In June 1623, a conference took place between England's foremost anti-Catholic polemicist, Daniel Featley, and the notorious Jesuit polemicist, John Percy (alias Fisher). In Featley's accounts of the debate, The Fisher Catched in His Owne Net (1623) and Romish Fisher Caught and Held in His Owne Net (1624), he alleged that the meeting was originally intended to be a small, informal, private conference to satisfy Edward Buggs, the ageing cousin of Featley's fellow controversialist Humphrey Lynde.Footnote 1 Buggs, having had several encounters with Percy, was now having serious doubts about whether the Protestant Church was the true Church.Footnote 2 His situation was not uncommon: Percy had extensive experience as a Catholic apologist in England and was influential in the conversions of several prominent Londoners, including the countess of Buckingham. Indeed, the fact that Percy converted a member of the court of James VI/I illustrates his significance. The king and others had attempted to counter her doubts, not merely through offering a bribe (reportedly the huge amount of £2,000) but even by arranging a secret three-day conference at which Percy debated against the two anti-Calvinists Francis White and William Laud, and even against the king himself.Footnote 3 In spite of these endeavours the countess eventually converted to Catholicism.Footnote 4
Percy's primary tactic, which he used on both Buggs and the countess, was to argue that the Protestant Church – unlike the Catholic Church – could not produce a list of credible names of those who subscribed to the Protestant faith before Luther. Although Percy had formerly been in and out of London's Gatehouse and New Prisons, he was released shortly before 1622 on account of the increased toleration given to Catholics as a result of the Spanish Match negotiations.Footnote 5 Central to these negotiations was James's scheme to secure a political alliance between England and Catholic Spain through a marriage union between his son Charles and the Catholic infanta. During the period of negotiation, it became clear that, if the match were to be successful, the English would have to heed the demand of the Spanish for greater toleration for English Catholics.Footnote 6
Fortunately for Buggs, Featley had gained considerable experience in confronting lay doubt and debating with Catholics during his tenure as an embassy chaplain to the English ambassador Sir Thomas Edmondes in Paris. There, between 1611 and 1613, he debated with the Catholic apologists ‘D. Stevens’, Richard Smith and Christopher Bagshaw, and apparently had remarkable success. In the first debate, a Scottish Catholic was converted to Protestantism, while in each of the two later debates, both of which were similarly prompted by wavering Protestant laypeople in need of credible replies to Catholic assaults on the Protestant faith, Featley managed to ‘save the day’ by assuaging the Protestants’ doubts.Footnote 7 Moreover, since Featley was not only a trusted friend of Lynde but widely acknowledged as ‘the leading anti-Catholic spokesman of the day’ and a defender of the established Church and monarchy, he was the ideal person to alleviate Buggs's doubts.Footnote 8
The debate itself, which took place in Lynde's house on Sheer Lane on Friday, 27 June 1623, is portrayed as rather uneventful, with each side jockeying to avoid deliberating according to the other's terms.Footnote 9 By examining the published accounts of this episode, this essay will explore lay doubt through the lens of a disputation between two leading apologists, one Catholic, the other Protestant. As we shall see, in this instance doubt about the nature of the true Church was a significant factor prompting conversion between Protestantism and Catholicism. Moreover, Featley and his contemporaries seemed to recognize that the early 1620s were witnessing a marked increase in the presence of doubt among the laity as to whether Protestantism was the genuine expression of Christianity. They appear to have associated this phenomenon with the prospect of the Spanish Match, and to perceive this increase in doubt as a sign of the growing dominance of Catholicism in England. I will argue that Featley and his Protestant cohort employed several tactics in order to counter this increased doubt among the laity. These strategies ultimately aided them in taking a strong stance against Rome in a large public forum at a crucial moment, when Catholicism was beginning to intrude further into England, and were designed to engender confidence in the Protestant laity that their Church was indeed the true Church. Through analysing an incident in which Protestant ministers went to great lengths to combat ideologies and political circumstances that were perceived to be generating doubts and endangering the souls of their laypeople, this essay will contribute to our historical understanding of conversion.
