The Flemish Influence on the Pilgrims: Part 4

A 1606 reprint of Mercator's map of West Flanders, the source of the spark of the Protestant Dutch Revolt

Recap of Earlier “The Flemish Influence on the Pilgrims” Blog Postings

In my earlier postings, Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3, we saw that from the time Flemings stormed across the English Channel as the largest component of William the Conqueror’s Invasion Force in 1066 up to the birth of the first Pilgrims in the late 16th century Flemings in the British Isles came, saw, influenced, and assimilated. The steady influx of Flemings to the British Isles in every subsequent century earned for the Flemish William Caxton’s classification by the 16th century as one of the ‘seven races of England’.

Thus, by 1600, many who spoke the King’s English and went by ‘English’ names were in fact of direct Flemish descent.The Flemish ‘swarming’ over the course of those 500 years prepared the crucible of the English body politic for the smooth reception of Flemish ideas of work and worship. Thus the late 15th century Catholic best-seller of Flemish mysticism from Thomas a Kempis called the Imitation of Christ manifested itself in the willingness of Englishmen to eagerly absorb Protestant tracts. We saw that Martin Luther’s first and most vocal Protestant advocates in the Low Countries were Augustinians from the monasteries at Ghent and Antwerp and that these Flemish friars brought the Good Word back to Flanders. Not only tracts but the English Bible itself was first financed and then prepared on Flemish printing presses at Antwerp and brought over by Flemish printers who trafficked for the benefit of both God and Mammon.

The dominance of Flanders in printing, literacy, and trade combined with this early enthusiasm for reading and disseminating the printed Word of God set the stage for the English Reformation by producing the very first Protestant martyrs – who were also from Antwerp. Flemish Protestants, often acting in league with the Flemish diaspora in England, financed and sheltered the Fathers of the English Reformation, made their work of translating the Bible into English possible and distributed the fruits of their work. In some cases they not only married themselves to the cause of the English Reformation but, as in the case of John Rogers’ wife/Jacob Van Meteren’s niece[i], even married off their daughters to make certain the cause of English reformation prospered.

At the same time, as we have seen (with more to follow), Flemish artisans brought needed skills to economically depressed regions of England[ii]. We have seen a glimpse of that in the earlier transfer of weaving skills in Bristol, Manchester, East Anglia, and select quarters of London proper. Oftentimes these artisans were migrants and moved freely and frequently between Flanders and England. Their skill sets, connections, and willingness to work harder and for lower wages sparked both envy and admiration. The Flemish immigrants’ mix of fervor and frugality meant that some Englishman saw examples to be emulated while others saw “strangers” whose radicalism was worse than treason.

In the last blog, Part 3, we chronicled the instances of Flemish and English Anabaptists being caught and martyred together for their faith from the 1530s to the 1550s. We also saw the issuance and re-issuance of proclamations prohibiting secret prayer meetings and bible-study – often conducted in nocturnal rural settings or private homes – but also the ‘separateness’ of these conventicles from regular attendance at Church of England services.

The belief of these charismatically-led, Anglo-Flemish Anabaptists in the need to separate themselves from ‘corrupt’ nationally- sanctioned parish churches and establish covenants of believers around tenets which included adult baptism while removing ritual acts were templates that English Separatists copied. The fact that English, Scottish and Flemish Protestants were caught and martyred together proves a connection more complete than mere documents can. Ignoring harsh edicts and the threat of confiscation, banishment and burnings, Englishmen were inspired by the sufferings of the Flemish “Strangers” in their midst and later linked the turning point of their conversions (to evangelical Protestantism) to those sad events. Interestingly, fruitful unions between Englishmen and Flemish women from John Rogers (English Bible translator) to John Hooper (conformist Anglican bishop) multiplied partisans on both sides of the debate.

English authorities’ failure to stamp out what they considered treasonous heresy from economically critical Flemish artisans pushed them to radical action: sanctioning the existence of ‘separate’ churches for the “Strangers” in their midst. These separate churches were intended as a solution but in fact they became (as we shall see) both a template of what was possible and a further catalyst for English religious dissenters. That these first “Dutch” churches – in London, Norwich, Sandwich, Colchester, Ipswich, and elsewhere – were predominantly Flemish congregations is proved by recent scholarship. Unfortunately, as we shall see, dissension between Anabaptist and Calvinist Flemings often played out to a broader English and European audience, to the discredit of the Flemings, and to the dismay of their congregations.

We also saw – in print and in text – that the inspiration for so many English Protestants was in fact not only the written Word of God in the Bible but also the ‘best-seller’ of late 16th century England: John Foxe’s Acts and Monumentes. This book leapt across religious schisms in 16th and 17th century England as a source of inspiration. And although the term ‘Anabaptist’ was not an acceptable one in Elizabethan England, the fact is that the majority of the ‘martyrs’ were Anabaptists and a majority of the Anabaptists were Flemings.

The role of Flemish Anabaptism in furthering the English Reformation through the seminal year of 1558 and beyond is undisputed. This Flemish connection with English Separatism has been largely ignored by mainstream historians. Few have had a reason to accent the connection between Anabaptism and Separatism. Fewer still the real tie between the Flemish, the Pilgrims and the Puritans.

Our previous posts, then, brought us up to the end of Queen Mary’s reign. This posting will carry us halfway along the near half-century of Queen Elizabeth’s rule (1558-1603) and to the dawn of the Pilgrim Fathers’ journey to the Netherlands and the New World.

A page from Tyndale's English language Bible, translated at Antwerp and financed and distributed by Jacob Van Metern of Antwerp. Van Meteren was head a family left a huge impact on England, the Netherlands and the U.S.

Elizabeth I’s Restoration of the English Reformation
The year 1558 was a watershed in British history. England lost its last toehold in France (Calais) – a psychological shock since French territory had been ruled from London since the Norman invasion of 1066. England also lost her Catholic Archbishop, her Catholic Queen (Mary), and of course ultimately her tie to the Church of Rome. In exchange the English gained a monarch of exceptional talent, skill, brilliance – and of Flemish ancestry: Queen Elizabeth I[i].

Regardless of her pedigree and intelligence the 25 year old Queen Elizabeth, had critical concerns to address. Uppermost for Elizabeth was the need of the Realm for temporal stability amidst spiritual turmoil. These concerns were of course no different than the preoccupations of her father Henry VIII (1509-1547) her brother Edward (1547-1553), or her sister Mary (1553-1558) for the half-century before. Ever mindful of how the religious debates of the Reformation on the Continent had quickly degenerated into warfare and brigandage, Elizabeth believed that what England needed was a middle road leading to national conformity. Although Elizabeth herself might not have so quipped, she wanted neither Papist nor Puritan to prevail.

An Anabaptist burning in the 1560s. Anabaptists were considered heretics by both Catholics and Protestants.

Under her father Henry VIII (whom Elizabeth deeply admired[ii]) Anabaptist ‘pests’ and ‘radical’ Protestants had been hurried to their Maker. Elizabeth’s sister Mary surpassed their father’s vigor in this. Perhaps as many as 500 Protestants and Anabaptists suffered – and contemporaries underscored that under Mary a “notably high proportion of artisans” were martyred.[iii] In fact, the first Protestants burned under Mary (in 1555) and the last ones burned under Elizabeth (in 1575) were Flemish cloth workers[iv].

While Elizabeth retained many of the trappings of Catholicism in her personal devotion[v], she herself had intentionally chosen close political advisors with unquestionable Protestant credentials[vi]. Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth strove for a middle path between the rituals she inherited from Rome and the firebrand evangelism propagated from Geneva. To reach this accommodation Elizabeth marked a legal path between the two.

Queen Elizabeth I, about 1563 as painted by the Flemish painter Steven Van Der Meulen

First, in The Act of Uniformity, (1559) Elizabeth required every inhabitant of the kingdom to regularly attend Mass (or be subject to fines and worse). All clerics were required to use the Common Book of Prayer as their sole guide to conducting the liturgy. Elizabeth followed the Act of Uniformity with the requirement (The Act of Supremacy -1559) that every candidate for higher clerical office swear a personal oath of allegiance to her. Collectively these acts were known as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. These acts signaled Elizabeth’s desire to subordinate dictates of conscience to the diktat of realpolitik.

On one hand, these Parliamentary Acts earned England, after the Catholic interregnum under Queen Mary’s reign (1553-1558), a spot in the vanguard of the Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, these acts seemed suspect to Calvinists in England and on the Continent. Although they stabilized the English political landscape, radical Protestants – such as Separatists and Puritans – were neither pleased nor praising of Elizabeth’s chosen path.

