Sodomy had always been an ecclesiastical offense.  The Statute of 1533 (25 Henry VIII, c. 6) made it a felony; and Pollock and Maitland consider that this “affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long time past."[82] The temporal law has never, however, proved very successful in repressing homosexuality.  At this period the Renaissance movement was reaching England, and here as elsewhere it brought with it, if not an increase, at all events a rehabilitation and often an idealization of homosexuality.[83]

An eminent humanist and notable pioneer in dramatic literature, Nicholas Udall, to whom is attributed Ralph Roister Doister, the first English comedy, stands out as unquestionably addicted to homosexual tastes, although he has left no literary evidence of this tendency.  He was an early adherent of the Protestant movement, and when head-master of Eton he was noted for his love of inflicting corporal punishment on the boys.  Tusser says he once received from Udall 53 stripes for “fault but small or none at all.”  Here there was evidently a sexual sadistic impulse, for in 1541 (the year of Ralph Roister Doister) Udall was charged with unnatural crime and confessed his guilt before the Privy Council.  He was dismissed from the head-mastership and imprisoned, but only for a short time, “and his reputation,” his modern biographer states, “was not permanently injured.”  He retained the vicarage of Braintree, and was much favored by Edward VI, who nominated him to a prebend of Windsor.  Queen Mary was also favorable and he became head-master of Westminster School.[84]

An Elizabethan lyrical poet of high quality, whose work has had the honor of being confused with Shakespeare’s, Richard Barnfield, appears to have possessed the temperament, at least, of the invert.  His poems to male friends are of so impassioned a character that they aroused the protests of a very tolerant age.  Very little is known of Barnfield’s life.  Born in 1574 he published his first poem, The Affectionate Shepherd, at the age of 20, while still at the University.  It was issued anonymously, revealed much fresh poetic feeling and literary skill, and is addressed to a youth of whom the poet declares:—­

    “If it be sin to love a lovely lad,
    Oh then sin I.”

In his subsequent volume, Cynthia (1595), Barnfield disclaims any intention in the earlier poem beyond that of imitating Virgil’s second eclogue.  But the sonnets in this second volume are even more definitely homosexual than the earlier poem, though he goes on to tell how at last he found a lass whose beauty surpassed that

          “of the swain
    Whom I never could obtain.”