Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/433

  in part as yet edited for the Camden Society, occur interspersedly in vols. 2533–9, 2541–3, 2545 of the Egerton MSS. The Ormonde Papers contain a long series of his letters to the Marquis of Ormonde; of Nicholas's Letters to Hyde only a few are preserved in the Clarendon State Papers at the Bodleian; see Calendar of them. The correspondence between Charles I and Nicholas in the summer and autumn of 1641 is reprinted in vol. iv. of Evelyn's Diary. For the continuation of the correspondence of Elizabeth with Nicholas, printed in part in Evelyn, see Egerton MS. 2548. The covers of seventeen out of forty-four of these letters are preserved in Egerton MS. 2546. See also in State Papers, Dom., Car. I, cxxxv. 46, a letter of Nicholas's, being ‘letters to his mistress, Jane Jay,’ of the year 1622; Rushworth's Hist. Collections; Thurloe's State Papers; Hist. MSS. Reports; State Papers, Domestic; Parliamentary Journals, and authorities cited.]  NICHOLAS, HENRY, or NICLAES, HENRICK (fl. 1502–1580), founder of the religious sect known as the Family of Love, was born at Münster, in Westphalia, on 10 Jan. 1501 or 1502 (cf., pp. 340, 341). Under the direction of his father, Cornelius Niclaes, a zealous Roman catholic in humble circumstances, he attended mass daily as a boy. At eight he began to see visions, and to put questions to his father-confessor. While still a youth he established himself in business at Münster as a mercer, and married when he was twenty. At twenty-seven he was imprisoned on suspicion of heresy, but was soon liberated. A few years later, about 1530, he removed with his wife and family to Amsterdam, where he was again imprisoned on suspicion of complicity in the Münster insurrection. In 1539 or 1540, when he was thirty-nine, the manifestations of his childhood were renewed, and he represented that he received a divine summons to become a prophet or ‘elect minister’ and practical founder of a new sect to be called ‘Familia Caritatis,’ ‘Huis der Liefde,’ i.e. ‘Family of Love.’ Three elders—Daniel, Elidad, and Tobias—were appointed to aid him in his enterprise.

Niclaes now left Amsterdam for Embden, and commenced to write down the revelations which were, he conceived, entrusted to himself alone. In Embden he lived for twenty years (1540–1560), and there he wrote most of his books, which he signed with the initials H. N., by some supposed to mean Homo Novus (, Discovery of the Errors of the English Anabaptists, 1623, pp. 89–91). His business in the meantime, with the assistance of his eldest son, Franz, became lucrative, and in the course of mercantile tours he made many converts in Holland, Brabant, and in Paris. His books, secretly printed at the presses of his friends and adherents, Christopher Plantin at Antwerp, Van Borne at Deventer, the Bohmbergers at Cologne, and Augustyn van Hasselt at Kampen, soon aroused opposition. They were prohibited by the council of Trent in 1570 and in 1582, and by papal bull in 1590 (, Indices Libr. Prohibit. des sechszehnten Jahrh. pp. 290, 347, 485).

Niclaes's visit to England cannot be dated with certainty. He was here in 1552 or 1553 (cf., Church Hist. bk. ix. pp. 282–91), but may have arrived earlier (cf. Original Letters, Parker Soc. ii. 560). According to Karl Pearson, he did not come till 1569 (‘Kingdom of God in Munster,’ Modern Review, 1884). Fuller says Niclaes joined the Dutch church in London; but Martin Micronius and Nicholas Carinæus (d. 1563), its successive ministers, attacked his doctrines in ‘A Confutation of the Doctrine of David George and H. N., the Father of the Familie of Love,’ English translations of which are given by John Knewstub in ‘A Confutation,’ pp. 88–92. Niclaes readily gained some followers in England, although his stay was short, and the story of a second visit is unsupported. Upon leaving he appears to have retired to Kampen, in Holland, and later to Cologne, where he was living in 1579. He probably died there in 1580 or 1581.

Niclaes taught an anabaptist mysticism, entirely without dogma, yet of exalted ideals. He no doubt imbibed his chief doctrines from David Joris or George (d. 1556). Niclaes declared himself the third prophet, sent specially to reveal love. He held himself and his elders to be impeccable, and the license which they claimed for themselves in this spirit gained for them the reputation of ‘libertines.’ But aspersions of the moral character of Niclaes and his chief followers are unfounded. Love of humanity was clearly the familists' essential rule of life.

Although regarded as a protestant sect, Niclaes derived his constitution of the priesthood entirely from the Roman catholic hierarchy. It consisted of the highest bishop, twenty-four elders, seraphims or archbishops, and three orders of priests. He made a new calendar with many additional holy days. In person Niclaes was ‘of reasonable tall stature, somewhat grosse of bodie, brave in his apparell’ (, Displaying of an Horrible Secte). Henry More (1614–1687) [q. v.], who called him ‘the begodded man of Amsterdam,’ and who answered his books in the ‘Explanation of the grand Mystery of Godliness,’ pp. 171 seq., frequently mentioned the ‘crimson satin doublet, the long