In addition, this analysis will shed light on several of the wider themes of early Stuart political and religious history. In his study Conversion, Politics and Religion, Michael Questier focused on the more inward, personal and experiential reasons for conversion, and argued that polemical discourse was not the sole reason, but that shifts in allegiance were actually ‘the culminations of a range of experiences as wide as the number of causes which unsettled the minds of contemporaries in religion’.Footnote 10 What follows will build on Questier's work by exploring the specific ideologies that generated lay doubt and will demonstrate how, in this instance, the political and ecclesiastical circumstances of the early 1620s could affect lay conversion.
Throughout, it is important to remember that knowledge of the details of this debate has been transmitted through several highly stylized polemical publications. These works were published during the politically charged period of the early 1620s and the truthfulness of each side's account was strongly contested by their opponents. For this reason, it will be necessary to explore how the Protestant account of this debate made its way into print and to assess its credibility.Footnote 11 Since the episode explored here is an isolated case study, the focus will be on drawing conclusions about its nature and purpose. More general conclusions about the dynamics of lay doubt and the connections between doubt and conversion must be set aside for another occasion.
Countering Lay Doubt in Early Stuart England
Doubt was a considerable pastoral issue for early Stuart Protestants. Anthony Milton has noted that during this period the Catholic appeal to a concrete historical record, rather than the Protestant appeals to arguments of doctrine, ‘seemed to offer the clearest guide to the troubled layman’. Accordingly, Catholic polemicists ‘increasingly focused upon the issue of the Protestants’ ancestry’ because ‘the visible continuity of an institutional church became the more necessary if men's salvation and their access to a properly validated divine authority were to be assured'. As a result, many Protestant ministers began to articulate their views about the problems they were having with laypeople in their parishes and some laypeople even left the faith.Footnote 12
Doubts were perceived to have eternal implications. Questier has pointed out that in early Stuart England opinions about which Church was counterfeit and which was authentic were significant, since individuals gave their allegiance to the Church that ‘professed the true religion, the only certain path to salvation’. As we have noted, the presence of doubt among the laity was also becoming a significant pastoral issue, and it functioned as a litmus test of whether Catholicism was gaining an upper hand, especially if – as with the countess of Buckingham – the layperson was a high-profile individual. Moreover, since many believed that the genuine Church ‘must continually increase’, a decrease in Protestant members through conversion might produce further doubts as to whether their Church was the true Church.Footnote 13
Doubts could creep in through either private or public conferences with Catholics, as well as through reading anti-Protestant polemical tracts. Protestants therefore chose to counter lay doubt by similarly combating Catholics through conferences and publication.Footnote 14 Canon 66 of the 1603 Canons of the Church of England presented conferences with recusants as a pastoral duty,Footnote 15 and Featley referred to this canon in his explanation of why he took part in such events, explaining that he had a pastoral duty to protect the flock under his care from harmful ideologies that might prompt doubts and ultimately lead lay members away from the true Church. He could not ‘suffer Wolves to enter into our Folds, and worry our dearest Lambs, bought at the high price of our Redeemer's Blood, and that before our eyes, and not open our mouthes for their rescue’.Footnote 16 Believing that Percy was labouring ‘to keep those in the dungeon, whom [he held] in captivity’ by ‘[forbidding his] Captives to reade our Relations’, Featley toiled even more to set these prisoners free. This disputation, therefore, was for Featley not merely an academic undertaking; he was driven by a deep pastoral concern for the souls of those under his care, and laboured that many might ‘see a glimpse of light’ and ‘look after more’.Footnote 17 He believed that disputation with Catholics and the publication of anti-Catholic polemic would aid in resolving the doubts of the laity.
