3. Sir Edwin Sandys - Publication of 'A Relation of the State of Religion...'
In 1596 (or 1593) Edwin travelled to the
continent with his friend George Cranmer, the trip lasted for three years,
visiting France, Italy, and Germany. Cranmer returned to England but Edwin
remained abroad until 1599.
Edwin published A Relation of the State of Religion in 1605, the full title is: A Relation of the State of Religion, and With What Hopes and Policies it Hath Been Framed, and is Maintained, in the Several States of These Western Parts of the World.[1]
As the title suggests the book examines European religions, some of the material clearly gathered at first hand during his extensive travels. The bulk of the book deals with Catholicism, which would have been the main interest to 17th century English readers. For its time the book was moderate and tolerant towards other religions. Generally books about Catholicism tended to be vitriolic diatribes, not the well-measured discussion which characterized Edwin's Relation. However despite Edwin's attempt to be even-handed the book is clearly anti-Catholicism in tone.
Edwin had written the book in 1599 at the end of his travels, although he circulated manuscript copies, it was not published until June 1605. The book was a success but in November the Court of High Commission ordered all copies to be burnt. The reason for this action is unclear, the 1629 edition (printed after Sandys's death) states that the 1605 edition had been printed from a stolen manuscript, and so prohibited, consequently he procured an order for the copies to be burnt. However this could have been a face-saving exercise. The tolerant attitude towards Catholics, his comments on the power of princes and his outspoken behaviour in the 1604 Parliament may have caused enough annoyance to lead to the censorship. Another event, which coincidentally happened at around the same time, was the arrest of Guy Fawkes on the 4th of November, while attempting to blow up Parliament in reprisal for increasing oppression of Roman Catholics in England.
After the later 1629 edition was published it became a much-respected and widely read book for some sixty years and ran to fourteen editions and four languages. The style of the book is a difficult read today, wordy sentences of 180 words are not uncommon.
In 1615 Sir Edwin Sandys published his second book, Sacred Hymns, Consisting of Fifty Select Psalms of David.
Richard Hooker's book, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
From 1588 to 1590 Sandys lived, along with his manservant, just east of the old Gothic St. Paul's Cathedral, at the house of John Churchman; a master at the Merchant Taylors' Company. The home of John and Alice Churchman became a kind of boarding house to visiting luminaries. In 1584 Edwin's friend and former tutor Richard Hooker came for a visit and stayed until 1595, becoming Master of the Temple in 1585 and marrying John and Alice's daughter, Joan, in 1588.
Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer took an active role in the preparation of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which set the tone and direction of Anglican theology. Hooker started writing around 1589, and Edwin and George were particularly interested in the Preface, which they wanted to direct towards the political issues of the day; namely the threat they saw from the Puritans in Parliament. Hooker added a section to the Preface refuting the extreme Calvinism of the Presbyterians and the Separatists, but Sandys and Cranmer were never completely satisfied. George Cranmer proof-read many pages, particularly Book VI, and he was very thorough, criticizing word choices and grammatical errors; even correcting Hooker's Greek. No doubt Hooker found Edwin and George's frequent questions and suggestions a little annoying.
Edwin made many suggestions but he was not as blunt as George; he used phrases such as 'It seems to me that'. Sandys did no agree with Hooker's arguments in Book VI. Hooker wanted the Church's legal jurisdiction to expand into areas that overlapped with civil courts, such as marriages and probating wills etc. Edwin believed such matters were part of Common and civil law. Hooker thought Sandys's position played into the hands of the Presbyterians. Sandys other disagreement was Hooker's views on confession and penance where Hooker was seeking the middle ground, but Edwin thought it embraced too much the practices of the Church of Rome.
Hooker needed a patron to print his book but no one was willing to take it on and underwrite the cost. He had approached the printer John Windet of St. Paul's to publish his book but the market for theological works had waned, especially one supporting the Church and projected to be in eight parts. Hooker turned to his friends; so Sandys stepped forward, and without his assistance the work may have remained unpublished.
Publication of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
In the New Year of 1593 Edwin had a tentative arrangement with John Windet to print 1,200 copies of the book and Sandys would pay the cost - £52. Book V, when it was ready, would be printed at the same cost. Sandys would supply the paper - 150,000 sheets at 8s. a ream. Sandys estimated the cost for the first four books to be £100 4s. and £136 16s. for Book V, each book was to sell at 2s. 6d. As a gesture of good faith, Edwin paid Hooker £10 in advance for the Preface and first four Books, and proposed another £20 for Book V and a further £20 for the final three, when they arrived at the printers - a total for Hooker of £50.
The end of the 1500s was not auspicious for Londoners; plague broke out in the summer of 1592 and lasted, with some abatement, until the summer of 1594. Plague deaths mounted in 1593, the year Ecclesiastical Polity was published, and more than 10,000 people died, including the Lord Mayor, this at a time when the population of the city was only around 100,000. The theatres were closed and coincidentally the film Shakespeare In Love is set in 1593, when the playwright was thought to be writing Romeo & Juliet, and also year Christopher Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl. Plague was followed by five years of alternating drought and heavy rainfall. Poor harvests led to poverty, food riots and rampant crime as well as runaway inflation.
Edwin and George Cranmer were on their continental tour when Book V was printed and Edwin's steward, Nicholas Eveleigh (brother of his first wife Margaret), undertook negotiations with the printer.
The Death of Richard Hooker
Events were to change on 2nd November 1600, when Hooker died. The manuscripts for Books VI-VIII were recovered and brought from Bishopsbourne rectory to the Churchman house for safekeeping. In the late spring of 1601 Edwin was among a group of Hooker's friends who met at the house. They discovered that Books VI and VII were fairly complete, but Book VIII was incomplete, so Sandys was given the job of carefully sorting the papers before they decided what to do next. In late 1601 it was agreed that Dr. John Spencer, Cranmer's brother-in-law and president of Corpus Christi, should take on the work of editing and completing Books VI-VIII; although the remaining volumes were not printed for another fifty years. Edwin also brought news that George Cranmer had been killed in Ireland, just as Elizabeth I's military campaign was drawing to an end.
Edwin appears to have lost interest in Ecclesiastical Polity after Hooker's death. He had recently finished writing his own book A Relation of the State of Religion and his interests were about to widen.
Sandys's total investment in the first five books was £278, a substantial sum. Book V was printed in 1597 and initialyl sales were slow, but picked up after 1611.
In 1614 Richard Hooker's daughter, Alice Hooker, took legal action against Edwin to secure profits from the sales of her father's book. It failed because Edwin had underwritten the publication of the book and had also paid Richard Hooker for the rights. Furthermore Edwin received no income after 1610, when the printer John Windet died, as his apprentice and successor, William Stansby, reneged on Windet's agreement with Edwin. So whether Sandys finally earned any money from the book is a matter of conjecture, he probably made a small profit.
John Churchman was less fortunate, in 1605 he lost almost all his property and assets to creditors, a consequence of the war in Ireland.
[1] - Later editions were titled: Europae Speculum, or A Relation of the State of Religion and With What Hopes and Policies it Hath Been Framed, and is Maintained, in the Several States of These Western Parts of the World.