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Community Control And Puritan Politics In Elizabethan Suffolk*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Paul S. Seaver
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Extract

We are apt to associate Puritanism, quite reasonably, with evangelical preaching, and to talk about the Puritan movement as the tail end of the English Reformation, as the last attempt to take Biblical Christianity into every parish pulpit and hence into the hearts of God's “Elect Nation.” As a consequence, it has seemed both proper and illuminating to view the history of Elizabethan Puritanism as a series of confrontations between Puritan ministers and the Queen's bishops, the bishops attempting to create unity by imposing uniformity of practice, the Puritan ministers attempting to follow what they believed Scripture and the example of the best reformed Churches dictated, with the inevitable consequence that they found themselves engaged in a kind of perpetual guerrilla war with the Queen's guardians of a prescribed uniform order.

If such basic assumptions are accepted, then the history of Elizabethan Puritanism can be seen as a series of escalating encounters, beginning in 1564, when the Queen forced the issue of discipline and order on a reluctant Church by requiring that Archbishop Parker publish his Advertisements. The debating stage was over in the Spring of 1566, when Parker and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners summoned the defiant London clergy to conform to the prescribed clerical dress or face expulsion for refusing to wear what Robert Crowley called “the conjuring garments of popery.” The year 1570 saw an escalation of the controversy. Cartwright's lectures on the nature of the true church mounted a much more substantial attack than had been seen in the first decade of the reign, for it was one thing to attack the surplice as a popish garment, quite another to argue that episcopacy itself lacked a Scriptural basis and that by implication it was, therefore, the Queen's duty to impose “discipline out of the Word”—a Presbyterian order—on the Church of England. In 1572 two Londoners, John Field and Thomas Wilcox, tried to give political reality to these notions in their Admonition to the Parliament.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , Winter 1977 , pp. 297 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1977

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Footnotes

*

Originally read as part of a panel which included a paper by Professor Slavin and a commentary by Professor MacCaffrey, both of which are included in this issue.

References

1 Jordan, W. K., Philanthropy in England 1480-1660 (London, 1959) pp. 297–322, 374–375Google Scholar.

2 Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, ed. Nichols, John Gough. Camden Society, v. 77 (London, 1869), pp. 25, 350Google Scholar. Obviously artisans and tradesmen like Maldon and Petit were not the only sorts of Englishmen to experience the Reformation as providing new opportunities for action and self-definition: see MacCaffrey, W. T., “England and the New Aristocracy, 1540-1600,” Past & Present, 30 (1965): 52–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and John Bossy's comment that the new recruits to Douai in the 1570s were in part reacting to “a social process by which the secular aristocracy had come to impose its will on the English Church.” The English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (London, 1975), p. 16Google Scholar.

3 B. L., Egerton MS.2713, fo.175r. The spelling and punctuation of this and all subsequent quotations have been modernized.

4 Ibid., fos.278r, 179r, 278r. Trendle in all probability meant no more by his invocation of “godly Joshua” than to set before Gawdy the example of him whom God charged to be courageous and to finish Moses' task of leading the Israelites to the promised land. Deut. 31:23. It is worth nothing, however, that in the “Argument” which precedes the book of Joshua in the Geneva Bible it is stated that God “after the death of Moses his faithful servant, he raiseth up Joshua to be ruler and governor for lack of a captain, nor have occasion to distrust God's promises hereafter.” The Geneva Bible, facsimile of the 1560 ed., intro. Berry, Lloyd E. (London, 1969), fo.86vGoogle Scholar.

5 B. L., Sloane MS.271, fo.33v.

6 The incident has been noted by Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1824), III, i: 20–31Google Scholar; Browne, John, History of Congregationalism … in Norfolk and Suffolk (London, 1877), pp. 27–28, 43–46Google Scholar; Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), pp. 187–188, 204–205Google Scholar; and most recently by Smith, A. Hassell, County and Court (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar, whose chapter on “Religion 1570-1585,” pp. 201-228, provides an illuminating account of the struggle between Freke and the East Anglian Puritan gentry; his account of the Bury episode depends heavily on Collinson, , “The Puritan Classical Movement in the Reign of Elizabeth I” Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1957, pp. 860–930Google Scholar.

