Elizabeth Tyrwhit's Morning and Evening Prayers

Susan M. Felch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754606611
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351940870
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In 1574, Christopher Barker published a volume of prayers and poems collected and composed by Elizabeth Tyrwhit, an intimate member of Katherine Parr's circle, governess to the princess Elizabeth, wife of a Tudor court functionary, and a wealthy widow. Later, Tyrwhit's Morning and Evening Prayers was selected by Thomas Bentley to be republished in his 1582 compilation of devotional works, The Monument of Matrones. This volume presents critical, old-spelling editions of both versions of Morning and Evening Prayers. Placing them side by side, Susan Felch discloses that the second version contains nearly a quarter more material that the first, and is organized quite differently. Felch convincingly argues that the additional material and revised arrangement of the longer version are likely copied direct from another, no longer extant authorial version, either printed or manuscript. In the volume's introduction, Felch provides background on Tyrwhit's life and family, including new information unearthed in her research; and sets Tyrwhit's work within the context of sixteenth- century English prayerbooks. Felch here posits that Tyrwhit's reorganization and framing of traditional material indicates her own considerable creativity. The Textual Notes and Appendix A compare the 1574 and 1582 versions and identify the source texts from which Tyrwhit derives her prayers and poems. The edition is completed by an autograph note by Tyrwhit; a discussion of the Tyrwhit family connections, and several versions of the rhymed Hours of the Cross as background to Tyrwhit's rendition entitled, 'An Hymne of the Passion of Christ'.

Introduction

The Life and Times of Elizabeth Oxenbridge Tyrwhit

Elizabeth Oxenbridge (later Tyrwhit)

Elizabeth Oxenbridge was born in the early years of the sixteenth century, probably before 1510, to Sir Goddard Oxenbridge of Brede in Sussex (d. 1531) and his second wife, Anne Fiennes.¹ Elizabeth, as the daughter of gentry, undoubtedly enjoyed a privileged childhood. The Oxenbridge family traced its lineage back to John de Oxenbridge (c. 1303–1343)² and, by the time Elizabeth was born, could boast a fine house, extensive land holdings, and a substantial social rank in East Sussex. Her paternal grandmother, Anne Lavelode, brought a sizable dowry to her marriage with Robert Oxenbridge, enhancing both the wealth and the social standing of the family, as the Chantry and tombs in the church at Brede attest.

Brede itself is about five miles northwest of Hastings, not far from Battle, and was settled by Benedictine monks from Normandy who occupied it until the early fifteenth century. Brede Place (formerly known as “Ford Place”), Elizabeth’s birthplace and childhood home, was built in the fourteenth century, but her father made a great many improvements and additions to it during his lifetime.³ It was described in the nineteenth century as “a tolerably good house & of stone, with good foliated windows, and two fine chimnies. & and in the centre an Elizabethan half-octagon.”⁴ The house had its own chapel, which opened off the large finished apartment to the south of the great room.⁵ Sir Goddard’s will mentions this chapel, although the window with unique foiled arches in the antechapel, which contained the Oxenbridge arms, was later removed to Northiam Church.⁶

Elizabeth’s father, Sir Goddard, became popular in local legend as the “Brede Giant” who purportedly ate naughty children. A nearby “Groaning Bridge,” stained with iron rust, is reputed to mark the place of his death, where, it is said, the children exacted their revenge by sawing him in half. On a more positive and accurate note, he was one of twenty-six “honorable persons” made a Knight of the Bath on 23 June 1509 in honor of the coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. The previous day the honorees attended the king at the Tower of London, serving him at dinner “in token that they shall never bear none [dishes] after that day.”⁷ He was sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1506, 1512, and 1519 and was appointed to Commissions of the Peace in 1511 and 1512.⁸ In his will, he bequeathed money to various religious foundations as well as “to the High Aulter of the churche of Brede aforsaid for my tythes and oblacyons forgotten” and requested “that an honest preest shall singe in the parryshe churche of Brede and yn the chapell at Forde for my soule and my frendes soules and all Christen soules during the space of vii yeres next aftre my decesse.”⁹

