Table Of ContentShaping the Stranger Churches
Studies in Medieval and
Reformation Traditions
Edited by
Christopher Ocker (Melbourne)
In cooperation with
Sara Beam (Victoria, BC)
Falk Eisermann (Berlin)
Johannes Heil (Heidelberg)
Martin Kaufhold (Augsburg)
Ute Lotz-Heumann (Tucson, Arizona)
Jurgen Miethke (Heidelberg)
Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer (Tucson, Arizona)
Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge, UK)
Founding Editor
Heiko A. Oberman†
VOLUME 224
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smrt
Shaping the Stranger Churches
Migrants in England and the Troubles
in the Netherlands, 1547–1585
By
Silke Muylaert
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Tympanum installed at the French Protestant Church of London for its
400th anniversary in 1950.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Muylaert, Silke, author.
Title: Shaping the stranger churches : migrants in England and the troubles
in the Netherlands, 1547-1585 / by Silke Muylaert.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034570 (print) | LCCN 2020034571 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004389366 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004439535 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Reformed (Reformed Church)—England—History—16th century.
| Reformed (Reformed Church)—Political activity—England—History—16th
century. | Dutch—England—History—16th century. |
Dutch—England—Religious life and customs. | Reformation—England. |
Reformation—Netherlands. | England—Church history—16th century. |
England—Relations—Benelux countries. | Benelux
countries—Relations—England. | Netherlands—History—Eighty Years’
War, 1568-1648—Religious aspects—Protestant churches.
Classification: LCC BX9476.G7 M89 2021 (print) | LCC BX9476.G7 (ebook) |
DDC 284/.249209031—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034570
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034571
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1573-4188
ISBN 978-90-04-38936-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43953-5 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Maps ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 The London Stranger Churches in the International Reformation,
1547–1565 26
1 From the Community under Edward VI to the
Elizabethan Resettlement 29
2 The Impact of the Exile’s Books and Psalms on the Low Countries 42
3 The Influence of the Stranger Churches on Their
Continental Brethren 52
4 Conclusion 60
2 Between Dissent and Cooperation: Relations between the Foreign
Churches in England and Connections with the Low Countries 62
1 The Strangers in London 63
2 All Foreign Churches in England 71
3 Stuck between England and the Low Countries 78
4 Conclusion 85
3 The Entanglements of Stranger Churches with Growing Resistance in
the Low Countries, 1560–1565 86
1 Dealing with Persecution in the Low Countries 89
2 The Effect of Armed Resistance on the Stranger Churches 102
3 Different Perspectives on Resistance 105
4 Conclusion 114
4 The Impact of the Wonderjaar (1566) on the Stranger Churches 117
1 Reform and Resistance in International Perspective: A Struggle
for Legitimacy 119
2 Division and Conflict among Reformers Concerning the Iconoclasm
in 1566 134
3 The Involvement of the Foreign Churches in Resistance in the
Aftermath of the Fury 146
4 Conclusion 152
vi Contents
5 The Foreign Churches and the Dutch Revolt, 1567–1585 154
1 Classic Accounts of How Religion Shaped the Dutch Revolt 155
2 The Complex Relationship between the Reformed Churches and
William of Orange 160
3 Men and Money: The Contribution of the Foreign Churches
to the Revolt 175
4 The Influence of Queen Elizabeth’s Attitude towards Intervention in
the Low Countries 187
5 Conclusion 192
6 The Foreign Churches and the Reformation, 1567–1585 195
1 Mutual Support among Foreign Reformed Churches in England 196
2 Support for the Reformed Churches in the Low Countries 204
3 The Foreign Churches in the Context of the English Church 220
4 Conclusion 230
Conclusions and Afterthoughts 233
Bibliography 239
Index 260
Acknowledgements
It has been quite a journey. I somehow started off researching late medieval
Bruges’ goldsmiths in Belgium years ago and ended up examining Elizabethan
foreign churches in England, only now to find myself in the Netherlands in-
terested in Reformers in the Dutch Republic. The people I have met along
the way have made this odd route extra interesting. Every department I have
studied and worked in has taught me a new set of skills and outlook. To begin
with, I am very grateful for having had a brilliant and supportive supervisor at
Ghent University, where I originally studied. Jan Dumolyn’s advice on how to
approach research on the goldsmiths proved very educational and inspiring.