The Protestant Revolt in the Netherlands started in Flanders and spread outwards to the north and east.

Religious Dissent in Flanders 1558-1570s
In Flanders and the Netherlands as a whole, several developments – religious, political, military, and economic – influenced Elizabethan England’s course. The most visible development was the growth of militant Protestant activism – now known as Calvinism – in Flanders. Calvin’s doctrines took root among many middle-class and aristrocratic Flemings. For the first half of the 16th century religious radicals were primarily Lutherans and Anabaptists. Put another way, “Until the 1550s the Anabaptists had virtually no rivals among the religious dissidents in Flanders.”[vii]


Margaret of Parma, Regent for the Netherlands, sister of Charles V and aunt of Phillip II

Pieter Titelman, the Chief of the Inquisition in the Netherlands wrote to the Regent, Margaret of Parma, on November 14, 1561 that:

“Flanders was completely infected by Menno’s teachings. During his trips he had discovered that at Ypres, Poperinge, Meenen, Armentieres, Hondschoote, and Antwerp extensive congregations were enjoying an unheard-of prosperity.”[viii] Pieter Titelman, writing further to the Regent, about the presence of Anabaptists in the Westkwartier, exclaimed: “As for Hondschoote, there is no number [of the Anabaptists] to be given; it is a bottomless abyss.”[ix]

Margaret of Parma [who rejected suggestions to more actively persecute Anabaptists], writing to William the Silent, Prince of Orange [who strongly urged her to exterminate them] in a letter dated July 25, 1566: “I have been warned that in a certain house in the new town, opposite the house of the Oisterlins in Antwerp, there are frequently meetings of the Anabaptists, early in the morning, sometimes three or four hundred persons, who meet in several shifts, not all appearing at the same time, thus not showing how many they are, since they know very well they are disliked by all other sects.”[x]

The day-by-day, town-by-town spread of the Beeldenstorm from Flanders to Brabant and outward.

This was one aspect of the new dynamic: the arrival of a new, militant Protestantism meant that Anabaptists found themselves pursued not only by Roman Catholic authorities but also ‘outed’ and hated by Calvin’s disciples. By the mid 1560s Calvinists dominated the elites of most Flemish cities and towns. Anabaptists (now known more regularly as Mennonites) continued to be found primarily among the artisans and tradesmen.

Among those baptized ‘Calvinist’ the crystallization of theology was inconsistently precise, however. Even such seemingly stalwart upholders of the Dutch Reformed Church (read: Calvinist) as the minister of the ‘Dutch’ Church at Austin Friars in London, Adriaen Cornelis Van Haemstaede[xi] were in sympathy with Anabaptists[xii] The one commonality among all those who broke with Rome was a strong antipathy for the form and rituals of Catholicism.

The Beeldenstorm - 'Votive Image Smashing' - as depicted in a contemporary painting.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that the shift to a more aggressive, reformed Protestantism reached its apogee in the late 1560s with the outbreak in Flanders of a frenzy of iconoclasm, which in Dutch is referred to as the Beeldenstorm. The Beeldenstorm manifested itself in the smashing of religious statuary, the destruction of Catholic relics, and the sacking of monasteries. It began in the Flemish town of Steenvoorde and quickly spread throughout the Netherlands. The real smashing of statuary shattered the artificial calm between the Catholic authorities of Flanders and the radicalized populace. The shock felt by spiritual and temporal authorities prompted a vigorous military response by the Spanish.

That military response to the image-breaking begun in Flanders opened the first stages of what is called (in English) the “Dutch Revolt”. The military struggle that ensued lasted for eighty years; hence, the name in Dutch, of De Tachtig Jarige Oorlog – The Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648). The outbreak of war sent tens of thousands of refugees away from the contested zone, primarily to what we today call the Netherlands, Germany, and of course England.

Phillip II, sovereign of Flanders, ruler of the largest empire the world had seen - inherited from his Flemish-born father, Charles V, and whose obstinacy lead to the declaration of a Republic in the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

From the 1560s through the 1580s, the war against King Philip II of Spain went poorly for the Dutch-speakers in the Low Countries. Since a majority of the dissent, a majority of the dissenters, and a large percentage of the conflict occurred in Flanders and Brabant, this is where the bulk of the refugees came from. The strongest waves of Flemish emigration then precisely followed the Duke of Alva’s repression (1567) to the Fall of Antwerp (1585).

Other ‘push factors’ – such as poverty, poor economic conditions, famine and persecution – forced Flemish refugees, primarily Protestants but also including some Catholics, to flee their homeland. They fled from those areas overrun by the Spanish and Walloon forces to North Sea coastal areas considered part of the ‘liberated provinces’ under the control of ‘rebel’ forces. These areas were primarily coastal, and extended from Ostende to Amsterdam, what we call modern West Flanders, Zeeland and Holland. From there most caught the first skiff or sail heading toward refugee communities in southeastern England.

London map by Nicolas De Fer about 1702; the Flemish Protestants congregated in Southwark, pictured above.

Civil unrest is hardly conducive to trade. When trade suffers government coffers suffer too. As Flanders was torn asunder England’s commerce with Flanders suffered too. The disruption of value-added markets for unfinished English wool exports was critical to the stability of the kingdom. Queen Elizabeth, conscious of these factors, offered enticements for skilled laborers to resettle in pockets of economically depressed East Anglia. The ‘pull factors’ of stability, economic incentives, and (after the first waves) the active encouragement of established Flemish immigrants, contributed to a further wave of ‘swarming’ during the twenty-year period 1566 to 1586.

A Flemish house in Norwich, the largest Dutch-speaking community outside of London at this time.

Stranger Churches As The Example of Separatism

At a political abstract, welcoming immigrant skilled craftsmen who are also co-religionists is effortless. But of course the reality of accepting large numbers of radicalized foreigners creates its own unforeseen challenges. These include assimilation and separation. Neither is error free and both risk social disruption.

The English learned this first hand. As a leading London merchant wrote in 1575:
“After our hartye commendacons, whereas sondrye straungers borne in the Lowe countries, of late examined befor us the Quenis Majesties commissioners in their behalfe appointed, do maynteyne the most horrible & dampnable error of the anabaptistes, and in the same detestable erroure, manye of them do willfullye & obstinatelye continue.”[xiii]

The Dutch Church placard at Austin Friars today. Founded by Flemings, this is the oldest Dutch-language church in the world. Services have been conducted here almost continuously since 1550.

Recall that Edward VI’s solution had been to permit the establishment of the Stranger Churches beginning in 1550. His hope was that segregating as much as possible the English from the influence of foreign theology and worship practices would nip the spread of heresy (defined here as anything other than the officially sanctioned orthodoxy). Ironically, the establishment of these very visible churches had just the opposite effect. As another church historian concludes, “In 1550…England’s capital was supplied with a working model of a reformed congregation as a pointer.”[xiv]

The 'Dutch' Church at Austin Friars as it appeared 200 hundred years ago. The current church building is a concrete edifice erected after Nazi bombs destroyed the above pictured structure during World War II.

These “Stranger” churches were established along linguistic lines: Dutch, French, and Italian. The largest of these by far was the “Dutch” Church (which was also viewed as the ‘senior’ church in issues of doctrine). The ‘Dutch’ Church at Austin Friars was set up as an unum corpus corporatum et politicum. They were granted a waiver from conforming (to Church of England rules for worship) specifically with the 1549 Act of Uniformity. This meant that they were truly independent in terms of both hierarchy and ecclesiastic matters of liturgy.[xv]

The overwhelming majority of the members of the Dutch Church were, as we have seen, Dutch speakers from the Southern Netherlands – what we today call Flanders.[xvi] And, in fact, Flemings were found not only in the congregations of the so-called Walloon and French churches but, as one historian has documented, the Flemish even occupied senior positions as Elders and Ministers in the French and Italian churches[xvii].

The St. Martin's at Colchester still stands today although like many such sites the Dutch language is gone.

Neither Edward nor his councilors counted on the law of unintended consequences to kick in. “Historians both of Puritanism and of the English Reformation rightly point to the importance of the example of the foreign refugee churches in London during the reign of Edward VI as providing a valuable precedent, both for the London congregation under Mary and for later Separatist developments.” [xviii] This example chartered clandestine congregations not unlike the first conventicles of Pilgrims. As we shall see there was plenty of channels for cross-fertilization.