Sir Goddard’s first wife, Elizabeth Etchingham, was the daughter and coheir of Thomas Etchingham.¹⁰ Their son, Thomas (d. 1540), Elizabeth’s older half-brother, inherited his grandfather Etchingham’s lands. He married Elizabeth Putnam, and their only daughter, Elizabeth, became his sole heir.¹¹ This younger Elizabeth Oxenbridge, the half-niece of our author, later married Sir Robert Tyrwhit of Kettleby, the nephew of our author’s husband.

The elder Elizabeth’s own mother, Anne Fiennes, was Sir Goddard’s second wife. She was the daughter of Thomas Fiennes (Fynes) of Claversham and the granddaughter of Richard, Lord Dacre. ¹² Although at least one of Elizabeth’s siblings, William, died young, she had an elder sister, Margaret, who married John Thatcher of Priesthawes, Sussex, and a brother Sir Robert (d. 1574) who became constable of the Tower and inherited Brede Place after his mother’s death.¹³ She also had a younger sister, Mary, who eloped with “a gentleman of Kent called Barram” much to Elizabeth’s displeasure, since she had hoped to secure a place for Mary in the household of Honor Basset Plantagenet, Lady Lisle.¹⁴

By 1537, Elizabeth was already at court and in a position to help her siblings. Although she was not of sufficient rank to be one of the great ladies (later called “Ladies of the Bedchamber” in Queen Elizabeth’s court), she served Jane Seymour as a lady of the Privy Chamber, the second rank above that of maids of honor and the chamberers who assisted the ladies of the Privy Chamber.¹⁵ After the death of Queen Jane following the birth of Prince Edward, Elizabeth Oxenbridge resided with Mary Arundell, Lady Sussex, along with a number of other young gentlewomen including Anne Basset, the daughter of Lady Lisle, as they waited for Henry VIII to take a new queen.¹⁶ Sometime between April 1538, when she was still known as “Mistress Oxenbridge” to the Lisle family, and 4 August 1539, when she signed her name “Elizabeth Tyrwhyt” to a thank you letter, she married Robert Tyrwhit, second son of a Lincolnshire gentleman, and with him continued to serve at court.¹⁷

Eizabeth Tyrwhit and Katherine Parr

From 1543 through 1548, the Tyrwhits’ careers and fates were closely linked with that of Henry’s sixth and final queen, Katherine Parr. Parr would certainly have known the Tyrwhits through her first husband, Edward Borough, a cousin of Robert Tyrwhit, although Elizabeth herself did not marry into the family until after Edward’s death in 1533. (See appendix B for a discussion of the Tyrwhit family connections.) Yet Robert Tyrwhit’s career in the court of Henry VIII may well have been expedited by Parr’s father, the master of the king’s household, or by her father-in-law Thomas Borough’s position as Anne Boylen’s chamberlain.¹⁸ Certainly by 1543, when Katherine Parr herself became queen, the Tyrwhits were well established at court and poised to become even more influential. Robert was knighted in 1543 and joined the queen’s household in July; the following year, he was made master of the horse and, by 1547, was steward.¹⁹ With Sir Thomas Arundell, Walter Bucler, and Hugh Aglionby, Robert served as one of the counselors who most closely dealt with the queen’s practical affairs.²⁰ Elizabeth Tyrwhit also joined the inner circle of the queen, serving as a lady of the Privy Chamber. Such positions of responsibility brought with them opportunities for greater wealth, and the Tyrwhits benefited from Parr’s patronage.

