Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales was the elder son of James VI and I, King of England and Scotland, his wife, Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's thrones. However, at the age of 18, he predeceased his father, his younger brother Charles succeeded him as heir apparent to the English and Scottish thrones. Henry was born at Stirling Castle and became Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland automatically on his birth. Henry's baptism on 30 August 1594 was celebrated with complex theatrical entertainments written by poet William Fowler and a ceremony in a new Chapel Royal at Stirling purpose-built by William Schaw, his father placed him in the care of John Erskine, Earl of Mar at Stirling Castle, out of the care of the boy's mother, because James worried that the mother's tendency toward Catholicism might affect the son.
Although the child's removal caused enormous tension between Anne and James, Henry remained under the care of Mar's family until 1603, when James became King of England and his family moved south. One of his tutors until he went to England was Sir George Lauder of the Bass, a Privy Counsellor – described as the King's "familiar councillor" – and he was tutored in music by Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger. Henry's tutor Adam Newton continued to serve the Prince in England, some Scottish servants from Stirling were retained, including poet David Murray; the king preferred the role of schoolmaster to that of father, he wrote texts for the schooling of his children. James directed that Henry's household "should rather imitate a College than a Court", or, as Sir Thomas Chaloner wrote in 1607, His Highness's household was intended by the King for a courtly college or a collegiate court" He passionately engaged in such physical pursuits as hawking, hunting and fencing, from a young age studied naval and military affairs and national issues, about which he disagreed with his father.
He disapproved of the way his father conducted the royal court, disliked Robert Carr, a favourite of his father, esteemed Sir Walter Raleigh, wishing him to be released from the Tower of London. The prince's popularity rose so high. Relations between the two could be tense, on occasion surfaced in public. At one point, the two were hunting near Royston when James criticised his son for lacking enthusiasm for the chase, Henry moved to strike his father with a cane, but rode off. Most of the hunting party followed the son."Upright to the point of priggishness, he fined all who swore in his presence", according to Charles Carlton, a biographer of Charles I, who describes Henry as an "obdurate Protestant". In addition to the alms box to which Henry forced swearers to contribute, he made sure his household attended church services, his religious views were influenced by the clerics in his household, who came from a tradition of politicised Calvinism. Henry listened humbly, to the sermons preached to his household, once told his chaplain, Richard Milbourne, that he esteemed most the preachers whose attitude suggested, "Sir, you must hear me diligently: you must have a care to observe what I say."Henry is said to have disliked his younger brother, to have teased him, although this derives from only one anecdote: when Charles was nine years of age, Henry snatched the hat off a bishop and put it on the younger child's head told his younger brother that when he became king he would make Charles Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles would have a long robe to hide his ugly rickety legs.
Charles had to be dragged off in tears. With his father's accession to the throne of England in 1603, Henry at once became Duke of Cornwall. In 1610 he was further invested as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, thus for the first time uniting the six automatic and two traditional Scottish and English titles held by heirs-apparent to the two thrones; as a young man, Henry was beginning to be active in leadership matters. Among his activities, he was responsible for the reassignment of Sir Thomas Dale to the Virginia Company of London's struggling colony in North America; the Irish Gaelic lord of Inishowen, Sir Cahir O'Doherty, had applied to gain a position as a courtier in the household of Henry, to help him in his struggles against officials in Ireland. Unknown to Sir Cahir, on 19 April 1608, the day he launched O'Doherty's Rebellion by burning Derry, his application was approved. Henry took an interest in the Kingdom of Ireland and was known to be supportive of the idea of a reconciliation with the former rebel Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who had fled into exile during the Flight of the Earls.