Protestants leaving the Flemish coast for a better life, as romantically depicted in this 19th century print.

Flemish Refugees Bring Foreign Crafts and Foreign Ideas

The English monarchs and their counselors when they established the ‘Dutch’ Church in 1550 could not have anticipated great numbers of Flemish refugees in England. But events overtook them.
Englishmen living near the Flemish colonies of Norwich, Colchester, Sandwich, and Yarmouth, “’were the first that made separation from the reformed Church of England.’”[xix] Chief among the reasons was the simple fact that the native and immigrant lived in close proximity and lived, worked and worshipped in the same venues. In Norwich, England’s second largest city and where the Flemings comprised anywhere between 30% and 50% of the total population between 1570 and 1620, the same church, St. Andrews, served both the Dutch-speakers and Separatist preachers like Robert Browne (spiritual father of Separatism) and the Pilgrim Fathers’ own pastor, John Robinson[xx]. It is hardly a coincidence then that the radicalized thought of these Flemish immigrants should flower in the faith of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Flemings and Englishmen intermarried (as can be seen from the records of the Pilgrims themselves) and native English ministers learned Dutch to assume positions in the Dutch Church.[xxi] So it should be little surprise that among seven Separatists discovered and arrested as a group in 1550, were 6 Englishmen and at least one with a Flemish-sounding surname. The Anglo-Flemish chronicler John Strype, historians’ main source for this information, believed these first Separatists (of 1550) were Anabaptists.[xxii]

Another 'Dutch' home at King's St in Sandwich built by Flemish Protestants and still used today

In 1560 the Spanish ambassador estimated that there were 10,000 refugees from Flanders. By 1562 he estimated that there were more than 30,000 refugees from Flanders. After 1567 the numbers increased even more. Some historians believe that the total number of refugees from Flanders exceeded 100,000 in the second half of the 16th century. While these numbers even today would cause dislocations. In a near-medieval country of only 3 million souls, 100,000 immigrants quickly overwhelmed most charitable organizations.

“Those [Flemish Protestants] in the Netherlands [were] persecuted intolerably by the Duke D’Alva, that breathed out nothing but blood and slaughter. Great numbers therefore of them from all parts daily fled over hither into the queen’s dominions, for the safety of their lives, and liberty of their consciences; and had hospitable entertainment and harbour for God’s sake and the gospel’s; being allowed to dwell peaceably, and follow their callings without molestation, in Norwich, Colchester, Sandwich, Canterbury, Maidstone, Southampton, London, and Southwark, and elsewhere.”[xxiii]

In exchange for refuge, the English expected a technology transfer. Recall that before the widespread adoption of cotton as a raw material, the hottest selling cloths throughout late 16th century Europe were Flemish ‘says and bays’. These textiles blended silks and wools into a light, durable and comfortable cloth. Once settled in Norwich, Colchester, Ipswich, Sandwich, Yarmouth and other East Anglian towns, the Flemish weavers were required to take on English apprentices. “The direct influence of these refugees on the English people was seen in this that each foreign workman, was compelled by law to take and train one English apprentice. This law sent probably fifty thousand English boys and young men to school, not only in industry, but in republican ideas and liberal notions.”

The Flemish refugees then, greatly influenced their English hosts. Despite official and social barriers, they worked alongside, got married to, and worshipped at the same places as their English neighbors. It would be difficult for a 21st century government to inhibit the spread of ideas (one need only think of China and the internet). How much more difficult then in an early modern society? Elizabethan England, much less able than modern societies to confront the vast dislocation arising from a heavy influx of foreign refugees, was completely unable to prevent an impact from these Flemish Protestants on its own people.

The Duke of Alva lead Phillip II's Spanish soldiers in the Netherlands and forced the Flemish Protestants out.

As one well-respected historian summarized:

"When Alva began his rule in the Netherlands, in 1567, [the Flemish] exodus to England opened again (some had taken refuge in England during the persecutions under Charles V), and on a large scale. They were industrious and moral, and as good mechanics [=artisans] would have been welcomed by the government. But, although received and given shelter, they excited the indignation of the English prelates by their heretical doctrines, insisting on the necessity of adult baptism, and declaring that the Saviour died for the redemption of all mankind, and not for that of a select few. Two [of 21] of them, as we have already seen, were for these heresies burned at the stake so late as 1575, by order of the queen [Queen Elizabeth I]. But apart from these heresies, they proclaimed another doctrine still more monstrous in the eyes of a monarch like Elizabeth. Turning for their religion to the Sermon on the Mount, they taught that all oaths, courts of justice, and officers of magistracy were unchristian, and, above all, that the civil government had no concern with religious matters. Here, for the first time, the doctrine of a separation between Church and State was proclaimed on British soil."[xxiv]

Future postings will make the direct connection between the Flemish immigrants and the English Puritans to America, and the seed they planted for the establishment of the United States of America.


