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Erecting the Discipline in Provincial England: the Order of Northampton, 1571
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
As that no Commonwealth can flourish or long indure without good lawes and sharpe execution of the same, so neither can the Kirk of God be brought to purity neither yet be retained in the same without the order of Ecclesiastical Discipline… drunkenesse, excesse be it in apparel, or be it in eating and drinking, fornication, oppressing of the poore by exactions, deceiving of them in buying and selling by wrong met and measure, wanton words and licentious living tending to slander, doe openly appertaine to the Kirk of God to punish them, as God’s word commands.
Such a declaration of the central role of discipline within the Reformed tradition is a commonplace to all historians of the Reformation and will be familiar to the editor of The First Book of Discipline, from which the above quotation comes.1 The head, the seventh and entitled 'Of Ecclesiastical Discipline', conformed in its procedure to the practice of estabUshed Calvinist congregations on the Continent in its austere attitude to the unrepentant sinner as in its care for the repentant individual who, on an appointed day before the whole kirk.
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- Part II. The Church in England
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991
References
1 The First Book of Discipline, ed. J. K. Cameron (Edinburgh, 1972), pp. 165–7.
2 Ibid., p. 168.
3 The First Book of Discipline, ed. J. K. Cameron (Edinburgh, 1972), pp. 32–4.
4 Garrett, C., The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, 1938Google Scholar).
5 Loades, D. M., The Oxford Martyrs (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Houlbrooke, R., ‘The Protestant Episcopate 1547–1603: the pastoral contribution’ in Heal, F. and O’Day, R., eds, Church and Society in England: Henry VB1 to James I (London, 1977), pp. 78–9Google Scholar.
6 Garrett, Marian Exiles, pp. 327–30.
7 Jones, N. L., Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion 1559 (London, 1982), esp. pp. 186–9Google Scholar; Haugaard, W. P., Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), esp. pp. 109–11Google Scholar.
8 Heal, F. M., Of Prelates and Princes: a Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 202–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Zurich Letters, ed. H. Robinson, 2 vols, PS (1842–5) prints much correspondence between English and continental divines in this period.
10 DNB, 21, p. 175.
11 Hudson, W. S., The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (Durham, N. Carolina, 1980), pp. 54–7Google Scholar; Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), p. 51Google Scholar.
12 Garrett, Marian Exiles, p. 331; Lewis, G., ‘Calvinism in Geneva in the Time of Calvin and Beza 1541–1608’ in Prestwich, M., ed., International Calvinism 1541–1715 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 41, 44–50Google Scholar; Ridley, J., john Knox (Oxford, 1968), p. 264Google Scholar.
13 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 67–83.
14 Zurich Letters, 2, pp. 127–36, esp. p. 130.
15 Ibid., pp. 358–61.
16 See the letters from Laurence Humphrey and Thomas Sampson in ibid., i, pp. 151–5, 157–65.
17 Ibid., pp. 168–9, 175–81.
18 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 142–3.
19 Anstruther, G., Vaux of Harrowden (Newport, 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the effect of recusancy on the Treshams see Finch, M. E., Five Northamptonshire Families – Northants Record Society, 19 (1956), pp. 72–92Google Scholar.
20 VCH Northamptonshire, 3, p. 9, following Markham, G A. and Cox, J. C., eds, The Borough Records of Northampton, 2 vols (London and Northampton, 1898Google Scholar).
21 Hoskins, W. G., Provincial England> (London, 1963), p. 79Google Scholar.
22 Dickens, A. G., ‘Early Protestantism and the Church in Northamptonshire’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 8 (1983-4), pp. 27–40Google Scholar.
23 Both the letter of the Earl of Leicester referred to at n. 42 below, and article 16 of the Order refer to recent reports of conservative practices. See also Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, pp.77-9.
24 Sheils, W.J., ‘Some problems of government in a new diocese: the bishop and the puritans in the diocese of Peterborough 1560–1630’ in CDay, R. and Heal, F., eds. Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England 1100–1642 (Leicester, 1976), pp. 173–7Google Scholar. The upheavals resulted in the almost complete loss of court records from 1540 to 1570. Sheils, W. J., The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough 1118–1610 Northants Record Society, 30 (1979), P. 6Google Scholar.
25 Ibid., p. 119. In addition to the parish churches, the hospital of St John was another useful source of patronage for the corporation: see the case of Arthur Wake in ibid., pp. 29–30.
26 Scott-Pearson, A. F., Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 102–6Google Scholar.
27 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 138.
28 Ibid., p. 136; The Visitations of Northamptonshire made in 1564 and 1618–19, ed. Metcalfe, F. C., Harleian Society (1887), pp. 105–6Google Scholar. Another branch of this family were Catholics and later implicated in the Gunpowder Plot.