Because of this Tyrone and his entourage mourned. Henry died from typhoid fever at the age of 18, during the celebrations that led up to his sister Elizabeth's wedding, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Prince Henry's death was regarded as a tragedy for the nation. According to Charles Carlton, "Few heirs to the English throne have been as and mourned as Prince Henry." His body lay in state at St. James's Palace for four weeks. On 7 December, over a thousand people walked in the mile-long cortège to Westminster Abbey to hear a two-hour sermon delivered by George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury; as H
King James Version
The King James Version known as the King James Bible or the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, begun in 1604 and completed as well as published in 1611 under the sponsorship of James VI and I. The books of the King James Version include the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, the 27 books of the New Testament; the translation is noted for its "majesty of style", has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world. It was first printed by Robert Barker, the King's Printer, was the third translation into English approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII, the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. On the European continent, the first generation of Calvinists had produced the Geneva Bible of 1560 from the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.
In January 1604, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans, a faction of the Church of England. James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of, reflect the episcopal structure of, the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy; the translation was done by 47 scholars. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings, as such was authorised by Act of Parliament. By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England.
Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible became the most printed book in history all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" indicates this Oxford standard text; the title of the first edition of the translation, in Early Modern English, was "THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Comandement". The title page carries the words "Appointed to be read in Churches", F. F. Bruce suggests it was "probably authorised by order in council" but no record of the authorisation survives "because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19".
For many years it was common not to give the translation any specific name. In his Leviathan of 1651, Thomas Hobbes referred to it as the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James. A 1761 "Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English" refers to the 1611 version as a new and more accurate Translation, despite referring to the Great Bible by its name, despite using the name "Rhemish Testament" for the Douay-Rheims Bible version. A "History of England", whose fifth edition was published in 1775, writes that new translation of the Bible, viz. that now in Use, was begun in 1607, published in 1611. King James's Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation in Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae. Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic: it is found both in a "Historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible" published in Massachusetts in 1815, in an English publication from 1818, which explicitly states that the 1611 version is "generally known by the name of King James's Bible".
This name was found as King James' Bible: for example in a book review from 1811. The phrase "King James's Bible" is used as far back as 1715, although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or a description; the use of Authorized Version and used as a name, is found as early as 1814. For some time before this, descriptive phrases such as "our present, only publicly authorised version", "our Authorized version", "the authorized version" are found; the Oxford English Dictionary records a usage in 1824. In Britain, the 1611 translation is known as the "Authorized Version" today; as early as 1814, we find King James' Version, evidently a descriptive phrase, being used. "The King James Version" is found, unequivocally used as a name, in a letter from 1855. The next year King James Bible, with no possessive, appears as a name in a Scottish source. In the United States, the "1611 translation" is generally
James VI and I
James VI and I was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death in 1625. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, positioning him to accede to all three thrones. James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died childless, he continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58.
After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617, styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland". He was a major advocate of a single parliament for Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonisation of the Americas began. At 57 years and 246 days, James's reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors, he achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced great difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and repeated conflicts with the English Parliament. Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie, The True Law of Free Monarchies, Basilikon Doron, he sponsored the translation of the Bible into English that would be named after him: the Authorised King James Version.
Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom", an epithet associated with his character since. Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise James's reputation and treat him as a serious and thoughtful monarch, he was committed to a peace policy, tried to avoid involvement in religious wars the Thirty Years' War that devastated much of Central Europe. He tried but failed to prevent the rise of hawkish elements in the English Parliament who wanted war with Spain. James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Both Mary and Darnley were great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England through Margaret Tudor, the older sister of Henry VIII. Mary's rule over Scotland was insecure, she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. During Mary's and Darnley's difficult marriage, Darnley secretly allied himself with the rebels and conspired in the murder of the Queen's private secretary, David Rizzio, just three months before James's birth.
James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. He was baptised "Charles James" or "James Charles" on 17 December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle, his godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as "a pocky priest", spit in the child's mouth, as was the custom; the subsequent entertainment, devised by Frenchman Bastian Pagez, featured men dressed as satyrs and sporting tails, to which the English guests took offence, thinking the satyrs "done against them". James's father, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh in revenge for the killing of Rizzio. James inherited his father's titles of Duke of Earl of Ross. Mary was unpopular, her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her.
