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More Evidence for the Date of A Testimonie of Antiquitie

Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord is an important book for several reasons.1 As John Bromwich argued in 1962, it is probably the first edition of an Old English text in Anglo-Saxon Types, a milestone in the recovery and public study of Old English.2 It was prepared under Archbishop Matthew Parker’s direction by his Latin secretary, John Joscelin; it was printed by a prominent stationer, John Day; and beyond its two original editions its text was reprinted many times, beginning with its near wholesale inclusion in the second English edition of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (STC 11223, 1570). An example of Parker’s religious propaganda, it is a significant piece in the controversies that raged in print during Elizabeth’s reign, and, for this reason, it is also important for understanding English Reformation history. Knowledge of A Testimonie’s date of publication is, therefore, potentially useful for understanding the book in its context. But that date remains problematic. The first edition of STC (1926) gave the date as 1567, but the revised edition (1976–91), basing its decision on the article by Bromwich, who had drawn on the work of Eleanor N. Adams, changed the date to ‘[1566?]’.3 In 1997 I pointed out that Adams misread a portion of Arber’s index to the Stationers’ Registers, mistaking the latter for a kind of sixteenth-century Books in Print,