Church Polity and Politics in the British Atlantic World, c. 1635–66 9780719090424

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world, c. 1635–66
‘From the Apostles’ time’: the polity of the British episcopal churches, 1603–62
Peers, pastors and the particular church: the failure of congregational ideas in the Mersey Basin region, 1636–41
‘One of the least things in religion’: the Welsh experience of church polity, 1640–60
Polity, discipline and theology: the importance of the covenant in Scottish presbyterianism, 1560–c. 1700
Presbyterian ecclesiologies at the Westminster assembly
‘They agree not in opinion among themselves’: two-kingdoms theory, ‘Erastianism’ and the Westminster assembly debate on church and state, c. 1641–48
The New England way reconsidered: an exploration of church polity and the governance of the region’s churches
The association movement and the politics of church settlement during the interregnum
Polity and peacemaking: to what extent was Richard Baxter a congregationalist?
‘Promote, protect, prosecute’: the congregationalist divines and the establishment of church and magistrate in Cromwellian England
The Restoration episcopate and the interregnum: autobiography, suffering and professions of faith
Index

Citation preview

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world, c. 1635–66

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Politics, culture and society in early modern Britain General Editors professor alastair bellany dr alexandra gajda professor peter lake professor anthony milton professor jason peacey

This important series publishes monographs that take a fresh and challenging look at the interactions between politics, culture and society in Britain between 1500 and the mideighteenth century. It counteracts the fragmentation of current historiography through encouraging a variety of approaches which attempt to redefine the political, social and cultural worlds, and to explore their interconnection in a flexible and creative fashion. All the volumes in the series question and transcend traditional interdisciplinary boundaries, such as those between political history and literary studies, social history and divinity, urban history and anthropology. They thus contribute to a broader understanding of crucial developments in early modern Britain. Recently published in the series Chaplains in early modern England: Patronage, literature and religion hugh adlington, tom lockwood and gillian wright (eds) The Cooke sisters: Education, piety and patronage in early modern England  gemma allen Black Bartholomew’s Day  david j. appleby Insular Christianity  robert armstrong and tadhg ó hannrachain (eds) Reading and politics in early modern England  geoff baker ‘No historie so meete’  jan broadway Writing the history of parliament in Tudor and early Stuart England paul cavill and alexandra gajda (eds) Republican learning  justin champion News and rumour in Jacobean England: Information, court politics and diplomacy, 1618–25  david coast This England  patrick collinson Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653) and the patriotic monarch  cesare cuttica Doubtful and dangerous: The question of succession in late Elizabethan England susan doran and paulina kewes (eds) Brave community  john gurney ‘Black Tom’  andrew hopper Reformation without end: Religion, politics and the past in post-revolutionary England robert g. ingram Revolution remembered: Seditious memories after the British Civil Wars edward james legon

Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum  jason mcelligott and david l. smith Laudian and Royalist polemic in Stuart England  anthony milton The crisis of British Protestantism: Church power in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–44 hunter powell

The gentlewoman’s remembrance: Patriarchy, piety, and singlehood in early Stuart England  isaac stephens Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan Commonwealth: The Muscovy Company and Giles Fletcher, the elder (1546–1611)  felicity jane stout Loyalty, memory and public opinion in England, 1658–1727  edward vallance Full details of the series are available at www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk.

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Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world, c. 1635–66 EDITED BY ELLIOT VERNON AND HUNTER POWELL

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2020 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7190 9042 4 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in 10/12 Scala by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

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list of figures and tables—vii acknowledgements—viii notes on contributors—ix list of abbreviations—xi

1 Introduction: church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world, c. 1635–66 Elliot Vernon

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2 ‘From the Apostles’ time’: the polity of the British episcopal churches, 1603–62 Benjamin M. Guyer

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3 Peers, pastors and the particular church: the failure of congregational ideas in the Mersey Basin region, 1636–41 James Mawdesley

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4 ‘One of the least things in religion’: the Welsh experience of church polity, 1640–60 Stephen K. Roberts

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5 Polity, discipline and theology: the importance of the covenant in Scottish presbyterianism, 1560–c. 1700 R. Scott Spurlock

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6 Presbyterian ecclesiologies at the Westminster assembly Chad Van Dixhoorn

7 ‘They agree not in opinion among themselves’: two-kingdoms theory, ‘Erastianism’ and the Westminster assembly debate on church and state, c. 1641–48 Elliot Vernon

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8 The New England way reconsidered: an exploration of church polity and the governance of the region’s churches Francis J. Bremer

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9 The association movement and the politics of church settlement during the interregnum Joel Halcomb

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10 Polity and peacemaking: to what extent was Richard Baxter a congregationalist? Tim Cooper 11 ‘Promote, protect, prosecute’: the congregationalist divines and the establishment of church and magistrate in Cromwellian England Hunter Powell 12 The Restoration episcopate and the interregnum: autobiography, suffering and professions of faith Sarah Ward Clavier

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Figures and tables

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FIGURES 10.1 The four parties 10.2 The ‘mere Christians’

page 205 206

TABLES 2.1 The liturgy for the ordering of priests (1550 and 1662) 2.2 The liturgy for the consecration of bishops (1550 and 1662)

31 32

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Contents

Acknowledgements

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This book, like many edited collections, has had more than its fair share of delays, trials and tribulations and therefore we would like to thank the staff at Manchester University Press for their patience, understanding and assistance in the preparation of this work. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the many academics and scholars who have offered their thoughts, time and effort to discuss ideas that have contributed to this book. In particular Joel Halcomb, Peter Lake, Phil Baker, Ann Hughes, John Morrill, Jason Peacey, David Scott, Michael Winship, Edward Legon and David Magliocco have read and/or discussed drafts of aspects of this work. We would also like to thank Laura, Whitfield, Hudson, Kate, Ane, Edmund and Sonja for making the production of this work easier.

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Notes on contributors

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Francis J. Bremer is Professor Emeritus of History at Millersville University. He has published widely on all aspects of early modern British Atlantic and New England history. His most recent works include Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a puritan in three worlds (2012) and Lay empowerment and the development of puritanism (2015). Tim Cooper is Associate Professor of Church History at the University of Otago. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming five-volume critical edition of Richard Baxter’s Reliquiae Baxterianae (Oxford University Press, 2020). Professor Cooper is the author of Fear and polemic in seventeenth-century England: Richard Baxter and antinomianism (2001) and John Owen, Richard Baxter and the formation of nonconformity (2011) as well as numerous articles on seventeenth-century church history. Chad Van Dixhoorn is Professor of Church History and the Director of the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is the principal editor of five-volume The minutes and papers of the Westminster assembly, 1643–1652 (2012). His other works include Confessing the faith: a reader’s guide to the Westminster confession of faith (2014) and God’s ambassadors: the Westminster assembly and the reformation of the English pulpit, 1643–1653 (2017). Benjamin M. Guyer is a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He is the author of several essays and articles on the early modern Church of England. Most recently, he is co-editor with Paul Avis of The Lambeth Conference: theology, history, polity, and purpose (2017). Joel Halcomb is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. He was an assistant editor for The minutes and papers of the Westminster ix

Notes on contributors

assembly, 1643–1653 (2012) and co-editor of volume three of The writing and speeches of Oliver Cromwell (2015). He is currently preparing a monograph on the congregational movement during the British civil wars. James Mawdesley received his doctoral degree from the University of Sheffield in 2014. Dr Mawdesley has published a number of articles in various refereed journals. Since 2017, he has worked as the Research Development Officer for the Faculty of Health and Medicine at Lancaster University. Hunter Powell is Research Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, Austin, and has also served as lecturer in history at the University of Texas. He is the author of The crisis of British protestantism: church power in the puritan revolution, 1638–1644 (2015). Stephen K. Roberts is the Director of the History of Parliament, London, and specialises in the history of mid-seventeenth-century Britain, particularly in Wales and the west and south-west of England. He is the author of Recovery and restoration in an English county: Devon local administration 1649–1670 (1985) and a co-editor of Politics and people in revolutionary England (1986), together with many articles on England and Wales in the mid-seventeenthcentury political crisis. R. Scott Spurlock is Senior Lecturer in Scottish Religious Cultures at the University of Glasgow and is a Research Associate at the Faculty of Theology, University of Stellenbosch. He has numerous publications encompassing early modern history and theology with a focus on the development of religious traditions in Scotland and its international world. Dr Spurlock is the author of Cromwell and Scotland: conquest and religion, 1650–1660 (2007). Elliot Vernon is the co-editor, with Philip Baker, of The agreements of the people, the Levellers and the constitutional crisis of the English revolution (2012) and is in the last stages of completing a monograph on London presbyterians and the politics of religion, c.1637–1664. Sarah Ward Clavier is Senior Lecturer in History and Heritage at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She has published a number of articles, focusing on seventeenth-century Wales, and is currently preparing for publication a monograph on the subject of Royalism, religion, and revolution: the gentry of north-east Wales, 1640–1688.

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List of abbreviations

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Unless otherwise stated, the place of publication is London. Acts and ordinances of the interregnum, 1642–1660, eds C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait, 3 vols (HM Stationery Office, 1911). Baxter, RB Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae: or, Mr Richard Baxter’s narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times, ed. M. Sylvester (1696). BL British Library, London. CCRB Calendar of the correspondence of Richard Baxter, eds N. H. Keeble and G. F. Nuttall, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). CH Church History. CJ The journals of the House of Commons (1802). CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic, The Commonwealth, ed. M. A. E. Green, 13 vols (HM Stationery Office, 1875–86). DWL Doctor Williams’ Library, London, WC1H 0AR. EHR The English Historical Review. Gillespie, Notes George Gillespie, ‘The notes of debates and proceedings of the Assembly of divines’, in The works of Mr. George Gillespie, ed. W. Hetherington, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1846), II. HJ The Historical Journal. HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission. HR Historical Research. JBS The Journal of British Studies. JEH The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. JRH The Journal of Religious History. Lightfoot, Journal John Lightfoot, The journal of the proceedings of the assembly A&O

xi

List of abbreviations

LJ MPWA MS ODNB SP TNA

xii

of divines in The whole works of the rev. John Lightfoot D.D. master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge, ed. J. R. Pitman, 13 vols (1824), XIII. The journals of the House of Lords (1767–1830). C. Van Dixhoorn (ed.), The minutes and papers of the Westminster assembly, 1643–1652, 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Manuscript The Oxford dictionary of national biography, eds H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) State papers held at the National Archives, Kew, London. The National Archives, Kew, London.

Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction: church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world, c. 1635–66 Elliot Vernon

T

he topic of church polity is one of the ‘Cinderella’ subjects of early modern religious history, late to the ball but entrancing none the less.1 The chapters presented in this volume argue that the topic of church polity was a crucial factor in the politics of the British Atlantic world during the mid-seventeenth century. By ‘church polity’ is meant the manner in which the church is structured and governed. It is related to the term ‘ecclesiology’, which in this volume is used for more abstract theological reflections on the nature of the church.2 Religious non-observance was minimal in the early modern British Atlantic world, with the consequence that church polity was inescapably bound up with the political in its wide definition: the relationships of power between individuals, groups and nations. The structures of church governance, therefore, had the potential to impact substantially on the lives of the vast majority of people in the seventeenth-century British Atlantic world.3 Church polity also had a strong effect on politics more narrowly defined as the institutions and ideas constitutive of the political community. Many of the debates on the subject from the 1630s to the 1660s were triggered by forceful conversations on how to prevent the church from being used as a naked political tool of kings and magistrates, or, conversely, to prevent the clergy from establishing a separate sphere of authority.4 In addressing the relationship of church polity to political power, the belligerents in the mid-seventeenth-century British Atlantic world also sought to reaffirm the position that the church (or churches) should serve the community of faithful. Such concerns and ambitions revealed the many contradictions and paradoxes within the post-Reformation politics of religion. In the environment of the British revolutions, these debates on church polity impacted on many of the crucial questions of the era. Key among these issues were: whether the Reformation had come to an end, or was further reformation necessary? What stress, if any, should be put on the credal notes 1

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

of oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity in the government of the church? What was the proper relationship between an individual Christian’s liberty of conscience and that individual’s obligation to the community of the faithful at large? Who could properly be considered a member of the church and who was empowered to teach and guard the faith ‘once delivered unto the saints’ (Jude 1:3)? How did these ‘watchmen’ (if indeed they were to be solely men) acquire legitimate authority? What were the proper means of exercising this power? In other words, to whom had the keys to the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16:19) been committed in the post-apostolic age? These questions of church power, in turn, begged enquiry into the proper boundaries and relationship between the civil state, the law and the church.5 These issues came to dwell at the heart of the crisis triggered by the policy and failure of Charles I’s monarchies in the late 1630s. The research of historians and historical theologians over the past few decades has highlighted that church polity was at the centre of the call to ‘reform the Reformation itself’ (to use Edmund Calamy’s peroration to the Long Parliament) and thus was critical to the religious history of the seventeenth century. The debate on church polity, therefore, was fundamentally political. One need look no further than the (mis)use of labels such as ‘presbyterian’, ‘independent’ and ‘episcopal’ to describe English political factions in civil war and interregnum politics to see the importance of church polity to the wider political history of the period. It is these issues that the chapters in this volume seek to address. A single collection of chapters can aspire only to touch the surface of the connection between church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The focus here is on protestantism and largely those whom the theologian and sociologist Ernst Troeltsch would have identified as holding to a ‘church type’ rather than a ‘sect type’ view of religion. For example, this collection does not have separate chapters on either separatist or baptist views of church polity. This is regrettable, but thankfully these groups have been well served by a number of full-length studies by Geoffrey Nuttall, Stephen Brachlow, Murray Tolmie, Stephen Wright and Mark Bell among others.6 To some degree, of course, the concept of a ‘separatist’ ceased to be a meaningful category in the late 1640s and 1650s, with the increasing acceptance by the political authorities of voluntary gathered churches as a legitimate form of Christian worship. Furthermore, as Matthew Bingham has shown, the category of ‘baptist’ is something of an anachronism, with many of those we now call ‘particular baptists’ positioning themselves within the umbrella of ‘the congregational way’. While congregations gathered around the principle of believer’s baptism suffered persecution in mid-seventeenth-century New England and the censure of the Kirk in Scotland, the English governments of the period were increasingly willing to consider the matter of believer’s baptism as a matter of conscience. In early 1648 a joint declaration of both Houses of 2

Introduction

Parliament understood otherwise doctrinally orthodox Christians who held to ‘a difference about a circumstance of time in the administration of an ordinance’ as being within the fold of the faithful.7 While this parliamentary concession to the principle of adiaphora was somewhat muffled by the May 1648 blasphemy ordinance, it became the norm under the governments of the interregnum.8 The limitations of space in this volume did not allow a chapter on the internal organisation of antiformalist groups, particularly the quakers. A good starting point for modern scholarship in this regard can be found in the 2015 collection of essays Early quakers and their theological thought edited by Stephen Angell and Pink Dandelion.9 Studies of major episcopalian theorists such as Herbert Thorndike, Jeremy Taylor and Henry Hammond, while discussed in this volume by Benjamin Guyer, are somewhat underrepresented in the historical literature, with J.W. Packer’s 1969 monograph The transformation of Anglicanism remaining a key survey of this field.10 Also missing from this volume are debates on polity within British and Irish catholicism during the period. This omission, together with that of Ireland, was due to not being able to find a scholar to write a chapter for this collection at the time of commissioning the chapters rather than an absence of material. Stefania Tutino’s 2008 monograph Thomas White and the Blackloists: between politics and theology during the English civil war can be recommended as a starting point for catholic discussions on church polity and politics in the period.11 Ireland is served by John McCafferty’s study of the Laudian period, The reconstruction of the Church of Ireland and Toby Barnard’s 1975 study Cromwellian Ireland, although Seymour’s 1921 Puritans in Ireland (1647–1661) is still a valuable source.12

THE MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION BACKGROUND TO THE MID-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DEBATE ON CHURCH POLITY Prior to the Reformation, the polity of the Western church had largely been episcopal in structure. Although there was wide variation throughout Europe, the great experiments in church polity would come with the Reformation and its call for a return to the purity of the earliest church foundation, howsoever that era was interpreted. Nevertheless, late medieval debates had impinged on questions of church polity and its relationship with politics. The thirteenthcentury political philosopher Marsilius of Padua had been critical of the medieval papacy’s claim to wield power over civil authorities. Formulating ideas that would be deployed in favour of the power of temporal rulers during the Swiss and Tudor Reformations, Marsilius had argued against the political dualism of the ‘two swords’ theory of church and state relations dating back to Pope Gelasius in the fifth century.13 In a similar vein, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century controversy between conciliarists and papalists arising out of 3

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

the great schism provided a body of ideas that not only challenged the authority of the pope but emphasised the power of councils in the governance of the church.14 As Hunter Powell’s study of the Westminster assembly debates has shown, conciliarist ideas would influence the 1640s debates on church polity. For example, the Lancashire delegate Charles Herle, whose activity before joining the Westminster assembly is explored in James Mawdesley’s chapter, was deeply steeped in conciliarist thought.15 The reformers’ reassessment of many aspects of the medieval church led to a new phase of questions and experiments concerning church polity. Martin Luther’s attack on the pre-Reformation church’s sacramental system had the knock-on effect of undermining the medieval church’s claims to governmental power generally.16 In the English Henrician Reformation, the common law heritage, blended with notions of Old Testament kingship, advanced the power of the imperial monarchy to order ecclesiastical affairs. Such a power of order was potentially limited only by the consent of the community in Parliament and not by ‘the Church’ conceived of as a separate realm of jurisdiction.17 Others, potentially antithetical to this notion of the power of theocratic and imperial kings, looked to the community of the faithful as the legitimate source of church power. The sixteenth-century consistorial model of church polity, most commonly associated with Calvin’s Geneva, and its spread to countries where protestantism was ‘under the cross’ of persecution, such as France or the Netherlands, established presbyterial forms of church government throughout Europe.18 The experiments of Jan Łaski and Jean Morély in congregational independency and the anabaptist communities of the ‘radical’ reformation provided Reformation Europe with further experiments in church polity.19 Church polity was also at the heart of the Scottish Reformation. The early adoption (albeit with a relatively slow uptake) of kirk sessions in the parishes presented a significant departure from the traditional polity of the Scottish church. Beyond the parish, the mid to late sixteenth-century struggle between supporters of episcopacy and the presbyterianism of the Second book of discipline took aim not only at the institution of episcopacy but also at the connection between the church and royal and aristocratic power. In this struggle, James VI managed to outmanoeuvre his presbyterian opponents on numerous occasions, culminating in the ratification of the Five Articles of Perth in 1621. However, the struggles over the polity of the Scottish church in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century left a residual body of thought, together with a deep layer of resentment within Scottish political and religious culture. This would blossom throughout the British Atlantic world in the mid-seventeenth-century crisis.20 The church settlement of England’s Elizabeth I, combining an episcopalian structure, a traditional liturgy, Reformed confessional theology and magisterial supremacy would become a cherished institution for many Christians throughout the British Atlantic world. To others, the worship 4

Introduction

and polity of the Church of England continued to remain ‘but half-reformed’ and unfit for the evangelical mission of protestantism. The failure of the Elizabethan church to reform its polity in line with the European Reformed churches would become the substance of disputes and debates within the Church of England. The consequence of the failure of presbyterian attempts to grow ‘presbytery within episcopacy’ in the 1580s led to the emergence of separatist ideas in the 1590s.21 An alternative model that developed was the attempt to square the circle of a national church, the royal supremacy and congregational independence. This model, advocated by William Bradshaw, would develop through the experiments of Henry Jacob into a distinctive congregationalist position in the seventeenth century.22 At the same time, figures such as Thomas Bilson were asserting the apostolic foundations of episcopacy against the scriptural arguments of presbyterians.23 The possibility of the ‘congregational way’ acting as a ‘national’ ecclesiastical establishment was realised in the Massachusetts Bay colony of the 1630s.24 As Michael Winship’s study of ‘godly republicanism’ in the Massachusetts Bay colony has shown, the New England connection between church polity and politics would have a profound impact on both sides of the Atlantic during the British Revolution.25 Francis Bremer in Chapter 8 below demonstrates how New England congregationalism was beset with tensions and struggles between the respective role and power of the laity and the clergy. This propelled some New England ministers to yearn towards more presbyterial forms of polity. Of course, New England was not the only example of colonial religion. The Virginia colony retained its adherence to the episcopal Church of England, albeit without its own bishop, and Roger Williams’s Rhode Island existed to promote liberty of conscience against the Massachusetts Bay model.26 A century of debate, thought and struggle over the polity of the church, therefore, presented one of the sources of rebellion to the policies of Charles I and the Laudian church. Historians have long stressed the tensions caused by Laudian ‘anti-Calvinist’ soteriology or the imposition of liturgical conformity. It is also necessary to recognise that the Laudian emphasis on the divine right of episcopacy caused many moderate puritans, such as the formerly conformist Richard Baxter, to search their consciences and rethink the formerly settled issue of church polity.27 Among those rethinking the issue of church government were the politically well-connected godly ministers who wrote under the name ‘Smectymnuus’, a collective pseudonym based on the initials of the five authors.28 The Smectymnuuans would declare in early 1641 that in the past ‘many conscientious men’ had accommodated themselves to the Church of England’s episcopalian structure on the grounds of ‘order and decency’ and not belief in its divine institution. However, episcopacy under Laud, as announced in the canons of 1640, had become ‘an idoll’, with the consequence that, ‘like the brazen serpent’ of 2 Kings 18:4, it was now ‘to be ground to powder’.29 Yet, if the Laudian vaunting of divine-right episcopacy 5

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

acted to radicalise those who had formerly little quarrel with the polity of the Church of England, the threat caused by this radicalisation acted to provide a banner around which a ‘royal and episcopal party’ could form to fight the civil war.30 One important intellectual context that informed the mid-seventeenthcentury battles on church polity was the emergence of new scholarship on the nature of the polity of the early church.31 The Reformation quest to discern the original pattern for Christianity entailed a detailed textual interpretation of the Bible and, increasingly, a fresh historical analysis of the practices of the early church. Although the term ‘apostolic fathers’ for the corpus of non-canonical Christian writings of the first and second centuries would not be used until the later part of the seventeenth century, it was the polemical battles over church polity during the middle of the century that saw the emergence of this body of scholarship.32 The term ‘apostolic fathers’, while usually traced to the collection published in Latin in 1672 by the French clergyman Jean Baptiste Cotelier (1629–86), made its first English appearance in William Wake’s (1657–1737) The genuine epistles of the apostolical fathers, published in 1693.33 The purpose of Wake’s edition, as Steven Taylor notes, was designed to show – against the arguments of dissenters and nonconformists dating back to the civil wars – that the Church of England ‘in all respects comes the nearest up to the primitive pattern of any Christian Church at this Day in the World’.34 The first major development in this scholarship was the rediscovery of ‘The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians’ (usually called ‘1 Clement’) in the Codex Alexandrinus gifted by Patriarch Cyril Loukaris to Charles I in 1627. 1 Clement would be printed in Greek with a Latin translation by Patrick Young, the royal librarian, in 1633 and published in English by William Burton in 1647.35 The second major advance in mid-seventeenthcentury early patristic scholarship was Archbishop James Ussher’s textual recovery of the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, scholarship later confirmed by Issac Voss.36 The rediscovery of 1 Clement and the Ignatian epistles also led to renewed attention being given to other early second-century works, including the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Apologies of Justin Martyr and the works of Hermas, a Christian author of second-century Rome.37 This scholarship acted to feed the mid-seventeenth-century debate on church polity. In 1641 Joseph Hall, the bishop of Exeter, had mocked the authors of Smectymnuus for their lack of knowledge of the primitive church fathers, particularly the newly discovered 1 Clement.38 On closer reading, however, 1 Clement, with its description of the churches of Rome and Corinth being governed by a multiplicity of presbyter-bishops and the absence of a monarchical bishop, provided grist to the mill for presbyterian arguments.39 On the other hand, Ussher’s scholarship on Ignatius of Antioch provided a boon to episcopalian polemicists such as Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndyke and Jeremy Taylor.40 Nevertheless, it was argued by Hammond’s opponents that the form of episcopacy described by Ignatius or alluded to 6

Introduction

by his contemporary, Polycarp of Smyrna, bore little resemblance to the episcopacy of the pre-civil-war Church of England. For example, Richard Baxter would use Ignatius to reconceptualise ‘episcopacy’ in his appeal to Christian unity by identifying the modern equivalent of Ignatius’s bishop with the beneficed minister of a single parish church.41 These polemical battles demonstrated to contemporaries that even these early Christian witnesses failed to speak with a unanimous voice on the issue of church polity, requiring recourse to interpretative hermeneutics such as the rule of ‘just and necessary consequence’ used by the Westminster divines to settle its model of church polity. The consequence, as Clement’s translator William Burton candidly put it, was that while the ‘earnest plea’ of all sides was ‘antiquity’, how antiquity ‘should be understood was resolved on aforehand’ by the belligerents’ personal predilection for differing forms of church polity.42 The centuries-long debate and struggle over the nature and place of the polity of the Church in the political realm discussed in this section came to a head in the political crisis that engulfed the polities of the British Atlantic in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The calamities that befell Charles I’s monarchies revealed differences and contradictions in intellectual positions that formerly appeared consensual or, at least, containable. It is to this period of crisis that the chapters of this volume are addressed.

OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTERS IN THIS VOLUME Benjamin Guyer begins the collection by taking a longue durée approach to episcopal polity in the British churches. The liturgy and canon law, together with a stress of the apostolicity of the three-office model of bishop, priest and deacon, functioned to create a stable ecclesial identity for advocates of the British episcopal churches, particularly the Church of England. This ecclesiological identity sustained advocates of the traditional order through the darker times of the mid-century crisis when episcopacy was abolished and worship using the Book of Common Prayer proscribed. As Guyer notes, Archbishop Cranmer’s insistence that the three-office order was of apostolic warrant put the case for episcopacy higher than had been made by many Catholic theologians in the medieval period. Cranmer’s high view of episcopacy would be reiterated by a century of Church of England apologists. This was particularly so in the writings of those, such as Jeremy Taylor or Henry Hammond, who can lay claim to providing an ecclesiological basis for the genuinely ‘Anglican’ Church of England of the Restoration period. Although modern scholarship of the Westminster assembly, led by Chad Van Dixhoorn, has rightly stressed that its work was predominantly doctrinal, the assembly will always be remembered for ‘the grand debate’ between presbyterian and congregational forms of polity. Van Dixhoorn’s chapter visits the presbyterian side of the Westminster assembly’s debate on polity, a debate that has come to define presbyterian polity throughout the world. 7

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

Van Dixhoorn surveys the areas of diversity and unity among the proponents for presbyterianism in the assembly. Rather than seeing the assembly’s presbyterian majority holding starkly different views on the polity of the church, Van Dixhoorn sees differences of emphasis and approach. In particular, he contrasts those who were keen to stress the rights of particular congregations, notably George Gillespie, with those who approached the polity of the church from a more abstract ecclesiological position, a view exemplified by Lazarus Seaman, the civil war master of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Somewhere in the middle were those whom Van Dixhoorn aptly classes ‘big tent presbyterians’, such as Stephen Marshall or Edmund Calamy, who were concerned to find practical compromises in order to further the projected reformation of the church in England. Van Dixhoorn’s chapter contains an excursus on George Gillespie, one of the most important theorists of presbyterian polity, whose brief career set its polemical sights against episcopacy and ‘Erastianism’, as well as the more sectarian aspects of congregationalism. Arguing that Gillespie remained largely coherent in his view of presbyterian polity from his earliest anti-­ Laudian works to his later tracts, Van Dixhoorn examines Gillespie’s intellectual methods and sources. The exploration of Gillespie’s position in light of the assembly debates leads Van Dixhoorn to conclude that deeper reflections on ecclesiology were consciously placed on the back seat by the Westminster assembly’s presbyterians. Rather, and to the chagrin of their congregationalist brethren, the presbyterians sought to meet their parliamentary brief by providing a workable settlement for the polity of the British churches. If the Westminster assembly’s presbyterians avoided a too deep reflection on ecclesiology in order to establish a presbyterian polity in practice, Scott Spurlock argues that Scottish presbyterians were nevertheless motivated by deeply ecclesiological reflections. Spurlock explores the implications of John Knox and other Scottish reformers’ adoption and amplification of Calvin’s understanding that a nation entered into covenant with God through the act of national reformation. For the Scottish presbyterians of the mid-seventeenth century, the National Covenant was a renewal of the promise between God and the Scottish people made in the earlier covenants of the Reformation era. The vehicle for this renewal was the presbyterian national church as re-established by the Covenanter revolution. The covenantal basis of Scottish presbyterian thought, Spurlock argues, provided the underlying structure of the Scots’ arguments for polity in the Westminster assembly. It also put them at variance with English and American congregationalists, who reserved the covenant idea for particular, gathered churches. The Scottish understanding of the role of the National Covenant in making an elect nation was also rejected by many English presbyterians, who were cautious of the ecclesiological link between a National Covenant and a national church. Spurlock concludes his chapter exploring how Covenanter ecclesiology was affected by the Cromwellian conquest of 8

Introduction

Scotland and the Restoration. These cataclysms led to a variety of responses from Covenanters, but the general trend was a retreat from corporate notions of the covenant making an elect nation towards personal covenanting. This, in turn, contributed to the intense personal piety of eighteenth-century Scottish and, by extension, American presbyterianism. Francis Bremer’s chapter reconsidering the New England way explores a period of crisis in New England’s ecclesiological reflections on the nature of the church and its polity. Bremer demonstrates that many of the questions discussed during the Westminster assembly debates, particularly the location of power in the church and the proper relationship of individual congregations to the larger community, were questions of high importance in the New England setting. Bremer surveys how the connection between church covenant and church membership in New England caused problems in the second generation of the New England settlement as many of the children of the original settlers did not seek to become church members and thus ‘unchurched’ themselves. This led to the development of the ‘half-way covenant’, whereby baptised adults who were not church members could still present their own children for baptism. The half-way covenant reeked of presbyterianism to many purists of the New England way. This apparent slow creep of allegedly presbyterian principles into New England was also perceived in the growing discouragement of lay participation in the governance of the church by the New England clergy. This development was both home-grown, especially after the ‘antinomian controversy’ and the trial of Anne Hutchinson during the mid- to late 1630s, and looked across the Atlantic to the chaos caused by the sects in 1640s England. The ultimate result of these struggles, Bremer argues, was a decline in the congregationalist principles of the New England churches towards more clerically centred positions on ecclesiology and church polity. Richard Baxter’s rather idiosyncratic views on church polity are treated by Tim Cooper, who provocatively asks whether Baxter was a congregationalist. Drawing on Bruce Lincoln’s interdisciplinary work in the study of religious identity, Cooper asks this question as a means of prising open the issues of group identity and community among the various ‘denominational’ positions in the mid-seventeenth century. Cooper’s argument is that identities based on allegiance to a particular church polity were more fluid than has been often recognised. For Baxter, this fluidity and a focus on church practice, not deeper ecclesiological theory, presented an opportunity for establishing concord. Cooper argues that Baxter’s technique in peacemaking was to show that the boundaries that had ossified around identity labels relating to church polity could be broken down by focusing on the commonalities of ‘mere Christianity’. As Cooper notes, Baxter’s peacemaking ultimately had limited practical success, his efforts being frustrated by the religious politics of the last years of the 1650s and the tribulations of the 1660s. Nevertheless, Baxter-as-peacemaker reminds us that the early civil war era focus on church 9

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

polity had the effect of revealing deep fault lines within the Christianity of the British Atlantic world. Joel Halcomb’s study of the association movement in the 1650s also draws on issues of concord and accommodation among those ministers holding to differing models of church polity. The Association movement has often been seen by historians as an example of the success (at least in theory) of Richard Baxter’s ecumenical efforts. Halcomb challenges this view, arguing that the ministerial associations were more disparate in nature than has often been argued. While some associations did indeed follow the Baxterian model of the Worcestershire association, others were self-consciously presbyterian classes, and a number of associations were not influenced by Baxter’s ideas. The majority of the associations relied, with varying degrees of latitude, on the Westminster assembly’s confessional documents to provide the doctrinal centre that was missing from the Cromwellian ‘Church’. An important feature of Halcomb’s chapter is his discussion of the regional associations in terms of the central and metropolitan politics of religion. Despite clear hopes that the associations might rebuild the national church from the localities into the centre, the associations were little noticed by the parliaments of the Cromwellian Protectorate. Nor did Baxter’s ideas fare well among those, largely metropolitan, godly ministers closest to the political pulse of the Cromwellian regime, whether leaning towards congregationalist or presbyterian positions. Halcomb, therefore, invites us to see the associations from angles that are not often explored in the hope of linking what is often miscast as a regionalist stop-gap for the local clergy in a time of crisis to the wider politics of religion in the period. The importance of the political sphere to church polity is stressed in a number of chapters to this collection. The chapters of James Mawdesley and Stephen Roberts both look at the connections between church polity and local politics. In particular, these chapters explore the relationship between the patronage networks of local peers, gentry and ministers and the effect these networks had on determining local choices in terms of church polity. Roberts’s topic is mid-seventeenth-century Wales, mainly known for its royalism or adherence to baptist and sectarian religious traditions. Roberts’s chapter bucks this trend and explores the fate of presbyterianism, advanced at Westminster and in Wales through the political influence of Sir Robert Harley, his family, friends and circle of clerical protégés. Roberts considers the civil war attempts to bring presbyterian polity to Wales, ultimately concluding that it was the political revolution in Westminster at the end of the 1640s and the consequent eclipse of Harley influence that was the undoing of this venture. Heading in a more northerly, but equally western direction, to the ‘Mersey Basin’ area of Cheshire and Lancashire in England, James Mawdesley’s chapter focuses on the clerical affinity connected to the Stanley earls of Derby in the late 1630s and early 1640s. Mawdesley asks why congregationalist 10

Introduction

polity was largely unsuccessful in laying down roots in the region at this time. This question is pertinent because Richard Mather, the founder of one of New England’s most prolific clerical dynasties, and an important congregationalist theorist in his own right, had come from Lowton in the parish of Winwick in Lancashire. Mawdesley argues that aristocratic patronage and leading ministerial protégés, particularly Charles Herle, the future prolocutor of the Westminster assembly (and rector of Winwick), were important in configuring the region towards presbyterianism. Roberts’s and Mawdesley’s findings are in line with other studies of aristocratic and gentry patronage and local choices on matters of polity.43 The confrontation between church polity and politics is the topic of Elliot Vernon’s chapter, which explores the dispute between the Westminster assembly’s presbyterians and the collection of common lawyers, constitutionalists and Hebraists dubbed ‘Erastians’ in the mid-1640s. Vernon argues that the root of this intra-Parliamentarian argument originated in the attempt to restrict Charles I’s ability to use the church as an instrument of state power by taking the whip hand of ecclesiastical supremacy away from the King. This led to the struggle between competing conceptions of a godly church and commonwealth found deep within Reformation thought. The first, the Calvinist two-kingdoms theory advocated by the presbyterian ministers at the Westminster assembly, sought a national church that, while established by the state, was independent in its own sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Opponents of this position, whom the Scottish Covenanter clergy dubbed ‘Erastians’ after the sixteenth-century Zwinglian polemicist Thomas Erastus, advanced a single-sphere model of church–state relations that saw state and church as coextensive under the supremacy of the civil magistrate. Vernon explores how the English presbyterians ultimately compromised their position by allowing the magistrate a supervisory role in the church without conceding the broader outlines of the Calvinist two-kingdoms theology. He concludes by disagreeing with those who argue that the magisterial congregationalism of the Cromwellian period was essentially Erastian in nature. In this, he looks at the variation of the two-kingdoms perspective found in the work of the congregationalist leader Philip Nye and at Oliver Cromwell’s allowance of ecclesiastical independence for not only gathered churches but also associations settled according to a presbyterian model. The 1650s represented the period when the leading ‘magisterial’ congregationalist ministers of the 1640s had the ear of the various interregnum governments for establishing their platform for the proper relationship between church and state. Hunter Powell’s chapter explores the development of this congregationalist platform in the 1650s, arguing that congregationalists such as John Owen, Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye looked to the colonial American model developed in the Massachusetts Bay colony by John Cotton. The goal of the English congregationalists, the divines closest to Oliver Cromwell, Powell argues, was to guide interregnum England between 11

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

the Scylla and Charybdis of preserving both Reformed confessional orthodoxy and liberty of conscience. Analysing the various written confessions of the congregationalist divines, culminating in the 1658 ‘Savoy declaration’, as well as using sermon literature, Powell sees interregnum England as moving towards a confessional settlement that obtained these two goals. Yet, he concludes, this journey was cut short by the death of Oliver Cromwell, the leader whose policies were most aligned with the congregationalists’ vision of further reformation. The coda to these chapters is provided by Sara Ward Clavier, who analyses the contribution of episcopal autobiography to the redefinition of the Church of England in the Restoration era. Taking a wide definition of autobiographical writing, Sarah Ward Clavier addresses the narratives of sufferings of the Restoration bishops, many of whom experienced harassment, dejection and loss during the interregnum period. While accepting Ian Green’s argument that this suffering was no greater than other episcopalian clerics during the period, Ward Clavier argues that this common suffering was put to good effect by the Restoration episcopate, who used their personal experiences to embody that suffered by many clergy within the restored Church of England. This allowed Restoration bishops to set themselves as representatives of the suffering church, embodying polity through autobiography. This drew on tropes drawn from the narratives of the suffering of early martyrs and bishops. Ward Clavier argues, therefore, that bishops’ autobiography emphasised ‘Anglican’ polity, both through affirming the apostolic succession of bishops as guardians of the church and the providential survival of the true church through times of darkness. These chapters show that the topic of church polity and politics in the seventeenth-century British Atlantic world remains a dynamic issue in a much-studied field. This volume addresses some of the many questions that the subject calls forth. It is hoped that the chapters found here will go some way to inspire scholars to continue to unpick the aporias of church polity and politics in this period.

NOTES 1 I owe this pertinent description to John Coffey. 2 According to the Oxford English dictionary, ‘ecclesiology’ originated in the nineteenth century and pertained to the construction and layout of churches. As in this volume, modern usage affords the term a more theoretical status. 3 This is explored in the forthcoming edited collection by Michael Davies, Anne Dunan-Page and Joel Halcomb, Church life: pastors, congregations, and the experience of dissent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 4 For this struggle in the later seventeenth century, see J. A. I. Champion, The pillars of priestcraft shaken: the Church of England and its enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 12

Introduction 5 Useful essays on the intellectual history of many of these issues, with a focus on the Elizabethan theologian Richard Hooker, can be found in W. J. Torrance Kirby (ed.), A companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008), particularly the chapters by W. H. Harrison, C. C. Simuţ, D. Kernan, A. S. McGrade and D. Eppeley. 6 G. F. Nuttall, Visible saints: the congregational way 1640–1660 (2nd edition, Weston Rhyn: Quinta Press, 2001); M. Tolmie, The triumph of the saints: the separate churches of London, 1616–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); S. Brachlow, The communion of the saints: radical puritan and separatist ecclesiology, 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); S. Wright, The early English baptists, 1603–1649 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006); M. R. Bell, Apocalypse how? Baptist movements during the English revolution (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000). 7 M. C. Bingham, Orthodox radicals: Baptist identity in the English revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); A declaration of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament concerning the papers of the Scots commissioners (1648), pp. 50–1. 8 The May 1648 blasphemy ordinance made it an offence punishable by imprisonment to publicly deny the validity of infant baptism and to baptise persons already baptised. See A&O, I, pp. 1132–6. 9 S. W. Angell and P. Dandelion (eds), Early quakers and their theological thought: 1647–1723 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 10 J. W. Packer, The transformation of Anglicanism, 1643–1660 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969). See also S. Mortimer, ‘Kingship and the “apostolic church”, 1620–1650’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 13:2 (2011), 226–56. For Thorndike, see C. Miller, ‘Herbert Thorndike and Anglican ecclesiology: “Classical” perspectives in aid of reconstruction’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 7:4 (2007), 261–78. 11 S. Tutino, Thomas White and the Blackloists: between politics and theology during the English civil war (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008). 12 J. McCafferty, The reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian reforms, 1633–1641 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); T. C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English government and reform in Ireland 1649–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); St J. D. Seymour, The puritans in Ireland (1647–1661) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921). See also the chapter by Crawford Gribben in the forthcoming first volume of The Oxford handbook of the protestant dissenting traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press) edited by John Coffey. 13 J. Coleman, A history of political thought from the middle ages to the renaissance (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), pp. 22–9, 134–68; G. R. Evans, Problems of authority in the Reformation debates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), ch. 11; J. Guy, ‘The Henrician age’, in J. G. A. Pocock, G. J. Schochet and L. G. Schwoerer (eds), The varieties of British political thought, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 28, 30–1; D. Kernan, ‘Jurisdiction and the keys’, in W. J. Torrance Kirby (ed.), A companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 445. 14 A. Black, ‘The conciliar movement’, in J. H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge history of medieval political thought, c.350–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); F. Oakley, The conciliarist tradition: constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 13

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 15 H. Powell, The crisis of British protestantism: church power in the puritan revolution, 1638–1644 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 68–9. See also P. Ha, ‘Puritan conciliarism: why Walter Travers read Bullinger’s “de Conciliis”’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 42:1 (2011), 57–76, for Walter Travers’s early seventeenth-century view of presbyterian church councils. 16 Kernan, ‘Jurisdiction and the keys’, pp. 446–7; for a useful analysis of the background to Luther’s attack on the sacramental system of the pre-Reformation church, see Evans, Problems of authority, ch. 8. 17 Guy, ‘The Henrician age’, pp. 26–8, 37. 18 P. Benedict, Christ’s churches purely reformed: a social history of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 19 R. M. Kingdon, Geneva and the consolidation of the French protestant movement, 1564–1572: a contribution to the history of congregationalism, presbyterianism, and Calvinist resistance theory (Geneva: Librairie Drosz, 1967), pp. 76–81; M. S. Springer, Restoring Christ’s church: John a Lasco and the form ac ratio (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 20 Summaries of these events can be found in A. Ryrie, The age of Reformation: the Tudor and Stewart realms, 1485–1603 (2nd edition, Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 235–44; J. Spurr, The post-Reformation, 1603–1714 (Edinburgh: Pearson Longman, 2006), pp. 50–1. 21 P. Marshall, Reformation England, 1480–1642 (2nd edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), pp. 123–52; P. Collinson, The Elizabethan puritan movement (Jonathan Cape, 1967). 22 P. Lake, Moderate puritans and the Elizabethan church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), chs 5 and 11; P. Lake, ‘William Bradshaw, Antichrist and the community of the godly’, JEH, 36:4 (1985), 570–89, C. G. Schneider, ‘Godly order in a church half-reformed: the disciplinary legacy, 1570–1641’ (PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 1986); P. Ha, English presbyterianism 1590–1640 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), chs 3–5. 23 P. Lake, ‘Presbyterianism, the idea of a national church and the argument from divine right’, in P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds), Protestantism and the national church in sixteenth century England (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 206–18; C. W. A. Prior, ‘Ecclesiology and political thought in England, 1580–c. 1630’, HJ, 48:4 (2005), 855–84; C. W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean church: the politics of religious controversy, 1603–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 114–23. 24 Whilst this book uses the later seventeenth-century denominational term ‘congregationalist’, it recognises that in the period of study contemporaries favourable to this form of church polity in the mid-seventeenth century used phrases such as ‘in a congregational-way’ to describe their church polity. The first person to coin this term appears to have been William Kiffin in the ‘Epistle to the reader’ attached to the anonymous sermon A glimpse of Sions glory (1641). 25 M. Winship, Godly republicanism: puritans, pilgrims and a city on a hill (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 26 See also the recent work by Polly Ha on Bermuda: ‘Religious toleration and ecclesiastical independence in revolutionary Britain, Bermuda and the Bahamas’, CH, 84:4 (2015), 807–27, and ‘Godly globalisation: Calvinism in Bermuda’, JEH, 66:3 (2015), 543–61. 14

Introduction 27 Baxter, RB, I, pp. 15–17; for an in-depth study on this era, see C. W. A. Prior, A confusion of tongues: Britain’s wars of reformation, 1625–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 28 Smectymnuus was an acronym for Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen and William Spurstowe. 29 Smectymnuus, An answer to a booke entitled an humble remonstrance (1641), pp. 85–6. 30 J. Maltby, Prayer book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 31 For protestant patristic scholarship in this period in general see J.-L. Quantin, The Church of England and Christian antiquity: the construction of a confessional identity in the 17th century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); I. Backus, ‘Reformed orthodoxy and patristic tradition’, in H. J. Selderhuis (ed.), A companion to Reformed orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 91–117. 32 The Restoration piqued a public interest for translations of the early Christian writings. An English translation of Hermas by John Pringle was published in 1661 as The three books of Hermas (1661). English translations of the letters of Poycarp, Ignatius and Barnabus taken from the scholarship of Ussher and Issac Voss would be published by Thomas Elborowe in 1668 as The famous epistles of Saint Polycarp and Saint Ignatius. A carefully researched lives of the ‘primitive fathers’ would be published by William Cave in his Apostolici (1677). In common with Wake’s edition, and much Anglican publishing on the primitive fathers, this work poured scorn on nonconformist interpretations of the early Church documents. 33 H. J. de Jonge, ‘On the origin of the term “apostolic fathers”’, Journal of Theological Studies, new series, 29:2 (1978), 503–5; B. D. Ehrman, ‘Introduction’, in B. D. Ehrman (ed.), The apostolic fathers: volume 1 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 8. 34 William Wake, The genuine epistles of the apostolical fathers (1693), Stephen Taylor, ‘Wake, William’, ODNB, citing Wake, The genuine epistles, p. vi. 35 Patricivs Ivnivs (i.e. Patrick Young), KLHMENTOS … Clementis ad Corinthios epistola prior (Oxford, 1633), William Burton, Clement, the blessed labourer of Pauls in the gospel, his first epistle to the Corinthians (1647). 36 Ehrman, The apostolic fathers, pp. 210–11; H. de Quehen, ‘Politics and scholarship in the Ignatian controversy’, The Seventeenth Century, 13:1 (1988), 69–84; A. Ford, James Ussher: theology, politics and politics in early-modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 235–41. 37 Latin translations of the letters of Polycarp and Ignatius would be published by James Ussher in 1644: In Polycarpianam epistolarvm Ignatianarvm (Oxford, 1644). 38 For a succinct discussion of Hall, Smectymnuus and John Milton’s attitude to, and use of, patristic scholarship in the debate on church polity this see T. Roebuck, ‘Milton and the confessionalization of antiquarianism’, in E. Jones (ed.), Young Milton: the emerging author, 1620–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 56–62. 39 Constant Jessop, The angel of the Church of Ephesus no bishop of Ephesus (1644). 40 See J. W. Packer, The transformation of Anglicanism, 1643–1660 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969); S. Mortimer, ‘Kingship and the ­“apostolic 15

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic church”, 1620–1650’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 13:2 (2011), 226–56. 41 See for example John Owen, The doctrine of the saints perseverance explained and confirmed, ‘Preface to the reader’, in John Owen, The works of John Owen, ed. W. H. Gould, 23 vols (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1965), XI, pp. 19–74; London Provincial Assembly, Jus divinum ministerii evangelici (1654), ‘The second part’, pp. 99–149; Richard Baxter, Five disputations of church-government and worship (1659), pp. 2–108. 42 Burton, Clement, the blessed labourer, ’preface’ sigs Br–v. 43 See, for example, B. Donegan, ‘The clerical patronage of Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, 1619–1642’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120:5 (1976), 388–419; A. Hughes, Politics, society and civil war in Warwickshire 1620–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 72–80.

16

‘From the Apostles’ time’

Chapter 2

‘From the Apostles’ time’: the polity of the British episcopal churches, 1603–62 Benjamin M. Guyer

A

midst controversy, armed conflict and bloodshed, in the seventeenth century episcopacy became a defining feature of the Church of England and its Irish and Scottish counterparts. This chapter makes an extended methodological argument about the importance of attending to the longue durée by setting debates about episcopal polity in two broad contexts.1 First, and more broadly, is the confessional framework provided by normative textual authorities, most notably the liturgies found in the Book of Common Prayer and the bodies of seventeenth-century canon law. These buttressed a ceremonial continuity that began with Elizabeth I; it continued until the Church of England was proscribed during the civil wars,2 but it was revived at the Restoration. Second, and more specifically, this chapter studies the reception by early Stuart divines of Archbishop Cranmer’s conviction that ‘It is evident unto all men, diligently reading holy scripture, and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time there hath been these orders of Ministers in Christ’s church; Bishops, Priests and Deacons’.3 Originally stated in the Ordinal of 1550, Cranmer’s view helped define later pro-episcopal apologetics, especially during and after the British civil wars. Despite turbulent and often unwanted political change, there was much stability in Anglican practice, even if varying emphases existed in Anglican theology and devotion.

