Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T11:27:56.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ecclesiastical Discipline and the Crisis of the 1680s: Prosecuting Protestant Dissent in the English Church Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2020

KIT MERCER
KIT MERCER*
Affiliation:
St Catherine's College, Oxford, OX1 3UJ
*
E-mail: Christopher.barbour-mercer@stcatz.ox.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues that as a part of the Tory reaction (1680–5) England's church courts were revived and utilised in the prosecution of religious dissent. The records of the church courts in three deaneries in and around London demonstrate that the numbers of prosecutions in the courts increased significantly in the early 1680s after the defeat of the Exclusion Bill and that the vast majority of these prosecutions were for religious offences. This brief flowering of persecution sought to ‘exclude the excluders’ and to remove political and religious dissidents from positions of secular power and from parish vestries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 352 - 371
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article is based on an MPhil dissertation for which I was fortunate to be supervised by Gabriel Glickman. I am extremely grateful to him, as well as to Grant Tapsell, for their advice and support.

References

1 Fletcher, Anthony, ‘The enforcement of the Conventicle Acts, 1664–1679’, in Sheils, W. J. (ed.), Persecution and toleration (Studies in Church History xxi, 1984), 235–46 at p. 243Google Scholar.

2 Spurr, J., The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689, London 1991, 209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Thomson, A., ‘Church discipline: the operation of the Winchester consistory court in the seventeenth century’, History xci (2006), 338–9Google Scholar.

4 C. E. Davies, ‘Enforcement of religious conformity in England, 1668–1700’, unpubl. D.Phil diss. Oxford 1982; W. M. Marshall, ‘Administration of the dioceses of Hereford and Oxford, 1660–1760’, unpubl. PhD diss. Bristol 1979; Whiteman, Anne, ‘The re-establishment of the Church of England, 1660–1663’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society v (1955), 111–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Thomson, ‘Church discipline’, 340.

6 Dabhoiwala, F., The origins of sex: a history of the first sexual revolution, London 2012, 51Google Scholar, and ‘Prostitution and police in London c.1660–c.1760', unpubl. D.Phil diss. Oxford 1995, 94.

7 Jens Åklundh, ‘The church courts of Restoration England, 1660–c.1689’, unpubl. PhD diss. Cambridge 2018, 129–35.

8 For example, Houlbrooke, Ralph, Church courts and the people during the English Reformation, 1520–1570, Oxford 1979Google Scholar; Ingram, Martin, Church courts, sex and marriage in England, 1570–1640, Cambridge 1987Google Scholar; and Waddams, S. M., Sexual slander in nineteenth-century England: defamation in the ecclesiastical courts, 1815–1855, Toronto 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Outhwaite, R. B., The rise and fall of the English ecclesiastical courts, 1500–1860, Cambridge 2006, 81Google Scholar; Sharpe, J., Crime in early modern England, London 1988, 38Google Scholar.

10 M. Jones, ‘The ecclesiastical courts before and after the Civil War: the office jurisdiction in the dioceses of Oxford and Peterborough, 1630–1675’, unpubl. B.Litt. diss. Oxford 1977, 127; P. Jackson, ‘Nonconformists and society in Devon, 1660–1689’, unpubl. PhD diss. Exeter 1986.

11 Gibson, W., ‘The limits of the confessional state: electoral religion in the reign of Charles ii’, HJ li/1 (2008) 27–47 at p. 41Google Scholar.

12 Spurr, The Restoration Church, 235.

13 Gregory, J., Restoration, Reformation, and reform, 1660–1820: archbishops of Canterbury and their diocese, Oxford 2000, 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Tapsell, G., ‘Pastors, preachers and politicians: the clergy of the later Stuart Church’, in Tapsell, G. (ed.), The later Stuart Church, 1660–1714, Manchester 2012, 71–100 at p. 88Google Scholar.

15 Idem, The personal rule of Charles II, 1681–1685, Woodbridge 2007, 71.

16 Outhwaite, Rise and fall, 81.

17 Spurr, The Restoration Church, 190.

18 Sheils, W. J., ‘Bishops and their dioceses: reform of visitation in the Anglican Church, c.1680–c.1760’, CCEd Online Journal i (2007), 31Google Scholar.

