Documents

The Documents

Christopher Goodman's letter book

Most of the new documents on this site come from one source, Christopher Goodman’s Letter Book. It has survived in an early 18th-century copy in the Plas Power MSS deposited in Denbighshire Record Office in Ruthin (DD/PP/839). The letter book is a volume bound in white leather [30.5cm x 19cm] probably copied by Thomas Lloyd, a Welsh clergyman, resident at Plas Power during the early 18th-century. He was a faithful copyist as can be seen when his versions can be checked against the few surviving originals from the 16th century. A full discussion of Lloyd’s work can be found in Dawson & Glassey’s article [see Bibliography].

Additional letters from other collections have been added to the site under 'Resources.' They include a translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter of a Latin letter written to John Calvin by ‘Tinoterius’, who has been firmly identified as John Knox. Two documents from the pen of John Bale [Petyt MSS in the Inner Temple Library] have been re-located and re-dated to Frankfurt during the winter of 1554-5. They now fit neatly into the middle of the ‘Troubles’, expressing Bale’s vehement opposition to Knox and his supporters. Also included is a letter sent in March 1557 by the Geneva exile congregation to the Frankfurt congregation that was drafted on the back of a book list [Rawlinson MSS in the Bodleian Library].

This website offers downloadable working versions of these translations and transcriptions to provide the basis for future research. It has not been possible to produce a scholarly edition with full apparatus and the transcriptions are accompanied by "work in progress" footnotes. It is hoped to add further interpretative material to the site at a later date.