Accordingly, Featley's most common device in countering lay doubt was to demonstrate that Roman Catholicism was a counterfeit version of Christianity.Footnote 18 Central to his argument was the attempt to prove the incompatibility of the doctrines established at the Council of Trent with the Scriptures and the early Church. In the course of the debate, therefore, Featley listed fifteen doctrines that he believed to have been established at Trent, but which were contrary to the Scriptures and the Church's teaching throughout history. These included ‘that there is a treasury of Saints merits’, the necessity of the Latin mass, ‘that Pope's pardons are requisite or useful to release soules out of Purgatory’, dependence on the pope for ‘all ecclesiastical power’, and the pope's authority to canonize saints.Footnote 19 In his efforts to debunk Catholicism, Featley also appealed to many of the same scriptural texts and the same apocalyptic rhetoric used by other early Stuart Protestants to prove that the papacy was the Antichrist.Footnote 20 Clearly, Featley's method was designed to convince any who might doubt the credibility of Protestantism by not only focusing on Catholicism's fraudulent claims but also drawing out the stark contrast between a truthful Protestant Church and a deceitful and counterfeit Catholic adversary.
The Struggle over the True Church in History
Featley also combated lay doubt by countering the notion that the Protestant Church was obliged to produce a catalogue of names to prove that it was a true Church. Percy argued that the Scriptures clearly decreed that the Church must be visible and continuous at all times in history. This is why the Catholic Church had already produced their own historical catalogue of committed adherents to the Catholic faith throughout its sixteen centuries, since that record was ‘the easiest and readyest way, to discerne this true visible Church of Christ, from all Hereticall Conventicles’.Footnote 21 Featley countered Percy's claims, arguing that ‘divine and infallible faith is not built upon the deduction out of humane history’ since ‘the names of all Professors are not nor ever were upon Record' and ‘all ancient Records are not now extant’.Footnote 22 By analysing his question, Featley undercut the root of Percy's query by showing that it was grounded on a false supposition. The doubts that resulted from Percy's heckling were unwarranted, since his reasoning was faulty.Footnote 23 Instead, the wavering layperson could have confidence in their Protestant Church: the Protestant faith alone was consistent with the Scriptures and the early Church.Footnote 24
By carefully analysing Featley's approach, one can note a number of remarkable features of his strategy. First, it is clear that Featley rejected the response to Percy's ‘where was the Protestant Church before Luther?’ given by some of his fellow Protestants. In tracing their pre-Reformation Protestant heritage, these Protestants cited the most significant clergy – ‘Schoolmen, abbots, and even popes’ – who held ‘Protestant’ views, but who remained within the Catholic Church. By contrast, Featley aligned himself with the ‘Foxeian’ tradition that located its Protestant line in ‘the medieval heretical sects: the Waldensians, Albigensians, Lollards, Hussites and others’ – those who had been persecuted by the erring Catholic church and may not have been even mentioned in any official record.Footnote 25 Featley flatly denied that he ‘ought to prove the Visibility of the Protestant Church, by having recourse merely to the corrupt Popish Church’. Though ‘that way [was] perhaps beaten by some’ it seemed to him ‘a slipperie & dirty way’. He did not need ‘to seek the golden purity of faith, amidst the dung, and drosse of Romish superstitions, and deprivations in later ages’. Instead, he cited Abbot, Ussher, Simon Voious, Illiricus, Wolssius, Lydius and Crispin as those ‘worthies’ who ‘have shewne mee a more excellent way’.Footnote 26
That Featley sided with the Foxeian tradition and sidestepped Percy's demands reveals that the lack of an explicit Protestant history, particularly for the centuries leading up to Luther, was a serious point of vulnerability for Protestantism in general.Footnote 27 As a result, Featley expended significant effort to make sure that the focus of his contributions remained on the flaws within the Catholic faith rather than the weaknesses within Protestantism. At one point of climax Percy's supporters interrupted the quarrel by shouting ‘names, names, names’, to which Featley replied: ‘What, will nothing content you but a Buttery booke? You shall have a Buttery Booke of names, if you will stay a while’.Footnote 28 At the conclusion, Featley finally consented to give a list of names, although he did so only for the first two centuries of the early Church, then saying that he would not continue until Percy confirmed that these were the names of legitimate Protestants.Footnote 29 His objective was to maintain control over the direction of the debate, for in this way he was able to minimize the flaws in his own position and accentuate the reasons why one should doubt not only the validity of Percy's questions, but also, and especially, Catholicism's claim to be the true Church. This carefully devised strategy seems to have been crafted with the intention of dissolving the doubts of wavering Protestants and giving them confidence that their faith was indeed authentic and that their salvation was secure.