7 Collinson, , Puritan Movement, pp. 172–173, 182–183, 210Google Scholar.

8 Strype, Annals, II, i: 21, 23. Freke was, in fact, as disturbed by the preaching of Robert Browne as he was by Handson's activities, but, although the former had preached at Bury, it was the latter who was one of the official preachers there. The magistrates clearly distinguished between the two, for they openly condemned the Brownists, while openly supporting Handson. Handson was inhibited by Bishop Freke in 1581 after refusing the enter into a bond “not to impugn or inveigh against the Communion Book.” Tymms, Samuel, An Architectural and Historical Account of the Church of St. Mary, Bury St. Edmunds (Bury St. Edmunds, 1854), p. 109Google Scholar.

9 Brook, Benjamin, The Lives of the Puritans (London, 1813), I: 239Google Scholar. It is worth noting that the magistrates were not alone in their respect for this preacher's abilities; Handson had been one of the three ministers Bishop Parkhurst had authorized in 1572 “to take charge and order” the exercise of Prophesying established at Bury. The Letter Book of John Parkhurst … 1571-5, ed. Houlbrooke, R.A., Norfolk Record Society, v. 43 (1974–1975), pp. 164–165Google Scholar. Within a year, however, Handson was reported to have refused to wear the surplice on the grounds that it was not legally required; he was not, however, immediately suspended but was given time to conform: Ibid., pp. 222, 232n.

10 The articles and answers are found in B.L., Egerton MS.1693, fos.89r-100r; Strype has printed the answers to the first set of articles: Annals, III, ii: 172–180Google Scholar. Subsequent quotations from the articles and answers are from Egerton 1693 unless otherwise noted.

11 Coping or Coppin and Thacker, purported followers of Robert Browne, are mentioned briefly in Nuttall, G.F., Visible Saints (Oxford, 1957), pp. 26–27Google Scholar, and in White, B.R., The English Separatist Tradition (Oxford, 1971), pp. 44Google Scholar. The magistrates, no more sympathetic to Separatism than the bishop, responded to Freke's charge by asserting that they had only urged the Separatists' removal from prison “when by experience we found that neither our entreating nor the often godly conference and labors of divers godly and learned pastors which we only procured could anything prevail.” As a consequence of this failure to turn the Separatists from their erring ways, the magistrates urged that the Bishop be forced to incarcerate them in his own prison in Norwich. Egerton 1693, fo.91r.

12 Collinson, , Puritan Movement, pp. 218–219, 232Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., pp. 218-219.

14 The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Usher, Roland G.. Camden Society, 3rd. s., v. 8 (London 1904), p. 61Google Scholar. Sir Robert Jermyn's sympathy could be assumed in part because the rector of his own parish of Rushbrooke was also an active member of the classical movement: Collinson, , Puritan Movement, p. 321Google Scholar. Two doctors and pastors were presumably needed to staff the two rectories of St. James and St. Mary, both of which had been appropriated by the Abbey prior to the Reformation. Redstone, L. J., “'First Ministers’ Accounts' of the Possessions of the Abbey of St. Edmund,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Inst. of Arch. and Nat. History, 13 (1909): 318, 319Google Scholar.

15 Collinson, , Puritan Movement, p. 338Google Scholar.

16 Browne, , Congregationalism, p. 27Google Scholar; The Seconde Parte of a Register, ed. Peel, Albert (Cambridge, 1915), I: 157Google Scholar. Other uses in the articles and answers suggest simply that “doctor” was synonymous with preacher or lecturer, and “pastor” with incumbent minister. See, e.g., Egerton 1693, fo.97r.

17 PRO, SP 12/155/5, fo.9r. The names of 173 inhabitants are attached to the petition.

18 PRO, SP 12/155/11, fo. 22r.

19 Ibid., fo.26r.

20 PRO, SP 12/155/63, fo.147r. The description comes from a letter sent to the Privy Council by the Bury justices on 6 October 1582 in which they reported on the progress of their efforts to reform the government of Thetford.

21 Egerton 1693, fo.94r.

22 Ibid., fos.87r-v, 93r. Even Parkhurst had found this magisterial embrace hard to suffer; his remark about Drew Drury—“a friend so far forth as he may rule and carry every matter before him as he liketh best”—would have been equally apposite if applied to SirJermyn, Robert and SirHigham, John: The Letter Book of John Parkhurst, p. 52Google Scholar.