Endnotes
[i] For Elizabeth’s fluency in Flemish please see http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/elizabeth/section1.html . On Van Meteren, a Father of Flemish America, please see a future posting to this blog.
[ii] There is an entire literature around the Flemings in England and their influence on English religious practices, economic development and political ship of state. Later postings will underscore the direct connections. A starting bibliography would include: Marcel Backhouse, The Flemish and Walloon Communities at Sandwich During the Reign of ElizabethI (1561-1603), (Brussel: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Leteren an Schone Kunsten, 1985); Nigel Goose and Lien Luu, eds., Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Ole Peter Grell, Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England, (Brookfield: Scolar Press, 1996); Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); and Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton, eds., From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America, 1550-1750, (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), esp. pp: 1-230; 353-412.
[iii] B.R. White, The English Separatist Tradition: From The Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers, (Oxford: University Press, 1971), p.3
[iv] Twenty-one Flemish Anabaptists were betrayed on Easter Sunday, subject to torture and burned for their beliefs at Smithfield in 1575. See http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/jan_pietersz_wagenmaker_d._1575 for details in English. Note that many of these early martyrs came from Gent.
[v] See Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England, (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp.152-155. See also, David Starkey, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), pp. 295-299 for Elizabeth’s retention of not only Roman Catholic vestments and practices but also other Roman Catholic paraphernalia in her household as late as 1600. See also Leo Frank Solt, Church and State in Early Modern England, 1509-1640, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), for background.
[vi] These key advisors included William Cecil, Lord Burghley and Matthew Parker, who became the new Archbishop of Canterbury. But she also retained several advisors from her Catholic sister Mary’s reign as well.
[vii] Marcel Backhouse, The Flemish and Walloon Communities, op.cit., p. 63
[viii] A.L.E. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530-1650: A Century of Struggle, (Scottdale: Mennonite Publishing, 1961), p.55
[ix] ibid, p.56
[x] ibid, p.62, n.96
[xi] "Haemstede, Adriaen Cornelis van (1525-1562) Adriaen Cornelis van Haemstede, of noble lineage, attended the University of Louvain, where he published in 1552 Tabulae totius juris canonici, . . . Livino Bloxenio á Burgh dicatae (copy in the State Library at Munich). He apparently joined the Reformed Church soon after. From Emden he was sent to Antwerp at the urgent request of the Reformed Church (dated 17 December 1555), and preached there in homes and out-of-doors. From autumn 1557 to February 1559 he spent a second period in Antwerp, full of danger and difficulty.
In this period he wrote his chief work, the martyrbook, De Gheschiedenisse ende den doodt der vromen Martelaren, the om het ghetuyghenisse des Evangeliums haer bloedt ghestort hebben, van de tyden Christi af, tot ten fare M.D.LIX toe, byeen vergadert op het kortste, Door Adrianum Corn. Haemstedium. An. 1559 den 18. Martii. The book is of great value, with its carefully collected and highly reliable reports, and was reprinted at Dordrecht 1657, Brielle 1658, Dordrecht 1659, Amsterdam 1671, Doesburg 1870-1871, Doesburg 1883. His influence on Tieleman van Braght's Martyrs' Mirror is unmistakable.
In his report on Anthonie Verdickt, who died in Brussels 12 January 1559, there was in the edition of 1559 (p. 449) a statement of Verdickt's very liberal view on early or late baptism, which has been deleted from all subsequent editions. Sharpened denominational sensitivity is also shown by the fact that because of Haemstede's mild judgment of the Anabaptists his name has been omitted from all the editions of his book since 1566 (Dresselhuis, 67; Sepp, 12). Worthy of note is also Haemstede's Confession of Faith for the Reformed in Aachen (1559) (Goeters, Theologische Arbeiten, 82 and 91). The following Anabaptist martyrs are found in Haemstede's martyrbook: Wendelmoet Claesd., Anneken vanden Hove, Sybrand Jansz, Janneken de Jonckheere, and Laurens Schoenmaker.
Fleeing from Antwerp, Haemstede led 13 merchant families to Aachen in February 1559 (not 1558; see Goeters, 55 ff.; 1907, 27), obtained permission to let them enter, preached to the citizens, had dealings with the Anabaptists, and preached in Jülich (Redlich, II, 375-381).
When Elizabeth assumed the British throne he sought refuge there for his fellow believers. In May 1559 Haemstede was in London, and was given the right to preach to his countrymen in Christ Church or St. Margaret's. In a letter to Palatine Elector Frederick III (12 September 1559) he pleaded for intervention in behalf of the Reformed in Aachen and sent a very instructive confession of faith for them (Nederland Archief, 1907, 46 ff.; Theologische Arbeiten, 1906, 85 ff.). But he soon became involved in a serious dispute on account of his mild judgment of the Anabaptists. On 3 July 1560 the church council of the greatly increased congregation charged Haemstede with offering the hand of brotherhood to several Anabaptists, though they rejected him; on the question of the incarnation he confessed his ignorance and declared that he would not for that reason reject the Anabaptists. Indeed, he had to intercede for them to the magistrate, to the bishop in London, whom the queen had appointed as supervisor of foreign groups, as well as to the Low German Reformed Church. They did not teach, as the Münsterites had, community of goods or of women; he would not judge them harshly. An anonymous petition was actually presented to the bishop of London, Edmund Grindal, to tolerate several who were unable to unite with the Reformed group. On 4 September the bishop sent it to Petrus de Loenus and Jan Utenhove for their opinion (Strype, Grindal, 62 f.). Haemstede admitted that he had promised to speak for them, not because he sanctioned their doctrine of the incarnation, but because he hoped they would see the light; at any rate, they were weaker members of Christ. They replied with the reproof that to underestimate error is to confuse the believers, strengthen the opposition, and make the church suspect in England and elsewhere. Instead of making the confession of guilt required of him, Haemstede declared that persons who acknowledge Christ as priest and intermediary, desire the Holy Spirit in order to work righteousness, are founded upon Christ, the only foundation. Hence he hoped for the best for them as for all his dear brethren. Even if they built on this foundation with wood, hay, straw, or stubble, they could partake of salvation. Their great ignorance did not exclude them from salvation. The truth should be presented to them in friendliness, but to judge and condemn them as ungodly was of the flesh and forbidden. Galatians 5; Matthew 7. This judgment refers not to all, but to the good among the Anabaptists, who err in simplicity (Kerkeraadsprotokollen, 448). The council replied that then no church discipline could be exercised toward those who joined the Anabaptists. Whoever rejected the incarnation, infant baptism, the oath, and government, refused to join the church, could not possibly be considered a brother. Haemstede agreed with a document of this nature, but added: the question of the method of incarnation was only a minor point in the article that the Son of God truly appeared in the flesh. To separate on this point would be to cast dice for the garment and to neglect the Crucified, or to quarrel about the color of the garment.
On 5 August 1560, Haemstede was suspended from the office of preaching. He replied, "Do these things, it is well, I thank you; this is what I seek. Christ ought always to suffer at the hands of the scribes and Pharisees; his ministers suffer likewise. But I must preach the Gospel; the Lord will provide the place for me" (Kerkeraadsprotokollen, 455).
In further negotiations before Bishop Grindal on September 16 Haemstede signed a correct confession of the incarnation, but refused to make a confession of guilt, and was therefore excommunicated on 19 November 1560, and expelled from the country. His adherents long maintained that he had been unjustly sentenced, and were themselves excommunicated. Among them were such distinguished men as Acontius, the historian Emanuel von Meteren, Antonius Corranus, and Cassiodorus de Reyna.
Haemstede went to Holland, where he worked in The Hague, East Friesland, and later in Groningen. There is also record of a trip to Kleve (121). In Antwerp a document in his defense was circulated (170). Also in the church council of Emden opinion was in his favor, and they wrote to the London church and to Grindal to have the case reopened. But when Haemstede appeared in London on 19 July 1562 to preach, and looked up his followers, he was arrested on 22 July. Grindal rejected as inadequate and ambiguous the confession of guilt presented by Haemstede and presented to Haemstede a formula of recantation (Strype, Grindal, 469 f.), in vain. An edict of the Privy Council to the church commissioners, 19 August 1562, ordered him to leave England within 15 days or forfeit his life. He died in Friesland in that year. The influence of Haemstede's attitude toward the Anabaptists continued not only in England. In Holland and East Friesland voices were heard in their defense. A very similar case soon after Ulis is that of the Walloon preacher, Adrian Gorinus."
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, pp. 620-621. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website. ©1996-2009 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.
Goeters, W. G. "Haemstede, Adriaen Cornelis van (1525-1562)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1956. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 27 July 2009

[xii] Adriaen Van Haemstaede in fact lost his position as the head of the Dutch Church in 1571 for opposing the burning of Flemish Anabaptists in England. As a result, the Antwerp native Emmanuel Van Meteren, the leading ‘Dutch’ representative in London and the son of the financier of the first English Bibles (Jacob Van Meteren) left the Flemish/Dutch Church and became a communicant at the Italian and French (protestant) Churches. Given his stature in the community it is likely that he carried with him other Flemings.
[xiii] Stephen S. Slaughter, “The Dutch Church in Norwich”, April 21, 1933, p.92 from an edict dated June 7, 1575 from London, quoted in Book of Orders for Strangers, folio 81d, p. 183
[xiv] B.R. White, The English Separatist Tradition, op.cit., pp.4-5
[xv] Timothy George, John Robinson and the English Separatist Tradition, (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1982), p.13.
[xvi] For example, not only was the origin of the Deacons and Elders overwhelmingly from Flanders (The Top Five origins for Deacons & Elders were Antwerp, Gent, Brugge, Roeselare, Kortrijk) but the congregation too was overwhelmingly Flemish (The Top Five places of origin for brides and grooms were Antwerp, Gent, Brussel, Brugge, and Oudenaarde). See: Raymond Fagel, “Immigrant Roots: The Geographical Origins of Newcomers from the Low Countries in Tudor England”, in Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, op.cit., p. 48, Table 2.3 “Geographical Origins of Elders and Deacons of the Dutch Church, 1567-1585” and also p. 49, Table 2.7 “Geographical Origins of Deacons and Elders, Brides and Grooms in the Dutch Church, 1571-1585 – Top Six Places”. Incidentally, The Flemish even heavily contributed to the leadership of the French and Italian Protestant churches. Antwerp, Gent, Brugge were in the Top 5 of place of origin for the Italian Church – See Ibid, p. 48, Table 2.5 “Geographical Origins of Elders and Deacons of the Italian Church, 1568-1591”. Note also that the first place of origin for ministers for the French church was Antwerp. See Ibid, p. 48, Table 2.4 “Geographical Origins of Elders and Deacons of the French Church, 1567-1585”.
[xvii]
[xviii] B.R. White, The English Separatist Tradition, op.cit., p.2
[xix] Timothy George, John Robinson, op.cit., p. 10; quoting John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, (Oxford, 1822), vol.2, pp.70-71.
[xx] Ernest A. Kent, “Notes on the Blackfriars’ Hall or Dutch Church, Norwich”, undated book excerpt pp. 86-108. pp.98-99
[xxi] ibid.
[xxii] Timothy George, John Robinson, op.cit., p. 11; quoting John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, (Oxford, 1822), vol.2, pp.70-71.
[xxiii] John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and Other Various Occurences in the Church of England, During Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign: Together with an Appendix of Original Papers of State, Records, and Letters, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), p. 269
[xxiv] Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America : an Introduction to American History, (New York: Harper, 1892), vol II, pp. 178-179

Copyright 2009 by David Baeckelandt - All rights Reserved

The Flemish Influence on the Pilgrims - Part 3

Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Brueghel ca 1566-1567. According to some, the Duke of Alva's red-cloaked cavalry are Walloons.

Recap of Previous “Flemish Influence on the Pilgrims” Blogs (Parts 1&2)
In my earlier blogs, Part 1 & Part 2, we saw that from the time Flemings stormed across the English Channel as the largest component of William the Conqueror’s Invasion Force in 1066 up to the birth of the first Pilgrims in the late 16th century Flemings in the British Isles came, saw, influenced, and assimilated. The steady influx of Flemings to the British Isles in every subsequent century earned the Flemish William Caxton’s classification by the 16th century as one of the ‘seven races of England’. Thus, by 1600, many who spoke the King’s English and went by ‘English’ names were in fact of direct Flemish descent.