In June 1567, Protestant rebels imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle. She was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent; the care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, "to be conserved and upbrought" in the security of Stirling Castle. James was anointed King of Scots at the age of thirteen months at the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling, by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, on 29 July 1567; the sermon at the coronation was preached by John Knox. In accordance with the religious beliefs of most of the Scottish ruling class, James was brought up as a member of the Protestant Church of Scotland, the Kirk; the Privy Council selected George Buchanan, Peter Young, Adam Erskine, David Erskine as James's preceptors or tutors. As the young king's senior tutor, Buchanan subjected James to regular beatings but instilled in him a lifelong passion for literature and learning. Buchanan sought to turn James into a God-fearing, Protestant king who accepted the limitations of monarchy, as outlined in his treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos.
In 1568, Mary escaped from her i
Charles I of England
Charles I was the monarch over the three kingdoms of England and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life, he became heir apparent to the thrones of England and Ireland on the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1612. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France instead. After his succession, Charles quarrelled with the Parliament of England, which sought to curb his royal prerogative. Charles believed in the divine right of kings, was determined to govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects opposed his policies, in particular the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent, perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch.
His religious policies, coupled with his marriage to a Roman Catholic, generated the antipathy and mistrust of Reformed groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters, who thought his views were too Catholic. He supported high church Anglican ecclesiastics, such as Richard Montagu and William Laud, failed to aid Protestant forces during the Thirty Years' War, his attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to the Bishops' Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments, helped precipitate his own downfall. From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. After his defeat in 1645, he surrendered to a Scottish force that handed him over to the English Parliament. Charles refused to accept his captors' demands for a constitutional monarchy, temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, Charles forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army had consolidated its control over England.
Charles was tried and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared; the monarchy would be restored to Charles's son, Charles II, in 1660. The second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, Charles was born in Dunfermline Palace, Fife, on 19 November 1600. At a Protestant ceremony in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh on 23 December 1600, he was baptised by David Lindsay, Bishop of Ross, created Duke of Albany, the traditional title of the second son of the King of Scotland, with the subsidiary titles of Marquess of Ormond, Earl of Ross and Lord Ardmannoch. James VI was the first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth I of England, when she died childless in March 1603, he became King of England as James I. Charles was a weak and sickly infant, while his parents and older siblings left for England in April and early June that year, due to his fragile health, he remained in Scotland with his father's friend Lord Fyvie, appointed as his guardian.
By 1604, when Charles was three-and-a-half, he was able to walk the length of the great hall at Dunfermline Palace without assistance, it was decided that he was strong enough to make the journey to England to be reunited with his family. In mid-July 1604, Charles left Dunfermline for England where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. In England, Charles was placed under the charge of Elizabeth, Lady Carey, the wife of courtier Sir Robert Carey, who put him in boots made of Spanish leather and brass to help strengthen his weak ankles, his speech development was slow, he retained a stammer, or hesitant speech, for the rest of his life. In January 1605, Charles was created Duke of York, as is customary in the case of the English sovereign's second son, made a Knight of the Bath. Thomas Murray, a presbyterian Scot, was appointed as a tutor. Charles learnt the usual subjects of classics, languages and religion. In 1611, he was made a Knight of the Garter. Charles conquered his physical infirmity, which might have been caused by rickets.
He became an adept horseman and marksman, took up fencing. So, his public profile remained low in contrast to that of his physically stronger and taller elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom Charles adored and attempted to emulate. However, in early November 1612, Henry died at the age of 18 of what is suspected to have been typhoid. Charles, who turned 12 two weeks became heir apparent; as the eldest surviving son of the sovereign, Charles automatically gained several titles. Four years in November 1616, he was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. In 1613, his sister Elizabeth married Frederick V, Elector Palatine, moved to Heidelberg. In 1617, the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, a Catholic, was elected king of Bohemia; the following year, the Bohemians rebelled. In August 1619, the Bohemian diet chose as their monarch Frederick V, leader of the Protestant Union, while Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor in the imperial election. Frederick's acceptance of the Bohemian crown in defiance of the emperor marked the beginning of the turmoil that would develop into the Thirty Years' War.