Protestant Subversion in the 1620s
By examining closely the details of how Protestants organized this conference and how Protestant accounts of the debate were published, one can detect a consistent pattern of risk-taking and strategic manoeuvring from the Protestant side. These tactics allowed the Protestants to subvert royal policies and to continue publishing anti-papal polemical works and engaging Catholics in debate. These two tools in particular were utilized to counter doubt and their subversion tactics shielded them from the consequences of being discovered by the authorities. In the early 1620s, James VI/I went to significant lengths to silence anti-Catholic polemic. The 1620 and 1621 proclamations, ‘against excesse of lavish and licentious speech of matters of state’, and the ‘directions on preaching’ promulgated in August 1622 were designed to ensure that all forms of anti-popery were removed from publications and preaching, on the ground that they called his foreign policy into question.Footnote 30 Some ministers, including Joseph Hall, were temporarily imprisoned for disobeying the king's orders, and after these proclamations were issued Cogswell has found that ‘very little even implicit criticism of royal policy slipped into print’.Footnote 31 James's regulations were stringent policies indeed, and by comparison, asserts Cogswell, ‘Archbishop Laud never restricted the activities of his clergy as drastically as James I did with the 1622 Directions’.Footnote 32 It appears that these Directions were intended to hinder Protestants from publishing anti-Catholic polemic and engaging in anti-Catholic conferences, the two weapons they used to counter doubt. The fact that the conference between Featley and Percy was held at all, and that any account of the event was published, gives us a clear indication of how resolute Protestants were in their mission to counter doubts in Protestant England.
All accounts agree that the meeting was originally framed as a private conference following dinner at Humphrey Lynde's house. However, when the Jesuits arrived they were shocked to find Lynde's house filled with a large crowd drawn from London's elite society, which included (among others) the earl of Warwick.Footnote 33 When Percy and his assistant protested to Lynde of ‘the inequalitie of that Audience’, both Lynde and Featley replied that they ‘could not helpe it’Footnote 34 since they ‘did not expect’ such a crowd.Footnote 35 While it is possible that a massive crowd of London's Protestant elite had happened to hear about the conference at Lynde's house, it is much more likely that the Protestants overplayed the extent to which they were innocent of publicizing the debate or helpless to turn the crowd away. Instead, the presence of the large crowd at a supposedly private debate may also have been engineered to counter lay doubt. The fact that the Catholics were overwhelmingly outnumbered, and clearly on hostile territory, might reassure the hesitant layperson and further confirm the superiority of Protestantism. Simply surveying the sheer strength in the number of observable Protestant adherents present might be enough. This plan was foolproof: since the crowd had not been formally invited, Lynde certainly could not be accused of organizing an event that went against the king's orders. Moreover, the fact that Featley's assistant was Francis White, a noted moderate polemicist, would help to shield those present. The group would also be protected by the presence of the earl of Warwick, who, according to Featley, was there to act as a mediator and ‘seasonably [interpose]’ if ‘the Disputants or standers-by grew into any heat or distemper’.Footnote 36
Despite James's regulations, several of the Protestants involved in the Sheer Lane conference seem additionally to have made deliberate plans to continue publishing anti-Catholic literature. Featley claimed that his initial account of the conference, The Fisher Catched in His Owne Net (1623), was licensed and published without his knowledge.Footnote 37 While this scenario also is not impossible, it is suspect, since Featley was an ecclesiastical licenser (an official authorizer of manuscripts for publication), and keenly alert to James's publication policies.Footnote 38 Moreover, the work was only later attributed to Featley, and was his only anti-Catholic work to be published anonymously.
