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Lever, Ralph (c.1530-1585), Church of England clergyman, was the fifth son of John Lever of Little Lever, Lancashire, and his wife, Elenor Heyton, and the younger brother of writeSeealsoLink('/view/article/16535/', "Thomas Lever")Thomas Lever. Educated at Eton, he progressed to St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in early 1548 and proceeded MA in 1551, dates which suggest that he was born about 1530. In 1549 he was a fellow of the college. On the accession of Queen Mary he went to the continent, a move doubtless connected with his partisanship for Lady Jane Grey in July 1553. His precise destination is unknown and it has been assumed that he remained ‘a wandering scholar’ (Garrett, 218). By 1559 he was back in England, becoming a senior fellow of St John's. He was incorporated at Oxford in 1560 and awarded his DTh at that university in 1578. When he married is unknown, but he and his wife, Margaret, had ten children.
During the early 1560s Lever appears to have become tutor to the family of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, and in 1563 he published a book on chess, The most Noble, Ancient and Learned Play called the Philosopher's Game, describing it on the title-page as invented ‘for the honest recreation of students, and other sober persons, in passing the tediousness of time to the release of their labours and exercise of their wits’. Another book, The Art of Reason, ‘teaching a perfect way to argue and dispute’, was dedicated to Essex in 1573. Lever's fascination with logical processes, which he approached in a somewhat pedantic manner, had a significant bearing on his career. By the mid-1560s he had secured the patronage of James Pilkington, bishop of Durham, who made him his chaplain and in 1565 promoted him to the rectory of Washington; in 1566 to the archdeaconry of Northumberland; and in 1567 to a prebend in Durham Cathedral. However, it was not long before the relationship came under strain. During the episcopal visitation of 1572 Lever clashed with Pilkington's chancellor Robert Swift over the content of the visitation articles. Called before the consistory for disobedience, Lever resigned in order to avoid deprivation.
Lever resigned the rectory of Washington in 1576 in favour of his brother John, but the legal complexities implicit in the move initiated a dispute with one Anthony Garforth who also claimed the living. In 1575 he became rector of Stanhope, but resigned in 1577 in order to take up the mastership of Sherburn Hospital, vacant because of the death of his brother Thomas. At Sherburn he continued the reforms implemented by his predecessor, eventually procuring an act of parliament in 1585 ‘so that not the master and a few have the commodities, but the living wholly bestowed on the poor’ (Marcombe, 291). Under this act the number of brethren was increased from sixteen to thirty; leasing policy was regulated; and it was ruled that the master should be a preacher with no other cure.
But although Lever's determination bore fruit at Sherburn, he had a much less positive impact on the Durham chapter. Despite the fact that he shared similar religious views to Dean William Whittingham and the puritan ‘inner ring’ of prebendaries, he was never a fully fledged member of the group and his profit from the ‘lotteries’ of chapter leases in 1572 and 1575 was small. Partly because of this he became opposed to Whittingham and made a series of complaints against his government, culminating in a petition to the queen to undertake a royal visitation in 1578. The new bishop of Durham, Richard Barnes, who was to assist in this task, made Lever his chaplain. However, when the commission met Lever became disillusioned because virtually all of its deliberations centred on the question of Whittingham's ordination, rather than on his alleged corruption. Consequently he fell out with Barnes and ultimately with the new vice-dean, Robert Bellamy. Writing to Burghley in September 1582, he complained, ‘There was never a preacher so misused by a bishop as your orator hath been by the Bishop of Durham’ (Marcombe, 265).
The appointment of Tobias Matthew as dean in 1583 began to calm an embarrassing situation. Thereafter Lever appears to have devoted his energies to a scheme to reform the chapter and other perceived abuses within the Church of England. On 12 January 1585 he submitted a document to the queen ‘touching the canon law, the English papists, and the ecclesiastical officers of this realm’ (Durham University Library, York book, fol. 36). With regard to the cathedral he suggested a thorough revision of the statutes, ‘defective in sundry points touching religion and government’, and an end to all ‘back reckoning’ about the difficulties of the 1570s (Marcombe, 245). The chapter, however, was hostile to his plans and he died in March 1585 before the new scheme could be properly considered. He was buried in Durham Cathedral, where his widow, who subsequently married Thomas Walker of Whitwell, requested interment in 1616.
