(More’s circle had resorted to Louvain), it was the logical alternative.
Further, the Englishman John Fowler would set up his press in Louvain,
where, as shall be seen, he would print most of the Recusants’ tomes
after 1566. At the University of Louvain two houses were established
within the university’s precincts, aptly dubbed Oxford and Cambridge.
There also were founded Franciscan and Dominican houses for the
exiled English friars.
Among the first to leave England were Richard Smith and Thomas
Harding. Smith had been placed in Parker’s custody, but fled for Douai
in 1559 and soon was appointed by Philip II as chancellor of the
university and professor of theology once the university formally began
in November 1562. Initially, however, Louvain, with its well established
university, proved the preference of English Catholics. Harding resorted
there, taking a secular living. Harding came from Combe Martin, but
five miles from Jewel’s birthplace in Berrynarbor. Like Jewel he had
attended Barnstaple, but obtained a scholarship to the school in
Winchester in 1528, and from there entered New College, Oxford in
- In 1554 he obtained his DD and became a prebendary at
Winchester and subsequently the treasurer of Salisbury. He was the first
to respond to Jewel, in 1564. Closely associated with Harding was
Thomas Dorman. Harding sponsored Dorman to Winchester, from
whence Dorman came to New College where he eventually proceeded to
a probationary fellowship. At some point in Edward’s reign he resigned
from New College, but in 1554 became a fellow at All Souls. Prominent
among the others who made their way to Louvain was Nicholas Sander.
Sander, also a fellow of New College, and like Harding and Dorman a
Wykehamist, arrived in Louvain in 1559, but soon went to Rome where
he was ordained a priest by the exiled bishop of St Asaph, Goldwell, and
made DD. He attended the third session of the Council of Trent, and
afterwards traveled in Lithuania and Prussia implementing its reforms.
By 1565 he was back in Louvain where he became professor of divinity.
Sander published three treatises against Jewel, most notably his The
Supper of the Lord (1565) and A Treatise of the Images of Christ(1567).
Sander was best known to the theologians of the period for his De visibili
monarchia ecclesiae. Sander came to a tragic end in 1581 while
accompanying an ill-fated expedition to Ireland in the hope of raising
Catholics against Elizabeth.
Probably the most gifted of those who opposed Jewel was Thomas
Stapleton.^5 Stapleton, like Harding, Dorman and Sander, was educated
118 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^5) Stapleton’s life and work is covered in O’Connell, Thomas Stapleton. It is one of the
few biographies of any of the Recusants, and treats at length Stapleton’s activity as a
controversialist, which extended far beyond his part in the debate with Jewel.
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