19 Goldie, M., ‘The unacknowledged republic: office-holding in early modern England’, in Harris, Tim (ed.), The politics of the excluded, c.1500–1850, Basingstoke 2001, 153–94 at p. 166CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Fletcher, ‘The Conventicle Acts’, 235; Harris, Tim, London crowds in the reign of Charles II: propaganda and politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis, Cambridge 1990, 71Google Scholar.

21 Outhwaite, Rise and fall, 58.

22 Horle, C. V., The Quakers and the English legal system, 1660–1688, Philadelphia, Pa 1988, 220–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 The Anglican canons, 1529–1947, ed. G. Bray, Woodbridge 1998, p. cx.

24 Outhwaite, Rise and fall, 81–2.

25 Ibid. 83.

26 Thomson, ‘Church discipline’, 342.

27 Spurr, The Restoration Church, 217.

28 Walsham, A., Charitable hatred: tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500–1700, Manchester 2006, 27Google Scholar.

29 Horle, The Quakers, 236.

30 Ibid. 240.

31 Phillipson, L., ‘Quakerism in Cambridge before the Act of Toleration (1653–1689)’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society lxvii (1987), 15Google Scholar.

32 Clapinson, M., Bishop Fell and non-conformity: visitation documents from the Oxford diocese, 1682–83, Oxford 1980, pp. xiv, xxxiv, 34Google Scholar.

33 Tapsell, G., ‘Parliament and political division: the last years of Charles ii, 1681–85’, Parliamentary History xxiii (2003), 251Google Scholar.

34 Åklundh, ‘Church courts’, 14.

35 Squibb, G., Doctors’ Commons, London 1977, 78Google Scholar.

36 N. G. Jones, ‘Wiseman, Robert’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/58166>.

37 Ferris, J., ‘Wiseman, Sir Richard’, in Henning, B. D. (ed.), The history of parliament: the House of Commons, 1660–1690, London 1983Google Scholar, <https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/wiseman-sir-richard-1632-1712>; Lacey, D. R., Dissent and parliamentary politics in England, 1661–1689, New Brunswick, NJ 1969, 372Google Scholar.

38 J. M. Rigg, ‘Lloyd, Nathaniel’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16849>; G. Hampson, ‘Lloyd, Sir Richard’, in Henning, The history of parliament: the House of Commons, 1660–1690, <https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/lloyd-sir-richard-ii-1634-86>. Crewe was, according to the author of the ODNB entry, notorious as ‘the churchman who was James ii's principal collaborator’: M. Johnson, ‘Crew, Nathaniel, 3rd Baron Crew’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6683>.

39 Levack, B., The civil lawyers in England, 1603–1641: a political study, Oxford 1973, 3–26Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. 32–3.

41 Quoted in Åklundh, ‘Church courts’, 70.

42 Åklundh states that there were 631 appeals from the dioceses within the southern province between 1661 and 1700 ‘most of which concerned testamentary cases’: ibid.

43 Squibb, Doctors’ Commons, 78.

44 Goldie, Mark, ‘The Hilton gang and the purge of London in the 1680s’, in Nenner, Howard (ed.), Politics and the political imagination in later Stuart Britain: essays presented to Lois Green Schwoerer, Rochester, NY 1997, 43–74Google Scholar.

45 These are all held at Lambeth Palace Library under the following call numbers: citations: Arches, 1672–1826, VH 52; Croydon, 1672–1826, VH 53; Shoreham, 1672–1826, VH 54; churchwardens’ presentments: Arches, 1672 – 1845, VH 60; Croydon, 1664–1885, VH 61; Shoreham, 1666–1885, VH 62; act books, 1664–93, VH 75; assignation books, 1664–1850, VH 76.

46 Åklundh, ‘Church courts’, 2.

47 For example, some of the cases from St Dunstans in the East, LPL, VH 52, fo. 18.

48 LPL, VH 53.

49 LPL, VH 60/1, fo. 32.

50 LPL, VH 60/1, fo. 19.

51 Meldrum, Tim, ‘A women's court in London: defamation at the bishop of London's consistory court, 1700–1745’, London Journal xix/1 (1994), 1Google Scholar.

