth the truth’, and

at the crucial moment he ‘fled downe the ladder to fly from the Butcher, thereby showing

the unstableness of his faythe’.120 Similarly, Drewrie refused to confess to treason and

‘desired all Romaine Catholickes to pray with… and for him’, and was obviously afraid so

‘when he felt the Carte to goe from under him… he caught fast holde with his left hande on

the halter above hys head’.121 Thus we can see that the theory posited by Royer suggesting

that the shift in focus to the behaviour of the condemned as the central objective of the

execution spectacle could be used to both show the benefit of the Protestant faith and the

relative futility of pursuing Catholicism, as the portrayal of a Catholic death is one of being

fearful and therefore ill-prepared. Thus it can be seen from the pamphlets discussed above

the importance of a good death in the reformed Protestant faith. As Royer posits, the

Marian martyrs were portrayed as using their bodies to show the strength of their faith in as

much as they used their bodies to do more than endure their death, they ‘embraced it’.122

Thus the calm manner displayed by the penitent Protestant upon execution, and the fear

120 William Sherwood, sig. B3r.121 Robert Drewrie, sig. D3v.122 Royer, ‘Dead Men Talking’, p.67.

42

and cowardice with which the papists are portrayed, provides an excellent example of the

propagation of Protestant ideology and the vilification of Catholicism.

The Examinations… of George Sprot and A Pitiless Mother both fall into the second sub-

category of anti-Catholic pamphlets, and it can be argued that these were an even more

effective tool for the anti-Catholic propagandists as they show the benefits of (re)turning to

Protestantism. In the case of George Sprot, a notary charged with treason for his complicity

in a popish plot, the readers are given an account of the usual and expected good Protestant

death in which Sprot spoke with ‘words readie and significant’ and his countenance was

‘reasonably erect and full of alacritie, without all feare of death’.123 It is then recounted how

‘laying holde upon the mercies of God in Christ, he raised himself, and strangely lifted up his

soule unto the Throne of Grace’, conveying a strong sense of the doctrine of justification by

faith alone.124 Whilst in A Pitiless Mother the murderess is denied her gallows speech, it is

made apparent that it is purely the evils of Catholicism that lead her to infanticide and that

‘her judgement and execution she received with a patient minde, [and] her soule no doubt

hath got a true penitent desire to be in heaven’.125 Hence it can be seen that the murder

pamphlet was an expedient medium through which both the benefits of a Protestant death

and the dangers of a Catholic life could be transmitted to all sections of society.

123 Hart, George Sprot, sig. D2v.124 Ibid., sig. C4v.125 Pitiless Mother, sig. B2r.

43

The appropriation of the murder pamphlet for the denigration of Puritanical Protestantism

is much less prevalent in the period in question, with the only example being in A True

Relation… of Enoch ap Evan.126 It is noteworthy that this pamphlet was followed by a

relation of the same murder, printed the following year, yet this does not fall within the

search parameters of this investigation as the word murder is not used in the pamphlet title.

It can therefore be argued, considering the use of the word in the anti-Catholic titles, that

the appropriation of pamphlets as propaganda was not deemed as necessary against

Puritans as it was for opposing Catholicism. The reasons behind this may be related to the

notion that the perceived growing threat of Puritanical sects became more of a concern in

the 1630s, or the previous argument that there was a definite divide between those

pamphlets which were sensational and those classed as godly, but to find the answer would

be beyond the scope of the present investigation. However, the vehemence with which the

author lays the blame for the horrendous crime at the feet of the puritanical sects is striking

as he stresses the dangers, ‘especially in these times’, of there being ‘so many Sectists,

Familists, Separatists, Non-conformists and Innovators in Religion.127 He then goes on to

suggest that the ‘mischiefe’ caused by these is made ‘most evident’ by the report of ap

Evan, who decapitated his mother and brother ‘for no other reason, but because according

to the Churches injunction, and all due Canonicall obedience, they received the Holy

Sacrament kneeling’.128 Whilst there is no report of ap Evan’s execution, there is a

confession printed in the pamphlet in the form of a poem in which he warns

You Non-Conformists, unto you I call,

Take heed in Pulpits how you raile and baule;

126 Richard More, A True Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther, Committed by one Enoch ap Evan (London, 1633)127 Ibid., sig. A3v.128 Ibid., sig. A3v.