Lever was a man of high principles who believed he spoke with the authority of God. He was blunt, fearless, and persistent, Robert Bellamy characterizing him as ‘a man born to argue’ (Marcombe, 267). Sir Michael Hickes believed he was ‘distempered’ and in 1583 Lever wrote to Burghley explaining how he was prone to uncontrollable fits of sobbing which rendered him helpless at times. According to Whittingham's biographer he finally ‘fell mad … being at last followed by the boys and children with wonderment’ (Green, 36). Lever may well have been suffering from a manic depressive illness, and contemporaries believed that the disruptions at Durham, caused largely by his persistence, were having a damaging effect both on the diocese and on the church in general.
David Marcombe Sources D. Marcombe, ‘The dean and chapter of Durham, 1558–1603’, PhD diss., U. Durham, 1973 · Venn, Alum. Cant., 1/3.78 · C. H. Garrett, The Marian exiles: a study in the origins of Elizabethan puritanism (1938) · The registers of Cuthbert Tunstall … and James Pilkington, ed. G. Hinde, SurtS, 161 (1952) · York book, U. Durham L., archives and special collections, MSS DRv/2; DR III/3, fol. 36 · J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation and establishment of religion … during Queen Elizabeth's happy reign, new edn, 1/1 (1824) · BL, Lansdowne MS 36 · APC, 1577–82 · state papers, domestic series, Elizabeth I, PRO, SP/12, 149; 176; 162; 219 · G. Allen, ed., Collectanea ad statum civilem et ecclesiasticum comitatus Dunelmensis (1763–99) · Durham Cath. CL, Sharpe MS 51 (Randall MS) · H. C. Porter, Reformation and reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958) · Foster, Alum. Oxon., 1500–1714, 3.903 · G. J. Armytage, ed., The baptismal, marriage, and burial registers of the cathedral church … at Durham, 1609–1896, Harleian Society, register section, 23 (1897) · W. H. Longstaffe and J. Booth, eds., Halmota prioratus Dunelmensis, SurtS, 82 (1889) · high commission act book 9, Borth. Inst. · exchequer, king's remembrancer, deposition, PRO, E 134/23 & 24 Eliz. Mich. 12 · A. M. E. Green, ed., ‘Life of Mr William Whittingham, dean of Durham’, Camden miscellany, VI, CS, 104 (1871)
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Fulke, William (1536/7-1589), theologian and college head, was the son of Christopher Fulke, a prosperous citizen of London; he gave his age as twenty-nine on 30 October 1566. His mother's name is not known and only one sibling, Samuel, is certainly recorded. Both St Paul's and the Mercers' have been claimed as the London school he attended. A story that in a contest between London schools he was vanquished by the young Edmund Campion, the future Jesuit missionary and controversialist, and vowed to have his revenge, is surely apocryphal, composed in the light of the adult Fulke's success in controversy with Campion. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1555, probably graduated in 1558 (though this was later doubted), and then, following his father's wish that he pursue a legal career, entered Clifford's Inn and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1560. It may have been in this period at the inns of court that he acquired his strongly protestant religious convictions. With the intention of studying theology and oriental languages, and at the cost of his father's support, he returned to St John's in 1562 or 1563. By then he had already written two significant books which reflect his wide academic interests, especially in science. Antiprognosticon (1560) attacked the widely respected practice of astrology, which Fulke sharply distinguished from the science of astronomy. In denying that astrology had any truly scientific basis, Fulke's was one of the most radical attacks on astrology in this period. In his work on meteorology (A Goodly Gallerye, 1563) he entered another field in which superstition and appeal to supernatural forces were common. As a neo-Aristotelian scientist, Fulke explained even the most unusual physical phenomena in terms of natural causation, while, as a theologian, he saw this as entirely compatible with belief in divine providence. These scientific works were important in promoting a strictly rational approach to the physical world, while denying any conflict between true science and true religion.
