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N.D. versus O.E.: anonymity's moral ambiguity in Elizabethan Catholic controversy
Criticism, Summer, 1998 by Marcy L. North
On the title page of his attributed Apologie or Defence of the Watchword (1600), Hastings refuses to grant the initials N. D. any identifying function. They are strictly a disguise; the Ward-word has been "published by an English-Spaniard, lurking under the title of N. D." In his letter to the reader, Hastings counters Parsons's attempt to label the Watch-word a libel by making the anonymity of the Ward-word a defining characteristic of libel. "As for the tearme of a byting Libell" he argues, "thou wilt say (gentle Reader) when thou hast perused him and me both over, that it is a more fit addition to the title of his temperate Ward-word which is byting, because it is full of rayling, and is libell, because it is slaunderous against her Majestie, and the seat of her Justice, and is thrust out without name" ([A2.sup.v]). More than a few times in his Apologie, Hastings chides Parsons for his anonymity, which, interestingly enough, he equates with immodesty: "He that hath once broken the bounds of modestie, must be lustily and outragiously impudent: so fareth it with this masked and disguised companion (who being vizoured cannot blush)" (153). Hastings idealizes the old-fashioned ethics of disputation whereby face-to-face encounters encouraged moral consensus through honesty, reason, and shame, but he conveniently ignores the danger this method would pose to his opponent. Hastings narrows the function of anonymity so that it conceals humility and conscience rather than identity, leaving exposed the impudence of unchecked speech. Modesty is still an important quality for Hastings, but anonymity does not represent it. Although Hastings never names Parsons and probably could not name him at the time, he reads the text suspiciously as if he were an informed reader. If he does not know the name of his opponent, he still claims to know his character through and through.
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Matthew Sutcliffe can identify Parsons, though he reveals this only after he has feigned ignorance for several pages and manipulated Parsons's authorial stance to his own advantage. In A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel (1600), Sutcliffe publishes under the initials O. E., as if to one-up Parsons's N. D., at least alphabetically. He fashions Parsons's initials into a condescending nickname: "Sir N.D. or Noddy, or howsoever it shall please you to stile your selfe, being a man but of two or three letters [footnote: Homo trium literarum], it should seeme you were in a fitte of a cholericke feaver, when you wrote your late Wardword" (A2). On signature A3, Sutcliffe teases the reader by mentioning "Robert Parsons" without identifying him as N. D. The full revelation finally begins two pages later when Sutcliffe tells N. D., "I will deale plainly with you, for that I am well acquainted with your stile, and know your lewde packing, and practising, and can convince you, if you have your steele visor on, and shame not to denie so plaine matters. I say, then that you Robert Parsons falsly abusing the name of Jesus, to overth[r]owe the truth of Jesus, have published first certaine chartels against your friends in Oxford: secondly, one famous or rather infamous libell against the Earle of Leicester: thirdly, another single libell against the late Lord Treasurerer: fourthly ..." ([A3.sup.v]-4). Sutcliffe names a total of eight anonymous publications that he attributes to Parsons, among them the Ward-word and the infamous Leicesters Commonwealth (1584), a work which the English government read as evidence of the Catholic potential for treachery against the queen. There is no doubt that Sutcliffe uses Parsons's anonymity as proof of the Jesuit's more general treacherous nature, but once the author has been revealed, Sutcliffe focuses on the irony of Parsons's plea for tolerance and on his continuing disloyalty to England rather than on his name suppression. The early play with anonymity creates a suspense within the narrative that reaches its climax with the revelation. While the revelation functions rhetorically within the text to bring the anonymous author out into the open for a public duel, it also functions in the political arena as a threat to Parsons's new antiresistance stance.
