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The Welsh Trust, 1674–1681: a Charitable Proposal for Comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2023

CHRISTY WANG*
Affiliation:
Singapore Bible College, 9 Adam Road, Singapore 289886

Abstract

The Welsh Trust (1674–81), established by Thomas Gouge, an ejected Presbyterian minister, brought together clergy and laity across emerging denominational divides who shared a desire to unite English Protestants against the perceived resurgence of Catholicism. The enterprise serves as a miniature of the tension among many Presbyterians between the reality of their dissent and the desire for church comprehension, challenging the traditional binary of ‘Dons’ and ‘Ducklings’. Furthermore, it reveals the creative ways in which mobilisers of comprehension pursued their ideals, which profoundly shaped the many godly reformations of the English Church after the Glorious Revolution.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

I am very grateful to my supervisors Diarmaid MacCulloch and Judith Maltby, my viva-voce examiners, Anthony Milton and Kirsten Macfarlane, as well as George Southcombe and Elliot Vernon for reading the early drafts of this article and providing me with invaluable advice.

References

1 Jones, M. G., ‘Two accounts of the Welsh Trust, 1675 and 1678 (?)’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies ix (1937–9), 7180Google Scholar; Calamy, Edmund, An abridgement of Mr. Baxter's history of his life and times, London 1713, ii. 10Google Scholar.

2 Bowen, Lloyd, ‘Wales, 1587–1689’, in Coffey, John (ed.), The Oxford history of Protestant dissenting traditions, I: The post-reformation era, 1559–1689, Oxford 2020, 239–40Google Scholar; White, Eryn, ‘Protestant dissent in Wales’, in Thompson, Andrew (ed.), The Oxford history of Protestant dissenting traditions, II: The long eighteenth century, c. 1689–c. 1828, Oxford 2018, 163–4Google Scholar; Goldie, Mark, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs: the entring book, 1677–1691, Woodbridge 2016, 75–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The terms were originally coined by Secretary of State Joseph Williamson in 1671: TNA (PRO), SP 29/294, fo. 223r. See also Thomas, Roger, ‘Comprehension and indulgence’, in Nuttall, Geoffrey F. and Chadwick, Owen (eds), From uniformity to unity, 1662–1962, London 1962, 208Google Scholar.

4 George Southcombe, ‘Presbyterians in the Restoration’, in Coffey, Protestant dissenting traditions, i. 77ff., and The culture of dissent in Restoration England: ‘the wonders of the Lord’, Woodbridge 2019, esp. ch i; Hughes, Ann, ‘Print and pastoral identity’, in Davies, Michael, Dunan-Page, Anne and Halcomb, Joel (eds), Church life: pastors, congregations, and the experience of dissent in seventeenth-century England, Oxford 2019, 169Google Scholar.

5 A frequently cited article on occasional conformity is J. D. Ramsbottom, ‘Presbyterians and “partial conformity” in the Restoration Church of England’, this Journal xliii (1992), 249–70. See also Winship, Michael P., ‘Defining Puritanism in Restoration England: Richard Baxter and others respond to A friendly debate’, HJ liv (2011), 689715CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Southcombe, ‘Presbyterians in the Restoration’, 78; and Milton, Anthony, England's second reformation: the battle for the Church of England, 1625–1662, Cambridge 2021, 505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Calamy, Abridgement, ii. 10.

7 Gouge, his father William Gouge, and many other London Presbyterians subscribed to A testimony to the trueth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant, London 1648 (Wing T.823) in 1647. In 1648 William and Thomas Gouge, along with fifty-four other ministers, again subscribed to A vindication of the ministers of the Gospel, in and about London, London 1648 (Wing B.5690A) to protest against the imposition of capital punishment upon King Charles i.

8 TNA (PRO), SP 29/41, fo. 135r.

9 TNA (PRO), SP 29/53, fo. 157r; 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, 5960Google Scholar.

10 Gouge, Thomas, The Christian housholder, Wolverhampton 1787, 3, 10Google Scholar, 22.

11 Another treatise, Joshua's resolution: or, The private Christian's duty in times of publick corruption, London 1663 (Wing G.1369), was published anonymously and attributed to Gouge by Donald Wing: Short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books printed in other countries, 1641–1700, 1st edn, New York 1948, ii. 122. The author however clearly believed that the English Church was going through a time of trial and persecution (pp. 13, 18), and admonished those ‘excluded from publick places’, which were ‘polluted by Idolatrous mixtures, and inventions of men, who abuse[d] their Authority’, to avoid giving ‘a seeming assent unto those undue impositions’ and set up family worship (p. 12). Considering its obscure authorship, differences in both tone and content compared to The Christian housholder, and the fact that it was published without the author's consent to suit the publisher's nonconformist agenda that ‘in all Ages the Saints of God have been Separatists’ (sig. A2v), this article will not discuss Joshua's resolution in detail.

