N.D. versus O.E.: anonymity's moral ambiguity in Elizabethan Catholic controversy

One should also note how Jewel uses the terms "public" and "private" in this section of the book. A "private" name is personal, but not hidden. Authors from this period often use "private" to mean "close" and "circumscribed," as in a "private letter" meant only for a few specific friends. A public text is a common, authorized document. It would be unnecessary, even inappropriate, to attach a private personal name to such a text, for that might close the circle of the text's effect or circumscribe its commonly authored truth. The writer of a public text remains hidden in order to give the text its public status. It is fair to assume that in most circumstances, Jewel would be eager to condemn secret printing and anonymous publication. Such "seditious" acts, he might say, are easily distinguished from his own by intention, utility, and interpretation, even when the various types of anonymity look identical on the page. Harding's attack on institutional anonymity and Jewel's defense of anonymity demonstrate how vulnerable the convention of anonymity was to interpretation, how easily it was dissected into its various functions and judged, not as a single convention, but as a piece of particular traditions such as the anonymity of inspired biblical texts or the deceptive pseudonymity of heresy.

In spite of Harding's and Jewel's individual efforts to distinguish and define the intentions behind specific acts of anonymity, many authors, book producers, and readers chose rather to cultivate the ambiguity of the convention. Perhaps the Catholic readers of Cooper's Apologie were indulging in just such an act of purposeful misunderstanding when they purchased the book for its included Catholic text. The various ways anonymity could be read provided a particular kind of protection for those seeking shelter within namelessness. The Catholic exile William Allen commented in 1576 that "nowhere do men lie hid more safely than in London."(26) Anonymity's myriad of potential meanings resembled a crowded city where the "criminal" functions and the "legitimate" uses were difficult to distinguish. It left some room, some license, and some play for authors and book producers who, indeed, had something to hide. The early controversy between Harding and Jewel merely emphasized the fact that anonymity would be almost impossible to regulate, not simply because the authorities lacked the power to regulate it, but also because it was integral to several contradictory moral traditions within early print culture.

During the Jewel-Harding exchange and in the decade that followed, a small number of controversialists on both the Protestant and the Catholic sides published anonymously or pseudonymously. Nicholas Harpsfield wrote from the Tower of London, publishing his Dialogi Sex in 1566 under the name of its editor, Alan Cope. In a heated exchange about royal supremacy, an anonymous defender of the English church wrote in 1570 against the views of the Portuguese bishop, Osorio da Fonseca.(27) A Latin publication appeared without name in 1573 in response to Nicholas Sander, a leader of the exiled English Catholic theologians and a prominent polemicist who had written previously against Jewel.(28) William Allen is said to have written the second part of a work published in 1575 in which he was not identified.(29) Although the number of anonymous publications was relatively small during these early years, it is clear that anonymity remained a readily available option for polemicists. The impact it would make on later controversies had its foundation in these early experiments with the uses and meanings of nameless publication.