Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/244

 236 THOMAS HARDING AprU Mr. JewelVs Reply against the Sacrifice of the Mass, Louvain, 1567 (in 4to). The history of this controversy has not yet been written ; ^ indeed, it cannot be written until there exists a corpus of catholic divines, like that of the protestant reformers published by the Parker Society. These authors did not enjoy in their exile either the advantages of peace and financial prosperity or any official sanction. Their books were systematically suppressed in England and attracted little attention in the foreign countries where they were published. The language in which they were written must have been one cause of that indifference. It was probably to rouse the interest of the divines of the Continent that William Rainolds, a fellow countryman, rendered Harding's works into Latin.^ Indigence prevented the printing of this translation, and probably also of some works of Harding himself, such as his His- toria Divortii, a history of Henry VIII 's separation from Rome.^ This lack of sound material renders an adequate estimate of the value and influence of Harding's writings impossible, but it may be safely said that in the struggle against the Anglican church he was one of the most powerful and expert protagonists of the Roman orthodoxy. He was one of the most influential members of the English community at Louvain, and possibly lectured in the Oxford Study House, which the refugees had opened for the benefit of the exiled students.* As the records of the faculty of divinity of that period have perished, no details can be supplied ; yet the fact that Valerius Andreas inserted him in the list of Doctores S. Theologiae ac Professores qui titulum aliunde Lovanium attulerunt, on a line with Richard Smith, implies that if he was not an actual professor either of Hebrew or of theology, he was honoured as such, and was at least a member of the faculty of theology.^ He took an active interest in the » See Frere, The English Church in the Reign of Elizabeth and James I (1904), i. 80-92. who abjured heresy in Rome and became professor of Scripture and Hebrew at Rheims. He was famous as poet, rhetorician, musician, mathematician, historian, philosopher, and divine, and wrote several polemical tracts. He died as rector of the Beguinage of Antwerp, and was buried in the church of that community (Paquot, Fasti Doctorales Facultatis Theologiae Lovaniensis, Brussels, Royal Library MS. 17567, p. 30 ; Diet, of Nat. Biogr.). Le Grand, Pr^fet de la Bibliotheque Royale de France, in his reply to Burnet (Histoire du Divorce (Paris, 1688), ii. 47 S. ; Paquot, Fasti, p. 30). domum in Nova Platea a loanne a Schore ad triennium, Lovanii, 28 iulii, 1565, coram Wamel, in Actis ' ( Bax, Historia Universitatis Lovaniensis, Brussels, Royal Library MS. 22172, ii. 149). » Valerius Andreas, Fasti Acadetnici Stiidii Oeneralis L&vaniensis (Louvain, 1650), p. 86.
 * William Rainolds or Reginald, alias Rossaeus, was a native of Pinhoe, Devonshire,
 * The manuscript, which has disappeared, was attributed to Harding by Joachim
 * ' Nicolas Sanderus, loan. Martial, et Thomas Stapleton, Angli, conducunt simul