The conflict confined to Bohemia, spiralled into a wider European war, which the English Parliament and public grew to see
Papist
Papist is a pejorative term used to label the Roman Catholic Church, its teachings, practices, or adherents. However, in early use it was not always considered offensive, as the term could refer to a partisan backing the side of the pope on a particular issue. In English the word gained currency during the English Reformation, as it was used to denote a person whose loyalties were to the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, rather than to the Church of England. First used in 1522, papist derives from Latin papa, meaning "pope"; the term was common in use in the Eastern Orthodox Church in the 19th century. The word was in common use by Protestant writers until the mid-nineteenth century, as shown by its frequent appearance in Thomas Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James II and in other works of that period, including those with no sectarian bias; the word is found in certain surviving statutes of the United Kingdom, for example in the English Bill of Rights of 1688 and the Scottish Claim of Right of 1689.
Under the Act of Settlement of 1701, no one who professes "the popish religion" may succeed to the throne of the Kingdom of England and the Act continues to apply to the United Kingdom and all of the Commonwealth Realms. Fears that Roman Catholic secular leaders would be anti-Protestant and would be unduly influenced from Rome arose after all allegiance to the Pope was banned in England in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, employed the term in his satirical essay A Modest Proposal, in which he proposed selling Irish babies to be eaten by wealthy English landlords. Daniel Defoe wrote in the popular Robinson Crusoe, near the end of the novel: "... I began to regret having professed myself a Papist, thought it might not be the best religion to die with." Similar terms, such as the traditional "popery" and the more recent "papalism", are sometimes used, as in the Popery Act 1698 and the Irish Popery Act. The Seventh-day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White uses the terms "papist" and "popery" throughout her book The Great Controversy, a volume harshly criticized for its anti-Catholic tone.
During the American presidential election of 1928, the Democratic nominee Al Smith was labeled a "papist" by his political opponents. He was the first Roman Catholic to gain the presidential nomination of a major party, this led to fears that, if he were elected, the United States government would follow the dictates of the Vatican; as of 2019, John F. Kennedy is the only Roman Catholic to have been elected President of the United States; the term is still sometimes used today, although much less than in earlier centuries. In early use the term appeared in the compound form "Crypto-Papist", referring to members of Reformed, Protestant, or nonconformist churches who at heart were Roman Catholics. Alexis Khomiakhov, a Russian lay theologian of the nineteenth century, claimed that "All Protestants are Crypto-Papists". Although the term may imply a Romanizing influence, at times there have been individuals who have secretly converted to Catholicism, for example, James II of England, Bartholomew Remov and Yelizaveta Fyodorovich.
Some people may on convert, such as George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, or secretly convert with reservations, such as John III of Sweden. The doctrine of mentalis restrictio was used to justify situations involving deceit. Anti-Catholicism Anti-clericalism Know Nothing Party Mackerel snapper Popish Plot Roman Catholic Romanism
Eikon Basilike
The Eikon Basilike, The Pourtrature of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, is a purported spiritual autobiography attributed to King Charles I of England. It was published on 9 February 1649, ten days after the King was beheaded by Parliament in the aftermath of the English Civil War in 1649. Written in a simple and straightforward style in the form of a diary, the book combines irenic prayers urging the forgiveness of Charles's executioners with a justification of royalism and the King's political and military programme that led to the Civil War, it is by no means certain. After the Restoration, John Gauden, bishop of Worcester, claimed to have written it. Scholars continue to disagree about the merits of this claim, though assuming that if Gauden wrote it, he had access to Charles's papers when he did so. Jeremy Taylor is said to have had a hand in its revision, to be the source of its title; some editions of the Eikon Basilike contained a sworn statement by William Levett, Esq. longtime courtier and groom of the bedchamber to the King, that Levett had witnessed Charles writing the text during the time that Levett accompanied him in his imprisonment on the Isle of Wight.