Featley never confessed to publishing anti-Catholic literature anonymously in defiance of James's policies; nor did he specify in print that publication of this conference was motivated by a desire to assuage the doubts of troubled Protestants. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that this is at least a credible possibility. It may be significant that a manuscript account of the conference exists in the Bodleian Library that is virtually identical to The Fisher Caught. Although the hand is somewhat different from the majority of Featley's other writings, it does bear a striking resemblance to that used in at least one letter attributed to him.Footnote 39 If this manuscript is Featley's original account, it is notable that his name is absent, so that it may have been intended to be anonymous from its inception. The manuscript (like the later printed work) was probably crafted on the basis of the three sources he allegedly used to write his later relation of the conference, The Romish Fisher Caught and Held in His Owne Net: his memory, the testimony of those ‘who were present at the Conference’ and ‘especially’ the ‘Notes as were taken in the Conference’.Footnote 40
Before publishing his accounts, Featley was clearly aware that James was displeased that the conference had taken place. The bishop of Durham, Richard Neile, who as a noted anti-Calvinist was no doubt delighted to relay the news, apparently informed Featley that James demanded ‘that the truth of the late Conference be certified to his Maiestie’, ‘further meetings staid', and ‘all future meetings . . . forbidden’.Footnote 41 It was Neile, not George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, who was the one chosen to relay James's message to Featley. This is surprising, not least because Featley was Abbot's chaplain, and is a strong indication of Abbot's marginalization. Despite printing his work anonymously, Featley came dangerously close to being censured by James, but was rescued by the formal collapse of the Spanish Match in 1624, which prompted James to lift the ban on the publication of anti-papal polemical literature and participation in anti-Catholic debate.Footnote 42
The Sheer Lane conference and subsequent publications are striking illustrations of the fact that Featley went to significant lengths to rescue wavering laypeople by continuing to publish anti-Catholic polemic and to engage in anti-Catholic debate. This pattern of risk-taking and strategic manoeuvring was directly linked to his mission to counter lay doubt. The early 1620s were an anxious time for English Protestants. Given the prospect of the Spanish Match and the fact that a number of the Protestant laity had already defected to the Catholic faith, Protestant ministers were worried about their fate, and with good reason. They knew that with the match would come further toleration of Catholics, and Catholicism in England would continue to increase.Footnote 43
Featley was aware that he was already losing his influence at court and with it his capacity to confront lay doubt by contending in these important battles for the souls of those defecting to Rome. Several historians have noted that Featley would have been the obvious choice for the role of responding to the countess's doubts in the 1622 conference. Despite this – and also despite the fact that he had already begun drafting both a treatise (presumably in preparation for the conference) entitled ‘The trial by fayth by the tutchstone of truth; for the Countesse of Bucking[ham]’ and a letter to her – he was denied the opportunity. That Featley was passed over and White and Laud were chosen instead is significant, for the views of White and Laud were characteristic of a more moderate position that would counteract Catholicism's claims without anathematizing Rome's status as a true Church and thereby calling James's developing foreign relations policy into question.Footnote 44 Featley's marginalization from the debate concerning the countess of Buckingham was seen by Protestants as an indication of whether or not they would be given future opportunities to contend against their Catholic adversaries.