A LITURGICAL INHERITANCE For the vast majority of seventeenth-century English, the most tangible expression of episcopal authority at the parochial level was found in the liturgy for confirmation. Upon learning the catechism, children were brought before the bishop, who laid hands upon them, prayed for them and blessed them. In the 1549 version of the rite, the bishop made the sign of the cross upon the newly confirmed. This act was moved in 1552 to the baptismal rite, where it replaced the anointing that originally followed the immersion 17

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic

and subsequent donning of white vesture by the baptised.4 Later liturgies maintained these changes; baptisands were signed with the cross and confirmands received the laying on of hands. From 1549 onward, confirmation was designated a rite ‘after the example of thy holy Apostles’, and the imposition of hands was expressly termed a ‘sign’ of God’s ‘favour, and gracious goodness’.5 The 1552 revision added a prayer during this blessing: ‘Defend, O Lord, this child with thy heavenly grace, that he may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom. Amen.’6 The liturgy for confirmation articulated no express theology of the episcopate, but because the rite was required for admission to the Holy Communion, it underscored the central importance of the diocesan bishop. Encompassing more than the local parish were the liturgies for the ordination of deacons, priests and bishops, first published in the Ordinal. The bishop was the main liturgical actor in each service. He secured from each ordinand assent to the royal supremacy and to the liturgical and doctrinal norms of the Church of England. Services for the ordination of deacons and priests contained prayers and New Testament readings particular to each order, and both services concluded with the bishop laying his hands upon each postulant, who knelt before the diocesan. In the service for deacons, the bishop then said, ‘Take thou authority to execute the office of a Deacon in the Church of God committed unto thee’. Delivering the New Testament to each deacon, the bishop continued, ‘Take thou authority to read the Gospel in the Church of God, and to preach the same, if thou be thereunto ordinarily commanded.’7 The service for the ordination of priests allowed others of the same order to join in the laying on of hands, but the bishop alone said, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven: and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained: and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God, and of his holy sacraments’. Priests then received the whole Bible and were exhorted, ‘Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in this Congregation’.8 Both ordination rites concluded with the bishop presiding at the Holy Communion, thus affirming unity in life, doctrine, and authority before and between all who were gathered. The provincial archbishop presided at the consecration of bishops. The service opened with the reading of 1 Timothy 3:1–7, which began, in Cranmer’s translation, ‘This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a Bishop, he desireth an honest work’.9 As with the ordination of priests, members of the same order could impose their hands, but only the officiant spoke in the imperative, ‘Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is in thee, by imposition of hands: for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and of soberness’.10 A Bible was then laid upon the neck of the new bishop, who was exhorted to study and live according to scripture. The original 1550 service then con18

‘From the Apostles’ time’

tained the following, which was prayed after the archbishop gave a pastoral staff to the new bishop: Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf, feed them, devour them not, hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind together the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost: Be so merciful, that you be not too remiss, so minister discipline, that ye forget not mercy, that when the chief Shepherd shall come, ye may receive the immarcescible Crown of glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord.11

The rubric directing the giving of a staff was removed in 1552, but the prayer was retained and joined to the prayer that followed receiving the Bible. Finally, the archbishop presided over the Communion, thereby enacting concord between bishop and archbishop and all other participants. Grounding both confirmation and ordination was Archbishop Cranmer’s brief preface to the Ordinal. He aimed to maintain the ‘reverent estimation’ historically held for the ecclesiastical hierarchy by directing that ‘no man by his own private authority might presume to execute any of them’.12 Cranmer buttressed his argument by appealing to history, beginning his essay with the seemingly simple affirmation, already quoted in the introduction: that the orders of bishop, priest and deacon originated with the apostles. It is often claimed that the Church of England thus maintained a historically ‘catholic’ hierarchy, but Cranmer’s belief in three distinct orders was at odds with earlier theological authorities. Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the most widely disseminated work of scholastic theology between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, held that bishops were not a distinct order. Priesthood was the highest of the church’s seven orders,13 but ‘The term bishop is a name of both dignity and office’.14 Furthermore, of these seven orders, ‘Two alone are called sacred … namely the diaconate and presbyterate, because we read that these were the only two which the primitive Church had, and only concerning these do we have the Apostle’s precept’.15 William Durand of Mende, whose Rationale divinorum officiorum was the most widely disseminated (and, later, most widely printed) explanation of Roman liturgical practice, held the same view. Quite unlike Cranmer’s understanding of the first epistle to Timothy, Durand denied that bishops were named in the passage. Rather, ‘only priests and deacons are named by the Apostle in his Epistle, since these are necessary for the ministry of the altar’.16 Lombard depended on Isidore of Seville for his understanding of the relationship between bishops and presbyters, but Durand cited the fourth-century church father St Jerome: ‘In the past, a presbyter was the same as a bishop, and before there were, through the inspiration of the Devil, schools of thought and disagreements in the religion … the Church was governed by a general council of presbyters.’ According to Jerome, the hierarchy of bishops over presbyters was due ‘more through custom than through the dispensation of the Lord’s true teaching’.17 More recent authorities, such as Desiderius Erasmus and Gasparo Contarini, also maintained that bishops were not a distinct order.18 However, the liturgical 19

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revisions of 1552 and 1559 retained Cranmer’s essay as the preface of the Ordinal, and thus his unusual conviction that the episcopate, as a distinct order, was of apostolic origin. By 1600, Cranmer’s perspective had been the official stance of the Church of England for almost half a century.

JACOBEAN EPISCOPACY In 1603, when James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne as James I, he left a country where episcopacy was often attacked and entered a country where episcopacy remained the norm, even if sometimes contested. As he made his way south from Edinburgh towards London, he was greeted by a group of ministers. They presented him with the Millenary Petition, which sought ‘reformation’ of a wide variety of matters: removing ceremonies from the Book of Common Prayer, requiring more sermons, ending pluralism (the holding of more than one benefice) and altering a range of disciplinary practices. The petition said nothing about the episcopate as such, but it did call for the abandonment of confirmation, which it deemed ‘superfluous’.19 James assented to the petitioners’ suggestion of a ‘conference among the learned’ by calling a three-day conference at Hampton Court that January.20 But public debate did not wait. Before the conference was held, the University of Oxford published a pointed refutation of the petition, alleging that the petitioners sought to abolish episcopacy. They were ‘factious men affecting popular parity in the Church’. Referencing in a marginal note the king’s political work Basilicon doron (Greek for The royal gift), the Oxford dons wrote, ‘it is to well knowen in this kingdome, and by experience it hath bin felte in that of Scotland, what manner of men they be’.21 By connecting ‘popular parity’ with political rebellion, the Oxford dons promoted the suspicion that the Millenary Petition drove towards the same violence that James had witnessed in Scotland. The Hampton Court conference was thus polarised even before it began. James first spoke his famous aphorism ‘No Bishop, no King’ during this conference. Although terse, the king’s simple affirmation originated in a debate about confirmation. Episcopacy became a major topic of discussion on the second day when John Reynolds, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, argued that confirmation was not apostolic, and that, by imposing their hands during the rite, bishops could be misunderstood as imparting ‘the visible graces of the holy ghost’.22 Reynolds proposed having the local pastor administer confirmation instead. Following the Book of Common Prayer, the bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, countered that confirmation was of apostolic origin, and he invoked St Jerome to illustrate the exclusive role bishops had historically exercised in the rite. Bancroft emphasised that Jerome was a trustworthy source because, ironically, he was ‘otherwise no friend to Bishops’.23 According to the account written by William Barlow, James also defended confirmation and concluded the discussion ‘by taxing 20

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Saint Ierome for his assertion that a Bishop was not divinae ordinationis [of divine appointment] … which opinion his Maiestie much distasted, approving their calling & vse in the Church, and closed it vppe with this short Aphorisme, No Bishop, no King’.24 By rejecting St Jerome’s position, James argued not only that episcopacy was of divine origin but that this view had some sort of political payout. The full scope of the king’s conviction became apparent only in continued discussions later that day, but his argument drew from Basilicon doron, which held that monarchy is iure divino (by divine right or duty). Written for his son Henry, Basilicon doron described kingship in exalted terms. The work opened with a series of sonnets, the second of which averred, ‘God gives not Kings the stile of Gods in vaine / For on his Throne his Scepter doe they swey’.25 James advised his son that a pious monarch ‘acknowledgeth himself ordained for his people, having receiued from God a burthen of gouernment, whereof he must be countable’.26 James’s vision of divinely authored political hierarchy found a mirror image in the hierarchy of the home. He exhorted his son, ‘O inuert not the order of nature, by iudging your superiours, chiefly in your owne particular!’27 At Hampton Court, James applied his vision of monarchical and paternal authority to the church. Just as royal authority was for the people but from God, so too was episcopal authority divinae ordinationis. It is easy to misread this as meaning that bishops were the chief bulwark for safeguarding monarchical authority, but James’s metaphysics of hierarchy indicates a more expansive argument. Inverting one hierarchy led to inverting others, and for this the king offered a historical argument. Later on the second day of the conference, James again used his aphorism ‘No Bishop, no King’. He explained that, in Scotland, those who set themselves against the episcopate had also set themselves against his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. He told the bishops, ‘if once you were out, and they in place, I knowe what would become of my Supremacie. No Bishop, no King, as before I sayd’.28 The validity of monarchy did not come from citizens; the validity of episcopacy did not come from laity; neither monarchy nor episcopacy depended upon the presbytery. In order to buttress the decisions of the conference, a new canon law was rapidly promulgated and plans were made for a new translation of the Bible. The canon law codified a range of norms. It defended the royal supremacy (canons 1 and 2), the apostolic doctrine of the Church of England (canon 3), the liturgy (canons 4 and 6), the Articles of Religion (canon 5) and episcopal authority (canons 7 and 8).29 Canons 9–12 condemned schism and conventicles. Collectively, the new canons did much to solidify monarchical and episcopal authority. The first canon described the king’s royal supremacy as ‘the highest power vnder God, to whom all men, as well inhabitants as borne within the same, do by Gods Lawes owe most loyaltie and obedience, afore and aboue all other Power and Potentates in earth’. The second canon directed that anyone who opposed the royal supremacy was ­‘excommunicated 21

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ipso facto, and not restored but onely by the Archbishop after his repentance and publike reuocation of those his wicked errours’. This formulaic censure concluded each subsequent canon through canon 12, thus granting archiepiscopal sovereignty over the readmission of heretics to the communion of the Church of England. The seventh canon excommunicated those who described the hierarchy of the English church as ‘Antichristian or repugnant to the word of God’ – language often used by opponents of episcopacy, especially in Scotland – and the eighth canon excommunicated any who denounced the liturgies found in the Ordinal. The canons for ordination (31–76) repeatedly emphasised the authority of the bishop. The English canons defended episcopacy in a most uncompromising way. Whereas the canons maintained episcopal order, the Authorised Version, or ‘King James’s Bible’, undercut the possibility of using Scripture to justify revolt against either crown or mitre. When the issue of Bible translation was first mooted at Hampton Court, James lampooned the Geneva Bible. He was especially incensed by its running commentary, and directed that ‘no marginall notes should be added, hauing found in them, which are annexed to the Geneua translation (which he sawe in a Bible giuen him by an English Lady) some notes very partiall, vntrue, seditious, and sauouring too much, of daungerous, and trayterous conceites’.30 When the new translation appeared, the translators used their preface to attack ‘the scrupulosity of the Puritanes, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betake them to other, as when they put washing for baptism, and congregation instead of Church’.31 No less importantly, the Geneva Bible effaced the episcopate. In the translation of 1 Tim. 3:1, a marginal note was appended to the word ‘bishoppe’. It read, ‘Whether he be Pastor or Elder’.32 This interpretation buttressed two key tenets of dissenting ecclesiology. First was the denial that bishops existed among the first generation of Christians. Second was the attendant view that the Greek word ‘episkopos’, translated as ‘bishop’ in the Ordinal, actually referred to a range of offices in the apostolic church. By writing ‘Whether he be Pastor or Elder’, the Geneva Bible foreclosed the possibility that bishops were the intended referent in the Biblical text. Because the Authorised Version used traditional language but no marginalia, its vocabulary easily harmonised with that found in the canon law and the Book of Common Prayer. The translators retained not only ‘the old Ecclesiastical words’ but the old ecclesiastical meanings as well.

CAROLINE EPISCOPACY Like his father, Charles I sought to bring his three churches into substantive agreement with one another. He oversaw the ratification of new canons in the churches of Ireland and Scotland, and the introduction of a revised Book of Common Prayer into Scotland (Ireland already used the English liturgy).33 Despite contemporary accusations to the contrary, this was not an attempt at imposing ‘anglicisation’.34 The three kingdoms of the British Isles were a 22

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composite monarchy; different nations were more easily managed if areas of similarity were strengthened. The Irish and Scottish canons were identical neither with one another nor with the English canons, although each canon law overlapped in significant ways with the others. Charles’s approach to ecclesial difference was a well-trodden, if not always successful path of royal administration in seventeenth-century Europe. The Church of Ireland’s new canons were passed in 1634.35 The first canon was entitled ‘Of the agreement of the church of England and Ireland, in the profession of the same Christian Religion’. It expressly identified its goal as ‘the manifestation of our agreement with the Church of England’. The next four canons followed the precedent set by the Jacobean canon law; the second canon was an almost verbatim restatement of royal supremacy. The third canon endorsed the Book of Common Prayer, and the fourth canon the Ordinal and its attendant threefold hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons. The fifth canon censured schism and conventicles, and, like the English canons, the Irish canons concluded each of the first five canons by excommunicating those who dissented. The close similarity between the Irish and English canons was due in part to the urging of William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury,36 but divergences between each body of canon law owed something to different political contexts. The Irish canons revised their English source material to better address perceived abuses in the Church of Ireland – ‘abuse’ defined as much by developing norms in England as by domestic pastoral need. The Irish canons were little concerned with underscoring episcopal authority, perhaps because, unlike in England and Scotland, the continuity of bishops in Ireland had never been a matter of significant dispute, even under Elizabeth.37 The Church of Scotland’s new canons,38 ratified in 1635, are best read alongside the 1637 Scottish Book of Common Prayer. The canons laid the groundwork for the new liturgies, and these together brought the Scottish church into closer alignment with the churches of England and Ireland. According to the Preface of the new prayer book, unity ‘as well in forme of publike worship, as in doctrine … would prevent many schismes and divisions’. Charles I explained that ‘since that cannot be hoped for in the whole Catholike Christian Church, yet at least in the Churches that are under the protection of one Sovereign Prince the same ought to be endeavoured’.39 He identified the new liturgies as a continuation of his father’s pursuit of conformity, but in this regard Charles was in a very unfortunate position. After leaving Scotland for England, James returned to his native country only once: in 1617, when he began advocating for Five Articles of Perth. They caused controversy by endorsing matters long rejected by Scottish presbyterians, such as episcopacy and kneeling to receive Communion. Combined with James’s general neglect of Scotland, the Five Articles of Perth only spurred resentment, further entrenching the presbyterian movement in the Scottish church. 23

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Charles recognised the difficulty of his task,40 and the organisation of the Scottish canons evidences the same. Unlike their Irish counterpart, the Scottish canons began not by affirming agreement with the Church of England but by affirming royal and episcopal authority.41 Borrowing from England’s canon law, the Scottish canons asserted, Whosoever shal herafter affirm, That the king’s M[ajes]tie hath not the same Authoritie in Causes Ecclesiasticall, that the godlie kings had amongst the Iewes, and Christian Emperours, in the Primitive Church; or impeach, in anie part, his Royall Supremacie in Causes Ecclesiasticall; let him bee excommunicated, and not restored, but onlie by the Arch-bishop of the Province, after his Repentance, and publicke Revocation of these his wicked Errours.42

Like the English canons, the next Scottish canon further normalised episcopacy by excommunicating those who rejected ‘The government of the Church under His Mtie by Archbishops, Bishops, and others which beare office in the same’.43 As with impugning the royal supremacy, only the diocesan bishop or the provincial archbishop could absolve those who denigrated episcopal authority. The canon law regulated but also aimed to graft episcopal and royal authority on to longer-standing presbyterian norms. For example, the second chapter of the Scottish canons envisioned changes in the procedure for ordination, directing that ‘No person shall bee heereafter receaved into holie Orders, without due examination of his literature, by the Arch-bishop or Bishop of the Diocesse’.44 The rite of ordination, however, accepted greater presbyterial authority and participation than in the churches of England and Ireland. As noted above, the English Ordinal allowed priests to join the bishop in the laying on of hands, but the Scottish canons required ordination ‘in the presence of two or three Presbyters of the Diocesse, who shall laye on handes together with the Arch-bishop, or Bishop’.45 Bishops were necessary for ordination but in Scotland their sufficiency was less than clear. Those who supported these changes may have considered this a workable compromise between episcopal and presbyterian ecclesiologies, but their opponents found the canons, liturgy and episcopacy itself wholly intolerable. They subsequently rebelled. In 1638, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland rejected the Articles of Perth and episcopacy. The Bishops’ Wars began several months later, and soon spiralled into civil war throughout the British Isles.46

EPISCOPACY CONTESTED The breakdown of censorship during the British civil wars enabled the publication of a bewildering number of ecclesiologically disparate proposals, but the foundational debate concerned episcopacy itself. The cover page of the 1641 ‘Root and Branch’ petition informed prospective readers that the 24

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petition called ‘For a Reformation in Church-government, as also for the abolishment of Episcopacie’.47 The petition alleged that ‘the government of Archbishops, and Lord Bishops, Deanes, and Archdeacons, &c. with their Courts and ministrations in them hath proved prejudiciall and very dangerous both to the Church and Common-Wealth’.48 The authors hoped that ‘the said government with all its dependances, rootes and branches may be abolished, and all laws in their behalfe made voyd’.49 The petition advanced multiple arguments against episcopacy. One was brightly political, alleging not only that bishops were a threat to the nation but that they made themselves enemies of the monarchy by claiming ‘their calling immediately from the Lord Jesvs Christ’.50 This argument originated in Elizabethan polemics,51 but had renewed urgency when confronted with the simple clarity of James’s affirmation ‘No Bishop, no King’. The petition also offered the more apocalyptic argument that ‘other reformed Churches, having upon their rejection of the Pope, cast the Prelates out also as Members of the Beast’.52 For at least some participants, the civil wars set Christ’s true church against the forces of the Antichrist. The Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 was much the same. It advocated ‘the reformation of Religion in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland’, calling for the preservation of the monarchy while simultaneously identifying the ‘Extirpation’ of episcopacy as one of its principal goals.53 The civil wars were indeed wars of religion. Despite such apocalyptic clarity, episcopacy retained considerable support. Defences came from all corners, scholastic and lay, devotional and theological. In 1641, Sir Thomas Aston began forwarding petitions to Parliament that supported episcopacy. The following year, after collecting almost twenty similar petitions from around England, he sent them, together with an endorsement by the king, to Parliament.54 Still other petitions circulated at the time,55 and, despite the proscription of episcopacy in 1646, petitions supporting one or another facet of established practice continued to circulate into the 1650s.56 These petitions reveal that Archbishop Cranmer’s historical understanding of the episcopate was widely accepted. In his first petition to Parliament, Aston described bishops as ‘instituted in the time of the Apostles’.57 Perusing his 1642 collection shows the exact same view at the University of Oxford,58 and in counties and dioceses throughout England. Petitions rarely offered extended theological analysis, but, if taken as indicative of popular belief, they reveal that supporters of episcopacy valued bishops for a number of reasons. As Aston wrote in his own petition, bishops were not only instituted by the apostles but had also been martyrs; they were ‘the great lights of the Church in all the first generall Counsels’, and ‘to them we owe the redemption of the puritie of the Gospell wee now professe from the Romish corruption’. No less importantly, there was a political analogue between ecclesiastical and civil affairs, because ‘their goverment hath beene so long approved, so oft established by the Common and Statute-lawes of this Kingdome’.59 Belief in the apostolic origin of episcopacy not only justified 25

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suspicion towards those who advocated the contrary theological position but also spurred suspicion towards their politics. A petition from London and Westminster asserted that ‘the Government of the Church by Episcopacy, is most sutable to the frame and forme of the Civill Government here in this Kingdome’.60 The petition further stated its fear that ‘every great alteration in a Church or state, must needs be dangerous’.61 The absence of bishops could only lead to the absence of the king. This suspicion had a venerable pedigree, extending at least as far back as the Hampton Court conference. One way of defending bishops entailed accepting a reformation of the episcopate.62 The most influential such plan came from James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh. Ussher first advanced his proposal, often termed ‘reduced episcopacy’, in 1641. It remained a live, if hypothetical, option for decades. Unlike Archbishop Cranmer, the Irish prelate placed comparatively little weight on the apostolic origins of episcopacy. The historical force of his argument began with the second-century bishop Ignatius of Antioch. Ussher surmised, ‘Betwixt the Bishop and the Presbytery of that Church, what an harmonious consent there was in the ordering of the Church Government’, for the bishop and presbyters together ‘had a hand not only in the delivery of the Doctrine, and Sacraments, but also in the Administration of the Discipline of Christ’.63 Ussher further proposed reorganising the Church of England into a twofold synodical structure. Each diocese would have a ‘Diocesan Synod’ that met ‘once or twice in the year’ and consisted of the diocesan bishop, any bishops suffragan and all priests.64 Ussher recommended a triennial ‘Provincial Synod’ that included the archbishop, bishops and bishops suffragan and ‘such other of the Clergy as should be elected out of every Diocese within the Province’.65 Because Ussher believed that the relationship between bishops and presbyters was originally collegial rather than monarchical, some presbyterians believed that his proposal would help them curb episcopal authority. Although the Reduction cannot be described as a clear middle way between presbyterianism and episcopalianism, it none the less offered a concession, retaining both a diocesan structure and the full episcopal hierarchy, while restricting the power of bishops and archbishops within a synodical framework. Some advocates of episcopacy were less willing to compromise. This position is often labelled ‘Laudian’, an anachronism of debatable descriptive value given that it takes its name from Archbishop William Laud, whose leadership in these matters commands less academic consensus than the term ‘Laudian’ indicates. Terminological debates aside, the clergyman Jeremy Taylor, who wrote extensively on episcopacy for both popular and academic audiences, exemplifies this position. Recent research identifies Taylor as responsible for much of the 1641 Rutland petition, one of the most theologically sophisticated episcopal appeals of the early 1640s.66 Still more importantly, Taylor’s theological works on the episcopate were comparatively popular. His lengthy sermon Clerus Domini saw at least four editions as a stand-alone work 26

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between 1651 and 1672. It was also included in all five editions of his sermon collection ‘Eniautos’ (Greek for ‘annual cycle’). Taylor’s lengthier 1642 apologetic Of the sacred order, and offices of episcopacy saw two printings before it was included in his 1648 collection Treatises, which was reprinted in 1650. Taylor defended the episcopate by drawing upon the centuries-old scholastic distinction between nature and grace. Like many of his contemporaries, he used a broadly ‘anthropological’ argument for defending the existence of a distinct priesthood. In the opening section of Clerus Domini, he asserted that ‘there was never any people but had their priests and presidents of religious rites, and kept holy things within a mure, that the people might not approach to handle the mysteries’. Rejection of priesthood was therefore ‘a recession from the customs of mankind’.67 This was priesthood as defined by nature, for ‘the very natural design of religion forces us to a distinction of persons’. However, Taylor also noted that, by their office, clergy ‘may be intermedial between God and the people, and present to God the people’s needs, and be instrumental to the conveying God’s blessing upon those whose fiduciaries they are’.68 Here Taylor moved from nature to grace. Benediction ‘depends on God’s own act and designation, and therefore must afterwards be proved by testimonies of His own, that He hath accepted such persons to such purposes’.69 Full priesthood was Christian priesthood, such as that exercised in the Church of England, and this rendered valid ordination indispensable. Taylor explained, ‘the grace and power that enables men to minister in the mysteries of the gospel is so wholly from God, that whosoever assumes it without God’s warrant, and besides His way, ministers with a vain, sacrilegious, and “ineffective hand,” save only that he disturbs the appointed order, and does himself a mischief’.70 Cranmer’s concern with lawful ordination a century earlier was thus repeated and now directed as a sweeping attack upon all domestic ordinations that broke with the Church of England’s legally enshrined position. This same view laid the groundwork for defending the episcopate. As Taylor wrote in his Offices of episcopacy, ‘episcopacy relies, not upon the authority of fathers and councils, but upon scripture, upon the institution of Christ or the institution of the apostles, upon an universal tradition and an universal practice, not upon the words and opinions of the doctors: it hath as great a testimony as scripture itself hath’.71 Like Cranmer, Taylor traced the episcopate back to apostolic times. In so far as it was of apostolic precedent, and in so far as scripture was divinely inspired, then the episcopal office was not only justified but ordained by God himself. The most important and influential defender of episcopacy was Charles I. Throughout the 1640s, Charles defended episcopacy, but with his beheading in 1648/9 the king’s religious views assumed new and ultimately central importance. The most widely disseminated statement of Charles’s support for episcopacy was found in his posthumously published Eikon basilike, a collection of final prayers, meditations and political and ecclesiastical apologiae. With at least thirty-nine editions published domestically in 1649, and 27

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with a further twenty editions translated into various European languages, it is estimated that the Eikon was ‘the most successful book of the century’.72 Excerpts from Charles’s religious writings first appeared in 1649, and collected editions of his writings first appeared in 1650; all of these, including the Eikon, were continually published well into the eighteenth century. With the 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, Charles entered the Church of England’s calendar of saints as ‘Charles, King and Martyr’, and a special liturgy for 30 January, the date of his death, was commanded for annual use. If, as was said in the early church, the blood of the martyrs is seed, then the death of Charles reaped a pro-episcopal harvest of unprecedented scope. Charles discussed church government throughout the Eikon, but devoted its seventeenth chapter exclusively to the issue, restating every major theological theme touched upon thus far. He repeated the view that the first epistle to Timothy witnessed to the apostolic origin of the episcopate as a distinct order.73 Like Ussher, the king drew upon a broader historical range than Cranmer, and, like Taylor, he appealed to the broad consensus of churches past and present. From this, Charles deduced a point of judgement against his opponents. Because historical records evidenced that ‘the Primitive Churches were undoubtedly governed by the Apostles and their immediate Successors the first and best Bishops’, churches that rejected the episcopate deviated ‘from their divine and holy pattern’.74 Subverting the call for ‘reformation’ found in the ‘Root and Branch’ petition and the Solemn League and Covenant, the king explained, ‘I could never see any reason why Churches orderly reformed and governed by Bishops should be forced to conform to those few, rather than to the Catholic example of all Ancient Churches, which needed no Reformation’.75 But, not unlike James’s Basilicon doron, theological arguments were not enough for Charles. The systematic arrangement of the episcopal hierarchy had analogues in the natural order. ‘I can no more believe, that such order is inconsistent with true Religion, than good features are with beauty, or numbers with harmony.’76 Perhaps surprisingly, the king stated his willingness to consider reduced episcopacy, but he emphasised that reduced episcopacy was not a form of presbyterian government, and that it stood wholly opposite congregationalism.77 Quite against the hopes of his opponents, the king’s beheading only gave his very traditional arguments renewed force. No bishop, no king.

A LITURGICAL LEGACY When Charles II arrived in London on 29 May 1660, his return provoked considerable debate about the future ecclesiology of the Church of England. A range of outcomes seemed possible. In the Declaration of Breda, dated 4/14 April, he proclaimed an unspecified period of amnesty between rival religious groups: 28

‘From the Apostles’ time’ We do declare a Liberty to Tender Consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of Religion, which do not disturb the Peace of the Kingdom; And that we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament, as upon mature Deliberation shall be offered to us for the full granting that indulgence.78

The promise of ‘Liberty to Tender Consciences’ did not stand on its own but was qualified in two ways. First was the expectation that toleration of religious differences ‘not disturb the Peace of the Kingdom’; second, and no less importantly, ‘the full granting that indulgence’ was made conditional upon ‘an Act of Parliament’. Consequently, amidst the heady political atmosphere of the early 1660s, one possible result was the rejection of religious diversity and the development of a politically and culturally hegemonic Church of England. Some have seen this, the actual outcome, as a betrayal of Charles II’s political and religious intentions, but it is better seen as a contingent response to developing events. Debates about episcopacy were central to the surges of political violence that followed the king’s return. Texts and authors discussed above were reprinted in the early years of the Restoration; Thomas Aston’s Collection of sundry petitions, Ussher’s Reduction and the Solemn League and Covenant were all republished in 1660, as were numerous editions of Charles I’s writings. The fear of violence caused Parliament and many others to look upon episcopacy as a bulwark of religious and social order over and against political agitation by militant religious minorities. Charles II’s two stipulations in the Declaration of Breda were violated in the exact order that he stated them. It is difficult to know the precise number of plots against the restored regime, but rumours of uprisings emanated from each British nation after the Restoration.79 The first serious threat to the regime came on Epiphany (6 January) in 1660/1. Its leader, Thomas Venner, was part of the Fifth Monarchists, a militant sect which believed that, upon successful overthrow of the government, ‘King Jesus’ would finally return. Having plotted twice against Oliver Cromwell and having been imprisoned for the second failed attempt, Venner now took aim at the restored monarchy and the Church of England. Before their uprising, the Fifth Monarchists published a manifesto entitled A door of hope.80 Specifying that ‘The Controversie now therefore lies between Zion and Babylon, Christ and Antichrist’, Venner and his associates avowed themselves enemies of all who supported ‘Popery, Prelacy, Common-Prayer, Organs, Superstitions, false, prophane forms of Worship, Idolatrous, Ceremonial, Typical, Antichristian shadows and ­vanities … and such whorish trash and Trinkery, Altars, Bowing, Kneeling, and Worshipping a piece of Wood and Bread, and a Wax candle (a filthy base Idol) for the true God’.81 The evils identified in A door of hope did not stop here; still later in the manifesto, Charles II was named ‘a profest Enemy, a Rebel and Traytor to Christ’.82 How many men followed Venner is unknown, but, with episcopacy and the monarchy identified as targets, the uprising and consequent murder of several soldiers set the nation on edge. 29

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One result of Venner’s rising was a rapid shift in support for reduced episcopacy. A good example comes from John Gauden, who was consecrated bishop of Exeter on 3 November 1660. In the first months of the Restoration, he wrote of his support for Ussher’s Reduction, commending ‘primitive, reformed, and regular Episcopacy, so reduced to an efficacious conjunction with Presbytery’.83 But after Venner’s uprising, he wrote that episcopacy was ‘divinely constituted’.84 He portrayed the violent aims of non-episcopal churches in terms of apocalyptic monstrosity. Opponents of the Church of England ‘all nestled themselves under the popular Shadow, or in the spreading Branches of an Anti-episcopal, novel, illegal and Headless Presbytery’.85 Another example, and the most politically influential at the time, comes from Charles II. On 25 October 1660, barely two months before Venner’s uprising, the king issued his Declaration Concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs. His ecclesiastical policy consisted of eight points, the third of which aptly summarised reduced episcopacy: ‘No Bishop shall Ordain, or exercise any part of Jurisdiction which appertains to the Censures of the Church, without the advice and assistance of the Presbyters.’86 Reduced episcopacy appeared ascendant. After 6 January, things changed. At the urging of the archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, Charles II issued a proclamation against conventicles on 10 January. The king began with reference to the Declaration of Breda, lamenting that ‘nothing can be more unwelcome to Us, then the necessity of restreyning some part of that Liberty which was indulged to tender Consciences by Our late gracious Declaration’. The king now accused a number of groups, including the Fifth Monarchists, of using religion to justify ‘disturbance of the publique Peace by Insurrection and Murther’. He then banned the right of such groups to meet in any kind of religious assembly.87 Because he was otherwise little inclined to contemplate conspiracy, this was a significant development against reformed episcopacy. Making matters worse, liturgical negotiations between the bishops and key presbyterians began in April but soon failed; disagreement proved intractable, and several presbyterians simply refused to participate.88 The Cavalier Parliament, which began on 8 May 1661, took matters still further by restoring the bishops to their traditional place in the House of Lords. In doing so, Parliament was reconstituted to its antebellum state. Reversing all of the legislation passed since 1642, the Cavalier Parliament called for public burnings of the Solemn League and Covenant. A deep fissure was thereby created between episcopal and non-episcopal churches. Reduced episcopacy was less the victim of a vengeful Anglican episcopate than the most notable casualty of apocalyptic extremism. All of this came full circle in 1662, when the Jacobean canons were reinstated, a new Act of Uniformity promulgated and revisions to the Book of Common Prayer completed. Under Charles II, uniformity in England pertained to a now-distinct ecclesial community: the Church of England. Those 30

‘From the Apostles’ time’

who would not accept the terms set out by the Act of Uniformity either left the Church of England voluntarily or were removed from its ministry. They proved a small minority.89 Although the 1662 Act of Uniformity led to considerable political and religious cohesion in England, it did not set a standard for the other Stuart kingdoms. In 1664, the Church of Ireland reinstated its 1634 canons, but the Scottish canons of 1635 were never revived. Something similar happened with liturgy. In 1665, an expanded form of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was adopted in Ireland, but in Scotland the new Book of Common Prayer was used only sporadically; here it competed first with presbyterian services and, from 1712 onward, the 1637 liturgy, which was reprinted and reused.90 Following the Williamite invasion of England in 1688, presbyterianism was restored in Scotland,91 and the subsequent development of Jacobitism led to growing alienation between Scottish episcopalians and many of their English and Irish co-religionists. The liturgical revisions made to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer drew from older sources but also added new material intended to buttress the episcopate. As with each previous prayer book, Archbishop Cranmer’s 1550 essay again prefaced the liturgies for holy orders. In the services for the ordination of priests and the consecration of bishops, small but significant changes were made to the prayers that accompanied the imposition of hands. This is best seen if we compare the 1550 original, which remained unchanged in 1552 and 1559, with the 1662 revision. In Table 2.1, italics are used to indicate substantive additions made to the latter. The first prayer comes from the ordination of priests, and was prayed as the bishop laid his hands on the kneeling ordinand. Unlike the earlier liturgy, in 1662, the newly ordained priest’s reception of the Holy Spirit was expressly tied to the episcopal laying on of hands. A Table 2.1  The liturgy for the ordering of priests (1550 and 1662) 1550

1662

Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven: and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained: and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God, and of his holy sacraments. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments; In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sources: Ketley, Two liturgies, p. 179; The Book of Common Prayer (1662 edition; Everyman’s Library, 1999), pp. 524–5.

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Table 2.2  The liturgy for the consecration of bishops (1550 and 1662) 1550

1662

Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is in thee, by imposition of hands: for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and of soberness.

Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands; In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. And remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is given thee by this imposition of our hands: for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and soberness.

Sources: Ketley, Two liturgies, p. 179; The Book of Common Prayer (1662 edition; Everyman’s Library, 1999), pp. 524–5.

similar change was made to the liturgy for consecrating bishops, but was added twice, thus further emphasising the authority of the archbishop (see Table 2.2). From 1550 until 1662, the reception of the Holy Spirit by a newly consecrated bishop was not explicitly connected with the archbishop’s ritual act. Rather, the Holy Spirit was described as already present in the bishop. But in 1662, the Holy Spirit was ‘committed’ by the archbishop to the newly consecrated, and divine grace was also ‘given’ by the archbishop’s hands. Foregrounded through repetition, new emphases took on a vital and arguably central role in the revised liturgy. The rite of confirmation changed little in 1662. However, the cultural meaning of confirmation changed considerably because dissenting churches developed independent structures that rejected bishops in toto. As a prerequisite for receiving Holy Communion in the Church of England, confirmation became an act that, unlike baptism, confessionally demarcated one citizen from another. In the new prayer book, the major developments surrounding confirmation came primarily from revisions made to two of the three liturgies for baptism. In both, confirmation received new emphasis. The first of  these, ‘The Publick Baptism of Infants’, had always been part of the  Book of Common Prayer; the second, ‘The Ministration of Baptism to Such as are of Riper Years and Able to Answer for Themselves’, was entirely new in 1662. Two significant changes were made to the former. A rubric was added which specified that godparents ‘shall be persons who have been baptised and confirmed’.92 Given that the Church of England had been forced underground for more than a decade, the ease of obeying this directive was not a foregone conclusion. The liturgy then concluded with an entirely new exhortation to the godparents: ‘Ye are to take care that this Child be brought 32

‘From the Apostles’ time’

to the Bishop to be confirmed by him, so soon as he can say the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and be further instructed in the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose.’93 With dissenting churches now in existence, the new liturgies sought to foreclose the possibility that confirmation was now seen as optional. The liturgy for adult baptism followed that for public infant baptism. Many of its prayers were identical, but with references to infants replaced with references to adults. Baptism and confirmation were required of baptismal sponsors for adult converts, but whereas exhortation was made to godparents in the case of infants, the baptism of adults ended with a written directive intended for the parish priest: ‘It is expedient that every person, thus baptized, should be confirmed by the Bishop so soon after his Baptism as conveniently may be; that so he may be admitted to the holy Communion.’94 In its new liturgies, the Church of England wasted no time reasserting the central importance of the bishop in both diocesan and parochial geographies. Confirmation and episcopacy would remain the norm.

CONCLUSION This chapter has advanced a simple methodological claim: early Stuart debates over episcopacy are best understood within a longue durée that began in 1549 and continued through to 1662. In liturgy no less than ecclesiology, the British episcopal churches of the seventeenth century built upon the Tudor inheritance of the Church of England. Retaining much, they refined much, developing earlier emphases that, over the course of time, helped demarcate them from other churches in the British Isles. Across Europe, shared political and confessional norms buttressed one another by defining local churches, preserving both their beliefs and their forms of worship. Confessional texts provided normative standards that sustained parochial experiences and quotidian expectations from one generation to the next. In the British Isles, the Book of Common Prayer, the various bodies of canon law and other ‘confessional’ documents created a shared theological framework that coalesced into what is now called Anglicanism. At the Restoration, the British episcopal churches became defined – at least domestically – by a tenacious refusal to abandon a form of ecclesiastical polity that they traced back to the earliest Christians. In Archbishop Cranmer’s words, the three orders of the Church of England were ‘from the Apostles’ time’. But this conclusion follows from more than just a given methodology. It is history, too.

NOTES 1 Helpful overviews of the early Stuart episcopate are K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘The ecclesiastical policy of King James I’, JBS, 24:2 (1985), 169–207; K. Fincham, ‘William Laud and the exercise of Caroline ecclesiastical patronage’, JEH, 51:1 33

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2

3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18

19

0 2 21 22 23 24 34

(2000), 69–93; C. W. A. Prior, ‘Ecclesiology and political thought in England, 1580–c.1630’, HJ, 48:4 (2005), 855–84; K. Fincham and S. Taylor, ‘Episcopalian identity, 1640–1662’, in A. Milton (ed.), The Oxford history of Anglicanism, volume I: Reformation and identity, c.1520–1662 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 457–82. There is some debate in contemporary scholarship over whether the term ‘Church of England’ should be used to describe the non-episcopal forms of Christianity endorsed by successive political regimes in the 1640s and 1650s. In this chapter, the Church of England denotes the episcopal church. However, some contemporaries debated the matter; for extended analysis, see C. Haigh, ‘Where was the Church of England, 1646–1660?’, HJ, 62:1 (2019), 127–47. J. Ketley (ed.), The two liturgies A.D. 1549 and A.D. 1552: with other documents set forth by authority during the reign of King Edward VI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), p. 161. The white baptismal gown was also removed in 1552 but not replaced with anything. Ketley, The two liturgies, p. 300. Ibid., p. 300. Ibid., p. 170. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., p. 181. Ibid., p. 185. Ibid., pp. 185–6. Ibid., p. 161. Peter Lombard, The sentences, book IV: On the doctrine of signs, trans. G. Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 2010), dist. XXIV, c. 3, p. 139, lists these as ‘door-keeper, lector, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon, priest’. Ibid., dist. XXIV, c. 15, p. 148. Ibid., dist. XXIV, c. 12, p. 147. William Durand, On the clergy and their vestments: a new translation of books 2 and 3 of The rationale divinorum officiorum, trans. T. Thibodeau (Chicago: University of Scranton Press, 2010), book II, Prologue, p. 76. Ibid., book II, chapter 11, p. 129. Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrases on the epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, the epistles of Peter and Jude, the epistle of James, the epistle of John, the epistle to the Hebrews, trans. J. J. Bateman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 22; Gasparo Contarini, The office of a bishop, trans. and ed. J. P Donnelly S.J. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2002), p. 77. The Millenary Petition may be found in the University of Oxford, The answere of the vicechanellour, the doctors, both the proctors, and other the heads of houses in the Universitie of Oxford (Oxford, 1603). The work is not paginated sequentially; see ‘The hvmble petition’, pp. 1–5, here at p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., ‘The Answere’, p. 9. William Barlow, The svmme and svbstance of the conference (1604), p. 25. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 35–6.

‘From the Apostles’ time’ 25 James VI and I, Basilicon doron: or his majesties instructions to his dearest sonne, Henry the prince, in Political writings, ed. J. P. Sommerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 1. 26 Ibid., p. 20. 27 Ibid., p. 47. 28 Barlow, The svmme and svbstance of the conference, p. 82. 29 The Church of England, Constitvtions and canons ecclesiasticall (1604). 30 Barlow, The summe and substance of the conference, pp. 46–7; A. McGrath, In the beginning: the story of the King James bible and how it changed a nation, a language, and a culture (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), pp. 161–5. 31 The Bible: authorized King James version with apocrypha (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. lxviii. 32 The Bible, trans. William Whittingham (Geneva, 1560), p. 98 of the New Testament, note b on 1 Tim. 3:1. 33 M. Kennedy, ‘The first prayer books 1551–1666’, in B. Mayne (ed.), The prayer books of the Church of Ireland 1551–2004 (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2004), pp. 7–17. 34 J.-L. Kim, ‘The Scottish-English-Romish book: the character of the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637’, in M. J. Braddick and D. L. Smith (eds), The experience of revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland: essays for John Morrill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 15–32, here at pp. 17, 20. J. McCafferty, The reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 115–16, esp. n. 7, notes that, in Ireland, clear episcopal preference was increasingly given to those educated at either Cambridge or Oxford. 35 Church of Ireland, Constitutions and canons ecclesiastical (Dublin, 1635). For detailed background, see McCafferty, The reconstruction of the Church of Ireland, ch. 3. 36 Ibid., p. 75. 37 A. Ford, James Ussher: theology, history, and politics in early-modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 90–1. 38 The Church of Scotland, Canons and constitutions ecclesiasticall (Aberdeen, 1636). 39 The Church of Scotland, The Booke of Common Prayer (Edinburgh, 1637), sig. a3r. 40 Kim, ‘The Scottish-English-Romish book’, pp. 20–1. 41 For detailed background, see L. James, ‘This great firebrand’: William Laud and Scotland 1617–1645 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017), ch. 3. 42 The Church of Scotland, Canons and constitvtions ecclesiasticall, ch. I.2. 43 Ibid., I.3. 44 Ibid., II.3. 45 Ibid., II.7. 46 James, ‘This great firebrand’, pp. 119–20; J. R. Young, ‘The Covenanters and the Scottish Parliament, 1639–51: the rule of the godly and the “second Scottish Reformation”’, in E. Boran and C. Gribben (eds), Enforcing reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 131–58, esp. pp. 139–43. 47 The first and large petition of the Citie of London (1641). 48 Ibid., p. 1. 49 Ibid., p. 2. 35

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 50 Ibid., p. 2. 51 P. Ha, ‘Puritan conciliarism: why Walter Travers read Bullinger’s “de Conciliis”’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 42:1 (2011), 57–76, here p. 65. 52 The first and large petition of the Citie of London, p. 7. 53 A solemn league and covenant for reformation, and defence of religion (Edinburgh, 1643), p. 4, nn. 1 and 2. 54 Thomas Aston, A collection of sundry petitions (1642). 55 A helpful list may be found in J. Maltby, Prayer book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 238–47. 56 See, e.g., Lionel Gatford, A petition for the vindication of the publique use of the Book of Common-Prayer (1654). 57 Thomas Aston, Two petitions (1641), sig. A2v. 58 Aston, A collection of sundry petitions, p. 6. 59 Ibid., p. 2. 60 Aston, Two petitions, sig. B3r. 61 Ibid., sig. B3v. 62 Ford, James Ussher, ch. 10. 63 James Ussher, The reduction of episcopacie (1656), p. 2. 64 Ibid., p. 6. 65 Ibid., p. 6. 66 Richard Cust, ‘The defence of episcopacy on the eve of the civil war: Jeremy Taylor and the Rutland petition of 1641’, JEH, 68:1 (2017), 59–80. 67 Jeremy Taylor, The whole works, ed. R. Heber, rev. C. Page Eden, 10 vols (1847– 54), I, p. 5. 68 Ibid., p. 7. 69 Ibid., p. 7. 70 Ibid., p. 43. 71 Jeremy Taylor, The whole works, V, p. 4. 72 A. Lacey, The cult of King Charles the martyr (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), p. 81 73 Charles I, Eikon basilike, ed. J. Daems and H. F. Nelson (Toronto: Broadview Editions, 2006), pp. 137–8. 74 Ibid., pp. 136–7. 75 Ibid., p. 140. 76 Ibid., p. 139. 77 Ibid., p. 139. 78 Charles II, Declaration (Edinburgh, 1660). 79 R. L. Greaves, Deliver us from evil: The radical underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), offers an extensive overview. See also R. L. Greaves. ‘Venner, Thomas’, ODNB. 80 A door of hope (1660); Greaves, Deliver us from evil, pp. 50–7. 81 A door of hope, p. 4. 82 Ibid., p. 5. 83 John Gauden, ΑΝΑΛΥΣΙΣ. The loosing of St. Peters bands (1660), p. 14. 84 John Gauden, A pillar of gratitude (1660), p. 35. 85 Ibid., p. 18. 86 Charles II, Declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs, reprinted in A collection of 36

‘From the Apostles’ time’

87 88

89

90

91

2 9 93 94

his majestie’s gracious letters, speeches, messages, and declarations since April 4/14 1660 (1660), pp. 102–3 (mispaginated pp. 92–3). Charles II, A proclamation, prohibiting all unlawful and seditious meetings and conventicles under pretence of religious worship (1660). G. J. Segger, Richard Baxter’s reformed liturgy: a puritan alternative to the Book of Common Prayer (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), especially pp. 39–50; B. Till, ‘Participants in the Savoy conference (act. 1661)’, ODNB. Estimates vary slightly. N. H. Keeble, The restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 141–2, estimates that in 1662, out of a population of 5 million, between 150,000 and 200,000 joined dissenting congregations – thus not more than 4 per cent. D. J. Appleby, Black Bartholomew’s day: preaching, polemic and restoration nonconformity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 58, argues that dissent comprised ‘well in excess of 300,000 people’ – thus at least 6 per cent of the population. For Ireland, see Kennedy, ‘The first prayer books 1551–1666’, pp. 14–16; for Scotland, see N. Yates, Preaching, word and sacrament: Scottish church interiors 1560–1860 (T. & T. Clark, 2009), pp. 19–21, 100. I. B. Cowan, ‘Church and state reformed? The revolution of 1688–9 in Scotland’, in J. I. Israel (ed.), The Anglo-Dutch moment: essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world impact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 163–83. Ibid., p. 267. Ibid., p. 274. Ibid., p. 288.

