The Bee hive of the Romish Church. A worke of all good Catholiks too be read and most neccessary to bee understoode: wherein both the Catholike religion is substantially confirmed, and the heretikes finely fetcht ouer the coales. Translated out of Dutch into English by George Gllpin [sic] the Elder.

Bookseller Notes

A translation, first issued in 1579, of Philips of Marnix' biting satire, 'De roomsche byen-korf' published ten years earlier during the author's exile in Friesland, by George Gilpin, who was particularly fitted to the task, since, by this point, he had become one of Elizabeth I's most dependable agents in her negotiations with the Low Countries. Though John Stell's impression of the text (in his initial letter 'To the Reader') is entirely clear ' thoug hast such a booke, as will make thee privie to all the practices of the Babylonicall Beast, (Rome I meane) the denne of Dragons and divels', and the text itself admits that a treatise on ecclesiastical difference can be 'wearisome to reade (p.3), the lively extended metaphor comparing the Catholic Church with the physical and hierarchical structure of a beehive offers an intriguing commentary on the balance between order and chaos. There are 'sundrie sorts of Bees' (p.352) described, from bees 'with redde scarlet wings' (p.353) closest to the king bee to bees 'appointed eache over his honicombe apart, which they call Parishes' to those 'who have nothing else to doe, but with an irksome buzzing by day and night doe swarme in their hive.' (p.354) (Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton, 2006).