In 1563 Fulke commenced MA, and in 1564 became a fellow of St John's and a college preacher. His radical religious views soon became apparent when he abandoned academic dress (gown and square cap) and the wearing of a surplice in chapel. Such things were considered popish remnants by the zealous protestants who regarded the Elizabethan settlement as only a step on the way to fuller reformation of the church. Fulke became the leader of a puritan faction in the college, composed mostly of younger fellows, while most of the senior fellows opposed them. Fulke and his faction, with their inflammatory preaching and their lively singing of metrical psalms, were popular with undergraduates, and also gained the support of the master, Richard Longworth, whose favouring of the puritan faction in appointments culminated in Fulke's being made principal lecturer. By late November 1565 most members of the college, subjected to intimidation as well as persuasion, had abandoned surplices in chapel, while the hard core of conservative fellows merely stayed away. So alarming was this rebellion against legal order that the university's chancellor, Sir William Cecil, in consultation with Archbishop Parker and even the queen, took steps to quell it. By the end of December he had succeeded, though the bitter faction-fighting in the college continued for years.
Fulke himself resigned his fellowship early in 1566, and probably spent the rest of the year as a freelance lecturer at his lodgings at The Falcon inn. In March 1567 he was readmitted to his fellowship and his post as preacher, to which he soon added that of Hebrew lecturer. He proceeded BTh in 1567 and became president of the college in 1568. Then, in 1569, in another acrimonious dispute involving Cecil, Fulke and his supporters attempted to get Longworth removed from office for misconduct, apparently with a view to electing Fulke himself as master. Counter charges against Fulke alleged a serious crime, the nature of which is unknown, but of which he was eventually cleared. For the sake of peace he was persuaded to resign his fellowship; he left Cambridge to become chaplain to the earl of Leicester, well known for his patronage of puritans. He was re-elected a fellow in March 1570, but again resigned in the summer of 1571—this time finally, since soon afterwards he married. His first wife (her name is not known) bore their eldest son Christopher before her death within two years of the wedding. Leicester obtained for Fulke the living of Great Warley in Essex, where he resided with his family until 1574. On 16 May 1573 he married his second wife, Margaret Cotton (d. 1604). Their children were Mary, baptized in 1574; twin sons baptized in 1575, who died in infancy; Hester, baptized in 1577; Elizabeth, baptized in 1583; Anne, baptized in 1585; John, baptized in 1587, who died in infancy; and William, baptized in 1588. After acquiring a second living, Dennington in Suffolk, Fulke and his family moved there, leaving Great Warley to a curate. Though he was often elsewhere, Dennington remained his family home until his death in 1589, and his tomb is in Dennington church, where he was buried on 28 August.
During the 1570s, under Leicester's patronage, Fulke found a rising position in the world compatible with his radical puritan convictions, though he was obliged to sign a declaration that the authorized liturgies and vestments were not contrary to scripture. He became popular as a preacher in London churches, and in 1572 he accompanied the earl of Lincoln as his chaplain on an embassy to Paris, receiving the Cambridge degree of DTh by special dispensation just before the embassy left for France. The early 1570s were also the time of his greatest commitment to the presbyterian movement within the Church of England. But the leaders of that movement judged the book he wrote in support of it not suitable for publication and only published it later, anonymously and without his consent (A Brief and Plain Declaration, 1584), when Fulke had abandoned the views expressed in it. Also in the 1570s he was becoming well known in the role that was to be the major concern of the rest of his career: as a theological controversialist, exposing the errors of Roman Catholic doctrine and defending the Church of England against theological attacks from English Catholic polemicists. It was his sense of the importance of arguing the common protestant cause against Rome that led him away from a puritan concern to cleanse the Church of England itself from popish remnants towards a more conformist position in his later years.