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Chapter 3

Peers, pastors and the particular church: the failure of congregational ideas in the Mersey Basin region, 1636–41 James Mawdesley

O

n 3 January 1641, Samuel Eaton clambered into the pulpit of St John’s church in Chester. Eaton was an idiosyncratic character. The son of a Cheshire vicar, he had trod the familiar path to Cambridge University before being appointed as the rector of the Wirral parish of West Kirby in 1628. At the bishop of Chester’s visitation that year, Eaton and five parishioners were presented ‘for not standinge at the readinge of the gosple nor bowinge at the name of Jesus’.1 Such puritan behaviour was hardly unusual in the diocese of Chester, and, at this stage, was unlikely to bother its ordinary, John Bridgeman, who had cultivated a reputation for displaying laxity towards puritan nonconformists.2 In 1630, Archbishop Samuel Harsnett’s visitors from York wryly noted that Eaton was ‘supposed to bee a puritane’.3 What happened next, though, was odd. By August 1631, Eaton had vacated his rectory and a successor had been instituted.4 There are no clues in the very good surviving diocesan records as to why Eaton had left his rectory. All of this was before the appointment of Richard Neile to the archbishopric of York in 1632, and before the enforcement of ‘Laudian’ ecclesiastical policies in the diocese of Chester from 1633 onwards.5 Afterwards, there followed a stint as the pastor of congregations in the United Provinces, followed by a brief return to England. During this sojourn, one contemporary source (dated 1638) alleged that Eaton had attended ‘conferences and disputes’ with the London minister John Goodwin. Eaton had claimed that ‘the said Church governed by Bishops to be descended from Antichrist and so from the devill’. To cap it off, he had endeavoured to ‘pervert Dr Bastwick’ who, soon afterwards, would find himself in a bit of bother with Archbishop Laud and the Star Chamber.6 By the time that the quill had been set to this manuscript, Eaton had already emigrated to New England, accompanied by his brothers Theophilus and Nathaniel. He thus gained the distinction of being the diocese of Chester’s only beneficed clergyman (as opposed to an unbeneficed curate) to make it to New England. 38

Peers, pastors and the particular church

Eaton stayed there for three years. By late 1640, with the Church of England under strain and things looking less rosy in New England (where Eaton had defended the holding of civil offices by non-church-members), he packed his bags and returned to Cheshire.7 St John’s, Chester, was a provocative location for Eaton’s sermon. Back in 1637, the church had been visited by William Prynne when he was being transported to prison in Caernarfon.8 St John’s was by then the only Chester parish to have failed to rail its communion table following the orders to that effect issued by Archbishop Neile’s visitors in 1633.9 Prynne was allowed relative freedom in the city, but his encounters with lay puritans directed the fury of England’s two archbishops towards Bishop Bridgeman, who had been absent in Lancashire at the time of Prynne’s visit. The subsequent attempts to punish the offenders had taken a farcical turn as some refused to perform public penance in Chester Cathedral and thus forfeited their hefty bonds. The mayor of Chester had subsequently refused to denounce the offenders (forming part of a long trend of there being no love lost between the city’s assembly and the diocesan and cathedral authorities).10 In a broader sense, the events surrounding Prynne’s visit had marked a turning point in Bridgeman’s episcopate. An old-style Jacobean prelate, Bridgeman had previously held a fair reputation amongst local puritans. By 1637, though, Bridgeman was beginning to appear more enthusiastic towards the ‘Laudian’ innovations’ as he engaged in a grand renovation of the cathedral (partfunded by Viscount Savage, a local catholic recusant). In 1638, he suspended his first incumbent for failure to comply with the orders to rail communion tables at the east ends of churches.11 Prynne later identified the death of Bridgeman’s wife Elizabeth in 1636 as being the end of a restraining influence on Bridgeman, and there is probably something in this as she was apparently sympathetic towards puritan clerics.12 Certainly, there are several moments during the Prynne case where Bridgeman appears to have been under great strain, not least as, by then, his eldest son Dove was suffering from his final illness.13 Bridgeman was probably also mindful that he had narrowly escaped serious censure after an investigation back in 1633 (ordered by Archbishop Laud) into his financial management of his diocese. By 1637 another old Jacobean bishop, John Williams of Lincoln, had fallen from grace, having openly criticised Laudian policy.14 The problem for Bridgeman was that, in trying to clear himself from suspicion of puritan sympathies by following the orders from Laud and Neile that he should tackle and punish those who had welcomed the author of Newes from Ipswich, he himself had come to resemble the subject of that tract, the bishop of Norwich, Matthew Wren. So it was that Eaton, an alleged associate of Prynne’s co-accused John Bastwick, offered the citizens of Chester a vision of a church free from prelatical control. Individual congregations could elect their ‘pastors and teachers’ and hold the power of excommunications as per the proof text of 39

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Matthew 18:17, where, in Eaton’s rendering, the ‘church’ meant ‘particular Congregations’.15 Cestrians with good memories would have recalled that Matthew 18:17 was the same text preached upon back in 1637 by the archdeacon of Chester, George Snell, when justifying the Church’s right to punish those who had entertained Prynne in Chester.16 Shortly afterwards Eaton preached a sermon in the Cheshire market town of Knutsford. In this he justified the gathering of covenanted churches formed of ‘only Saints’, and taught ‘That the power of the Keyes is committed neyther to the Pastors nor Governours, but to the whole Congregation, and to every particular member of the same’.17 All of this was barely a month after three of Prynne’s Cestrian entertainers, Calvin Bruen, Peter Leigh and Richard Golborne, had personally presented to the House of Commons a petition complaining about their treatment at the hands of the church, with an explicit grievance being against Snell’s denunciatory sermon.18 These accounts of Eaton’s sermons come from a hostile account by Sir Thomas Aston, the Cheshire defender of episcopacy. Aston spectacularly misinterpreted what Eaton had actually said, claiming that Eaton had argued for ‘their new Presbyterian Discipline’ when according to Aston’s own summary of Eaton’s sermon at Chester, Eaton had ‘denied all Nationall, Provinciall and Diocesan Churches, as well as Bishops’.19 With an unpopular diocesan bishop, a simultaneous (and linked) parliamentary campaign complaining about the events of 1637, and with Eaton calling for his hearers at Chester ‘to petition the Parliament for the razing of the old foundation’, the stage was set for a lively petitioning campaign against episcopacy.20 What is remarkable is how quickly the wheels fell off.21 Whilst the first anti-episcopal petition from Cheshire, presented to the Commons by the county’s member Sir William Brereton on 19 February 1641, gathered 1100 signatures, this was dwarfed by Aston’s first pro-episcopal petition, submitted to the House of Lords on 27 February 1641 and containing some six thousand signatures.22 By April 1641, Aston’s petition had been beset by allegations of impropriety, such as the forging of signatures.23 As Calvin Bruen gathered a petition against Aston’s activities (ultimately presented to the Commons by Brereton on 19 April 1641), Aston’s ally John Werden reported on 2 April 1641 that an anti-episcopal petition was being prepared in the Wirral. His observation that at the Wirral parish of Neston ‘they haue puld down the railes from the Communyon table’ suggests that he suspected a link was likely.24 On 23 April 1641, Werden was aghast that Sir William Brereton’s wife had ordered that the minister at Neston ‘take downe some painted ancyent Imagery which was in the Glasse wyndowes’. When he refused as ‘he knew none that took offence at them’, she instructed one of her men to remove the windows.25 The problem was that amongst the clergy of Cheshire, whilst the Laudian episcopate was hardly popular, there was little appetite for a menu of iconoclasm and congregationalism. Along with Eaton, the only other clergyman known to have been involved with the Cheshire anti-episcopal petitioning 40

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campaigns of early 1641 was a cousin of Sir William Brereton, probably a Lancastrian curate named John Brereton, who had preached against Aston’s petition at Neston.26 Similarly, whilst some forty-eight of Cheshire’s gentry had distanced themselves from Aston in an ‘Attestation’ submitted to the Commons on 22 May 1641, there is little evidence that they had allied themselves with Bruen’s campaign.27 On 25 May 1641, Sir Francis Gamull, a member of Parliament for the city of Chester, wrote to his father-in-law, Sir Richard Grosvenor, ‘Sr W[illiam] B[rereton] is Gonn into Cheshire wee learne to obtaine new matter & that committye is not like to remaine vnless hee come with new force out off Cheshire. Maney are more zealous against Bishops I spare not to say they will destroy that order.’28 It is not unfeasible that Brereton’s return consisted of a series of bridge-building exercises. This included reining in the iconoclasm associated with Bruen’s petition, and perhaps focusing attention on the real issue of episcopacy rather than upon what system would replace governance by bishops. The report to the House of Lords from the magistrates and ministers of Chester dated 31 May 1641 noted that church services were no longer being disturbed (as had been the case back in April). Similarly, instances of iconoclasm seem to have died away.29 On 6 August 1641, Werden reported to Aston that sermons were being preached in Cheshire ‘against the Bishops & their government’. Congregationalism was no longer a viable option as a replacement for episcopacy in the county, and, perhaps by then, even Eaton knew it. Preaching at Barrow on the outskirts of Chester (another provocative location, given that the rector was Bishop Bridgeman’s son Henry), Werden noted that ‘Eaton was modest in comparison to [the Cheshire cleric Thomas] Holford whoe rayled most damnably against all church gouernment at all established’.30 The lack of popular support for a congregationalist campaign in Cheshire was probably grounded in fears of disorder and popular government no doubt exacerbated by the recent iconoclasm. Indeed, five years later in 1646, the Manchester cleric Richard Hollinworth would orchestrate the Lancashire petition in support of presbyterianism (which gained over twelve thousand signatures) by using sermons and print to warn of the dangers of congregationalism.31 However, the harsh truth was that after effectively nine years away from Cheshire, by the time that Eaton preached his first sermon at Chester in January 1641, powerful local interests in what we might call ‘the Mersey Basin’ area had already acted against congregationalism. In the late 1630s, a series of letters had been batted to and fro between Lancastrian clerics and their former colleague turned New England émigré, Richard Mather. Work by Nicholas Tyacke and Carol Schneider has identified the powerful clerical, gentry and aristocratic interests, linked by a common nonconformity within the Church of England, who, in the late 1630s, were working against those clerics who held to the congregationalist touchstones operating in New England.32 This chapter will take a view of the opposition to ‘the New England way’ in 41

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the late 1630s and the early 1640s from the perspective of the Mersey Basin. It will focus on the nexus of clergymen surrounding the powerful interest of the Stanley family, earls of Derby, who worked against the promotion of covenanted congregations separated (or semi-separated) from their parochial counterparts. In the late spring of 1643, the Stanley protégé Charles Herle’s The independency on scriptures of the independency of churches was printed, advocating a vision of particular churches linked together under a synodical umbrella. However, even by the time that Samuel Eaton had preached in 1641, the Stanley interest had already reacted decisively against the idea of completely autonomous churches.33 In truth, before he could even start to change the views of clerical and gentry interests, Eaton had already made the fundamental error of being away from England when it had mattered. The Mersey Basin area can, arguably, be seen as a microcosm of a wider English phenomenon. Indeed, one might say that the five authors of the Apologeticall narration of 1644, who had together spent the late 1630s in exile, would ultimately face the same problem as Eaton when presenting their views to their godly colleagues who had remained in England in the face of the adversities of the 1630s.34

THE GODLY IN PRE-CIVIL-WAR CHESIRE AND SOUTH LANCASHIRE There is not enough space in a short chapter to be able to sketch fully the characteristics of ‘puritanism’ within the Mersey Basin region, though some brief points are worth making.35 There has been much debate during the past half-century about the precise meaning of ‘puritan’. My preference is for a particularly evangelical protestantism, sometimes (but not always) manifested in terms of nonconformity with aspects (particularly ceremonial) of the requirements of the Church of England which were seen as unnecessary survivals from pre-Reformation catholicism. The crucial distinction is perhaps that puritans recognised each other as being puritans, something built upon a mutual sociability at lectures, at preaching exercises and at the repetition of sermons.36 Thinking more specifically about puritan clergy, Lancashire and Cheshire did not have the blocs of valuable livings in the gift of powerful patrons which enabled puritanism to become the force which it became in East Anglia.37 Whilst influential in other ways (for example, through the provision of household chaplaincies), the Stanley family, earls of Derby, held the rights of patronage only to three livings across the two counties.38 The region (and particularly Lancashire) none the less became a popular destination for puritan clerics recently graduated from Oxford and Cambridge universities who wanted to tackle Roman Catholicism on the front line. This was all the more challenging, as progress during the first couple of decades after the Elizabethan church settlement of 1559 had been notoriously slow.39 42

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Furthermore, apart from some periods of aberration the authorities in the province of York often had a reputation for being laxer towards puritan nonconformity than their counterparts in the province of Canterbury.40 Such clergymen were often able to find themselves parochial livings or, failing that, a lectureship or a curacy in one of the numerous multi-chapelry parishes. For these appointments, the precise dynamics of selection was often more closely linked to local conditions than the more formal processes of presentation and institution to a benefice. After all, a moderately puritan message of a true saving faith linked to moral reformation was not without its attractions to those with the powers of appointments to parishes or chapelries.41 Accounts by Samuel Clarke and Oliver Heywood have provided historians with vivid insights into the focal points of godly life in Cheshire and south Lancashire before the civil war, with godly Christians gathering together voluntarily to pray and to hear the repetitions of sermons originally preached by favoured preachers.42 During Archbishop Harsnett’s metropolitical visitation in 1630, James Chambers, a layman in Liverpool, was accused ‘of repeating sermons in his House … the same being holden to bee conventicles’.43 At nearby Ormskirk, the vicar, John Broxupp, was accused of ‘keeping conventicles in his house vpon Sabath & other Festivall tymes in the night’, and twelve parishioners were presented for attending these conventicles.44 Those accused at Ormskirk pleaded with Harsnett’s visitors that they hope they are not within the compasse of conventiclers, for they were onely present at Master Broxopps house, when he did onely to his childe & servantes, by way of repetition of the Heades of his owne Sermon, which that day he had deliuered, onely for the better informacion & instruccion of his family in the way of godlines, and to no other ende neyther intending any faccion.45

Such private gatherings, as Patrick Collinson memorably argued, ‘furnished the national and parochial Church with its legitimation in the eyes of the godly who declined to separate from it’.46 Broxupp, though, was hardly an obscure figure: the patron upon his appointment at Ormskirk in 1628 was no less a figure than James, Lord Strange, the son and heir of William, the sixth earl of Derby.47 However, whilst the north-west may (like East Anglia) have had the occasional powerful patron, there was a crucial difference between the structuring of puritan gatherings in the two regions. Whether or not one calls these godly gatherings ‘non-separating congregationalism’ or ‘semi-separatism’, the north-western affairs did not go down the route of at least some of their East Anglian counterparts in covenanting together their members in a way which publicly demarcated them from their reprobate neighbours.48 Lancastrian and Cestrian puritans might have gathered together to repeat sermons, but, as far as the evidence points, the godly and the ungodly continued to be brought together in parochial worship, and received the Lord’s supper together in mixed communions. In 1645, Samuel Eaton recalled that under his pastorate, ‘the vocall covenant being only wanting’, 43

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the ­congregation in his former Cheshire parish of West Kirby had ‘consisted of the choycest Christians of many Parishes, who met constantly together upon the Lords day, and enjoyed the Word, and seales of the Covenant, and maintained a Pastor to dispense the same unto them, and never, or very rarely repaired to such Parishes where their habitations were’.49 The emphasis on ‘the Word’ seems to suggest that what Eaton describes was more akin to a preaching lecture with its fair share of godly ‘sermon gadders’ rather than a covenanted community of the godly with closed administrations of the sacraments. Thus, when in 1636, the Lancastrian clergyman turned New England émigré Richard Mather sent justifications of covenanted churches of the visibly godly back to Lancashire, a region with no prior experience of such covenanted churches, the cat was well and truly thrown amongst the pigeons. By carefully piecing together the surviving evidence, it can be shown that the opposition to Mather was centred upon the Stanleys, the region’s leading noble family.

THE GODLY CIRCLE OF THE STANLEY FAMILY Notwithstanding the lack of parochial livings in their direct patronage, the Stanley family provided valuable support for the region’s most evangelically protestant clergymen. Henry Stanley, the fourth earl of Derby (d. 1593), had been educated alongside Edward VI. He combined his evangelical protestantism with the prosecution of Roman Catholic recusants and the fathering of illegitimate children.50 One of the most regular preachers in his household was Richard Midgley, the vicar of Rochdale and a renowned puritan nonconformist. The use of household chaplaincies and preaching invitations was the Stanleys’ most effective means of patronising godly clergymen.51 By the 1630s, Henry’s son William, the sixth earl, was enjoying retirement, and the Stanley interests were managed by his son and heir, James, Lord Strange. In 1626, Strange had married Catherine de La Trémoille, a French Huguenot with an impeccably godly pedigree as the granddaughter of William the Silent and the niece of Maurice of Nassau and of the elector palatine, Frederick IV.52 As well as having appointed John Broxupp to the vicarage of Ormskirk, another clergyman who enjoyed Strange’s favour was Charles Herle. A native of Cornwall and a graduate of Exeter College, Oxford, Herle had been Strange’s tutor and the chaplain to his mother Elizabeth (Herle had even written her will before her death in 1627). In 1626 Herle had been presented to Winwick in Lancashire, one of England’s wealthiest livings, by the Stanleys’ kinsman Sir Edward Stanley of Bickerstaffe.53 In 1631, Herle dedicated a substantial meditative treatise to Strange in gratitude for his assistance when Herle had recently been ill.54 By this time, Herle appears to have been drawn into the circle of Cheshire clergymen surrounding John Ley. Ley had yet to attain his later reputation as a prolific author, but he was already the star attraction of the Chester preaching circuit, holding the city’s most prominent lectureship at St Peter’s church as 44

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well as the north Cheshire vicarage of Great Budworth, not far from Herle’s own living of Winwick. In the early 1630s, Herle was one of fourteen clerical signatures of a letter to Ley calling for him to pronounce on a sabbatarian dispute which was then raging in Chester. This dispute had followed the publication in 1630 of a historic epistolary clash over correct Sabbath observance between Edward Brerewood and Nicholas Byfield, Chester’s late lecturer who had held the hard line over the Sabbath.55 Ley seems to have preached a series of sermons on the topic of the Sabbath shortly after receiving this letter, for, by July 1632, Bishop Bridgeman had inhibited Ley from preaching on the topic of the Sabbath, with Charles I himself having instructed the bishop to ban Ley from preaching on contentious topics.56 In 1641, the letter would form part of the prefatory materials to Ley’s Sunday a Sabbath.57 The impetus for the request appears to have been rooted within Cheshire, with Herle being the only signatory from outside of the county. Why Herle should have been drawn into this circle evades a direct answer, though Lancashire and Cheshire were within the same diocese of Chester and, furthermore, Cheshire certainly had a rich tradition of preaching exercises which might have drawn Herle across the border.58 However, two more precise reasons may be offered. Firstly, one of the signatories was Richard Wilson, who, like Herle, was an Oxford University graduate who in 1630 had been appointed by the Stanley family to his rectory of Holy Trinity, Chester.59 Secondly, another signatory was John Conny, a long-standing unbeneficed clergyman in Chester who was an exact contemporary of Herle’s at Exeter College, Oxford.60 Thus, by the early 1630s Herle had been drawn into a group of largely Cheshire-based clergymen who themselves had connections both with each other and with the Stanley family. Through the Stanleys, connections stretched to some of the Europe’s most influential protestant families, whilst Ley himself was a friend and correspondent of James Ussher.61 As associates and near neighbours, Herle and Ley knew each other even before they were both appointed as members of the Westminster assembly in 1643. On 18 August 1640, Ley and Herle had preached together at a monthly exercise, which was immediately followed by the meeting where the clergy present decided to ask Ley to draft a paper for Bishop Bridgeman outlining their objections to the recently introduced et cetera oath. As Ley related, ‘our minds and tongues united in pressing Peace and Charity, most needfull Themes for these crazie and distracted times’.62 We should be careful about going too far in stressing the unanimity of this group; after all, it was Thomas Holford (another signatory of the letter to Ley) who was discerned by John Werden to have preached even more vehemently against church government in 1641 than Samuel Eaton.63 However, the original group had also included Samuel Clarke, the then curate of the Cheshire chapelry of Shotwick and whose Warwickshire connections already placed him within presbyterian networks.64 Ley himself was another migrant, via university, from Warwickshire to Cheshire.65 45

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This group of godly clergy were within the circle of the Stanleys, and particularly Lord Strange. We should be wary of discounting the influence of Lord Strange at this time on the basis of looking back from his famous royalism during the civil wars. Strange had declared for the King only on the eve of the conflict, and had even been named as the lord lieutenant of Cheshire in Parliament’s militia ordinance of March 1642.66 The previous month, he had voted in favour of the bishops’ exclusion from the House of Lords.67 Indeed, during the storm surrounding William Prynne’s visit to Chester in 1637, Bishop Bridgeman had been forced to deny to Archbishop Neile of York that Prynne had been amongst the congregation which had heard a contentious sermon preached in the city by an unnamed preacher on the topic of ‘the affliction of Gods children’.68 Neile later informed Bridgeman that his own investigations had suggested ‘that his name is Ruttle, or Rutter, & one that came from London’.69 This ‘Ruttle, or Rutter’ was probably Samuel Rutter, a Stanley family chaplain.70 His time as a student at Westminster School may have led to the assertion that he ‘came from London’. The significance of this sermon is that, within the diocese of Chester, it is the first recorded denunciation from the pulpit of Laudian ecclesiastical policy. It is very telling that it came from a clergyman operating within the nexus surrounding the Stanley family, and that linkage with the Stanley family may well have protected Rutter from sanction. A cleric like Rutter coming to the fore on the back of powerful local patronage may be seen within the broader context of 1637 being something of a turning point in the course of Charles I’s personal rule.71 From then on, the region’s beneficed clergymen can be found taking stands against Laudianism. On a return visit to his native Warwickshire in May 1637, John Ley declined to attend a church service on account of the ceremonies, and he also left a manuscript copy of his treatise Sunday a Sabbath with the Warwick schoolmaster Thomas Dugard.72 Before 1637, within the diocese of Chester it was unbeneficed clergymen rather than their beneficed counterparts who had stood their ground against the ceremonies to such a point that they lost their livings.73 The 1633 metropolitical visitation, in which the visitors of the new archbishop of York, Richard Neile, enforced the new innovative policy of railed east-end communion tables standing on a north–south axis, appears to have been a pivotal moment for two young unbeneficed clerics. In Archbishop Neile’s report to Bishop Bridgeman, he noted one ‘William Thompson Curate & preacher of Newton suspected to be a Nonconformist’. The situation was even graver for another young cleric: ‘Richard Mather Curate of Toxteth a Nonconformist: he is suspended’. Some thirty-eight clergymen were reported by Neile to Bridgeman in the same report, with most having been through the fairly common process of acknowledgement of fault and subsequent reinstatement.74 Mather’s holding out to the point of suspension makes him quite an unusual case at this visitation, and it does not seem that his future collaborator Tompson took his nonconformity to this extreme stage in 1633.75 46

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Mather’s circumstances were unusual, to say the least. Being born in 1596 to a fairly poor family in Lowton, a township of Winwick, he had received an education and had gained employment in 1611 as the schoolmaster at Toxteth, a former parkland within the parish of Walton-on-the-Hill.76 Mather’s conversion in 1614 was on the one hand attributed to the preaching of William Harrison, a famously godly lecturer at nearby Huyton, but on the other hand to the example of Edward Aspinwall, who with Edmund Smolte in 1596 had purchased Toxteth Park from the earl of Derby for £1100.77 Whilst Aspinwall and Smolte would later sell their interests to Sir Richard Molyneux of Sefton, this was not before they had made the necessary provisions to secure the positions of themselves and their fellow tenants.78 Mather subsequently studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, but, after only a short time at Oxford and without having graduated, he received a call from the people of Toxteth to be their first minister. Having preached his first sermon at Toxteth in September 1618, he subsequently secured ordination from the then bishop of Chester, Thomas Morton.79 There was much about Mather’s situation which was unusual, even within a Lancastrian context. Toxteth seems to have possessed a particularly assertive, and indeed supportive, laity. Whilst Lancashire’s numerous chapelries probably held more opportunities for the laity to throw around their weight than a parish church did, plucking an undergraduate student from Oxford into ministry at a new chapel and without having yet secured ordination was very unusual indeed. Here one can perhaps see the overlaps with ideas about proper callings and lay consent for the appointment of officers which the New England Mather would later propound. However, Mather should not be seen as having been a clerical outsider. He held a Wednesday lectureship at nearby Prescot, and the vicar there, John Alden, was one of four clergymen charged by Bishop Bridgeman in 1629 with oversight of a monthly combination lecture at Liverpool, with the injunction that all of the appointed preachers ‘are conformeable to the Canons of the Church’.80 Alden’s three colleagues all had good credentials within the local clerical establishment. We have already met John Broxupp, the repetitionhosting vicar of Ormskirk, who had been a Stanley appointment to that living. Nevil Kay was the vicar of Liverpool’s mother parish of Walton-on-theHill, whilst Gregory Turner, the rector of Sefton, had served as a magistrate and was known for his anti-catholicism.81 Both had been appointed to their livings by different members of the Molyneux family.82 The four decided to hand oversight of some months’ lectures to two further colleagues. James Hyett had secured a reputation for himself on the London preaching circuit before heading northwards to Lancashire. He had briefly served as the vicar of Childwall, a village now absorbed as a suburb of Liverpool, before being appointed in 1625 as the rector and vicar of Croston on a royal presentation from Charles I. He was also listed in 1625 as being Bishop Bridgeman’s chaplain.83 The second assistant, appointed to select the lecturers for April 47

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and August, was Mather. Thus, here we find the non-graduate, unbeneficed Mather working alongside clerics who were all beneficed graduates, whilst all had locally important patrons.84 All of this would suggest that Mather was not rocking the boat too much whilst he remained in Lancashire. The peculiarities of his particular charge at Toxteth probably meant that Mather could have exerted a tighter control over admission to the sacraments than many of his counterparts might have felt able to do. Nevertheless, there is no sense that Mather was in any way ‘gathering’ congregation members from other parishes or from other areas of Toxteth’s mother parish of Walton-on-theHill. His vicar Nevil Kay sat on the committee which allowed him a notable role in appointing preachers to the Liverpool combination lecture, whilst Mather himself held a weekly lectureship in nearby Prescot. It has already been mentioned that, when Mather’s letters arrived in Lancashire from New England in the later 1630s, the region had no prior history of covenanted congregationalism. Whilst Toxteth might have sown the ideal in Mather’s mind of a localised, godly community free from external sway, for the full shaping of Mather’s ideas and the stir which they could cause back home we need to look towards New England.

RICHARD MATHER, NEW ENGLAND AND THE MERSEY BASIN According to his son Increase Mather, Richard Mather had undergone much soul-searching before making the decision to leave Lancashire for New England. He had written a short treatise advancing a hypothetical case for leaving England, and ‘These arguments were thus presented to the Consideration of other godly Ministers, and other Christians in Lancashire, at several meetings for that end’. Increase recorded that ‘many were thereby perswaded that his call to New-England was clear, yea even his own people at Toxteth’.85 Whilst his treatise considered matters such as the correctness of leaving a church where ministers could not exercise full discipline over their congregations, there is no sense within the treatise that Mather was thinking specifically in terms of a covenanted congregation which separated the godly from the ungodly. Of course, Mather may well have been discreet in order to get the approbation which he wanted. Increase tells us that Richard had read letters sent to England by John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, and we have no reason to think that Mather was the only person in Lancashire who would have read those letters.86 In the face of an increasingly assertive (and seemingly popish) episcopate, the issue of church covenants may well have been the proverbial elephant in the room at Mather’s Lancastrian conferences. Mather arrived in Massachusetts in August 1635, at a moment when, in the context of an ever increasing population, some of the Massachusetts congregations were fracturing over the issue of whether their covenants were being administered to newcomers with too little discernment.87 On 3 March 1636, 48

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the Massachusetts General Court issued an order which ‘required the majority of the colony’s ministers and magistrates to be present at the gathering of any new churches’.88 By this point, it is likely that Mather was already in the process of gathering a congregation at his place of settlement, Dorchester. On 1 April 1636, Mather and his initial group of congregation members came before the colony’s clergy and magistrates, seeking approval to form together as a church, only for permission to be denied.89 Increase Mather does not record any of these initial difficulties, but both John Winthrop and Thomas Shepard give some indication of the reasons for rejection. Winthrop wrote that ‘for that most of them (Mr. Mather and one more excepted) had builded their hopes of salvation upon unsound grounds, viz., some upon dreams and ravishes of spirit by fits; others upon the reformation of their lives; others upon duties and performances, etc.’. Winthrop recorded three specific doctrinal errors, but the most cutting was the third: ‘They expected to believe by some power of their own, and not from Christ.’90 There is a sense, though, that New England ecclesiology had significantly changed during the few months since Mather had arrived in Massachusetts. Early in 1636, Thomas Shepard’s Cambridge congregation had been the first to have been publicly gathered on the basis of its members’ saving faith. After the rejection of the Dorchester proposal, Shepard informed Mather ‘we come not here to find gracious hearts, but to see them too. ’Tis not faith, but a visible faith, that must make a visible church, and be the foundation of the visible communion.’91 Stephen Foster found it ‘a little puzzling’ that Mather should have been caught out in such a manner, given his reputation as a scholar of church polity, though it may be pointed out that the lengthy works on polity for which Mather is famous all postdate the early struggles to secure a congregation for Dorchester. In addition, the emphasis on a visible saving faith was in itself a very recent development with the colony’s ecclesiology.92 It is possible that the emphasis in the Dorchester testimonies upon dreams, fits and personal reformation had been intentionally framed in order to prove such a visible saving faith. Ultimately, after Mather had intensively worked with the proposed members of the congregation to rid them of the errors identified by Winthrop, they again approached the clergy and magistrates on 23 August 1636, and this time secured the required approval for covenanting a congregation.93 By then, Mather was already in correspondence with clergymen back home in Lancashire, he having received letters which appear to have expressed concern about the state of the New England churches, and, more pointedly, their relationship with the Church of England.94 One of these letters was sent to a ‘Mr. R.’ and a ‘Mr. T.’, dated 25 June 1636, with Mather expressing concern about whether Mr R. (whom he clearly knew) was currently in Lancashire.95 The other letter, apparently sent in 1636 to a Lancastrian minister identified as ‘E. B.’, survives as a transcription within Mather’s lengthy manuscript, ‘A Plea for the Churches of Christ in New England’, 49

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dating from 1645–46.96 In the letter sent to Mr R. and Mr T., Mather stresses the role of the General Court in ensuring the orthodoxy of churches. He writes about how church covenants were administered and about the officers of the churches, stressing the parallels between the New England churches and the models offered by Robert Parker and William Ames. The latter part of the letter, however, moves away from ecclesiastical matters to discuss the threat posed by the Indians and his hopes for a plentiful harvest. In contrast, the letter sent to ‘E. B.’ is a point-by-point answering of what were originally thirty-six queries (two were not included in Mather’s transcription) about the doctrines and practices of the churches of New England. Mather offers statements about the respective rights and duties of congregations and their officers, about the nature of the church covenant and about the relationships between the different churches in New England. As has been noted, in a county with no prior heritage of covenanted congregations, and coming from a cleric who had until recently ministered in the county and who had (in his previous musings about emigration) seemingly skirted around the issue of church covenants, these letters must have laid down a gauntlet to those Lancastrian clergy who still ministered within mixed congregations of the godly and the ungodly. When Richard Burg published a critical edition of the letter to E. B. in 1972, he was unable to identify the recipient. However, the recent development of The Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd) means that it is now possible to address such questions tentatively. The only clergyman with those initials ministering in Lancashire in the 1630s was Edward Brooks, listed in 1634 as being the curate of the chapelry of Holcombe in Bury parish.97 That still leaves the arguably more complex issue of who were Mr R. and Mr T.? The former has regularly been identified as William Rathband, later a keen opponent of New England congregationalism, and in the mid-1630s serving as the curate of Blackley in Manchester parish.98 The identification of Mr T. has been more problematic. Everett Emerson, the text’s editor, did not offer an identification. Susan Hardman Moore has suggested Mather’s future collaborator William Tompson, who in 1636 was yet to migrate to New England and who was then still serving as the curate of Newton in Winwick parish.99 On the basis of their future pathways, Rathband and Tompson would have been odd collaborators to say the least. The potential identification of E. B. as Edward Brooks focuses attention towards the south Lancashire parish of Bury. Bury was a lively religious centre, with its monthly preaching exercise being noted in the 1633 metropolitical visitation.100 In 1636, the rector there was Peter Travers, whilst his curate was William Rothwell. These two clerics would appear to be better candidates for the identity of Mather’s Mr T. and Mr R. Both were graduates of Cambridge University, with Rothwell having recently graduated (BA 1630; MA 1633) from Emmanuel College, still lying quite literally under the shadow of its famous former master (and now near neighbour) Laurence Chaderton, 50

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a native of nearby Oldham.101 Travers had been appointed to the rectory of Bury in 1633 by William, earl of Derby, in whose family he had served as a household chaplain; he additionally held the rectory of Halsall, close to the Stanleys’ residence at Lathom but not a living in their possession.102 At the 1633 metropolitical visitation, he was reported for puritan nonconformity, and it was also recorded that puritans from the adjacent parish of Middleton were attending services at Bury.103 In his letter to Mr R. and Mr T., Mather had placed himself at the heart of south Lancashire clerical puritanism. He commiserated at the deaths of three clerics, including George Gee, the curate of Newton in Manchester parish who had been buried at the collegiate church there in January 1636. He also mourned the passing of John Ridgely, the sometime curate of Westhoughton in Deane parish who had been suspended by Bishop Bridgeman in 1627 on account of his puritan nonconformity.104 He also asked that his correspondents pass his regards to acquaintances including ‘Mr. Ball’ (probably the Staffordshire minister John Ball), ‘Mr. Bo.’ (most likely William Bourne, the redoubtable Manchester nonconformist cleric who in 1637 would be one of the thirteen correspondents to John Cotton) and ‘Mr. N.’ (possibly Thomas Norman, a nonconformist who had spells during the 1630s as the curate of the Manchester chapelries of Birch and Gorton).105 Aside from puritan networks, there were other pointers which lead to a Bury interest in Mather. In 1624, he had married his wife Katherine in the parish church there, with Increase Mather later recording that whilst Mather’s father-in-law, a Bury gentleman named Edmund Holt, had been a good Christian, he had disapproved of Richard’s nonconformity.106 In 1630, Mather had returned to the area to preach at the recently established Ringley chapel in the adjacent parish of Prestwich.107 However, a further interesting lead is that the schoolmaster at Bury in 1636 was Henry Dunster, who would leave Lancashire for Massachusetts in 1640, and would soon afterwards become the president of Harvard College. A native of Bury, Dunster had been almost an exact contemporary at Cambridge of his fellow curate William Rothwell, albeit at Magdalene College (BA 1631; MA 1634).108 Dunster later recalled that he had been inspired at Cambridge by hearing Thomas Goodwin preach, and, in a similar trajectory to Goodwin, one wonders if by the mid-1630s the eyes of Bury’s schoolmaster were already looking beyond England and he was causing some concern to his clerical colleagues in the parish.109

TITHES, COVENANTED CHURCHES AND THE MAINTENANCE OF ORDER It would be going far beyond the surviving evidence to suggest that this reaction against Mather was in some way personally orchestrated by James Stanley, Lord Strange. It seems far more likely that the initial opposition arose out of local issues particular to Bury parish, given Mather’s marital 51

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c­ onnection to the parish and the future trajectory of the parish’s schoolmaster, Henry Dunster. This opposition almost certainly fed into the more famous opposition towards New England congregationalism displayed by William Bourne, a long-standing clergyman in the nearby parish of Manchester but whose connections within puritan networks stretched deep into the Midlands epicentre of the polemical reaction against developments in New England. That is not to say that there was not a certain alignment of interest between critiques of covenanted churches and the responsibility for the maintenance of order within Lancashire and Cheshire which Lord Strange held as the most senior active peer within the two counties. In his letter to E. B., Mather argued that the maintenance of pastors should be raised ‘voluntarily’ from within their congregations.110 The collection of tithes from sometimes recalcitrant parishioners was already a potential minefield for the clergy, and particularly for those clergy ministering in large northern parishes with an array of tithe rights and, often, the need to pay stipends to curates. In effect, Mather’s letter had provided a ready justification for the less religious to exclude themselves from the church and not pay their tithes. This situation had reached its logical conclusion at Winwick by 1644, when Charles Herle complained to the Westminster assembly ‘that divers parishioners of his deny his ministry for Christian, but Levitical, for demanding of tithes’.111 If only for ensuring the maintenance of public order, a situation whereby the ungodly were rigidly excluded from membership of the church was certainly not in the interests of the civil magistracy. Aside from the potential congruence of interest over public order, given that the advowson of Bury parish was within the patronage of the Stanley family, any opposition to Mather stirring amongst the parish’s clergy would have had access to a natural constituency of fellow clergymen operating within the Stanleys’ patronage network. The rector of Bury, Peter Travers, had served as a household chaplain of the Stanleys, as had Charles Herle, who by the 1630s was already involved in a network of influential clergy, largely based in Cheshire, which included the likes of John Ley and Samuel Clarke. Whilst he was later a famous critic of the primacy of independent congregations, Herle’s role during the late 1630s is unknown, though he appears to have known Mather. Mather’s future collaborator, William Tompson, had served as the curate at Newton chapel in Herle’s parish of Winwick. In 1644 they both testified ‘our thankfulnesse for that loving respect which we found from you [Herle], when we lived together in that Country; when you were pleased to own us in our sad times’.112 Given the Stanley network, Herle’s personal connection to Mather, and his later interest in the matter, it would seem improbable that he simply remained on the sidelines during the Lancastrian debates of 1636. Indeed, Tompson does not appear to have migrated to New England until 1637, and the circulation of the correspondence from Mather may well have played an important role in his own thinking about New England.113 A linkage via Herle would point to a clerical network stretching 52

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into Cheshire. These contacts would extend onwards to a Cestrian peerage, gentry and broader clergy who, despite the encouragement of Sir William Brereton, noticeably failed to support in early 1641 an anti-episcopal petitioning campaign based upon a congregational platform.

CONCLUSION: THE FAILURE OF CONGREGATIONALISM IN THE MERSEY BASIN Even by 1641, and well before the convening of the Westminster assembly in 1643, congregationalism in the Mersey Basin region was never likely to succeed. Looking at Richard Mather’s Lancastrian correspondents in 1636, their origins in the Lancashire parish of Bury placed them within influential religious and political networks ultimately centred upon the godly credentials of James Stanley, Lord Strange. The leading clerical figures within this grouping, such as Charles Herle, John Ley and Samuel Clarke, would all be future supporters of presbyterianism. It was within the Stanley network that the diocese of Chester’s first recorded denunciation from the pulpit of ‘Laudian’ policy originated in 1637. In effect, anti-Laudian and anti-congregational interests within the Mersey Basin area during the 1630s were aligned, having their origins within the same Stanley-centred network. Thus, when Samuel Eaton attempted to launch a call for a congregational platform in Cheshire in January 1641, he needed to secure the support of interests who, whilst no supporters of Laudian episcopacy, did not share an appetite for the congregational system of church polity. Even when coupled with the unpopularity of Bishop Bridgeman, that support was not forthcoming. Ultimately, a fear of the radical potential seen as being inherent within a system of independent congregations would transcend the boundaries of allegiance after civil war broke out in England in 1642. Lord Strange would famously support the cause of Charles I, and Peter Travers lost his livings after residing in Lathom House whilst it was besieged by Parliament’s forces.114 In both Lancashire and Cheshire, the presbyterian campaigns of 1646 drew on support from royalist clergymen. Coalitions were built in defence of a coherent national church, and efforts were even made to secure the restorations to their former livings of ejected royalist clergymen who now ‘supported’ presbyterianism.115 It has recently been suggested that the publication of the three volumes of Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena during the course of 1646 may have played a role in cementing the Lancashire presbyterians’ determination to reject a congregational church structure.116 Gangraena may have colourfully testified to the alleged dangers of congregationalism, but the reality of the situation in the two counties was that, even as Samuel Eaton clambered into a Chester pulpit back in January 1641, congregationalism was never going to be seen as a palatable system upon which a national church could be built. Whilst Eaton had been away, congregationalism’s chances in the region had all but evaporated. 53

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NOTES 1 Cheshire Record Office, Chester, EDV 1/29, fo. 12r. 2 See the account in Thomas Paget, ‘An humble advertisment to the high court of Parliament’, in John Paget, A defence of church-government (1641), unpaginated. 3 Borthwick Institute for Archives, York, V. 1629–30, Court Book, fo. 206r. 4 Eaton had vacated his rectory by 13 August 1631, when Thomas Glover was instituted as rector, see The Clergy of the Church of England Database (hereafter CCEd), www.theclergydatabase.org.uk, Record ID: 131742 (accessed 13 January 2016). Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols (1813–17), III, p. 673, implies that Eaton may have vacated his living voluntarily, though S. J. Guscott, ‘Eaton, Samuel (d. 1665)’, ODNB, gives the more conventional line that Eaton was deprived, though I have been unable to find any evidence of this, and I thus lean towards à Wood’s interpretation. 5 The best short account of the enforcement of ‘Laudian’ policies in the province of York remains A. Foster, ‘Church policies of the 1630s’, in R. Cust and A. Hughes (eds), Conflict in early Stuart England: studies in religion and politics 1603–1642 (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 193–223. For the diocese of Chester, though, see also J. Mawdesley, ‘Clerical politics in Lancashire and Cheshire during the reign of Charles I, 1625–1649’ (PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2014), chs 2–3. 6 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bankes MSS, 48/7. Eaton’s Cheshire connections are explicitly noted in this manuscript, thus ruling out the London antinomian of the same name as being the subject of these allegations. I would like to thank Anthony Milton for pointing me towards this reference. 7 Guscott, ‘Eaton’, ODNB. 8 Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, D1287/9/8 (A/93) (John Bridgeman to Richard Neile, 20 November 1637). 9 Cheshire RO, P51/12/1. 10 The fullest account of these events in Chester in 1637 is in Mawdesley, ‘Clerical politics’, pp. 123–39. 11 This is the argument in ibid., ch., 3. This incumbent was Edward Fleetwood, the vicar of Kirkham in Lancashire, see Cheshire RO, EDC 5/1638/14. 12 William Prynne, The antipathie of the English lordly prelacie, 2 vols (1641), II, p, 290. 13 Bridgeman recorded various life events in his ledger, see Staffordshire RO, D1287/3/1 (F/632). Bridgeman mentions his son’s illness in his letter to Archbishop Neile dated 20 August 1637, Staffordshire RO, D1287/18/2 (P/399/5B). 14 I would like to thank Simon Healy for bringing this point to my attention. For the 1633 investigation, see B. W. Quintrell, ‘Lancashire ills, the King’s will and the troubling of bishop Bridgeman’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 132 (1982), 67–102. 15 Sir Thomas Aston, A remonstrance against presbitery (n.p., 1641), ‘The Petition which was spread abroad in the Countrie amongst the Common people’, pp. 5–6. Eaton’s involvement in the petition was also noted by an anonymous London-based commonplace book author, see BL, Harley MS 4931, fo. 118v. 16 William Prynne, A new discovery of the prelates tyranny (1641), p. 101. 54

Peers, pastors and the particular church 17 Aston, Remonstrance, p. 6. A manuscript account of this sermon at Knutsford is preserved in Bodleian Library, Tanner MS, 65, fos 214r–v. 18 The journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes: from the beginning of the Long Parliament to the opening of the trial of the earl of Strafford, ed. W. Notestein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923), p. 101. 19 Aston, Remonstrance, ‘A Petition’, p. 5. This was observed by Paget, ‘humble advertisment’, unpaginated. 20 D’Ewes, ed. Notestein, p. 375. 21 A fuller account of the changing religio-political situation in Cheshire in 1640–42 can be found in Mawdesley, ‘Clerical politics’, pp. 161–202, though see also J. S. Morrill, Cheshire 1630–1660: county government and society during the English revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), ch. 2; J. Maltby, Prayer book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially chs 4–5; P. Lake, ‘Puritans, popularity and petitions: local politics in national context, Cheshire, 1641’, in T. Cogswell, R. Cust and P. Lake (eds), Politics, religion and popularity in early Stuart Britain: essays in honour of Conrad Russell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 259–89. 22 Maltby, Prayer book and people, p. 151. 23 BL, Additional MS 36914, fo. 210v; Harl. MS 163, fo. 69r. 24 BL, Add. MS 36914, fos 210r–v. 25 BL, Add. MS 36914, fos 215r–v. This letter is dated as ‘Good Friday’. I would like to thank David Wykes for his assistance in identifying the calendar date. 26 BL, Add. MS 36914, fos 210r–v. Sir William Brereton’s cousin was probably John Brereton, an MA graduate of the University of Edinburgh (1637) who served as an assistant minister at Prestwich in Lancashire, and who was confirmed as the rector of Wilmslow in Cheshire by the Committee for Plundered Ministers on 22 September 1645. Though John’s relationship to Sir William is unclear, John was a legatee in Sir William’s will in 1661, see A. G. Matthews, Calamy revised: being a revision of Edmund Calamy’s account of the ministers and others ejected and silenced, 1660–2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), p. 71. 27 Morrill, Cheshire, pp. 46–8, 51–2. 28 BL, Harl. MS 2081, fo. 93v. 29 LJ, IV, pp. 261–2 30 TNA, SP 16/483, fos 35v–36r; for Henry Bridgeman, see CCEd, Person ID: 9735. 31 Mawdesley, ‘Clerical politics’, pp. 259–65. 32 N. Tyacke, The fortunes of English puritanism, 1603–1640 (Dr Williams’ Library, 1989); C. G. Schneider, ‘Roots and branches: from principled nonconformity to the emergence of religious parties’, in F. J. Bremer (ed.), Puritanism: transatlantic perspectives on a seventeenth-century Anglo-American faith (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), pp. 167–200. 33 Charles Herle, The independency on scriptures of the independency of churches (1643). 34 G. F. Nuttall, Visible saints: the congregational way 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), p. 11. 35 Whilst better in discussing the social rather than the political dimensions of north-western puritanism, the best study remains R. C. Richardson, Puritanism 55

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36

37 38 39 40

41

42

43 44

45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52

53

54

56

in north-west England: a regional study of the diocese of Chester to 1642 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972). For some pertinent thoughts on the meanings of ‘puritanism’, see P. Lake, ‘Puritan identities’, JEH, 35 (1984), 112–23; P. Marshall, Reformation England 1480–1642 (Arnold, 2003), pp. 135–41. For example, Sir Robert Jermyn of Rushbrooke in Suffolk, see P. Collinson, The Elizabethan puritan movement (Jonathan Cape, 1967), p. 188. Mawdesley, ‘Clerical politics’, p. 67. These three livings were Bury and Ormskirk in Lancashire, and Holy Trinity, Chester. C. Haigh, ‘Puritan evangelism in the reign of Elizabeth I’, EHR, 92 (1977), 30–58. The key periods of aberration were under the Archbishops John Piers (1589–93), Samuel Harsnett (1629–31) and Richard Neile (1631–40). For Piers see Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, p. 406; for Harsnett, see K. Fincham, ‘“So potent, crafty and violent an adversary”: Samuel Harsnett, Master of Pembroke and Archbishop of York’, Pembroke College, Cambridge, Annual Gazette, 80 (2006), 36–50; for Neile, see Foster, ‘Church policies’, pp. 193–223. D. J. Lamburn, ‘The influence of the laity in appointments of clergy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and recruitment in the Tudor and early Stuart church, Borthwick Studies in History, 2 (1996), p. 115. Samuel Clarke, The lives of sundry eminent persons in this later age (1683), pp. 3–4; Oliver Heywood, Oliver Heywood’s life of John Angier of Denton, ed. E. E. Axon, Chetham Society, new series, 97 (1937), p. 56. Borthwick, V. 1629–30, Court Book, fo. 102v. Borthwick, V. 1629–30, Court Book, fo. 108v. Broxupp would again be accused of hosting conventicles later in the 1630s, see Cheshire RO, EDC 5/1637/16; EDC 5/1638/96. Borthwick, V. 1629–30, Court Book, fo. 108v. P. Collinson, The religion of protestants: the church in English society 1559–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 276. CCEd, Record ID: 131785. Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, pp. 381–2. Samuel Eaton and Timothy Taylor, The defence of sundry positions & scriptures for the congregational-way justified (1645), p. 2; see also S. Foster, The long argument: English puritanism and the shaping of New England culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 164. L. A. Knafla, ‘Stanley, Henry, fourth earl of Derby (1531–1593)’, ODNB. Richardson, Puritanism, pp. 117–20. B. Coward, ‘Stanley, James, seventh earl of Derby (1607–1651)’; J. Callow, ‘Stanley, Charlotte [nee de La Trémoille], countess of Derby (1599–1664)’, both ODNB. V. Larminie, ‘Herle, Charles (1597/8–1659)’, ODNB; W. Farrer and J. Brownbill (eds), The Victoria history of the county of Lancaster (hereafter VCH), 8 vols (University of London, 1906–14), IV, pp. 122–32. Charles Herle, Contemplations and devotions on the severall passages of our blessed saviours death and passion (1631), ‘The epistle dedicatorie’.

Peers, pastors and the particular church 55 For Byfield see B. Ball, ‘Byfield, Nicholas (1578/9–1622)’, ODNB. 56 Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, D1287/18/2 (P/399/67); M. J. Crossley Evans, ‘The clergy of the city of Chester, 1630–1672’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 68 (1985), 106–7; G. T. O. Bridgeman, The history of the church and manor of Wigan in the county of Lancaster, Chetham Society, new series, 16–18 (1888–90), 16, 338. The undated order from Charles I can be found in TNA, SP 16/211, fo. 138r. 57 John Ley, Sunday a Sabbath (1641), ‘The Coppie of the Letter mentioned in the Preface’. 58 Prayers were said in Herefordshire in 1633 for the continuation of these Cheshire exercises, see BL, Add. MS 70062, unfoliated (memorandum, 22 February 1632/33 and 12 April 1633). 59 Richardson, Puritanism, p. 187; G. Ormerod, rev. T. Helsby, The history of the city and county Palatine of Chester (1882), I, pt 1, p. 332. 60 Richardson, Puritanism, p. 187; Conny was appointed in 1636 to the vicarage of St John’s, Chester, see Ormerod, rev. Helsby, History, I, pt 1, p. 315. 61 For a letter from Ley to Ussher dated August 1619, see Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Letters 89, fos 30r–v; see also John Ley, Defensive doubts, hopes, and reasons, for refusall of the oath, imposed by the sixth canon of the late synod (1641), ‘A Letter, declaring the occasion of beginning a manner of proceeding for the penning and publishing of the Discourse ensuing’. 62 John Ley, Defensive doubts, ‘A Letter, declaring the occasion’. Though the location of the exercise is identified in the pamphlet only as ‘W.’, it has been identified as Warrington by R. C. Richardson (see Puritanism, pp. 68–9), whilst M. H. Curtis has opted for Winwick, see his ‘The trials of a puritan in Jacobean Lancashire’, in C. R. Cole and M. E. Moody (eds), The dissenting tradition: essays for Leland H. Carlson (Athens, GA: Ohio University Press, 1975), p. 95. 63 TNA, SP 16/483, fos 35v–36r. 64 A. Hughes, ‘Clarke, Samuel (1599–1682)’, ODNB. 65 R. L. Greaves, ‘Ley, John (1584–1662)’, ODNB. 66 A&O, I, pp. 1–5. 67 C. Russell, The fall of the British monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 471. 68 Staffordshire RO, D1287/9/8 (A/93): John Bridgeman to Richard Neile, 22 September 1637. 69 Staffordshire RO, D1287/9/8 (A/93): Richard Neile to John Bridgeman, 16 November 1637. 70 J. R. Dickinson, ‘Rutter, Samuel (d. 1662)’, ODNB. Rutter would remain loyal to the Stanley family throughout their civil war troubles, being appointed in 1661 as the bishop of Sodor and Man, a diocese under the Stanley family’s influence. Rutter should not be seen as being synonymous with a Samuel Rutter, the rector of Waberthwaite in Cumberland. 71 See, for example, P. Donald, An uncounselled king: Charles I and the Scottish troubles, 1637–1641 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially p. 327. 72 A. Hughes, Politics, society and civil war in Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 78, n. 105; A. Hughes, ‘Thomas Dugard 57

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73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95

58

and his circle in the 1630s – a “parliamentary-puritan” connexion?’, HJ, 29 (1986), 786. Whilst John Ley had written to Bishop Bridgeman in June 1635 to protest against the erection of an altar in Chester Cathedral, this text was not printed until early 1641, see John Ley, A letter … to the reverend father Iohn l. bishop of Chester (1641). This excludes Samuel Eaton, who appears to have voluntarily vacated his rectory at West Kirby in Cheshire circa 1631. Staffordshire RO, D1287/9/8 (A/92). The account of Richard Mather’s career in the early 1630s in Increase Mather’s The life and death of the reverend man of God, Mr. Richard Mather (Cambridge, MA, 1670), p. 10, is a little confused, claiming that Richard had been suspended in August 1633 and restored in November 1633, before being finally suspended by Archbishop Neile’s visitors in 1634. However, Neile’s visitation was in the summer of 1633. A triennial visitation of his diocese was held by Bishop Bridgeman in 1634, and it is possible that, if the chronology is accurate, Mather’s final suspension may have been enacted then. Ibid., pp. 2–5. Mather, Richard Mather, pp. 5–6; VCH … Lancaster, III, pp. 40–5. Ibid. Mather, Richard Mather, pp. 6–7. G. Chandler and E. K. Wilson (eds), Liverpool under Charles I (Liverpool: Brown, Picton and Hornby Libraries, 1965), pp. 158–9. D. J. Wilkinson, ‘The Commission of the Peace in Lancashire, 1603–1642’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 132 (1983), 48–9. CCEd, Appointment IDs: 131801 (Kay) and 131416 (Turner). Quintrell, ‘Lancashire ills’, 96–7, n. 14; CCEd, Person ID: 27689. CCEd, Appointment ID: 131531. Alden’s patron at Prescot was King’s College, Cambridge. Mather, Richard Mather, pp. 11–20, quotation at pp. 19–20. Ibid., p. 20. Foster, Long argument, pp. 159–60. Mather’s early difficulties in Massachusetts are well described in B. R. Burg, Richard Mather (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1982), ch. 2. Foster, Long argument, p. 161. Burg, Mather, pp. 27–8. John Winthrop, Winthrop’s journal: ‘History of New England’, 1630–1649, ed. J. K. Hosmer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), I, 177–8. Quoted in Foster, Long argument, p. 161 Ibid., p. 161. Burg, Mather, p. 31. This chapter will not discuss in depth the contexts and contents of these scribal and pamphlet exchanges, and for a fuller discussion of these aspects the reader is advised to consult Schneider, ‘Roots and branches’, pp. 167–200, and Burg, Mather, pp. 31–50. E. Emerson (ed.), Letters from New England: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629–1638 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), pp. 200–8.

