Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England

Brooke Conti

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780812245752, 9780812245752
• eBook ISBN: 9780812209211
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria inglesa

As seventeenth-century England wrestled with the aftereffects of the Reformation, the personal frequently conflicted with the political. In speeches, political pamphlets, and other works of religious controversy, writers from the reign of James I to that of James II unexpectedly erupt into autobiography. John Milton famously interrupts his arguments against episcopacy with autobiographical accounts of his poetic hopes and dreams, while John Donne's attempts to describe his conversion from Catholicism wind up obscuring rather than explaining. Similar moments appear in the works of Thomas Browne, John Bunyan, and the two King Jameses themselves. These autobiographies are familiar enough that their peculiarities have frequently been overlooked in scholarship, but as Brooke Conti notes, they sit uneasily within their surrounding material as well as within the conventions of confessional literature that preceded them. Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England positions works such as Milton's political tracts, Donne's polemical and devotional prose, Browne's Religio Medici, and Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners as products of the era's tense political climate, illuminating how the pressures of public self-declaration and allegiance led to autobiographical writings that often concealed more than they revealed. For these authors, autobiography was less a genre than a device to negotiate competing political, personal, and psychological demands. The complex works Conti explores provide a privileged window into the pressures placed on early modern religious identity, underscoring that it was no simple matter for these authors to tell the truth of their interior life—even to themselves.

PART I

Oaths of Allegiance

CHAPTER 1

James VI and I and the Autobiographical
Double Bind

Only a few pages into Basilikon Doron, the handbook of advice he wrote for his son Henry, King James VI of Scotland (the future James I of England) gives the prince directions on a number of devotional matters. After treating the proper method of prayer and the appropriate approach to scripture, he abruptly slides into autobiography and then abruptly slides back out: “As for the particular poyntes of Religion,” he writes, “I neede not to d[i]late them; I am no hypocrite, follow your Fathers foote-steppes.”¹ Although declining to get bogged down in specific points of doctrine may be sensible, by thrusting himself into the discussion the king makes the issue unexpectedly personal: it is his religion that readers are invited to contemplate, not the young prince’s or their own. No sooner has James focused attention on himself and his religion, however, than he irritably attempts to back offstage. Rather than telling his readers what his beliefs are, James defensively announces what he is not: a hypocrite. This sudden movement toward self-display that is also a refusal of self-display is characteristic of all the autobiographical moments that punctuate James’s prose. As with this passage, such moments tend to occur when the subject turns to religion, and specifically to religious controversy; James’s impulse toward autobiography is intimately related to his efforts to distinguish and discriminate among Christian denominations.

Although James avoids specifying the “particular poyntes” that Henry should believe or observe, his autobiographical aside introduces James’s own religious history as if it were a legible model for his son to follow. But the king’s life does not provide a legible model, either in this passage or elsewhere. Its illegibility is partly due to James’s narration—which, as in the above lines, tends to withhold as many details as it supplies—but his elliptical narrative approach is itself the product of the politically complicated facts of James’s religious biography. Born and baptized a Catholic in 1566, the same year that Scotland’s Reformation was ratified, James was crowned king just a year later, after his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to resign the crown in part because of her Catholicism. Given into the custody of Protestant noblemen after Mary’s exile and largely raised by his two Presbyterian tutors, the young king was subject to repeated kidnappings and the attempts of different religious factions to gain control over him and his government. James’s religious identity was thus a matter of national significance and national debate from the day he was born. Once he became a contender for the English throne this debate intensified, and the pamphlet literature of the day shows keen interest in the question of James’s “real” religious sympathies: were they Catholic or Presbyterian? And in either case, how could such a person become head of the English Church? In order to gain and retain his hold on power, James’s official beliefs had to shift more than once. This rendered his actual beliefs perpetually obscure, and perpetually the topic of speculation.

