A similar sense of malleability, and the contingency of multiple religious influences, characterizes the autobiography of theater enthusiast (later turned amateur actor and playwright) Arthur Wilson, who describes himself as “such Waxe in Religion, as was apt to take any Impression.”136 Wilson was apprenticed to fellow playgoer John Davies of Hereford, “who being also a Papist, with his Wife & Familie, their Example & often Discourse gave Growth to those Thrivings I had. So that, with many Conflicts in my Spirit, I often debated which was the true Religion.”137 Later apprenticed in another papist household, Wilson continues to question and dispute: “Finding no way fitter to discover the Truth than to search into it, & being always in Argument against them, I went under the Notion of a Puritan; but God knowes, it was rather out of Contention than Edification: for indeed I was nothing.”138 Afterward, “out of the Societie of Papists” and serving as secretary to tepid presbyterian Robert Devereaux, third Earl of Essex, he writes that he “became a confirmed Protestant: but found nothing of the Sweetnes of Religion.”139 His piety deepened later in the employ of puritan playgoer Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, who maintained silenced ministers: “Now Preaching, the true Glasse of the Soule, discovered more unto mee that I had formerly seene; & good Men, by how much they were eclipsed by the Bishop’s, did privately shine the brighter.”140 Wilson’s later-life, godly, presbyterian commitments are evident in the disparaging treatment of the episcopacy in his History of Great Britain.141 On one hand, there is a clear trajectory in Wilson’s life from youthful dalliances with papistry to mature puritan devotion. However, it is also apparent that his taste for cross-confessional discussion did not evaporate with his turn toward godly piety. In later years, Wilson struck up a friendly acquaintance with the Catholic priest Father Weston: “Being familiar with him, I askt him many Questions, which are Arcana among them; & he was ingenuous to me in discovering the Truth.”142 Wilson’s interests in both religious dialogue and theater were lifelong and compatible.
In the process of conversion, spiritually turning toward God (metanoia) and changing denominations could be entangled in various, complex ways. For playgoer and Catholic priest Father Augustine Baker, a horse-riding accident immediately set his mind on higher things (“If ever I git out of this danger, I will beleive there is a God”). Yet his denominational conversion came later in an intense burst of prayer and reading.143 Sometimes piety and confessional commitment grew together: playgoing clergyman Peter Heylyn moved from an initial reluctance to study theology under the influence of his “zealous Puritan” Oxford tutor, through a growing love for the English Church that awakened skepticism toward Calvinist thought, to a career as a Laudian polemicist.144 These examples illustrate differences not only in the content but also in the experiential process of religious change. Baker’s first conversion is an event, and his second the product of a concentrated period of reflection, whereas for Heylyn religious change was a gradual, long-term evolution.
Spiritual conversions did not happen in splendid isolation from worldly concerns. However, Questier rightly points out that it is reductive to speak of people simply subordinating their consciences to better their careers or avoid persecution. More often, “when political and religious motives were both engaged in the mind of the individual convert they were maintained in a constant tension.”145 For example, theatergoer Christopher Blount was educated by William Allen himself, but in 1585, he abandoned his faith and helped Francis Walsingham embroil Mary, Queen of Scots, in the manufactured conspiracy that led to her execution. Blount’s apostasy seems to have been driven initially by worldly considerations, whether for political advancement or to protect his Romanist family from persecution. Yet his subsequent years of dedication to Leicester (under whose command he served in multiple, Protestant military campaigns); his marriage to Leicester’s widow, Lettice; and his ill-fated loyalty to Leicester’s stepson, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, suggest a factional commitment beyond shallow careerism.146 Confessing at his trial that he supported Essex because the earl had promised “toleration for religion,” Blount refused to speak with a Protestant minister before he was beheaded, declaring, “I die a catholic,” but adding the oddly sola fide qualification, “Yet so, as I hope to be saved only by the death and passion of Christ, and by his merits, not ascribing anything to mine own works,” followed by a request for intercessory prayer from the gathered witnesses.147 The theological irregularity of Blount’s death speech, as well as the complex intersection of political, personal, and religious ties that brought him to the scaffold, demonstrates the conflicting pressures that simultaneously shaped confessional lives.
Public conversions were fodder for polemic. Because both Protestants and Catholics agreed that one sign of the true Church was that its numbers were ever increasing, gains and losses on both sides were widely publicized. In 1637, Lady Newport’s public appearance at the Cockpit, immediately after her scandalous conversion to the Roman Church, contributed to rising alarm about prominent Catholic conversions at court.148 Perhaps few defections to the Roman Church were as embarrassing to the Church of England as that of playgoer Tobie Matthew, the son of the archbishop of York. Matthew’s autobiography describes a series of efforts by Protestant divines to reclaim him, culminating in what can only be compared to a modern-day intervention: “There came by accident, if it were not rather by design, a kind of … little College, of certain eminent clergymen … into a good large room of the house … with [my parents and] many others of their great family … to persuade me [to] return to my former religion.”149 This was not a success.
Theater buff John Harington observes that, “[although] brothers and brothers, fathers and sons, husbands and wives [differ] one from another in opinions and beliefs, [yet] many times as myself have seen [they] live in house and bed and board together very lovingly.”150 Yet, as the archbishop’s mixed-faith household demonstrates, cross-confessional relationships could be intimate without being easy. Catholic convert Matthew’s mother was “more fervent toward the Puritanical sole-Scripture way.” He recounts passiveaggressive exchanges of concern for each other’s spiritual well-being: “She would be telling me often how much she prayed to the Lord for me, whilst I, on the other side, would also … let her know whatsoever I conceived to import her for the good of her soul.”151 In a culture where religious pluralism was widely considered an offense to God, and a danger to society, these acts of pious harassment could be understood as gestures of Christian