Peers, pastors and the particular church 96 B. Richard Burg, ‘A letter of Richard Mather to a cleric in old England’, William and Mary Quarterly, 29 (1972), 81–98. 97 CCEd, Person ID: 35790. 98 See, for example, Letters from New England, ed. Emerson, p. 200. 99 S. Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World settlers and the call of home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 226, n. 68. 100 Borthwick, V. 1633, Court Book 2, fo. 565v. 101 CCEd, Person ID: 91090; P. Collinson, ‘Chaderton, Laurence (1536?–1640), ODNB. 102 CCEd, Person ID: 34631. NB Appointment ID 131908 mistakenly gives Travers’s date of institution at Bury as 1634 rather than 1633 (new style). 103 Borthwick, V. 1633, Court Book 2, fos 565v, 566v. 104 Letters from New England, p. 205. CCEd, Persons IDs: 28154 (Gee) and 35014 (Ridgely). For Ridgely’s suspension in 1627, see Cheshire RO, EDA 3/2, fo. 20v. 105 Letters from New England, p. 208. The 1637 letter to Cotton was published in Simeon Ashe and William Rathband, A letter of many ministers in old England (1643). A manuscript version of this letter, complete with the signatures omitted from the printed version, is transcribed in S. Bush, Jr (ed.), The correspondence of John Cotton (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 262–8. For Norman, see CCEd, Person ID: 35174. 106 Mather, Richard Mather, p. 8; The registers of the parish church of Bury in the county of Lancaster: christenings, burials and weddings 1617–1646, (eds) W. J. Löwenberg and H. Brierley, Lancashire Parish Register Society, 10 (1901), 356. The common nature of the name Edmund Holt in the Bury registers makes it difficult to ascertain if Mather’s father-in-law was still alive in the 1630s. 107 John Angier, pp. 55–6; see also J. Mawdesley, ‘The harassment of Isaac Allen: puritanism, parochial politics and Prestwich’s troubles during the first English civil war’, HR, 87:238 (2014), 671–4. 108 F. J. Bremer, ‘Dunster, Henry (bap. 1609, d. 1659)’, ODNB. 109 J. Chaplin, Life of Henry Dunster: first president of Harvard College (Boston, 1872), p. 263. Malcolm Gaskill has described Dunster as being ‘a Lancashire protégé of Richard Mather’, but he does not provide any evidence of a relationship before they had both emigrated to New England, see Gaskill’s Between two worlds: how the English became Americans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 155. 110 Burg, ‘Letter’, 94. 111 Lightfoot, Journal, p. 281. 112 Richard Mather and William Tompson, A modest & brotherly answer to Mr. Charles Herle his book against the independency of churches (1644), Preface. 113 Hardman Moore, Pilgrims, p. 187. 114 Minutes of the committee for the relief of plundered ministers, and of the trustees for the maintenance of ministers, relating to Lancashire and Cheshire, 1643–1660, ed. W. A. Shaw, Record Society for the Publication of Original Documents relating to Lancashire and Cheshire, 28, 34 (1893–96), 34, pp. 3–4. 115 Mawdesley, ‘Clerical politics’, pp. 256–9. 116 A. Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 370.

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Chapter 4

‘One of the least things in religion’: the Welsh experience of church polity, 1640–60 Stephen K. Roberts

T

he condition of the protestant ministry in Wales was considered as deplorable at the restoration of the monarchy as it had been on the eve of the civil war nearly twenty years previously, and the condition of Wales, both in social and religious terms, remained generally marginal to the concerns of successive regimes at Westminster. Yet controversy over the governance of the church in Wales was a significant factor in the demise of the Commonwealth in 1653 and the inauguration of the Cromwellian Protectorate. Not least among Oliver Cromwell’s justifications for his dismissal of the Rump Parliament was the case of Wales and ‘the poor people of God there’, subject to the discouragements of the ‘malignant party’.1 The question of religion in Wales in the 1640s and 1650s is territory wellworked by historians, mainly, if not wholly, because of the rise of protestant nonconformity in later centuries and its role as the religious expression of the liberalism which played such a prominent part in the making of the modern Welsh identity. There is a very substantial body of Victorian and twentieth-century scholarship written from a broadly confessional point of view, tracing the emergence of what later became the dissenting denominations. What we might call a confessional tradition in Welsh religious history has been a durable and serviceable one, and as recently as 2013 an essay on ‘The growth of puritanism’ again surveyed the emergence of denominational groupings in Wales up to and including the 1650s.2 This approach has tended to privilege the activities of the so-called ‘Welsh Saints’, mainly but not exclusively by focusing on the colourful and relatively well-documented lives of the most prominent ministers of the period, notably Walter Cradock, Vavasor Powell, Morgan Llwyd and Henry Walter.3 This tradition is better seen as church history, rather than as religious history, as its organising principle is to separate out and classify rather than explore networks, fusions and blurrings. A second and complementary process by which to assess the Welsh religious experience has been to trace the contemporary state-sponsored 60

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drive to illuminate ‘the dark corners of the land’. The classic work on this is Christopher Hill’s essay which includes that phrase in its title.4 Seen thus, the pinnacle of achievement was the so-called ‘act for the propagation of the gospel’ of February 1650. Hill described the committees formed in north and south Wales to eject ministers, to pool tithes to fund itinerant ministers and to appoint schoolmasters as ‘the culmination of two or three generations of Puritan effort’.5 That judgement remains unchallenged, and more recent scholarship has tended to adjust rather than to divert the general trajectory of scholarship: by considering particular episodes in more detail, rather than by finding new milestones or demolishing old ones. Essays written in 2004 and 2005 illustrate the recent trend.6 It seems unlikely that any major new source of either a printed or manuscript variety will emerge to suddenly transform the overall picture across the whole of Wales, given the paucity of contemporary printed literature, particularly in the Welsh language, and the generally well-worked manuscript collections, so new insights are more likely through subjecting the same materials to new questions. One such fresh insight came with the article by Lloyd Bowen, cited above. In a detailed working out of how Welsh religious reform came to figure on the parliamentary agenda in the early years of the Long Parliament, he noted the prominence of two MPs in particular in promoting Welsh interests: Sir Robert Harley, knight of the shire for Herefordshire, and Oliver Cromwell, burgess for Cambridge. These men came to personify contrasting wings of what we might continue usefully to call the puritan movement during the 1640s: Harley as a presbyterian, Cromwell as an independent. The 1650 act of the Rump Parliament was self-evidently an independent creation, in which the principle of itineracy was enshrined. An immediate result of the 1640–42 lobbying of Parliament was an order to despatch itinerants to Wales that was repeated in 1647 before being cast into legislation in 1650. Bowen asks whether an essential division in puritan opinion, on the strategy for evangelising in Wales, was a fault line visible from the outset of the Long Parliament: ‘Could it be that this division had been foreshadowed in early 1642 with the emergence of the radical Cromwell rather than the moderate Harley as the promoter of the Welsh puritans’ petitions?’7 If this interpretation is valid, the effect is to marginalise and confine to failure still further the presbyterian strategy for winning over Wales. In this chapter, I propose to take an overview of the presbyterian impulse to puritanise and reform Wales. The word ‘presbyterian’ will be used loosely here, to describe the effort to reform the Welsh church along non-episcopalian but still federalised lines; with a broadly Calvinist theology based on a strict view of church membership and an emphasis on church ordinances as a way of defining membership, within the framework of an Erastian church–state structure. In doing so, I hope to highlight some of the successes and failures of the group that on the usual reading of the Welsh church in the period lost 61

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out to the independents and sectaries who found state protection under the umbrella of the 1650 act.

PLANS TO REFORM THE WELSH CHURCH IN THE EARLY 1640S As Lloyd Bowen has described, appeals to Parliament to reform the Welsh church sprang from two petitions, of December 1640 and February 1641, whose content was overlapping.8 Common to the two petitions, which emerged from south-east Wales, with input from the marcher region of west Herefordshire and Radnorshire, was the complaint of a paucity of preaching ministers in Wales, particularly of those able to preach in Welsh. According to the petitioners, not thirteen in a thousand parishes enjoyed the ministrations of a preacher in the Welsh language, with the result that no challenge was possible to the prevailing sins of ‘gross ignorance, idolatry [and] superstition’. The two petitions included a denunciation of bishops and curates, the February 1641 version intensifying the attack to take advantage of the anti-episcopalian, ‘Root and Branch’ sentiment in the Commons at the time. In fact, the February petition clothed with flesh the bones of the earlier version in other respects, providing a more detailed critique of the failings of curates, ‘blind guides [and] dumb dogges’, who read two or three services in a morning, and got between £3 and £5 a year for their perfunctory efforts. The statistic of thirteen preachers in a thousand parishes was glossed with the qualifier that this meant thirteen preaching in their own livings, and the special venom reserved in the December 1640 petition against the Book of Common Prayer as ‘the maintenance of an unlawful ministry, when every silly reader ordained by a bishop may in a surplice and with a service book take the cure of souls and so the people perish’ was watered down. Remove the prayer book, the December petition had argued, and ‘all our blind curates will be also dumb in a day’.9 As the first petition, of December, was rewarded with a Commons order for five itinerant ministers to preach in Wales on a roving commission, the question naturally arises as to the purposes of the second, February, one. As mentioned, and as Lloyd Bowen suggests, the parliamentary context is the drive against episcopacy; but the shift to sharpen the attack on bishops while back-pedalling on the evils of the prayer book, together with an added sprinkling of detail about curates’ stipends, suggests a different agenda, more in keeping with the interests of the petition’s principal sponsor, Sir Robert Harley. It is easy to predate a prevailing hostility in the House of Commons towards the prayer book. Suffice to say, by way of a general indication, that even as late as October 1641, ten months after the attack on it in the first Welsh petition, John Pym was still willing to defend its use against allegations by the king and his advisers that no bishop meant no prayer book.10 The outlook of the Harley circle of critics of the church hierarchy, which included 62

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beneficed ministers as well as those moving towards separatism, had before 1640 been partly conditioned by the problem of how best to utilise church livings to ensure an effective preaching ministry. In 1639, when the rectory of Presteigne was settled in the feoffees for impropriations, the view among Harley’s Welsh marcher circle was that ‘Those who minister in the church should of the church have wherewith they may live, as in ancient times those who laboured in the sanctuary did eat of the sanctuary, and those serving the altar did partake with the altar’.11 As one who enjoyed presentation rights to at least eight advowsons, Harley would more than most gentry proprietors have been more exercised by the issue of how to match livings with ministers, as the survey he commissioned of 193 Herefordshire livings in 1640–41 indicates.12 This concluded that, apart from a small concentration of preaching ministers in Harley’s own Welsh border country, there were no more than twenty ‘constant and conscionable preachers’ in the whole county, and that the ‘greatest cause of the scarcity of good ministers … [was] … the prelates’. Other causes of the spiritual malaise lay in the ministers who couldn’t or wouldn’t preach; the sins and wilful obstructions of the laity; the popery and greed of patrons; and the ‘useless’ and ‘devouring’ cathedrals. Warming to his theme, Harley’s surveyor, probably the minister of Brampton Bryan, Stanley Gower, described the cathedral service as ‘metamorphosing itself into strange gesticulations, crouching, ducking, shifting from place to place, from this side to that side, one blowing, another piping and fidling, others bellowing, some praying, the congregation a confusion’.13 But nowhere in the comprehensive indictment of the church in the marches in 1640 was a condemnation of liturgical texts, of either the Book of Common Prayer or any other book; and nowhere is the principle of itineracy advocated as either a panacea or an expedient to address the shortage of ministers. Out of this analytical approach to cataloguing the ills of the church sprang a delegation from both south and north Wales to wait on Parliament with the February 1641 petition, in which the prayer book was dropped from the list of offending objects. A few months later, one of Harley’s favoured ministers, Oliver Thomas of Oswestry, was suggesting names to his patron as nominees to be commissioners for disarming Roman Catholic recusants in Wales, indicating how under changing political priorities at Westminster the direction of remedial activity was being diverted away from parochial reform and towards a rather easier to manage crack-down on catholicism.14 Thomas, a published author in the Welsh language, provides us with a good example of how a minister might accommodate himself to the needs of a bilingual congregation: ‘The Lord hath opened in mercy a door for my ministry which no man hither unto hath shut. My manner is to make a brief repetition of the chief heads of my sermons in Welsh in the conclusion; when I so do, my countrymen keep the more silence and yield greater audience.’15 There was an honourable tradition among the marcher gentry of encouraging a preaching ministry in Welsh. Examples would include Sir Thomas Myddelton (d. 1631), 63

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father of the parliamentarian general of that name, who put his money where his mouth was, so to speak, by financing from London in 1630 a new printing of the Welsh Bible, which in some printings included the Book of Common Prayer; while Harley in 1641 sought a Welsh-language preacher to augment the provision of sermons at Llanbister, Radnorshire.16 There were of course other petitions emanating from Wales and the marches from other perspectives: one to the Commons in favour of restoring learning, suppressing recusancy and urging resistance by the ‘British nation’ to invasion by papists (February 1642), one from north Wales in favour of episcopacy (5 March) and one to Harley personally (also 5 March) from Herefordshire JPs, which took an optimistic view of reform of cathedrals and removing popery, urging the uniform use of the prayer book and a clamp-down on (protestant) sectaries, suggesting to us that in the Welsh marches the defence of the Book of Common Prayer could temporarily anyway have been a fulcrum of common ground on which the respective weight of pro- and anti-episcopal opinion could pivot.17 A Commons order of 9 April 1642 announced a general intention of reform in the government and liturgy of the church, but became rather more specific in its express plan to consult divines and appoint more learned and preaching ministers, including ‘in many dark corners’.18 The diaspora of the puritan activist ministers from Monmouthshire and Gower immediately before and upon the outbreak of civil war seemed to put an end to any immediate extension of reformed proselytising activity. The leaders of the group at Llanfaches, Monmouthshire, took themselves to Bristol, where they remained until the city surrendered to the royalists in July 1643, while their counterparts in Gower went further west in Wales or in some cases crossed the Atlantic to New England.19 The energies of patron gentry figures like Harley were diverted into creating the infrastructure for creating a military force to resist the king’s army; in Harley’s case into building the association of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire, in support of the earl of Stamford’s command under the earl of Essex.20 The association aspired to a military dominance in the Welsh counties, which it could not hope to grasp. Along with other MPs associated with puritan congregations of Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and the marches, including Oliver Cromwell, Harley opposed any moves towards peace with the king in the early stages of the war, and like John Pym was a consistent enemy to both the principles and the detail of the so-called Oxford peace proposals of 1643. From April 1644 Harley played a leading part in restructuring the association in support of the redoubtable parliamentarian garrison at Gloucester as a parliamentarian regional capital, so that while it aspired to include south Wales it could abandon Worcestershire as a safe county for the king. Harley’s deep interest in drafting the terms of these successive military associations can be viewed as a facet of his commitment to covenanting theology, incipient in his sympathy for those covenanting among themselves in the meetings in the marches on the eve of civil war, and given fuller 64

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expression in his enthusiasm for the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots. From June 1644 he was active in promoting the pronouncements of the Westminster assembly, in which he had inherited the layman’s seat initially taken by the now deceased Pym.

WALES AND PARLIAMENTARIAN RELIGIOUS POLITICS Harley’s engagement with the problem of reforming the Welsh church was re-energised by his efforts to advance the work of the assembly. Inevitably, so far as its deliberations addressed Welsh problems at all, the assembly was sympathetic towards the policy of a structured reform and augmentation of the parochial ministry, not towards itinerancy. It was a significant straw in the wind that almost as soon as the Westminster assembly first convened, and long before Thomas Edwards had begun his bitter compilations of the excesses of sectaries and independents, the assembled ministers denounced William Erbury, architect of the December 1640 petition. More promising for analysts in the Harley circle was the suggestion by the divines that ‘some collops’ (cutlets of meat) should be cut from dean and chapter resources ‘for cherishing of young scholars’. 21 Intermittently throughout 1644, the assembly was subjected to impatient interventions by the earl of Pembroke, a very significant proprietor in south-east Wales, on its perceived slow progress.22 It was the recruiting of Myddelton’s army to north Wales in February 1644 that first stimulated interest in specifically Welsh matters in the assembly, in the wake of a Commons request for encouragement by the divines for collections by London parishes.23 From April there were repeated calls from the Lords for work on the ‘Directory of worship’ to be completed, and by June Harley was active in mediating between the Houses and the assembly, drafting a narrative for consumption by the Scottish Parliament and general synod of the work of the bodies in London. Pressure by MPs and peers on the assembly to speed up their deliberations was matched by trenchant and resentful criticism of the Houses by elements of the assembled clergy. While demands for the speedy completion of the ‘Directory’ by presbyterian MPs such as Zouch Tate and Humphrey Salway intensified in the last quarter of 1644, the assembly in its turn began to cast aspersions on parliamentary committees, producing in September a list of twelve sins of Parliament, including its failure to make good promises to fund the ministry: summarised in John Lightfoot’s notes as ‘church lands not sold for the maintenance of ministers’.24 Against this background of deepening mutual recrimination and point-scoring, a substantial part of the ‘Directory’ was brought on 12 December by Harley from the assembly to the Commons, where his committee worked on it before he reported it to the House. On the same day, the Commons approved an order to translate the ‘Directory’ into Welsh, which was taken to the assembly a few days later by Francis Rous, an MP respected for his earlier metrical version of the Psalms.25 If the pace of their response is 65

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anything to go by, the divines gave Rous’s order a cool reception. They sat on it for two weeks before confirming they concurred with the order.26 Although Harley was busy promoting the ‘Directory’ in January 1645, the assembly allowed two whole months to elapse even before it commissioned a committee to find translators, and even then the committee was given no executive authority.27 When, on 17 April 1645, the ordinance to replace the prayer book with the completed ‘Directory’ in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales passed both Houses, there was no Welsh translation available to accompany the English language text.28 Perhaps from Harley’s particular perspective there was no urgency for it. There had been no immediate prospect in the winter of 1644–45 that the marches and south-east Wales would fall under parliamentarian authority, and the region was stalemated in the military politics of the Gloucester garrison, in which Herefordshire and Wales remained a frontier.29 Success further north had proved temporary. Troops of Sir Thomas Myddelton and Sir William Brereton famously entered Hawarden and Wrexham in December 1643, resulting in a significant episode of iconoclasm. In Hawarden church ‘the common prayer book was scattered up and down the chancel’, having been torn out of Bibles by soldiers who believed the Book of Common Prayer prefaced the Old Testament of the Bible. The English commentator put their actions down to sheer brutish ignorance; he is unlikely to have known that in the Welsh Bible of 1630, sponsored by Myddelton’s own father, the prayer book did in some printings indeed come before Genesis in the volume.30 But the military tide quickly turned, and north Wales reverted to royalist control. More progress by Parliament had been made in English-speaking south Pembrokeshire, by means of naval support, but even there by August 1644, Rowland Laugharne, the parliamentarian commander and client of the earl of Essex, had been forced back and confined to the towns of Pembroke and Tenby. At the height of his successes in April 1644, the covenant was not tendered to the populace because no instructions had been received on how to administer it. The south Pembrokeshire strongholds proved an adequate base for a later break-out, however, and by August 1645 Laugharne had retrieved enough territory to become de facto parliamentarian commander in south Wales.31 It was the tactics of the king that focused parliamentary minds on the problem of Wales. In the aftermath of Naseby, Charles went west to gather another force, and entered south-east Wales early in August 1645. According to a parliamentarian newspaper, he was there met with ‘a flat denial in the old British language’, but played on latent Scotophobia very effectively by alleging that Parliament intended to confiscate Welsh lands to bestow them on the Scots army around Hereford. Harley and Commons-men associated with the earl of Pembroke were required in response to write a ‘Declaration’ in rebuttal, adopted by both Houses in September, and three to four hundred copies of The King’s Cabinet Opened, Parliament’s own prized propaganda 66

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weapon, were sent down to south-east Wales with the ‘Declaration’.32 In the process by which the south Wales counties fell to Parliament, between October 1645 and February 1646, and indeed beyond, bad faith was in many respects pervasive, both in terms of concealed loyalties and in rhetoric, and the king’s canard about Welsh land forfeitures set the tone. The Glamorgan committee persuaded the Brecon men to come in on Parliament’s side by emphasising the king’s intention to impose on them ‘subjection to Rome and … intolerable slavery’. The Brecon men concurred – ‘our religion is principally aimed at’ – but when left to produce their own manifesto characterised themselves as fighting on the Pymian principles of 1642, ‘a defensive war for the protestant religion, the person and honour of the king, the privileges of Parliament and the liberty of subject’.33 These discussions were notionally under the auspices of Rowland Laugharne, whose Pembrokeshire committee was gloomily reporting to Parliament how it was encountering in the southwest ‘nothing but abhorring the national covenant’.34 But even while in the east the Glamorgan and Brecon men were bigging up the threat from popery in their stilted negotiations, and in the west the Pembrokeshire committee struggled to impose the covenant, Laugharne was conducting secret negotiations with Richard Vaughan, earl of Carbery, commissioned by the king in April 1643 as commander of south-west Wales. Laugharne began to press Carbery’s virtues on the Commons in November 1645, and much of the bumpy ride towards a complete acceptance in south Wales of parliamentary rule, including the south Walian dimension of the second civil war in 1648, can be attributed to the acceptance by Parliament in February 1646 of Laugharne’s blandishments on behalf of Carbery.35 The effects of this deal, clinched on the recommendation and active endorsement of the earl of Essex, can be seen in specific controversies around personal loyalties: for example, in the case of Philip Jones, leading counsellor of lord protector Cromwell, but dogged from the mid-1640s by questions stemming from his loyalty and probity early in the civil war; but also in broader questions of political and religious orientation. The Carbery–Laugharne axis hangs over the revolt of the so-called ‘peaceable army’ in Glamorgan in January– February 1646, the summer rising in Glamorgan in 1647 and support in south Wales for Laugharne’s part in the second civil war in May 1648.36 In all three of these episodes, rejection of the covenant and the ‘Directory’ was a common theme, articulated with clarity by the peaceable army in February 1646: ‘The common prayer book hath been commonly traduced and several Sundays omitted in Cardiff, which we apprehend as a forerunner of its final rejection had some their desires, and were we not resolved by the help of God to continue it and be a means whereby we and our ancestors have received much comfort.’37 They voiced a fear that the covenant, recently tendered as they had heard in the Carbery territory of Carmarthenshire, would soon be visited upon them. The atavistic tone of support for the prayer book in Cardiff is no better 67

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exemplified than in the career of the ‘peaceable army’ leader, Edward Carne.38 It is encountered across a range of locations and confrontations elsewhere in Wales, so it is worth entering a few remarks here about that text. The Westminster assembly heard in 1644 how ‘all the west are exceedingly devoted to this booke’, and John Lewis, the author of The Parliament explained to Wales, compared it to another false god, Dagon of the Philistines.39 The exiguous corpus of Welsh-language publishing before 1660 (only 108 different titles in total, over 113 years) is well known, but there was a printed translation of the prayer book available from 1567, some twenty years before William Morgan’s translation of the Bible came to the press. There were new printings of the 1588 Welsh Bible in 1620 and 1630, and a New Testament in 1646. Another milestone was reached in 1621 with the publication of Edmwnd Prys’s translation of the Psalms into a Welsh metrical form, but it is the six different printings of the prayer book down to 1640 that stand out in these scanty statistics.40 Any attempt by Parliament to construct in Wales a confessional state along reformed protestant lines would need to take account of this deep-seated devotion to parish church and prayer book. Survivalism was a powerful instinct among lay adherents of the prayer book; and survivalism was evident too among the scattered royalist clergy. In studies of the radical Welsh Saints, the significance of networking has long been appreciated. But much less observed is the networking among the royalist clergy underground after 1645. An insight into royalist networking survives in the unpublished letters of Thomas Bassett, vicar of Llantrisant, ten miles northwest of Cardiff. Bassett was a royalist ultra, detained in Cardiff for his part in the 1647 disturbances. From Cardiff castle, with the connivance of a range of local parliamentarians, including Philip Jones, with whom he claimed kinship, and the wife of sheriff Bussy Mansel, whose ‘profuse liberality to royal prisoners’ he acknowledged, Bassett kept in touch with Hugh Lloyd, future bishop of Llandaff, and Brian Duppa, bishop of Salisbury. Bassett was able to pass on news of Gilbert Sheldon, and to ask even in those straitened circumstances for fresh ordinations and new curates, appealing to Duppa as a fellow son of ‘mother Oxford’.41 And while Bassett was free to maintain correspondence with the episcopal hierarchy from his quarters at Cardiff castle, further west Jeremy Taylor was beginning a productive career as a writer of devotional works at Golden Grove under the protection of Carbery, to whom he dedicated both Holy living and Holy dying. Episcopal ordination was apparently still taking place at Brecon in 1648.42 Even local elites in the service of Parliament could not be relied upon to introduce the covenant and ‘Directory’, therefore, and by the time that Parliament was able to command across the whole of the dominion, which was not until Harlech castle fell in March 1647, it was evident that the idea of a Welsh translation of the ‘Directory’ was a dead letter. Without a policy steer focused on all Wales, progress towards a ‘preaching ministry’ in the dominion was fragmentary, localised and subject to dilution through local 68

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deals. But from the perspective of a Westminster reformer like Harley, other means of enhancing and invigorating the parochial ministry were to hand. From December 1642, the most prominent and certainly the most enduring instrument for tuning the pulpit to the liking of the House of Commons was its own Committee for Plundered Ministers (CPM), established from the outset with no representatives of the House of Lords. A modern authority has calculated that nearly eighty per cent of cases considered before October 1643 lay in London and the Home Counties.43 The most the committee could do was to order a sequestration against a clergyman; it could not enforce or supervise the action against an individual without co-operation from a local agency. It is doubtful whether the CPM had any effect on Wales before 1645, simply because Parliament’s writ did not yet run there. As late as the period July 1645 to March 1646 only one order, relating to Cardiganshire, is recorded in the series of redacted and restructured versions of the order books that survive, and even between May and November 1646, a period of temporary military and political stability in Wales, there were six orders for Cardiganshire, two for Breconshire, three for Carmarthenshire, two each for Denbighshire and Flintshire, to set alongside forty-five orders for Derbyshire, forty-six for Lincolnshire and sixty-four for Essex.44 But, despite the very modest totals, this was a start, and the range of CPM responses to parish problems, visible in English counties, was present in Welsh ones too. So ejected ministers’ families were granted fifths (e.g. Hawarden, Flintshire, August 1646); delinquent royalists’ fines were applied to support named ministers (e.g. Monmouthshire, May 1646, or Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, November 1646) and a watchful eye was kept on re-intrusions by ejected clergy, with the help of sympathetic ministers or their families (e.g. St Florence, Pembrokeshire, August 1646).45 Two features perhaps strike one as peculiar to the situation in Wales. One is the number of CPM orders made to sequester delinquent clergy or lay impropriators, but without a corresponding order for a named clerical beneficiary. Thus many provisional orders were made simply on the strength of intelligence about the size of the cure (e.g. Llanddewibrefi, Cardiganshire, December 1646, six hundred communicants, or Lledrod in the same county, same month, eighty communicants), reserving for future consideration any ministerial appointment.46 Sometimes the CPM was even willing to concede the principle of itineracy, as when resources were sequestered from the bishop of St David’s in July 1646 in the two Glamorgan parishes of Llandeilo Talybont and Reynoldston, and were deployed for ‘a godly orthodox divine … to preach and catechize and instruct in several churches and chapels within the said county’.47 The second noticeable feature was the handful of CPM orders in 1647 confirming certificates of ministers by the Westminster assembly. These seem particularly to have applied to mid-Wales parishes in Montgomeryshire and its borders with Denbighshire and Cardiganshire, with a couple for Caernarfonshire and Merioneth, and doubtless relate to the 69

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military advances by Sir Thomas Myddelton and Thomas Mytton in the last phase of the civil war in Wales. In these parishes, ministers were already in place to ‘preach, catechize and instruct’.48 One can only wonder whether Harley, observing the instability of politics and religion in south Wales and the marches, would have recalled one of his client ministers’ remarks to him in July 1641, ‘If the care or provision for us be committed to our Welsh parliamentary knights and burgesses our hopes are gone’.49 The withdrawal or expulsion of royalist Welsh MPs had severely depleted the ranks of those at Westminster representing Welsh seats. Between December 1645 and the end of August 1647, writs were moved for by-elections in twenty-one Welsh constituencies.50 The first three elections ordered, on the same day in December 1645, were for Pembrokeshire, Cardiff Boroughs and Brecon.51 This order was born of over-confidence in the Commons. The Pembrokeshire election took place within a month or so of the order, but the instability in the south-east that I have described ensured that it was seven months before an election could be held at Cardiff, and it took fourteen months to fill the Brecon seat. Due process in the ‘recruiter’ elections for Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire was less irregular, four seats being filled in April and August 1646, each after a two-month interval after the writ. During the summer of 1646 there was an interval before fresh elections were held for the constituencies made safe by Myddelton and Mytton in mid- and north Wales. It was at this point, in August 1646, that John Lewis published Contemplations on these times, or, the Parliament explained to Wales. This is unique as an unofficial discursive political text to be addressed to the Welsh people on behalf of Parliament during the civil war; but whose view of Parliament, and which Wales? Dedicated to Harley, Myddelton and John Glynne, the Welsh-born recorder of Westminster, the book not only was a manifesto on behalf of reformers focused on improving the parochial ministry, preserving tithes and property rights in advowsons and impropriations, but was by its timing as well as its dedication a manifesto on behalf of the political presbyterians, seeking to halt the inroads into Welsh seats by independents in Cardiff and Cardigan. It was on religious policy that Lewis made much of his pitch, beginning with a frank acknowledgement of the common opinion that the appearance of the English-language ‘Directory’ in Wales ‘was as if the Parliament had bestowed 40,000 men upon the king’.52 But he argues away scruples that might be held against the covenant, and addressed specifically the atavistic aspects of devotion to the prayer book. Lewis describes it as like an old Welsh house, an object of familial piety and sentimental attachment but now unsuitable for modern living and due for replacement. Having thus condemned the prayer book as outmoded, Lewis sidesteps the detail of a successor liturgy altogether, seizing instead on the providential signs of God’s favour to the Welsh, which include (with suspect logic), the survival of the Welsh language, so that the gospel could be preached in Welsh to the people: God’s goodness in allowing the Welsh now 70

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to accept the dispensations of Parliament, despite their wilful earlier adherence to the king; and the spread of preaching in Wales, not by itinerants but by men like the CPM-approved minister at Llangurig, Montgomeryshire, ‘a place heretofore noted for untowardness’.53 At the point that Lewis launched his book, Harley was busy trying to place his own candidates in Herefordshire seats to halt the independent menace, working hard with Edward Massie to move writs for marcher seats, and co-operating with the CPM to secure the augmentation of parochial livings in the territories where he had influence, such as north-west Herefordshire and towns like Leominster. A correspondent of Harley’s dismissed one of their electoral opponents as moved by ‘neither the desire [for] the setting up the kingdom of Xt nor advancement of the public good, both which he hath much talked on and but talked only’.54 As chairman of the privileges committee, which dealt with disputed elections, Harley enjoyed a potential advantage over his independent opponents in the management of the recruiter elections, and he threw himself into campaigning with gusto, buying two hundred copies of the ‘Directory’, five hundred orders against superstitious ministers and one hundred ordinances for better observation of the Lord’s Day.55 He was successful in securing his candidates in Herefordshire, Hereford and Weobley, and in Wales (in due course), in Radnorshire and new Radnor.56 It was against this background of electoral and political competition and literary efforts to influence by-elections in Wales that the independent interest secured a coup in July 1646 by pushing through an ordinance to send three noted independent Welsh ministers, Walter Cradock, Richard Symonds and Henry Walter, to Wales as itinerant preachers, thus reviving the strategy championed by the radicals in the early 1640s. The same day, the presbyterians responded with an instruction to Glynne to bring in an order to settle a preaching ministry in north Wales, which he was to deliver through a standing committee, preponderantly of north Walians, with authority over county committees, to which petitions from the southern counties of Brecon and Radnor were pointedly referred. The Lords asked the Westminster assembly to approve the itinerants, as due process demanded, but two had already left for Wales, and for months a series of futile orders passed between the Houses and the assembly, to the loud echo of stable doors being belatedly slammed.57 The episode duly appeared in Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena, as part of what has been called the presbyterian ‘campaign of vilification of non-presbyterians in general and the army in particular’.58 For Edwards the order to despatch the three itinerants was sinister evidence that more itinerants would be appointed by the Independents, and he was surely right. When the army exacted its revenge on the leading presbyterian MPs in 1647, Harley’s son, Edward, was targeted as one of the eleven members because of his conduct as colonel of a new model regiment, but the taint of the Carbery–Laugharne pact in south Wales vividly coloured army perceptions of the Harleys’ by-election campaigns: ‘Look on all south Wales and you will 71

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hardly hear of a man there that serves in the House, but have either been made by delinquents or have been commissioners of array or otherwise assisting the king.’59 From April 1647, when the army first denounced Edward Harley, until December 1648, when Pride’s purge completed the job of destroying the presbyterian interest in Parliament, and ended Sir Robert Harley’s public career, the conventional narrative records the advances of the independent vision of an itinerant preaching ministry, with all that that implies by way of downgrading the regular administration of religious ordinances and catechising. The second civil war did nothing to assist the cause: an enemy of Harley’s mischievously attributed the 1648 revolt in Wales to a presbyterian plot.60 But some comfort could be taken by champions of the Welsh parochial ministry in 1647–48. Steady numbers coming before the CPM have already been mentioned. Surviving presentation deeds record a handful of clergy appointed by the parliamentary commissioners of the great seal in Glamorgan in 1645–46 to benefices where the earl of Leicester was patron; there may have been more.61 In collaboration with the earl of Pembroke, Harley oversaw in June 1647 production of a new great seal for south Wales, which would have provided a fresh instrument for appointing to livings.62 Quarter sessions and the circuits of the Welsh great sessions were thereby re-established, and Harley made sure his clients rode the circuits. In March 1648 he waved one of them off on his journey to south Wales with the injunction ‘please not to make [your] authority reflect on the worthy ministers which God for your encouragement in his work hath placed amongst you’.63 Thomas Edwards’s denunciations notwithstanding, the assembly began to take a more indulgent view of Welsh itinerants. It finally approved Walter Cradock in August 1647, perhaps taking into consideration that Cradock was known to have encouraged the taking of the covenant. Perhaps the ‘Mr Lloyd’ it approved in May was Morgan Llwyd, Cradock’s former protégé, by that time established in Wrexham, where Cradock himself had once preached. These approvals were part of a general relaxation of the rules by the assembly, not one specific to Wales; later that year, Richard Baxter was approved without needing to attend.64 Legislation in support of godly ministers, which made re-intrusion by ejected clergy an offence at common law, which gave JPs the authority to enforce tithe-paying and gave the CPM further supervisory powers, was passed in August.65 And almost surreptitiously, and certainly with no fanfares, work on the Shropshire presbyterian classis reached fruition on 29 April 1647, when it was published as the work of the bicameral committee working on criteria for exclusions from the Lord’s supper. The details were issued under the hand of the Speaker of the Lords, the earl of Manchester, but whether it ever properly passed the Houses as an ordinance seems questionable. This divided the county into six classes, based on parishes, with ministers and lay elders. The second classis included Oswestry, Llanymynech and Llanyblodwel, and the ministers 72

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included Harley’s long-standing intelligencer, Oliver Thomas. This brought presbytery to the frontier, as no classes were ever constructed, even in blueprint form, further west. It also brought presbytery to a metaphorical frontier in terms of theological orthodoxy, since the lists proposed as elders laymen whose presbyterian affinities were suspect, like Thomas Baker of Sweeney Hall, patron of the very un-presbyterian Vavasor Powell.66 The fourth Shropshire classis is known to have extended its jurisdiction into the English region of Flintshire. Philip Henry entered his living of Worthenbury, Flintshire, in September 1653, and sought to be ordained there, but was obliged by the classis to be examined in Prees, Shropshire, 15 miles away, over the border in England. His fellow examinees included a Denbighshire cleric. Henry served four years in Worthenbury before ordination. The fourth classis was active in ordaining clergy over the thirteen years of its life, inducting some sixty-three ministers into their calling, and sustaining a presbyterian ministry of a wholly English-language character in English Flintshire.67 English presbytery pushed a finger into this north-eastern corner of Wales. Other advances in the interests of the reformed parish ministry smack of compromise and concession, but even so they should not be dismissed. Even under the Rump Parliament, the June ordinance for preaching ministers across England and Wales validated the continuation of first fruits and tenths, allocated £18,000 to augment livings and commissioned surveys of livings with a view to rationalising their size and resources. The surveys were undertaken in Wales, records in whole or in part surviving for the counties of Anglesey, Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire. The Pembrokeshire survey of 1650 revealed that seventeen of the forty-nine beneficed ministers in the county owed their appointments to the CPM. But there were 156 parishes in Pembrokeshire, 108 with no minister at all, bare statistics which vindicate the clamorous demand for itinerants, made once again in Pembrokeshire in 1649 by Hugh Peter, which was soon afterwards enshrined in the 1650 propagation act. The shortfall of ministers made the expedient of rationalising parish boundaries, the remedy the surveys were intended to further, completely inadequate as a solution.68

CONCLUSION: WALES AND THE RELIGIOUS POLITICS OF THE 1650S In addressing the proposition that reform of the Welsh church from 1640 took the form of two separate impulses, one towards augmenting and developing the settled parochial ministry, the other towards the creation of a ‘first-aid’ cadre of mobile preachers, this chapter has been an attempt to trace the tortuous history of the former endeavour. It is the story of Harley, not of Cromwell; the history of parliamentary committees and presbyterians, not the more swashbuckling and appealing history of great communicators in Welsh and English like Morgan Llwyd or Hugh Peter, or liberty-loving antinomians 73

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like William Erbury. Despite having the advantage over their independent rivals for much of the time, in terms of access to the parliamentary legislative and administrative machine, the presbyterians made mistakes. One was the failure to produce a translation of the ‘Directory’, which might have helped overcome the perception that it was an alien imposition. However, the ‘Directory’, as its title rather implies, was a handbook for the clergy, not a replacement liturgical text for the laity, so parallels with the prayer book are limited, as were perhaps the consequences of a text in English only.69 A more serious miscalculation was the willingness of MPs to back Laugharne in his pact with Carbery, which had repercussions for the whole of Wales, not just for the affected region. To set against this, there were effective CPM interventions and there was a settled orthodox ministry in better shape in Wales in 1655 than it had been in 1640. But the high political events which saw the state veer away from a supported, classical presbyterian ministry in favour of a looser, more tolerant structure that was slow to crystallise into the church structure of the Cromwellian protectorate was most decisive in determining the complexion of religious life in 1650s Wales. The impact of the 1650 act for propagating the gospel in Wales, which was rooted in the principles of independency, has been analysed at length elsewhere. It cast a long shadow over the confessional spectrum in Wales during Commonwealth and Protectorate. Itineracy and the gathering of churches, the essential principles of the propagation act, left a suspect legacy in terms of legitimacy, as well as in the better-studied field of secular public discourse. The minister of Presteigne, Radnorshire, was petitioned against in 1655 as one who ‘came not in at the right door as true shepherd’ by presentation deed, but by appointment of the ‘late propagators of the gospel’.70 Most of the ministers to achieve fame or notoriety in 1650s Wales were either, like William Erbury and Morgan Llwyd, inclined to reject church structures or, like Walter Cradock and Vavasor Powell, given to express themselves in lukewarm terms concerning ecclesiastical governance. It was Powell, according to his first biographer, who insisted that ‘speaking words, maintaining opinions, and the outward performing of duties, and partaking of ordinances are but the least things in religion’.71 In the ecclesiological experience of the 1650s, some continuities of frustration from the 1640s are immediately visible. In 1641 Stanley Gower had proposed that two Welsh cathedrals, one in the north, one in the south, be converted into colleges to train ministers. In The Parliament explained to Wales, John Lewis repeated the call for ‘some solemn places in Wales for the profession of the more necessary kind of arts and good literature’; and revisited the suggestion in 1657 in correspondence with Richard Baxter, which revealed that the energetic Worcestershire minister had been pursuing the same idea for a decade.72 The idea of a Welsh ministerial training college was essentially a presbyterian one, its failure to reach fruition a casualty of the dead ends and unfulfilled aspirations outlined earlier in this chapter. There appear to have been no ministerial 74

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associations in Wales until the late 1650s, either along classical presbyterian lines or according to Baxterian principles, such as were established earlier in the decade in, for example, Worcestershire and Devon. Not until October 1658, after the succession of Richard Cromwell, did twenty ministers in the southern Welsh marches come together to form an association in defence of uniform public ordinances and to encourage clerical ordinations.73 A parallel body began to form in north Wales in the same year.74 It is intriguing that until then the confessional grouping to achieve most by way of association in 1650s Wales was that of the baptist congregations. Like the presbyterians of north-east Wales, the baptist mission sprang from English roots, in this case the City of London congregation meeting at Glaziers’ Hall, Broad St. Situated in half a dozen locations stretching across south Wales from Hay-on-Wye in the east to Carmarthen in the west, the 1650s Welsh baptists espoused beliefs and practices on common ground with presbyterians, and maintained a separate identity from others, ‘not mixt with Independents’.75 Calvinist theology, recognition of a state-approved ministry, closed communion, the appointment of elders and deacons, the singing of psalms and the disciplining of members including by temporary or permanent excommunication were all aspects of the south Wales baptist ecclesiology in the 1650s.76 At Ilston, in Gower, they met in the parish church. One Sunday a month the members heard prayers and prophesyings successively in English and Welsh for two hours, then the public were admitted to hear a sermon in Welsh, followed by communion for church members.77 The leader of the movement, John Miles, wrote an anti-quaker tract, An antidote against the infection of the times (1656), as vehement as anything by Baxter. Were these the legatees of one of the strands of that early bifurcation of reforming ambitions in the Long Parliament, moved by the conviction in an unstructured religious landscape that ‘order is never far removed from fellowship’?78 In his magisterial survey of the workings of the act for the propagation of the gospel in Wales, Thomas Richards remarked on the ‘thoroughly English’ character of its origins and administration.79 Essentially the same point could be made about the missionary character of what little presbytery there was in Wales in the 1650s, and about the baptist movement, which in south Wales assumed the mantle that presbyterianism never took up. The victory of the independents in the political coup of 1648–49 ensured that church polity in Wales in the 1640s and 1650s remained a case of arrested development. Any student of the printed literature of 1650s Wales and its aftermath will be struck by the ferocity of the polemic between ‘propagators’ like Vavasor Powell or their bitterest enemies, spokesmen for the royalist clergy like Alexander Griffiths or (later) John Walker, but a calmer note is struck by a more dispassionate observer, Richard Baxter, who noted how in Wales, after the ejections and the subsequent regime of itinerant preachers, most of the parish churches had in fact fallen into disuse. As the number of itinerants was small, perhaps one to every six or eight parishes, the people publicly 75

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worshipped God once in six or eight weeks only. Baxter’s observations were borne out by others. In north-east Wales, Wrexham, the eyrie of Morgan Llwyd, was exceptional as a centre of zealous protestantism; elsewhere in the district, ‘there is not a sarmon or prayres some times in 5, 6 or 7 weekes to gether’.80 Alexander Griffiths, the self-appointed scourge of Vavasor Powell, noted in 1654 how ‘you may ride ten or twenty miles on the Lords Day, where there is twenty churches, and not one door opened’.81 It has been the contention of this chapter that much of this failure to address the problems of the Welsh church lay in the political defeat at Westminster of the presbyterian project, which from early in the Long Parliament had struggled in contention with an alternative vision which crystallised into independency. The consequence was the failure to establish a viable alternative to prayer book, bishops and church courts. In those circumstances, as Baxter drily asked his readers, ‘had not a liturgy been better than nothing?’82

NOTES 1 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. C. L. Stainer (Oxford, 1901), pp. 97–8. I am grateful to Judith Maltby, Sarah Ward Clavier and other members of the Religion in the British Isles 1400–1700 seminar, Oxford, for comments on a paper I gave there in 2014 on this topic. 2 J. Gwynfor Jones, ‘The growth of puritanism, c. 1559–1662’, in A. P. F. Sell (ed.), The great ejectment of 1662: its antecedents, aftermath and ecumenical significance (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012). See also, for example, G. H. Jenkins, Protestant dissenters in Wales, 1639–1662 (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press, 1991), for a valuable survey of the historiography. 3 The classic text is G. F. Nuttall, The Welsh saints, 1640–1660 (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press, 1957). 4 C. Hill, ‘Puritans and “the dark corners of the land”’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 13 (1963), 77–102; C. Hill, ‘Propagating the gospel’, in H. E. Bell and R. L. Ollard (eds), Historical essays, 1600–1750, presented to David Ogg (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963), pp. 36–43, brought together under the title of the former essay in C. Hill, Change and continuity in seventeenth century England (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 3–47. 5 Hill, Change and continuity, p. 35. 6 S. K. Roberts, ‘Propagating the gospel in Wales: the making of the 1650 Act’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, new series, 9 (2004), 53–71; L. Bowen, ‘Wales and religious reform in the Long Parliament 1640–42’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, new series, 12 (2005), 36–59. 7 Bowen, ‘Wales and religious reform’, 58. 8 BL, Additional MS 70002; BL Add. MS 70109, misc. 59; BL Harleian MS 4931, fo. 90. 9 BL, Harl. 4931, fo. 90. 10 CJ, II, pp. 789b–790a; BL, Add. MS 18777, fo. 17. 76

‘One of the least things in religion’ 11 Brampton Bryan Hall, Harley MSS, 8/40/2. 12 Draft biography of Sir Robert Harley by S. K. Roberts, History of Parliament, the House of Commons 1640–1660, forthcoming; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 206. 13 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 206, fos 8v, 10. 14 BL, Add. MS 70106, fo. 155. 15 BL, Add. MS 70106, fo. 156; O. Thomas, Car-wr Y Cymru (1631). 16 Y Bibl Cyssegr-lan (1630); BL, Add. MS 70062 (Harley to Mr Hazzard), 7 October 1641. 17 To the honourable court the House of Commons (1642); [Sir Thomas Aston], A collection of sundry petitions (1642), pp. 27–9; HMC, The manuscripts of his grace the duke of Portland, preserved at Welbeck Abbey (1894), III, p. 85. 18 BL, Add. MS 70081, fo. 9. 19 T. Richards, History of the puritan movement in Wales, 1639 to 1653 (National Eisteddfod Association, London, 1920), p. 34; Glamorgan Archives, D/DF L/8; S. John, ‘Croesi’r Iwerydd’, in J. G. Jones (ed.), Agweddau ar Dwf Piwritaniaeth yng Nghymru yn yr Ail Ganrif ar Bymtheg (Lewiston / Queenston / Llanbedr Pont Steffan, 1992), pp. 48–51. 20 S. K. Roberts, ‘Sir Robert Harley’, in History of Parliament, the House of Commons, 1640–1660, forthcoming. 21 Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 9, 57. 22 Ibid., pp. 126, 128, 129, 130, 242. 23 Ibid., p. 181. 24 Ibid., pp. 309–10, 337, 339; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 68–70, 78. 25 CJ, III, p. 722a; Add. 31116, p. 358; Lightfoot, Journal, p. 342. 26 MWPA, III, pp. 480n, 490. 27 CJ, IV, pp. 7b, 9b, 10a; MWPA, III, p. 553. 28 CJ, IV, p. 114a. 29 S. K. Roberts, ‘How the west was won: parliamentary politics, religion and the military in South Wales, 1642–9’, Welsh History Review, 21:4 (2003), 653–7. 30 A collection of original letters and papers, ed. T. Carte, 2 vols (1739), I, p. 32. 31 Roberts, ‘How the west was won’, p. 661. 32 The Scotish Dove, 95 (8–15 August 1645), p. 749; CJ, IV, pp. 242b, 264b, 265a, 266a, 267a; A declaration of the Lords and Commons (1645, BL Thomason Tracts 669. f.9.45); Roberts, ‘How the west was won’, pp. 658–9. 33 NLW, Tredegar MS 105/134, 135; A declaration of the gentlemen and inhabitants of the county of Brecknock (6 December 1645). 34 Quoted in T. S. Williams, ‘Richard Vaughan, second earl of Carbery’ (MA Thesis, University of Wales, 1936), p. 177. 35 The earle of Carberyes pedegree (1646); TNA, C 108/188, petition against Carbery, c. 1660; TNA, C 108/188, Rowland Laugharne to Speaker, 18 November 1645; Williams, ‘Carbery’, 178; Roberts, ‘How the west was won’, p. 662. 36 For an introduction to these episodes, C. M. Thomas, ‘The civil wars in Glamorgan’, in G. Williams (ed.), Glamorgan county history vol. IV: Early modern Glamorgan (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 257–78. 37 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Nalson V, fos 235, 239. 38 S. K. Roberts, ‘Carne, Edward’, ODNB. 77

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 39 MWPA, III, p. 433; J. Lewis, Contemplations upon these times, or, the Parliament explained to Wales (1646), p. 22. 40 G. H. Jenkins, Literature, religion and society in Wales 1660–1730 (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press, 1978), p. 34. 41 Cardiff City Library, MS 1.223, reverse pagination, pp. 1, 10–12, 17–21, 21–6, 26–9, 30–1, 36–9. 42 National Library of Wales, MS 201160C, p. 161. 43 The Suffolk committees for scandalous ministers 1644–1646, ed. C. Holmes (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society xiii, 1970), 12, n. 6. 44 Bodl., MS Bodl. 322, 323. 45 BL, Add. MS 15670, fos 173v, 211v; TNA, SP 22/1, fos 65v, 128. 46 TNA, SP 22/1, fos 147, 147v. 47 TNA, SP 22/1, fo. 69v. 48 BL, Add. MS 15671, fos 29, 41v, 51v, 58v, 67, 164v, 222v. 49 BL, Add. MS 70106, fo. 155. 50 CJ, IV, p. v. 51 CJ, IV, pp. 366a. 52 Lewis, Contemplations, p. 9. 53 Ibid., pp. 24, 26–30. 54 BL, Add. MS 70005, 3rd foliation, fo. 42 (Edward Massie to Edward Harley); BL, Add. MS 70058 (John Flackett to Edward Harley, 6 June 1646). 55 BL, Add. MS 70068, stationer’s bill, 9 September 1646. 56 Details will be found in The history of Parliament: the House of Commons 1640– 1660, forthcoming. 57 LJ, VIII, pp. 454a, 541a; CJ, VI, pp. 622a; MPWA, IV, pp. 232, 327, 336, 337, 440, 441. 58 Thomas Edwards, The third part of Gangraena (1646), p. 131 (Exeter: The Rota, 1977); A. Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 366–7. 59 The Clarke Papers, II (Camden Soc. new series, liv, London, 1894), p. 157. 60 BL, Add. MS 70006, fo. 23. 61 Lambeth Palace Library, MS Comm. I, fos 25, 29, 70–2, 110–12. 62 CJ, V, p. 220b; LJ, IX, p. 419a; HMC Portland, III, pp. 102, 161. 63 BL, Add. MS 70062 (Sir Robert Harley to Bennet Hoskins, 21 March 1648). 64 MWPA, IV, pp. 526, 527, 681, 717. 65 A&O, I, pp. 999–1000. 66 The severall divisions and persons for classicall presbyteries in the county of Salop (1647); R. Gough, The history of Myddle, ed. D. Hey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p. 160. 67 Matthew Henry, An account of the life and death of Mr Philip Henry (1698), p. 35; Diaries and letters of Philip Henry M.A., ed. M. H. Lee (1882), p. 37; Richards, Religious developments, pp. 161–76. 68 A&O, II, pp. 142–8; Roberts, ‘Propagating the gospel’. 69 J. Maltby, ‘“Extravagencies and impertinencies”: set forms, conceived and extempore prayer in revolutionary England’, in N. Mears and A. Ryrie (eds), Worship and the parish church in early modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 226–9. 70 BL, Add. MS 70123 (Francis Rickards to Edward Harley, 16 November 1655). 78

‘One of the least things in religion’ 71 Walter Cradock, The saints fulnesse of joy (1646), p. 33; Walter Cradock, Glad tydings, from heaven (1648), pp. 26–31; Walter Cradock, Gospel-libertie (1648), p. 111; Edward Bagshaw, Life and death of Mr Vavasor Powell (1671), p. 34. 72 Corpus Christi MS 206, fo. 12v; Lewis, Contemplations, 32; G. F. Nuttall, ‘The correspondence of John Lewis, Glasgrug, with Richard Baxter and with Dr John Ellis, Dolgelley’, Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society, II (1953–54), 120–34; S. K. Roberts, ‘Lewis, John’, ODNB. 73 BL, Add. MS 70007, fo. 137. 74 Henry, An Account, pp. 59–61. 75 NLW, MS 21160C, p. 160. 76 B. R. White, ‘John Miles and the structures of the Calvinistic baptist mission to South Wales, 1649–1660’, in M. John (ed.), Welsh baptist studies (Cardiff: South Wales Baptist College, 1976), 35–76; The Ilston book: earliest register of Welsh baptists, ed. B. G. Owens (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1996). 77 The Ilston book, pp. 21, 27–8. 78 G. F. Nuttall, Visible saints: the congregational way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), p. 94. 79 Richards, Puritan movement, p. 93. 80 Flintshire Record Office, D/G/3276 (John Peck to Sir John Trevor, 4 October 1651). I owe this reference to the kindness of Sarah Ward Clavier. 81 Alexander Griffiths, Strena Vavasoriensis (1654), p. 5 (Cardiff: Cymdeithas Llên Cymru reprint, 1915); see also L. Bowen, ‘“This murmuring and unthankful peevish land”: Wales and the Protectorate’, in P. Little (ed.), The Cromwellian Protectorate (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 150–3. 82 Richard Baxter, Catholick communion defended (1684), p. 28.