If James’s beliefs were obscure to his countrymen during his lifetime, they are surely no clearer to us today. But despite the obscurity of James’s private faith, the basic facts of his religious biography are well established and were almost universally known by his contemporaries. James’s depictions of his religious identity in his prose are therefore not casual or incidental; they would have been written in the knowledge that some portion of his readers would be searching for clues to his beliefs or trying to square what they read with what they already knew of his background. James’s autobiographies, born in a context of religious controversy, are what I have described in my Introduction as confessions of faith: conscious attempts to explain or clarify his beliefs that wind up doing very little of either. James’s confessions of faith show him struggling to get past the problematic parts of his religious biography—the parts that could give rise to charges either of apostasy or of having at some point falsified his religion—but no explanation appears to be adequate. At times James seems reduced to reciting the barest and most basic of Christian tenets, in a kind of ecumenical creed, to prove his orthodoxy and lack of hypocrisy. Much as he may try to provide a coherent narrative for his shifts in religion, there is no narrative that will permit him to appear as a loyal son and worthy heir to the Stuart line while also appearing a reliably Protestant successor to Elizabeth and ruler of England; the two roles are fundamentally in tension. James’s genealogical inheritance made him king of Scotland and a contender for the English throne, but his religious inheritance would have disqualified him from both.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the problem of James’s identity suffuses his public prose. In Basilikon Doron, in the lengthy preface to the second edition of An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance, and in nearly every one of his published speeches before Parliament, James interweaves an astonishing amount of family history and professions of personal belief. His confessions of faith continually present him as a dutiful, reverent son, attacking the enemies of his parents as his own and virtually eliding any difference between himself and his forebears. When it comes to the specifics of his religion, however, James tries to have it both ways, implying that his beliefs are simultaneously Protestant and identical to those of his parents. The tensions between his religious identity and his public role seem unresolvable, and yet his confessions of faith place those tensions on display again and again.

James’s textual self-presentations have been the subject of scholarly interest for thirty years now, from Jonathan Goldberg’s James I and the Politics of Literature to Jane Rickard’s more recent Authorship and Authority.² James’s religious identity has been of less interest, at least to literary scholars, and the relationship between James’s religious identity and his rhetorical self-presentations has been largely ignored.³ This chapter argues that the interplay between James’s political position and his religious identity is precisely what gives rise to the autobiographical self-portraits that some readers have seen as profoundly disingenuous.⁴ As I have already suggested, however, James was in an extraordinary double bind, where he could not tell the truth—whatever that truth might be—without being seen as hypocritical by some portion of his audience. James’s confessions of faith thus reveal a writer caught between the need to declare his religious identity and the seeming impossibility of doing so.

His Mother’s Son

James’s greatest asset and greatest liability as king was his mother, Mary. Thanks to her Tudor and Stuart bloodlines, James was king of Scotland and one of the strongest claimants to the English throne, but as Scotland’s deposed queen and Elizabeth’s first cousin once removed, Mary had a stronger genealogical claim than James to both titles; moreover, Mary’s Catholicism and involvement in plots against Elizabeth caused many Englishmen to regard James himself with suspicion.⁵ In Scotland, James’s mother’s Catholicism was less clearly a liability; it had resulted in her deposition, but it also ensured the loyalty of many powerful Scottish Catholic nobles and at least the provisional interest of strategically useful Catholic princes on the Continent.

Aside from the degree to which Mary helped or hindered James’s ambitions, it is difficult to determine his feelings toward her. After the first year of his life James never again saw his mother, and as a child he appears to have had no contact with her; George Buchanan, one of his two tutors, also took every opportunity to abuse and revile Mary before the young king.⁶ In his early teens, and under the influence of his French relative and first favorite, Esmé Stuart, James did begin a correspondence with his mother, and he appears to have seriously considered Mary’s proposal of an act of “Association” under which she and James would be considered Scotland’s joint sovereigns: James would continue to rule as king, but he would do so, officially, in both of their names.⁷ In his letters to Mary during his mid-teens, James professes his love and duty toward her in terms that, while formal, occasionally give the appearance of real emotion.⁸

Whatever actions James may have wished to have taken toward effecting the Association, it became a moot issue in 1582, when the sixteen-year-old king was kidnapped by the Protestant Ruthven lords, who were displeased with Esmé Stuart’s influence at court. They kept James under a kind of house arrest for nearly a year and forced him to send Stuart into exile. After James’s escape, Mary began urging the Association again, but by then James was less supportive; he does appear to have been continuing to negotiate with Elizabeth for an end to Mary’s imprisonment, but he was also attempting to repair relations with the English queen, who was increasingly suspicious of Mary and displeased at James’s correspondence with Continental Catholic princes and his refusal to turn over English fugitives seeking refuge in Scotland. As James grew more hopeful of a treaty of Anglo-Scottish alliance that would secure his claim to the English throne, he appears to have moved away from his mother and her faction.