44

Draw not poore Lay-men quite beyond true sense,

Which caused me to do this fowle offence.129

He also uses the poem to perform the function of a gallows speech, talking of former sins

and iterating that it is ‘not to save this body that I crave, which is prepared to satisfy the

grave’, and giving thanks to a minister, Peter Studley, who

Nere did absent mee, when time could afford,

But brought the Oyle of Mercy, which he gave

My poore sick heart, whereby my soule to save.130

Thus this pamphlet is clearly propagandist, suggesting that Puritans turned ap Evan into a

murderer and his salvation came with his conferences with a Church of England minister,

yet in the genre as a whole this anti-Puritan diatribe appears to be atypical.

It can therefore be argued that the murder pamphlet was appropriated to spread

propaganda of both an anti-Catholic and an anti-Puritan nature, and that this may have

been a subtle yet effective means by which the ideology of the reformed Church was

cultivated amongst the lower orders. In both the Catholic and Puritan examples there is

reference to Protestant doctrine in the form of justification by faith alone, the good

Protestant death or the correct way to receive the Holy Sacrament. Thus these examples

show the ways in which it may indeed have been possible that the early modern murder

pamphlet was a suitable medium through which the doctrines of the Church of England

could be disseminated throughout the middling and lower orders in English society.

129 Ibid., sig. A4v.130 Ibid., sigs. B2r; Bv.

45

Conclusion

This investigation of the early modern murder pamphlets in England has attempted to

assess the extent to which the genre conveyed the ideology of the Protestant Church among

the lower orders of society, and whether the content was explicit enough to allow all levels

of society to interpret these doctrinal changes correctly. As we have seen, improvements in

the safety and reliability of distribution networks, increasing literacy levels and the

separation of the godly literature from other forms of popular literature made this genre a

suitable medium through which doctrinal changes could be conveyed to the masses.

However, can it be argued that the Protestant content was explicit enough to qualify the

assumption that it helped disseminate the reformed doctrines? In sources such as The

Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell or The Unnatural Father this seems to be the case, as both

explicitly convey the doctrine of justification by faith alone and the necessity of pastoral

guidance when interpreting the Word of God to ensure adherence to reformed ideology.

Equally, the propaganda pamphlets which were based in strong anti-Catholic sentiment but

concluded with the perpetrator’s return to the Protestant fold, such as The Examinations…

of George Sprot, also conveyed the doctrine of justification by faith alone to the reader.

Still, if we consider the genre as a whole, the conclusions that can be drawn are conflicting.

Whilst forty two of the pamphlets surveyed contained some form of religious reference,

many of these were generic Christian moralities or the continuance of pre-Reformation

providential schema seeming to support the argument put forward by Lake and Questier

that contents of the murder pamphlets were far from explicitly Protestant. Yet it has been

46

shown that even these were useful in reconciling the lower orders with the back and forth

nature of reform over that previous decades by providing a familiar framework with which

the more complicated doctrines could be introduced. Similarly, when considering the lack of

attention paid to predestinarian doctrine within the pamphlets, it has been contended that

even contemporary preachers were not pre-occupied with propagating the doctrine of

predestination. Rather, they preferred to concentrate on the life and behaviour of the elect

post assurance, which was seen by some as relatively easy to secure. This conservatism

within the reformed ideology is also evident in the printed accounts of executions, when it is

apparent that the Protestant behaviour of the condemned with full repentance and

complete faith in the salvation offered by Jesus Christ was the ideology being disseminated

by the texts, suggesting that salvation was attainable for all with a truly penitent heart.

When considering the pamphlets produced purely for propagandist purposes, it can be

argued that these were specifically transmitting Protestant ideology in as much as they

highlighted the ways in which Catholicism (and Puritanical Protestantism, to a lesser extent)

were detrimental to spiritual wellbeing. Yet it can also be argued that these (with the

exception of George Sprot) did so by creating the evil Catholic (or Puritan) other in

opposition to the righteous Protestant, rather than specifically disseminating Protestant

doctrine. However, the moderate approach to reform displayed in most of the ideology

presented in the murder pamphlets, and the use of anti-Catholic sentiment as a means to

define Protestantism, seems to be a reflection of the reform undertaken by the authorities.

It therefore follows that in discussing the extent to which the murder pamphlets

disseminated Protestant doctrine, we are looking for the more conservative reformed

47

ideology, thus the lack of attention paid to the more complicated theology does not

necessarily mean that these pamphlets were not spreading specifically Protestant beliefs.

Consequently, it can be argued that the dissemination of Protestant ideology was facilitated

by the murder pamphlet, but it appears that this may have been in conjunction with a more

general objective of both state and religious authorities to modify the moral behaviour of

the masses.

48

Appendix

A list of all pamphlets considered from original Early English Books Online search for pamphlets with ‘murder’ or ‘murther’ in the title, including any found but not evaluated in this investigation:

Aevesham, A Most Strange, Rare, and Horrible Murther committed by a Frenchman (London, 1586)

Anon, A Brief Discourse of Two Most Cruell and Bloudie Murders (London, 1583)

Anon, A Brief and True Relation of the Murther of Master Thomas Scott (London, 1628)

Anon, A Cruell Murther Committed Lately Upon the Body of Abraham Gearsey London, 1635)

Anon, A Most True Discourse Declaring the Life and Death of One Stubbe Peeter (London, 1590)

Anon, A Pitiless Mother (London, 1616)

Anon, A Pleasant New Ballad to Sing Both Even and Morn, of the Bloody Murther of John Barleycorn (London, 1625)

Anon, A Spectacle for Usurers (London, 1606)

Anon, A True Relation of a Most Horrible Murder, Committed Upon the Body of Sir John Tindall (London, 1616)

Anon, A True Relation of one Susan Higges (London, 1640)

Anon, A True Relation of the Most Inhumaine and Bloody Murder of Master James, Minister (London, 1609)

Anon, A True Report of the Araignment, Tryall, Conviction and Condemnation, of a Popish Priest, named Robert Drewrie (London, 1607)

Anon, A True Report of the Late Horrible Murther Committed by William Sherwood, (London, 1581)

Anon, A True and Summarie Report of the Declaration of Some Part of the Earl of Northumberlands Treasons (London, 1585)

Anon, A World of Wonders (London, 1595)

Anon, Murder Upon Murder (London, 1635)

Anon, Newes From Perin in Cornewall (London,1618)

Anon, Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers, Lately Committed (London, 1591)

49

Anon, The Arraignment,Examination, Confession and Judgement of Arnold Cosby London,1591)

Anon, The Bloody Mother (London, 1609)

Anon, The Complaint and Lamentation of Mistress Arden of Faversham (London, 1633)

Anon, The Horrible Murther of a Young Boy, Three Years of Age (London, 1606)

Anon, The Lamentation of Edward Bruton (London, 1633)

Anon, The Lamentation of Master Paiges Wife (London, 1635)

Anon, The Life and Death of Griffin Flood (London, 1623)

Anon, The Life and Death of Lewis Gaufredy (London, 1612)

Anon, The Manner of the Cruell and Outragious Murther of William Storre (London, 1595)

Anon, The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther Committed by an Inkeepers Wife, called Annis Dell (London, 1606)

Anon, The Unnatural Wife (London, 1628)

Anon, The Wicked Midwife (London, 1640),

Anon, Three Bloodie Murders (London, 1613)

Anon, Two Notorious Murders (London, 1595)

B. T., A Bloudy New Yeares Gift (London, 1609)

Closse, George, The Parricide Papist (London, 1606)

Cosbie, Arnold, The Manner of the Death and Execution of Arnold Cosbie (London, 1591)

Dugdale, Gilbert, A True Discourse of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell (London, 1604)

Goodcole, Henry, Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry (London, 1635)

Goodcole, Henry, Natures Cruell Step-Dames (London, 1637)

Hart, William, The Examinations, Arraignment and Conviction of George Sprot (1608)

H. I., The Divell of the Vault (London, 1606)

J. N., A True Relation of the Grounds, Occasion and Circumstances of that Horrible Murther Committed by John Bartram (London,1616)

Kyd, Thomas, The Truth of the Most Wicked and Secret Murthering of John Brewen (London, 1592)

More, Richard, A True Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther Committed by one Enoch ap Evan (London, 1633)

50

Munday, Anthony, A View of Sundrye Examples (London, 1680)

R. W.,The Most Horrible and Tragicall Murther of the Right Honourable, the Vertuous and Valerous Gentleman John Lord Bourgh (London, 1591)

Taylor, John, The Unnatural Father (London, 1621)