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Chapter 5

Polity, discipline and theology: the importance of the covenant in Scottish presbyterianism, 1560–c. 1700 R. Scott Spurlock

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hilst some of the chapters in this volume focus on conceptions of church government and the use of the keys, the present chapter will discuss early modern Scottish presbyterian understandings of ecclesiology and who was understood to be the subject of the keys. A number of recent studies have demonstrated the fluidity of polity in seventeenth-century Britain, which is important, but the root issue underpinning the discourses and disputes were fundamentally ecclesiological.1 In this respect, ecclesiology is a necessary starting point for understanding polity and discipline in the Scottish Kirk, as well as where and why it differed from fellow Reformed traditions in Britain and its empire. From the Reformation in Scotland the idea of covenant served an essential function, not just for the development of a theological tradition but for defining the Church of Scotland as based upon a covenant between God and the nation. Although this arguably represented the most ambitious ecclesiological formulation of any Reformed tradition, it resulted in disappointment and led to a shift towards an internalised and personally experienced interpretation of covenant in Scottish protestantism.

THE COVENANT IN THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION When John Knox wrote his Apellation to the nobility in 1558 he identified the nation as an essential unit of the visible church, because, like the people of Israel, God covenanted with people in corporate units ranging in scope from city to nation.2 This concept came to serve as the bedrock of Reformed ecclesiology in Scotland – until 1661. Although David Mullan has argued ‘The problem with Knox is that he had already, even if unwittingly, embraced two distinct covenanting ideas: one, a national, corporate, sociological construct absent from Calvin, the other very much focused on the individual salvation of those elected to grace from eternity’, it was in fact directly from Calvin that Knox inherited his ecclesiology.3 80

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Whilst the covenantal underpinnings of Calvin’s ecclesiology are not often emphasised, they played an important underlying principle in Geneva. Calvin made this explicitly clear in the preface of his 1538 catechism, defining the exemplary relationship between God and a people to be found in the covenants made under the kings Josiah and Asa, and upheld by Ezra and Nehemiah. He rooted this in the peoples’ promise to ‘walk after the Lord’ by which ‘men are constrained to keep God’s law’ and because of this ‘the Lord has charge over them’. Through this process, Calvin proclaimed the church in Geneva to be a covenanted people: ‘For we are the mediators of the covenant which the Lord, when he promised it through Jeremiah, declares will be inviolable’.4 In his commentary on Romans, written in 1539 while in exile in Strasbourg, Calvin spoke of God making a covenant with a nation – the ‘general election’ of a people.5 This general election, however, is not to be confused with ‘that second election’, which he elsewhere calls the ‘firm effectual’ election to salvation, or special election, but instead he argues the latter takes place from among those within a corporate, general election.6 For this reason, Peter Lillback argues that Calvin’s idea of a general election is equivalent to God corporately covenanting with a people.7 The question that arises is to whom Calvin believed this external covenanting applied. Despite never going so far as claiming Geneva to be a visible church, he subjected the entire population to ecclesiastical discipline and – from 1536 – baptism, equating it to an outward sign of allegiance.8 In Scotland, however, the link between nation and visible church became far more explicit. The Reformed order of baptism established in Scotland in 1561 understood the sacrament as sealing ‘the league and covenant made betweene God and us, that he will be our God, and we his people’.9 Knox’s interpretation of who should be included among God’s people and thus eligible for baptism depended heavily on Calvin. In a letter from Calvin to Knox in 1559 he implored the Scots not to limit baptism only to the children of the godly. Knox had been hesitant to baptise children of the ungodly and excommunicates; however, Calvin advised him that the blessing of God’s covenant promises ‘is extended to a thousand generations’. Calvin continued: ‘wherever the profession of Christianity has not wholly perished or become extinct … no one is received to baptism in respect or favour of his father alone, but on account of the perpetual covenant of God’.10 Hence the right to baptism was community-based rather than parentally based. Since Scotland had long professed Christian faith, baptism marked every Scottish child’s covenant status, at least externally, just as circumcision marked that of every Jewish boy. This belief in being a chosen, covenanted people was embedded from the outset of the Scottish Reformation and was explicitly reiterated in 1581 when the nation ­– through the king’s subscription as well as all those in public office – ‘covenanted’ in the Negative Confession to uphold their obligations to right religion.11 These events represented the political expression of a theological presupposition that Scotland shared a similar experience 81

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to Israel; in that nation and church blurred into one. For Jane Dawson the process led to Scotland perceiving itself as a ‘new Israel’.12 Yet the question of how this developed theologically is an important one. Robert Rollock’s 1596 Catechism on God’s covenants discussed the nature of God’s covenanting with humans. He argued the old covenant God made with his ‘ancient Church and people’ is the same ‘substance’ as that which is made with Christ’s church in the new covenant.13 As a result, Rollock did not stress a great distinction between the covenants of work or grace, but rather emphasised their mutuality. For Rollock, the covenant of works applies to the corporate whole while the covenant of grace applies to the elect. The continuing obligation of the former is important because it provides ‘a means to conversion, faith, regeneration, and the mortification of the flesh’, although he stressed not all will convert.14 Rollock also emphasised the visible church as being equivalent to Israel in its covenanted relationship with God and warned ‘Scotland’ not to turn its back on God as Israel had done.15 John Cameron, a Scot who returned briefly from France to serve as principal of Glasgow University, developed the idea of corporate election in another direction. While most scholars focus on its potentially Arminian aspects, Cameron’s foedus subserviens (subservient covenant) ­– or Sinaitic covenant – proposes a corporate and conditional covenant between God and Israel.16 This covenant placed Israel in a privileged position, but still subject to the law, with blessing being conditional upon obedience. What is important is that God covenants with those whom he elects. Yet there remains an unclear distinction between those whom God elects to be his visible, covenanted people and those whom he elects to salvation. Robert Bruce, Rollock’s and Cameron’s contemporary, drew these two strands together, explaining that God elects and covenants in two ways. He elects a corporate body of people through the election of nation (a general election), who thus represent a visible church just as Israel had done, and he elects individuals to salvation (particular election). While God had ‘selected his natione of the Iewes, vnto whome he gaue the visible ensignes of his presence’, Bruce explained, ‘it hath now pleased him in mercie to translate his Tabernacle, & to make his residence with vs … He hath not remained with any nation without error or heresie so long as he hath done with vs.’17 He makes the nation God’s tabernacle and claims Jerusalem and Judah had been no more blessed than Scotland.18 While interchangeably referring to nations and religious bodies, Bruce clearly expresses a distinction within this body of people, noting that God dwelled only in the hearts of a ‘chosen few’.19 In this way, Scottish presbyterian theologians developed explicitly, what Knox had claimed implicitly, that the whole nation could be chosen in a corporate, general election. No Scottish theologian articulated this more emphatically than Samuel Rutherford, who explained, ‘The same Covenant made with Abraham is made with the Corinthians, 2 Cor. 6. 16. “I will be their God, and they shall be my people”.’20 Whereas Rollock understood corporate 82

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election as an aspect of the covenant of works, Rutherford presents it as part of an overarching and unfolding singular covenant of grace: ‘It was the Covenant made with Abraham, which was a Covenant of Grace.’21 Again, later in the same work, ‘So the externall Church Covenant and Church right to the means of grace is given to a society and made with Nations under the New Testament’.22 Rutherford, therefore, understood the law to be part of the same covenant of grace, albeit ‘a darker dispensation of grace’ serving to prevent the people from sinning and Moses to be ‘the Typical Mediator of the young Covenant of Grace’.23 In order to maintain the unity of the covenant, Scottish theologians of the federal tradition hypothesised a dualistic division within a singular covenant of grace: the ‘external covenant’ with the corporate whole and the ‘internal covenant’ with the elect. The concept was not unique to Scotland. A number of seventeenth-­century theologians referred to the distinction between a corporate ‘external’ or ‘outward covenant’ of grace and the ‘internal covenant’ of special election.24 It became a key concept for defining and demarcating the visible church. Among the earliest English authors to employ the term was the baptist John Smyth.25 By 1616 the Scot John Forbes, a 1583 graduate of St Andrews ministering to the English congregation in Middleburgh in the Netherlands, espoused the outward and inward dispensations of the covenant.26 The crucial debate between Reformed theologians was the scope to which this external covenant extended. Congregationalists argued the external covenant ought to be understood as their church covenants which extended only to the visibly godly. However, Scottish presbyterians rejected this view and Rutherford demanded, ‘all are taken promiscuously in this covenant externally, good and evil, who prospered to a kingdome’.27 Not all presbyterians agreed. English presbyterians, as a number of scholars have noted, developed a range of opinions due to their experiences in the wake of failed reform efforts in the 1590s, but generally understood any covenanted status for England necessarily to exclude the large number of ‘Ishmaelites’ in the nation.28 Rutherford, however, went as far as to claim, ‘The faithfull may become and stand members, and have a spirituall communion with a people … that are Idolaters, thieves, murtherers, worshippers of Baal, so being they worship the true God publickly as he commandeth, and be in externall covenant with him’.29 For Rutherford corporate covenanting established a ‘federal, or Covenant holinesse’, not of individuals but ‘of the seed, Society, Family, or Nation, which is derived from father to son, as if the father be a free man of such a City’.30 In the covenant with Abraham, Rutherford argued, God chose ‘a Nation and a House’.31 In this respect, Sidney Burrell has argued that the National Covenant in 1638 represented Scotland’s supersession of Israel as God’s chosen people.32 However, for George Gillespie and his fellow presbyterians the National Covenant did not represent an innovation. Rather, they understood it to be in perfect continuity with the ‘national covenant’ of 1581 – as he termed the King’s confession – which had been renewed ­nationally 83

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in 1590, 1592 and 1596 and locally on numerous other occasions.33 These covenants applied not simply to the Church of Scotland but to the people of Scotland and established their obligation to be members of the national Kirk and profess faith in Christ. Scotland’s covenants held both the elect and the reprobate together within a particular visible church comprising the whole nation, although not eradicating the distinction between the two.34 While the specially elect participated in the internal covenant, the whole of Scotland’s subjection to the external covenant required them to profess Christ. Just as Rollock and Bruce had distinguished between the general election of the whole and the special election of the few, Rutherford understood the external covenant to stretch the canvas of a visible church over the whole population of Scotland, just as the Abrahamic covenant did for Abraham and his progeny. For Rutherford this was natural since ‘the visible church established in the New Testament’, like Israel in the Old, was at the national level.35

‘CHURCHING THE NATION’ The melding of these concepts represents a process of ‘churching the nation’. In this paradigm being Scottish after the Reformation meant particular covenant obligations and responsibilities, just as being Jewish included ethnopolitical and religious identities and duties. The signing of the Negative Confession from 1581 and the National Covenant from 1638 thus represented the culmination of Knox’s rhetorical argument that nations can be in covenant with God. While John D. Ford is correct in claiming that ‘what mattered was not so much that subscribers [to the National Covenant] belonged to a godly nation as that the nation could be godly because elect and covenanted people belonged to it’, the reality is that subscription to the National Covenant was not limited to those perceived to be godly or elect to salvation.36 In fact, significant numbers of people signed under coercion authorised by a 1640 act of Parliament.37 For the Covenanter, the nation of Scotland and its people had already been elected and were in an external covenant with God just as the people of Israel. The subscription of national covenants served as the reciprocal action or the ratification of the fact. For Archibald Johnston of Wariston – a leading lay Covenanter, lawyer and co-author of the document – the 1638 covenant represented the ‘wedding day of Christ the bridegroom and Scotland his bride’ after what might be called a long theological betrothal.38 Hence, ecclesiology in the mind of a Scottish Covenanter began with the whole nation. Covenanters fundamentally accepted there could be no direct correlation between the boundaries of the visible and invisible churches. Instead, they understood the visible church as comprising a broader corporate body – a kingdom – in covenant with God, like ‘the Church of Corinth’ which ‘is called his people, and the Kingdomes of the world the Lords Kingdomes in Covenant … [albeit] there were many of them uncircumcised in heart’.39 Robert Baillie, who did not always agree with Rutherford, concurred that 84

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the visible church ‘is such a body whose members are never all gracious’.40 David Dickson admitted that God’s covenanting with the people originated with Abraham, but when the law was given to Moses ‘the first framing of a nationall Church’ was established at which time all the people of Israel were admitted into the covenant even though only a few were ‘converted’.41 He and Rutherford agreed that the giving of the law established the Jewish church, and the law applied to all the people. Despite this broad inclusion, for Rutherford the very existence of the visible church needed to be understood as existing for the sake of the elect,42 while the breadth of the visible church provided for the gospel message to be preached to all which professed the moral obligations resting upon all Scots. As a result, rather elect or not, a commitment to live in the fullness of covenanted expectations was demanded from elect and reprobate alike. In this light, baptism represented an important issue. It was well established in Reformed Scotland that baptism marked a seal of admission into the external covenant of grace and therefore the covenant of grace must be preached at baptisms.43 Yet Rutherford rejected inquiring into the faith of parents in order to ascertain whether their faith was ‘real or not’ since the gospel comes to the ‘Nation, to the House, to the Society’.44 He argued, ‘it is a free Grace’ that God allowed ‘hypocrites and infidels’ and ‘Reprobate Parents’ to give birth to elect children and to fill the visible church.45 In other words, since the terms of the covenant pertained to the whole nation – itself a visible church – and were to be promulgated through the preached word, the people should be included rather than excluded. As David Dickson described it: This way of receiving into externall covenant, all these who receive the offer and the condition of the covenant, without inquiring into their election or reprobation, their regeneration or unregeneration for the time (which may be called a covenanting outwardly and in the letter) in the deep and wise counsell of God, is appointed for the gathering and constitution of the visible kirk … He excludeth no man from embraceing the covenant; but, on the contrair, he opens the door to all that are called, to enter into (as it were) the outer court of his dwelling house.46

As such, the Covenanters understood baptism as not simply entry into the Church, but in parallel the mark of God’s covenant with the nation and hence their culpability to uphold the obligations for obedience inherent in the external covenant.47 For this reason, Rutherford argued: ‘Nor can it be anyway approven by the Lord in Scripture, to excommunicate from the Visible Church, all the multitudes of non-converts, baptized, and visibly within the Covenant of Grace … We look upon this Visible Church, though black and spotted, as the hospital and guest-house of the sick, halt, maimed and withered.’48 Hence, the visible church should be understood as ‘the office house of Grace’.49 In some sense, this may present an inverted understanding of the visible church from the positions held by many Reformed churches. The ecclesiology of Rutherford and the Scottish Covenanters implies that 85

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Scots were not to be admitted to the church because they acquired a faith in Christ, but rather they were included in the covenant and therefore expected to profess faith. In other words, those baptised into the church had an obligation to believe. Church membership was not forced, per se, as magistrates could not enforce membership. However, in the context of a covenanted nation they could coerce subscription to the national covenants (even those before 1638) and punish failures to fulfil covenanted obligations. As Rutherford declared, ‘The magistrate does not command religious acts as service to God, but rather forbids their contraries as disservice to Christian societies’.50 Obedience is not optional, according to David Dickson, because covenants made with God are obligatory for all subsequent generations.51 Failure to baptise a child could, therefore, be understood as a breach. However, the policy of the Church of Scotland was inclusion in baptism, rather than exclusion. In the case of a child born to parents known to be ungodly, the Kirk allowed a mother, a relative or even a friend to present a child for baptism.52 In other words, the policy of the Kirk sought to ensure children were baptised, even if that required coercing parents or relatives into conforming to what was perceived to be their inherent obligation. Even the children of those deemed to be reprobates, according to Rutherford, ought to be baptised because ‘they have a right by birth to the call, they being born where the call soundeth, they must have some visible right to the Covenant it self’.53 Or, as the original prayers for baptism in the Reformed Kirk declared, Christ ‘commanded to preach and baptise all without exception’.54 It is for this reason discipline played such a prominent role in Reformed Scotland and why it was identified as one of the three marks of the true church.55 Discipline aimed at correction, reconciliation and inclusion rather than exclusion. As Knox’s own Order for ecclesiastical discipline puts it, ‘a man corrected, or excommunicated, might be ashamed of his fault, and so through repentance come to ammendment’.56 Church membership represented the expected norm and the use of church discipline, even excommunication, served to correct behaviour through social marginalisation in order to restore membership and community.57 Therefore, while excommunication prevented participating in the sacraments it did not ‘forbid … the hearing of sermons’, because these may ‘occasion to repent’.58

ECCLESIOLOGY AND CHURCH POLITY The previous assessment raises significant questions about ecclesiology and church polity. The First book of discipline (1560), written at a time when the Reformed faith in Scotland was being built from the ground up, entrusted the power to call ministers and to elect elders on an annual basis to congregations. Even in excommunication, the First book explained the process as ‘by the mouth of the minister, consent of the ministry, and commandment of the church’.59 Thus the power of the keys, or the power of ecclesiastical discipline, 86

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was understood to reside in the particular congregation. By the production of the Second book of discipline (1578) presbyteries played an important role in calling ministers to congregations, elders elected their replacements and the power of excommunication shifted from the whole of the congregation to the officers of the church. The reason for this can be deduced from the threefold definition of the term ‘Kirk’ given in the first chapter of the book: 1. The kirk of God sumtymis is lairgelie takine for all thame that professis the Evangell of Jesus Chryst, and so it is ane company and fellowschipe, not onlie of the godlie, bot also of hypocrittis, professing alwayis outwartlie ane trew religione. 2. Other tymis it is takine for the godlie and elect onlie.60

Here the dichotomous nature of those in the external (visible church) and internal (invisible church) covenants is clearly set out. The Second book immediately moves to establish the relationship between the two, claiming that a third meaning for ‘Kirk’ refers to ‘thame quho exerc[is]e the spirituall functioune amang the congregatioun’. These individuals – the officers of the church (ministers, teachers, elders and deacons) – are granted the ‘proper jurisdictioun and governament exercit to the comfort of the haill kirk’.61 Sections two to eight of the work go on to describe how the officers are to be selected with the ultimate aim that the truly godly (the elect), demonstrated by ‘soundnes of religioun and godlines of lyf’, will be identified to rule over the rest, although this threefold definition means those selected to rule need not be elect. Unlike in the First book, judgement in matters of discipline and appointing church officers belongs to the elders and the congregation’s role is reduced to consent.62 The crucial point is that the power of the keys – the authority to admit and exclude from the church – is not given to the congregation to be wielded by its officers but is instead granted by God directly to the officers of the church.63 Church polity represented the framework through which discipline and purity of religion – what David Calderwood called God’s two great gifts to Scotland – could be maintained.64 Scottish presbyterians believed their form of church government was ordained jure divino, particularly for a covenant people. Hence George Gillespie equated presbyterianism with the Jewish Sanhedrin of the Old Testament, in which elders are ‘chose and called … invested with authority in judging controversy’ for they are ‘called up as representative of the whole church, when God was making a covenant with his people’.65 Thus the very pattern of church government itself was rooted in God’s covenant. According to Robert Blair, presbyterian church government served as ‘the wall of the House of God’, because of its ability to ensure a church could maintain discipline, preach the word effectively and dispense the sacraments appropriately.66 Similarly, the authors of the Summe of saving knowledge argued that ‘The outward means and ordinances for making men partakers of the Covenant of Grace are so wisely dispenced, as the Elect shall be infallibly converted and saved by them, and the Reprobate … 87

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justly stumbled. The means are specially these four. 1. The Word of God. 2. The Sacraments. 3. Kirk Government. 4. Prayer.’67 Two things must be emphasised here: first, these ordinances are used to ensure the elect will be ‘converted and saved’; second, this happens within the context of the rest of society being partakers of the external covenant of grace so that, although not elect to salvation, they will be corrected and held to a godly standard. Hence presbyterian government in the Scottish context was understood to be primarily about discipline, as through it God ‘will have them [all the people] hedge in, and help foreward unto the keeping of the Covenant’.68

COVENANTER ECCLESIOLOGY AND THE DEBATE ON CHURCH POLITY IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC WORLD The ecclesiological assumptions underpinning Scottish presbyterian polity are essential for understanding the Covenanters’ relationships with fellow Reformed Christians in England and New England. While most work on the Westminster assembly debates focuses on differences over church government and discipline, and perhaps rightly so since this is how the debates were structured, much of the difference rested in divergent understandings of ‘covenant’. Whereas many English divines understood the Solemn League and Covenant as a pledge for reform, Scottish divines and some of their English colleagues understood it in profoundly different terms. At a fundamental level, the Scottish representatives understood the issue to be who would be included in a visible church, engrafted through participation in a covenanted nation and national church. While not a dominant theme of the assembly itself, the nature of God’s covenanting with a corporate body represented the key presupposition underlying the debates. Thomas Goodwin, one of the Dissenting Brethren who resisted a presbyterian establishment, for instance, rejected the notion that any nation could be covenanted as a visible church, albeit ‘such a covenant, with promises suitable … [had been] given de novo to the Jews … as they were a church’; he denied that this could be replicated by any other society or people apart from a gathering of the ‘saints elect’.69 Similarly, Giles Firmin declared he did not know what the English presbyterian Daniel Cawdrey meant by ‘external covenant’ and called any claim that a national covenant could make a national church ‘silly’.70 Although less emphatic, Philip Nye, preaching at the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, granted that ‘God sweares for the salvation of men, and of Kingdomes’, but never equated this to making a nation a church.71 Even in covenanted Scotland, with its excellent discipline, he recognised only ‘churches of Scotland’ rather than the singular Church of Scotland the Kirk pled for.72 In contrast, Alexander Henderson’s sermon on the same occasion immediately heralded the significance of the Solemn League and Covenant for the ‘Church and Kingdome’ in England, inextricably linking the two.73 Nye 88

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and the Dissenting Brethren did not deny that God covenants corporately with communities, but denied that such bodies represented visible churches and could comprise only the elect (or at least the visibly godly) in gathered congregations. For support they drew upon the writings of New England congregationalists such as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard and Richard Mather.74 Many in the Reformed traditions appealed to the idea of covenanting, but opinions diverged profoundly on what social level this could take place. English and New English congregationalists rooted their ecclesiology in church covenants, admitting only those deemed likely to be elect. This tradition developed out of the failure to settle a rigorous Reformed church in England.75 Since church covenants represented the foundation of their ecclesiology, they served as the starting point for all other discussions of related subjects, such as discipline and polity. Scottish presbyterians, however, rejected the possibility of congregational covenants. Rutherford declared ‘there is no such thing in Gods word’ and returned to the case of Israel, proclaiming there to be ‘no ground that Moses … made a Church covenant onely with some selected and choice persons, partakers of the heavenly calling … for all promiscuously were the materials of this Church’.76 Here he agreed with the Church of England clergyman John Ball, who published an influential work on the covenant of grace that rejected what Ball viewed as the separation of New Englanders.77 Rutherford’s paramount concern was that limiting church membership meant exclusion from preaching and, perhaps most importantly, church censures and corrective discipline, the fruits of the external covenant of grace.78 From the Scottish Covenanters’ perspective, all Scots were subject to ecclesiastical discipline just as all Jews had been subject to the Jewish laws and the courts, because God chooses the ‘nation all and whole’.79 While Peter Bulkeley used similar terminology of a national covenant in relation to New England, he used it for the political nation comprised of individuals in particular church covenants.80 He makes a distinction between the corporate covenanting of the Abrahamic or Sinaitic covenants and what occurs after Christ, arguing for a gospel covenant limited to the elect in whom God puts the habit of faith, thereby denying that corporate covenanting can be based on anything other than God’s gathering of the elect.81 In New England the hallmarks of the internal covenant denoted the limits of the external covenant. In other words, the Scots and their congregationalist colleagues started at diametrically opposed positions. Whilst Hunter Powell has demonstrated an affinity between Scottish presbyterians and the Dissenting Brethren in the early 1640s, the latters’ appropriation of texts produced by New England congregationalists to defend their desired national church settlement in England demonstrated the fundamental distance between them. The Dissenting Brethren wanted a national ­settlement that comprised voluntary participation of gathered congregations in national synods. The Scots could not comprehend how a 89

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nation could uphold the duties, rights and responsibilities of a covenanted people if the majority were excluded from access to the preaching and sacraments that come with membership in the visible church. The Dissenting Brethren wanted to include all under the obligation of covenant obedience (like Scotland) while limiting church membership to the elect and church government primarily to the local congregation (like New England). Hence they sought to have their cake and eat it too. Applying the New England model to rule over a mixed multitude is something Cotton and his fellows in New England denied was possible. New Englanders got around this by excluding non-church-members from the secular state. In this respect, the Scottish presbyterians were more closely in tune with the New England congregationalists albeit they started at opposing extremes: Scottish presbyterians included all, New England included only the godly, but both mapped visible church and secular citizenship on to one another. This is why men like Baillie and Rutherford wrote so vehemently against the New England way. For if the New Englanders were correct, it would unchurch the whole of Scotland. In terms of church discipline, the argument over who possessed the power of the keys within the church first required a definition of who ought to be admitted into the visible church. The gap between the positions of New England and Scotland is exemplified in their understandings of covenant and the implication for baptism. Both sides made reference to the thousand-generation covenant (Psalm 105:8) Calvin presented to Knox. For the New Englander Richard Mather, ‘if we shall admit all Children to Baptisme, whose Ancestors within a thousand Generations have been Believers, as some would have us, we might by this Reason Baptise the Children of Turkes, and of all the Indians, and Barbarians in the Country’.82 Rutherford responded by denouncing the exclusivity of New England, claiming that Mather’s interpretation would mean that: if … father and mother bee violaters of the Covenant, though nine hundreth foregoing generations have beene lovers of God, yet the Covenant mercy is interrupted to the innocent Infants … and they are translated over to the classe and roll of the children of Turkes and Pagans under the curse and wrath of God.83

Instead, Rutherford implored inclusion on the grounds that God’s covenanting with a society instils a federal holiness. Although he was not present at Westminster, Mather’s views were invoked by the Dissenting Brethren, albeit not wholly in a manner approved of by New England congregationalists. Hence it might be argued that the primary obstacle at Westminster was a shared terminology of covenant lacking a consensus over meaning, with the crux of the matter being the nature of the external covenant, its implications and the associated rights. Whilst New England congregationalists and Scottish presbyterians seemed clear – albeit at odds – on the implications of their positions regarding corporate covenanting, the Dissenting Brethren were not. In reality they were invoking a Dutch model of gathered congrega90

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tions governed at the provincial level and co-operating nationally, but not incorporating the whole population. Scottish presbyterians and New England congregationalists agreed on the fundamental importance of corporate covenanting, its permanence and its foundational role for godly and secular governance – only those under covenant could be held accountable. The New Englander Thomas Shepard concurred that the outward covenant among the godly is what makes a godly people or ‘Israel’.84 However, for Scots, limiting membership in the visible church to the godly undermined its ability to maintain discipline and represented a dangerous, schismatic position for ‘it is most false that none are in Covenant under the New Testament, but only Believers’.85 Although he admired much of what Cotton, Hooker, Mather and Shepard espoused, Rutherford could not escape the fact they confused the relationship between the external and internal covenants. To establish the visible church – and a godly society – on the basis of participation in the internal and secret covenant was not only impossible but also inhibitive to the work of the Holy Spirit and the gathering of ‘a Church and his elect ones, by a visibly and audibly Preached Covenant to a society, to a City … To the Gentiles … To all Nations’.86 Hence, he lambasted the ‘homogeneal Church of onely believers’ set out in the congregational-way of New England and advocated by their supporters in England.87 For this reason he explicitly denied that the congregational covenant had any scriptural merit and instead argued that the Kingdom of God becomes manifest ‘where the the Preached Covenant is … and the Bridegroom among them’, rather than where the godly are gathered to the exclusion of all others.88

COVENANTER SCOTLAND AND THE NEW ENGLAND WAY The position of the Dissenting Brethren presented the challenge of how a godly few could maintain control over a nation and its church if they represented a minority within the nation. Both New Englanders and Scottish presbyterians were aware of this difficulty. In order to ensure the dominance of the godly in Massachusetts the colony passed legislation in 1631 limiting freemen status and the right to vote to church members.89 This represented the great disjuncture between New England congregationalists and the Dissenting Brethren. Both upheld congregational covenants as the foundation stone of congregations, but in New England they further served as the bedrock for a theocratic state. The Scots followed a similar tack, albeit not by excluding from the church. All those who failed to subscribe the National Covenant were excluded from government and civil office. By the 1640s the covenants came to define the Scottish nation and residents’ status within it. Subscription reflected both church membership and by corollary one’s eligibility for political involvement. Hence the Scottish model did not differ 91

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wholly from what was found in New England. The fundamental difference, however, is that the Scottish approach prevented the necessary development of New England’s half-way covenant. In Scotland church membership was assumed and imposed, due to inherited covenant obligations, and good standing in the Kirk served as a condition for participation in secular government. Hence access to the Lord’s table might be limited, but not church membership, whereas in New England church membership – which allowed access to the sacraments and the ability to serve in civil government – was limited. Thus, both the New England way and the Scottish presbyterianism found methods to exclude the ungodly from secular politics and limit the society’s guilt for their sin. The difficulty in Scotland was how to maintain the dominance of the godly in a state and church which certainly included more reprobates than saints elect to salvation. The key issue became the purity of the church’s officers, both ministers and elders. Under the Covenanters the suitability of ministers became an increasing concern addressed by appointing visitation committees to inspect ministers and depose them if found wanting. Between 1638 and 1651 the Kirk deposed more than 230 ministers.90 By 1649 an even more radical step saw the abolition of lay patronage, a tradition which, although contentious since before the Reformation, had survived the various realignments of polity after 1560.91 The abolition of patronage in Scotland meant that local heritors, who had financial obligations for maintaining parish churches, no longer had the power to plant their chosen candidates. Instead the power came to rest securely in the hands of the presbyteries. This heightened tensions between presbyteries and congregations; moreover, it highlighted the discrepancies between the case put forward by Scottish representatives at the Westminster assembly and the reality in Covenanted Scotland. According to George Gillespie, ‘he was hardly a moneth [in London] before he was in danger to turn malignant, and hardly again a month in Scotland, but he was in danger to turn a sectary’.92 Albeit made before the abolition of patronage, his comment reflected the pressure at Westminster to define church membership broadly and the pressure in Scotland to exclude the ungodly from church governance: hence his appeal to a Sanhedrin model of church government. By the end of the 1640s the cost of including all of Scotland in the visible church began to take its toll.

THE KIRK DIVIDED: PROTESTERS AND RESOLUTIONERS The defeat of the covenanting cause by Oliver Cromwell in September 1650 created a crisis in the Kirk, albeit one which had been fomenting for some time. Two factions formed over the interpretation of Scotland’s covenanted obligations and what to do if the godly were understood to be no longer governing the church. The resolutioner majority declared, ‘For our part … we resolve in the power of the Lord’s grace never to accord therunto, nor to reced … from the established Government, be the hazard what it will’.93 92

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In other words, God appointed presbyterianism jure divino and calls the church’s officers, investing them with power to rule directly. In contrast, the protesters argued that the Kirk had indeed come to be dominated by the ungodly – which is why the covenanting cause failed – and as such the godly minority had a responsibility to resist those in church office they deemed unfit. Yet neither protesters nor resolutioners sought to unchurch the population of Scotland. Throughout the interregnum both factions defended the covenanted nation and church comprising both elect and reprobate alike. However, the challenges posed by the introduction of the English regime and the decapitation of presbyterian church government by the prohibition of the general assembly from 1653 meant the Kirk no longer functioned as a presbyterian church and the nation risked further transgressing its covenanted responsibilities. In this context, probing questions began to be asked. Preaching in about 1652 Hugh Binning lamented: ‘What is now the great blot of our visible church? Here it is, the most part are not God’s children, but called so; and it is the greater blot that they are called so, and are not.’94 But his disappointment was not reserved simply to the laity. Binning, who sided with the protesters about this time, went on: This is also the spot of assemblies, synods, presbyteries, that there are few godly ministers. Alas, that this complaint should be, even among those whose office it is to beget many children to God! how few of them are begotten, or have the image of their Father! And thus church assemblies have no beauty, such as the courts of Jesus Christ should have.95

Across the board, the failure of the covenanting cause caused deep reflection. The sins of the nation were generally accepted as the cause of God’s wrath.96 The resolutioner general assembly of 1652 responded by passing two acts. The first demanded greater care in preaching and catechising the people ‘for promoting the knowledge of God in the land’.97 The second stressed the importance of properly trying ministers and elders before their admission to office and the need to test church members strictly before admitting them to communion. Both sought to address concerns they shared with the protesters.98 However, as noted above, the ultimate issue between the two groups was ecclesiastical subordination. Protesters argued that the corruption of the Kirk at the national level meant that local churches and rightfully constituted presbyteries ought not to submit themselves to errant higher Kirk courts. Baillie and other resolutioners deemed this to be a ‘Brownist’ errour. Although the issue came to the fore during the interregnum, the issue had been prevalent since the 1640s. It was one the congregationalists had raised during the Westminster assembly debates. George Gillespie had attempted to draw a line under it when he wrote: ‘without a subordination among ecclesiastical courts, and the authority of the higher above the inferior, it were utterly impossible to preserve unity, or to make an end of controversy in a nation’.99 However, the events of the late 1640s and early 1650s had forced 93

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some Scots to readdress the question. The protester–resolutioner conflict proved bitter and debilitating. Tensions continued to boil throughout the interregnum, with the protester minority refusing to recognise the authority of the resolutioner majority. Rutherford, for his part, continued to struggle with how control over the Kirk could be regained from a resolutioner majority who seemed to have compromised the religious principles set out in the covenants for malignant interests. As John Coffey has described, ‘one of the greatest seventeenth century defenders of divine-right presbyterianism finished his days as a rebel against the church polity he had sought so hard to establish’.100 These divisions and the failure of the Covenanters’ promises of divine blessings weakened the resolve of the Scottish people and required reassessment of what God’s covenant with Scotland meant.

CONCLUSION Despite the hagiographical histories of Scottish covenanting, Alasdair Raffe’s work has highlighted that two-thirds of Scots conformed at least nominally to Restoration episcopacy.101 This was probably eased by the continued role of elders in maintaining congregational discipline and care for the poor.102 However, the restored episcopal church explicitly rejected the covenants, abolished their hold over the people and forbade future subscription, thus seemingly bringing an end to the covenantal ecclesiology articulated by Covenanter theologians. Such an interpretation might be supported by the fact that the re-establishment of presbyterianism as the state church of Scotland in 1690 avoided any mention of the covenants and the documents of the Westminster assembly served as the church’s foundation. So what happened to the robust covenantal theology in the intervening period: did it really vanish so quickly? The answer is no, it did not. It certainly persisted among a hard-line minority. James Stewart declared in Naphtali that ‘this whole Nation is perpetually joyned unto the Lord’.103 Echoing the position of Rutherford, he claimed ‘almost as to the number of persons, the Church of Scotland was of equal extent with the Nation, and in that respect of all other National Churches, did most resemble the old Church of the Iewes’.104 As a result of Scotland ‘being a nation so solemnly and expresly engaged by Covenant unto God, & one with another … there lyeth upon all and every one of us an indispensible duty’.105 Similarly, men like John Guthrie, James Renwick and Alexander Shields claimed that Scotland persisted to be a covenanted land and the obligations of the people to be a visible church could not be abandoned.106 However, the scope of this argument’s acceptance in Scotland, despite the historiography, was limited. More commonly, Scots struggled with the idea that the National Covenant had been judged by God and found wanting. How else could the catastrophic failure of the covenanting experiment be explained? Some, like the growing 94

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number of quakers and many of those who embraced Restoration episcopacy, deemed the covenant to have been prideful and foolhardily sinful.107 Others took a more moderate view that the scope and ambitions of the covenants had been haughty and entered into too hastily.108 Andrew Honyman, a Covenanter who accepted the bishopric of Orkney in 1664, argued that Scotland was indeed covenanted to God in the tradition established in 1581.109 In this respect, he could accept the whole of the people to be included in the visible church. However, he argued that the exclusion of episcopacy as set out in the Glasgow ‘Declaration’ had been inserted ‘after the [National] Covenant was taken by the body of the Land’ and therefore ‘could not oblige all the takers of it to own their declaration of the sense of the Covenant’.110 He could thus argue for continuity free from what he viewed as the ‘contrived’ ambitions added to the National Covenant by radical presbyterians seeking to ‘extirpate episcopacy’.111 Yet he did not reject the idea of a national visible church. Robert Leighton, who also accepted a Restoration bishopric, shared this view. For Leighton the covenants’ faults lay with their focus on external things: ‘Religion did not consist of external things, whether of gouernment or ceremonies, but “in righteousness, peac, and joy of,” &c.’112 He argued that Scotland entered into the National Covenant too rashly and needed ‘to be repented for’, because ‘we placd mor religion in opposing ther [episcopal] ceremonies then in the weightiest matters of the law of God’.113 Leighton too persisted in understanding the people of Scotland as being a chosen people, but stressed God’s unilateral covenant faithfulness rather than the covenant’s bilateral nature: The tenor of an external Covenant with a People (as the Jewes particularly found) is such, as may be broken by Mans unfaithfulness, though God remain faithful and true: but the New Covenant of Grace makes all sure on all hands, and cannot be broken, the Lord not only keeping His own part, but likewise performing ours in us, and for us, and establishing us that He departs not from us first, so we shall not depart from Him.114

As early as 1661 Leighton told Alexander Brodie, with reference to Psalm 99, that in ‘Gods dealing with his people, he was favourable to them though he took vengeance on their Inventions. A good Cause and a Covenant with God, will not shelter an Impenitent people from sharper Correction.’115 In that respect, the judgement against Scotland had been a corrective for his people, but, more importantly, the new covenant of grace was internal and more important than an external covenant with a corporate body. Leighton did not deny the external covenant, or the national nature of the church; instead he downplayed its obligations and stressed the internal covenant’s promises. Other men, like Alexander Brodie, struggled much more with their conformity, being left to come to terms by ‘ther oun light’.116 When the earl of Murray, having been commissioned to deal with nonconformists, asked Brodie if the Scots could really ‘bind our posteriti unborn’ to God, he replied 95

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in the positive, asserting that ‘the peopl of God of old did bind and sweare for themselvs and ther posteriti, to retain God and his worship, and renouncd al others idols and fals gods’.117 But Brodie put less emphasis on the ecclesiological significance and more on the relationship between the individual and God. Brodie stressed baptism as God’s pledge to the individual which required the response of conversion and the fulfilment of the internal covenant. While Brodie remained staunchly Calvinist, his intellectual shift reflects a very important change in late seventeenth-century Scottish spirituality. As David Mullan notes, the emphasis in late seventeenth-century spiritual writing moved from an emphasis on election towards ‘conversion’ and the realisation of the internal covenant. The roots for this had been percolating since much earlier in the century, with William Guthrie, Hugh Binning, David Dickson and others focusing on the internal covenant’s condition of individual faith coming to the fore from the interregnum.118 William Guthrie, while agreeing that the visible church remained in covenant with God, emphasised the need for faith. Although the external covenant extended to the corporate whole, just as the covenant of Abraham had done, yet for salvation ‘only faith is the condition of the Covenant’.119 This represented a pastoral shift away from discipline to fostering faith in the individual. Hugh Binning similarly emphasised the need for conversion.120 In his great work on federal theology written during the interregnum, David Dickson too stressed the importance of conversion, making reference to it over one hundred times in his book.121 Here the shift is away from the doctrine of Calvin, Knox and even Rutherford who rooted faith in election and denied it to be an act of volition. This shift seems to have been an interregnum phenomenon fostered by the implosion of the covenanting regime and the arrival of Cromwell’s army. The catastrophic judgement against Scotland required a penitent response and individual conversion. It was also during the early years of the interregnum that personal covenanting became more pronounced. In the decades that followed, subscriptions to covenants persisted, but they were personal and represented the individual’s commitment to God rather than emphasising a sense of corporate responsibility.122 The transition did not come as a sea change, but rather as a confluence of multiple trends fuelled, to a great extent, by the concerns of the protesters. Perhaps this trend is best evidenced in Patrick Gillespie’s The ark of the testament opened (1661). An intriguing figure who seemingly abandoned the orthodox protester position during the interregnum by assisting the Cromwellian regime in settling independent ministers into Kirk charges, particularly in the presbytery of Glasgow, Gillespie continued to be identified within the protester movement led by James Guthrie, Samuel Rutherford and Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston. He is important for understanding the progression of protester ideas because he lived well past the Restoration settlement. Unlike that of other inheritors of the radical presbyterian tradition who embraced Naphtali, Gillespie’s work emphasises the inherent curse 96

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within all covenants: those who fall under the covenant of grace externally, but who are not elect. Gillespie stresses the sense of disappointment that the bastard child must feel who does not receive the blessing promised through a father, ‘so may every one conclude of themselves who live in the visible Church and yet are not in Christ’.123 There is a palpable sense in Gillespie that the burden for both the reprobate and for the godly who have been inseparably linked together in the National Covenant had taken its toll. Gillespie, like many of his colleagues, would not give up the promises of the covenant of grace, but he would minimise the external covenant so aggressively pursued throughout the 1640s for the promise of the internal covenant. For Gillespie, this is reflected in his self-description as a minister of the New Testament and his work as an essay on the ‘Gospel-covenant’ which ‘now is made manifest to the Saints’. Well before the Restoration Gillespie had moved decisively away from corporate to personal covenanting, for he argues that the covenant of grace (termed by him the gospel-covenant) ‘is Particular and Personall’.124 In terms of polity the Restoration largely put to bed the vicious division among presbyterians over who should rule the church, bypassing concerns about whether the godly or those God providentially placed in positions of authority should rule. Instead, the Restoration placed episcopal oversight above traditional Kirk structures, thus hanging the keys on an episcopal peg, and did so with less outrage than historiography has maintained. This is because the seeds of the covenanting revolution had sown disappointment and disillusionment for most Scots. For Leighton, Brodie and Gillespie alike, the emphasis on the covenant moved from the external covenant, defining the visible church and determining who should rule it, to an emphasis on the internal covenant and a greater importance on conversion that would come to typify the evangelicalism of the eighteenth century. This is a tradition that developed particularly within the presbyterian tradition, though not without controversy.125 For generations the personal covenanting proforma provided in William Guthrie’s Christian’s great interest served as a model for Scots to commit themselves to God.126 James Clarke, minister of Glasgow, also stressed the importance of human action, declaring ‘having thus entered into a personal Covenant with him, see thou keep thy Covenant inviolably, also renew it frequently, and endeavour to carry and walk as becomes a Christian in Covenant with Christ’.127 Alexander Wedderburn too stressed the importance of making a personal covenant with God.128 He frames this in exceptionally evangelical terms, stating ‘so the great condition in personal Covenanting is, this act of accepting’ and further explained ‘wherein personal covenanting with God lies, it lyes in accepting the Son, the Father hath offered Him, and all that he hath, and when the Soul accepts of this offer and relyes with an act of recumbency on the faithfulness of Him that made it’.129 This was a theology steeped in the traditions expressed by Edward Fisher’s Marrow of modern divinity, which emphasised conversion in terms of entering into a 97

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covenant with Christ and becoming his own: ‘God made not this Covenant with your Fathers, but with you’ (Deuteronomy 5:3).130 Fisher’s book, though written seventy years earlier, gained great notoriety in eighteenth-century Scotland and in conjunction with the tradition discussed above precipitated the Marrow Controversy. The failure of the covenanting revolution and its ecclesiology rooted in a corporate, external covenant ultimately resulted in the triumph of the internal covenant and a significant shift towards personal religion over and above national obligations. After 1661 the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant never again served as the benchmarks for the national church. For all but the most hard-line, the significance of the covenants moved away from ecclesiology, polity and discipline. Instead, for many Scots the concept of covenant became internalised and developed in ways that would predicate the rise of evangelicalism, set the stage for the debates of the ‘Marrow Controversy’ and, ironically, contribute to the development of the seceder tradition.

NOTES





1 At the fore of this trend are a number of John Morrill’s doctoral students at Cambridge: Elliot Vernon, ‘The Sion College conclave and London presbyterianism during the English revolution’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999); Joel Halcomb, ‘A social history of congregational religious practice during the puritan revolution’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009); Polly Ha, English presbyterianism 1590–1640 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); and Hunter Powell, The crisis of British protestantism: church power in the puritan revolution, 1638–1644 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 2 R. L. Greaves, Theology and revolution in the Scottish reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1980), p. 213. For a discussion of differing interpretations of how this concept were applied to England and Scotland, see J. E. A. Dawson, ‘The two John Knoxes: England, Scotland and the 1558 tracts’, JEH, 42:4 (1991), 555–76; S. Dolff, ‘The two John Knoxes and the justification of non-revolution: a response to Dawson’s argument from covenant’, JEH, 55:1 (2004), 58–74. 3 D. Mullan, Scottish puritanism, 1590–1638 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 179. 4 I. J. Hesselink (ed.), Calvin’s first catechism: a commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), pp. 4–6. 5 John Calvin, Commentaries on the epistle of Paul the apostle to the Romans, trans. and ed. J. Owen (Edinburgh, 1849), p. 345. 6 John Calvin, Commentary on the gospel according to John, trans. W. Pringle (Edinburgh, 1847), pp. 346–7. 7 P. Lillback, The binding of God: Calvin’s role in the development of covenant theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), p. 203. 8 J. W. Riggs, ‘Emerging ecclesiology in Calvin’s baptismal thought, 1536–1546’, CH, 64:1 (1995), 29–43.

