The Puritans in power; a study in the history of the English church from 1640 to 1660

Front matter

I

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Preface

THE object of the following sketch is to illustrate the effect of the Puritan Revolution upon the Church of England and upon the Universities as institutions closely connected with the Church. In pursuing this purpose I have had in mind the immediate and material results of the revolution rather than the influence exercised upon religious thought, upon the future history of parties within the Church, or upon the relations of the Church to Dissent. I have not attempted, except by way of the shortest possible introduction, to analyse the development of the Puritan movement or to trace the steps which brought it into conflict with the school of Archbishop Laud — a field which has provided ample material for independent investigation. My aim has been to collect evidence descriptive of the methods by means of which the revolution was accomplished and generally illustrative of the outward aspects of the Puritan regime. If in the course of the discussion I have touched upon matters of polemical interest it has not been with the object of providing weapons to the armoury of either side in the dispute.

vi PREFACE

I am very deeply indebted to Professor Firth for gjving me access to some valuable notes and for his generous assistance at all times. To the Venerable Archdeacon Cunningham also I wish to express my sincere thanks for much advice and for his interest in a work with the conclusions of which he did not always agree.

G. B. T.

Trinity College.

September, 191 3

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

i. The Prelude . i

4. The Regulation of Cambridge University . . 93

Appendix

i. An Inventory of Prestwich Rectory . . . 264

2. The Case of Sylvester Adams . . .268

3. The Seizure of College Plate at Cambridge . 271 Index 273

ERRATA

PAGE

82 127 184 187 188 247

LINE 24.

3°- 6.

3°-

For " Robert " read " Roger "

" Croydon " read " Croyden "

"Gerald" read "Gerard"

"Heylin" read "Heylyn"

"Acts" read "Arts"

" Duncan " read " Duncon "

Chapter I

The brief period of Puritan ascendency which succeeded the Great Civil War forms the concluding phase of what has generally been regarded as a distinct epoch in English ecclesiastical history. But though a revolution which saw the overthrow of episcopal government, the abolition of the liturgy of the English Church, and the deprivation of a third of its ordained ministers is obviously a subject which cannot be described without reference to the events which preceded it, yet the whole history of the Puritan movement is so complex that an attempt to summarise the causes and tendencies is a task of no ordinary difficulty.

One is faced at the outset by the question of terminology. The name " Puritan," by which we are accustomed to designate the forces which lay at the back of a great religious and social upheaval, is itself full of pitfalls, because it was and is used to describe tendencies of thought, superficially alike, but really distinct. In the first place, its most common use in modern language draws attention to that aspect of its meaning which is historically the least important. To modern ears the word naturally suggests the dour look and the sombre habit, familiar in fiction and in art, as typifying an austere code of morals and a harsh and narrow outlook upon life. But though this view of Puritanism as a social and moral force is a direct

T. P. I inheritance from the sixteenth century and is true, to a certain degree, of what then came into being, the word had another and an historically older signification which is apt to be forgotten. Primarily the Puritans stood for purity in church life rather than for purity in personal life or conduct, which was thought of as a corollary. Their demand was for a complete reformation, for the abolition, in matters of religious worship and ecclesiastical government, of all that had been superimposed upon primitive forms.

So much may be premised of the Puritans, but when one seeks to define their position more accurately, generalisation at once becomes hazardous. For Puritanism was not a creed endowed with defined dogmas and a constructive ecclesiastical policy ; it was rather an attitude of mind which expressed itself not in one form only or with an equal degree of insistence. As a constructive force, Puritan thought in England was destined to follow two main lines of development, the Presbyterian and the Independent, but while it is to some extent inevitable, in speaking of the earlier phases of Puritanism, that one should employ these names for purposes of distinction, it is important to guard against the error of ascribing to movements in the embryonic stage the characteristics by which they ultimately came to be known, and of assuming the existence, from the beginning, of doctrines which were in fact only gradually formulated. The end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was essentially a period of evolution in religious thought, and it was only by degrees that opinions began to run in well-defined channels. Presbyterianism, of course, became at an early stage a recognised model of ecclesiastical government, but it would be untrue to say that English Puritanism, under Elizabeth and James I, was represented by a Presbyterian or an Independent party. The body of Puritan feeling in the country had not at that time become identified with any party or parties : it existed rather as an influence which directed men's minds more or less forcibly towards a further reformation in the Church. For the present purpose it will be more instructive to analyse the fundamental principles which characterised its two main currents.

The key-note of the Puritan position was the acceptance of the Bible as the one infallible authority before which all institutions in the Church must stand or fall. To some extent this attitude was common to the whole Reformation movement, but whereas the more moderate reformers had been content to do away with all that seemed contrary to Scripture, the Puritans went further and demanded the abolition of all for which the Bible offered no positive warrant. In this lies the explanation of their attitude towards the ecclesiastical system which was being built up in the English Church. It explains their dislike of the hierarchy, for even if some form of Episcopacy could be traced in the New Testament, the same could not be said of deans and canons ; it explains also their attitude towards the festivals of the Church and indeed towards all non-primitive institutions which the Reformation in England had not finally abolished. On this, the destructive, side Puritan feeling was tolerably unanimous and definite. Here, however, unanimity ended, for it is in their theories of ecclesiastical government, of the functions of the ministry and of the relation of the Church to the State that the differences between the two great Puritan parties become apparent. On the one hand, Presbyterianism, as the name implies, rested upon a system of government by presbyters or elders, under which the congregation is controlled by the ministers and elders whom it has itself elected, the

1 — 2 collection of congregations in a district by the Presbytery or Classis composed of ministers and elders, and the whole country by a General Assembly. It claimed authority from the constitution of the primitive Church, as revealed in the books of the New Testament, and it owed the form in which it was established after the Reformation chiefly to the work of Calvin. The system is essentially national ; it recognises the jurisdiction of a supreme power, and in this lies its fundamental difference from the Independent theory.

The Independents, like the Presbyterians, sought their model of Church government in the New Testament, but while the attention of the Presbyterians had been directed towards the governmental machinery, they had been influenced by the example of the self-sufficing and autonomous churches which sprang up in the wake of missionary enterprise 1 . Carrying out the principle which they perceived in the position of those churches, they claimed that the individual congregation had full power to elect its own officers and to manage its own affairs and that it owed obedience to no authority save that of its Master.

Intimately connected with these theories of government within the Church were the respective views of the relation of the Church to the civil power. The Presbyterians, with the theocracies of Old Testament history before their eyes, endeavoured to build up a polity in which the secular authority should be strictly subordinated to the Church. In this respect their teaching resembled that of the Romanists and stood in marked opposition to the growing Erastianism in the English Church. The Independents, on the other hand, in this less faithful to scriptural tradition, while they

1 See the Independents' Catechism published by M. C. Burrage : The Early English Dissenters, ii, 156-7.

repudiated State control and the institution of tithes, were debarred from the assertion of ecclesiastical supremacy by the absence from their system of any supreme ecclesiastical authority. With them the ultimate triumph of right principles would be secured by entrusting the State to a "rule of the saints," that is to say, government by men directly inspired by God. The idea of inspiration was common to both views, with the difference that the one conceived the gift of the Spirit as flowing mainly through an ordained ministry while the other held that it was subject to no such limitation.

A divergence of opinion upon a subject so important is naturally seen most clearly in the conception of the ministry. If the Church were the oracle of God, then the ordained ministers of the Church must be considered to occupy a position analogous to the Jewish prophets, and therefore the Presbyterian ministry was accorded a prestige which was probably greater than that enjoyed by the ministers of the Anglican Church. It was greater because in the Presbyterian system the sacraments did not possess so full a spiritual significance, and therefore the personal influence of the ministry, as the medium through which God's purpose was revealed, was relatively enhanced. With the Independents on the other hand, the fact of ordination was in comparison unimportant, and many of the most influential preachers were laymen. The essential question was whether a man were possessed of the spiritual gift, and it was the decision of this question which chiefly engaged the attention of the Committee appointed by Cromwell in March 1653/4 for the approbation of public preachers. This belief not only in the existence of direct inspiration, but also in the possibility of discerning its presence, explains much in the actions and utterances of Independent preachers which would otherwise be unmeaning.

These points of difference in religious opinion, which were destined to become prominent during the constitutional and ecclesiastical experiments of the Interregnum, were dormant in the Puritanism of the years which preceded the Rebellion. In what relation did Puritan thought, thus diversified, stand to the system which was taking shape in the Church of England as by law established ?

If it can be said that no clearly defined position can be postulated in the case of Puritanism before the Civil War, the same is to a great extent true of the Church of England, for it also was in the evolutionary stage. The Church was indeed established on the basis of episcopal government and was possessed of a liturgy and a code of doctrine, but the limits had not been defined so strictly as to exclude the Puritan altogether or so clearly as to avoid the possibility of controversy. It was this circumstance which gave the opportunity, as it provided the justification, of the Puritan attack. But the issue was from the beginning complicated by the fact that the purely religious problems in the conflict did not stand alone, but were, at all events during the critical period of the struggle, merged in questions of secular politics. In the second place, the religious problems themselves were not the outcome of an orderly development, but owed their very nature to the action of a series of opposite and mutually incompatible forces. The peculiar circumstances in which the Reformation was inaugurated under Henry VIII, the advance made under Edward VI, and the subsequent counter- Reformation under Mary were of themselves factors well calculated to render the religious question in England one of extreme difficulty, nor was the solution for the moment brought appreciably nearer by that famous venture in ecclesiastical politics which posterity has agreed to misname the Elizabethan " Settlement." Up to that point, the broad issue had been the alternative between Roman Catholicism and the Protestant systems which had taken root on the Continent. From that point begins the movement towards the re-establishment of a Church, which should avoid either alternative and be national in a sense that one owing allegiance to the teaching of either Rome or Geneva could never be. The system was imposed from above and owed its foundation to the strength of the Government: both then and later the voluntary acceptance of it by the country as a whole was hindered by the fact that, while Calvinism and Lutheranism were recognised models possessed of a definite programme, the Elizabethan via media appeared as something new. Accordingly, it was never accepted by the more advanced Puritans as a final settlement, but only as an intermediate stage on the road to complete reform 1 , and the demands of the Puritan representatives at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 really amounted to a claim that the English Church should be modelled on a Calvinistic basis 2 .

Such a claim received no more encouragement from James I than it had from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's attitude had been dictated principally by motives of public policy; James' experience had taught him that the claims of the Presbyterians accorded ill with his theory of kingship, but he viewed the question also from the standpoint of the theologian. At the same time, the position of the English Church became more clearly defined, and its anti- Puritan tendency more pronounced, by the broadening of its field of apologetics. On the one hand,

1 Mandell Creighton : Laud's position in the History of the English Church (Laud Commemoration Lectures), p. 8 ; H. O. Wakeman : The Church and the Puritans, p. 10.

2 H. O. Wakeman : The Church and the Puritans, p. 72.

by appealing to the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and bydeveloping the theory of the historical continuity of the English Church, its defenders definitely parted company with those who regarded the Reformation as a break with the past. On the other hand, the spread of the doctrine of Arminius among the more advanced divines of the Church of England set up a barrier against those who followed Calvin on the subjects of Grace and Predestination.

Throughout James' reign, nonconformity and separation were discouraged, but the general acceptance of the "orthodox" liturgy and system of Church government was due to the fact that the times still allowed a considerable measure of latitude. Scrupulous compliance was not rigidly enforced, and many even of the clergy were really Puritans at heart 1 . Under these conditions, open opposition was confined to a minority, and many who were lukewarm in their affection for Episcopacy and entirely hostile to extreme views, were prepared to accept the existing state of things, to set differences aside, and to turn their attention to a reformation of the religious life by means of a stricter discipline. But if separatism were deprecated, it is important to remember that freedom of thought within the limits of the Church was not the ideal towards which either party was striving. In spite of the popular cant about liberty for tender consciences, of which that age heard so much and understood so little, true tolerance was as foreign to the mind of the Puritan as it was to the " Anglo Catholic." The breaking-point would be reached when the extreme views of either side came into contact, and the struggle, when it arose, would be not for toleration, but for supremacy.

The accession of Charles I marked an important

1 S. R. Gardiner: Hist.ofEng. 1603-42, iii, 241-2.

point in the development of the ecclesiastical question. The new King had inherited many of his father's views on civil and religious policy and his unwillingness to brook popular opposition in either sphere, but he was in every way a more attractive figure, and if he possessed no greater capacity to rule in a difficult age, he yet brought to the task a real wish for his country's welfare, a deeply religious mind and the power to play the part of a king with dignity. His frequent want of judgment in a crisis was due partly to the fact that he was a man with no gift for statesmanship and partly to a fatal tendency to be guided by ill-considered advice and to select his counsellors rather on grounds of sentiment than of reason. His arbitrary conduct arose from his conception of the regal power, a conception which had been common to his predecessors and had yet to be proved impracticable. At the same time, it must be conceded that the problems with which he was called upon to deal, though identical in kind, had assumed a more serious aspect than they had presented in the preceding reign, and to this, rather than to any personal inferiority, must be attributed the fact that he did not succeed in avoiding failure where his father had only missed success.

It was during the first fifteen years of Charles' reign, and especially during the eleven years during which he governed without a Parliament, that the ground was prepared for the revolution in Church and State. On the side of the Church, the policy which the King sanctioned, and indeed encouraged, will always be connected with the name of William Laud.

Laud's rise, though he obtained his highest preferments late in life, was characteristic of the age in which he lived. It was founded in academic surroundings, and the presidentship of St John's College, Oxford, io THE PURITANS IN POWER

was the first step in his upward progress. He became Dean of Gloucester in 1616, Bishop of St David's in 162 1, Dean of the Chapel Royal and Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1626, Bishop of London in 1628, Chancellor of Oxford University in 1629, and Archbishop of Canterbury, on the death of George Abbot, in 1633. Such, in brief, was his distinguished career, and, from the accession of Charles, it would not be too much to say that his was the ruling mind in ecclesiastical affairs. He was essentially an exponent of the "Anglo Catholic" school and, in point of doctrine, an Arminian, but the peculiar importance of his influence on the Church lay in his character and general attitude of mind.

At the time when he was called upon to assume a position of authority, there was much that gave cause for dissatisfaction to one who set a value on conformity and " decent dignified ceremonialism " in the services of the Church. Abbot, his predecessor in the see of Canterbury, was at heart a Puritan, and at the beginning of Charles' reign a majority certainly of the laity, and probably also of the clergy, were what may be called Puritan Episcopalians, that is to say, accepted government by bishops without sacrificing the Calvinistic opinions of the earlier post- Reformation period. Conformity, in fact, to the Church doctrine, as Laud conceived it, did not exist, and various and contradictory tenets were freely promulgated by the clergy. In external matters, the state of affairs was still more displeasing. Reports from the dioceses revealed that the churches in many places "lay nastily," the buildings dirty, and even the fabric in a ruinous condition 1 . The services were often performed without any regard to dignity or even decency, ministers were careless and "insufficient" in the discharge of their duties ; the communion table not

1 G. G, Perry : Hist, of the Church of England, i, 489.

THE PRELUDE n

infrequently stood in the body of the church, emblematic of opinions on the sacrament in themselves eminently distasteful to Laud, and was there treated as a convenient article of furniture rather than as the centre of the Church's most solemn service. All this Laud felt to be a reproach and an offence, likely, if unreformed, to drive men to the Church of Rome.

"I found," he writes, "that with the contempt of outward worship of God the inward fell away apace, and profaneness began boldly to show itself. I could speak with no conscientious person almost that was wavering in religion, but the great motive which wrought upon them to disaffect or think meanly of the Church of England, was that the external worship of God was so lost, and the churches themselves suffered to lie in such a base and slovenly fashion in most places of the kingdom 1 ."

To the reform of external worship, accordingly, Laud addressed himself and, up to a certain point, he would have received the support of all, irrespective of party, who cared for the welfare of religion. The bad state of repair in churches, and still more the want of an efficient ministry offended Puritans as well as others 2 , but the line of reform which they favoured differed both in degree and in kind from that which Laud proposed to adopt. The outward adornment of churches they did not desire, and what they wished to cultivate in the clergy was first and foremost the gift of preaching. Laud's measures, on the other hand, ran, in many respects directly counter to this.

The articles in Laud's Metropolitical Visitation of

1 Quoted by M. Creighton : Laud's position in the History of the English Church (Laud Commemoration Lectures), p. 18.

2 See Richard Baxter's account of the clergy in the neighbourhood of his home in Shropshire. Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), pp. 1-2.

the diocese of Winchester in 1635 do not suggest an extensive ritualistic movement, and indeed in this respect are only concerned with the ordinary ecclesiastical furniture and ornaments. Inquiry is made as to whether there is a bible and a prayer-book "fairly and substantially bound," a font of stone, a comely pulpit, a comely large surplice, a fair communion cup, with a cover of silver, a flagon of silver, tin, or pewter, to put the wine in, with "all other things and ornaments necessary for the celebration of divine service, and administration of the sacraments." The communion table was to be "convenient and decent... with a carpet of silk, or some other decent stuff, continually laid upon the same at time of divine service, and a fair linen cloth thereon, at the time of the receiving of the Holy Communion." The clergy were to officiate in surplice and hood 1 . Nor do the Canons of 1640, which represent the high- water-mark in official injunctions on the subject, carry us much further.

It is expressly stated that "the standing of the communion table sideway under the east window of every chancel or chapel, is in its own nature indifferent," but in view of the Advertisements of Queen Elizabeth and the continuous custom in the royal chapels and elsewhere, which effectually cleared the practice of any "just suspicion of popish superstition," it is thought fit " that all churches and chapels do conform themselves in this particular to the example of the cathedral or mother churches, saving always the general liberty left to the bishop by law, during the time of administration of the Holy Communion." The declaration, however, went on to declare that this situation did not imply that the communion table ought to be esteemed "a true and proper altar, wherein Christ is again really sacrificed ;

but it is and may be called an altar by us in that sense in which the primitive Church called it an altar and in no other." To protect the table so placed from irreverent treatment and abuse, it should be "decently severed with rails " from the body of the church.

