Reformers, Conflict, and Revisionism: The Reformation in Sixteenth-Century
Hadleigh
John Craig
The Historical Journal, Vol. 42, No. 1. (Mar., 1999), pp. 1-23.
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The Historical Journal, qn, I ( ~ g g g ) ,p p 1-23 Printed in the United Kingdom
0 1999 Cambridge University Press
R E F O R M E R S , C O N F L I C T , AND
R E V I S I O N I S M : T H E R E F O R M A T I O N I N
S I X T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y HADLEIGH*
J O H N C R A I G
Simon Fraser University
A B S T R A C T . The cloth-making town of Hadleigh in Suffolk has often been cited in the annals of the
English Reformation as a town that early embraced Protestantism apparently effortlessly. This view
owes much to John Foxe's famous description of this ' Universitie of the learned', yet a closer
examination of the surviving evidence from Hadleigh indicates that the Reformation was as bitterly
contested here as it was in many another mid- Tudor community. And the nature of the bitter struggle
between the advocates of reform and a group of conservatives in the town mog haveprovedsojierce that
the energies for further reform under Elizabeth all but dissipated.
There are but few signs that the sleepy town of Hadleigh in Suffolk, nestled in
a valley north of the river Stour, was once the twenty-fourth wealthiest town in
England.' Few now journey to Hadleigh. The old railway line was taken up
years ago and the modern highway disdains to dally as it cuts a swathe north
of the town and hurries on to Ipswich. Matters were not always so. In 1530,
Hadleigh was an unincorporate market town of middling rank whose
prosperous economy was dominated by the cloth trade. A triad of structures
located in the heart of the town still stand as testaments to its past importance.
The parish church of St Mary with its lead spire that soars to a height of 135
feet, built and embellished by the profits of her native clothiers, dominates this
square. Slightly west of the church is the Deanery tower, a surviving gatehouse
of an archdeacon's palace and a former seat of ecclesiastical authority in
Hadleigh. Completing the triad is the fifteenth-century guildhall lying just
south of the church, the physical symbol of the cloth trade that determined
Hadleigh's economic health for generations. The square itselfis the churchyard
with its tombstones, a fitting stage for an examination of the townsmen of four
centuries past, who worshipped in the parish church, decided issues ofcivic and
* I wish to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada and to thank Patrick Collinson, Tom Freeman, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Peter
Northeast, and Marjorie McIntosh for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. An earlier
version of this essay was awarded the Archbishop Cranmer prize in the University of Cambridge
for 1991. ' W. G. Hoskins, Local h i s toy in England (2nd edn, London, 1g72), p. 239.
2 J O H N CRA IG
economic importance in the guildhall, and who were conscious of their
privileges as a peculiar of the archbishop of Canterbury.'
But the historian who begins an account of the Reformation in Hadleigh
churchyard surrounded by these public symbols of church and borough with
their familiar elements of ecclesiastical injunctions, the cloth trade, and the role
of the guilds may be led astray. A better starting point may be found some
distance north of the town on a small piece of unploughed land. There, dwarfed
and railed in by the nineteenth-century monument raised by subscription, lies
a rough hewn stone with a carved inscription which reads ' I 555 D. Tayler in
defending that was good at this plas left his b l ~ d e ' . ~ This clumsy couplet is a
useful reminder of the sharpness of the religious struggle waged in this cloth
town.
It is all too easy, however, to leap from Taylor's monument to the
remarkable account of both Hadleigh and Taylor given by the compiler and
historian of the martyrs, John F ~ x e . ~ The town of Hadleigh has come to possess
a special place in the history of the Reformation in England, made famous by
Foxe's description of this 'Universitie of the learned', and echoed by more
modern historian^.^ Foxe wrote,
The towne of Hadley was one of the fyrst that received the woord of God in all England,
at the preaching of Maister Thomas Bilney : by whose industry the Gospel1 of Christ had
such gracious successe, and tooke such roote there, that a great number of that parish
became exceding well learned in the holy scriptures, as well women as men: so that a
man myght have found among them many that had often read the whole Bible thorow,
and that could have sayd a great part of S. Paules Epistles by hart, and very well and
readely have geven a godly learned sentence in any matter of controversie. Their
children and servauntes were also brought up and trayned so diligently in the right
knowledge of Gods word, that the whole towne seemed rather an Universitie of the
learned, then a towne of Clothmaking, or laboryng people: and that most is to be
commended, they were for the more part faithful folowers of Gods word in their l i ~ y n g . ~
Hadleigh's status as a peculiar of the archbishop of Canterbury and a benefice
of refuge for some of Cranmer's protCgts and early reformers such as Thomas
Rose, Nicholas Shaxton, and most notably Rowland Taylor has lent credence
to Foxe's description. Nevertheless, whilst there is no doubting the presence
and industry of reformers such as Taylor in Hadleigh, the 'gracious success' of
their message is less certain. Foxe was not unaware of troubles in Hadleigh but
N. Pevsner, The buildings ofEngland, Suffolk (2nd edn, rev. by E. Radcliffe, London, 1g74),
PP; 243-7, Based on a personal visit on a bicycle in the summer of 1990.