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Polity, discipline and theology 9 David Calderwood, The history of the kirk of Scotland, eds T. Thomson and D. Laing, 8 vols (Edinburgh, 1842–49), II, pp. 101–2. 10 John Knox, The complete works of John Knox, ed. D. Laing, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 1846–64), VI, p. 96. See also Calvin’s exegesis of Psalm 105:8 in John Calvin, A commentary on the psalms of David, trans. A. Golding, 3 vols (Oxford, 1840), III, pp. 35–6. 11 J. D. Ford, ‘The lawful bonds of Scottish society: the Five Articles of Perth, the negative confession and the national covenant’, HJ, 37:1 (1994), 45–64, p. 48; David Calderwood, Parasynagma perthense (1620), pp. 26–7; David Calderwood, ‘The Confutatioune of ye dikaiologie’, National Library of Scotland, Wodrow MSS, Qto. LXXVI, fo. 25r quoted in V. T. Well, ‘The origins of covenanting thought and resistance: c. 1580–1638’ (PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 1997), p. 2. 12 J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland re-formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 233. 13 A. Denlinger, ‘Robert Rollock’s catechism on God’s covenants’, Mid-America Journal of Theology, 20 (2009), 124. 14 Ibid., 128. 15 Robert Rollock, Select works of Robert Rollock, ed. W. M. Gunn, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1849), I, pp. 471, 476, 480, 525. 16 John Cameron, De triplici Dei cum homine foedere theses (Heidelberg, 1608); translated and printed in Samuel Bolton, The true bounds of Christian freedome (1645), pp. 351–401. For a discussion of Cameron in context, see R. Muller, ‘Divine covenants, absolute and conditional: John Cameron and the early orthodox development of reformed covenantal theology’, Mid-American Journal of Theology, 17 (2006), 11–59. 17 Robert Bruce, The vvay to true peace and rest deliuered at Edinburgh in xvi. Sermons (1617), p. 300. 18 Ibid., p. 282. 19 Ibid., p. 300. 20 Samuel Rutherford, The covenant of life opened (Edinburgh, 1655), pp. 75, 81. 21 Ibid., p. 60. 22 Ibid., p. 83. 23 Ibid., pp. 58–65. 24 David Dickson, A brief exposition of the evangel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew (1651), p. 185; Daniel Cawdrey, A sober ansvver, to a serious question. (1652), p. 25; Rutherford, The covenant of life opened. 25 John Smyth, The character of the beast, or, The false constitution of the church (Middleburg, 1612), pp. 8, 10, 18, 46. Cf. Thomas Patient, The doctrine of baptism and the distinction of the covenants (1654), pp. 86–93. 26 John Forbes, A treatise tending to cleare the doctrine of iustification (Middleburgh, 1616), pp. 8–9. 27 Rutherford, The due right of presbyteries (1644), p. 105. 28 E. W. Kirby, ‘The English presbyterians in the Westminster assembly’, CH (1964), 418–28; R. D. Bradley, ‘The failure of accommodation: religious conflicts between presbyterians and independents in the Westminster assembly 1643–1646’, JRH, 12:1 (1982): 23–47; T. D. Bozeman, ‘Federal theology and the 99

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29 30 31 32 33 34



35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 100

“national covenant”: an Elizabethan presbyterian case study’, CH, 61:4 (1992): 394–407. Rutherford, A peaceable and temperate plea for Pauls presbyterie in Scotland (1642), p. 136. Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, pp. 82–3. Ibid., p. 83. S. A. Burrell, ‘The covenant idea as a revolutionary symbol: Scotland, 1596– 1637’, CH, 27:4 (1958) 338–50, 342–3. George Gillespie, The humble representation of the commission of the generall assembly to the honourable estates of Parliament (1648), p. 26. Samuel Rutherford, A survey of the survey of church discipline (1658), p. 75; Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, p. 94; John Coffey, Politics, religion and the British revolutions: the mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 166–7. Rutherford, The due right, p. 55. Ford, ‘The lawful bonds of Scottish society’, 64. Records of the Parliaments of Scotland, 1640/6/33. P. Donald, ‘Archibald Johnston of Wariston and the politics of religion’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 24 (1991), 131. Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, p. 80. Robert Baillie, A disvvassive against the errours of the time (1645), p. 159. David Dickson, Therapeutica sacra (Edinburgh, 1664), p. 104. Rutherford, The due right, p. 248. Rollock, Works, II, p. 662. Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, p. 84. Ibid., p. 109. David Dickson, Therapeutica sacra, pp. 94–5. Alexander Brodie, The diary of Alexander Brodie of Brodie (Aberdeen, 1843), pp. 63, 175, 310. Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, ed. A. A. Bonar (New York, 1861), pp. 552–3. Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, p. 77. Samuel Rutherford, A free disputation on the pretended liberty of conscience (1649), contents, pp. 51–2. David Dickson, A brief explication of the last fifty Psalmes (1654), pp. 47–9. Knox, The complete works, II, pp. 230–1. Calvin advised Knox in this regard, Knox, The complete works, VI, pp. 94. See for example Alexander Jaffray, Diary of Alexander Jaffray with memoirs of the rise, progress, and persecution, of the people called quakers, in the north of Scotland, ed. J. Barclay (Aberdeen, 1856), pp. 98, 138. Rutherford, The covenant of grace, p. 76. Church of Scotland, The service, discipline & forme of the common prayers and administration of the sacraments used in the English church of Geneva (1641), p. 36. I. Hazlett (ed.), ‘A new version of the Scots confession, 1560’, Theology in Scotland, 17:2 (2010), 55. Church of Scotland, The service, discipline & forme of the common prayers, p. 61. Knox, The complete works, II, p. 230. For a recent study see N. M. Macdonald,

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58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71



72 73 74 75

76

77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84

‘Reconciling performance: the drama of discipline in early modern Scotland, 1560–1610’ (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2013). Church of Scotland, The service, discipline & forme of the common prayers, p. 63. James Cameron, The first book of discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), p. 170; Church of Scotland, The doctrine and discipline of the kirke of Scotland (1641), p. 56. Cameron interprets ‘church’ to mean congregation in this context and describes ministers ‘as the executive of the congregation’s wishes’ (p. 68). J. Kirk (ed.), The second book of discipline (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 163. Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., p. 164. Calderwood, Doctrine and discipline, third page in unnumbered preface. George Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming (1646), p. 10. Robert Blair’s preface to James Durham, The dying man’s testament to the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1659). The summe of saving knowledge (Edinburgh, 1659), unpaginated. ‘Head 3’. Ibid. Thomas Goodwin, The works of Thomas Goodwin, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 1861–66), VI, p. 355. Giles Firmin, A sober reply to the sober answer of reverend Mr. Cawdrey (1653), pp. 21, 50; Giles Firmin, Separation examined (1652), p. 81. Alexander Henderson, The covenant that was read, sworn unto, and subscribed by the honourable House of Commons, and reverend assembly of divines, the 25. of September (1643), p. 12. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 26. See generally Powell, The crisis of British protestantism. William Perkins, ‘A commentary or exposition upon the first five chapters of the epistle to the Galatians (1604)’, in William Perkins, The works of William Perkins, ed. I. Breward, 3 vols (Abingdon: Sutton Courtney Press, 1970), II, p. 300; T. D. Bozeman, ‘Federal theology and the “National Covenant”’, 394–407; M. McGiffert, ‘Covenant, crown and commons in Elizabethan puritanism’, JBS, 20:1 (1980), 32–52. Rutherford, The due right, pp. 83, 106. He cited Deut. 29:10: ‘Yee stand this day, all of you before the Lord your God, your captaines of your tribes, you elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel’. John Ball, A treatise on the covenant of grace (1645), p. 55. Rutherford, The due right, p. 200. Rutherford, The covenant of life, p. 85. A. Delbanco and A. Heimert (eds), The puritans in America: a narrative anthology (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 117. Peter Bulkeley, The gospel-covenant (1646), p. 281. Richard Mather, Church-government and church-covenant discussed (1643), p. 22 Rutherford, The due right, p. 263. Thomas Shepard, The church-membership of children, and their right to baptisme according to that holy and everlasting covenant of God, established between Himself and the faithfull (Cambridge, MA, 1663), p. 1. 101

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96

97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108 109 110 102

Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, p. 79. Ibid., p. 83–4. Italics added by the current author. Rutherford, Survey of the survey, p. 185. Rutherford, The due right, pp. 125–30; Rutherford, Survey of the survey, pp. 2, 139; Rutherford, The covenant of life opened, p. 79. E. Morgan, Visible saints: the history of a puritan idea (Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press, 1963), p. 104. D. Stevenson, ‘Deposition of ministers in the Church of Scotland, 1638–1651’, CH, 44 (1975), 324. For the best study on the subject of patronage in the Church of Scotland into the eighteenth century see L. Whitley, A great grievance: ecclesiastical lay patronage in Scotland until 1750 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013). W. K. Tweedie (ed.), Select biographies (Edinburgh, 1845), I, p. 331; Coffey, Politics, religion and the British revolutions, p. 219. ‘Overtures of peace and union’, in Protesters no subverters, and presbyterie no papacie (Edinburgh, 1658), p. 8. Hugh Binning, The works of Hugh Binning, ed. J. Cochrane, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1839), II, p. 408. Ibid., p. 409. Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, Causes of the Lords wrath against Scotland (Edinburgh, 1653); John Nicoll, A diary of public transactions and other occurrences, chiefly in Scotland, 1650–67, ed. D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1836), pp. 59–60, 202; James Turner, Memoirs of his own life and times, 1632–1670, ed. T. Thomson (Edinburgh, 1829), p. 160. Church of Scotland, Acts of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638– 1842, ed. T. Pitcairn (Edinburgh, 1843), pp. 1151–2. Ibid., pp. 1153. Gillespie, Notes, p. 59. Coffey, Politics, religion and the British revolutions, p. 224. A. Raffe, The culture of controversy. Religious arguments in Scotland, 1660–1714 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012), p. 33. W. Foster, Bishop and presbytery: the Church of Scotland 1661–1688 (London: SPCK, 1958), pp. 61–83. James Stewart, Naphtali (1667), pp. 183–4. Ibid., A2r–A3. Ibid., p. 150. John Guthrie, A sermon preach’d upon breach of covenant (n.p., 1663?), pp. 2, 8; James Renwick and Alexander Sheills, An informatory vindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented remnant of the suffering, anti-popish, anti-prelatick, antierastian, anti-sectarian, true presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland … written at the Leadhills in the Yeare 1687 (Edinburgh, 1744), pp. 23, 39. Alexander Jaffray, Diary of Alexander Jaffray, ed. J. Barclay (3rd edition, Aberdeen, 1856), pp. 38–9, 160. Brodie, The diary of Alexander Brodie, p. 222. Andrew Honyman, The seasonable case of submission to the church-government as now re-established by law (Edinburgh, 1662), p. 32. Ibid., p. 36.

Polity, discipline and theology 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119

120

121 122

123 124 125 126

127 128 129 130

Ibid., p. 24. Brodie, The diary of Alexander Brodie, p. 221. Ibid., p. 222. Robert Leighton, A practical commentary, upon the two first chapters of the first epistle general of St. Peter (York, 1693), p. 333. Robert Leighton, Sermons preached by Dr Robert Leighton, late archbishop of Glasgow (1692), p. 220. Brodie, The diary of Alexander Brodie, p. 266. Ibid., p. 367. T. F. Torrance, Scottish theology: from John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), p. 64. For example, see James Durham, Christ crucified (Edinburgh, 1683), pp. 9, 15. William Guthrie, The Christian’s great interest, p. 39. On page 6 he notes that faith is ‘the only proper condition which giveth right to the saving blessings of the Covenant, Rom. 4. 5.’. Binning, Works, I, pp. 149, 182, 404; II, pp. 103, 111, 143–9, 176, 281, 329; III, pp. 295, 333, 373; Hugh Binning, The common principles of Christian religion clearly proved and singularly improved (Glasgow, 1667), pp. 23, 154, 189. David Dickson, Therapeutica sacra (Edinburgh, 1656). D. G. Mullan, Narratives of the religious self in early-modern Scotland (Ashgate, Farnham, 2010), pp. 318–328. See also my review of Mullan’s book in Scottish Historical Review, 91:1 (2012), 180–2. Patrick Gillespie, The ark of the testament opened (1661), pt 1, p. 345. Gillespie, Ark, pt 2, pp. 149–59. Mullan, Narratives of the religious self, pp. 309–59. Ibid., pp. 326–6; George Sinclair makes reference to using this text in an attempt to help a girl harangued by the devil. George Sinclair, Satan’s invisible world discovered (Edinburgh, 1685), p. 202. James Clark, Memento mori (Edinburgh, 1699), p. 16. Alexander Wedderburn, David’s testament opened up in fourty sermons upon Samuel 23, 5 (Edinburgh, 1698), pp. 42, 58, 91–9, 101–5, 109–15. Ibid., pp. 105, 109. E.[dward] F.[isher], The marrow of modern divinity (1646), pp. 41, 98–9, 130.

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Chapter 6

Presbyterian ecclesiologies at the Westminster assembly Chad Van Dixhoorn

ECCLESIASTICAL CONTEXTS

T

he Westminster assembly was in many ways the high point of the puritan experiment. The special morning service on 1 July 1643 saw the nave of Westminster Abbey thronged with supporters of a godly reformation. Long prayed-for alterations in worship, clarifications in doctrine and renovations in church government were finally within reach. While continuing reformation was to proceed on all three fronts, much of the speculation and commentary in the press about the assembly was occupied with its attempts to reform church governance in England (and by extension Ireland and the principality of Wales) and to refine the government of the church in Scotland. The assembly offered a purpose-built arena for the mid-century ecclesiastical contests of the English-speaking world, and its debates on the subject were extensive and became noisily divisive. The notoriety of these debates owes much to the assumption that the rancour which accompanied debate out of the assembly also characterised debate in the assembly, although this was usually not the case. Even more interesting to onlookers was the fact that a (narrow) majority in the English House of Commons refused to accept, and even openly mocked, some of the assembly’s key proposals for a new model of church government.1 If the making of the assembly’s image owed much to successful marketing on the part of Parliament, the synod’s demise was equally reliant on the same body. Whilst failing to gain the imprimatur of the House of Commons or the acceptance of the major part of the English public, the gathering’s texts on church government none the less came to dominate all subsequent forms of presbyterian government and are thus of the highest significance for the history of presbyterian polity. Unsurprisingly, the story of the assembly’s debates on the subject, the religious politics associated with them and the subsequent legacy of the assembly’s texts have been variously narrated, 104

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often with parties lionised or demonised by their respective denominational constituencies. More consistently told has been the story of lost credibility, as congregationalists and presbyterians in the assembly eventually allowed their private disputes to be adjudicated by the public through printed pamphlets. This chapter treats yet another dimension to the gathering’s ecclesiastical disputes: intramural debates among presbyterians at the Westminster assembly. Histories of the assembly exhibit a range of opinion on presbyterian division. One of the earliest chroniclers of the assembly, Robert Baillie, sighed with relief that ‘God sent Mr Henderson, Mr Rutherfoord, and Mr Gillespie’ to the English presbyterians, emphasising the confusion and errors of the English and the settled views of the Scots, without whom the church to the south would never have ‘agreed to any settled government’ with a Reformed flavour.2 Two hundred years later, and diverging from Baillie, William Hetherington insisted that ‘The Scottish commissioners cannot with propriety be regarded as forming a party in the Westminster Assembly, as they and the English presbyterians were in all important matters completely identified’.3 John R. de Witt was more nuanced than Hetherington, noting some differences in polity among presbyterians, but a fundamental unity with respect to the theory of presbyterian church government. For de Witt, the ‘fundamental difference’ in the assembly is ‘between the Presbyterian and Independent parties’.4 Others see development within the presbyterian party at the assembly. Alexander Mitchell focused on early divisions among presbyterians and then emphasises their increasing unity.5 Robert Paul realised that there was ‘a great deal of fluidity within the parties’.6 In yet another permutation, Rosemary Bradley concluded that ‘the English presbyterians … always remained a hybrid group’.7 Hunter Powell’s recent study of the assembly’s congregationalists and their role in the assembly’s early debates seeks to correct over-simplifications. He narrates diversity, pitting the London minister Lazarus Seaman’s highchurch ecclesiology against George Gillespie’s incipient ­congregationalism – or the Dissenting Brethren’s quasi-presbyterianism – arguing that assembly congregationalists had more in common with some presbyterians than did many of the presbyterians with each other.8 Powell asks, helpfully, what ‘types of presbyterianism emerged at the Westminster assembly’ and seeks to ‘isolate a few … presbyterian strains of ecclesiological thought’.9 Like Bradley, he finds the divisions among the presbyterians more significant than historians before them allowed, even arguing that John De Witt and Robert Paul ‘have failed to account for the strength and tenacity of the various English presbyterian positions’.10 Indeed, in direct contrast to De Witt, Powell emphasises differences in presbyterian theory rather than differences in presbyterian practice. What follows in this chapter is an attempt to delineate and account for presbyterian diversity in the context of assembly members’ self-professed 105

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presbyterian identity. This study will first survey the assembly’s debates, then its texts and finally its votes. In each case, the focus will be on points of unity and diversity among assembly presbyterians, rather than a discussion of the full range of disagreements that existed in the assembly as a whole.

DEBATING CHURCH GOVERNANCE Historians have long recognised that there were differences among the Westminster assembly’s presbyterians, and in their less buoyant moments, of which there were many, assembly members lamented these differences themselves. True, the participants sometimes boasted about the bond that united their brotherhood, but unity was always a work in progress. Celebrating their similarities, Robert Baillie would boast that his fellow Scottish commissioners at the Westminster assembly ‘never … had a greater harmonie’ and that there was ‘not the least difference, the smallest eye-lift betwixt any of us’.11 John Lightfoot, too, could speak of an ecclesial issue ‘easily resolved’ by the assembly.12 None the less, Baillie would later reflect on differences in the ecclesial thinking of George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherford (two of those same commissioners) that were widely recognised among Scottish contemporaries and could hardly have been hidden at the assembly.13 And while Baillie sometimes praised God for solidarity with and among English presbyterians (‘all of our side’), at other times he bemoaned their indecision (‘The leading men in the Assemblie are much at this time divided about the questions in hand’).14 John Lightfoot, too, could speak of some matters ‘debated long’ or votes ‘at last … concluded’.15 In a vote about the power of ordination, Lightfoot’s personal count indicated that two-fifths of those voting demurred from the assembly’s decision, and in his estimation the ‘business had been managed with the most heat and confusion of any thing that had happened among us’.16 These are telling comments, and yet they remain the impressions of a few participants. To gain a comprehensive sense of the diversity that obtained among the assembly’s presbyterians, one would need to survey the assembly’s own records as well as the commentary offered by its participants. Although one of the points that came to unite the majority of assembly presbyterians was a conviction that a form of church government could be deduced from Scripture, a comprehensive reading of the minutes of the Westminster assembly allows us to say with confidence that the most frequent disagreements among the presbyterians were found in points of biblical exegesis. When later in the assembly Cornelius Burges did not sign his name to an important statement about church government, his refusal to concur with the majority was only ‘till he see the proofes’ that they would append in support of their vote.17 And the matter that Lightfoot said was ‘easily resolved’ still proved to be a ‘great business’ when it came time ‘to find out some proofs for it’.18 106

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Four clusters of debates dominated the exegetical disagreements among the presbyterians. George Gillespie found himself at odds with Thomas Temple, Thomas Gataker and Jeremiah Whitaker when he saw in Matthew 18 and its command to relay irreconcilable problems ‘to the church’ a multistep process of church discipline; Gillespie led the way in affirming it, the three in denying it.19 Second, a wide variety of theories obtained as to what 1 Corinthians 5 might mean with its difficult reference to ‘handing someone over to Satan’, and whether excommunication by the church was intended by the Apostle Paul in that text.20 Third, a minority of presbyterians at the assembly, led by Thomas Temple, raised questions about the likelihood of a plurality of congregations in Jerusalem in the early church, even though this plurality could be potentially useful in establishing biblical precedence to connectional church governance, either episcopal or presbyterian.21 And finally, presbyterians disagreed as to whether the congregations in the New Testament’s Jerusalem church had a fixed or fluid leadership; that is to say, members debated on the one hand whether individual ministers or apostles were called to pastor particular congregations, or on the other hand whether a college of ministers was responsible for the well-being of one large congregation or of a collection of congregations.22 The last issue, whether congregation leadership was fixed or fluid, is instructive in gauging the relative significance of a much-debated biblical point. As it happens, the congregationalist Philip Nye thought it was the presbyterians’ weakest argument, his friend Thomas Goodwin their strongest.23 Their friend George Gillespie had his own opinion but concluded that the erudite debate on the subject was much ado about almost nothing, for the presbyterian case could be argued from either scenario. Paraphrasing an English bard, Gillespie commented that the assembly was struggling to put ‘Hercules shoe on a child’s foote’.24 After much debate, the assembly agreed.25 If presbyterians contested the best lines of biblical support for their distinctives in church government, they also differed in particular points ranging from relatively trivial matters to vital, policy-changing paradigms. The first church governance discussion exposing diverging views among the presbyterians, in the autumn of 1643, adumbrated the dynamics of many of their disagreements. Their differences bore little significance for their own practice but had amplified ramifications for the assembly itself: presbyterians were united against the congregationalists that there was no biblical requirement that every congregation should call both a pastor and a teacher, but remained divided amongst themselves about whether the scriptures offered a real distinction between pastors and teachers in the first place.26 No significant point in presbyterian church polity was at stake, but it might have mattered to the congregationalists: the presbyterian conviction that the office (or at least function) of teacher was of special usefulness in the university was an extension of their idea that the ministry was given to the whole church; but it also had the potential to interfere with the congregationalist conviction 107

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that ordained ministers, like elders, properly belonged only to local congregations. As it happened, congregationalists had a workaround, for, if they saw the true home of a teacher in the local congregation, they too wanted ordained ministers in the universities. Thus the congregationalist Philip Nye adroitly anticipated any charges of internal incoherence in a congregationalist acceptance of ministers as professors by arguing that one must not ‘make any severe distinction betweene universityes & churches; in Scotland their Achademyes are churches’.27 It was less obvious that such was the case in England, but the presbyterians saw no need to comment. As it happened, the debate about pastors and teachers also raised the question of whether it was prudent to say much on the subject given that other Reformed churches maintained a real distinction between the two.28 Most other discussions among the presbyterians would carry more weight; they would also often bear in some way on understandings of local congregations and congregational church government. This chapter refers to ‘local congregations’ and not to ‘local churches’ because presbyterially inclined members of the assembly questioned whether congregations were in some sense complete churches or merely parts of a complete church – the latter being a minority view championed by the formidable Lazarus Seaman during a debate in February 1644.29 Lazarus Seaman’s contention that congregations are only parts of the church did not carry an immediate practical application. It does not appear that he anticipated the assembly enshrining his understanding in any of its texts. His interest was in the realm of what might be best termed ‘ecclesiology’ (dealing with scripture, theology, even theory), rather than the realm of what would perhaps be best termed ‘polity’ (dealing with the practical outworking of ecclesiological principles). Naturally, in the flow of their arguments, members of the assembly did not neatly package their commitments on church governance as belonging either to ecclesiology or polity. Indeed, it would be easy to draw too dark a line between the two since ecclesiology and polity are like partly overlapping circles, with some commitments shared between both spheres. None the less, the distinction has some utility for understanding the assembly’s own dynamics. Seaman had offered an ecclesiological distinction about the nature of the church that would recur in the assembly’s polity debates and, arguably, approached one of the key theoretical differences among assembly presbyterians.30 The elephant in the assembly in the autumn of 1643 was the ruling elder, and not a theory about the nature of the church. The alternative between ruling elders and episcopal bishops was not the explicit subject of debate when the assembly was asked to review and then to subscribe to the Solemn League and Covenant in October, but members saw themselves to be making a decision when it came to their subscription; honest subscription at least required them to be open to a debate about church governors.31 The issue was forced a month later in November when the assembly debated whether the 108

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Scriptures taught an office of ‘ruling presbyters’.32 Here the congregationalists were united with Scottish presbyterians in support of the office; English presbyterians were divided among themselves on the issue and its biblical backing for more than three weeks.33 The synod tried various devices to smooth the conversation, including dissolving the assembly into a committee of the whole. If this was meant to encourage freedom of debate, the scribe failed to get the memo: this is the one committee meeting for which an official assembly record survives. Nor are assembly records on this point particularly helpful in revealing what happened. Someone other than the scribe wrote a note in the minutes saying that Old Testament evidence supported the office of ruling elder, but assembly votes fail to confirm this conclusion and the one independent account of the day contradicts it.34 The assembly eventually moved on to discuss deacons, with presbyterians debating the function of a deacon; was he a minister or minister-in-training? Or an agent of the elders employed in ministries of mercy? Deliberations over the diaconate took them to the end of 1643, with involved conversations about the duty of pastors and parishioners to care for the poor.35 Having differed earlier over the offices of pastor and teacher, presbyterians found themselves in early 1644 debating whether a minister must be designated to a particular pastoral charge in order to be ordained (as the congregationalists argued), and wondered again what implications this might have for those in a non-pastoral teaching ministry.36 Presbyterian members wondered whether an evangelist needed to be present at every ordination service in order to legitimate the act of ordination – an idea redolent of arguments for episcopacy. (Herbert Palmer spoke for many when he confessed, ‘I have divers thoughts, yet I am not soe abundantly cleare.’)37 And they assumed that only a minister could participate in the ordination of a minister, until challenged by a proposed amendment.38 A speaker’s recommendation, that the assembly simply refer to ‘the laying on of the hands of the presbytery’ (and thus allow room for ruling elders to participate), was met with cries of ‘no, no’! Given the almost visceral response of the majority, the participation of ruling elders in the ordination of preaching elders appeared to be headed for defeat.39 The debate over ordination, bubbling up sporadically from 1643, did not go away. In the beginning of May, it was asked whether a congregational eldership, perhaps with more than one preaching elder, could ordain its own preaching and ruling elders. This is when Robert Baillie issued his complaint that ‘The leading men in the Assemblie are much at this time divided about the questions in hand … Some of them would give nothing to congregations’, others everything.40 He was right. The assembly’s congregationalists had been arguing with significant force that it was in the essence of a congregation, as a church, to be able to perform any churchly function, including ordination. The self-sufficiency of the local congregation, rightly ordered, was an important ecclesiological principle for the assembly’s congregationalists. Lazarus Seaman, who was diametrically opposed to the congregational 109

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independency that such a position assumed, had tried to knock the legs out from under this argument by disputing one element in its premise: that a congregation was, in fact, a church, and not simply a part of the church. It was in the context of this contest that Seaman offered his most significant programmatic ecclesiological statement, the main elements of which the assembly’s scribe recorded with unusual care: ‘This is what I say: ordination doth not depend on the essentiality, but integrality of a church.41 When a congregation comes to be an organised body, then it is a church. But this is never integrally intire till it be associated with neighbour congregations, if they may associate.’42 This may have been a concession or a development in Seaman’s thinking. But his point, perhaps more palatable to his fellow presbyterians than some of his earlier declarations about the church, was that a church is never whole in its fullest or proper sense until it is sharing in those activities which impact or belong to the church of Christ as a whole. After extended deliberation the presbyterians concluded that a congregation’s eldership – even a very large one – should not, under normal circumstances, take to itself the power of ordaining ministers, or preaching elders.43 If there was a concern among some presbyterians and all congregationalists that the assembly was not giving ruling elders the rights and authority that were properly theirs, it was also the case that at least three of the Scottish commissioners carried the corresponding concern that local congregations be granted what was ‘due to particular churches’.44 Correlating with the question of whether a congregation was a ‘church’ at all, the entitlements of congregations appeared repeatedly as a subject in its own right or as a principal feature within another debate. Congregational rights was a subject about which the Scots had written a paper and which Alexander Henderson took a role in promoting, Seaman in opposing.45 The debate about congregational privileges or rights could take many different forms. Was the office of ruling elder a clear teaching of scripture and thus a matter of divine right? Almost all presbyterians said yes,46 but Seaman pressed a more nuanced question: even if it was an office by divine right, did every congregation by divine right need to have such an officer? Scottish presbyterians with English congregationalists wanted to maximise the number and necessity of ruling elders; other assembly members wished to minimise, and even allow for the possibility of none at all; still others were unsure. A rough peace was made by an expatriate Scot, Thomas Young, and the assembly concluded it was ‘requisite’ to have ruling elders in a ­congregation – a carefully deployed word that peacekeepers would often try to insert into the assembly’s formulations.47 The assembly then considered how elders and pastors were to be selected. Did a congregation enjoy the right to elect its own leaders? Or simply to retain a right of refusal, and that only with substantial grounds? Again, presbyterians were not on the same page. After all, it would prove one of the assembly’s most socially revolutionary votes if it were to conclude that 110

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congregations (and not patrons) held the ultimate right to reject – or even to choose – potential ministers and elders.48 Right of choice was the most economically and socially significant declaration, but, in the eyes of Parliament, the assembly’s most disturbing vote came when it concluded that church members (and thus also Members of Parliament) could be disciplined by congregational elderships.49 Of course behind this shared conviction was yet another division. Presbyterians agreed that a congregation’s eldership could discipline its membership, but many of them (including some of the strongest advocates of congregational rights) thought that, whilst a local eldership should normally be responsible for the suspension of recalcitrant members, only a regional presbytery should go so far as to excommunicate a member,50 leading to debate as to whether the first court of jurisdiction for discipline was properly with the congregational or presbyterial eldership.51 Quite apart from the merits of scriptural argumentation, in the context of rampant excommunication for trivial offences in the 1620s and 1630s both positions made sense. Some presbyterians wanted to stop excommunication from being perceived as distant and bureaucratic and thus wanted it carried out by the eldership of a local congregation. Other presbyterians wanted to make sure it was a rare and not a routine event, and knew that if handled by a presbytery it would be more infrequent. But the major argument for presbyterial excommunication was that the excommunication of a member, like the ordination of a minister, was a matter of relevance to all the churches in a geographical area and not simply to a local congregation.52 Deliberation about suspension and excommunication, however, was, in turn, complicated by the conviction of many presbyterians that disciplinary action, even if executed by the elders, should still be conducted only with the implicit or explicit concurrence of their congregations. For some, the consent of the congregation was a matter of right. For others, it was a practical reality. After all, what effect could discipline have if the majority of the congregation did not think a person deserved it?53 For still others, such as Robert Baillie, the idea of congregational involvement in a disciplinary process was a nightmare to be avoided at all costs, a half-step away from ecclesial anarchy.54 Of profound consequence for church discipline was the nettlesome question of membership. Presbyterians dreamed of a church comprised of visible saints and their children, but were troubled by the idea prevalent among congregationalists that prospective members would have to offer ‘such signs of true grace as persuades the whole congregation of their true regeneration’. The presbyterians advocated instead ‘a fair profession, and want of scandall’.55 But would that profession consist of affirming basic Christian truths held by the ‘learned and godly’, as the English would have it? Or the doctrine confessed by the commonality of Reformed churches, as the Scots were accustomed?56 Henderson, on behalf of his fellow Scottish commissioners, explained that ‘We conceive that a man may be excommunicated for an error that is not fundamental’.57 Not many in the assembly would agree. 111

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There were other issues, and in most of them the power or rights of a congregation and its eldership was an assumed or explicit subject for debate. Even in issues pertaining to presbyteries and synods, congregational matters were just under the surface. Could congregations, for example, send learned members to be members of synods? Or only elders? What if members were sent in an advisory capacity, able to speak but not to vote? Were ministers constituent members of presbyteries but ruling elders of congregations not? If ruling elders needed to be commissioned, might other ruling elders in their congregation commission them? Or must they be nominated by preaching elders only? Is delegation or election for synods even a good practice?58 And can a synod coerce the membership of a local congregation, or is its authority only spiritual?59 At least a dozen disagreements among presbyterians rose to the level of debates at the Westminster assembly. Underlying all of them was a palpable tension between those who saw most of the component parts of a presbyterian polity rooted in scripture and those who saw few. Prior to the assembly, Calybute Downing asserted that ‘it is very safe, and savours of a prudent and peaceable spirit, not easily to conclude many things in Governement, Jure Divino’, or by divine right.60 He was hardly alone in his sentiments, but, as the assembly progressed, an increasing number of divines embraced most or all of the key elements of the presbyterian system of government. The assembly would still need to describe as ‘fitting’ or ‘requisite’ a set of practices that some members wished to force, considering them required. But by deploying careful phrases the assembly’s presbyterians were able to absorb and accommodate its diminishing number of dissenters – the steadfast congregationalists excepted. Of course in any discussion of presbyterian unity or disunity, chronology is essential. The most significant turning point for presbyterians, as Mitchell, de Witt and Paul have noted, came at the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant and with the debated about church officers in November and December 1643; in the former, members made themselves open to new directions; in the latter, they debated whether to replace the rule of bishops with ruling elders. At both points there were divines willing to distinguish between abolishing prelacy as the abuse of episcopacy, and abolishing episcopacy itself. For those with a lingering weakness for episcopacy, congregationalism offered no cure, presbyterianism the only real alternative. Once willing to entertain the idea of presbyterianism, they were open to persuasion from scripture and, as the months and years passed, they gradually accepted presbyterianism one point at a time, and then the system as a whole. Among those who saw almost every element of presbyterian polity as mandated by Scripture, or jure divino, were the Scottish commissioners, although a reading of Baillie’s letters and Gillespie’s works demonstrate that they map on to different points of the presbyterian spectrum when it came to their ecclesiological principles. The pull for Gillespie was always towards the 112

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local congregation, but the unity of the visible church was one of the checks in his system of balances. Gillespie also insisted that congregational rights, though real, were a later development in biblical history.61 While agreeing with the congregationalists in their insistence on church power finding its first expression in local congregations some Scottish commissioners were even more unwilling than English presbyterians like Stephen Marshall to allow a congregation the execution of that power in any matter that might concern a regional church. Lazarus Seaman and Robert Baillie were on a different plane from Gillespie. Seaman, perhaps more than any other presbyterian, so privileged the unity of the visible church that it became what appears to have been an organising principle. This is what shaped his understanding of the ministry and the rights of local congregations and the distinctions that he would make between preaching and ruling elders. The church was a whole, and the ministry of the church given to the whole church of Christ. In his conception of the church, ruling elders would support the ministry where needed; indeed, he was convinced that church discipline could be conducted at the local level even if the eldership consisted of one preaching elder.62 Robert Baillie shared some of Seaman’s leanings in polity, but for different reasons: Seaman was motivated by ecclesiological principles, Baillie by a fear of sectarianism. Others held commitments overlapping with Seaman and Baillie, a subset of whom are known to have advocated a modified episcopacy prior to the assembly or to have conformed at the Restoration.63 These presbyterians ceded to the local congregation what was not essential or efficient for the regional or national church. Their primary concern was for the whole before the parts. It would be overly simplistic to consider them all ‘high-church presbyterians’ or ‘modified episcopalians’. In fact, Seaman ‘became “a little estranged” from his presbyterian brethren who attempted to achieve some agreement with the episcopalians for the future religious settlement’. Richard Baxter attributed these tensions to personal issues, suggesting that Seaman felt slighted.64 But there is every reason to think that his disappointment with his friends had much to do with the strength of his commitment to presbyterian principles rather than a commitment to clericalism or to an abstract high-churchism that could adapt to various forms of church government. Stephen Marshall, friend of Gillespie and constant cause of complaint for Baillie, accommodated congregationalists for both policy reasons and personal ones (the prominent congregationalist Philip Nye’s family was linked to Marshall’s through marriage). Baillie, who saw ‘Vines, Herle, Reynolds, Temple, Seaman, and Palmer, of our mind’, would frequently complain of ‘Marshall’s cunning’ in making peace with the congregationalists, giving ‘congregations the power of excommunication and ordination’.65 Marshall, Edmund Calamy and others were big-tent presbyterians eager to establish a nationally unified church government quickly and peaceably, even if not perfectly. 113

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THEORY AND PRACTICE: THE PRESBYTERIAN POLITY OF GEORGE GILLESPIE The minutes of the Westminster assembly help us to understand what the gathering debated, the positions members held, and how they conducted themselves. What these records fail to do is to pinpoint the gathering’s conclusions on each of these topics, or to identify the debates that presbyterians tried to avoid. Here the papers authored by the assembly are essential. Additionally, if one looks at the presbyterian backstory to the assembly, not least the printed literature on church governance produced before the gathering began, it becomes apparent that some topics of importance are given less attention in the assembly’s debates than historians might expect, and play almost no part in those texts authored by the presbyterian majority. There exists no book-jacket overview of early modern presbyterian publications, and no easy way of defining by consensus what constitutes an essential presbyterianism. This chapter is not intended to fill this void. The absence of an overview is due, in part, to the fact that there is no such thing as a generic presbyterianism. Polities that existed in practice were shaped in their particulars by the churches in which they functioned. What is more, the churches that employed a more or less presbyterian polity in Scotland and Europe understandably placed more emphasis on practice than on theory in their official texts on church governance. For comment on both ecclesiology and polity one usually has to read the writings of theologians, although here too we do not find uniformity among theorists. No one church, or voice within a church, speaks for all. None the less, it is helpful to compare the writings of the assembly to a prominent mid-century presbyterian in order set his publications, often focused on theory, beside the assembly’s body of literature with its emphasis on presbyterian practice. The compelling reference point employed by this study is the corpus produced by the controversialist George Gillespie. Although one of the youngest men at the Westminster assembly, Gillespie seems to have been the first participant to outline a presbyterian polity and then to defend it against alternative approaches to church governance.66 Buried within his astonishing learned Dispute against the English popish ceremonies, printed in Edinburgh in 1637 without authorial attribution, the twenty-four-year-old Gillespie offered four ‘Digressions’ on church government, the principles of which he appears to have maintained for the remainder of his short life.67 If his polity remained consistent, so too did Gillespie’s principal polemical interests: opposing episcopalian polity, Erastian ecclesiology and, with a marked difference in tone, congregationalism. While liberally applying unflattering epithets to adherents of episcopalianism and the architects of Erastianism, Gillespie employed the moniker ‘independent’ (unwelcomed by congregationalists) only sparingly and usually privately. While willing to 114

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argue against congregationalists in print and on the assembly floor, it is striking that many, perhaps most, of his retorts and counter-arguments remained in his personal notes and were not uttered in the presence of his friends.68 Indeed, even in his anonymous writings, he was careful to emphasise the unity that they shared. ‘Brethren’, he exhorted, ‘we shall be one in heaven, let us packe up differences in this place of our pilgrimage, the best way wee can’.69 Gillespie is useful because much of what he had to say about church governance was picked up and discussed by friends and opponents alike. A summary of his thinking offers a window into the ideas discussed in printed presbyterian works; it is merely value added that Gillespie, as a commissioner of the Church of Scotland, was also an important interlocutor at the assembly itself. What follows, focusing especially on works printed and notes penned between 1637 and 1647, is a brief synopsis of Gillespie’s understanding of church governance in four topic clusters: ecclesiology, polity, exegesis and perspectives on the history of ecclesiology.70 The basic building blocks of Gillespie’s ecclesiology involved five crucial elements, the most essential of which were present at every stage of his articulated ecclesiology. First, under the mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ, there is a government of the church that is distinct from the rule of the civil magistrate; these two governments are to relate to the church in distinct ways.71 Second, the only legitimate members of the church are visible saints and their children, and the only ecclesiastical offices in the church are those instituted by Jesus Christ in the New Testament.72 Third, Christ has delivered to the whole church, including local congregations, the keys of the kingdom, both doctrine and discipline.73 Fourth, though the power of government rests originally with the people of the church, the twofold exercise of the keys of the kingdom is committed to representatives (to preaching elders, the keys of doctrine and discipline; to ruling elders the key of discipline only).74 Fifth, there are two powers of government in the church: the ‘power of order’ (potestatis ordinis), or rights and responsibilities communicated to all preaching elders (or ministers) at their ordination; and a ‘power of jurisdiction’ (potestatis jurisdictionis), or actions which a preaching elder cannot properly do himself and which must be done in a representative meeting of elders.75 The main lines of Gillespie’s polity (as opposed to those matters which he considered incidental) were supported by extensive scriptural exegesis or were considered by him to be evident from ‘the light of nature’. These points of polity too can be summarised under a few headings. First, the only perpetual church offices instituted in the New Testament are deacons and various types (but not orders or degrees) of elders.76 Second, each congregation is to have a plurality and parity of elders who act with the concurrence of the members as a matter of right and in order to permit effective church government, and these men are charged with a special care for the holiness of the church’s members.77 Third, the members of the church are neither to 115

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act alone nor to call the eldership to account for its decisions, which would reduce an eldership to a mere committee of the congregation. Rather, the concurrence of the congregation can be tacit and implicit.78 Fourth, actions particular to a local congregation ought to be conducted by the elders of that local congregation (such as admission or suspension from the Lord’s table, the election of elders or the ordination of ruling elders), but actions of importance common to more than one congregation ought to be conducted by a regional eldership (such as excommunication from the Lord’s table, the examination and ordination of preaching elders and the hearing of appeals), but salvo jure, without prejudice to the right of the congregation.79 Finally, a variety of synods are to be of standing use in the church, including presbyteries, synods and assemblies and the lower assemblies are subordinate to the higher. Ecumenical councils, should they ever be revived, are of occasional use only.80 Gillespie’s usual lines of biblical argumentation with respect to church governance often involved the insistence (contrary to both Erastians and congregationalists but in common with episcopalians), first, that there is some continuity between the church governments in the Old Testament and the New. For example, an examination of the Mosaic religious economy reveals, both in the Pentateuch and in the historical books, (1) a church government distinct from civil government, (2) the existence of teachers and of ruling elders as representatives of the people, (3) the concurrence of the people in the actions of their representatives and (4) the practice of appeals from a lower court to a higher. Gillespie argued that much of this is assumed by Jesus Christ in his act of establishing his church, and by the early church itself.81 Second, the vocabulary of the New Testament, including its use of the term ‘church’ (singular) as an appellation for multiple congregations in a city or region, suggests the visible unity of the church, a unity usually expressed through a shared church government.82 Third, cities such as Jerusalem and Ephesus had sufficiently high populations of Christians that by necessity multiple congregations were formed in each place. Elders first governed the congregations of a city collectively as a presbytery. The existence of elderships dedicated to local congregations is a later development as additional congregations grew and new churches were planted.83 Fourth, references to the ‘church’ in the Old and New Testaments often refer synecdochally to ‘that company of church governors whereby a particular church is represented’.84 Fifth, Acts 6, Acts 15 and, by extension, Matthew 18 indicate that there should be a subordination of smaller or lower courts of the church to higher, where doctrine and discipline can be disputed, appeals heard and common concerns (such as ordination) determined collectively.85 Finally, Gillespie’s narration of the history of ecclesiology asserted that even church fathers and medieval scholars recognised that the New Testament instituted only the offices of deacon and elder, and no degrees of order among or superior to elders;86 second, that the New Testament offered 116

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the church a presbyterian structure of government which existed in some form for at least two centuries, and traces of which can be found even in the early fifth century;87 third, non-presbyterian forms of church governance tend to be associated with deviant theologies;88 fourth, the government of the protestant Reformers is closer to a presbyterian form than any other form; and, finally, that the errors characteristic of Erastianism represented a recent error in the history of ecclesiology and should be considered suspect, in part, because of its late date and ‘new-fangled language’.89 Each of these points can be amply demonstrated from Gillespie’s writings. When Gillespie’s works are set beside the assembly’s many texts and statements about church governance, points of comparison and contrast readily emerge. For example, while the assembly only mentions in passing what Gillespie discusses in depth, it is clear that the presbyterians in the gathering shared a similar perspective on the history of church governance.90 Again, although there were always some members who disagreed on every exegetical point raised in the assembly, the majority of assembly presbyterians argued for their position along similar lines as did Gillespie. As already noted, there were competing understandings regarding the constitution and government of the church during the time of the apostles. None the less, greater unity was found among the assembly’s presbyterians when it came to understanding the government that the apostles themselves established for the post-apostolic period. As with Gillespie, other assembly presbyterians tended to see continuity in church government between the two testaments,91 to insist that the diversity of languages and sufficiently high populations of Christians in major cities required a plurality of congregations (some of which probably shared their elders for a time),92 and to find passages such as Acts 6, Acts 15 or Matthew 18 indicative of a gradation of church courts.93 There are differences too. The assembly is less interested than Gillespie in the use of the term ‘church’ as an appellation for multiple congregations; it comments on the usage of the term,94 but insists repeatedly that it is interested in considering concepts, not mere labels: ‘we inquire not after names, but things’.95 Also unlike Gillespie, the assembly does not appear to argue that references to ‘the church’ sometimes refers by means of synecdoche to its representatives. Additionally, the assembly gives importance to an argument that Gillespie does not emphasise: that elders are commissioned by Christ to serve the whole church, and belong to the whole church, and thus it is appropriate for them to serve in regional presbyteries.96 Where the assembly’s presbyterians eventually found themselves most unified was in the realm of church polity, or practice. They were united: the New Testament held out only two offices in the church: varieties of elders and deacons.97 But not united immediately: an early version of the assembly’s directory for church government also held out an office of ‘widow’ as a kind of deacon (or deaconess).98 The development of other presbyterian practices and policies was also under consideration. For example, the parity of elders 117

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is implied in the denial that bishops are of another order than a presbyter,99 but in practice there was no true parity between preaching elders and ruling elders, as can be seen in the assembly’s comments on the plurality of elders. Again, the plurality of elders in a local congregation is assumed in key assembly texts,100 but, strictly speaking, such plurality was not mandated on the congregational level.101 Seaman thought a single elder could be sufficient for a congregation, and others agreed with him even if they did not think it ideal.102 But Seaman and others had in mind a lone preaching and not a lone ruling elder: indeed, the assembly expressed alarm at the thought that two ruling elders could be considered a sufficient eldership for important acts of government.103 Those who (like Gillespie) insisted on a plurality of elders in every congregation would have to be content with the norm recommended by the assembly (plurality), and turn a blind eye to the minimum that the assembly absolutely required (singularity). Perhaps the presbyterians were most unified among themselves when it came to the practicalities of church discipline. As the membership of the church was to be holy, and not simply coterminous with the membership of the state, it was imperative that the faith and life of its membership be kept in check by an effective, flexible system of discipline initiated by a congregational eldership.104 This was an assertion complicated by the interests of congregations (for congregationalists wanted the membership involved in discipline) and by the House of Commons (which wanted its members immune from discipline, and able to serve as a court of appeal in a contested case). The assembly would deal with the two situations very differently. On the one hand, all but one or two of the assembly’s vocal presbyterians were against Members of Parliament being involved in the use of the keys, leading to a protracted dispute with the lower house.105 On the other hand, the assembly was willing to grant that the consent of the congregation was to be sought in discipline.106 And while curbs were probably envisioned with respect to the participation of a congregation in discipline, these restrictions were mentioned only in the assembly’s polemical tracts and not its programmatic ones. Only in their majority responses to the congregationalists’ minority reports did the assembly’s presbyterians express their disapproval of power being shared ‘between’ the elders ‘and the people’;107 there too they questioned if congregationalist polity led to situations where, effectively, ‘people are to rule over their Officers’.108 Neither scenario was acceptable to the assembly. Other points of unity in polity are not hard to find. As in Gillespie’s writings, the assembly’s texts reveal a concern to establish a connectional form of church government with local, regional and national assemblies, each comprised of delegates from, but with authority over, lower assemblies – the aspects of governance most often associated with presbyterianism as a system of government.109 By contrast, the assembly as a whole offered little explicit reflection on the privileges of congregations; the subject was canvassed in the 118

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gathering’s debates but enjoyed no prominence in its writings. The assembly had given congregations the right to choose its ministers and to consent in cases of excommunication. But only in passing did it mention (and affirm) underlying principles such as the ‘interest’ of congregations or the ‘liberty and privileges of the congregations’.110 Rights and privileges are ecclesiological points and it is on such points, especially the subject of the powers of the keys, that the assembly had the least to say. Rather, the gathering affirmed what it considered to be obvious presbyterian tenets: Christ is the head of the church and its government is appointed by him;111 the civil government has duties to the church, distinct from those of the church’s own governors;112 the church’s membership is comprised of visible saints and their children,113 and its offices are those appointed by Christ in the New Testament for the use of the whole church.114 The first and last of these points were stressed most heavily, for the assembly gave the most press to those principles that were most closely linked to the connectional aspects of presbyterian polity. The contrast between the assembly’s congregationalists and the majority of presbyterians is sharpest here. The congregationalist minority reports focused chiefly on local congregations, and built arguments based on what appeared to be theoretical distinctions between powers of doctrine and discipline and the source and flow of church power.115 The assembly’s committee for accommodation and the grand committee did address congregationalist theories about the exercise of the keys, and the assembly appears to have accepted a distinction between powers of doctrine and discipline, or different uses of the keys of the kingdom.116 Actually, the majority complained that congregationalists characterised presbyterian government as being ‘upon all occasions, so prejudiciall to congregations, and to their power’.117 Nevertheless, the gathering as a whole found no useful currency in the ecclesiological distinctions common amongst the congregationalists and did not employ these distinctions in their own constructive work.