The Flemish ‘swarming’ prepared the crucible of the English body politic for the smooth reception of Flemish ideas of work and worship. Thus the late 15th century Catholic best-seller of Flemish mysticism from Thomas a Kempis called the Imitation of Christ manifested itself in the willingness Englishmen to eagerly absorb Protestant tracts prepared on Flemish printing presses at Antwerp and brought over by Flemish printers who trafficked for the benefit of both God and Mammon. We saw that Martin Luther’s first and most vocal Protestant advocates in the Low Countries were Augustinians from the monasteries at Ghent and Antwerp and that these Flemish friars brought the Good Word back to Flanders.

The dominance of Flanders in printing, literacy, and trade combined with this early enthusiasm for the reading and disseminating the printed Word of God set the stage for the English Reformation by producing the very first Protestant martyrs – who were also from Antwerp. Flemish Protestants, often acting in league with the Flemish diaspora in England, financed and sheltered the Fathers of the English Reformation, made their work of translating the Bible into English possible and distributed the fruits of their work. In some cases they not only married themselves to the cause of the English Reformation but, as in the case of John Rogers’ wife/Jacob Van Meteren’s niece[i], even married off their daughters to make certain the cause of English reformation prospered.

At the same time, as we have seen (with more to follow), Flemish artisans brought needed skills to economically depressed regions of England[ii]. We have seen a glimpse of that in the earlier transfer of weaving skills in Bristol, Manchester, East Anglia, and select quarters of London proper. Oftentimes these artisans were migrants and moved freely and frequently between Flanders and England. Their skill sets, connections, and willingness to work harder and for lower wages sparked both envy and admiration. The Flemish immigrants’ mix of fervor and frugality meant that some Englishman saw examples to be emulated while others saw “strangers” whose radicalism was worse than treason.

Our previous blogs, then, brought us up roughly through the first third of the 16th century. This posting will trace one important thread to understand the Flemish influence on the “Father Pilgrims”: the role of Flemish Anabaptism in furthering the English Reformation. A subsequent post, shortly to follow, will show how Flemish Anabaptists and Calvinists seeded English Separatist thought and habits of the Pilgrims.

Family Tree of Protestant Denominations showing the connection of Anabaptism to Puritans, Separatists, Baptists and Congregationalists






Anabaptism – Historical Context and First Spread in Flanders
Anabaptism simply defined is the belief that one must be an adult to become a Christian through baptism since a Christian requires a commitment to live the life that an infant cannot consciously make. Anabaptism arose as a result of Martin Luther’s admonitions to read the Bible and spread directly on the tail of the spread of the printed vernacular Bible. Because baptism was only possible, then, as an adult, they were deridingly called “re-baptizers” or, in the Greek, ‘Anabaptists’.

Anabaptist belief evolved but in the 16th century was often distilled down to a few key tenets. These included a belief in the Bible as the sole source of divine guidance, a belief that only adults could make the decision for themselves to be baptized, and a belief that oaths should not be made[iii], nor higher authorities recognized (since only God is recognized as an authority over men). As the movement spread and splinter sects formed, a communalism of goods as well as an expectation of the imminent end of the world also influenced their thinking and became hallmarks of the sect[iv].

Early examples of Anabaptists might – surprisingly – include English Protestant icons like William Tyndale, whom, as we saw earlier, was not only the Father of the English vernacular Bible but whose mission was critically aided and abetted by Flemish Protestants in Flanders and England[v]. Thomas More and other high English churchmen often labeled Tyndale an Anabaptist[vi]. This may have been more of a slur than an honest classification, but it illustrates the connection between access to Christian scriptures in the vernacular, the territory of Flanders[vii], and the fear ecclesiastic authorities had of that volatile mix.

Many students of church history are aware that Anabaptism’s direct heirs today are the Mennonite and Amish denominations (some of whom do not consider themselves “Protestant”[viii]). However few are aware that in fact the Mennonite/Amish congregations have a strong strain of Flemish DNA. Many more still are unaware that the Anabaptists were the first to truly advocate something that we believe is a hallmark of Western democracy: separation of church and state. Historian Jonathan I. Israel pointed out that, “only the Anabaptists, [of the Low Countries] in their fervour, separated themselves from the rest of the community, refusing to attend church and forming their own prayer-gatherings in defiance of the government.”[ix].

Within Anabaptism a direct line of theological inheritance can be traced from the founder of the Pilgrims’ separatist beliefs, Robert Browne, to the Flemish Anabaptists. From the Brownist Separatist tradition to the birth of the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist mainline Protestant denominations and their spread to the New World is a direct line. And of course, at many points along the way, the Flemish played a role.

Rabid Revolutionaries?
The first Flemish Protestants found their authority in the pages of the Bible – as Thomas a Kempis had softly suggested in the late 15th century and as Luther loudly echoed in the first decades of the 16th century. Since the very first printed tracts of Luther’s preachings were disseminated outward from Flanders, the Flemish in Antwerp had looked to the written word – often as explained by street preachers - to guide their discernment of God’s Will.

Old Testament prophets translated into German by Anabaptists in 1528

As Bibles were printed, Flemish Protestants noticed glaring differences between their interpretation of God’s Word and the centuries-old Catholic traditions. As evolution morphed to revolution, ritual-bound Catholics remade themselves as Christians who rejected all authority, civil and ecclesiastical, with the exception of their Bible (and those who professed to interpret it for them). Under Catholic tradition the priest interceded for man with God; under the Anabaptists (and, indeed, many Reformation Protestants), man no longer needed priests since now all Christians were called to be members of the priesthood.

Thomas Muntzer, Anabaptist Co-Founder and Radical Reformer

Anabaptists attempted to hasten these Biblically-inspired changes in various ways. To spread the Good Word, early Anabaptist leaders deviated in unexpected directions. One of the founders of the Anabaptist movement, Thomas Muntzer, in fact became convinced of the imminent end of the world. He wished to forward its ultimate overturn of the existing social order when he assumed leadership of rebel farmers in the Peasants War (1525). Except for those who died in the conflict, the world did not come to an end of course but the world did take notice of not only the death toll (over 100,000 killed) but also the revolt’s radical ideas of social equality, communal ownership of goods, and rule by a Bible-based theocracy. Unfortunately for the Flemish Anabaptists, the turmoil and the radicalism of Muntzer’s preaching came to define the external image of Anabaptists as rabid revolutionaries.

Panoramic view of the Battle of Falkenhausen

If Muntzer in 1525 suggested to many that Anabaptism was dangerous, Munster, a German city taken and run my self-proclaimed apocalyptic Anabaptists (1534-1535) confirmed it. In the wake of Muntzer’s beheading after the Battle of Falkenhausen, (May, 1525), early Anabaptist leaders, like Melchior Hofmans, a furrier by trade, fled, following the trade routes to the Netherlands. His fiery speeches inspired young, migrant cloth workers like Jan Beuckelzn of Leiden to believe that the end of the world was near.

Jan van Leiden, chiliastic leader of the radical Anabaptists at Munster and the poster boy for radical, anarchist excesses.

Jan van Leiden, as he was more commonly known, had sought migrant work in Flanders and England in the early 1530s, and there came under the influence of first the mild Menno Simons (spiritual father of Mennonites). Still later he fell under the sway of the more radical Anabaptists Melchior Hofmans, while the more pacifist brand of Anabaptists stayed loyal to Menno Simons and David Joris of Bruges. Believing that a “New Jerusalem” was not only at hand but actually to be formed at Munster, he and others journeyed there and put in place a vision of the future that victims of Stalin’s Soviet Union would find familiar.

The town of Munster, Westphalia, at the time that the Anabaptists under Jan van Leyden took control. Afterwards the leaders were hung in cages from St. Lamberts church. Those cages, empty now, still hang from the church tower today.

This Anabaptist city-state, before being subdued, degenerated into revolutionary bloodlust, communist excesses, and sexual debauchery. Catholic and Protestant princes found common cause to wipe out the Anabaptists at Munster. By late 1535, following an 18-month reign, the ‘New Jerusalem’ lay in smoldering ruins. Local princes marshaled every resource to root out any last vestiges of Anabaptist philosophy in German borderlands and warned others of the Munster revolt[x]. Temporal rulers outside Germany receiving the news, including Henry VIII, came to the conclusion that they must prevent Anabaptism spreading at all costs. For them the first step to eradicating Anabaptists was prohibiting small groups of artisans to meet in secret for Bible study.