29 The Order is found in PRO, SP12/38/138, and has been printed in Borough Retore of Northampton, 2, pp. 386–90; VCH Northamptonshire, 2, pp. 38–9; R. M. Serjeantson, A History of the Church of All Saints, Northampton (Northampton, 1901), pp. 104–8. Arrangements for the conduct of the exercise of the clergy and a Confession of Faith were also appended to the Order.
30 Printed in An Answer at Large to a most hereticall, trayterous, and Popisticalt Byll, in English Verse, which was cast abroad in the streetes of Northampton… (Northampton, 1881). The appearance of Reformers proved a divisive issue in many towns: see the cases of Rye and Gloucester: Mayhew, G., ‘Religion, Faction and Politics in Reformation Rye: 1530–59’ Sussex Archae ological Collections, 120 (1982), pp. 139–60Google Scholar and Clark, P., ‘The Ramoth-Gilead of the Good: Religion and Politics in Gloucester 1540–1690’ in Clark, P., Tyacke, N., and Smith, A. G. R., eds, The English Commonwealth (Leicester, 1979), pp. 167–87Google Scholar. Similar conflicts occurred north of the border in Edinburgh: Lynch, M., Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981);Google Scholar and Calvin’s own struggles in Geneva prior to 1557 provided a precedent, Lewis, ‘Geneva 1541–1608’, p. 41; Stauffer, R., ‘Calvin’ in Prestwich, ed.,International Calvinism, pp. 20, 22–7Google Scholar.
31 Lewis, , ‘Geneva 1541–1608’, pp. 46–50;Borough Records of Northampton, 2, pp. 386–00Google Scholar. The articles of the Order are referred to by number in the following notes.
32 Articles I, 3, 15, 16.
33 Articles 11, 14. It was claimed by Wiburn’s supporters that this took place in addition to the order as set out in the Book of Common Prayer, and that nothing within that was omitted.
34 Articles 7–10; for frequency at Geneva see Stauffer, ‘Calvin’, p. 20.
35 Articles 4, 12, 13.
36 The ‘civic’ role of preachers in the context of other developments within urban communities is discussed in Sheils, W.J., ‘Religion in Provincial Towns: Innovation and Tradition’ in Heal and O’Day, eds, Church and Society, pp. 156–76Google Scholar; Collinson, P., ‘The Protestant Town’ in his The Birthpangs of Protestant England (London, 1988), pp. 43–9Google Scholar; and more generally in Clark, P. and Slack, P., English Towns in Transition 1100–1700 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 142–52Google Scholar.
37 Article 6.
38 Article 13.
39 See below pp. 341–2 and Scambler’s letter to Cecil, MS BX. Lansd. 17, fol. 55.
40 Article 17.
41 Sheils, Puritans, p. 7.
42 Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library, Papers of State, ii, pp. 647–8.
43 National Register of Archives, Baskerville Transcripts, De Lisle and Dudley Papers, ii. no. 60.
44 Magd. College, Pepys Library, Papers of State, ii, pp. 389–90.
45 Sheils, Puritans, pp. 26, 34, 42, 121–2 for the continuing Puritan influence there. Wiburn retained his commitment to Reformed churchmanship, and in 1576 assisted in the estab lishment of the Church in the Channel Isles, perhaps through Leicester’s influence, Scott- Pearson, Thomas Gtrtwright, pp. 161–4.
46 For The Admonition controversies in Parliament see Neale, J. E., Elizabeth and Her Parliament, 2 vols (London, 1965 edn), 1, pp. 293–8Google Scholar and Elton, G. R., The Parliament of England 1110—Si (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 209–16Google Scholar for revision.
47 Ever since Latimer’s ministry in Bristol, Elton, G. R., Policy and Police (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 112–20Google Scholar, patrons had sought to use urban pulpits in this way.
48 For the influence of the capital on local gentry see Sheils, Puritans, pp. 116–18.
49 Clark and Slack, English Towns in Transition, pp. 149–52, explores the relationship between godly discipline and urban government.
50 Sheils, Puritans, pp. 127–8, shows the effects of this by 1573; the visitation also revealed the extent and influence of the exercise on the parochial clergy of the area: ibid., pp. 27–31.
51 For Lever at Coventry see Zurich Letters, I, pp. 86–7; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 51.
52 The precise character of religious practice in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign was open to wide regional and local fluctuations which the appearance of several local studies since the mid-sixties has uncovered: see especially Haigh, C., Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar and McCulloch, D., Suffolk under the Tudors (Oxford, 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
53 This is done in Sheils, Puritans, pp. 122–7, upon which this paragraph is based.
54 MS HMC Hatfield 17, p. 58.
55 Marprelate, M., An Epistle to the Terrible Priests of the Confocation House, facsimile edn (Leeds, 1967), p. 28Google Scholar.
56 Wiburn and Knox presumably met in Geneva, and he may also have had some earlier contac with Christopher Goodman.