John Foxe, Acts and monuments (London, 1570), p p 1693-705 The account of Hadleigh
appeared first in the 1563 edition, pp. 1065-80. Additional material was incorporated into the
1570 edition. I have quoted from the 1570 edition except where otherwise indicated.
John Strype, Memorials of Thomas Cranmer ( 2 vols., Oxford, 1840), I, pp. 603-6; A. G. Dickens,
The English R e f o rma t i (London, 1 9 6 4 ) ~ p p 269-70; P. Collinson, 'Godly preachers and zealous
magistrates in Elizabethan East Anglia: the roots of dissent', in E. S. Leedham-Green, ed.,
Religious dissent in East Anglia (Cambridge, ~ g g ~ ) , p. 13.
Foxe, Acts and monuments, p. 1693.
3 T H E R E F O RMA T I O N IN HADLE I GH
he generally chose to emphasize the triumphant progress of Protestantism and
to gloss over less favourable events. Yet the surviving evidence from Hadleigh
town records, accounts, wills,7 and even Foxe's own evidence indicate that
from 1530 to 1560, the town was bitterly divided over religious issues.
This is grist to the mill of historians interested in the issue of social conflict
-
and its relationship to the process of religious change brought by the sixteenth
century. Yet the subject is not without a polemical edge. It has become
orthodox among Reformation revisionists to view social relations before the
Reformation as essentially harmonious, cemented together by the reconciling
activities of the parish priest and institutions such as guilds and fraternities and
demonstrated in the festive and charitable rituals of rogationtide processions,
church ales, the distribution of holy bread, and kissing the pax. This is held in
stark contrast to the divisiveness of Protestantism, an unattractively complex
creed that abolished these rituals as tainted by superstition, contributed to
conflicts and disputes in towns and villages, and that carried the seeds ofits own
destruction in the implicit notion of a gathered church and the explicit presence
of precisians and puritan^.^
Such arguments raise larger questions than can be dealt with here. Until
more work is done on the incidence, role, and function of conflict in the late
medieval period, we have no way of telling whether the sixteenth century saw
a rise in the cases of conflict and the part played by the new theology.
Parishioners in 1520 may not have been arguing over sermons preached on
predestination but some can be found vigorously contesting the very symbols
and rituals that emphasized the harmony of Catholic Christendom. In 1522 a
parishioner of Theydon-Gernon in Essex smashed the pax over the head of the
offending clerk who had dared to offer it to another man first.g Sir Thomas
More, in a similar vein, could speak of 'how men fell at varyaunce for kissing
' Hadleigh records are currently retained by the town in the guildhall in Hadleigh. I am
grateful to the late Mr W. A. B. Jones and Mr Cyril Cook for making the records available to me.
Most Hadleigh wills are kept at the Public Record Office or at the Essex Record Office. I am
grateful to Peter Northeast and Marjorie McIntosh for letting me read their transcriptions of
earlier and later Hadleigh wills respectively.
These sentiments are explicit in J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the Englishpeople (Oxford,
1984);Scarisbrick's review of Collinson, The birthpangs of Protestant England (London, 1989),Times
Literary Supplement, 28 July - 3 August 1989,p. 829; C. Haigh, 'Anticlericalism and the English
Reformation', in C. Haigh, ed., The English Reformation revised (Cambridge, 1987)~pp. 56-74;
C. Haigh, 'The Church of England, the Catholics and the people', in C. Haigh, ed., The reign of
Elizabeth I (London, 1984)~p p 195-2 19; and, to a lesser extent, implicit in Susan Brigden, London
and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989),esp pp. 628-39. For this interpretation from the late medieval
perspective, see C. Harper-Bill, The pre-Reformation church in England, rqoer530 (London, 1989).