In 1578 Leicester's patronage secured him the mastership of Pembroke College, Cambridge, a position he held until his death. He was a conscientious and energetic master, during whose tenure the average number of undergraduates entering the college each year effectively doubled, and he served as vice-chancellor of the university in 1581–2. In 1579 he would probably have been appointed to the regius chair of divinity had he not declined to be considered because of his parish duties. Although he remained one of those Cambridge divines to whom puritans looked for learning and guidance, Pembroke under his mastership did not become a puritan college, like St John's under William Whitaker or Christ's under Laurence Chaderton. Indeed, the beginnings of the Arminian theology of grace that would characterize the Laudian movement, contesting the dominant Calvinism of the Elizabethan church, can be traced to men like Lancelot Andrewes and Samuel Harsnett who were fellows of Pembroke in the 1580s. Fulke remained an unhesitating adherent of the reformed views of predestination, grace, and assurance, but remained close to Calvin's theology in these respects, avoiding the heightened emphasis on predestination that characterized the later Calvinism of men like William Perkins. Amid the new theological developments of the 1580s Fulke remained primarily an apologist for the central doctrines of reformed theology against the attacks of the papists. As such, puritans continued to claim him as an authority, but he also enjoyed the favour and co-operation of the government and the ecclesiastical authorities. It was as the acknowledged successor to John Jewel in the theological defence of the Church of England against Rome that he was admired and remembered by his contemporaries: ‘that profound, ready and resolute doctor, the hammer of heretics, the champion of truth’, as Bishop Joseph Hall called him in 1607 (Hall, 262).
Probably encouraged by his noble patrons and government contacts, Fulke conceived the project of answering all works of controversy written in English by papists since 1558 and of doing so by the technique of exhaustive rebuttal, answering every point, large and small, made in the writings of his opponents. In fact he published answers to twenty-one Roman Catholic works by such writers as William Allen, Thomas Stapleton, Nicholas Sander, and Robert Persons. In most cases their text was printed with Fulke's response, indicating his confidence that readers would not be led astray by the papist but rather edified by the cogency of his own response. Fulke was well equipped for this role by his vast erudition, especially in patristic literature, and his command of biblical and classical languages, as well as his painstaking concern for accurate detail and the rules of logical argument. In addition to written controversy, Fulke engaged in public disputations with recusant prisoners, most famously with Edmund Campion in the Tower before the latter's execution in 1581. The climax of his work was his vast confutation of the Rheims New Testament, the English translation of the Vulgate text produced by English Catholics with numerous annotations. To write this he lodged with two assistants for nine months in 1587–8 in the London home of his publisher, who provided living expenses and books.
As well as replying to Roman Catholic attacks on the English church, Fulke pursued his refutation of Rome in published sermons, especially a series on the Apocalypse (Praelections, 1573) which were first preached in the earl of Leicester's household in 1569, at the time of the northern uprising. There and in other works he propagated the dominant Elizabethan version of the apocalyptic interpretation of the Reformation as the final struggle between Christ and Antichrist, a theme that ran through the whole sixteenth-century protestant–Catholic controversy. Fulke's work is also characterized by the increasing shift in this controversy from particular doctrines to the fundamental issues of doctrinal authority and to the nature and accessibility of the biblical revelation. Most important, perhaps, were his controversy with Gregory Martin about the principles and practice of Bible translation (A Defense of the Sincere and True Translations, 1583) and the continuation of this in his exhaustive work on the Rheims New Testament (The Text of the New Testament, 1589). This controversy, with its constant demonstration of the inextricable connection between translation and interpretation, significantly influenced the King James version of the Bible.
Richard Bauckham Sources R. Bauckham, ‘The career and thought of Dr William Fulke (1537–1589)’, PhD diss., U. Cam., 1973 [incl. bibliography of Fulke's works, incl. MSS and letters] · H. C. Porter, Reformation and reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958), chaps. 5–6 · W. McKane, Selected Christian Hebraists (1989), chap. 3 · R. Bauckham, ‘Science and religion in the writings of Dr William Fulke’, British Journal for the History of Science, 8 (1975), 17–31 · R. Bauckham, Tudor apocalypse (1978), esp. 321–40 · A. C. Southern, Elizabethan recusant prose, 1559–1582 (1950) · T. E. Key, ‘Dennington church’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, 8 (1892–4), 65–82 [transcribes inscription on monument to Fulke erected 1621] · A. L. Attwater, Pembroke College, Cambridge: a short history, ed. S. C. Roberts (1936) · Venn, Alum. Cant., 1/2.183; 1/4.523 · The works of Joseph Hall, B. of Exceter (1634) · CUL, department of manuscripts and university archives, Guard Book IV · monument, Suffolk, Dennington church
Likenesses W. Marshall, line engraving, BM, NPG; repro. in W. Fulke, The text of the new testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists (1633), frontispiece
Wealth at death property at Hornsey, Middlesex (inherited from his father); property at Taunton, Somerset; property at Dickleburgh, Norfolk (118 acres, purchased for £900 in 1586); books, ‘antiquities’, plate, etc.: will, CUL, department of manuscripts and university archives; deed of sale of land, Pembroke Cam.
