Francis Knollys (the Elder) - Puritanism

Puritanism

Knollys never wavered in his consistent championship of the puritans. In May 1574 he joined Bishop Grindal, Sir Walter Mildmay, and Sir Thomas Smith in a letter to Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, arguing in favour of the religious exercises known as 'prophesyings'. But he was zealous in opposition to heresy, and in September 1581 he begged Burghley and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester to repress such 'anabaptisticall sectaries' as members of the 'Family of Love', 'who do serve the turn of the papists'. Writing to Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, 20 June 1584, he hotly condemned the archbishop's attempts to prosecute puritan preachers in the Court of High Commission as unjustly despotic, and treading 'the highway to the pope'. He supported Cartwright with equal vehemence. On 24 May 1584 he sent to Burghley a bitter attack on ‘the undermining ambition and covetousness of some of our bishops’, and on their persecutions of the puritans. Repeating his views in July 1586, he urged the banishment of all recusants and the exclusion from public offices of all who married recusants. In 1588 he charged Whitgift with endangering the queen's safety by his popish tyranny, and embodied his accusation in a series of articles which Whitgift characterised as a fond and scandalous syllogism.

In the parliament of 1588–9 he vainly endeavoured to pass a bill against non-residence of the clergy and pluralities. In the course of the discussion he denounced the claims of the bishops 'to keep courts in their own name', and denied them any 'worldly pre-eminence'. This speech, 'related by himself' to Burghley, was published in 1608, together with a letter to Knollys from his friend, the puritan John Rainolds, in which Bishop Bancroft's sermon at St Paul's Cross (9 February 1588–9) was keenly criticised. The volume was entitled 'Informations, or a Protestation and a Treatise from Scotland … all suggesting the Usurpation of Papal Bishops'. Knollys's contribution reappeared as 'Speeches used in the parliament by Sir Francis Knoles', in William Stoughton's 'Assertion for True and Christian Church Policie' (London, 1642). Throughout 1589 and 1590 he was seeking, in correspondence with Burghley, to convince the latter of the impolicy of adopting Whitgift's theory of the divine right of bishops. On 9 January 1591 he told his correspondent that he marvelled 'how her Majestie can be persuaded that she is in as much danger of such as are called Purytanes as she is of the Papysts'. Finally, on 14 May 1591, he declared that he would prefer to retire from politics and political office rather than cease to express his hostility to the bishops' claims with full freedom.