23 Such a procedure was evidently not unique: the inhabitants of King's Lynn and of Whissonsett both petitioned Sir Nathaniel Bacon to exercise his right to present on behalf of their candidates. The Official Papers of Sir Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Norfolk, 1580-1620, ed. Saunders, H.W., Camden Society, 3rd s., v. 26 (London, 1915), pp. 190–192Google Scholar. For a similar petition of the tenants of North Runcton to Francis Gawdy in 1592, see Historical MSS. Commission, 8th Report (1881), App. II, Duke of Manchester MSS., p. 27 (I owe this citation to Barbara Donagan).

24 The justices' letter to the Privy Council, 1582, quoted in Browne, , Congregationalism, p. 27Google Scholar.

25 The rehabilitation of the Bury magistrates was engineered by Leicester: see Collinson, , Puritan Movement, p. 205Google Scholar. For Freke's troubles and departure, see Smith, , County and Court, pp. 224–227Google Scholar.

26 Leigh, Edward, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (London, 1653)Google Scholar, Epistle Dedicatory “To all the orthodox and godly magistrates, ministers and people of England.”

27 Collinson, , Puritan Movement, p. 162Google Scholar.

28 SirD'Ewes, Simonds, A Compleat Journal of … the House of Lords and House of Commons Throughout the whole Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1643), p. 329Google Scholar.

29 Timothy Breen makes much the same point in his article, “Persistent Localism: English Social Change and the Shaping of New England Institutions,” William & Mary Quarterly, 32 (1975): 23Google Scholar, where he argues that “the New Englanders gave the church back to the local communities.” My only quarrel with Breen's thesis would come over the matter of dating. He sees the struggle largely as confined to the reign of Charles I; as the Bury episode suggests, persistent localism was manifest much earlier, and the Caroline period saw the culmination, I believe, of a struggle that was evident at least from the middle years of Elizabeth's reign.

30 Tymms, , Bury St. Edmunds, p. 109Google Scholar.

31 West Suffolk Record Office, C2/1, fos. 1r-v; for the names of the inhabitants “for common conference for the town of Bury 1570,” see the verso of the last folio. The Bury by-laws have none of the elaboration found, for example, in the Northhampton church orders of 1571: see Cross, Claire, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (London, 1969), pp. 213–215Google Scholar. The main thrust of the Bury orders was a concern that the vagabonds be searched out, that the children of the poor be set to work, that artificers refrain from loitering, and so on. Bury did not receive its first charter incorporating the borough until 1606: Lobes, M.D., The Borough of Bury St. Emunds (Oxford, 1935), p. 169Google Scholar.

32 Tymms, , Bury St. Edmunds, p. 110Google Scholar. The Biblical passage is Rev. 3:15 and is quoted from the Geneva Bible.

33 It is very difficult to know what contemporaries meant by such terms as “Brownism.” The Bury magistrates condemned Brownism but protected the local Puritan community. Should one assume that Browne's preaching at Bury had been totally ineffective, or should one assume that what the townsmen learned from Hand-son and Browne was not nearly so radical as “Brownism”? Categories used in official accusations sometimes seem to bear little resemblance to what the laity seem to have thought they were experiencing. How often does an accusation of holding an “unlawful” and “seditious” conventicle hide a tame village affair such as that Sir Julius Caesar found on investigating such a charge against a group of inhabitants of Braintree, Essex; as he reported in a letter to Walsingham, 18 May 1584: “And finding in conclusion this to be the sum of all, that there met together at the said house to the number of ten persons or thereabouts of his kindred” who “conferred together of such profitable lessons as they had learned that day at a public catechizing, that some of them after supper attended to one that read in the Book of Martyrs, and the rest occupied in honest talk; afterwards they sung a psalm of David and prayed according to the form of prayer established by public authority and so departed about ten o'clock at night.” B.L., Landsdowne MS.157, fo.186r.

34 Ziff, Larzer, The Career of John Cotton (Princeton, 1962), pp. 48–50Google Scholar. The magistracy of Lincoln had been badly divided by an earlier effort to institutionalize Puritan reforms in the mid-1580s: see SP 12/188/25, fo.96r; SP 12/188/27, fo.100r; SP 12/188/39, fo.177r; SP 12/192/70, fos.135v-136r; and especially SP 12/192/67, fos.129r-v.

35 Robert Abbot to Sir Edward Dering, 10 March 1640/41, B.L., Stowe MS.184, fo.27r.