Abstract: George Closse (fl. 1571–1621) had one of the most dramatic and scandalous careers of any clergyman in early modern England. He provoked outrage in 1586 with a sermon at Paul’s Cross attacking the lord mayor for maladministration of justice, then repeated the feat in 1603 with an assize sermon attacking the legal profession for venality and corruption. He was finally brought down by a Star Chamber case in 1613 in which he was convicted of perjury, forgery, simony, adultery, and procuring an abortion. This article reconstructs his extraordinary career and explains why he repeatedly found himself in trouble with the authorities. Closse saw the preacher as a prophetic figure whose role was to denounce sin in the most vehement terms, to be a spokesman for popular grievances, and, where necessary, to rebuke the magistracy for failing to redress those grievances. His strong assertion of clerical autonomy put him on a collision course with the civil authorities and, in particular, with the practitioners of the common law. His career illustrates, in an extreme form, the power of preaching to shape (and, potentially, to radicalize) opinion in the early modern public sphere.
Arnold Hunt (Sun,) studied this question.
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