T. I., A Horrible Cruell and Bloudy Murther Committed at Putney in Surrey (London, 1614)

T. I.,The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery and Murder (London, 1616)

51

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Anon, A Full and True Account of the Speech of John Marketman at the Ladder Immediately before his Execution (London, 1680)Anon, A Pitiless Mother (London, 1616)Anon, A True Report of the Araignment, Tryall, Conviction and Condemnation, of a Popish Priest, named Robert Drewrie (London, 1607)Anon, A True Report of the Late Horrible Murther Committed by William Sherwood, (London, 1581)Anon, A True and Summarie Report of the Declaration of Some Part of the Earl of Northumberlands Treasons (London, 1585)Anon, A World of Wonders (London, 1595)Anon, Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers, Lately Committed, (London, 1591)Anon, The Bloody Mother (London, 1609)Anon, The Life and Death of Griffin Flood (London, 1623)Anon, The Life and Death of Lewis Gaufredy (London, 1612)Anon, The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther Committed by an Inkeepers Wife, called Annis Dell (London, 1606)Anon, The Wicked Midwife (London, 1640), Anon, Three Bloody Murders (London, 1613)Anon, Two Most Cruell and Bloudie Murders (London, 1583)Closse, George, The Parricide Papist (London, 1606)Cosbie, Arnold, The Manner of the Death and Execution of Arnold Cosbie (London, 1591)Dugdale, Gilbert, A True Report of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell (London, 1604)Golding, Arthur, A Briefe Discourse of the Late Murther of Master George Saunders (London, 1573)Goodcole, Henry, Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry (London, 1635)Goodcole, Henry, Natures Cruell Step-Dames, (London, 1637)Hart, William, The Examinations, Arraignment and Conviction of George Sprot (1608)H. I., The Divell of the Vault (London, 1606)More, Richard, A True Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther Committed by one Enoch ap Evan (London, 1633)R. W.,The Most Horrible and Tragicall Murther of the Right Honourable, the Vertuous and Valerous Gentleman John Lord Bourgh (London, 1591)S. C., A Brief Resolution of a Right Religion (London, 1590)Studley, Peter, The Looking-glasse of Schism (London, 1634)Taylor, John, The Carriers Cosmographie (London, 1637)Taylor, John, The Unnatural Father (London, 1621)T. I., A Horrible Cruell and Bloudy Murther Committed at Putney in Surrey (London, 1614)T. I.,The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery and Murder (London, 1616

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Secondary Sources:

Bacon, Francis, The Advancement of Learning (Serenity Publishers, Maryland, 2005)Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Temple Smith, London, 1978) Clair, Collin, A History of Printing in Britain (Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1965)Clark, Sandra, The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets 1580-1640 (The Athlone Press Ltd, London, 1983)Condren, Conal, ‘Richard More (c.1575–1643), religious writer and politician’ at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19185?docPos=1Cressy, David, ‘Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in Early Modern England’ in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (Routledge, Oxon, 1993)Dixon, Leif, Practical Predestinarians in England c.1590-1640 (Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, 2014)Duffy, Eamon, ‘The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart England’ The Seventeenth Century, 1:1 (1986)Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C.1400-c.1580 (Second Edition) (Yale University Press, London, 2005)Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England’, Social History, 23: 1 (1998)Green, Ian, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000)Haigh, Christopher, ‘The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation’ in Christopher Haigh (ed), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987)Haigh, Christopher, Elizabeth I (Pearson Education Limited, Essex, 1998) Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993)Haigh, Christopher, The English Reformation Revisited (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987)Haigh, Christopher, ‘The Taming of the Reformation: Preachers, Pastors and Parishioners in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, History, 85 (2000)Huizinga, Johan, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (New York, Harper, 1957)Hume, Martin A. S., (ed), "Simancas: August 1586", Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), Volume 3: 1580-1586 (1896)Ingram, Martin, ‘From Reformation to Toleration: Popular Religious Cultures in England 1540-1690’, in Tim Harris (ed), Popular Culture in England 1500-1850, (Macmillan Press, Hampshire, 1995)Lake, Peter, ‘Deeds Against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Early Seventeenth Century England’ in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford University Press, California, 1993)Lake, Peter, with Questier, Michael, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (Yale University Press, London, 2002)Marshall, Peter, Reformation England 1480-1642 (Arnold, London, 2003)McGrath, Alister E., Reformation Thought: An Introduction (2rd Edition) (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1999)

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Reardon, Bernard M.G., Religious Thought in the Reformation (2nd Edition), (Longman Group Limited, Essex, 1995)Robinson, Hastings, The Zurich Letters, Comprising the Correspondance of Several English Bishops and Others, with some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1846)Royer, Katherine, ‘Dead Men Talking: Truth, Texts and the Scaffold in Early Modern England’, in Simon Devereaux and Paul Griffiths (eds) Penal Practice and Culture, 1500-1900: Punishing the English, (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004)Alec Ryrie, Palgrave Advances in the European Reformations (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004)Sharpe, J.A., Judicial Punishment in England (Faber and Faber, London, 1990Sharpe, J. A., ‘Last Dying Speeches: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth Century England’, Past and Present, 107, (1985)Spufford, Margaret, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth Century England, (Methuen and Co. Ltd, York 1981)Stone, Lawrence, ‘The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640’ Past and Present, 28 (1964)Thomas, Keith, ‘The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England’ in Gerd Baumann (ed), The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986)Walsham, Alexandra, Providence in Early Modern England, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001)Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991)Williams, Kevin, Read All About It! : A History of the British Newspaper, (Routledge, Oxon, 2010)

