Familia Caritatis

The Familia Caritatis, also known as the Familists, was a mystical religious sect founded in the sixteenth century by Henry Nicholis, also known as Niclaes.

His followers were said to assert that all things were ruled by nature and not directly by God, deny the dogma of the Trinity, and repudiate infant baptism.

The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition states: Nicholis's followers escaped the gallows and the stake, for they combined with some success the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove.

Plantin worked by day as Philip II of Spain's printer of Catholic documents for the Counter Reformation, and otherwise surreptitiously printed Familist literature.

In October 1580 Roger Goad, Dr Bridgewater and William Fulke engaged in the examination of John Bourne, a glover, and some others of the Family of Love who were confined in Wisbech Castle, in the Isle of Ely.