12 Gouge, The Christian housholder, 26. While Gouge did not clearly speak of attending parish churches, the fact that he did not limit his reference to collective worship as the ‘ordinary means … for the reforming’ of Christian life to conventicles is revealing.

13 Baxter, Richard, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ: or, Mr. Richard Baxters narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times, London 1696 (Wing B.1370)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pt iii, 190.

14 Gouge, Thomas, The principles of Christian religion explained to the capacity of the meanest, London 1668Google Scholar (Wing G.1371), and A word to sinners, and a word to saints, London 1668 (Wing G.1379).

15 Idem, A word to sinners, sig. A2v. For the practice of binding works of practical divinity together see Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England, 1st edn, Cambridge 1998, 26.

16 Besides the Welsh Trust, Gouge had engaged in many other charity works. For instance, upon the Great Ejection, Gouge fundraised among the wealthy in London for fellow ejected ministers and their families. During the Great Fire of London in 1666, he also served as treasurer for a financial relief scheme set up by Henry Ashurst, London draper and renowned philanthropist: Clarke, Samuel, The lives of sundry eminent persons in this later age in two parts, I: Of divines; II: Of nobility and gentry of both sexes, London 1683 (Wing C.4538), 204Google Scholar.

17 Winship, ‘Defining Puritanism in Restoration England’, 703–5.

18 Clarke, Lives, 204.

20 Ibid. 204, 205; Baxter, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, pt iii, 190.

21 Tillotson, John, A sermon preached at the funeral of the reverend Mr Thomas Gouge, London 1682Google Scholar (Wing T.1234), 82.

22 Winship, ‘Defining Puritanism in Restoration England’, 703.

23 Hughes, ‘Print and pastoral identity’, 169.

24 Gouge also collaborated with other Welsh translators, Richard Jones (1603–73), a schoolmaster in Denbigh and a fellow dissenter, and William Jones (d. 1679), another ejected minister whose nonconformity seemed to have been influenced by Baxter: Calamy, Abridgement, ii. 714; Robert Tudur Jones, Congregationalism in Wales, ed. Robert Pope, Cardiff 2004, 77.

25 Bowen, ‘Wales, 1587–1689’, 239–40; Charles Edwards, An afflicted man's testimony concerning his troubles, London 1691 (Wing E.191), 9; Derec L. Morgan, ‘A critical study of the works of Charles Edwards (1628–1691?)’, unpubl. DPhil diss. Oxford 1968, 23.

26 Jones, ‘Two accounts’, 77; Calamy, Abridgement, ii. 10.

27 These works were either translated by Richard Jones or by William Jones, Gouge's other collaborators. The first editions of these translations are Gwyddorion y grefydd Gristianogol, London 1679 (Wing G.1368A); Hyfforddiadau Christianogol, London 1675 (Wing G.1368B); Gair i bechaduriaid, a gair i sainct, London 1676 (Wing G.1367); Galwad ir annychweledig idroi a byw, London 1659 (Wing B.1273A); and Bellach neu Byth, as part of a collection of writings entitled Tryssor ir Cymru, London 1677 (Wing T.3206A).

28 Jones, ‘Two accounts’, 73.

29 Ibid; Baxter, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, pt iii, 190.

30 Eamon Duffy, ‘The long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism and the multitude’, in Nicholas Tyacke (ed.), England's long Reformation, 1500–1800, 1st edn, London 1998, 48–50.

31 Ibid. 47; Richard Baxter, preface to Wadsworth, Thomas, Mr. Thomas Wadsworth's last warning to secure sinners, London 1677Google Scholar (Wing W.187).

32 Simon Patrick, ‘A brief account of my life, with a thankful remembrance of God's mercies to me’, in The works of Symon Patrick: including his autobiography, ed. Revd Alexander Taylor, Oxford 1858, ix. 442–4.

33 Calamy, Abridgement, ii. 118; Cliffe, J. T., Puritan gentry besieged, 1650–1700, 1st edn, London 1993, 46Google Scholar.

34 Jones, ‘Two accounts’, 71–80.

35 The first remark was John Arnold's and the second Sir Trevor Williams's, meant to reinforce each other's attacks on the marquess in parliament. Arnold's comparison of Chepstow to a ‘cathedral’ was likely meant in the sense that Chepstow was the marquess’ principal seat: The manuscripts of the duke of Beaufort, K.G., the earl of Donoughmore, and others, London 1891, 114.

36 Jenkins, Philip, ‘Anti-popery on the Welsh Marches in the seventeenth century’, HJ xxiii/2 (1980), 275–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 283, 285, and The making of a ruling class: the Glamorgan gentry, 1640–1790, Cambridge 1983, 128; Anthony Ashley Cooper, Two speeches, Amsterdam 1675 (Wing S.2907), 10.

37 Glickman, Gabriel, ‘Protestantism, colonization, and the New England Company in Restoration politics’, HJ lix/2 (2016), 365–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 369, 379–81.

38 ‘Apostol Sir Gâr’: Dylan Rees, Carmarthenshire: the concise history, Cardiff 2006, 70; Jones, Congregationalism in Wales, 74.