During the early 1560s Lever appears to have become tutor to the family of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, and in 1563 he published a book on chess, The most Noble, Ancient and Learned Play called the Philosopher's Game, describing it on the title-page as invented ‘for the honest recreation of students, and other sober persons, in passing the tediousness of time to the release of their labours and exercise of their wits’. Another book, The Art of Reason, ‘teaching a perfect way to argue and dispute’, was dedicated to Essex in 1573. Lever's fascination with logical processes, which he approached in a somewhat pedantic manner, had a significant bearing on his career. By the mid-1560s he had secured the patronage of James Pilkington, bishop of Durham, who made him his chaplain and in 1565 promoted him to the rectory of Washington; in 1566 to the archdeaconry of Northumberland; and in 1567 to a prebend in Durham Cathedral. However, it was not long before the relationship came under strain. During the episcopal visitation of 1572 Lever clashed with Pilkington's chancellor Robert Swift over the content of the visitation articles. Called before the consistory for disobedience, Lever resigned in order to avoid deprivation.
Lever resigned the rectory of Washington in 1576 in favour of his brother John, but the legal complexities implicit in the move initiated a dispute with one Anthony Garforth who also claimed the living. In 1575 he became rector of Stanhope, but resigned in 1577 in order to take up the mastership of Sherburn Hospital, vacant because of the death of his brother Thomas. At Sherburn he continued the reforms implemented by his predecessor, eventually procuring an act of parliament in 1585 ‘so that not the master and a few have the commodities, but the living wholly bestowed on the poor’ (Marcombe, 291). Under this act the number of brethren was increased from sixteen to thirty; leasing policy was regulated; and it was ruled that the master should be a preacher with no other cure.
But although Lever's determination bore fruit at Sherburn, he had a much less positive impact on the Durham chapter. Despite the fact that he shared similar religious views to Dean William Whittingham and the puritan ‘inner ring’ of prebendaries, he was never a fully fledged member of the group and his profit from the ‘lotteries’ of chapter leases in 1572 and 1575 was small. Partly because of this he became opposed to Whittingham and made a series of complaints against his government, culminating in a petition to the queen to undertake a royal visitation in 1578. The new bishop of Durham, Richard Barnes, who was to assist in this task, made Lever his chaplain. However, when the commission met Lever became disillusioned because virtually all of its deliberations centred on the question of Whittingham's ordination, rather than on his alleged corruption. Consequently he fell out with Barnes and ultimately with the new vice-dean, Robert Bellamy. Writing to Burghley in September 1582, he complained, ‘There was never a preacher so misused by a bishop as your orator hath been by the Bishop of Durham’ (Marcombe, 265).
The appointment of Tobias Matthew as dean in 1583 began to calm an embarrassing situation. Thereafter Lever appears to have devoted his energies to a scheme to reform the chapter and other perceived abuses within the Church of England. On 12 January 1585 he submitted a document to the queen ‘touching the canon law, the English papists, and the ecclesiastical officers of this realm’ (Durham University Library, York book, fol. 36). With regard to the cathedral he suggested a thorough revision of the statutes, ‘defective in sundry points touching religion and government’, and an end to all ‘back reckoning’ about the difficulties of the 1570s (Marcombe, 245). The chapter, however, was hostile to his plans and he died in March 1585 before the new scheme could be properly considered. He was buried in Durham Cathedral, where his widow, who subsequently married Thomas Walker of Whitwell, requested interment in 1616.