A witness to the King's execution, Levett helped transport the King's body back to Windsor Castle for burial. Whoever wrote the Eikon Basilike, its author was an effective prose stylist, one who had partaken of the solemn yet simple eloquence of Anglican piety as expressed in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer; the end result is an image of a steadfast monarch who, while admitting his weaknesses, declares the truth of his religious principles and the purity of his political motives, while trusting in God despite adversity. Charles's chief weakness, it says, was in yielding to Parliament's demands for the head of the Earl of Strafford, its portrait of Charles as a martyr invited comparison of the King to Jesus. The pathos of this dramatic presentation made it a master stroke of Royalist propaganda; the book was quite popular despite official disapproval during the Restoration. In 1657 it appeared in musical form, with a verse rendering by Thomas Stanley and music by John Wilson; the musical setting blended the austere style of the metrical psalter, favoured by the Puritans, with fashionable instrumental accompaniment provided by an organ, theorbo or another such continuo instrument.
Because of the favourable impression the book made of the King, Parliament commissioned John Milton to write a riposte to it, which he published under the title Eikonoklastes in 1649. Milton's response sought to portray the image of Charles, the absolute monarchy he aspired to, as idols, claiming a reverence due only to God, therefore justly overthrown to preserve the law of God; this theological counterattack failed to dislodge the sentimental narrative of the Eikon itself from public esteem. The allegorical frontispiece of the Eikon Basilike depicts the King as a Christian martyr; the Latin texts read: IMMOTA, TRIVMPHANS — "Unmoved, Triumphant". The frontispiece was engraved by William Marshall. In the first edition, the frontispiece was accompanied by English verses that explain it; the English verses go: The Eikon Basilike and its portrait of Charles's execution as a martyrdom were so successful that, at the Restoration, a special commemoration of the King on 30 January was added to the Book of Common Prayer, directing that the day be observed as an occasion for fasting and repentance.
On 19 May 1660, the Convocation of Canterbury and York canonised King Charles at the urging of Charles II, added his name to the prayer book. Charles I is the only saint formally canonised by the Church of England; the commemoration was removed from the prayer book by Queen Victoria in 1859. Several Anglican churches and chapels are dedicated to "King Charles the Martyr"; the Society of King Charles the Martyr was established in 1894 to work for the restoration of the King's name to the Calendar and to encourage the veneration of the Royal Martyr. Richard Helgerson suggests that Eikon Basilike represents the culmination of the representational strategies of Charles' immediate Tudor and Stuart predecessors: the textual absolutism of King James and the "iconic performativity" of Elizabeth. In addition to the way it recapitulates previous modes of royal representation, Helgerson notes a certain affinity between the textual aesthetics of the "King's Book" and those of the Counter-Reformation: "Eikon Basilike drew on a set of culturally conditioned responses against which the new culture of print was defining itself, responses that had served Elizabeth and Shakespeare and that then were serving Counter-Reformation Catholicism.
This unbookish—indeed anti-bookish—book thus turned print against its
Robert Waldegrave
Robert Waldegrave or Walgrave, the son of Richard Waldegrave of Blockley, was a 16th-century printer and publisher in England and Scotland. From 1578 to 1588 he printed numerous religious works in London, from 1590 to 1603, more than 100 books in Scotland. In 1603, following King James I of England's accession to the English throne, he returned to England, but died the same year. Waldegrave is chiefly known for printing the first four of the Marprelate tracts on a secret press, for printing the works of King James I of Scotland in Scotland. Little is known of Waldegrave's parents. According to the Stationers' Register, his father was Richard Waldegrave, a yeoman from Blockley three miles northwest of Moreton in Marsh in Worcestershire, now in Gloucestershire, he died before 1568. Further information may be gleaned from the will of Thomas Freman, of Blockley, proved 27 May 1546 by Richard Sambage and Richard Walgrave, two of the four named executors; the text of the will, dated 16 March 1545 includes the testator's mother-in-law, Margery Walgrave, who receives 20/-.