The fact that Featley and his Protestant cohort were losing their potential to influence doubting Protestants motivated them to take active steps to defy the encroachments of Catholicism, and to alleviate doubts in the ‘sheep’ under their care by boldly publishing anti-Catholic polemic, despite the associated risks. The publication of anti-papal propaganda and practice of anti-Catholic debate were essential and indispensable tools for this mission. Anti-popery could attract wavering laypeople during emotionally heightened times, suggests Lake, since ‘it incorporated deeply held beliefs and values and it helped to dramatize and exorcise the fears and anxieties produced when those values came under threat’.Footnote 45 This was especially true during periods like the 1620s, ‘when men groped for the reassuring certainties and simplicities of extreme confessional regulation’.Footnote 46 Although we can never be certain when exactly Featley and the organizers of the conference decided to capitalize on this opportunity, it nevertheless gave them the chance to engender vital assurance in a wavering Protestant populace, and to prevent the laity from being thrust further towards the precipice of converting to the religion of the Antichrist.
Following the conference, Featley claimed that Buggs approached Lynde to thank him for arranging the meeting and to ‘[assure] him that he was well resolved now of his Religion’.Footnote 47 Despite Percy's scepticism regarding this claim, Lynde too gave his final confirmation of this report in a letter published at the end of Featley's Appendix to the Fisher's Net. There we learn that Buggs had a son who had defected to Rome. Nevertheless, on account of Featley's labours, Buggs boldly avowed that he was now so convinced in his faith that even ‘if his sonne would not leave his religion, and the priests company, he would leave him’.Footnote 48 It is difficult to assess how seriously we can take these claims, since they are reported in a propagandist tract. Buggs may have been snatched from the enemy's hand, but even had his doubts remained, the Protestants wanted it to appear as if they had been resolved. By presenting the outcome of the debate in this way Featley and his contemporaries attempted to assure other wavering laypeople that their doubts could likewise be resolved. Indeed, portraying one's own side as victorious seems to have been a consistent feature of these stylized publications from both Protestants and Catholics. It was through the medium of these and other similar works that Catholic and Protestant apologists hoped to have an impact beyond the select few who attended the debate and to attract further converts to their respective Churches. In the end, in the Protestants’ public portrayal of the debate the outcome was clear: Featley had succeeded in forging bonds of faith and confidence which were even more enduring than family ties.
Conclusion
The episode explored in this essay sheds light on wider debates and themes relevant to early Stuart political and religious history. In particular, this essay has built on Questier's work by demonstrating how the political and ecclesiastical circumstances of the 1620s appear to have been a factor in shaping the encounter between Featley, Buggs and Percy. Featley and his Protestant cohort appear to have linked the amplified presence of doubt among the laity with the proposed Spanish Match, and to have interpreted this upsurge as a warning that Catholicism was beginning to infiltrate England. As such, they were not passive bystanders, but seem to have gone to great lengths to develop strategies and mechanisms to defy the political shifts that increasingly marginalized them in the early 1620s. By exploring the nature of these Protestants’ steadfast commitment to countering lay doubt, this study has shed light on early Stuart Protestantism more generally by demonstrating that even those Calvinist conformists, like Featley, who were celebrated as activists and defenders of the established Church and the monarchy, could in some circumstances employ subversive tactics which were strikingly similar to the manoeuvres normally ascribed to more radical early Stuart Protestants.
Additionally, by investigating the theme of conversion, we have observed how on this occasion doubt over the nature of the true Church could be a significant factor in an individual's defection to a different faith. This has confirmed Anthony Milton's arguments by demonstrating that there could be a strong correlation between one's denominational commitment and the perceived eternal consequences of conversion: Buggs’ salvation was perceived to be dependent on whether or not he was a part of the true Church. Accordingly, this study has shown that the disputants were not merely involved in an academic exercise, but were concerned to play a pivotal pastoral role in shaping laypersons’ perceived eternal destiny.
Ultimately, while this essay is only a case study, it has explored the various strategies that pastors employed to shepherd the sheep under their care, especially when various ideologies generated doubts that endangered the flock. Moreover, it has shown that when a ‘private’ conference was made public through publication, these works were likely to be tailored in order to present their respective party as victorious in order to win further converts. Perhaps, as additional studies are conducted and we gain a firmer grasp of these complex and intricate questions, we will better understand the ideologies, experiences and contexts that ultimately conspired to generate both doubt and conversion within the early Stuart Church in England.