In 1586 a Catholic plot against Elizabeth’s life was discovered, and Mary was implicated.⁹ She was put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to death. After her sentencing, James attempted to intercede on her behalf. The letters that James sent to Elizabeth and various intermediaries as a part of these efforts show some of his earliest textual struggles to present himself as a worthy heir to both the Stuart and the Tudor lines: he must express outrage at Mary’s alleged role in the plot against Elizabeth, while nevertheless acting as a loyal son and a monarch in his own right. These are private letters—no doubt written in the knowledge that they would be read by others, but not intended for a large readership—and they do not explicitly discuss James’s own religious identity. Nevertheless, they set up in useful ways the concerns that will occupy us for the remainder of this chapter. In them, we can see the ways that James’s conflicting public and personal roles strain his self-presentations, forcing his language at times into fragmentation and incoherence.

Shortly after Mary’s conviction, James sent a letter to William Keith, one of his agents in London. In it he expresses outrage at the irregular nature of the proceedings against Mary, although without addressing the specifics of the charges against her or attempting to make a claim on Elizabeth based on Mary’s biological relationship to either one of them; instead, he appeals to Elizabeth on the grounds of their equal status and dignity as monarchs. He writes to Keith: “I no way merit at that queen’s hands such hard using as to disdain to hear my overture and reasons. . . . Fail not to let her see this letter. And would God she might see the inward parts of my heart where she should see a great jewel of honesty toward her locked up in a coffer of perplexity, she only having the key which by her good behaviour in this case she may open the same” (Letters 75). James wishes for Elizabeth to understand the sincerity of his sentiments, but he does not seem to have much hope that she can see his true feelings; even if she could “see the inward parts” of his heart, what she would find there would be “a jewel of great honesty . . . locked up in a coffer of perplexity.” Although Elizabeth’s “good behaviour” has the potential to unlock that coffer and thus reveal James’s true sentiments, it is not entirely clear what this good behavior might consist of. (Commuting Mary’s sentence? Securing James’s title to the English throne?) His words also hint at great personal distress: “perplexity” can mean not just confusion, convolution, or puzzlement but also affliction and torment.¹⁰ The “inward parts of [James’s] heart,” or his true feelings, are locked in an anguished body.

Jane Rickard has noted that in their correspondence surrounding Mary’s conviction both Elizabeth and James stress the depths of their feelings while lamenting the inadequacy of language to express those feelings, and she comments that it is to the advantage of each to do so; by this means, neither monarch ever has to say anything directly displeasing to the other and can pretend that any problems stem from the inevitable miscommunications and misunderstandings of not being able to talk face-to-face.¹¹ Although this reading seems generally correct, James’s language is vaguer and more agitated than Elizabeth’s throughout the exchange, and I believe this is not merely because he is in the weaker position politically; rather, this particular crisis, by striking at the core of James’s identity—as son, cousin, heir, and monarch—severely limits the self-presentations he can draw upon, and therefore the arguments that he can make.

As the weeks continued, James wrote to a number of people close to Elizabeth in the apparent hope of influencing her treatment of his mother, but his language continues to be vague and roundabout. To the Earl of Leicester he insists that Elizabeth needs to hear his proposals before acting: “If my overtures and offers be not found reasonable, the Queen may then do as shall seem to her best; but to proceed before she hear it, could come of no wisdom.” He continues, “My extremity if so should be [i.e., if Mary is executed] is greater than I can express” (Letters 76). This reference to his “extremity” again points to James’s pain and agitation, and it is the closest he will ever come to a threat; he seems as unwilling to define what he means by that word as he is to acknowledge that Mary could be executed: “if so should be” is James’s only, periphrastic allusion to the likely outcome of Mary’s conviction for treason.

Elizabeth was apparently displeased by James’s back-channel negotiations, and after she responded negatively to the contents of his letter to William Keith, James wrote to her directly, backtracking from his earlier veiled threats (Letters 79). It is hard to know whether James’s striving to placate Elizabeth was motivated primarily by a sincere concern for his mother’s life or primarily by anxiety over his own reputation in Scotland and his future claim to the English throne.¹² Accordingly, James’s final letter to Elizabeth before Mary’s execution has been variously interpreted.¹³ The editor of James’s letters describes it as “turgid,” while Goldberg elides any mention of this letter or any other attempts on James’s part to persuade Elizabeth against Mary’s execution.¹⁴ However, an attentive reading will reveal how distraught James seems, as well as his continuing difficulty in expressing himself directly:

Madame and dearest sister,

If ye could have known what dive...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on Spelling and Punctuation
• Introduction. Controversy and Autobiography
• Part I. Oaths of Allegiance
• Part II. Personal Credos
• Part III. Loyal Dissents?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments