A Catholic book that survived the Reformation hints at a secret act of defiance by one of Henry VIII’s own enforcers.
Sir John Gage helped Henry VIII dismantle monasteries and dispose of their possessions for the Crown. Yet six fragile pages from a medieval religious book suggest that the trusted royal official also saved a Catholic text from the destruction he was expected to enforce.
Dr. Katie Walter of the University of Sussex and Dr. James Wade of Girton College, Cambridge, have linked the pages at The Keep archive in Brighton, U.K., to a manuscript held 3,500 miles away at Yale University in the United States. The manuscript is a copy of Nicholas Love’s early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, and it bears Gage’s signature. Their study, published in Notes and Queries, connects him to a book that went from an approved bestseller to dangerous reading during the English Reformation.
An approved bestseller becomes dangerous
Love completed his English translation and adaptation of an earlier Latin text around 1409, when disputes over religious authority could carry deadly consequences. The Lollards, a proto-Protestant movement, argued that people should have access to the Bible in English and challenged the authority of the pope and priests. A law passed in 1401 sought to suppress heresy, with punishments for seditious heretics, including Lollards, that could include death by burning.
“In the early 15th century, having bible translations in English could get you killed,” Walter says. “Nicholas Love’s translation offered a safe alternative. It was considered orthodox and circulated with the seal of approval of Archbishop Arundel, the outspoken opponent of the Lollards.”
William Caxton published a printed edition of the Mirror in 1486. It remained in print until publication abruptly stopped at the start of the Reformation, when teachings that had helped establish its religious credentials became contentious.
Love had appended a treatise defending the real presence of Jesus’ body and blood in the sacrament of Communion. He also included passages on oral confession to a priest and other orthodox Catholic sacraments. These became subjects of fierce debate during Henry VIII’s reign and the turbulent years of Reformation and counter-Reformation that followed. Some Catholics continued to prize the book illicitly.
“65 copies of Love’s text survive today. That’s a lot for a 15th-century manuscript but so many could have been destroyed in the Reformation. It shows how popular it was, but it also shows how a work that became suspicious and dangerous for some could also be valued and preserved by others,” Wade says.
The king’s enforcer remained Catholic
Gage’s place among those owners brings together two sides of his life that readers of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy may recognize. He appears in the novels as a religious conservative who nevertheless serves Henry VIII dependably as Constable of the Tower and a member of the Privy Council.
When the dissolution of the monasteries began in 1536, Gage was already vice-chamberlain of the royal household and gaining influence at court. He was also on good terms with Thomas Cromwell, whose power was rising. Having demonstrated his abilities as an administrator, Gage was assigned to organize the dissolution in Surrey, Kent, and Sussex. His work involved taking stock of everything the monastic houses owned and determining how to dispose of those assets for the Crown.
“Gage had a very long career in a highly turbulent court,” Wade says. “He survived when many other very shrewd people did not. And he made a fortune in the process. But he’s also this incredibly conflicted man, because he remained a Catholic throughout the Reformation. He’s got all this power and bureaucratic savvy combined with a risky conviction in his faith. Somehow he manages to reconcile these two things, and survive.”
Six pages traced to Gage’s book
Connecting Gage to the six pages required Walter and Wade to resolve a cataloging puzzle that had frustrated scholars for nearly a century. Following clues left by archivists and earlier researchers, they reached the digitized Takamiya MS 20 manuscript at Yale’s Beinecke Library. As they scrolled through it, they found a gap immediately before a controversial passage about the importance of oral confession to a priest.
The missing text matched the content of The Keep’s pages, and the handwriting matched that of the manuscript’s scribe. Together, those features established that the separated pages belonged to the Yale volume. On its final page, Gage’s signature appears among a list of names thought to belong to its owners.
Walter says, “The fact two possible owners before Gage were religious women suggests the manuscript might have been in a monastic house before it came into his possession. The dissolution of the monasteries led to the destruction of many books but others were taken and then circulated through informal networks. Considering Gage’s active role in the dissolution, it’s very possible he acquired the book during this chaos.”
Other monastic possessions certainly passed into Gage’s hands through his official work. He legitimately acquired the Battle Abbey sword, a treasure made for the abbot in the early 15th century. His house, Firle Place, was even built using stones removed from nearby Lewes Priory after its surrender to the Crown in 1537. The manuscript’s route into his possession remains uncertain.
“One possibility is that John Gage went to a monastic library and brought it home. Another is that someone else smuggled it out, and it briefly circulated from hand to hand until Gage acquired it. The key thing is – he kept it safe when he was meant to destroy books precisely like this one,” Wade says.
Catholic books survived in private hands
Walter says, “We often associate this period with book burning and destruction, so this manuscript’s story goes a bit against that grain. It reminds us that people were also rescuing, valuing, and caring for books.”
After printing of the Mirror ceased, Catholics played an important role in safeguarding its contents. “By keeping this book on his shelf, John Gage and his family were part of a much bigger secret effort to preserve Catholic literature and knowledge,” Walter says.
The researchers hope the findings will open new opportunities to trace Gage’s perilous course through the dissolution and the Reformation.
“It makes us think about the integrity that underlies subterfuge. There was a lot at stake for John Gage to perform tasks at court, but then secretly preserve the very thing that he’s meant to destroy,” Wade says.
Reference: “Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Missing Fragment from Takamiya MS 20 in the Holdings of the Keep” by Katie Walter and James Wade, 17 September 2026, Notes and Queries.
DOI: 10.1093/notesj/gjag103
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.