39 Calamy, Abridgement, ii. 718; Jenkins, Geraint H., Literature, religion and society in Wales, 1660–1730, 1st edn, Cardiff 1978, 204Google Scholar.

40 D. Densil Morgan, ‘The Reformation and vernacular culture: Wales as a case study’, in Jennifer Powell McNutt and David Lauber (eds), The people's book: the Reformation and the Bible, Downers Grove, Il 2017, 85. An example of Hughes's publication of Rhys Prichard's religious verses is Canwyll y Cymru, sef, gwaith Mr. Rees Prichard, gynt ficcer Llanddyfri, London 1681 (Wing P.3403B).

41 Matthew Kilburn, ‘The learned press: history, languages, literature, and music’, in Ian Anders Gadd (ed.), The history of Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, i. 434–5.

42 John Jewel, Eccho of the sons of thunder: Dad-seiniad meibion y daran, trans. Morris Kyffin, Oxford 1671 (Wing J.738).

43 Edwards, preface to Jewel's Eccho of the sons of thunder.

44 John Tillotson to Richard Baxter, 11 Apr. 1675, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, pt iii, 157.

45 Ibid. 19–20. The term ‘Cambridge Platonists’, coined in the nineteenth century, is highly contested, not least because Platonism was merely one of the many strains of philosophy with which they interacted. For a more thorough analysis of how these religious philosophers, while far from being intellectually unified, can still be appropriately identified as a group, see Hutton, Sarah, ‘The Cambridge Platonists: some new studies’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy xxv (2017), 851–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 852–3, and ‘The Cambridge Platonists’, in Sacha Golob and Jens Timmermann (eds), The Cambridge history of moral philosophy, Cambridge 2017, 235–56, esp. pp. 245–8.

46 Spurr, John, ‘“Latitudinarians” and the Restoration Church’, HJ xxxi (1988), 6182CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 63–4.

47 Patrick, ‘A brief account of my life’, 419.

49 Ibid. 425–6.

50 Lamont, John R. T., Divine faith, London 2004, 95–7Google Scholar.

51 Chillingworth, William, The religion of Protestants a safe way to salvation, Oxford 1638Google Scholar (RSTC 5138), 386.

52 Ibid. 407.

53 Lamont, Divine faith, 95–7; Spurr, ‘Latitudinarians’, 81.

54 Calamy, Abridgement, ii. 9.

55 Humphrey Lloyd to Gilbert Sheldon, 10 Aug. 1676, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Tanner 40, fo. 18r.

56 Ibid; Sheldon to Lloyd, undated, ibid, fo. 19r.

57 Stephen Nye, The life of Mr. Thomas Firmin, late citizen of London, London 1698, (Wing N.1508), 6–7.

58 Ibid. 49.

59 Philip Dixon, ‘Firmin, Thomas (1632–1697), philanthropist’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, at <https://www.oxforddnb.com>.

60 Jones, ‘Two accounts’, 72, 76, 77; Nye, Life, 50.

61 The endorsements can be found in John Faldo, Quakerism no Christianity, 2nd edn, London 1675 (Wing F.303).

62 Penn, William, The invalidity of John Faldo's vindication of his book, called Quakerism no Christianity, London 1673Google Scholar (Wing P.1305), 414. For a more thorough analysis of Penn's dispute with Faldo and his anti-Socinian polemic see Madeleine Pennington, Quakers, Christ, and enlightenment, Oxford 2021, 127–31.

63 Nye, Life, 14.

64 Edward Stillingfleet, The mischief of separation, 2nd edn, London 1680 (Wing S.5605B), 35, 36.

65 Baxter, Richard, Richard Baxters answer to Dr. Edward Stillingfleet's charge of separation, London 1680Google Scholar (Wing B.1183), sig. A2r.

66 Ibid. sig. A2r–v.

67 Ibid. sig. A2v.

68 Harris, Tim, Politics under the later Stuarts: party conflict in a divided society, 1660–1715, London 1993, 117Google Scholar.

69 Lewis, Barry J., Gray, Madeleine, Jones, David Ceri and Morgan, D. Densil, A history of Christianity in Wales, Cardiff 2022, 224–9Google Scholar; Suggett, Richard and White, Eryn, ‘Language, literacy, and aspects of identity in early modern Wales’, in Fox, Adam and Woolf, Daniel (eds), The spoken word: oral culture in Britain, 1500–1850, Manchester 2002, 68–9Google Scholar; Rivers, Isabel, Vanity Fair and the celestial city: dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical literary culture in England, 1720–1800, Oxford 2018, ch iiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Rose, Craig, ‘Providence, Protestant union and godly reformation in the 1690s’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society iii (1993), 151–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sirota, Brent S., The Christian monitors: the Church of England and the age of benevolence, 1680–1730, New Haven 2014, ch iiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Andrew G. Craig, ‘The movement for the reformation of manners, 1688–1715’, unpubl. PhD diss. Edinburgh 1980, 57–60.