CONCLUSION In trying to understand presbyterian diversity among those with a selfconscious presbyterian identity there is, of course, much that this brief study cannot address. It should be noted, for example, that, in advocating a robust connectionalism in the visible church, the assembly’s presbyterians saw room for more than a mere governmental unity. In November 1644 the congregationalists had presented, argumentum ad absurdum, that ‘If the Scriptures had intended many Churches making one Church, and the Elders of those many Churches to have been Elders in common to those Churches as one Church, then in like manner the Deacons of all those Churches should make up a common Deaconry’.118 The presbyterians responded that it was no absurdity for ‘the Deacons Office might be extended to more Congregations 119

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then one’. As the presbyterians understood it, this was the practice of the church ‘in Jerusalem, and so it may be still, as the like condition of the Church may require: were the poor Saints to be maintained now as then, only by voluntary Contributions, divers Congregations might be associated in this work also, for the common care of their poor’. Indeed, in England ‘the Law hath ordered, that if one Parish be not able to maintain their own poor, the Neighbour Parishes are to joyn with them in it; So, that neither by Gods Law, nor mans Law, doth this carry any incongruity with it’.119 The very word ‘presbyterian’ draws attention to church government, but the assembly was aware of the fact that the visible unity of the church could be expressed in a diaconal as well as a disciplinary connectionalism. This study is also limited in its use of sources. It has expanded the use of the assembly’s minutes and papers beyond that of previous studies of church governance at the assembly, but it has made only limited use of the writings of assembly members. It seems evident that, in order to glean the most from the assembly’s surviving minutes and papers, the records and texts of the assembly must be illumined by the works of individual members, a practice which Hunter Powell employs in his recent study. This chapter surveys texts about church government written by George Gillespie and uses them as a lens through which to gain perspective on the assembly’s proposals. After reading Gillespie’s works, it was easier to see the significance of aspects of the assembly’s debates and texts, and to see where one commissioner’s interests and arguments coalesce or contrast with the assembly’s. In this case, significant overlap can be found on the topics of history, exegesis and polity, as well as with some elements of ecclesiology. Gillespie himself thought that his views were similar to those held by other assembly members and he cites fellow members such as Charles Herle, Thomas Case and Samuel Rutherford to bolster his arguments.120 None the less, as useful as Gillespie is as a point of reference, he remains only one point of reference, and additional studies are needed in order to understand the spectrum of presbyterian views that obtained at the assembly and to place individual divines at correct points along this spectrum. Comparative studies may confirm that Gillespie’s views on church governance most closely represent mainstream opinion among the presbyterians, with Lazarus Seaman and Stephen Marshall mere eddies on opposite banks, but perhaps not. In trying to understand presbyterian unity and diversity, this study offers one main proposal. It advocates making a distinction between ecclesiology and polity as a tool for accessing the dynamic between the assembly’s debates and its texts: the debates, where in the undercurrents of the assembly’s committees and plenary sessions many issues generated turbulent discussion; and the texts, where the drift of the assembly’s documents is towards homogenous practical instructions for church governance. In the assembly’s own history, the difference between ecclesiology and 120

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polity can be seen in the fact that one is hardly heard. Readers of the works of Gillespie and others will notice the prevalence of clearly articulated ecclesiological principles; readers of the assembly’s texts will find comparative silence on the same subjects. The emphasis of the assembly is on practice; and, even when called to defend their positions, the assembly tended to offer specific exegetical arguments from scripture for individual practices rather than reasoned arguments from key premises. There were exceptions to this general rule, times when the gathering did present foundational principles and then build upon them. For example, on more than one occasion the assembly’s presbyterians introduced their system of government in three steps. Mixing a Pauline metaphor with an image from Isaiah, they asserted that Christ is the head of the church, and that the government of the church rests upon his shoulders. They then asserted the unity of Christ’s body, one general visible church. In the third place, the gathering argued that the gift of church officers is for the whole church. From this, they drew the conclusion that it is not incongruous, but rather the norm, for Christ to appoint officers to serve his church beyond the confines of an individual congregation.121 These were principles of government, important points, but not points of practice. As the majority in the assembly saw it, there was always more than one road that led to presbyterianism, and in articulating some foundation for presbyterian practice the assembly did not wish to exclude others. After all, some of the non-congregationalists entered the assembly almost as wary of one another as they were of the men who came to be known as the ‘Dissenting Brethren’, and thus in the slippery debates on church governance it seemed prudent to place their weight on those topics where support was thickest. Congregationalists quite sensibly seized on the delicacy of their brothers’ predicament, attempting to destabilise their presbyterian colleagues as they tried to save seats for themselves at the table. Philip Nye spoke as if every difference among the assembly constituted a separate party with respect both to major issues, such as whether there is divine warrant for a system of government, and to ‘divers other perticulars’.122 Viscount Saye and Sele joined him, noting that presbyterians were of a ‘double opinion’, some seeing local congregations as complete churches in themselves with church officers, others seeing that many congregations make up one church with shared officers.123 His timing was shrewd, and the truth of his observation undeniable. When it came to ecclesiology, presbyterians were of two minds. And yet there is a danger in overestimating the importance of more subtle ecclesiological distinctions. Presbyterians did hold ecclesiological commitments that informed their polity. As this chapter has already documented, presbyterian members were pulled towards two opposite poles of church governance, some sympathising with disappointed congregationalists, others with displaced episcopalians; they also differed in their ecclesiological starting points and in some basic principles. But the impact 121

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of these principles among presbyterians is not directly parallel to that of the congregationalists. Hunter Powell reflects on the presbyterians’ decision to avoid debate over ecclesiological principles and suggests that they avoided debating ‘fundamental beliefs’ and settled for a unity achieved ‘linguistically and procedurally’, for ‘Had the assembly opted to start with a platform of church government first they would have risked alienating one or more presbyterian party’.124 There is truth in these statements. The assembly did have to pay very close attention to its words. Extended debates were held over the strength of the language used in the ‘Directory for church government’ in its draft and final forms. And it would have been fatal for assembly progress if presbyterians had tried to encode an expansive set of ecclesiological principles in their programmatic, or even their polemical texts. Nor would it have helped the presbyterian cause if they had done so. Finer ecclesiological points did not possess the determinative power for the assembly’s presbyterians that they seem to have possessed with the assembly’s congregationalists. Indeed the bulk of the presbyterians’ positive statements and defensive polemic evidence a dependence on what modern readers will recognise as straightforward attempts at exegetical constructions, and it appears to be on what the assembly’s considered the strength of their exegetical conclusions that they came to a shared church polity. This point can hardly be overemphasised. The assembly produced pages of reflection on the history of polity and pamphlets almost entirely occupied with biblical arguments for points of polity. This was, for them, ­sufficient to establish a presbyterian polity. In all of this literature the almost entire absence of reflection on the keys or church power in the assembly’s own texts, in contrast to those of the congregationalists, is almost jarring. And when the assembly did make a rare comment about church power, it insisted that the real question was not whether various ecclesial options for the church added or detracted from a congregation’s or presbytery’s power, but the more practical issue of how elderships were ‘to manage that power’.125 This lack of interest in the ideas that congregationalists found most pressing must have been discouraging, and perhaps even insulting, to the Dissenting Brethren. It is one thing to be told that one’s views are incorrect; it is another to have the reasons for those views considered almost irrelevant. Conversely, where presbyterians shared ecclesiological principles with the congregationalists the similarity of ideas encouraged both parties, and perhaps especially the congregationalists, to think that they had more in common than they really did. Hence Philip Nye’s comment that ‘ware the government of Scotland layed downe, those you call independents will come nearer to it than many in this assembly’.126 Perhaps the fact that presbyterians were willing to build a system of government without a unified system of ecclesiology simply did not make sense to the congregationalists. 122

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If so, that would explain why Lord Saye and Sele insisted that presbyterians should debate and defend their respective ecclesiological positions,127 and why Thomas Goodwin would conclude years later that the presbyterians, in not beginning with ecclesiological principles, were unjustly manipulating assembly debates to their own advantage.128 The fact is that the presbyterians recognised that ministers sharing a large measure of agreement in matters of polity could still diverge when it came to ecclesiology, and vice versa. The theologian James Bannerman acknowledged both points as early as 1869 when he noted that some seventeenth-century presbyterians had an understanding of church power similar to that held by their episcopalian contemporaries, while other presbyterians held to a conception of church power almost identical to that held by ­congregationalists – and yet these presbyterians shared a common polity with one another and not with their brethren advocating episcopacy or the congregational way.129 Indeed, George Gillespie, whom everyone recognised as an important presbyterian theorist in his own right, said as much himself. As deeply as Gillespie cared about the keys of the kingdom and theories of church power, he acknowledged as early as 1641 that there were good men on both sides of the debate about whether church power ‘be originally in the people’. What is more, he argued that presbyterians ‘can defend the name of a representative church, without debating the question, whether the people have the power originally or not’.130 Gillespie’s comment on church power could stand equally well for his perspective on the keys. It would have been easier to draft a directory for church government if a majority had a shared ecclesiological starting point. But it is hard to accept that it was merely a political move to circumvent controverted points of ecclesiology if a divine-right presbyterianism could be reached by another route. If the votes of the assembly can put the governmental and disciplinary contests of the assembly in context, then to equate the dissimilarities that obtained among the assembly’s presbyterians with ‘parties’ or ‘polities’ or ‘presbyterianisms’ would be to exaggerate the conclusions that the surviving evidence allows. To be clear, ‘we inquire not after names, but things’. But the thing is, no difference in theory among the gathering’s connectional ecclesiologists created an identifiable voting bloc, or a discernible dissenting minority, or even different kinds of presbyterianisms when it came to the basic elements of presbyterian practice. Consequently, the best way of capturing their differences is to say that there were presbyterian ecclesiologies at the Westminster assembly.

NOTES 1 CJ, IV, pp. 519–20. 2 Robert Baillie, The letters and journals of Robert Baillie, ed. D. Laing, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1841), II, p. 177. 123

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 3 W. M. Hetherington, History of the Westminster assembly of divines (New York, 1843), p. 124. 4 J. R. De Witt, Jus divinum: the Westminster assembly and the divine right of church government (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1969), p. 67. 5 A. F. Mitchell, The Westminster assembly: its history and standards (Philadelphia, 1884), pp. 181–92. 6 R. S. Paul, The assembly of the Lord: politics and religion in the Westminster assembly and the ‘grand debate’ (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1985), p. 104. 7 R. D. Bradley, ‘“Jacob and Esau struggling in the wombe”: a study of presbyterian and independent religious conflicts 1640–1648’ (PhD Thesis, University of Kent, 1975), pp. 8–9. 8 H. Powell, The crisis of British protestantism: church power in the puritan revolution, 1638–44 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), p. 47. 9 Powell’s phrase, ‘presbyterian strains of thought’, is perfectly put, and more precise than his passing references to ‘varieties of presbyterianism’ or ‘types of presbyterianism’ (Powell, Crisis, p. 5, pp. 5, 58, 190, 248). 10 Powell, Crisis, p. 200 11 Baillie, Letters, II, p. 159. 12 Lightfoot, Journal, p. 321. 13 Baillie, Letters, III, p. 94. 14 Baillie, Letters, II, pp. 253, 177. 15 Lightfoot, Journal, p. 312. 16 Lightfoot, Journal, p. 262. 17 MPWA, IV, p. 757. 18 Lightfoot, Journal, p. 321. 19 MPWA, III, pp. 360–6; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 84–6; 94–5. 20 MPWA, III, pp. 402–7; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 93–4. 21 E.g., MPWA, II, pp. 534–9. 22 MPWA, II, p. 682. 23 Gillespie, Notes, p. 48. 24 MPWA, II, p. 683. 25 MPWA, II, pp. 534–684; III, pp. 7–20. 26 MPWA, II, pp. 312–53. 27 MPWA, II, p. 353. 28 MPWA, II, pp. 10, 328–54; Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 53–60. 29 MPWA, II, p. 532. 30 E.g., MPWA, III, pp. 54–67. 31 C. Van Dixhoorn, ‘Scottish influence on the Westminster assembly: a study of the synod’s summoning ordinance and the Solemn League and Covenant’, The Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 37 (2007), 55–88. 32 MPWA, II, p. 354. 33 MPWA, II, pp. 354–461. 34 Cf. MPWA, II, p. 461, with II, p. 11, and Lightfoot, Journal, p. 83. 35 ‘The Answer of the assembly of divines, unto the reasons of the seven dissenting brethren, against the proposition of divers congregations being united under one presbyteriall government’, pp. 1–80 (13), in The reasons presented by the

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36 37 38

39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52

53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60

Dissenting Brethren against certain propositions concerning presbyteriall government (1648). MPWA, II, pp. 626–32; also MPWA, II, pp. 10, 328–53; Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 53–60. MPWA, II, p. 638; for the debate, see pp. 638–42. Lightfoot and Gillespie place the beginning of this debate on Friday 22 March (Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 234–5; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 45–6). The assembly’s minutes put the resolution of the discussion on the following Monday. MPWA, II, pp. 644–5, with a reaffirmation of its position, led by Seaman. MPWA, II, p. 662. Gillespie, Notes, p. 46; MPWA, II, p. 20. MPWA, II, p. 662, captures only Gillespie’s summary of his opponent’s arguments. For Gillespie on the issue, see Gillespie, Notes, p. 47. See also Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 234, 239). Baillie, Letters, II, p. 177. I.e., ordination does not belong to the church’s essence, but to the church as a whole. MPWA, III, p. 64. MPWA, III, pp. 53–86; Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 261–6; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 59–61, 62–4. Lightfoot, Journal, p. 256; Gillespie, Notes, p. 56. For Baillie’s opposition, see Baillie, Letters, II, p. 170. Lightfoot, Journal, p. 256; Gillespie, Notes, p. 56. Baillie, Letters, II, p. 253. MPWA, III, pp. 48–51; Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 260–2; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 57–8. MPWA, III, p. 52; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 59; also see Samuel Rutherford, The due right of presbyteries (1644), pp. 128–9, 205, 459. C. Van Dixhoorn, ‘Politics and religion in the Westminster assembly and the “grand debate”’, in R. Armstrong and T. Ó. hAnnracháin (eds), Insular Christianity: alternative models of the church in Britain and Ireland, c.1570–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 129–48. MPWA, III, pp. 78–80, 99–120; Lightfoot, Journal, p. 262. MPWA, III, pp. 421–7. MPWA, V, Doc. 19, pp. 59, 61; Doc. 20, pp. 63–4, 67; Doc. 29, pp. 79–80; Doc. 30, p. 85; Doc. 45, p. 138; Doc. 52, pp. 152–3, 77; Doc. 58, p. 170; Doc. 72, p. 196; Doc. 77, p. 217; Doc. 134, pp. 185–211. Gillespie, Notes, p. 99. Baillie, Letters, II, p. 254. In terms of congregational rights, it should be noted that at least by 1649 Baillie did accept congregational consent in calling ministers. See Baillie, Letters, III, p. 94. Baillie, Letters, II, p. 236. MPWA, III, p. 519. The assembly chose the former (MPWA, V, Doc.58, p. 169 and MPWA, V, Doc.77, pp. 213–14). MPWA, III, p. 520; see MPWA, III, pp. 519–21. MPWA, III, pp. 314–31; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 74–8. Baillie, Letters, II, p. 388 Calybute Downing, Considerations toward a peaceable reformation in matters ecclesiasticall (1641), p. 4. 125

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 61 [George Gillespie], A dispute against the English-Popish ceremonies (Leiden, 1637), pp. 170–1 (hereafter DEPC); [George Gillespie], An assertion of the government of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1641), pp. 128–30 (hereafter AGCS). 62 MPWA, III, p. 423 63 See the list in Baillie, Letters, II, p. 236. 64 T. Liu, ‘Seaman, Lazarus’, ODNB. 65 Baillie, Letters, II, p. 236. 66 If one can trace lines of ecclesiological commitment in Scotland’s history, it appears that Gillespie represented what came to be the preferred polity within the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evangelical party in Scotland (see Baillie, Letters, III, p. 94) and, excepting the relation between the church and the state, within the British colonies in which presbyterianism came to roost. 67 The first to suggest a shift in Gillespie’s thinking is James Bannerman, who speculates that there may be differences between Gillespie’s 1637 and 1647 discussions of the topic of the source of church power. He flags the fact that Gisbertus Voetius, much respected by Scottish divines, disagreed with the 7th and 75th of Gillespie’s 1647 CXI propositions (J. Bannerman, The church of Christ, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1868), I, p. 274n.). There, contrary to his publications prior to 1647, Gillespie, without qualification, appears to source the power of church government in the officers of the church rather than in the membership and eldership of the church jointly, thus undermining the third point in his ecclesiology and polity as summarised below. Powell believes that Gillespie shifts his position by 1641 but there is significant evidence to the contrary. Compare below with Powell, Crisis, p. 194. 68 E.g., see his use of the term ‘Independents’ in Gillespie, Notes, pp. 27, 34, 37, 51, 54. For Gillespie’s respect for congregationalists, see MPWA, I, p. 30. 69 George Gillespie, Wholesome severity (1645), p. 39. 70 In understanding Gillespie’s perspectives of church governance this study draws on five sources especially: DEPC; AGCS; Gillespie, Notes; George Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming (1646) (hereafter ARB); George Gillespie, CXI propositions concerning the ministerie and government of the church (Edinburgh, 1647) (hereafter CXI), and George Gillespie, A treatise of miscellany questions (Edinburgh, 1649) (hereafter TMQ). Internal evidence suggests that the ‘treatise’ actually consists of ten treatises, each an occasional and polemical piece written in response to a contemporary publication printed either in 1646 or 1647. I have also consulted Gillespie’s other printed works. 71 DEPC, pp. 163–4; AGCS, pp. 21–8; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 26, 91–4, 109–16; TMQ, pp. 231–8; CXI, pp. 3–4. Gillespie will stress that the whole world is under the kingship of the Son of God, but only the church is under his mediatorial kingship, or the kingship of Christ, e.g. ARB, pp. 194–207. 72 For visible saints and their children, see ARB, pp. 38–152; CXI, pp. 5–14. For elders instituted by Christ in the New Testament, see DEPC, p. 160. 73 DEPC, pp. 170, 181–3; AGCS, pp. 116–22; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 14, 34, 76; ARB, pp. 406–7; TMQ, p. 24. 74 For church power residing in the people, see DEPC, pp. 169–70, 183, 185; Gillespie, Notes, p. 21; actual exercise of keys is for representatives only, DEPC, pp. 183–8; AGCS, pp. 29–34; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 21, 23; ARB, pp. 402–7; CXI, 126

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75 76 77

78

79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89 90

91 92 93

pp. 3–4, 19–34. For the distinction between the two keys, ARB, pp. 408–9, 416. For differences in the use of the keys between preaching and ruling elders, DEPC, pp. 188–9. AGCS, pp. 12–17; Gillespie, Notes, p. 21; ARB, pp. 402–7. DEPC, p. 164; AGCS, pp. 8, 82; TMQ pp. 1–8; CXI, pp. 1–3. DEPC, pp. 167, 169–70, 181–3 and esp. 190–1, where Gillespie considers the case of a congregation that will not tolerate the exercise of church discipline; AGCS, pp. 116–22; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 14, 34, 76; ARB, pp. 406–7; TMQ, p. 24. For the plurality of elders, see DEPC, p. 189, and Gillespie, Notes, pp. 57–8. For the focus on the godliness of members, see ARB, pp. 38–152; CXI, pp. 5–14. See DEPC, p. 186; AGCS, p. 118, and A post-script, p. 9; Gillespie, Notes, p. 14; ARB, p. 406; Gillespie clarifies that he is not reducing an eldership to a committee of the congregation, TMQ, p. 25. AGCS, pp. 124–30; CXI, pp. 13–14. Gillespie defends regional presbyteries in DEPC, p. 172; elements of the fuller system are set out in AGCS, pp. 124, 136–47; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 78–86; TMQ, pp. 30–1; CXI, pp. 13–14. DEPC, p. 178; AGCS, pp. 17–28, 164–78; Gillespie, Notes, p. 26; ARB, passim; TMQ, pp. 231–8. AGCS, pp. 138–47; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 32, 37–8, 51–2. DEPC, pp. 170–1; AGCS, pp. 128–30; TMQ, pp. 97–110, Gillespie, Notes, pp. 41–6. DEPC, p. 186; AGCS, pp. 109–10; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 21, 42; ARB, pp. 402–7. DEPC, pp. 169–71; AGCS, pp. 108–212; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 110–11; ARB, pp. 350–423. DEPC, p. 160; AGCS, p. 8. DEPC, pp. 160–2, 164–6, 172, 190–1; AGCS, pp. 57–73; Gillespie, Notes, pp. 26, 85, 114; ARB, pp. 556–71; CXI, pp. 5–6. Erastianism with anabaptists and Arminians: ARB, pp. 134, 161–9; with papists, anabaptists and Arminians: Gillespie, Notes, p. 114; with atheism: TMQ, p. 1; congregationalism with anabaptists: Gillespie, Notes, p. 23; Socinianism: Gillespie, Notes, p. 60; or both, TMQ, p. 33. AGCS, pp. 30, 75, DEPC, pp. 176, 195–7; ARB, pp. 161–9. For a denial that the New Testament allowed degrees of order among elders, and thus that it was a later development, see e.g. MPWA, V, Doc. 29, p. 79 (but the assembly asserts that episcopal ordination is still valid). That traces of presbyterian government can be found in later centuries, see MPWA, V, Doc. 52, p. 79; Doc. 81, p. 230; Doc. 88, pp. 243–5; The answer of the assembly of divines … concerning the subordination of congregationall, classicall, provinciall, and nationall assemblies, pp. 164, 185 in Westminster assembly, The grand debate concerning presbitery and independency (1648), sigs Tt–Bbb2. Hereafter MPWA, V, Doc. 111. E.g. MPWA, V, Doc. 19, p. 55; Doc. 39, p. 113; Doc. 45, pp. 129–31; Doc. 81, p. 229. MPWA, V, Doc. 19, pp. 59–61; Doc. 35, pp. 91–2; Doc. 45, pp. 131, 134–6; Doc. 52, pp. 2–3, 10, 15, 17–48; Doc. 91, pp. 86–112. MPWA, V, Doc. 19, pp. 59–61; Doc. 35, p. 90; Doc. 45, pp. 134–6; Doc. 52, pp. 55–6, 59; Doc. 78, p. 222; Doc. 111, pp. 178–8. 127

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 94 For an oblique discussion, see MPWA, V, Doc. 19, p. 60; the assembly more clearly argues that references to ‘churches’ in the plural do not detract from the idea of a universal visible church. See MPWA, V, Doc. 111, p. 151. 95 MPWA, V, Doc. 52, p. 8. 96 MPWA, V, Doc. 45, p. 128; Doc. 52, pp. 1–80. 97 MPWA, V, Doc. 19, pp. 53–9; Doc. 29, p. 79; Doc. 45, p. 129; Doc. 52, p. 78. 98 MPWA, V, Doc. 19, p. 58. 99 MPWA, V, Doc. 29, p. 79. 100 MPWA, V, Doc. 72, p. 196, and Doc. 77, p. 207. 101 MPWA, V, Doc. 45, p. 132; Doc. 77, p. 209. 102 See Gillespie, Notes, pp. 57–8; see also Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 260–1; MPWA, V, pp. 48–50. 103 E.g., The answer of the assembly of divines … concerning ordination, pp. 187–90 in Westminster assembly, The grand debate, sigs Bbb2–Bbb4v. Hereafter MPWA, V, Doc. 34, p. 340. 104 Elders to join in discipline, MPWA, V, Doc.39, p. 113; Doc. 67, p. 189; Doc. 73, p. 199; Doc. 81, pp. 228, 230–1; Doc. 83, p. 234; Doc. 88, pp. 237–48; Doc. 93, p. 258; Doc. 104, pp. 301–2; Doc. 116. See also The Westminster confession of faith, ch. 30.4. 105 Van Dixhoorn, ‘Politics and religion in the Westminster assembly’, pp. 129–48. 106 MPWA, V, Doc. 58, p. 170, and Doc. 77, p. 214. 107 MPWA, V, Doc. 134, p. 186. 108 MPWA, V, Doc. 99, p. 275. 109 MPWA, V, Doc. 19, pp. 59–61; Doc. 45, pp. 132–6; Doc. 52, pp. 57–80; Doc. 72, pp. 195–7; Doc. 77, p. 207, 209–13; Doc. 78, pp. 222–3; Doc. 88, p. 248; Doc. 111, pp. 135–88; Doc. 134, p. 143. 110 MPWA, V, Doc. 52, pp. 3, 14. 111 MPWA, V, Doc. 19, pp. 52–3; Doc. 45, p. 128. 112 MPWA, V, Doc. 116. See also the Westminster confession of faith, chs 20.4, 23:3; 30.1. 113 MPWA, V, Doc. 77, p. 205; Doc. 88, p. 247; Westminster confession of faith ch. 25.2; Westminster larger catechism, Questions 62, 166; Westminster shorter catechism, question 95. 114 E.g., MPWA, V, Doc. 30, pp. 85–6. 115 For example, Reasons against the third proposition concerning presbyteriall government, p. 3, in The grand debate, sig. B2. See also ibid., p. 37, in The grand debate, sig. F3. Hereafter MPWA, V, Doc. 38, pp. 111–12. 116 For the Grand Committee, see MPWA, I, p. 24, n. 15. For the exercise of the keys, see Papers given in to the honorable committee … for accommodation, in The grand debate, sigs Aaaa–Bbbb, and Gillespie, Notes, pp. 103–4. For the use of distinctions, see, e.g., MPWA, V, Doc. 111, p. 176; MPWA, V, Doc. 52, p. 11. 117 MPWA, V, Doc. 134, p. 191. 118 MPWA, V, Doc. 38, p. 5; see also pp. 4–6, 12. 119 MPWA, V, Doc. 52, p. 13. 120 E.g., Herle in George Gillespie, Male audis, or an answer to Mr Coleman (1646), p. 27, and TMQ, p. 25, Case in Gillespie, Male audis, p. 55; Rutherford in ARB, pp. 168, 408. 128

Presbyterian ecclesiologies 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

MPWA, V, Doc. 45, p. 128; Doc. 52, pp. 152–3. MPWA, III, p. 285. MPWA, II, p. 532. Powell, Crisis, p. 202. MPWA, V, Doc. 134, p. 192. MPWA, III, p. 285. MPWA, II, p. 532. See Powell, Crisis, p. 190. Bannerman, The church of Christ, I, pp. 262–75. Powell, Crisis, reasserts this thesis forcefully. 130 AGCS, A post-script, p. 15.

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Chapter 7

‘They agree not in opinion among themselves’: two-kingdoms theory, ‘Erastianism’ and the Westminster assembly debate on church and state, c. 1641–48 Elliot Vernon1

I

n 1659 Richard Baxter identified four parties to the previous decades’ dispute over church government: ‘the Episcopall, Presbyterians, Congregationall, [and] Erastian’.2 Despite its ubiquity in historical writing, the last of Baxter’s parties, the ‘Erastian’, was a recent neologism. Prior to the civil wars, English writers had occasionally referred to the opinions of Thomas Lüber, more commonly known as ‘Erastus’, a sixteenth-century professor of medicine and disciple of Zwingli, who had crossed swords with Théodore de Bèze, the French Calvinist leader, over Reformed conceptions of church and state relations.3 However, it appears that the term ‘Erastian’ had first been deployed in 1645 by Scottish presbyterian ministers to slur opponents of their vision of a presbyterian settlement for the British churches.4 Beginning in private correspondence in around April 1645 the term ‘Erastian’ was first applied to the House of Commons under the influence of John Selden and to the barrister William Prynne.5 The first target of the term ‘Erastian’ in print, however, was Thomas Coleman, the Westminster assembly divine and Hebraist. Coleman had been a thorn in the side of presbyterian ambitions in the assembly from its inception.6 After two and a half years of punishing internal debate, Coleman had finally broken ranks with the assembly. In a sermon before the House of Commons on 30 July 1645, Coleman counselled Parliament to establish the government of the church by law and to resist the presbyterian claims to an independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction.7 Coleman’s sermon provided timely support for the Parliament-men’s growing discomfort with the Westminster assembly’s demands for the autonomous jurisdiction of presbyteries. Indeed, ‘Colemanniani’ was advanced as an alternative, albeit less catchy, epithet to 130

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describe the position of common lawyers, Hebraists and Parliament-men against the presbyterians.8 The term ‘Erastian’ quickly gained common currency in religious polemic. By 1647 the London presbyterian minister Lazarus Seaman provided a definition of the term, stating that it encapsulated the position ‘that there is no church-power or order’ intrinsic to the church, such power residing entirely in the civil magistrate.9 Similarly, the congregationalist preacher Matthew Barker ascribed the term to those ‘that would have no other government in the Church, but that of the Civil Magistrate, and his power to interpose, even in the instrinsick affairs thereof’.10 The issue of the Long Parliament’s conflict with the Westminster assembly has been a key topic in a number of recent works in the history of political thought. Jeffrey Collins has characterised parliamentarianism as defending the statist and magisterial features of the English Reformation against ‘ecclesiastical dualism’.11 In a similar vein Johann Sommerville argues that the middle decades of the seventeenth century are better characterised as an ‘Erastian revolution’ rather than the ‘puritan revolution’ of historiographical tradition.12 These arguments are to some extent uncontroversial. Most historians would accept that the Long Parliament advanced a version of the Tudor royal supremacy that increasingly diminished the ‘royal’ element of the supremacy in favour of Parliament. Nevertheless, this blunt use of the term ‘Erastian’ in contemporary historical writing has been criticised for blurring contemporary distinctions about the nature of church–state relations. Alan Orr, noting the disputes over the term, provides a ‘working definition’ of Erastianism as being the ‘power to determine doctrine and exercise discipline over the established church’ as resting ‘ultimately with the secular magistrate … rather than any ecclesiastical body’.13 Orr’s definition is perhaps the best modern definition, but one difficulty with it is that it is hard to see how the mid-1640s neologism ‘Erastian’ adds anything to the Tudor Reformation’s notion of the church ‘by law established’ except a useful shorthand term. It also tends to diminish two features of 1640s and 1650s religion. The first problem is that the interplay between the counsel of a clerical body such as the Westminster assembly and Parliament in determining doctrine and discipline is sidestepped by an overly positive focus on the power of the state. The second issue is that many lay opponents of clerical autonomy in the national church, above all Oliver Cromwell, took this position out of a concern to preserve the freedom of individual churches to teach their own doctrine and practice their own discipline free from external interference. Jacqueline Rose has described the term ‘Erastian’ as ‘dangerously slippery’. Indeed, Charles Prior has counted at least eight permutations of the term ‘Erastian’ in recent historiography.14 For Rose the incautious use of term ‘Erastian’ has often blurred the distinction between those who saw ecclesiastical jurisdiction as involving input from the godly magistrate and those who believed in the state’s outright control of the church.15 For Prior, the blanket application of the term conceals 131

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more subtle debates such as how law could best be used to protect religion rather than simply to dominate it.16 Put another way, the term ‘Erastian’ has all too often be used to guide early modern discourses about church and state on the high-road to the Hobbesian sovereign. To follow such a path is to ignore all the meandering byways and alleys that an exploration of the mid-seventeenth-century debate reveals. ‘Erastian’, as Prior argues, ‘has been asked to bear a very large interpretative burden – employed to characterize the political dynamic of the English revolution and its place in the larger story of the emergence of the “modern” and religiously neutral state’.17 Asserting a notion of an Erastian revolution against a puritan one could be seen to recast godly ministers, so essential to the cause of Parliament on many levels, as somehow inimical to the parliamentarian project. This chapter seeks to explore some of these issues by investigating the dynamics of the arguments of the 1640s debate over the issue of church–state relations. The argument will be that the debate within parliamentarianism of the period c. 1641–48 over the issue of church and state was characterised by tensions and contradictions that unleashed submerged competing claims as to how to best order a godly society. The resolution of these contradictions, while never fully worked out in practice, was met with compromises and changes of position that characterised the relative religious equanimity of the Cromwellian Protectorate.

TWO KINGDOMS OR A SINGLE SPHERE? REFORMED VISIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE One of the sources of debate between the presbyterians at the Westminster assembly and their ‘Erastian’ opponents was differing conceptions of church–state relations emerging from the sixteenth-century Reformation. A widespread position held by European Calvinist theologians was a ‘two-kingdoms’ model of an independent church working alongside, and protected by, a Christian magistrate.18 In this vision, the Church was to exercise spiritual discipline separate from the authority of the civil state or secular magistrate.19 The church, it was argued, had been given the power by Christ to rule its own membership separate from the princes of the world. Nevertheless, the two-kingdoms model was more often than not an ideal rather than a reality. Some Reformed churches, including those of France and the United Provinces, were minority voluntary churches acting with varying degrees of forbearance and support from the civil states in which they found themselves situated. Other Reformed churches in Europe, such as the one established in the sixteenth-century Palatinate, had to concede that the civil magistrate retained the final say in matters of discipline. Against the Calvinist position, but still within the Reformed tradition, influential Swiss German theologians stressed a single-sphere model where church and state were coextensive in 132

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the Christian commonwealth.20 Heinrich Bullinger had held that excommunication was ‘nothing other than the public and Christian guarding of public virtue and Christian morals’, an act to be carried out by the magistrate, not the clergy.21 Christian society in this model was patterned on the Jewish kingdoms of the Old Testament, with jurisdiction for disciplining sin committed to the godly magistrate. In this view, the Lord’s Supper was not an instrument of church discipline, but was Christ’s gift of spiritual comfort to be offered to all Christians.22 Indeed, the Swiss German position on the relationship of church and state had contributed inspiration to the political theology of the Tudor Reformation’s concept of the royal supremacy.23 The competing positions of Geneva and Zurich had come into open conflict in Heidelberg in 1568–70. Against the attempt of Calvinist theologians, led by Kaspar Olevianus, to establish the Genevan disciplinary ideal, Erastus, then a professor of medicine at the University of Heidelberg, had advanced the ideas of Bullinger and the Bern reformer Musculus.24 Standing in the single-sphere tradition, Erastus denied scriptural warrant for the ministry to possess an independent power of discipline in a Christian state. Contrary to Calvin and Beza, Erastus argued that the reference to ‘the Church’ in passages such as Matthew 18 referred to the Sanhedrin, a Jewish court exercising civil jurisdiction. Erastus also argued that, just as Jews in the times of the Hebrew Bible were not excluded from the Passover feast for sins, so the Church, by parallel reasoning, could not exclude Christians from the Lord’s supper as an instrument of spiritual discipline.25 Although the Calvinists would triumph against Erastus in the Heidelberg disputations, they would have to concede to the Prince-Elector that his state reserved the final sentence of excommunication to itself.26 Other states, such as the United Provinces, settled on a model of a protected public church, membership of which was entirely voluntary and made up of a minority of the population.27 Likewise, the French Reformed church was an equally voluntary body, with its tolerated status born out of the politique considerations of settling the Wars of Religion.28 The relationship between Calvinist forms of church government and civil states in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe, therefore, contained many tensions, contradictions and compromises. The continental European context has to be borne in mind when considering the emergence of the term ‘Erastian’ in the 1640s to describe church– state relations in mid-seventeenth-century Britain. Many of the early modern nations and states that adopted the Reformed tradition limited the claims to power advanced in theory by Calvinist theologians for the church. Yet, at the same time, such states found, to a lesser or greater extent, room to permit a degree of independence in church discipline for the furtherance of reformation.

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THE CHURCH–STATE QUESTION IN THE EARLY LONG PARLIAMENT One nation in which the rival claims between church and magistrate erupted into conflict was Scotland during the Covenanter revolution of 1637. Following a wave of godly agitation against the Laudian prayer book, the Covenanters re-established a presbyterian Kirk purified of episcopalian modifications. To Scottish presbyterians and English puritans alike, the success of the Covenanter revolution reopened the possibility for the British churches to be cleansed of the ungodly remnants of both the first Reformation and the more recent Laudian innovations.29 The resurrection of the godly cause in England caused pre-existing and unresolved tensions and questions concerning godly discipline and the relationship between church, king and Parliament to revive. Recent studies advancing the notion of an ‘Erastian revolution’ have tended to downplay these issues within English religious history. Jeffrey Collins criticises civil war historians for focusing too much on doctrine and belief and characterises the early Long Parliament as demonstrating a ‘free rein’ in its ‘Erastianism’.30 In a similar vein, Alan Orr sees the period as the coming of age of a parliamentary project to define control of the doctrine and discipline of the church as a mark of sovereignty.31 Advocates of this line of argument often posit that the Erastian revolution in England was blunted by the exogenous factor of the Scottish Covenanters, whose religious demands in 1643 reintroduced ecclesiastical dualism as a quid pro quo for military assistance.32 Collins’s repositioning of the long-standing jurisdictional issue between civil authority and the church at the centre of the politics of religion of the period has been a welcome addition to the historiography of this period. Nevertheless, his argument that Erastianism proceeded with ‘perfect clarity’ until the need for the Scottish military alliance in 1643 is questionable. Such a proposition can be advanced only if the term ‘Erastian’ is used to cover all aspects of thought and policy that afforded the magistrate jurisdiction over church government. Arguably, this ‘lumping’ definition is exactly what the Scottish presbyterians were seeking to confer in coining the term ‘Erastian’ to smear various opponents in 1645. As such it has the tendency to over-simplify the dynamics of the politics of religion in the period. Reformist voices who sought to relocate godly discipline in the local community were never far away in parliamentarian debate. Godly elements within the early Long Parliament were characterised by the often suppressed, or competing and contradictory, ideals within English godly religion, which increasingly played themselves off against each other as the mid-seventeenth-century crisis progressed. From before the opening of the Long Parliament, the core parliamentarian opposition to Charles I’s administration relied on godly ministers to act as its voice in the parishes and to mobilise the localities. It is therefore pertinent to ask to what extent the parliamentarian clergy can be described as ‘clericalist’ 134

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prior to the Scottish alliance of 1643. Peter Lake’s study of the early Stuart London minister Stephen Dennison has suggested that godly ministers had developed a high notion of their calling. Ministers saw themselves as the ‘central agents’ in the edification of the saints through the pulpit, the sacraments and the godly observance of the Sabbath. Yet, as Lake recognises, this clericalism was modulated by ‘tensions and contradictions’ inherent in the puritan project, which saw the building up of the laity in godliness and spiritual independence as a principal objective. Such tensions, Lake argues, yearned for resolution by the establishment of local church governance that encompassed both lay and clerical elements.33 In a similar vein, Christopher Haigh has noted that the demand for local church discipline through the suspension of scandalous parishioners was made as much by the godly laity as by puritan ministry.34 The demand for community-specific church government was set out by the leading Parliamentarian ministers at the beginning of the Long Parliament. In November 1640 Stephen Marshall used a fast sermon to call for parish-based discipline through granting local ministers the power to exclude the ‘promiscuous multitude’ from the Lord’s supper.35 On 17 February 1641 the minister Cornelius Burges told a parliamentary committee that the Church’s use of ecclesiastical discipline was warranted by the precedent of scripture and the early church, where church officers acted together in a ‘presbiterie or consistory’ to impose discipline on Church members.36 Citing the Jacobean judge Sir Edward Coke, the influential parliamentarian divines going under the acronym Smectymnuus, who included Stephen Marshall, argued that episcopacy in England was a legal creation and that Parliament was free to abolish it if it so desired. Nevertheless, this did not leave Parliament at liberty to replace episcopacy with any form of government of its own choosing.37 According to Smectymnuus, Parliament was to settle church government according to the divine ‘prescript of God’. This was a broadly presbyterian polity made up of ministers and the godly laity chosen to exercise oversight over parish churches.38 William Abbott’s survey of parliamentary anti-clericalism in the period has suggested that the concerns at Westminster in 1641 were mainly to disconnect the bishops politically from the King’s power. In practice this meant denying that the clergy were an estate of the realm. The programme of 1641 was thus centred on dismantling the bishops’ temporal offices and jurisdiction.39 Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that this ‘anticlericalism’ was willed on by the parliamentary opposition’s godly clerical advisers. Support for Parliament’s attack on prelacy can be seen by the complaints against the bishop’s temporal jurisdiction in the minister’s Petition and remonstrance of 24 January 1641.40 This document, while steering clear of making demands for an alteration of the polity of the Church of England, was a comprehensive assault on all aspects of the Laudian expression of the church. It had been organised from the house of Edmund Calamy, one of the 135

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authors of the Smectymnuus tracts and a minister close to the opposition to Charles’s government. The twin questions of whether access to the Lord’s supper should be guarded and whether the ministry in a Christian commonwealth retained an independent power of excommunication were important fault lines within the early parliamentarian politics of religion. From the late 1630s many of the leading godly peers and gentlemen in the Long Parliament had connected the ministry’s controls over admission to the Lord’s supper with the seeds of clerical power. This insight was triggered not only by the rise of Laudianism but also from those ministers whom the godly laity respected as preachers and pastors. In 1635 the leading dissident peers Viscount Saye and Lord Brooke had become dismayed at the connection between church membership and political office holding in the Massachusetts Bay colony. Their particular concern was the potential for church censures to undermine political office holders.41 Saye’s nephew, the lawyer Henry Parker, gave voice to these developing anti-theocratic instincts. In a series of anonymous tracts published in 1641, Parker stressed a single-sphere model of state and church, arguing that sovereignty must be unitary and that punishment for sin and heresy belonged to the civil sword alone. For Parker, an ecclesiastical–secular division, even if a godly Calvinist one, threatened to create a ‘regnum in regno’ that threatened magistracy.42 By 1643 the earl of Northumberland also expressed fear of the jurisdictional demands of the godly clergy. Northumberland saw in the claim that the Church held an independent power to excommunicate the ‘rod by w[hi]ch the Ecclesiastical Goverm[en]t is by Clergie men … kept up’.43 Nevertheless, this understanding of the need to separate coercive power from the Church represented one point in a spectrum of opinion. This can be seen in the interim proposals for church governance suggested in Parliament as a result of the ‘Root and Branch’ debate in the summer of 1641. The first scheme presented was Sir Edward Dering’s proposal to locate excommunication in a local presbytery under the direction of a presidential bishop.44 Dering’s scheme indicates that at least some parliamentarians felt concerned to preserve retaining a semblance of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As George Yule argued, this position would continue to assert itself in the often close divisions on parliamentary votes on church government throughout the 1640s.45 The alternative to Dering’s proposals in 1641 was the junior Sir Henry Vane’s programme for a system of county commissions to take over the jurisdiction of the episcopate. This scheme is often regarded by historians as the quintessential model of early parliamentarian ‘Erastianism’.46 In its final form this is certainly correct, as the Commons ultimately settled on an all-lay solution. However, it is often forgotten that, in its initial draft, the power of excommunication was to be shared equally between clerical and lay committee members.47 Vane’s scheme was never implemented and Parliament committed itself to the godly clergy’s demand for an assembly of 136

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divines to settle the matter of further reformation.48 It has been argued that pressing parliamentary business and the growing conservative reaction were the reasons for the shelving of Vane’s proposals. Nevertheless, both Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Coleman thought at the time that the parliamentarian clergy had put pressure on the parliamentary junto for Vane’s scheme to be dropped.49 If a clericalist reflex in the parliamentarian clergy can be discerned in 1641, it was theoretically inchoate and did not immediately presage the later conflicts over the respective jurisdiction of the church and the magistrate. This would change between the summer of 1641 and the opening of the Westminster assembly in 1643 as the parliamentarian ministers’ demands gradually developed a harder ideological footing through the adoption of the presbyterian two-kingdoms political theology.

THE PRESBYTERIAN CLERGY AND TWO-KINGDOMS THEORY By the mid-1640s a number of commentators noticed that many of the clergy closely associated with the parliamentarian junto had begun to assert an independence that had not been seen at the start of the Long Parliament. On 8 September 1645, the younger Sir Henry Vane thought that the ministers ‘would have thought it an happinesse in the beginning of this Parliament yf they had assurance’ of what Parliament was at that time prepared to grant regarding church government.50 Perhaps galvanised by consideration of the position of the church in any post-civil-war settlement and perhaps frightened by the rapid growth of sectaries, many clergy close to the parliamentarian cause began to demand that legislation should reflect the divine right of presbyterian government. The language used to express these demands was a strong version of the Calvinist two-kingdoms theology common among the Scottish Covenanters.51 The two-kingdoms position has been described by historians such as George Yule as ‘Melvilianism’, after Andrew Melville, the late sixteenth-­ century Scottish presbyterian.52 Like ‘Erastian’, ‘Melvilian’ has served as useful shorthand; however, it should not give the misleading impression that the doctrine of the two kingdoms was a Scottish import, exogenous to English puritanism. One of the most in-depth explications of the doctrine had been developed by the Elizabethan presbyterian Thomas Cartwright, whose lectures Melville probably attended while in exile in Geneva in the 1560s.53 It is clear, therefore, that the Scots did not bring two-kingdoms theory south to England. When the Scottish presbyterian Samuel Rutherford advanced the theory in an early 1642 treatise, he quoted Cartwright as his main source.54 Even earlier than Rutherford, the Cartwrightian position was set out with succinct clarity by the Surrey minister Richard Byfield in his September 1641 treatise The power of the Christ of God.55 137

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One of the central arguments of the presbyterian two-kingdoms theory was the assertion of a political theology that stressed that the church acted in a separate but co-ordinate sphere to civil magistracy.56 This political theology was grounded in Christological and Trinitarian roots. While Christ ruled over the world in the realm of natural law as the second person of the Trinity, his kingship over the church was through his human nature as the mediator between God and fallen humanity.57 As Rutherford put it, ‘kingly power floweth immediately from God the Creator, not from God in the Mediator Christ’.58 These different spheres were evidenced by the different means and ends in the use of the divine power to rule. The magistrate’s sphere lay in delivering retributive justice on the outward person for the protection of the people and the preservation of social order. The power of the Church lay in spiritual sanctions against the inward individual for the edification of the saints and bringing of a sinner to repentance.59 Two-kingdoms theory did not posit the complete separation of church and state, however. While such a position would be advanced in the mid-1640s by sectaries such as John Goodwin and John Saltmarsh, for those within the pale of Reformed orthodoxy the two kingdoms were co-ordinate powers in a Christian commonwealth.60 Rutherford argued that the question of which kingdom should have precedence was an absurdity; it was like ‘asking which of the two shoulders on a man’s body are highest, and nearest to a man’s head?’61 As a ‘nursing father’ to the church and the keeper of both tables of the law, the civil magistrate was to use his authority to suppress the church’s enemies and to ratify the counsel of synods on ecclesiastical matters into positive law.62 Presbyterian two-kingdoms theorists posited that Christ’s mediatorial rule was continued in the visible church under the stewardship of scripturally defined church officers.63 Presbyters therefore received their ministerial authority over the church immediately from Christ and not through the mediation of the civil magistrate. This distinction allowed those scriptural verses, such as Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13, which pertained to the divine authority of secular magistrates, to be separated from the exercise of authority in the church without contradicting the general requirements of a Christian’s obedience to secular magistrates.64 Two-kingdoms theory, therefore, viewed those kings and magistrates who claimed that their sovereignty extended to the internal things of the church as usurpers over Christ’s mediatorial kingdom. Presbyterians never tired of citing the example of King Uzziah (2 Chron. 26:16–21) who was struck down with leprosy and lost his crown for burning incense in the temple against the divine prerogative of the priests.65 Presbyterians like Richard Vines had argued that ‘the Church had a power of jurisdiction in it before the supreme magistrate was Christian; and why it should lose that under Constantine which it had under Nero, I know not’.66 The power of Christian magistracy with regards to the church was thus said to be ‘cumulative not privative’, that is, a magistrate’s conversion to Christianity added to, but did not deprive 138

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the church of its authority over doctrine and discipline.67 Even Constantine had declared himself ‘a bishop outside the church’ who acted ‘around the Church’ and not internally.68 Magistrates who claimed supreme jurisdiction over the church, such as Henry VIII and his successors, had only set up civil popery, ‘a civil antichrist instead of a spiritual’ one.69 The presbyterian two-kingdoms theory had a tendency to advance an all-or-nothing case for the independence of the church in the exercise of spiritual censures. Such a position relied on proving this authority either from the plain words of scripture or from a general consensus. As stated above, the problem was that the Reformed tradition itself was not ad idem on these issues and the disagreements within that tradition would lead the presbyterians to experience difficulties within the debates of the Westminster assembly.