Lever was a man of high principles who believed he spoke with the authority of God. He was blunt, fearless, and persistent, Robert Bellamy characterizing him as ‘a man born to argue’ (Marcombe, 267). Sir Michael Hickes believed he was ‘distempered’ and in 1583 Lever wrote to Burghley explaining how he was prone to uncontrollable fits of sobbing which rendered him helpless at times. According to Whittingham's biographer he finally ‘fell mad … being at last followed by the boys and children with wonderment’ (Green, 36). Lever may well have been suffering from a manic depressive illness, and contemporaries believed that the disruptions at Durham, caused largely by his persistence, were having a damaging effect both on the diocese and on the church in general.
David Marcombe Sources D. Marcombe, ‘The dean and chapter of Durham, 1558–1603’, PhD diss., U. Durham, 1973 · Venn, Alum. Cant., 1/3.78 · C. H. Garrett, The Marian exiles: a study in the origins of Elizabethan puritanism (1938) · The registers of Cuthbert Tunstall … and James Pilkington, ed. G. Hinde, SurtS, 161 (1952) · York book, U. Durham L., archives and special collections, MSS DRv/2; DR III/3, fol. 36 · J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation and establishment of religion … during Queen Elizabeth's happy reign, new edn, 1/1 (1824) · BL, Lansdowne MS 36 · APC, 1577–82 · state papers, domestic series, Elizabeth I, PRO, SP/12, 149; 176; 162; 219 · G. Allen, ed., Collectanea ad statum civilem et ecclesiasticum comitatus Dunelmensis (1763–99) · Durham Cath. CL, Sharpe MS 51 (Randall MS) · H. C. Porter, Reformation and reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958) · Foster, Alum. Oxon., 1500–1714, 3.903 · G. J. Armytage, ed., The baptismal, marriage, and burial registers of the cathedral church … at Durham, 1609–1896, Harleian Society, register section, 23 (1897) · W. H. Longstaffe and J. Booth, eds., Halmota prioratus Dunelmensis, SurtS, 82 (1889) · high commission act book 9, Borth. Inst. · exchequer, king's remembrancer, deposition, PRO, E 134/23 & 24 Eliz. Mich. 12 · A. M. E. Green, ed., ‘Life of Mr William Whittingham, dean of Durham’, Camden miscellany, VI, CS, 104 (1871)
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Fulke, William (1536/7-1589), theologian and college head, was the son of Christopher Fulke, a prosperous citizen of London; he gave his age as twenty-nine on 30 October 1566. His mother's name is not known and only one sibling, Samuel, is certainly recorded. Both St Paul's and the Mercers' have been claimed as the London school he attended. A story that in a contest between London schools he was vanquished by the young Edmund Campion, the future Jesuit missionary and controversialist, and vowed to have his revenge, is surely apocryphal, composed in the light of the adult Fulke's success in controversy with Campion. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1555, probably graduated in 1558 (though this was later doubted), and then, following his father's wish that he pursue a legal career, entered Clifford's Inn and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1560. It may have been in this period at the inns of court that he acquired his strongly protestant religious convictions. With the intention of studying theology and oriental languages, and at the cost of his father's support, he returned to St John's in 1562 or 1563. By then he had already written two significant books which reflect his wide academic interests, especially in science. Antiprognosticon (1560) attacked the widely respected practice of astrology, which Fulke sharply distinguished from the science of astronomy. In denying that astrology had any truly scientific basis, Fulke's was one of the most radical attacks on astrology in this period. In his work on meteorology (A Goodly Gallerye, 1563) he entered another field in which superstition and appeal to supernatural forces were common. As a neo-Aristotelian scientist, Fulke explained even the most unusual physical phenomena in terms of natural causation, while, as a theologian, he saw this as entirely compatible with belief in divine providence. These scientific works were important in promoting a strictly rational approach to the physical world, while denying any conflict between true science and true religion.
In 1563 Fulke commenced MA, and in 1564 became a fellow of St John's and a college preacher. His radical religious views soon became apparent when he abandoned academic dress (gown and square cap) and the wearing of a surplice in chapel. Such things were considered popish remnants by the zealous protestants who regarded the Elizabethan settlement as only a step on the way to fuller reformation of the church. Fulke became the leader of a puritan faction in the college, composed mostly of younger fellows, while most of the senior fellows opposed them. Fulke and his faction, with their inflammatory preaching and their lively singing of metrical psalms, were popular with undergraduates, and also gained the support of the master, Richard Longworth, whose favouring of the puritan faction in appointments culminated in Fulke's being made principal lecturer. By late November 1565 most members of the college, subjected to intimidation as well as persuasion, had abandoned surplices in chapel, while the hard core of conservative fellows merely stayed away. So alarming was this rebellion against legal order that the university's chancellor, Sir William Cecil, in consultation with Archbishop Parker and even the queen, took steps to quell it. By the end of December he had succeeded, though the bitter faction-fighting in the college continued for years.