One other direction there was which caused trouble in the future. The synod who had drawn up the Canons declared that it was " very meet and behoveful " that all persons should do " reverence and obeisance both at their coming in and going out of the said churches... according to the most ancient custom of the primitive Church in the purest times," as an act for the advancement of God's majesty, but that in the practice or omission of this the apostle's rule should be observed " which is, that they which use this rite, despise not them who use it not, and that they who use it not, condemn not those that use it 1 ."

In practice, it is probable that a rather more elaborate ritual obtained in some places ; the use of copes was enjoined in cathedrals and episcopal chapels in accordance with the 24th Canon of 1603, and stained-glass windows were repaired or newly introduced, but the points already mentioned were sufficient to supply the grounds on which the Puritan party based their contention that Laud and his followers were bringing in " Popish Innovations."

In view of the ritualistic developments of modern times, it comes at first as a surprise that such comparatively modest measures of reform should raise such serious opposition. The explanation lies in the circumstances of the age. On the one hand, hardly two generations had passed since England had been under a Roman Catholic Government, and to those who were unable to take a more than superficial view of the

1 Laud's Works, v, 624-6.

tendency of events, it may well have seemed that the

same fate still threatened the country. On the other

hand, the position taken up by the predominant school

of English churchmen was still too novel to be familiar.

A great part of the new policy the Puritans did not

understand, and what they understood they did not

like. For there is no doubt that the divergence of view

between the two parties went much deeper than a mere

question of forms, and that the order prescribed by Laud

represented doctrines which were opposed to those held

by his opponents. To the Puritan who regarded the

Holy Communion merely as a commemorative act, there

was nothing indecent in the old state of affairs, and the

table standing as an ordinary piece of furniture in the

body of the church effectively typified his views. When

the table was removed to the east end of the chancel,

furnished with hangings and ornaments, and separated

from the, people by rails, when kneeling at the reception

of the Elements was enjoined, and the act of bowing

encouraged, it was obvious that the inward meaning had

not remained unaffected. Laud might honestly dissociate

himself from the eucharistic opinions of the Roman

Church : the doctrinal distinction, though in reality broad

enough, was too subtle to convince Puritan suspicion,

while the outward resemblance to Roman forms was an

argument which struck the eye and was readily accepted.

The charge that Laud inclined towards Roman

Catholicism is effectually refuted by his controversy with

Fisher the Jesuit, but his view of the position and

historical continuity of the Church of England made

him appear to be in closer agreement with Rome than

he actually was, and an age which had been astonished

to hear Sheldon deny that the Pope was Anti-Christ was

not likely to regard favourably one who allowed the

Roman Church to be a true Church. Nor were Laud's measures in a real sense "innovations" — "an unlucky word," as Clarendon remarks, which "cozened very many honest men into apprehensions very prejudicial to the King and to the Church 1 ." That his opponents had any justification for so regarding them was due to the fact that the general practice in the matter of Church services during the two preceding reigns had been much more Puritan in tone than the precept of authority had warranted, but hardly any of Laud's directions were strictly "new 2 ." The position of the communion table " in the place where the altar stood" could be referred to Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions of 1559, the use of surplice and cope to the Advertisements of 1566, the practice of bowing towards the east could be said to have been "usual" in the same reign 3 , while images, either in stone or glass, had been allowed even by Calvin, so that they were used not for idolatrous purpose but " in docendo et admonendoV The Puritans might indeed cite the twenty-third Injunction of 1559 against paintings and monuments and argue that the spirit of the law was being contravened ; Laud's appeal was to the letter and to practice; and on the mere point of novelty his position was unassailable. Assuming that the Elizabethan statutes had left the law indefinite, it became a question of interpretation, and of which of two possible lines of development should be pursued. The crux of the matter was that Laud had chosen the an ti- Puritan interpretation. But it was not only in forms and external matters that Laud's policy conflicted with Puritan sentiment. We have seen that the attribution of a semi-prophetic character to the ministry was common among the Puritans in general, and especially among the Presbyterians, and

2 Cf. W. Bright : Waymarks in Church History, p. 338.

3 Laud's Works, iv, 201. 4 Ibid, iv, 199.

this naturally led them to regard the exercise of preaching as the primary duty of the minister and the most important part of their religious service. The pulpit rather than the press was the mouthpiece of controversial as well as of pastoral theology, and they demanded a large liberty in the matter of discussion. With such a demand Laud had little sympathy. Though by no means undervaluing the gift of tongues, his own religious temperament led him to distrust the unbridled language of somewhat ill-instructed men 1 .