The Elizabethan Protestant Press: A Study of the Printing and Publishing of Protestant Religious Literature in English, Excluding Bibles and Liturgies, 1558-1603.
Uninterrupted for forty-five years, from 1558 to 1603,
Protestants in England were able to use the printing press to
disseminate Protestant ideology. It was a period long enough for
Protestantism to root itself deeply in the life of the nation and
to accumulate its own distinctive literature. English Protestantism,
like an inf ant vulnerable to the whim of a parent under King Henry
VIII, like a headstrong and erratic child in Edward's reign, and
like a sulking, chastised youth in the Marian years, had come of age
by the end of the Elizabethan period.
At the outset of Elizabeth's reign the most pressing religious
need was a clear, well-reasoned defence of the Church of England.
The publication of Bishop Jewel's Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae
in 1562 was a response to that need and set the tone of literary
polemics for the rest of the period. It was a time of muscleflexing
for the Elizabethan Church, and especially in the opening
decades, a time when anti-Catholicism was particularly vehement.
Consistently throughout the period, when Queen and country were
threatened by Catholic intrigues and conspiracies, literature of
exceptional virulence was published against Catholicism.
But just as the press became an effective tool for defenders
and apologists of the Church of England, it soon was being used as
an instrument to advance the cause of further reform by more radical
Protestants. Puritans, Familists and Separatists resorted to the
printing press to publicize their particular brand of Protestantism.
Puritans, especially, used the press to put pressure on Parliament
by arranging the publication of their demands to coincide with the
calling of Parliament. Stinging attacks on the established church
were met with stout resistance; authors, printers and booksellers
often were imprisoned and the literature suppressed. The radicals
then turned to secret presses, or to presses outside of England,
and continued their onslaught against the "half" reformed Church
of England. The bitterness and pugnacity once reserved for the
popes of Rome now became, for the dissidents, appropriate sentiments
to be levelled at English bishops.
Religious polemics, however, though most eye-catching and
revealing from the historian's viewpoint because they reflect pressing
issues and concerns, were only one aspect of Elizabethan literature.
While the polemicists crossed swords, the great majority of authors and translators busied themselves in producing works designed for
general Protestant edification. These were the devotional, didactic
and exegetical works that went into multiple editions and were in
constant demand throughout the reign. Polemical and controversial
writings were published from time to time, but works of edification
issued from the press in a continuous stream throughout the reign.
The constant repetition of Protestant doctrine and attitudes reinforced
the Protestant policies consistently laid down by the
government.
For moral and financial support in publishing their literature,
Elizabethan Protestant authors relied heavily upon a relatively small
group of persons. The great majority of dedications in Protestant
literature were addressed to no more than a dozen or so patrons, and,
except for a few, tended to sympathize with moderate Puritanism.
Furthermore, the Elizabethan period was a watershed in the history
of literary patronage and this was reflected in Protestant literature.
Printers and publishers became more important to the author than
the patron in getting his manuscript into print and furthering his
literary pursuits. And it was a relatively small number of printers
and publishers (no more than twenty-five) who bore the brunt of
financing the lion's share of Protestant literature.
With such a powerful and relatively new medium as print to disseminate
ideology, it is not surprising that strong censorship was
exercised. From the Queen's Injunctions of 1566, when the Vestments
controversy was at its height and offensive Puritan tracts were
being published, control of the press tightened as Catholics and
radical Protestants became more adept at clandestine printing and at
smuggling their literature into the country. Officers of the government,
the church and the Stationers' Company worked so effectively
together in their "search and destroy" missions for printing presses
used in illegal publishing ventures that, by the end of the period,
almost all offensive religious literature had to be printed abroad.
The role of the printing press in Elizabethan England is comparable
to that of television in the 20th century. As television
revolutionizes the art of politics, from political party conventions
to national elections, so the printing press affected politics and
religion in the last half of the 16th century. The most effective
way for Puritans, for example, to attack and embarrass the Establishnent
-- and for the Establishment to defend itself -- was to use
the medium of print. So much more efficient than preaching -- with much less risk of detection -- the press replaced the pulpit as
the main instrument of religious education and of religious reform