Henry VIII’s dissolution enforcer stashed Catholic manuscript – its lost pages have just been rediscovered
image:
Dr Katie Walter and Dr James Wade in The Keep archive, Brighton, with the fragment of Nicholas Love’s early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.
view moreCredit: Courtesy of the University of Sussex
Sir John Gage, a key figure in Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, saved a dangerous Catholic book from likely destruction, a new study suggests. The identification of six lost pages of a medieval bestseller – illicitly prized by Catholics in the Reformation – as belonging to Gage, exposes the split loyalties of one of Tudor England’s great survivors.
Fans of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy will recall John Gage appearing as a religious conservative and yet dependable enforcer for Henry VIII, as Constable of the Tower and Privy Counsellor. But new research suggests a bold act of subterfuge by Gage, in which he shielded a treasured Catholic text from the very destruction the king ordered him to enforce.
Archival sleuthing by researchers from the Universities of Sussex and Cambridge has reunited six fragile pages in The Keep archive, Brighton (UK) with a manuscript held 3,500 miles away at Yale University in the US: Nicholas Love’s early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.
Dr Katie Walter from the University of Sussex; and Dr James Wade, from Girton College, Cambridge overcame a cataloguing puzzle which had frustrated scholars for nearly a century, leaving the fragment ‘hiding in plain sight’. Their study is published today in the journal Notes and Queries.
A trail of clues left by various archivists and scholars eventually led Wade and Walter to a digitised manuscript known as ‘Takamiya MS 20’ held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Scrolling through it, they found the gap where The Keep pages belonged – just before a controversial passage on the importance of oral confession to a priest – and matched the scribe’s handwriting, and the content of the missing passage to prove the connection. On the final page of the Yale manuscript, among a list of names of likely owners, including those of two religious women, is the signature of John Gage.
Dr Katie 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.”
Dr James Wade says: “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.”
Love’s precious / deadly words
Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ went from being an approved, orthodox bestseller in the early 15th century to a ‘risk to life’ book in the English Reformation a century later.
Love completed his English translation and adaptation of an earlier Latin text around 1409, at a moment of intense anxiety about the rise and spread of heretical beliefs. The Lollards, a proto-Protestant religious movement, were boldly arguing people should have access to the Bible in English and challenging the role of the Pope and of priests. In 1401, an act was passed to suppress heresy, condemning seditious heretics, including the Lollards, to punishments that could include death by burning.
“In the early 15th century, having bible translations in English could get you killed,” Katie 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.”
In the Reformation, however, some of Love’s words became toxic. Most problematically, he appended a treatise arguing for the real presence of the blood and body of Jesus in the sacrament. He also included passages about oral confession to a priest as well as other orthodox Catholic sacraments – all of which became hotly debated in Henry VIII’s reign and in the tumultuous years of Reformation and counter-Reformation which followed.
James Wade says: “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.”
Who was John Gage (1479 – 1556)?
When the dissolution of the monasteries began in 1536, Sir John Gage was gaining influence at Henry VIII’s court. He was already vice-chamberlain of the royal household and was on the right side of Henry’s rising star: Thomas Cromwell.
Having already proven himself an effective administrator, Gage was tasked with organising the dissolution in Surrey, Kent, and Sussex. This involved taking stock of everything owned by monastic houses and working out how to dispose of those assets for the Crown.
As part of this role, Gage legitimately acquired items including the Battle Abbey sword, a treasure made for the Abbot in the early 15th century. Gage’s house, Firle Place, was even built with stones removed from the nearby Lewes Priory following its surrender to the Crown in 1537.
“Gage had a very long career in a highly turbulent court,” says James Wade. “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.”
Katie 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.”
William Caxton brought out a print edition of Nicholas Love's Mirror in 1486 and it stayed in print until publication abruptly halted at the start of the Reformation, after which point Catholics played an important role in safeguarding its contents for the future. “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”, Katie Walter says.
James Wade says: “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.”
The researchers hope their findings will open up new opportunities to trace John Gage’s perilous steps through the dissolution and Reformation.
Notes to editors
A brief chronology
John’s Gage’s copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror stays in the Gage family in Sussex until the 20th century. At some point between Gage’s acquisition and the manuscript’s re-binding in the nineteenth century, 6 pages, now known as ‘The Keep fragment’, become detached. In 1929, the family deposits 46 boxes of documents on loan with the Sussex Archaeological Society. One of these boxes contains the fragment but it is omitted from the box’s contents list. In 1982, the box is transferred to the East Sussex Record Office before moving to its current location in The Keep in 2013.
Meanwhile, in 1976, a collector in Tokyo, Japan, Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, purchases the manuscript at a Christie’s sale of properties belonging to John Gage’s descendant, Viscount Gage of Firle. Then in 2017, it is transferred to the Beinecke Library at Yale University, where it remains.
References
K. Walter & J. Wade, Nicholas Love’s ‘Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A missing fragment from Takamiya MS 20 in the holdings of The Keep’, Notes and Queries (2026). DOI: 10.1093/notesj/gjag103
‘Archive of the Gage Family of Firle, Viscounts Gage’, The Keep Catalogue.
Nicholas Love, Mirour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ (Takamiya MS 20). General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Media contacts
Tom Almeroth-Williams, Communications Manager (Research), University of Cambridge: tom.williams@admin.cam.ac.uk / tel: +44 (0) 7540 139 444
Dr Katie Walter, University of Sussex: K.L.Walter@sussex.ac.uk
Dr James Wade, Girton College, University of Cambridge: jpw49@cam.ac.uk
Journal
Notes and Queries
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A missing fragment from Takamiya MS 20 in the holdings of The Keep
Article Publication Date
17-Sep-2026
Portrait (unattributed) of Sir John Gage.
First page of The Keep fragment of Nicholas Love’s early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. It shows the beginning of Chapter 34, on the Raising of Lazarus.
Pages 8-9 of The Keep fragment of Nicholas Love’s early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, from Chapter 34, on the Raising of Lazarus. Image shows the manuscript's thread binding.
Credit
Courtesy of The Trustees of the Firle Estate Settlement and the University of Sussex
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