Shortly after his marriage to Katherine in 1543, Henry went to France, leaving his new wife behind as regent. During this time, Parr clearly took seriously her role as governing monarch: her strong signature, “Kateryn, the Quene, KP,” is recorded on numerous state papers. It also seems likely that she grew increasingly attracted to the reformist members of her counsel, and, indeed, this growing attachment to Protestant doctrine frames the opening of John Foxe’s account of Parr’s brush with treason and incarceration. As Foxe tells the story,

[Henry VIII] was informed that Queene Katherine Parre, at that tyme his wife, was very much given to the readyng and study of the holy Scriptures: and that she for that purpose had retained divers well learned and godly persons, to instruct her thoroughly in the same, with whom as at all tymes convenient she used to have private conference touching spirituall matters: so also of ordinarie, but especially in Lent every day in the after noone, for the space of one houre, one of her said Chaplaines in her privie chamber made some collation to her and to her Ladyes and Gentlewomen of her privy chamber, or other that were disposed to heare: in whiche Sermons, they oftymes touched such abuses, as in the Churche, then were rife. Which thynges as they were not secretly done, so neither were their preachinges unknowen unto the king. Wherof at the first, and for a great time, he semed very well to like. Which made her the more bold (beyng in dede become very zelous towarde the Gospell, and the professours therof) franckly to debate with the kyng, touchyng Religion, and therein flatlye to discover her selfe: oftymes wishyng, exhortyng and persuadyng the kyng, that as he had to the glory of God, and his eternall fame, begon a good and a godly worke in banishing that monstrous Idoll of Rome, so he would thoroughly perfite and finishe the same, clensing and purgyng his Churche of England, cleane from the dregges therof, wherein as yet remayned great superstition.²¹

Although this opening account of Parr’s evangelical circle does not mention Elizabeth Tyrwhit by name, as one of the queen’s ladies, she was esteemed for her “vertuous disposition” (as Foxe would later describe her), and almost certainly would have been among those who were “disposed to heare” the afternoon sermons and participate in the theological discussions. Foxe is at pains to point out that there was nothing secretive about these meetings, and, indeed, for over a decade women at court had been significant supporters of religious reformation.

Robert Parsons, the Jesuit apologist, records a conversation from Henry VIII’s reign between a courtier (possibly Sir Francis Bryan, one of the King’s close companions) and “a Lady that was somewhat forward in the new Gospel.”²² The courtier defends the 1536 Articles that argued for three sacraments rather than seven by insisting that, if there must be “devices” or novel opinions in religion, he would rather they come from a king than from a knavish friar like Martin Luther. The king, at least, “hath Majesty in him, and a Council to assist him” whereas Luther made up his opinions out of ambition, a desire to revenge himself upon the Dominicans, and his lust for a wife. The lady objects that a mortal man, even a king, cannot authorize matters of religion and argues that the reformers speak “God’s Eternal Truth and Word,” not the devices of men. But this claim of sola Scriptura is countered by the courtier’s reminding her of the Smithfield Dutch martyrs who, as even the lady agrees, were heretics. Yet, says the courtier, they, too, based their arguments on the Bible, “singing and chanting Scriptures” as they went to their deaths. In the face of such contradictory interpretations, how can mere humans determine what is God’s word? Although the skeptical courtier wins the day against the “gospelling” lady in Parsons’s account, the story itself illustrates the extent to which women were at the forefront of the Henrician court in defending the emerging Protestant religion.

This defense of Protestantism, which moved from Katherine Parr’s reading circle to debates with the king, nearly led to the queen’s downfall in 1546. Foxe casts Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor, as the chief villains who convince the king that Katherine’s exhortation and persuasion amount not only to wifely insubordination but also to political treason. Their initial plan, according to Foxe, was to isolate the queen by attacking her closest friends and then, having discovered evidence “whereby the Queene might bee charged,” to have Katherine herself “take...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Life and Times of Elizabeth Oxenbridge Tyrwhit
• The Wycliffe Bible Manuscript Note (1572)
• Morning and Evening Prayers (1582)
• Textual Notes (1582)
• Morning and Evening Prayers (1574)
• Textual Notes (1574)
• Appendix A: The Comprehensive Table of Contents
• Appendix B: The Tyrwhit Family Connections
• Appendix C: The Hours of the Cross
• Index