Critical Edition of Robert Barnes's A Supplication Vnto the Most Gracyous Prince Kynge Henry The. VIIJ. 1534

Critical Edition of Robert Barnes's A Supplication Vnto the Most Gracyous Prince Kynge Henry The. VIIJ. 1534

Edited by Douglas H. Parker
Copyright Date: 2008
Published by: University of Toronto Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442687776
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  • Book Info
    Critical Edition of Robert Barnes's A Supplication Vnto the Most Gracyous Prince Kynge Henry The. VIIJ. 1534
    Book Description:

    Robert Barnes (1495-1540) was perhaps the most important sixteenth-century English Protestant reformer after William Tyndale. The shifting religious and political views of Henry VIII positioned Barnes at the opposite end of the popular ideology of the day, culminating in his execution in 1540 soon after that of Thomas Cromwell.A Supplication Vnto the Most Gracyous Prince Kynge Henry The. VIIJ., the first edition of which appeared in 1531 during Barnes's German exile, was a controversial lament for the religious climate in England and an earnest argument in favour of reform.In this critical edition, Douglas H. Parker compares all extant versions of the text published in the sixteenth century, focusing on the differences between the 1531 and 1534 editions. Parker argues that the differences between versions can be explained by Barnes's increasing sensitivity to the unstable theological climate under Henry VIII as well as to the author's attempt to curry favour with the English government in 1534. This critical volume includes the entire 1534 edition ofA Supplication, a biographical sketch of Barnes, a bibliographical introduction, a glossary of arcane words, and an appendix that features the 1531 edition, giving readers the chance to make their own comparison.This work is a long over-due study of one of the most fascinating and prescient texts to emerge from the Protestant Reformation.

    eISBN: 978-1-4426-8777-6
    Subjects: History

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Acknowledgments
    (pp. ix-x)

  4. Introduction

    • Robert Barnes: A Biographical Sketch
      (pp. 3-15)

      Robert Barnes was born in or about 1495 in Lynn in Norfolk.¹ At an early age, he entered the house of the Augustinian Friars in Cambridge. Some years later, possibly in 1517 when he was twenty-two, he went to the University of Louvain and studied for a time under the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, developing, as a result, an interest in and sympathy for humanist views. The portrait medallion of Erasmus in silhouette on Q2r(p. 288) suggests that Barnes or John Byddell, the printer of the 1534 edition ofA Supplication, was perhaps trying to establish an ideological link...

    • The 1531 and 1534 Editions of A Supplication Vnto the Most Gracyous Prince Kynge Henry The.VIJJ.
      (pp. 16-55)

      This long, complex, and highly allusive work exists in four distinct editions, three of which are radically different from each other. The first edition was published in 1531 in Antwerp by Simon Cock or Martinus de Keyser; a second was published in England in 1534 by John Byddell; and a third by John Daye in 1573. A 1548 edition, published in England during Edward VI’s brief reign, is essentially identical to that of 1534.23What follows is a detailed comparison of the fascinatingly different 1531 and 1534 editions and an attempt to account for the diversity of two works with...

    • John Foxe’s Edition of Barnes’s A Supplication
      (pp. 56-59)

      In 1573, John Foxe produced an edition of the works of William Tyndale, John Frith, and Robert Barnes from the printing house of John Daye. The title page of this edition reads as follows: ‘The Whole workes of W. Tyndall, Iohn Frith and Doct. Barnes, three worthy Martyrs, and principall teachers of this Churche of England, collected and compiled in one Tome togither, beyng before scattered, and now in Print here exhibited to the Church. To the prayse of God, and profite of all good Christian Readers. At London Printed by Iohn Daye, and are to be sold at his...

    • The Literary Response to Robert Barnes
      (pp. 60-93)

      In 1532, Thomas More’sThe Confutation of Tyndale’s Answerappeared as the third in a series of major polemical documents, two of which, written by More himself, were designed to respond to the growing threat of heresy and heretical beliefs in England, beliefs that motivated the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, in 1528 to grant More a licence to examine heretical books with a view to responding to their claims and reducing their influence within England.92As is well known, the first major English document that challenged the magisterial authority of the traditional church and undermined its hermeneutical monopoly on...

    • Editorial Principles
      (pp. 94-96)

      This text is an old-spelling critical edition of the 1534 second edition ofA supplication vnto the most gracyous prince kynge Henry the.viij.(STC 1471). The title is taken from the running title of the work, since no copy of the 1534 edition has a formal title page. The date of this second edition and its printer are both known from the colophon, which reads: ‘Imprinted at London in Fletestrete by Iohn Byddell, at the signe of our lady of Pitie, next to Flete brydge. The yere of our lorde God .1534. in the moneth of Nouember. The font of...

    • Bibliographical Descriptions
      (pp. 97-100)
    • Notes
      (pp. 101-130)
  5. A Supplication Vnto the Most Gracyous Prince Kynge Henry The.VIIJ. (1534)
    (pp. 133-348)

    In moste humble wyse complayneth vnto your grace your contynuall Orator Robert Barnes, of the intollerable iniuryes/ wronges/ and oppressyons, wherwith certayne bysshops of realme vexe/ and haue vexed/ contrary vnto the worde of God, and theyr owne lawes, and doctours/ not onely me, but also all true preachers and professours of the same/ in condempnyng them for heretykes, as they dyd me/ whiche thynge they were not able to proue by the scrypture of God/ nor yet shall/ yf it wolde please your grace indyfferently (accordyng to the offyce, wherin God hath set you) to here the small as...

  6. Appendix: The 1531 Edition
    (pp. 485-696)
  7. Emendations in the 1531 Edition
    (pp. 697-699)
  8. Glossary
    (pp. 700-712)
  9. Bibliography
    (pp. 713-722)
  10. Index
    (pp. 723-736)