The altercation took place on 'Allhallows day, after the elevation of the Host' when the parish
clerk, Richard Pond, 'presented the pax to Mr Francis Hampden, patron of the church, and
Margery, his wife and then to Mr John Browne, gent., who took it, kissed it and then broke it in
two pieces over the head of the said Richard Pond, causing streams of blood to run to the ground.
O n the previous Sunday Browne had said, "Clerke, if thow here after gevist not me the pax first
I shall breke it on thy hedd."' hT.C. Waller, ed., 'Some additions to Newcourt's Repertorium, vol.
11, being notes made by J. C. Challenor Smith', Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 7
(1902),p. I 75. I owe this reference to Mr M. O'Boy.
4 J O H N CRA IG
of the pax, or goyng before in procession or setting of their wives pewes in the
church'.'' Rituals such as the distribution of holy bread or the kissing of the pax
were not simply moments of Christian charity but also important reflections
and reinforcements of the social hierarchy and thus moments of exclusivity as
well as in~lusivit~.' ' Rogationtide processions may have been an expression of
parochial harmony but the practice also ensured that the boundaries of the
parish were remembered and retained, practical considerations that possessed
important and potentially divisive implications for the payment of tithe.''
Clearly, there is much that is unbalanced and naive in a stark contrast between
late medieval unity and early modern fragmentation.
Nor was it the case, in towns and villages across the country, as the structures
of penance and purgatory confronted ideas of imputed righteousness and the
activities of iconoclasts, that the necessav result was social conflict. Determining
the religious persuasion of a town certainly could be a cause of conflict but
perhaps no more so than the contentious issues of municipal office holding or
town finance. Professor MacCaffrey has argued that in spite of widely divergent
religious opinions among the ruling elite in Exeter, they were 'not an occasion
for major social disagreement'. The town of Bury St Edmunds actually
functioned quietly throughout the turbulent years of mid-Tudor change. It
was not until the combined pressure of Bishop Freke's anti-puritan policy, and
the aggressive tactics of a group of radical Brownists, that divisions in the town
broke out in the early 1580s. And despite the undoubted conservatism of most
aldermen in York, clashes among the councillors seem to have been limited to
squabbles over the staging of morality plays in the 1 ~ 7 0 s . ' ~ The experience of
Hadleigh, however, was quite different. Cranmer's policy of using this peculiar
as a refuge for reforming preachers aroused strong opposition from some of the
inhabitants. And their opposition was not without success. Of the four men
known to have laboured in Hadleigh -Bilney, Rose, Shaxton and Taylor -
two were burnt, one arrested and prohibited from the town, and one recanted.
Eventually Protestantism triumphed, but the bitter struggle in Hadleigh
lo W. E. Campbell, ed., The English works o f s i r Thomas More ( 2 vols., London, 1g31), p. 8 8 Cf.
H. Maynard Smith, Pre-Reformation England (London, 1963), pp. 9&8; J. Bossy, 'Blood and
baptism, kinship, community and Christianity in Western Europe from the fourteenth to the
seventeenth centuries', in D. Baker, ed., Sanctity andsecularity: the church and the world (Oxford, 1973)~
PP. 129-43.
'I Cf. the orders for deacons in Holy Trinity church, Coventry, 1462, 'ye sayd dekyn schall se
ye woly [holy] cake every sonday be kyte a quordyng [cut according] for every mans degre'. British
Magazine, 6 (1834), p. 262.
l2 This practice may have been more divisive in urban rather than rural parishes. Cf. the case
brought by the parish of All Saints, Canterbury, against Mr Henry Lawse, who claimed that his
house attached to the hospital of Eastbridge alias Kingsbridge was exempt from the payment of
tithe. During rogationtide processions, parishioners from All Saints marked his house with ' a great
letter Roman A' which Lawse promptly rubbed out. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, x. 11. 11.
fos. I 7v-26v I owe this reference to Patrick Collinson.
l3 W. MacCaffrey, Exeter, 154e1640 (London, 1g75), p p 174-202; J. S. Craig, 'Reformation,
politics and polemics in sixteenth century East Anglian market towns' (Ph.D. dissertation,
Cambridge, 1992)~ ch. 4; D. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1g7g), pp. 22&5g.