52 Whiteman, Anne, ‘General introduction’, in The Compton census of 1676: a critical edition, ed. Whiteman, A. and Clapinson, M., London 1986, pp. xxxvii–xxxixGoogle Scholar.

53 de Krey, G., London and the Restoration: 1659–1683, Cambridge 2005, 275–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ibid. 241–3.

55 For a good summary see Braddick, M. J., State formation in early modern England, c 1550–1700, Cambridge 2009, 291–333Google Scholar, and Fletcher, A., Reform in the provinces: the government of Stuart England, New Haven 1986Google Scholar.

56 Seaward, Paul, ‘Gilbert Sheldon, the London vestries, and the defence of the Church’, in Harris, Tim, Seaward, Paul and Goldie, Mark (eds), The politics of religion in Restoration England, Oxford 1990, 53–7Google Scholar.

57 Horle, The Quakers, 32.

58 Adee, N., A plot for a crown, in a visitation sermon at Crickdale, London 1685, 20Google Scholar.

59 Spurr, The Restoration Church, 204.

60 Clapinson, Bishop Fell, p. xxxiv.

61 Ibid. 34.

62 Both Horle and Walsham note how the failure of churchwardens to prosecute Dissenters was commented upon and disapproved by the Anglican hierarchy: Horle, The Quakers, 89; Walsham, Charitable hatred, 92.

63 Tapsell, Personal rule, 27.

64 Tim Harris, ‘Cooper, Anthony Ashley’, ODNB, < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6208>.

65 Goldie, Mark, ‘The theory of religious intolerance in Restoration England’, in Grell, Ole, Israel, Jonathan and Tyacke, Nicholas (eds), From persecution to toleration: the Glorious Revolution and religion in England, Oxford 1991, 337–42Google Scholar.

66 See the case of Edward Fowler: Goldie, Mark and Spurr, John, ‘Politics and the Restoration parish: Edward Fowler and the struggle for St Giles Cripplegate’, EHR cix (1994), 574CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Bertha Porter, ‘Richard Owen’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21025>.

68 Whiteman, ‘General introduction’, p. xl.

69 LPL, VH 52, fo. 11.

70 Wright, Catherine, ‘The kindness of strangers: charitable giving in the community of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries’, in Davies, M. and Galloway, J. (eds), London and beyond: essays in honor of Derek Keene, London 2012, 201–22Google Scholar.

71 LPL, VH 52, fo. 5.

72 Ibid. fo. 6.

73 Ibid. fos 6, 8.

74 Mead, W., A particular account of the late and present great sufferings and oppressions of the people called Quakers upon prosecutions against them in the bishops courts, London 1680, p. vGoogle Scholar.

75 N. Zahedieh, ‘Claypoole, James’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50425>; Jordan Landes, London Quakers in the trans-atlantic world: the creation of an early modern community, Basingstoke 2015, 59.

76 G. S. De Krey, ‘Pilkington, Sir Thomas’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22280>; London and Middlesex 1666 Hearth Tax, ed. M. Davies, C. Ferguson, V. Harding, E. Parkinson and A. Wareham, London 2014, ii. 690.

77 LPL, VH 53 b 2, fos 4, 6, 7.

78 R. Sewill and E. Lane, The free men of Charlwood, Crawley 1980; E. Vallance, ‘Henry Hesketh’, ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13125>. See also Hesketh, Henry, The charge of scandal and giving offence by conformity refelled and reflected back upon separation, London 1683Google Scholar.

79 Hesketh, H., The dangerous and almost desperate state of religion, London 1679, 20Google Scholar.

80 Idem, An exhortation to frequent receiving the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper, London 1684.

81 LPL, VH 62.

82 LPL, VH 60/3.

83 Sowerby, Scott, Making toleration: the repealers and the Glorious Revolution, Cambridge 2013, 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 LPL, VH 53, 52, 54.

85 LPL, VH 54, second bundle fos 25, 27. Note also that in the diocese of London in the same period only 9 out of 197 presentments were for moral offences: London Metropolitan Archives, DL/B/B/001/MS09583/005; DL/B/F/001/MS11164/021.

86 For example, LPL, VH 53/2, fo. 4.

87 Phillipson, ‘Quakerism in Cambridge’, 21.