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School of Arts and HumanitiesHistory and HeritageHaH Ethical Issues Form

Personal Details – (to be completed by the student)Student Name Sara Bradley Student ID: N0369082

Module Title The History Dissertation Module Code HIST32005

Module Leader Dr Kevin GouldAssignment

Title Dissertation

HISTORY ETHICAL ISSUES AND YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT

Undergraduate researchers (undertaking individual/group projects or dissertations) need to be aware of any ethical implications of their proposed research. You can find the University’s ethics policy here:

http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/ethics _governance/index.html

However, we would like particularly to draw your attention to this part of the University’s guidelines:

When undertaking research involving human participants, those research participants must be made fully aware of the potential risks of the research, how the project will be conducted and how the results will be used, prior to their involvement in that research.

In order to enable you to address these issues if relevant, and then support you in your ability to conduct ethical research, you must complete this form and hand it to your module leader or Dissertation Supervisor.

1. ABOUT YOUR PROJECT/DISSERTATION

NAME Sara Bradley

WORKING TITLE The Transmission of Protestantism via the Murder Pamphlet

1580-1640

Dissertation

Supervisor

Dr John McCallum

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2. ETHICAL CLEARANCE (delete where appropriate to decide if further ethical clearance is required) – Please circle your answer below.

Does your research involve living human participants, including descendants of identified figures featuring in your research who died less than 100 years ago, where you are revealing information NOT already in the public domain?

YES

(if yes, please complete the rest of the form on the nextpage)

NO

(if no, sign below and return to your supervisor or the Module Leader)

Please answer the questions below, circling the appropriate response

3. METHODOLOGY/PROCEDURES

To the best of your knowledge, does your proposed researchA. Involve the risk of causing physical, psychological, social or emotional distress to participants?

NO YES

B expose participants to risks or distress greater than those encountered in their normal lifestyle?

NO YES

C involve the use of hazardous materials? NO YES

If you answered Yes to any of these questions, you must seek further advice from your Supervisor and/or the Module Leader before progressing with your research.

4. OBSERVATION/RECORDING

A Does the study involve observation and/or recording of participants? NO YES

B. If you answered yes to the previous question, will those being observed and/r recorded be informed that the observation and/or recording will take place?

NO YES

If you answered yes to both questions, you must seek further advice from your Supervisor and/or the Module Leader before progressing with your research.

5. CONSENT

A. Will participants give their consent to participate in the study? NO YES

IF YOU ANSWERED YES:B. Will you inform participants of the objectives of your study? NO YES

C. Will you inform participants about how you will use the data you have collected?

NO YES

IF YOU ANSWERED YES AND YOUR STUDY INVOLVES CHILDREN UNDER 18D. Will you get the children’s consent? NO YES

E. Will you get parental consent? NO YES

F. Will you give children the opportunity to withdraw from the study (despite parental consent)?

NO YES

IF YOU ANSWERED YES AND YOUR STUDY TAKES PLACE IN A

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SCHOOLG. Will approval be gained from the Head Teacher of the School? NO YES

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you must seek further advice from your Supervisor and/or the Module Leader before progressing with your research.

6. DECEPTION

Does your study involve deception of participants (i.e.: withholding information from or misleading participants) which could potentially harm or exploit participants?

NO YES

If you answered yes to this question, you must seek further advice from your Supervisor and/or the Module Leader before progressing with your research.

7. CONFIDENTIALITY

A. Will information on participants be treated as confidential and not identifiable unless agreed otherwise in advance?

NO* YES

B. Will you be storing data on specific participants on a computer? NO YES*C. Will an video/audio recordings of participants be kept in a secure place and not released for use by third parties?

NO* YES

If you have selected any answers marked with an asterisk, you must seek further advice from your Supervisor and/or the Module Leader before progressing with your research.

8. ITEMS TO BE IDSCUSSED WITH SUPERVISOR/MODULE LEADER

Where any questions require a discussion with your supervisor, please note the results of your discussion below:

(continue on a separate sheet and attach if necessary

9. DECLARATION

By adding my printed name below, and by uploading this document to the module dropbox, I confirm that:

I HAVE READ THE UNIVERSITY’S STATEMENT ON ETHICS AT http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research /ethics_governance/index.html

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I HAVE DISCUSSED WITH MY SUPERVISOR MY POSITION ON ETHICAL ISSUES RELEVANT TO MY DISSERTATION STUDY

MY SUPERVISOR HAS SEEN THIS COMPLETED FORM AND CONFIRMS ITS VALIDITY

Print name of: Student……………………………………………………………………….. Date………………………

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