Thursday, March 20th, 2008
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Christopher W. Marsh – The Family of Love in English Society, 1550-1630
[Cambridge University Press 1994]
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This book is an intensive exploration of the hidden and mysterious world of the Family of Love in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. The Familists, devoted followers of the Messianic Dutch mystic, Hendrick Niclaes, were passionately denounced by many literate contemporaries, and an association with extremism, subversion and hypocrisy has endured.
The author tracks the English Familists into their houses, fields and places of work. The imaginative and highly detailed methodology makes possible an especially fruitful interaction with the past, and ensures that no single social context dominates the emerging picture. For instance, although the full extent of Familism at the court of Elizabeth I is revealed for the first time, the members there are discussed side by side with their 'loving friends' in the fields and fens of eastern England.
This study is, however, most significant for what it reveals about the nature of wider society. The processes by which the Family of Love came to be represented to posterity are examined carefully and placed alongside less accessible evidence. This approach brings into play a compelling and hitherto unsuspected dialogue between the forces of hostility and the lesser-known forces of tolerance: one surprising conclusion is that most English men and women seem to have possessed an impressive capacity to tolerate known 'heretics' in their midst.
Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1. Introduction
- Hostility and historiography
- Problems of access
- A microscopic method
- Emerging themes
- 2. Familist belief: the quest for perfection
- The voice of H. N.
- Precedents and influences
- Voices raised in hostility
- Extracted 'confessions'
- Voices raised in self-defence
- Wills
- Knowing them by their fruits
- 3. Seedbeds and first shoots (1550-1565)
- Marian Protestants
- Conservatives
- Anabaptist 'sectaries'
- Enthusiastic conformists
- A background in astrology
- Mysticism: a common thread?
- 4. Development and consolidation (1565-1579)
- Books and ballads
- Internal organisation
- 'Parlour meetings' and Familist sociability
- Behaviour before 'the World'
- 'Progress'
- 5. Crisis (1576/1582)
- Chronicle: the Familist crisis
- Animus
- The need for a scapegoat
- Courtiers
- Country people
- The puritan crisis
- John Knewstub versus Robert Seale
- Outcomes
- 6. Resolution: the pursuit of internal cohesion (1582-1603)
- The wills of Creake and Raven (part I)
- Familist households
- Economic networks and material prosperity
- Mutual support
- The lie of the land
- Friends in high places: the courtier Familists
- Office-holding in the country
- 7. Resolution: the pursuit of external integration (1582-1603)
- The wills of Creake and Raven (part II)
- Faith and social relations
- Outward charity and social responsibility
- Religious tolerance in country and court
- The Familist paradox
- 8. Crisis renewed (1603-1610)
- Basilikon Doron (James VI/I)
- A supplication of the Family of Love (Robert Seale?)
- The Family of Love (Thomas Middleton)
- Ely repercussions: William Safford's books
- Balsham repercussions: the burial of Thomas Lawrence
- Resolution
- 9. After the first generation (1610-1700)
- 10. Conclusion
- The house that Robert Dorrington built
- Appendix: the membership of the Family of Love
- Bibliography
- Index
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