Anabaptism – First Spread in Flanders
Although the first complete Bible in Dutch did not roll off the presses until 1526, Anabaptism spread early and quickly through Flanders. “Early in March 1524 a conventicler was surprised at Antwerp and those present were summoned by the magistrates. Virtually all of them were artisans: a cooper, painters, shearmen, a woodcarver, a cutler-cum-silversmith, girdlers, dyers, a pointmaker, a satinworker, grocers, a joiner, a shoemaker, tinkers, tailors…, a saddler, smiths, labourers, a silk dyer, a locksmith, a carter, and a dealer in earthenware.”[xi]

Those with the least to lose were the quickest to believe. Conversely, the upper classes tended to look down on this profession as unworthy of their social standing. So much so that Anabaptism was sometimes labeled a lower class phenomenon by Reformist wings of Protestants and Catholics alike. “In 1525 one inquisitor angrily asked whether scriptural interpretation should be left to ‘furriers and weavers’”.[xii] Since many of the first converts to the beliefs of Anabaptism were local clergy, oftentimes they lead cells of believers. “Nicholas Jansz. van der Elst, an erstwhile parish priest in Antwerp, used to lead a circle in Brussels in 1527, composed largely of artists and tapestry weavers, meeting in private houses.[xiii]

Melchior Hofmans, Anabaptist preacher, who fled after the Peasant War to the Netherlands, and whose disciples baptized Menno Simons.

This is not to imply that the lower classes were illiterate. In fact visitors to Flanders and Brabant in the 16th century and even earlier were amazed at the widespread literacy. Francesco Guicciardini, considered the Father of Modern History and “writing in 1567, remarked that most of the ordinary people in the southern provinces [=Flanders, Brabant, etc.], including the farmers, were literate”.[xiv]

But even if they had been illiterate, there were many other informal channels to convey the Good Word. Sometimes this was through informal gatherings part of the tradition in Flanders from their neighbors, guild members and traveling merchants. “In the villages around Ghent evangelicals in the early 1530s used to withdraw to the tavern to discuss the gospel of the day after having attended mass”.[xv]

By the end of the 1530s, then, the term “Anabaptist”, in the minds of many magistrates, came to mean almost any Protestant who subscribed to neither the state-sponsored churches of northern Europe (which generally considered themselves part of a universal “Reformed” Christian church) nor the overwhelmingly German confession of Lutherans, and met in secret cells, separate from the community.

Conventicle of believers meeting secretly at night to hear a forbidden preacher in 16th century England.

Dissenters Temporal and Ecclesiastic
As hinted above, the term ‘Anabaptist’ acquired an especially sinister connotation as a result of the Peasants’ War and Munster Revolt. To further heighten suspicion, Anabaptists also generally refused to take oaths of loyalty, serve as magistrates, and recognize temporal authority. Monarchs, regardless of whether Catholic or Protestant, viewed torture not toleration, as the only option in addressing this dissent.

Anabaptists being burned, Antwerp, 1567

Sixteenth-century rulers in any case considered themselves the final arbiter of not only civil but also ecclesiastical authority. Such an idealogy then presented a threat not only to the ecclesiastical order but also an ipso facto challenge to the throne above it. As English Protestant Nicholas Lesse wrote in 1550:

“Papists, although they were right nought for the soul, yet were they good and profitable for the body for civil commonwealths, for the maintenance of civil justice, and all good politic orders. But as for these [Anabaptists] they are neither good for the body nor for the soul: yea, they are most mortal enemies and cruel murderers to both."[xvi]

Menno Simons, Anabaptist leader and after whom the Mennonites take their name. Called "the most important figure in the Dutch reformation."







Fleeing Flemish Stakes to English Flames
With few exceptions, the flight of non-Catholic Flemings from the Southern Netherlands was part of “the largest uprooting experienced in early modern Europe”[xvii]. Some estimate as many as 180,000 fled the country[xviii]. Flemish Anabaptists came to England for the most part in multiple waves: in the mid 1530s as a result of the persecution after the fall of seditious Anabaptist Munster and in the 1550s as a result of renewed Catholic-Calvinist persecution. Later waves joined Calvinists fleeing the Duke of Alva’s Inquisition between 1567 and 1573 and of course as the Duke of Alva’s armies reconquered Flanders and Brabant in the 1580s, and finally after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585.



The British Isles had actually experienced something not too dissimilar to Anabaptism in the century before from a millennial, home-grown Christian group also inspired by Flemish weavers. Called the Lollards – from a Flemish term ‘lollen’, to mumble – the Lollards had shaken the established order before being driven underground in the late 15th century. The Flemish script of the Good Word inspired by Luther, and transmitted by Flemish traders and merchants in the 1520s and 1530s found fertile ground in Tudor England. In the view of Henry VIII and his ministers, Anabaptism was simply Lollardy in a new form. As historian E.G. Rupp put it, “the new Anabaptist was but old Lollard writ Dutch".[xix] As such, the template for dealing with Lollardy was already established by precedent: extirpation by fire, usually at a public burning.

Anabaptists being burned in Flanders

Initially, Henry VIII’s councilors really believed the growing movement around them was tied into the Lollards. So the first proclamations against heresy, in 1529 and 1530, were directed against “sects of heretics and Lollards”.[xx] The difficulty in combating the attractiveness of Anabaptist doctrines was expressed by one of the first official propagandists for the Tudors against the sect, William Barlow. In his book, A dyaloge descrybyng the orygynall ground of these Lutheran faccyons (1531) Barlow confessed, “I coulde haue founde in my harte to commytte my soule holly to theyr dirreccyon”.[xxi]

Anabaptists doctrines and founders explained in English

Passing the Word From Flemish to English
The first instance of direct persecution linking the spread from Fleming to Anglo-Saxon took place about the time Jan van Leyden (of Munster fame) was in England. Two Flemings, a Scot and six Englishmen with Anabaptist beliefs were arrested in connection with the importation and distribution of "the booke of Anabaptist confession" sometime in 1532[xxii]. These books (it was a shipment of 300) were presumably printed in Antwerp They met secretly for worship and planning in London, at the house of a John Raulinges and their leader was a Flemish preacher by the name of Herman Bastian. The captives described him as "the bishop & reader of the Anabaptists."[xxiii] Later, in 1538, this same Herman Bastian would be caught, arrested, and abjure his Anabaptist faith, but not before so alarming the German princes who caught him that they felt compelled to draft a letter to Henry VIII warning him of “this plague” of “Anabaptist madness”.[xxiv]

David Joris van Brugge, a leader of the pacifist majority of Anabaptists

Of course, one of the primary reasons Flemings were in England in the first place was to flee the Hapsburg Catholic persecution in Flanders. The fleeing Flemings naturally followed established trade routes – most heavily used for the cloth trade – across the North Sea and English Channel[xxv]. The exile communities made this Flemish refuge possible. The economic justification for routes and refuge was the flourishing trade in textiles[xxvi].

A Woman Anabaptist being buied alive, Flanders 16th century

Many of the Anabaptists settled in London’s Southwark enclave, or Southhampton but especially in the port towns on the east coast of England. Towns like Norwich, Sandwich, Ipswich and Lavenham. In Norwich, the second largest city in England for at least the period 1500 to 1660, they became as much as 40% of the total population.[xxvii] As was the practice in much of Europe for resident aliens, the enclaves of Flemish refugees were often exempt from local laws. However, when these “Strangers” began to disseminate their heresies among the native (English) population the authorities took drastic action.

The Flemish Anabaptists left other lasting legacies in England besides their skills and faith. Flemish style houses can be found throughout the Eastern Counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent

Although Henry VIII repudiated papal authority by the Act of Supremacy in 1534, he kept the Anglican church orthodox, from the Roman Catholic perspective of doctrines and practices. The Anabaptists threatened this order, and so, like the Lollards before them, Henry marched them to the stake. As historian R. W. Dixon noted: "there were more Anabaptists burned by Henry the Eighth than Lollards in the whole of the previous century."[xxviii]

Interrogation of a Flemish Anabaptist at Ghent

In that same year, 1534, Henry captured and tortured 23 Flemish Anabaptists. Fourteen were eventually burned at the stake at Smithfield (the most common grounds for burning heretics in Stuart-Tudor England). The remainder (mainly women and young boys) were sent back to the gaol in Catholic Flanders to be dealt with by the authorities there[xxix].