5 T H E REFORMAT ION I N H AD L E I G H
between the advocates of reform and a group of conservatives was a central
feature of the town's life for three decades. This is important for at least two
reasons. The first is that, thanks largely to Foxe, Hadleigh is often idealized as
the archetype ofthe Protestant town, a cloth town that embraced Protestantism
apparently effortlessly. Secondly, the evidence for religious conflict in
Hadleigh, spotty though it is, allows the historian to trace the story a step
further and to ask how matters were resolved and what effect the experience of
conflict had upon the religious life of the town.
Particular consideration of the labours of the four notable reformers in
Hadleigh provides a useful structure for the first part of this essay. The first of
these, Thomas Bilney, of Norfolk stock and Cambridge educated, is, without
doubt, the most elusive. Neither Lutheran, nor Catholic, recent appraisals
have labelled him an Evangelical.14 I t is clear that his most astringent criticisms
were directed against pilgrimages and images and his emphasis was upon the
sufficiency of Christ's work of redemption, a high view of scripture and of
preaching. It was whilst engaged on his first preaching tour of 1526--7 that
concentrated upon eastern Suffolk, and Ipswich in particular, that Bilney first
came to Hadleigh. Knowledge of Bilney's activities in Hadleigh is scant,
derived entirely from Foxe and a single statement in an Act Book of the diocese
of Norwich. Foxe implies that Bilney enjoyed more than a passing moment in
Hadleigh and this is perhaps corroborated by the testimony of Guye Glason, a
shoemaker from Eye, who, caught up in court proceedings against him for
speaking against images in 1533, confessed to having learnt his opinions from
a sermon that Bilney had preached in Hadleigh in 1527.'~ I t is possible that
Bilney's influence in Hadleigh was of a formative character and that he built
upon existing clandestine groups of Lollards known to have been active in the
Stour valley, but there is no surviving evidence for this supposition.16 It is more
likely that Bilney took advantage of Hadleigh's peculiar status in order to work
outside the jurisdiction of the disapproving bishop of Norwich. Bilney may well
have preached in Hadleigh on his final and fateful preaching tour ' up to
Jerusalem' that ended in his execution at Norwich.
l4 J. F. Davis, 'The trials ofThomas Bylney and the English Reformation', HistoricalJournal, 24
(1981), p p 775-90; G. Walker, 'Saint or schemer? The 1527 heresy trial of Thomas Bilney
reconsidered', Journal ofEcclesiastica1 History, 40 (1989)~ p p 2 1 ~ 3 8 .
Norfolk Record Office, Act 4/4b, fos. 33~-7'. Glason confessed that he 'wolde not wurship
the Crosse ner the crucyfyxe And if that I hade the Rode that stondeth in the monasterye of Eye
in my yerde I wolde brenne it And shyte upon it hed to make it a foote hyegher then it is.' The
clerk recorded that Glason ' dicit quad dedint huius opiniones ex sermone Bilneye habuit apud Hadley septemio
abhunc'.
l6 Cf. Alan Pennie, 'The evolution of Puritan mentality in an Essex cloth town: Dedham and
the Stour valley, 156-1640' (Ph.D. dissertation, Sheffield, 1989); Anne Hudson, The premature
Reformation (Oxford, 1989)~ pp. 456-83; J.A. F. Thomson, The later Lollards (Oxford, 1965)~
PP. '37-8.
- -
6 J O H N CRA IG
Although the precise details of Bilney's residence in Hadleigh must remain a
matter of conjecture, his preaching, particularly against images, was not
without fruit. The most convincing evidence of Bilney's influence in the region
of Hadleigh can be seen in the wave of iconoclasm which spread across the
Stour valley in the early 1530s.'~ The most notable incident in this wave of
protest was the burning of the famed rood of Dovercourt which, as Diarmaid
MacCulloch has convincingly argued, was probably carried out as a response
to the flames that consumed Bilney the previous summer in Norwich. In 1532,
four men, three from the town of Dedham, Robert King, Nicholas Marsh, an
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