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Continuity in Change: Bishops of London and Religious Dissent in Early Stuart England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Ogbu U. Kalu
Ogbu U. Kalu*
Affiliation:
University of Nigeria, Nsukka
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Extract

A significant aspect of the religious scene in the early Stuart period was the survival of vibrant religious nonconformity in spite of Bancroft's “reconstruction of the English Church.” Historians have recently concentrated on the periods of excited religious politics under Elizabeth and the latter part of Charles I's reign and have tended to accept Hacket's Restoration apology that there was no serious opposition to official religious policy in the intervening years. But attempts to explain the phoenix-like rise of Puritanism in Caroline England by reference to socio-economic disequilibrium are not fully satisfactory.

Decades ago, Roland G. Usher, who did much to highlight Bancroft's reconstruction, explained the origins of the resurgent Puritanism of the Laudian period by pointing to the mid-Jacobean period. W. H. Clark concurred: lax ecclesiastical administration under Abbot made it possible for Puritans to re-group, starting from about 1614. Both men assumed that there had been effective enforcement of the new Canons of 1604, and of the official policy enunciated at the Hampton Court Conference, until Abbot came on the scene. Analysis of the Church court records indicates that this was simply not so. The number of Puritans continued to rise while vigorous enforcement was spasmodic.

Ironically, the years to which Usher and Clark attributed the origins of Caroline Puritanism were in fact the period when enforcement was possible. First, the Pamphlet War aroused by the new settlement had died down. Second, only two bishops, John King and George Mountain, held the See of London between 1611 and 1628.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Fall 1978 , pp. 28 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1978

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References

1. Elton, G. R., Tudor Constitution (Cambridge, 1960), p. 125Google Scholar; Kenyon, J. P., The Stuarts (London, 1958), p. 22Google Scholar; McGrath, P., Puritans and Papists (London, 1967), pp. 337ffGoogle Scholar; Hacket, J., Scrinia Reserata (London, 1692) Pt. IIGoogle Scholar; George, C. H., “A Social Interpretation of English Puritanism,” J.M.H., IV (Dec., 1953), 327–42Google Scholar; George, C. H., “Puritanism as History and Historiography,” Past and Present, No. 41 (Dec., 1968), 77–104Google Scholar

2. The latest effort along this line is Hunt, William A., “The Godly and the Vulgar: Puritanism and Social Change in Seventeenth Century Essex” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard, 1974.)Google Scholar

3. Usher, Roland G., The Reconstruction of the English Church, 2 vols. (New York, 1910)Google Scholar; Clark, W. H., The History of Nonconformity, 2 vols. (London 1911–1912), I, 252Google Scholar.

4. Kalu, Ogbu, “Bishops and Puritans in Early Jacobean England: A Methodological Perspective,” Church History, 45 (Dec., 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. King, John, The Fourth Sermon … Hampton Court … Tuesday, 30 September, 1605 (Oxford, 1606)Google Scholar.

6. Guildhall Library (hereafter GL), MS 9537/11, 12. Visitation roll-call book, 1611-15.

7. Greater London Record Office (hereafter, GLRO), DL/C/312, f. 124v.

8. Searle, GLRO, DL/C/312, f. 106; Danvers, GLRO, DL/C/310, ff. 83v-4; DL/C/621, f. 98. Danvers was later suspended in 1616 for dallying with separatism.

9. Chelmsford, Essex Record Office (hereafter ERO), DP 94/5/1 (Chelmsford Churchwardens' Account Book), ff. 138, 147; GLRO, DL/C/314, ff. 95, 171, loose paper; ERO, D/ABA/1, f. 40v (Act Book, Commissary of Essex and Herts.). For the identity and social status of some vestrymen, see their Wills, ERO, D/ABW/48; D/ABW/59; D/ABW/210.

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11. Ibid., f. 134v; British Library (B.L.), Sloane MS 271, f. 73; Seaver, Paul, The Puritan Lectureships (Stanford, 1970), pp. 199–260Google Scholar, 246; MacLure, Millar, The Paul's Cross Sermons (Toronto, 1958), pp. 95–96Google Scholar.

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14. GLRO, DL/C/621, f. 53.

15. On 25 Nov. 1621, his son preached a defence of his father's protestantism, A Sermon Preached at St. Paules Crosse … whereunto is annexed the Examination of Thomas Preston (London, 1621)Google Scholar.

16. ERO, D/ACA/45, ff. 179v-80, 330v; D/ALV/1, f. 86v. For the Visitation Articles, see B.L., 700.9.17.

17. ERO, D/ALV/1, f. 30.

18. GLRO, DL/C/343 (Vicar-General's Book, “Duck”), f. 32v.

19. Archdeaconry of Essex: New lectureships, 1632:

For this increase, see especially Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism (London, 1969)Google Scholar, Ch. 3 and Paul Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships.

20. B.L., Add. MS 48057, ff. 105-06.

21. Laud, , Works, IV, 249Google Scholar; Heylyn, Peter, Cyprianus Anglicus (London, 1671), pp. 165, 169Google Scholar; Trevor-Roper, Hugh, “James I and His Bishops,” Historical Essays (New York, 1957), p. 139Google Scholar.

22. Some records for Fall 1628 Visitations are extant: GL, 9537/13 — Visitation Call Book, GLRO, DL/C/317-318 Correction Books for London City among the Consistory Court Records. Special cases appear in the Vicar-General's Book (DL/C/343 “Duck”). But there is no Visitation Call Book or Correction Book for the 1631 Visitation. The only possible Correction Book is GLRO, DL/C/319 which is unfit for public use. Researchers for London City have the further benefit of DL/C/320 containing cases adjudicated in-between instance cause proceedings from June 1633 to March 1634-35.

23. Laud's administration is reconstructed from GL, MS 9537/13, 14; PRO, SP 16/142, f. 113; 144, f. 36; 175, f. 104; 218, f. 43; 351, f. 100; 339, f. 53; Winthrop Papers, 2 (Henry Jacie to Winthrop, 9 Jan. 6131/2); Young, Alexander, Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1623-1636 (Boston, 1846)Google Scholar; Davids, T. W., Nonconformity in Essex (Colchester, n.d. [1929])Google Scholar.

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25. Seaver, , Puritan Lectureships, pp. 245, 254Google Scholar.

26. Trevor-Roper, H. R., Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 (London, 1940), p. 119Google Scholar.

27. Part III of my forthcoming Religious Policy and Practice in Jacobean England looks at the inner dynamics of religious dissent as a contributory cause of their survival. See also, Rose, E. E., Cases of Conscience (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar; Shipps, K., “Lay Patronage of East Anglican Puritan Clerics in Pre-Revolutionary England,” (Ph.D. thesis, Yale, 1971)Google Scholar.