ABSTRACT
This chapter reads Hanmer’s Bragge side by side with the text of Campion’s “Letter to the Privy Council” and it seeks to find the place of this text within the context of the “Campion affair”. It compares Hanmer’s writing to William Charke’s – the two became involved in the controversy within two weeks from one another, but even though their pamphlets are closely related, they elicited different reactions and had different offshoots. Church and state are interdependent; therefore, heresy and sedition also coalesce: because our blessed estate of policie standeth in defence of religion, and our most blessed religion laboureth in mayntenance of common wealth. The Elizabethan state could claim religious leniency and tolerance in opposition to persecution of unorthodoxy, typical of Church of Rome, because torture and death were not imparted for religion. In Persons’ comparison, Hanmer emerged as the “quiet”, “plain”, “good-fellow like” and “liberal” voice of the established Church, and Charke as the devious, unscrupulous, self-serving one.