I would like to thank him for his lasting support. During my doctoral studies,
my incredible advisors Kenneth Fincham and Andrew Foster taught me how
to write a doctoral thesis. I would not have succeeded without their trust in me
and will not forget their kindness and team work. I have received similar sup-
port from several members of staff and colleagues at the School of History and
the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent,
such as Ryan Perry, Amy Blakeway, Philip Boobbyer, Barbara Bombi, Rebecca
Warren, and most prominently Crosbie Smith. I could not believe my luck
that towards the end of my doctoral research, I found a group of incredibly
kind scholars who shared my passion for the foreign churches and Reformed
migration. It has been an absolute pleasure to have been working alongside
Mirjam van Veen, Jesse Spohnholz, Inge Schipper, and Peter Gorter on a proj-
ect about the Rhineland Exiles at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam for the
past two years and to have learned so much from each of them.
Along this journey, I have also profited from advice and conversation
with scholars outside my own institutions. I think in particular of Raingard
Esser, Andrew Spicer, Christine Kooi, Craig Harline, Diarmaid MacCulloch,
Andrew Pettegree, Daniel Fogt, Nicolas Terpstra, Timothy Orr, Nicholas Must,
Francesco Quatrini, Simon Healy, Jonas van Tol, and John Desreumaux from
the Ypres City Archives. It has also been a pleasure to discuss Flemish migra-
tion to England and Scotland with researchers from the project ‘Scotland and
the Flemish people’ at the University of St Andrews, whom I thank for taking
a vivid interest in my work. I am also grateful for the opportunities to meet
other researchers which organisations such as the Amsterdam Centre for the
History and Heritage of Protestantism, The Huguenot Society of Great Britain
and Ireland, the Dutch Church in London, and the French Protestant Church
of London have given me. I am especially indebted to the French Huguenot
viii Acknowledgements
Church of London Charitable Trust and to the selection panel of the Institute
of Historical Research in London for awarding me the Huguenot Scholarship
in 2015. This generous scholarship enabled me to continue my research.
Naturally, I would also like to thank my family and friends. My parents and
their partners have supported me when I needed them to, while my sisters
Marieke Van Dijck and Elke Muylaert have been close companions on this
journey. I want them to know that I admire both deeply. I also want to thank
our cat for his support, despite training us to do whatever he wants. I have
also received plenty of support from Edward John Gillin and his family. My
personal growth over the last few years would have been small without our
conversations. I would further like to thank other friends and colleagues who
have made the work more bearable at times, among others Charles Carlin,
who kindly proofread these acknowledgments. The people at Brill have also
been very thoughtful and supportive during the publication process, especially
Arjan van Dijk, Ivo Romein, Andrew Gow, the anonymous reviewers, and copy-
editor Angela Jianu.
The academic world can be competitive. I have seen people turn nasty out of
that strive for excellence and egotistical ladder-climbing. Over the years, how-
ever, I have encountered so much kindness, even at times when I was stuck. I
have found that such kindness and willingness to listen and to exchange ideas
has always been more helpful than that competitive spirit. It is out of collabo-
ration and mutual trust that good things grow. A great example of such kind-
ness was the unexpected offer from the respected scholar Alastair Duke to help
edit the manuscript to this book since English is not my native language. It
must have taken him many hours to correct my manuscript. It is to this aca-
demic kindness and in particular to those kind people mentioned here in these
acknowledgements whom I admire very much, that I dedicate this book.
Maps
map 1 Locations of the foreign churches in England between 1559 and 1585
© Silke Muylaert
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