Fulke himself resigned his fellowship early in 1566, and probably spent the rest of the year as a freelance lecturer at his lodgings at The Falcon inn. In March 1567 he was readmitted to his fellowship and his post as preacher, to which he soon added that of Hebrew lecturer. He proceeded BTh in 1567 and became president of the college in 1568. Then, in 1569, in another acrimonious dispute involving Cecil, Fulke and his supporters attempted to get Longworth removed from office for misconduct, apparently with a view to electing Fulke himself as master. Counter charges against Fulke alleged a serious crime, the nature of which is unknown, but of which he was eventually cleared. For the sake of peace he was persuaded to resign his fellowship; he left Cambridge to become chaplain to the earl of Leicester, well known for his patronage of puritans. He was re-elected a fellow in March 1570, but again resigned in the summer of 1571—this time finally, since soon afterwards he married. His first wife (her name is not known) bore their eldest son Christopher before her death within two years of the wedding. Leicester obtained for Fulke the living of Great Warley in Essex, where he resided with his family until 1574. On 16 May 1573 he married his second wife, Margaret Cotton (d. 1604). Their children were Mary, baptized in 1574; twin sons baptized in 1575, who died in infancy; Hester, baptized in 1577; Elizabeth, baptized in 1583; Anne, baptized in 1585; John, baptized in 1587, who died in infancy; and William, baptized in 1588. After acquiring a second living, Dennington in Suffolk, Fulke and his family moved there, leaving Great Warley to a curate. Though he was often elsewhere, Dennington remained his family home until his death in 1589, and his tomb is in Dennington church, where he was buried on 28 August.
During the 1570s, under Leicester's patronage, Fulke found a rising position in the world compatible with his radical puritan convictions, though he was obliged to sign a declaration that the authorized liturgies and vestments were not contrary to scripture. He became popular as a preacher in London churches, and in 1572 he accompanied the earl of Lincoln as his chaplain on an embassy to Paris, receiving the Cambridge degree of DTh by special dispensation just before the embassy left for France. The early 1570s were also the time of his greatest commitment to the presbyterian movement within the Church of England. But the leaders of that movement judged the book he wrote in support of it not suitable for publication and only published it later, anonymously and without his consent (A Brief and Plain Declaration, 1584), when Fulke had abandoned the views expressed in it. Also in the 1570s he was becoming well known in the role that was to be the major concern of the rest of his career: as a theological controversialist, exposing the errors of Roman Catholic doctrine and defending the Church of England against theological attacks from English Catholic polemicists. It was his sense of the importance of arguing the common protestant cause against Rome that led him away from a puritan concern to cleanse the Church of England itself from popish remnants towards a more conformist position in his later years.
In 1578 Leicester's patronage secured him the mastership of Pembroke College, Cambridge, a position he held until his death. He was a conscientious and energetic master, during whose tenure the average number of undergraduates entering the college each year effectively doubled, and he served as vice-chancellor of the university in 1581–2. In 1579 he would probably have been appointed to the regius chair of divinity had he not declined to be considered because of his parish duties. Although he remained one of those Cambridge divines to whom puritans looked for learning and guidance, Pembroke under his mastership did not become a puritan college, like St John's under William Whitaker or Christ's under Laurence Chaderton. Indeed, the beginnings of the Arminian theology of grace that would characterize the Laudian movement, contesting the dominant Calvinism of the Elizabethan church, can be traced to men like Lancelot Andrewes and Samuel Harsnett who were fellows of Pembroke in the 1580s. Fulke remained an unhesitating adherent of the reformed views of predestination, grace, and assurance, but remained close to Calvin's theology in these respects, avoiding the heightened emphasis on predestination that characterized the later Calvinism of men like William Perkins. Amid the new theological developments of the 1580s Fulke remained primarily an apologist for the central doctrines of reformed theology against the attacks of the papists. As such, puritans continued to claim him as an authority, but he also enjoyed the favour and co-operation of the government and the ecclesiastical authorities. It was as the acknowledged successor to John Jewel in the theological defence of the Church of England against Rome that he was admired and remembered by his contemporaries: ‘that profound, ready and resolute doctor, the hammer of heretics, the champion of truth’, as Bishop Joseph Hall called him in 1607 (Hall, 262).