On 1 October, 1538 Henry VIII issued a commission to Archbishop Cranmer "to search for and examine Anabaptists . . . and destroy all books of that detestable sect." In November 1538 two proclamations went out against Anabaptists: the first prohibited the printing, importation, and possession of their “naughty printed books”[xxx], and the second ordered all rebaptized persons to leave the realm on pain of death and confiscation of possessions[xxxi].

Those edicts were triggered by immediate events since we hear that on November 29th, 1538, Pieter Franke – actually a Bruggeling by the name of Pieter de Bontwerker[xxxii] – and his wife, both Flemish Anabaptists, were burned at the stake[xxxiii]. Franke’s martyrdom was at Colchester while his wife perished separately at the execution grounds at Smithfield. Other commentators of the time described Franke as a "goodly yong man, and about 22 yeres of age[xxxiv]”, and his martyrdom is said to have impressed and converted many Englishmen who witnessed it at Colchester.

Determining if a burning Flemish Anabaptist is still alive

An eyewitness account comes from the pen of a John Bale, who in his anti-Catholic, A Mysterye of Inyquyte (Geneva, 1545) wrote:

“In the myddes of the fyre also he [Franke/de Bontwerker] stode with oute feare, sorowe, tremblynge, changynge of countenaunce, or dissolute mouyng: which were playne tokens of a conscience not trobled, but assertayned throughlye of a moche better lyfe after this lyfe. This learned I in Colchestre of them which by his onlye deathe or pacient sufferance, conuerted from youre papisme vnto true repentaunce, where as nothynge afore coude conuert them.”[xxxv]

The story of Dirk Willems, who, when he heard that the sherif pursueing him for his Anabaptist beliefs had fallen through the ice, turned back to save him is often considered by Anabaptist hagiographers to be a key example of their practice of Christian charity.

The next month (December, 1538) two young women from Leuven, Anneken Jans and Christiana Michiel Barents, were arrested while in transit from England to Delft. As was often the case with Anabaptists, for their refusal to recant they were drowned (in a cruel parody of baptism) at Rotterdam, January 7th, 1539. Under interrogation, Christiana confessed that she became an Anabaptist through the proselytizing of another Leuven refugee by the name of “Lijnken”, who had been martyred earlier in England[xxxvi]. Paradoxically then, Henry VIII’s policy of exterminating Flemish Anabaptists was converting both Englishman and Fleming resident in England to the Anabaptist faith.

The drowning of a Flemish Anabaptist, 1552

All the king’s men must have realized this as well for on the 26th of February 1539, Henry VIII issued a pardon to all native-born ‘heretics’ in England. Foreign-born ‘heretics’ however were not pardoned. “This appears to indicate that a considerable number of English subjects were affected by the new beliefs and that persecution had done more to spread than to counteract them.”[xxxvii]




However, these edicts apparently did not deter Flemish Anabaptists any more than before from spreading the Word. For just a few months later, in July, 1539, Henry felt compelled to issue the Six Articles Act. The Acts confirmed many Catholic practices (such as the Mass) and reiterated that violation of the belief in Transubstantiation was punishable by burning at the stake[xxxviii]. Some of the first to be persecuted for violating the Six Acts were Flemish refugees. “15 or 20 strangers mostly from Flanders, and all Anabaptists” were imprisoned in April 1540 but their fate is unknown[xxxix]. Two Flemish Anabaptists and an Englishman, however, were martyred together in June, 1540, “for speaking irreverently of the Holy Sacrament and refusing to revoke their errors”[xl]. The following month (July, 1540) Henry reiterated his pardon for heretics – all except Anabaptists[xli].



King Henry VIII’s death in 1547 momentarily halted persecutions of Flemish ‘heretics’ in England. The end of his reign however only served to inflame Flemish and other Protestant “Strangers” against Roman Catholic rituals and practices. These disturbances presaged the iconoclasm of 1566, the so-called Beeldenstorm, that began in Flanders and swept north to Holland, ushering in the Dutch Revolt. As the riots in England spread, mainly in heavily Flemish enclaves in the eastern coastal towns of England, groups of young Englishmen joined their ranks in protest.[xlii]

Under the reign of his young son, Edward VI, rule of the English realm effectively fell to a circle of Tudor high churchmen. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, in January, 1550, was issued instructions by the King’s Council to root out and interrogate any suspected Anabaptists. Cranmer and others thought that it may be better to try and contain rather than martyr. This lead directly to a license for the Ghentenaar Calvinist minister Martin Micronius[xliii] to set up and run what he called a "Flemish Church" but which has come to be known as the “Dutch Church”, at the formerly Augustinian monastery called Austin Friars in London. The expectation of the establishment was that a more orthodox, reformed Protestant congregation would be more easily and accurately monitored. Also, segregation of the Strangers from the English would limit the opportunities for ‘infection’ of the body politic. Or, as the young king wrote in his diary, for "the avoyding of al sectes of Anabaptistes and such like.”[xliv]

By his approach at containment and persuasion, Archbishop Cranmer was deemed insufficiently aggressive by some in King Edward’s government. Bishop John Hooper (married to an Antwerpenaar[xlv]) and John Knox, were instead given the assignment of rooting out the rot in the two areas swarming with both Flemings and heresies: London and Kent.[xlvi]






The failure of either the carrot or the stick frustrated government and high church officials in England. The afore-mention John Hooper, for example wrote to a colleague (in 1549) that "Anabaptists flock to the place [where Hooper gave lectures in London] and give me much trouble with their opinions respecting the incarnation of the Lord." In June, 1550, he added that the Flemish-refugees of East Anglia (Kent and Sussex) were "troubled with the frenzy of the Anabaptists more than any other part of the kingdom."[xlvii]




With the accession of Queen Mary (1553-1558) the burnings of religious dissenters resumed. As we saw earlier, the first martyr was the Bible translator, John Rogers (aka, Thomas Matthews, author of the Matthews Bible), married to Jacob Van Meteren’s Antwerpenaar niece. During "Bloody" Queen Mary’s reign the persecution of Anabaptists became that of Protestants in general.

John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs - the hallmark book beyond the Bible for Anglicans, Puritans and Pilgrims alike - chronicled the martyrdoms of not only mainstream Protestants like John Rogers but included the sufferings of many of the Flemish Anabaptists above. Since the greater percentage of these martyrs came from towns in the eastern counties and from the artisan classes, some historians estimate that as many as 80 per cent may have been Anabaptists.[xlviii] And, as we have seen above, there was a Flemish connection for many of these martyrs.

In the martyrdom of the Flemish Protestants in mid-16th century Tudor England, they not only gained paradise for themselves but, as we shall see, inspired a select group of English Christians in the eastern counties of England to separate from the Church of England and in the end establish a new paradigm of government in the New World. This new community of believers, completely separate from any state church, were what we know today as the "Pilgrim Fathers". The nascent state they formed set the tempo for the modern world by strictly adhering to a separation of church from state.

My next posting will pick up with Queen Elizabeth I’s reign and follow the thread of Flemish influence on the Pilgrims to their homes in eastern England.