John Walgrave and Martyn Walgrave are beneficiaries. In addition Richard Walgrave is assigned the task of oversight of husbandry. Waldegrave is thought to have married about 1580, his wife's Christian name was Mary. They had six children. A seventh child, was born in September 1596 in Edinburgh. On 24 June 1568 Waldegrave began an eight-year apprenticeship with the London stationer, William Griffith: Robert Walgrave the sonne of Rychard walgrave late of blacklay in the Countye of Worcestre yeoman Deceassed hath put hym self apprentes to Wylliam greffeth Cetizen and stacioner of London from the feaste of the nativite of saynte John bapteste anno 1568 viij yeres. Having completed his apprenticeship, Waldegrave should have gained the freedom of the Stationers' Company by 1576, his name first appears in the company's records as a publisher on 17 June 1578, when he became licensed to publish The Castle for the Soule, the first of many religious texts he printed or published during his career. Waldegrave's principal place of business was "Without Temple Bar in the Strand", near Somerset House, although in 1583 he was located for a short time in Foster Lane.
In that year he was recorded as having two presses. In the late 1580s his imprints indicate that he published from shops at the sign of the Crane in Paul's Churchyard and the sign of the White Horse in Cannon Lane, he soon became known for printing the works of English clergymen and others who dissented from the established religion, including Dudley Fenner, Laurence Chaderton and John Field. He published editions of works by continental and Scottish religious reformers, among them Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox. During the 1580s he was twice imprisoned in the White Lion prison in Southwark, spending 20 weeks there in 1586–7. In February the following year, a Star Chamber decree restricted his publishing activities; that April, he anonymously printed and published John Udall's The State of the Churche of England Laid Open, or Diotrephes, but on 16 April officers of the Stationers' Company confiscated his press and all his type, together with copies of Udall's book. Although he escaped from his house carrying a box of type hidden beneath his cloak, the copies of Udall's book were burned, his seized press and type destroyed.
Waldegrave hid the salvaged type at the house of Mistress Crane in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury. Born Elizabeth Hussey, Mistress Crane was the widow of Queen Elizabeth's Cofferer of the Household and Master of the Household, Anthony Crane, had reformist sympathies, in the late spring of 1588 she allowed Waldegrave and John Penry to set up a secret press at her country home at East Molesey, across the Thames from Hampton Court Palace; the first tract to be printed there was the Demonstration of Discipline. In late 1588 and early 1589, Waldegrave embarked on an more controversial enterprise, printing the first four tracts written against the ecclesiastical authorities by an unknown satirist using the pseudonym Martin Marprelate; the first of the Marprelate tracts, Martin's Epistle was printed on the secret press in October 1588. The tract enjoyed immense popularity, the ecclesiastical authorities instigated a hue and cry after Martin. In November the press was moved from East Molesey to Sir Richard Knightley's house at Fawsley in Northamptonshire, where Martin's second tract, The Epitome, was printed.
Shortly thereafter the secret press was moved to the Whitefriars, the home of Knightley's great-nephew, John Hales, where Certaine Minerall and Metaphysicall Schoolpoints and Hay Any Worke for Cooper were printed, the former in early January and the latter in late March 1589. Waldegrave refused to print any further tracts, citing the Puritan ministers' disapproval of Martin Marprelate's course of action. Waldegrave had a patron and protector in James VI of Scotland who asked his diplomat Sir Robert Melville of Murdocairny to intercede with Elizabeth for him. Waldegrave's movements in the months after he left the secret press are uncertain. However, by early 1590 he was in Edinburgh, where by March that year he was granted a licence to print. On 9 October he was appointed King's Printer by James VI. From that point until his death in 1603–4, Waldegrave printed over 100 works, "making him the most prolific Scottish printer of the sixteenth century", his output consisted principally of rel