Probably encouraged by his noble patrons and government contacts, Fulke conceived the project of answering all works of controversy written in English by papists since 1558 and of doing so by the technique of exhaustive rebuttal, answering every point, large and small, made in the writings of his opponents. In fact he published answers to twenty-one Roman Catholic works by such writers as William Allen, Thomas Stapleton, Nicholas Sander, and Robert Persons. In most cases their text was printed with Fulke's response, indicating his confidence that readers would not be led astray by the papist but rather edified by the cogency of his own response. Fulke was well equipped for this role by his vast erudition, especially in patristic literature, and his command of biblical and classical languages, as well as his painstaking concern for accurate detail and the rules of logical argument. In addition to written controversy, Fulke engaged in public disputations with recusant prisoners, most famously with Edmund Campion in the Tower before the latter's execution in 1581. The climax of his work was his vast confutation of the Rheims New Testament, the English translation of the Vulgate text produced by English Catholics with numerous annotations. To write this he lodged with two assistants for nine months in 1587–8 in the London home of his publisher, who provided living expenses and books.
As well as replying to Roman Catholic attacks on the English church, Fulke pursued his refutation of Rome in published sermons, especially a series on the Apocalypse (Praelections, 1573) which were first preached in the earl of Leicester's household in 1569, at the time of the northern uprising. There and in other works he propagated the dominant Elizabethan version of the apocalyptic interpretation of the Reformation as the final struggle between Christ and Antichrist, a theme that ran through the whole sixteenth-century protestant–Catholic controversy. Fulke's work is also characterized by the increasing shift in this controversy from particular doctrines to the fundamental issues of doctrinal authority and to the nature and accessibility of the biblical revelation. Most important, perhaps, were his controversy with Gregory Martin about the principles and practice of Bible translation (A Defense of the Sincere and True Translations, 1583) and the continuation of this in his exhaustive work on the Rheims New Testament (The Text of the New Testament, 1589). This controversy, with its constant demonstration of the inextricable connection between translation and interpretation, significantly influenced the King James version of the Bible.
Richard Bauckham Sources R. Bauckham, ‘The career and thought of Dr William Fulke (1537–1589)’, PhD diss., U. Cam., 1973 [incl. bibliography of Fulke's works, incl. MSS and letters] · H. C. Porter, Reformation and reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958), chaps. 5–6 · W. McKane, Selected Christian Hebraists (1989), chap. 3 · R. Bauckham, ‘Science and religion in the writings of Dr William Fulke’, British Journal for the History of Science, 8 (1975), 17–31 · R. Bauckham, Tudor apocalypse (1978), esp. 321–40 · A. C. Southern, Elizabethan recusant prose, 1559–1582 (1950) · T. E. Key, ‘Dennington church’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, 8 (1892–4), 65–82 [transcribes inscription on monument to Fulke erected 1621] · A. L. Attwater, Pembroke College, Cambridge: a short history, ed. S. C. Roberts (1936) · Venn, Alum. Cant., 1/2.183; 1/4.523 · The works of Joseph Hall, B. of Exceter (1634) · CUL, department of manuscripts and university archives, Guard Book IV · monument, Suffolk, Dennington church
Likenesses W. Marshall, line engraving, BM, NPG; repro. in W. Fulke, The text of the new testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists (1633), frontispiece
Wealth at death property at Hornsey, Middlesex (inherited from his father); property at Taunton, Somerset; property at Dickleburgh, Norfolk (118 acres, purchased for £900 in 1586); books, ‘antiquities’, plate, etc.: will, CUL, department of manuscripts and university archives; deed of sale of land, Pembroke Cam.
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