Endnotes
[i] John J. Murray, Flanders and England: The Influence of the Low Countries on Tudor-Stuart England, (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1985), p.56 claims that John Roger’s wife, Adriana de Weyden, was Jacob Van Meteren’s sister-in-law and others his daughter, although the consensus appears that she was his niece. John Foxe says that this kinswoman of Van Meteren “more richly endowed with virtue and soberness of life, than with worldly treasures”. Foxe, Martyrs,V, p.840 quoted in David Daniell, The Bible in English, (London: Yale University Press, 2003), p.191.
[ii] The premier source for this viewpoint – that Flemish skilled workers made a decisive contribution to the development of English industry – has been the indispensable (for more than 100 years) William Cunningham in his Alien Immigrants to England, (London:1897), Kesslinger reprint (2008).
[iii] Ironically, given the mainstream Anabaptist pacifism, and aversion to oath taking, the Munster Anabaptists required an oath in the prosecution of their struggle against the Bishopric. See: http://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/portal/Internet/index_aufruf.php?url_home_unten=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lwl.org%2Fwestfaelische-geschichte%2Fportal%2FInternet%2Ffinde%2FlangDatensatz.php%3FurlID%3D1363%26url_tabelle%3Dtab_quelle for the text in German.
[iv] Please see the “Millenialism in the Reformation” online site at http://www.lessonsonline.info/MillennialismReformation.htm . For a superb blog on chiliastic millennialism please see http://www.chiliasmchronicles.blogspot.com/
[v] This is a claim that some successors to the Anabaptists, such as the Baptists and the Mennonites, make claim to. See, for example: “William Tyndale: The Father of Our English Bible” at http://www.wayoflife.org/articles/williamtyndale.htm. Tyndale’s assistant in Anywerp was William Roy, the son of a naturalized Brabanter and, like Tyndale, a graduate of Cambridge. See Murray, Flanders and England, op.cit., p.49. Murray points out the key role of Erasmus in the English Reformation and the connections between Cambridge, Leuven, Sir Thomas More, and the breakdown in respect for the Roman Catholic church’s doctrines and practices.
[vi] Erasmus, Desiderius, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmui Roterodami, (Basel, 1529) cited in Irvin Buckwater Horst, The Radical Brethren:Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558, (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1972), p.40.
[vii] Throughout this blog my interest is to promote the history of the Dutch-speaking people of what is often called the Southern Netherlands. At that time of course these territories were represented by various political entities which do not neatly fit into the current territorial borders of modern day Flanders and/or had their own unique history. These include the County of Flanders, the Duchy of Brabant, the Lordship of Mechelen, the Duchy of Limburg, etc. But for the people I am writing this for – Flemish-Americans like my sons Ludovicus and Matthias – these distinctions are secondary to understanding the contribution of Flemings to the world. Thus, in my blog postings I refer to all those Dutch speakers from what might be called modern-day Belgium as Flemings. That said, the historical record is real and the distinctions of course existed. I would like to thank Mijnheer Jan Neckers, himself a published historian on Mechelen, as well as author of many historical documentaries, for this important point.
[viii] William R. McGrath, “The Anabaptists: Neither Catholic nor Protestant” at http://www.cbc4me.org/articles/Baptist/04-McGrath.pdf . For the view that Baptists predate Catholicism and are therefore not Protestants please see http://www.fbcsh.org/origins.php. Also, see the Beachy Amish Mennonite website’s FAQ where they say: “The Beachys are part of the Anabaptists, a Christian religion…Anabaptists are neither Catholic nor Protestant, though they are often categorized as a Protestant group by writers unfamiliar with Anabaptist history and doctrine.” http://www.beachyam.org/FAQs.htm
[ix] Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, (Oxford: University Press, 1995), p.85. On the issue of church and state separation and the Anabaptsits' please see "The Anabaptists: Did You Know?" in Christianity Today, 1985 online archive: http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/1985/issue5/506.html. On the issue of Flemish contributions to legal heritage of the Anglo-Saxon states, please see R.C. van Caenegem, Historical Considerations on Judicial Review and Federalism in the United States of America, With Special Reference to England and the Dutch Republic, (Brussel: KVAB, 2003). My deep gratitude and appreciation to Professor Matthias Storme for both making me aware of Professor Van Caenegem's work and for advice on several key references.
[x] Later, apologists for Communists and Nazis alike hearkened back to this millennial movement in books, paintings, stamps and philosophy. For the Nazi connection see George Von Der Lipp, et.al., A History of the Munster Anabaptists: Inner Innigration and the Third Reich, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=288750 . For the DDR stamps see http://www.danstopicals.com/ml4.htm . For a reference to Friedrich Engels appropriation of the Anabaptist banner and actions in the Peasant War to Marxist rhetoric see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasant_War_in_Germany . A succinct online read of the Peasants’ War can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/9298/zuefallig/bauernkrieg.htm . The world’s largest oil painting, commissioned by the DDR as a monument to the Socialist legitimacy of the Communist state through the hijacking of the Peasant War history, see the museum built around the commemoration of the Battle of Falkenhausen here: http://www.panorama-museum.de/ .
[xi] Duke, op.cit., p.33 citing CD, IV, pp. 259-61 and C.C. de Bruin, De Statenbij[b?]el en zijn voorgangers, (Leiden, 1937), p.195
[xii] Duke, op.cit., p.37 citing CD, IV, p. 467
[xiii] Duke, op.cit., p.36 citing CD, V, pp.237-42.
[xiv] Duke, op.cit., p.33 citing J.G.C.A. Briels, “Zuidnederlandse onderwijksrachten in Noord Nederland, 1570-1630” in Archief voor de geschiednis van de Katholieke kerk in Nederland, XIV, (1972), pp.148-49.
[xv] J.Decavele, De dageraad van de reformatie in Vlaanderen, 1520-1565, I (Brussel, 1975), pp.268-270 cited in Duke, op.cit., p.39 footnote 70.
[xvi] Meic Pearse, “Fear of ‘Anabaptists’ in Sixteenth-Century England” Originally published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 3, June 1993. sourced at http://www.anabaptistnetwork.com/book/export/html/180
[xvii] Nigel Goose, “Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England”, in Nigel Goose and Lien Luu, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), p.1.
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] E.G. Rupp, Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Mainly in the Reign of Henry VIII) (Cambridge: University Press, 1966) p.1
[xx] Horst, Radical Brethren, op.cit., p.37. Horst also mentions (p.40) that Erasmus had wrote to Sir Thomas More in 1528 saying that it had spread “more widely than anyone had suspected”.
[xxi] Ibid, p.45
[xxii] Ibid, pp.49-51
[xxiii] Horst, Irvin B., Harold S. Bender and Alan Kreider. "England." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1990. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 07 December 2008 http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/E565.html . Please note that a good part of the following depends heavily on Horst’s online article.
[xxiv] Horst, Radical Brethren, op.cit., pp.81-85
[xxv] I will discuss the cloth/textile trade and Flanders’ contribution not only to England but also to the Pilgrims in a subsequent post.
[xxvi] Horst, et.al.,”England”, op.cit.
[xxvii] Goose, op.cit., p18. One enduring legacy of this huge influx is the prevalence of Flemish architecture in these towns. See the online pictorial examples at http://waysidearteastanglia.me.uk/home/dutchgables.htm.
[xxviii] Horst, et.al.,”England”, op.cit.
[xxix] Murray, Flanders and England, op.cit., p.53
[xxx] Horst, Radical Brethren, op.cit., pp.86-87
[xxxi] Ibid
[xxxii] A.L.E. Verheyden, Het Brugsche Martyrologium, (Brussel: 1945), p. 45,cited in Horst, Radical Brethren, op.cit., p.88
[xxxiii] Horst, Radical Brethren, op.cit., p.88
[xxxiv] Ibid, p.87
[xxxv] Ibid, p.89. Interestingly, Bale’s book was printed at Geneva.
[xxxvi] Horst, et.al.,”England”, op.cit.
[xxxvii] Ibid
[xxxviii] See http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/sixarticles.htm
[xxxix] Horst, Radical Brethren, op.cit., p.93
[xl] Ibid
[xli] Horst, et.al.,”England”, op.cit.
[xlii] Murray, Flanders and England, op.cit., p.54
[xliii] See Krahn, Cornelius. "Micronius, Marten (ca. 1522-1559)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1957. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 12 January 2009 http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M527.html . In a letter to Henry Bullinger (May 20th, 1550) Micronius (Marten De Cleyne) states that “indeed it is a matter of the first importance that the word of God should be preached here in Dutch, to guard against the heresxies which are introduced by our countrymen.” Hastings Robinson, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, Written During the Reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary: Chiefly From the Archives of Zurich (London: University Press, 1847), Letter CCLX p.560. Curiously, in this same letter, Micronius refers to this congregation as the “Flemish church” cf ibid, p.561 and p.565.
[xliv] Ibid. Interestingly, Cranmer graduated from Cambridge the same year as Tyndale and may have known him. “The great majority of the men who led English Protestants were in residence at Cambridge during the years when the White Horse meetings there [1515-1520] were in progress. This is true of Tyndale, Joye, Roy, Barnes, Coverdale, Bilney, Latimer, Cranmer, Frith, Lambert, Ridley, Rowland Taylor, Thomas Arthur, Matthew Parker and many others who preached, wrote, accepted high office or embraced martyrdom in the cause.” Dickens, A.G., The English Reformation, 1964 2nd ed., (1989) , p. 91 quoted in David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), Nota Bene ed 2001, p.49.
[xlv] Murray, Flanders and England, op.cit., p.54
[xlvi] Horst, et.al.,”England”, op.cit.
[xlvii] Ibid
[xlviii] Ibid


Copyright 2009 by David Baeckelandt