THE ‘ERASTIAN’ CHALLENGE The Westminster assembly represented the great hope of Reformed orthodoxy for obtaining the reforms set out in early fast sermons before Parliament. The assembly has often been seen as the price of the Scottish alliance after Parliament’s poor military showing in 1642–43. This is only partly true as the assembly had been among Parliament’s demands to the king since at least the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641. The initial membership lists, issued in April 1642, had attempted to balance partisanship on matters of polity, but, with the refusal of most episcopalians to join the assembly, it was apparent that the largest and most powerful group within the assembly would favour some form of presbyterian system.70 Presbyterian dominance was tempered by the small but well-respected group of congregationalist ministers, as well as three of the assembly’s Hebrew scholars: the ministers Thomas Coleman and John Lightfoot and the lawyer and scholar John Selden. The first challenge to presbyterian orthodoxy by the Hebraists can be seen in the important but indecisive debate in October 1643 on Matthew 16 concerning Christ’s donation of the ‘keys of the kingdom of Heaven’ to the Apostle Peter. This debate is particularly significant as it took place before the Scots had been admitted to the assembly. Presbyterians, led by Lazarus Seaman, wanted to establish that Peter received the keys, and thus the power of church censure, from Christ as the representative of the apostles. This would achieve two purposes. Firstly, it would set up a future position for the assembly to argue that church officers, as the successors to the apostles, and not church members (as argued by separatists), wielded ecclesiastical power. Secondly, it established that the church, and the church alone, received this power from Christ. This would then serve a scriptural proof text for the presbyterians’ claim to the divine warrant of the church’s authority on earth.71 The godly Hebraist John Lightfoot threw an incisive jab at the presbyterian interpretation during this debate by pointing out that in rabbinic 139

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c­ ommentary ‘binding and loosing’ was only ever applied to ideas such as doctrine and never to people.72 Although Lightfoot was essentially ignored by the rest of the assembly, his comments marked the beginning of the gnawing Hebraist critique of presbyterian scriptural interpretation. Lightfoot’s initial foray was followed on 1 November 1643 when Thomas Coleman argued that 1 Corinthians 5:5, a critical proof text in the Christian tradition for the power of the church, had to be read in light of 1 Timothy 1:20 as an extraordinary power of the apostles.73 This argument caused the assembly some trouble, and Lazarus Seaman found it necessary to argue for a distinction between the essence of the power of the keys, which was communicated to the church, and its historical accidents in apostolic practice.74 The opening up of a disconnect between scripture and historic church practice was pushed further by Selden some months later when he pointed out that the earliest church fathers had not interpreted Matthew 18, the main proof text for excommunication, as giving this power to the church. On the basis of his reading of rabbinic scholarship, Selden argued that ‘tell it to the Church’ referred to the Sanhedrin, which, he asserted, was the Jews’ civil judicial assembly. Selden proceeded to argue that excommunication was the invention of the later church and therefore not of divine prescription.75 It is often stated that the presbyterians had no real response to Selden’s ‘formidable scholarship’ and were ‘intimidated opponents’.76 Few could match Selden’s prolific scholarship or the precision of his methodology, and Baillie would later bemoan the absence of an adequate reply to Selden among European Reformed theologians. Nevertheless, the Westminster assembly’s presbyterians were not devoid of Hebraic learning.77 William Gouge and Lazarus Seaman were both accomplished readers of Hebrew, as were others in the assembly.78 George Gillespie and Edmund Calamy, while not renowned Hebraists themselves, had closely studied the commentaries of continental Hebraists such as Zepper, L’Empereur and Betram, as well as British scholars such as John Weymess and Thomas Godwyn.79 In the 1640s, this scholarship on the Hebrew polity of the ancient and New Testament period presented an ambiguous picture. For presbyterians the existing position in the then available literature suggested that ‘the Jewes had a double sanhadrin’ which had distinctive ecclesiastical and civil functions, even if those who sat in the court were the same people.80 The real problem for the presbyterian position in the assembly was that the Hebraist triumvirate cast doubt on the solidity of presbyterian appeals to history and scholarship. This was most effective when there were doubts and divisions within the presbyterian camp itself. Even on the issue of excommunication, divines such as Charles Herle, Richard Vines and Philip Nye all accepted that there was ‘nothing of excommunication in the Jewish church at all’.81 More important, however, was the impression that the presbyterians could not make clear arguments from the New Testament and thus could not discern a clear divine right pattern for church polity. In December 1643, 140

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in exasperation at the assembly’s epistemological uncertainty over New Testament offices, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd declared that it was ‘strange that we should seeke for officers of the church in the New Testament out of the Ould’. Viscount Saye and Sele was even more blunt, stating that he had concluded from the arguments made relating to Jewish law and practice that the ‘paterne’ being expounded in the assembly would ‘rather suite for prelacy than for that in hand’.82 If the Hebraists had weakened many of the presbyterians’ points, the presbyterians also received pointed criticism of their position regarding the  magistrate from their congregationalist brethren. It has long been observed that the congregationalists formed a kind of tactical alliance with the ‘Erastians’ against the presbyterians. As will be seen, congregationalists like Philip Nye were avowedly anti-Erastian, but aspects of their theory chimed in tune with certain statist notions of a state–church administration. In 1641 Henry Burton had argued that it was only in covenanted gathered churches that the true ‘spirituall common-wealth of Israel consisteth’. Such churches were to be tolerated by the civil magistrate without interference with their liberty to practise discipline according to scriptural precedent. Nevertheless, although a national church had ‘no patterne in the Scripture now under the Gospel’, Burton argued that the magistrate could still provide for such a church administration structured according to the needs and whims of the civil state.83 Although Burton may have been at the extreme end of the spectrum, congregationalists generally shared his ambivalence towards the institutions of the national church. In distinction to properly constituted gathered churches, the parish churches of the old Church of England were often characterised as ‘sermon houses’: venues for preaching and Christian instruction that served to provide moral and religious guidance to the unregenerate masses and the call to the true saints to join covenanted church fellowship.84 By insisting that the covenanted congregational church was the only divinely warranted church structure, the congregationalists were just as much undermining the claims of the presbyterian version of two-kingdoms theory as the Hebraists. This uncertainty would provide ammunition to Parliamentmen that they were free to impose a prudential solution for the government of the church when it came to legislation. Nevertheless, the congregationalists’ position was not Erastian and they advocated a form of two-kingdoms theory not too dissimilar to that of their presbyterian opponents.85 The assembly congregationalists were adamant that the civil state should have no jurisdiction over excommunication in properly constituted gathered churches, as this was a prerogative of the congregational presbytery operating with the common consent of the church’s members.86 The leading congregationalist Philip Nye specifically disavowed Erastianism in his writings and set out a variation of the two-kingdoms perspective on church–state relations.87 For Nye, a ‘twofold power or authority’ existed ‘to be exercised in causes and over 141

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persons ecclesiastical or spiritual, the one placed in the princes, the other in the churches of Christ’.88 The magistrate’s ‘power in spiritual causes’, Nye wrote, is ‘not a spiritual power’ but a jurisdiction in the realm of natural law ‘to restrain or coerce’.89 Unlike the church, the magistrates’ power ‘reacheth not the inner man’ because the magistrate is not given the power of the keys by Christ to excommunicate and deliver a sinner over to Satan.90 The difference between the presbyterians and the congregationalists in their understanding of two-kingdoms theory, according to Nye, was that ‘Church power is limited to a particular congregation’.91 As Peter Lake has argued, this position had been developed by the early Jacobean puritan William Bradshaw as a response to the need to modify the Elizabethan presbyterian movement’s challenge to the royal supremacy.92 The presbyterian two-kingdoms theory tended to emphasise the outward emanation of Christ’s mediatorial kingdom as flowing from the universal visible church as a totality.93 Congregationalist theory, on the other hand, saw the visible unity of the church in the common sacraments and rejected the idea of political ecclesiastical unity in the visible church.94 The congregationalist view resonated to some degree with the single-sphere position of the ‘Erastians’ in the assembly as it laid stress on the seventeenthcentury truism, most often associated with the French jurist Jean Bodin, that sovereignty must be unitary. In an assembly debate in February 1644, Nye argued that presbyterianism contradicted the sovereignty of the congregational church by asserting ‘a power over a power ecclesiastical’.95 However, Nye took the Bodinian definition of sovereignty further, arguing that synodical presbyterianism was incompatible with civil magistracy. He argued that a national presbyterian polity which matched the geographical extent of the civil state would either ‘interest themselves in the civil power’ and become a tyranny, or would lead to civil war as church and state fought each other for dominance.96 This allowed Nye to make an epistemological dent in the presbyterian argument. Nye argued that, if presbyterianism was instituted by divine right, why would Christ, who, it was presupposed by all, had established a kingdom of peace, institute a system of polity that challenged the power of the civil magistrate? As Nye later wrote: ‘Christ knowing his church to be scattered his policy is such as might not be formidable’ to the magistrate’s civil supremacy.97 Nevertheless, Nye explicitly denied Erastianism, arguing that Christ had conferred on each congregational church ‘a ruling and governing power compleat and sufficient in and for itself’. This power was not threatening to the civil state as it was analogous to the lesser societies of the commonwealth, such as families or corporations.98 The arguments of both the Hebraists and the congregationalists fed the doubts of those who witnessed the debates in the assembly. Such concerns can be seen in the comment of Sir Cheney Culpepper, who in January 1644 told Samuel Hartlib that the existence of presbyterian classes and synods, as well as their power to excommunicate, ‘may perhaps be deduced out of the 142

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Scriptures but to me they seeme noe where expressed’.99 Doubts, such as that of Culpepper, over the presbyterians’ methodology of making deductions ‘from good and necessary consequence’ were widespread and increased as the assembly’s debates went on.100 The Hebraist and congregationalist attack on presbyterian hermeneutics, therefore, provided the parliamentary spectators with the intellectual ammunition to assert that they need not follow the assembly majority’s advice in ratifying into law divine-right presbyterianism. This problem was compounded by the fact that the long debates revealed that the presbyterian majority were not ad idem among themselves. As early as 21 February 1644 Lord Saye had revealingly told the assembly: ‘You must consider whether the word of God hold out an Institution or noe … If there be none, then what the civill state shall apoynt as conducable most to godlynesse.’ As Lightfoot recorded it, Saye was exasperated that the debates showed that the presbyterians ‘agree not in opinion among themselves’.101 At the same time, perhaps taking Saye’s frustrations as a sign that his work was done, John Selden gave up attending the assembly for good. It is clear from parliamentary diaries of the period that Selden’s attention turned to convincing the House of Commons, as Baillie put it, that as ‘the Jewish state and church was all one … so in England it must be, that the Parliament is the Church’.102 The tensions in the assembly boiled over into a public breach on 30 July 1645 when Thomas Coleman used a fast sermon before the Commons to advise Parliament to ‘establish as few things jure divino, as can well be’.103 Coleman asserted that the failure of the assembly was its faulty exposition of Scripture. The proof texts used to assert the claim to a divine right of excommunication, Matthew 18 or 1 Corinthians 5, Coleman told Parliament, were not appropriate ‘to the matter’ of church power as they applied to the Jewish civil magistrate.104 The magistrate was fully empowered to act in settling the church: ‘A Christian Magistrate, as a Christian Magistrate, is a governour in the Church … I find all government given to Christ, and to Christ as mediatour.’105 Coleman’s denial that the church formed a separate mediatorial kingdom of Christ was an outright attack on the Christological basis deployed by the presbyterians for the divine right of their church polity. Coleman followed up this attack by telling Parliament that ‘ecclesiastical (improperly called) government … [is] merely doctrinall: the corrective or punitive part being civill or temporall’.106 It was Coleman’s recommendations to Parliament that led George Gillespie to condemn Coleman with the first printed use of the tern ‘Erastian’. Nevertheless, it backfired. Coleman responded positively to Gillespie’s slur by situating Erastus within the unimpeachably respectable pantheon of the Swiss German magisterial reformers such as Bullinger, Gualther and Aretius.107 Coleman’s location of Erastus as a representative of the ‘Zurich’ tradition was essential to the argument between Parliament and the presbyterian clergy. The Swiss German Reformed tradition ­provided 143

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MPs with arguments for magisterial control over church discipline that relied on unimpeachable godly authority. In a debate of 3 September 1645 Bulstrode Whitelocke cited to Parliament the Swiss German Reformed theologians Zwingli and Gualther and the influential Heidelberg theologian David Pareus, as all holding that ‘the minister is not to exclude any without confirm[ation] of [the] magistrate’.108 The citation of Pareus is significant as it suggests that the Palatinate model of limited ecclesiastical independence coupled with the magistrate’s final determination of church discipline was in Whitelocke’s mind. This was evidently also the case for Selden who, quoting Coleman against presbyterian claims, agreed that Parliament could make laws authorising parish presbyteries ‘to barr notorious sinners’ from the Lord’s supper, without granting an unlimited divine-right jurisdiction.109 Remembering the debates of this period, Viscount Saye pointed out that the presbyterian demands for an ‘arbitrarie and unlimited power’ were unprecedented in the European Reformed churches.110 Saye cited the example of the Palatinate, as well as the voluntary nature of the French and Dutch Reformed churches, to deny the presbyterian argument for an independent jurisdiction over church discipline.111 The importance of using the ‘Zurich’ single-sphere tradition was that it provided a polemical riposte to the presbyterian charge that Parliament’s legislation offended the position of the continental Reformed churches. Coleman had turned the slur of ‘Erastianism’ into a positive appellation, presenting Parliament with an aspect of the Reformed theological heritage that chimed perfectly with the Tudor and common-law tradition of the English state’s ecclesiastical supremacy. Coleman’s ‘Erastianism’ hurt because it located these arguments within the continental Reformed theological tradition. Indeed, Gillespie’s rather impotent response to Coleman was to try to contain the damage by attempting to reclaim the Swiss German Reformers for the disciplinarian camp.112 The damage had been done, however, and Parliament-men could be clear in their consciences that the insistence on imposing legal limitations on the clergy’s power did not import ‘civil Popery’.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE The difficulties revealed in the debates on church government led to a wider perception that the presbyterians had overplayed their hand. This was especially the case given that Parliament, in its ordinance of 5 June 1646, had offered an olive branch to the presbyterian ministers by making a committee of Parliament the final court of appeal for suspension for sins not already declared to be within the competence of parish presbyteries.113 Further hope was offered to the presbyterian ministers for a more extensive jurisdiction in the future as the June ordinance was voted to continue only for a period of three years.114 Robert Baillie famously called Parliament’s legislation ‘a lame Erastian presbytery’ and historians have generally accepted Baillie’s 144

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verdict.115 What historians have often missed, however, is that Parliament gave parish presbyteries the power to suspend communicants for a very wide number of ‘notorious and scandalous’ sins.116 For Baillie, the parliamentary ordinances were ‘lame’ and ‘Erastian’ because they did not acknowledge the church’s independent jurisdiction, not because presbyteries were refused the power of suspension for most of the sins that presbyterians believed warranted suspension. Looking back to 1646, Viscount Saye averred that the presbyterian ministers had turned their ‘zeal for religion into a contestation for the advancement of the clergies power’ and had lost the support of the people for it.117 Saye’s perception is confirmed by Thomas Bakewell, a Fleet Street baker and presbyterian ruling elder, who noted that the divisions over the issue of excommunication ‘have hindered our expectation of a setled government’. The result was that ‘many of the presbyterians are disheartened’ such that ‘it hath caused many to turn to the error of Erastus’ saying that ‘the Assembly have now a bone to pick’ with Parliament.118 In June 1646 the leading London presbyterians, faced with both Parliament’s concessions and the potential loss of the public support upon which they relied, issued a set of Certain considerations and cautions offering a form of compromise.119 While maintaining the two-kingdoms position that church officers derived their authority for church censures directly from Christ, the London ministers modified their position to accept that ‘church officers do receive authority of the publike exercise of their offices’ from the magistrate. It was the magistrate’s right to have ‘his conscience satisfied of the truth’ of the form of church government he would set up ‘in his dominions’. The ministers argued that, if this meant that divine right rule could not at present be achieved, it was still lawful for church officers to act under the magistrate’s command.120 The London ministers received a mixed response to their Considerations and cautions. Viscount Saye considered it essentially a declaration of partial conformity, making the presbyterians no different from the independents in their relationship to the state.121 William Prynne thought that the idea of accepting Parliament’s ‘new indulged jurisdiction’ in practice, while not accepting Parliament’s underlying authority to order it, was a ‘new paradox’ to maintain the clergy’s claim to divine right.122 Nevertheless, the presbyterian ministers’ position was amplified the following year in a pamphlet entitled Touching the subject of supremacy in causes ecclesiastical, a work ascribed to the London presbyterian minister John Geree, who had provided the presbyterian response to Henry Burton’s congregationalism in 1641.123 This work aimed to show that ‘presbytery may be settled’ on the terms of the parliamentary ordinance of 5 June 1646.124 As in the Certain considerations, the author maintains that the keys of the kingdom of heaven included the power of excommunication and that the exercise of this power was given by Christ only to the church and not to the civil magistrate.125 However, the author distinguishes between private churches, such as those found 145

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in the early church, which operated in secret and public churches, which operate with the protection and encouragement of the magistrate.126 Taking the Reformed commonplace that God imposes a duty on the magistrate to ‘protect and countenance true religion’, the author argued that this includes ensuring that church censures are not abused by the clergy.127 The magistrate may, therefore, set rules to be observed in the exercise of such censures in the public church and hear appeals against unjust decisions. While the magistrate lacks any formal power in the ecclesiastical realm, his civil power must be obeyed out of Christian obedience and as a condition for the public status of the church.128 Citing Marsilius of Padua, the author argues that the failure of the church to accept the magistrate’s supremacy would lead to ‘two distinct supremacies in one Kingdom’ and would make the church an instrument of confusion and not of peace.129 As with the Certain considerations, the distinction between a private and a public church allowed the presbyterians to maintain their two-kingdoms theory while at the same time submitting to the parliamentary ordinances. The presbyterians’ begrudging acceptance of a secondary obligation to obey the magistrate’s command in relation to the public church provided an intellectual plaster to cover the wound caused by the split between ‘Erastianism’ and two-kingdoms theory. It also suggests that the London presbyterians had re-evaluated the validity of continental Reformed practice in light of Parliament’s refusal to allow the Covenanter-driven demand for an independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

CONCLUSION: A PROTECTORATE COMPROMISE? These lessons in casuistry and compromise were to be ill-fated. The New Model Army’s putsch of Parliament on 6 December 1648 ended the possibility of a presbyterian ecclesiastical establishment in England. This was confirmed in August 1649, when the Rump Parliament declined to adopt the presbyterian system as the public church of the new republic by the narrowest margin of the speaker’s casting vote.130 The refusal to establish presbyterianism can, to some degree, be interpreted as the victory of the ‘Erastian Revolution’ that Jeffrey Collins and Johann Sommerville have seen in the interregnum. As the recent explorations of figures such as Louis Du Moulin, John Milton, Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington have shown, the ‘Erastian’ idea of the magistrate’s supremacy over the church would be substantially developed during the 1650s, sometimes expressing protean manifestations of notions of what Rousseau would later call ‘civil religion’.131 Nevertheless, the 1640s debate over church power largely resulted in something of a theoretical stalemate, with presbyterians and congregationalists (and, indeed, episcopalians such as Herbert Thorndyke and Henry Hammond) maintaining divine-right theories while co-operating within the interregnum ‘public’ church. Ann Hughes and Christopher Durston have argued that the civil regimes of the 146

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1650s, particularly the Protectorate, provided a locally sensitive and laissezfaire approach to the practice of godly forms of church government. Indeed, as Durston points out, most of those charged with the ecclesiastical administration of the Cromwellian period were themselves clergymen.132 The ecclesiastical policy of England’s interregnum regimes was not characterised by an ‘Erastian’ interference with doctrine or discipline. Indeed, to the frustration of many, congregationalist and presbyterian alike, the secular administrations of the interregnum chose not to exercise, in any meaningful sense, their claims to ecclesiastical supremacy. The clearest example of this is Cromwell’s one and only use of his veto as Lord Protector to avoid the 1656 Catechism bill passing into law. This bill, which had passed in Parliament, would have established the Westminster assembly’s Shorter catechism as the official teaching instrument of the public church. Yet, despite the incorporation of substantial protections for gathered churches, Cromwell refused to allow his Parliament to use the Catechism to set the doctrine of the church.133 While it is the case that at certain points in time Cromwell could sound like a thoroughgoing ‘Erastian’, his opening speech to the 1656 Parliament delineated a theory of the independence of the church (or rather ‘churches’) that was on all fours with that advanced by Nye and other magisterial congregationalists.134 The role of the civil magistrate, as he was fond of saying, was that of a constable to keep the peace between God’s particular people.135 In this light, Cromwell considered petitions from presbyterian associations who ‘do but desire they may have liberty and protection in the worshipping of God according to their own judgments; for the purging of their congregations, and the labouring to attain more purity of faith and repentance’ as ‘the blessedest thing which hath been since the adventuring upon this Government’.136 So long as liberty of conscience for peaceable protestants was maintained, the state would eschew defining either the doctrine or discipline of church practices, whether exercised in individual gathered churches or in presbyterian associations. The practice under the later Protectorate was to leave peaceable churches, whether parish or voluntary, to adopt whatever doctrinal and disciplinary standards they chose without state interference.137 The term ‘Erastian’ remains, as John Selden protested long ago, a difficult and imprecise term.138 For Selden, as for others tarred with the same brush, such as Prynne and Coleman, there was no Erastian revolution in the 1640s. On the contrary, the ancient constitution and the Tudor settlement triumphed over a Scottish presbyterian-led attempt to achieve a revolution in church and state.139 As the example of Cromwell stated above shows, notions of an Erastian triumph should not mask the very wide concessions that both sides were prepared to make towards common goals of further reformation and godly rule. Even if, as Johann Sommerville suggests, church–state relations during the civil war and interregnum amounted to an ‘Erastian revolution’ at the level of theory, it was a revolution that was fully accommodated to the possibility of ‘puritan revolution’ at the level of practice. 147

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NOTES













1 I would like to thank Joel Halcomb, Peter Lake and John Morrill for reading drafts of this chapter, as well as the scholars attending the British History in the Seventeenth Century and the Religious History of Britain, 1500–1800 seminars at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, for their generous and helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. All errors, of course, remain my own. 2 Richard Baxter, Five disputations of church government (1659), p. 337. 3 For a discussion of (the relatively sparse) references to Erastus prior to the mid-1640s, see C. D. Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate: a renaissance physician in the second Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 396–8. 4 That ‘Erastian’ was a recent neologism can be seen by the fact that George Gillespie’s A late dialogue betwixt a civilian and a divine (1644), mentions Erastus (p. 30) without using the term ‘Erastian’. An early use can be seen in Robert Baillie’s November 1645 book A dissuasive from the errours of the time, where he talks at p. 6 of ‘the Erastian-Civilians’. 5 The letters and journals of Mr Robert Baillie, 1637–62, ed. D. Laing, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1841–42), II, pp. 265, 315. 6 George Gillespie, A sermon preached before the right honourable House of Lords (1645), p. 31, George Gillespie, Nihil respondes (1645), pp. 20–1. 7 Thomas Coleman, Hopes deferred and dashed (1645), pp. 24–5. 8 G. Toomer, John Selden: a life in scholarship, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), II, p. 718. 9 Lazarus Seaman, The Diatribh proved to be Paradiatribh (1647), p. 4. 10 Matthew Barker, The faithful and wise servant (1657), p. 26. 11 J. R. Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 75. 12 J. Sommerville, ‘Hobbes, Selden, Erastianism, and the history of the Jews’, in G. A. J. Rogers and T. Sorell (eds), Hobbes and history (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), p. 163. 13 D. A. Orr, Treason and the state: law, politics and ideology in the English civil war (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 102–3. 14 J. Rose, Godly kingship in Restoration England: the politics of the royal supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 203, C. W. A. Prior, ‘Rethinking church and state during the English interregnum’, HR, 87 (2014), 445–8. See also the older but still influential comments of J. N. Figgis in ‘Erastus and Erastianism’, Journal of Theological Studies, 2 (1900), 82–3. 15 Rose, Godly kingship, p. 204. 16 C. W. A. Prior, A confusion of tongues: Britain’s wars of reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 228; Prior, ‘Rethinking church and state during the English interregnum’, 464. 17 Prior, ‘Rethinking church and state during the English interregnum’, 464. 18 For Calvin’s two-kingdoms theory see E. Campi, Shifting patterns of reformed tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 60–3, and M. J. Tuininga, Calvin’s political theology and the public engagement of the church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

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‘They agree not in opinion among themselves’ 19 See for example T. Maruyama, The ecclesiology of Theodore Beza: the reform of the true church (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1978), pp. 116–18; H. Speelman, Calvin and the independence of the church (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 143–236; D. Nobbs, Theocracy and toleration: a study of the disputes in Dutch Calvinism from 1600 to 1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938). 20 For studies of the ‘single sphere’ idea in the Swiss German Reformed tradition see R. C. Walton, ‘The institutionalization of the Reformation at Zurich’, Zwingliana, 13 (1972), 497–515, Campi, Shifting patterns, pp. 63–5. 21 J. W. Baker, ‘Christian discipline, church and state, and toleration: Bullinger, Calvin, and Basel, 1530–1555’, Zwingliana, 19 (1992), 35; J. W. Baker, ‘Erastianism in England: the Zurich connection’, in A. Schilder and H. Stickelberger (eds), Die Züricher Reformation: Ausstrahlungen und Rückwirkungen (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 327–49.. 22 Baker, ‘Christian discipline, church and state, and toleration’, 36. 23 D. MacCulloch, The later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (2nd edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 58–60; W. J. Torrance Kirby, The Zurich connection and Tudor political theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 3–4. 24 The leading study of Erastus is Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate. 25 I have summarised Erastus’s position from Clement Barksdale’s translation of Erastus’s Theses published as The nullity of church censures (1659). 26 P. Benedict, Christ’s churches purely reformed: a social history of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 215. 27 M. Prak, The Dutch republic in the seventeenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 205–9. 28 Benedict, Christ’s churches, ch. 4. 29 L. A. M. Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish revolution: Covenanted Scotland, 1637– 1651 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 100, 123–6, 134–6. 30 Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, p. 79. 31 D. A. Orr, ‘Sovereignty, supremacy and the origins of the English civil war’, Historical Research, 87:3 (2002), 485. 32 Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, p. 79. 33 P. Lake, ‘Order, orthodoxy and resistance: the ambiguous legacy of English puritanism or just how moderate was Stephen Denison’, in M. J. Braddick and J. Walter (eds), Negotiating power in early modern society: order, hierarchy and subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 212–14, 216. 34 C. Haigh, ‘Communion and community: exclusion from communion in postReformation England’, JEH, 51:4 (2000), 721–40. 35 Stephen Marshall, A sermon preached … November 17, 1640 (1641), p. 35. 36 The Verney papers: notes of proceedings in the Long Parliament J. Bruce (ed.), (1845), pp. 9, 11. 37 Smectymnuus, An answer to a booke entitled an humble remonstrance (1641), pp. 85–6, 113. The pseudonym ‘Smectymnuus’ was made up of Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young and William Spurstowe. 38 Smectymnuus, An Answer, pp. 80–1, 93. 39 W. M. Abbott, ‘Anticlericalism and episcopacy in parliamentary debates 149

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40 41

42

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44 45 46

47 48

49

50

51 52

53 54

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1640–41: secular versus spiritual functions’, in B. Sharp and M. C. Fissel (eds), Law and authority in early modern England: essays presented to Thomas Garden Barnes (Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2007), pp. 157–85. BL Harley MS 5108, especially fos 94r–104r, 109r–v; Shaw, History of the English Church, I, pp. 23–6. K. O. Kupperman, ‘Definitions of liberty on the eve of civil war: Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, and the American puritan colonies’, HJ, 32:1 (1989), 20–3; K. O. Kupperman, Providence Island 1630–1641 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 248–53. Henry Parker, The true grounds of ecclesiasticall regiment (1641), pp. 7, 23–5, 29; W. Lamont, Marginal Prynne 1600–1669 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 171–2. J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The peerage in politics 1645–49’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1986), p. 84. I am grateful to John Adamson for discussing this point with me. D. Hirst, ‘The defection of Sir Edward Dering 1640–1’, HJ, 15 (1972), 203–4. Yule, Puritans in politics, pp. 162–5. Shaw, History of the English Church, I, pp. 77–102; Yule, Puritans in politics, pp. 111–14; Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, pp. 76–9; Sommerville, ‘Hobbes, Selden, Erastianism, and the history of the Jews’, 165. A. Fletcher, The outbreak of the English civil war (Edward Arnold, 1981), pp. 104–5. ‘The grand remonstrance’, clause 184, in S. R. Gardiner, The constitutional documents of the puritan revolution, 1625–1660 (3rd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 229; [Cornelius Burges et al.], To the honourable, the knights, the citizens and burges of the Commons House in Parliament, the humble petition of sundry ministers … December 20 1641 (1641). Abbott, ‘Anticlericalism and episcopacy’, p. 173, Thomas Coleman, A brotherly examination re-examined (1645); p. 10, The correspondence of Thomas Hobbes: Vol. I 1622–1659, ed. N. Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 120. BL, Add. MS 18,780 (The Journal of Walter Yonge, Volume 3), fo. 114r. I am very grateful to Christopher Thompson for allowing me to use his transcript of Yonge’s Journal. See Yule, Puritans in politics, p. 157. Yule, Puritans in politics, p. 150. See also J. Coffey, Politics, religion and the British revolutions: the mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 49, 218. For Melville’s famous speech to James VI and I defining two-kingdom theory see The autobiography and diary of Mr James Mellvill, ed. R. Pitcairn (Edinburgh, 1842), p. 370. E. R. Holoway III, Andrew Melville and humanism in renaissance Scotland 1545– 1622 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 124–6. Samuel Rutherford, A peaceable and temperate plea for Pauls presbyterie in Scotland (1642), pp. 294–5. For Cartwright’s two-kingdom theory see A. F. Scott Pearson, Church and state: political aspects of sixteenth century puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp. 9–40; P. Lake, Anglicans and puritans? Presbyterian and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 28–9; W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s doctrine of the royal supremacy (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 98–105.

‘They agree not in opinion among themselves’ 55 Richard Byfield, The power of the Christ of God (1641). 56 Thomas Cartwright, The seconde replie of Thomas Cartwright (1575), pp. 410–14, 441. 57 Byfield, The power of the Christ of God, p. 2, D. McKay ‘Samuel Rutherford on civil government’, in M. Vogan (ed.), Samuel Rutherford: an introduction to his theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Reformation Society, 2012), pp. 253, 256–9, 261–4. Richard Hooker, as Torrance Kirby shows (Richard Hooker’s doctrine of the royal supremacy, pp. 111–14), criticised this aspect of two-kingdoms theory as a form of Nestorianism. However, as books VI and VIII of the Laws would not be published until 1648, they came too late to be referenced in the Erastian controversy of the mid-1640s. 58 Rutherford, A peaceable and temperate plea, p. 295, George Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming (1646), p. 174. 59 Byfield, The power of the Christ of God, p. 6, Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming, pp. 175, 185–6, Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, or the divine right of churchgovernment asserted, eds C. Coldwell and D. W. Hall (Dallas, TX: Napthali Press, 1995), pp. 58, 67. 60 Coffey, John Goodwin and the puritan revolution: religion and intellectual change in 17th century England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 109–112, M. Caricchio, ‘John Dury, reformer of education against the radical challenge’, Les Dossiers du Grihl, 2010: http://dossiersgrihl.revues.org/3787, paras 19–31. 61 Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming, pp. 256–60, 284–5, 314–18, Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, p. 89. 62 Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming, pp. 190–1, 259–60, Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, pp. 72–3, 76, 78; Philip Nye, The lawfulness of the oath of supremacy (1662), p. 81. 63 Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, pp. 85–7. 64 Byfield, The power of the Christ of God, p. 3; Rutherford, A peaceable and temperate plea, pp. 295–6. 65 Thomas Bakewell, An answer to those questions … touching jus divinum (1646) p. 15; Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, pp. 49, 79. 66 H. F. Cary (ed.), Memorials of the great civil war in England, 2 vols (1842), I, p. 18. 67 Rutherford, A peaceable and temperate plea, p. 298, Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming, pp. 250, 265, 303, Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, p. 78. 68 Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, pp. 78–9. In Reformed scholasticism this is often expressed through the distinction between ius in sacra and ius circa sacra. 69 Samuel Rutherford, The divine right of church government and excommunication (1646), p. 601, Gillespie, Aarons rod blossoming, p. 249, 254, Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, pp. 87, 91, 96. 70 Yule, Puritans in politics, p. 118; MPWA, I, pp. 1–15, The names of those divines … nominated … for the consultation, or assembly (1642). 71 See MPWA, II, pp. 229–55; H. Powell, The crisis of British protestantism: church power in the Puritan revolution, 1638–1644 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 63–80. 72 MPWA, II, p. 238, Lightfoot, Journal, pp. 31–2. 73 MPWA, II, p. 256, Lightfoot, Journal, p. 34. 74 MPWA, II, pp. 258–9. 151

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 75 MPWA, II, pp. 520–2. Selden would make essentially the same argument before the House of Commons on 3 September 1645, see BL, Add. MS 18,780, fo. 111v. 76 J. P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s chief rabbi: John Selden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 246–50. 77 For a detailed summary of De synedriis, Selden’s anti-Presbyterian magnum opus, see G. Toomer, John Selden, II, pp. 692–787. For Selden and the church– state question see R. Barbour, John Selden: measures of the holy commonwealth in seventeenth century England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 289–94, 304–42; J. P. Rosenblatt, ‘Making law and recording it: John Selden on excommunication’, in L. Hutson (ed.), The Oxford handbook of English law and literature, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 353–71; O. Haivry, John Selden and the western political tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), ch. 6. 78 Gouge had been a student of Hebrew at Cambridge and had later published the Hebraist works of Sir Henry Finch. For Gouge see M. A. Ziskind, ‘John Selden: humanist jurist’ (PhD Thesis, University of Chicago, 1972), p. 144, B. Usher, ‘Gouge, William’, ODNB. For Seaman, who was said to read the Hebrew Bible fluently ‘without points’, see J. Reid, Memoirs of the Westminster divines (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), pp. 136–41. 79 See e.g. Calamy and Gillespie’s speeches on 11 December 1643, MPWA, II, pp. 430–4. 80 MPWA, II, pp. 430–32, [Richard Hollingworth], The main points of churchgovernment and discipline (1649), pp. 39–42. 81 MPWA, II, p. 448. 82 MPWA, II, p. 469. 83 [Henry Burton], The Protestation protested (1641), sigs C1r–C3v. 84 For congregationalist practice in parochial churches see J. Halcomb, ‘A social history of congregational religious practice during the puritan revolution’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009), pp. 107–13. I am grateful to Joel Halcomb and Michael Winship for discussing this point with me. 85 See also J. Sommerville, ‘Hobbes and independency’, Rivista di Storia della Filosophia, 59:1 (2004), 155–73. 86 MPWA, II pp. 498–500 (William Bridge), Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye, ‘To the reader’, in John Cotton, The keyes of the kingdom of heaven (1644), Nye, Lawfulness of the oath of supremacy, p. 196. 87 P. Nye, Beames of former light (1660), p. 133, Nye, Lawfulness of the oath of supremacy, pp. 109–110, D. Nobbs, ‘Philip Nye on church and state’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 5:1 (1935), 41–59. 88 Nye, Lawfulness of the oath of supremacy, pp. 50–8, 78–9, 93. 89 Ibid., pp. 29–30. 90 Ibid., p. 57. 91 Ibid., pp. 58–9, 90. 92 P. Lake, Moderate puritans and the Elizabethan church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 269–71. 93 The works of Samuel Hudson argue this point most fully for the presbyterian position, see Samuel Hudson, The essence and unitie of the church catholic visible 152

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94 95 96

97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105 106 107

108 109 110 111 112

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

(1644); Samuel Hudson, A vindication of the essence and unity of the church catholike visible (1650, 2nd edition, 1658); Sungho Lee, ‘All subjects of the kingdom of Christ: John Owen’s conception of Christian unity and schism’ (PhD Thesis, Calvin Theological Seminary, 2007), pp. 133–5. Lee, ‘All subjects of the kingdom of Christ’, pp. 122–30. MPWA, II, pp. 523–4, 530. Gillespie, Notes, p. 27. MPWA, II, p. 530, records Nye as saying ‘in 2 vast bodyes, these 2 either will agree or disagree; if they doe agree it is bad, but if they [do not] agree it is commonly worse’. Nye, Lawfulness of the oath of supremacy, p. 101. Ibid., pp. 101, 130–3. University of Sheffield, Hartlib Papers 13/28a (Sir Cheney Culpeper to Hartlib, 9 January 1644). For an exploration of this methodology see C. J. Williams, ‘Good and necessary consequence in the Westminster assembly’, in A. T. Selvaggio (ed.), The faith once delievered: essays in honor of Dr Wayne R. Spear (Phillipsburg, NJ: P. & R. Publishing, 2007), pp. 171–90. Lightfoot, Journal, p. 170, Gillespie, Notes, p. 27. Baillie, Letters, II pp. 265–6. Coleman, Hopes deferred and dashed, p. 24. Selden would remind Parliament of Coleman’s arguments on these texts in the parliamentary debate on 3 September, see BL, Add. MS 18780, fo. 111v. Coleman, Hopes deferred, pp. 24, 27. Coleman, A brotherly examination, p. 11. Coleman, A brotherly examination, p. 16, Thomas Coleman, Male dicis maledicis (1646), pp. 22–6. William Prynne would also cite the works of Benedict Aretius against the presbyterian disciplinarian position; see William Prynne, Suspention suspended (1646), pp. 18, 31. BL, Add. MS 18780, fo. 111v, Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English affairs, 4 vols (Oxford, 1853), I, pp. 505–8. BL, Add. MS 18780, fo. 112r. [William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele], Vindiciae veritatis (1654), p. 11. Ibid., p. 13. George Gillespie, Nihil respondes (1645), pp. 32–3, and George Gillespie, Male audis (1646), pp. 52–3. Gillespie later acknowledged that ‘the error of Erastus’ had its root in the German magisterial Reformation, see George Gillespie, A treatise of miscellany questions (1649), p. 155. A&O, I, pp. 852–5. CJ, IV, pp. 562–4. Baillie, Letters, II, p. 362. A&O, I, p. 791. [Fiennes], Vindiciae veritatis, p. 8. Thomas Bakewell, The ordinance of excommunication rightly stated (1646), sig. A1; [Bakewell], An answer to those questions, p. 3. Certain considerations and cautions agreed by the ministers of London (1646). Ibid., pp. 6–7. [Fiennes], Vindiciae veritatis, p. 37. 153

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132

133 134

135 136

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Prynne, Suspention suspended, pp. 1–2. [John Geree?], Touching the subject of supremacy in causes ecclesiastical (1647). Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., pp. 3–4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 5–6. B. Worden, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 206–8. See Prior, ‘Rethinking church and state during the English interregnum’ for a survey. See also M. Goldie, ‘The civil religion of James Harrington’, in A. Pagden, The languages of political theory in early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 197–222; R. Beiner, Civil religion: a dialogue in the history of political philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), esp. chs 5–6. A. Hughes, ‘“The public profession of these nations”: the national church in interregnum England’, in C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds), Religion in revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 93–114; C. Durston, ‘Policing the Cromwellian church: the activities of the county ejection committees, 1654–1659’, in P. Little (ed.), The Cromwellian Protectorate (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), pp. 188–206. P. Little and D. L. Smith, Parliaments and politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 210–11. For Nye’s key role as the leading ecclesiastical adviser to the Protector, see University of Sheffield Library, The Hartlib Papers, 4/3/52B (John Dury to Hartlib), 17 October and 18 October 1654). Little and Smith, Parliaments and politics, p. 206. The letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, eds T. Carlyle and S. C. Lomax, 3 vols (Methuen & Co., 1904), II, p. 537. For the petition to Cromwell, see R. N. Worth, ‘Puritanism in Devon, and the Exeter Assembly’, Report and transactions of the Devonshire Association, IX (1877), 284–5. It might be objected that use of the Book of Common Prayer and the precivil-war liturgy remained forbidden. However, as Judith Maltby has noted, the Protectorate largely turned a blind eye to the use of the prayer book, clamping down on its use only when it was used in support of Royalist agitation. See J. Maltby, ‘“Extravagancies and ompertinencies”: set forms, conceived and extempore prayer in revolutionary England’, in N. Mears and A. Ryrie (eds), Worship and the parish church in early modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 230. Ziskind, ‘John Selden: humanist jurist’, pp. 211–15; Toomer, John Selden, II, pp. 718–19. Ziskind, ‘John Selden: humanist jurist’, pp. 211–15; Toomer, John Selden, II, pp. 718–19; William Prynne, Diotrephes catechised (1646), p. 7; Coleman, A brotherly examination, p. 22.

The New England way reconsidered

Chapter 8

The New England way reconsidered: an exploration of church polity and the governance of the region’s churches Francis J. Bremer

N

ewly arrived in Boston after three decades as the spiritual leader of the New Haven church and colony, John Davenport welcomed an invitation from the deputies of the Massachusetts General Court to deliver the annual election-day sermon in May 1669. Mounting a defence of the congregational principles on which the region had been founded, he warned of changes that would lead to ‘an end of New England’s glory, and happiness, and safety’. Davenport invoked his authority as one who was involved from ‘the first beginning of this colony of Massachusetts’. He related how the first churches ‘were gathered in a congregational way, and walked therein, according to the rules of the Gospel, with much peace and content among themselves’, so that his friend John Cotton wrote that in New England ‘the order of the churches and of the Commonwealth was so settled, by common consent, that it brought to his mind the New Heaven and New Earth, wherein dwells righteousness’. But this order was now threatened by ‘two extremes: misguided zeal, and formality’. In words that clearly referred to the magistrates’ interference in the affairs of his congregation, he warned them that they ‘deprive not any instituted Christian church, walking according to Gospel rules, of the power and privileges which Christ hath purchased for them by his precious blood’. He indirectly criticised a council of local churches which had endorsed a secession of members from the First Church Boston, and directly criticised the magistrates, who had ‘countenance[d] and upheld others to exercise power over the churches in such things, to whom Christ never gave such power’. Davenport acknowledged the need for occasional synods or councils, but reminded his hearers that Cotton had taught that ‘concerning the power of councils, that the question is carried to the council, but the cause still remaineth in and with the church’. Alluding to what has become known as the ‘half-way covenant’, he warned the magistrates against ‘imposing on the churches anything Christ hath not put upon them’, such as ‘men’s opinion, 155

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especially when they are such as prevailed in an hour of temptation, though consented to by the major part of a topical synod, yet disliked by some of themselves, and by other godly ministers both in this country, and in other countries, so that they are things controverted and under dispute’. He denied the need for standing councils – which was the direction the authoritarian elements in the region were moving towards – warning that such bodies ‘under a pretence of helping the church with their light, bereave them of their powers’. Should the magistrates and deputies fail to correct their behaviour, they would feel ‘God’s punishing justice’, and the Lord would ‘remove the golden candlesticks and the burning and shining lights in them’.1 This sermon was as stinging a public attack on the civil leaders of Massachusetts as had ever been delivered by a respected clergyman. It reflected the concern of many that the region was moving from its congregational roots towards a more presbyterian polity. The deputies, who sided with Davenport, voted their thanks. The magistrates declined to do so. John Davenport had been one of the foremost members of the puritan clerical brotherhood in England in the 1620s. The rector of St Stephen’s Coleman Street in the City of London, he had been one of the organisers of the feoffees for impropriation (a trust to finance the placement of puritan preachers in England’s pulpits), a supporter of John Dury’s efforts to unite international protestants and a promoter of efforts to aid the refugees from the Thirty Years War. He was an early supporter of the Massachusetts Bay Company and helped to vet the clergy whom the company initially sent to New England. Following Bishop William Laud’s emphasis on strict conformity to ceremonies that puritans found objectionable, Davenport moved to the Netherlands. His candidacy for an appointment to the ministry of the English church in Amsterdam precipitated a significant debate over requirements for church membership and the distribution of governing authority in a church. Blocked from the pulpit in Amsterdam, he ministered for three years to the English church in Rotterdam. In 1637 he emigrated to New England with a cadre of settlers largely drawn from his former London parish. Davenport and his followers landed in Boston, where they stayed while trying to determine a location to settle. He and his wife stayed with his friend John Cotton, and he became engaged in the church trial of Anne Hutchinson. The Massachusetts clergy also engaged him to write a defence of their church polity in answer to questions from English reformers. In April 1638 he and his supporters planted the town and colony of New Haven in what is now southern Connecticut. Under his leadership, New Haven, aspiring to be a new Jerusalem, developed its own variation on New England church practices. There are two reasons to focus on John Davenport when discussing debates over the New England way. Because too often discussions of New England puritanism assume that the entire region was Boston writ large, a focus on Davenport provides insight into the actual diversity of colonial practices. Another is that it can help us get past the common 156

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interpretation of religious disputes in the region as one pitting a uniform orthodoxy against sectarian radicals. There are three key aspects of church polity that will be examined in the following pages with the intention of prompting a reappraisal: the nature of the true church; the distribution of power within the church; and the relationship of individual congregations to the larger community of faith.2

THE EARLY CHURCH POLITY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY The settlers of New England had been born in a country where the local units of religious life were parishes that had existed for centuries. There were no parishes in New England and the immigrants were not likely to ask the English bishops to establish any. The early colonists were thrown on their own resources when it came to their religious life. Their response to the challenge was to organise congregations of believers bound together by explicit covenants. In 1628 the company’s organisers had invited William Ames, one of the more highly respected puritan theologians, to be one of the founding clergy in their colony, but he rejected the offer. His criticisms of English practices had led to an exile in the Netherlands, where he published his major works. In his Medulla theologica (Amsterdam, 1623), translated as The marrow of theology, Ames identified the church in the most general sense as ‘the company of men who are called’ and hence united to Christ. The visible, instituted church took the form of ‘a congregation or particular church [that] is a society of believers joined together in a special bond for the continual exercise of the communion of saints among themselves’.3 John Davenport wrote that ‘every true church is a city of God’, and was formed by a covenant ‘whereby a company of Christians do become a church’. The point was that each individual church was an autonomous unit. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Pilgrim ‘separatists’ of the Plymouth colony played a larger role than previously acknowledged in influencing the early church polity of Massachusetts.4 This is especially true in terms of how the new churches defined their relationship to English parishes, but the basic elements of congregationalism would have been familiar to many of the colonists from the writings of men such as Ames, Henry Barrow and Henry Jacob as well as the experiences that colonial clergy such as Thomas Hooker, Hugh Peter and John Davenport had in the Netherlands. In gathering their individual congregations the colonists wanted to restrict membership to visible saints, which led them to establish requirements for membership and receipt of the sacraments. Thus, Richard Mather stated, ‘we believe that all members of churches ought to be saints’ and that it was important to ‘use all … means whereby God may help us to discern, whether those that offer themselves … be persons so qualified or no’.5 But how were those qualifications to be recognised? Fifty years ago, Edmund S. Morgan 157

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argued that, to join a church, colonists had not only to demonstrate godly behaviour and acceptance of articles of faith but to offer accounts of their personal conversion, and that this New England innovation was virtually universal among the colonial churches.6 I have argued at length elsewhere that Morgan was incorrect in his assessment of how widespread the requirement of such personal narratives was.7 The fact is that the means used to determine an applicant’s elect status varied widely, and few churches required such a narrative for admission, though many encouraged members to share such experiences as a means of ministering to one another’s spiritual growth. Puritans never lost sight of the fact that, whatever tests they employed, mere human beings could not know for sure whether an individual was saved. John Norton, while stipulating that church members should have experienced conversion, acknowledged ‘the inward side of the event in a person cannot be known by others’.8 Indeed, whenever they wrote about requirements for membership, puritans almost invariably stipulated the need for a ‘judgment of charity’.9 Thomas Hooker, among others, was willing to concede that an individual might achieve assurance of his or her own salvation, concluded that there was no certain way that the conversion of others could be ascertained.10 Giles Firmin remembered that he heard Thomas Hooker, at a meeting of about forty ministers, put that question, What rules they would go by in admission of members into churches? Will you go by the narration of the work of God upon them in conversion? Or will you look at the frame wherewith they make their narration? One, saith he, comes and makes his narration with many tears; another he tells you plainly what God hath done, but he cannot shed tears as the other, but yet proves the better Christian, said he. To say no more, tears are common to hypocrites, and no infallible signs of soundness of grace.11

Clergy were agreed that it was impossible to truly detect those who were saved from hypocrites – particularly those in the early stages of the process of conversion.12 Most churches followed the requirements of the congregational churches in the Netherlands and the Jacobs congregation in London in stipulating that potential members ‘manifested and professed both faith and obedience, both that they believed what God promised and that they would be obedient to what he required’.13 They looked for a true and sincere faith that embraced the heart as well as the will. This ‘saving conviction is a greater and stronger light, like the light of the Sun’, and ‘is only from the sanctifying spirit of God’. It is this ‘new light whereby we are enabled to see other things, or the same truths in a more spiritual and effectual manner’.14 There was a difference between a profession of faith offered by someone whose understanding and emotions had been enlightened by the spirit and offered by someone who was not of the elect, and that difference was discernible by the godly. 158

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In limiting membership to those judged by their peers as likely to be of the elect, those New England colonists were asserting congregational principles. There were, however, some communities that took a different path. In 1635 Peter Hobart organised the church at Hingham, Massachusetts, along presbyterian lines with virtually all the town residents joined as members. The Newbury church was formed according to a congregational pattern, but Thomas Parker and James Noyse would seek to reorganise the congregation with broader membership.15 The original congregational churches in the colonies baptised infants of members but expected that on reaching maturity those children would put themselves forth for membership by demonstrating the same qualities that their parents had. When this expectation proved illusory and numerous children of members entered adulthood without having been granted membership, Richard Mather led a campaign to allow those baptised non-member adults, provided they swore to the church covenant, to present their own children for baptism. This gave those adults what was came to be referred to as ‘half-way’ membership. The issue was first aired and tabled at the Cambridge assembly in 1647. John Davenport was troubled by what he saw as an erosion of the true foundation of the church. He later wrote that he ‘was present and observed with grief that the tempter was then tempting’.16 It was proposed again at a synod in 1657, and the ‘half-way covenant’ was formally recommended to all the churches at the synod of 1662. Davenport and others (including, initially, Increase Mather) continued to oppose it as altering the congregational nature of New England’s church order, expanding membership in a way that smacked of a more inclusive presbyterianism. Writing from England, the former colonist Nathaniel Mather warned that he saw on both sides of the Atlantic ‘a departure … of late in congregational men from old principles and practices’, and that Philip ‘Nye not long before his death saw and much laid to heart what he saw of that kind’.17

LAITY AND MINISTRY If the broadening of membership was seen as one element of a perceived drift from congregationalism to presbyterianism, a perceived shift in the distribution of powers within the individual congregation was another area of concern for men such as Davenport. Virtually all puritans interpreted the passages in the gospel of Matthew in which Christ referred to the church (Matthew 16:19 and 18:17) as identifying the individual congregation as the church.18 But there was no consensus on what this meant in terms of how the church was to exercise its power. Some English puritans who had written on the subject, such as Paul Baynes and William Bradshaw, believed that the authority of the keys was to be wielded by the officers of the church. They took the position that, while the ministers were to be chosen by the 159

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laity, their authority derived from God.19 Others countered this somewhat aristocratic view with a more democratic position. William Ames believed that the power of Christ was communicated to the members of the gathered congregation, though he trimmed his position somewhat to avoid discounting the importance of the ministry. Robert Parker, citing Thomas Cartwright, argued that Matthew 16:19 was to be read as Christ giving ‘the keys to the whole church’. Yet Parker believed that the ministers were to administer the keys as the agents of the laity. The people were the rulers; the ministers their servants.20 Though explicitly asserting that a congregation held governing power ‘immediately under Christ’ as a right, Henry Jacob saw the officers of the church as the congregation’s instruments in exercising authority.21 Such writers were trying to assert lay authority while also seeking to temper the potentially anarchic tendencies. What was for some of these authors a matter of theoretical importance during Elizabeth’s reign became a matter of practical concern as puritans began to organise actual congregations in England and the Netherlands. There was no universally accepted position in New England, though the facts that congregations were formed by lay Christians and that congregations could actually exist without a minister testified to a general emphasis on lay as opposed to clerical power. Indeed, by looking at New England’s early history from the perspective of what it became it is easy to underestimate the extent of lay empowerment in the formative decades.22 From the earliest days of the puritan movement a major part of advancing reform was the various forms of conferencing in which godly lay men and women came together (often without a clergyman) to share their religious experiences and their understanding of scripture. Because puritans believed that the inspiration of the Spirit (more than any amount of book learning) was the key to understanding God’s will, the laity were key to advancing reform. Patrick Collinson argued that ‘the conduct of a puritan minister, including his own nonconformity, was partly a response’ to pressure from those in the pews. While ministers would clearly be loath to acknowledge that they were bowing to popular pressure, Collinson found evidence that ‘the strongest prejudices against the most concrete and symbolic of popish survivals in the Church of England, the surplice, resided not in the puritan clergy but among “simple gospellers”’. Thus, for instance, when some Suffolk puritans crossed the Stour River to attend services at Boxsted, Essex, the vicar there decided not to wear the vestment, since ‘some that came out of Suffolk side would have liked him the worse if he had worn it’.23 Explaining to the Norfolk pastor Edward Fenton why his parishioners were moving beyond him, the separatist Robert Harrison pointed to their ‘fruitful edifying of gracious speech and godly conference’.24 Sharing experiences of grace was always an important part of godly life aside from whether it was or was not used as a test for membership in the New England churches. Sharing stories with others who could understand 160

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them reinforced a sense of saintly communion and could be a means of leading others to a closer relationship with God. Thomas Goodwin pointed to ‘the success which our examples, or gifts, or graces have upon others’ as one of the fruits of saving grace.25 The London puritan clergyman Thomas Taylor referred to godly conference as ‘a whet-stone of grace’.26 It was, he wrote on another occasion, a means of drawing ‘thy friends along to heaven with thee’.27 Richard Rogers used a similar image in describing godly conference as ‘whetting on one the other’.28 The preaching of godly clergy and the reading of Scripture were both important, but, according to Vavasor Powell, ‘amongst the various ways of God’s teaching, experience is one of the chiefest’.29 If, indeed, it was possible for even an illiterate man with the gift of the Spirit to be a better guide than a scholar untouched by God’s grace, it is not surprising that occasionally laymen preached in secret gatherings. Patrick Collinson found that ‘at Ramsey there was a preaching place in the woods, with straw and moss for seating, ‘and the ground trodden bare with much treading’, where dozens of individuals, most of them women, ‘gathered in this clearing to eat roast beef and goose while listening to one William Collett, who expounded St. John’s gospel from a ladder’. Elsewhere in Essex a schoolmaster named John Leach was the leader of what authorities labelled a conventicle.30 At Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, the layman William Brewster was cited in 1598 for preaching to a group of local believers, initially by reviewing and commenting on sermons preached in local churches.31 There is evidence that in the late 1630s Oliver Cromwell, living in St Ives, ‘regularly preached in other men’s houses as well as his own’.32 Whilst most lay contributions came in such settings, prophesying in the form of lay exposition of Scripture in a public setting was encouraged in many puritan congregations. Jeremy Bangs, whose study of John Robinson’s Leiden church is the most thorough, has concluded that lay prophesying was one of the elements that made the religious life of that congregation exciting: ‘Robinson emphasised that interpreting the Bible was not a skill restricted to the clergy, and that among the laymen of any proper congregation it should be expected that some could be found whose words should be heard.’33 ‘It may so come to pass,’ he wrote, ‘that some in the church, though no ministers, may excel the very pastors themselves’.34 The practice carried over to New England. In defending the New England way against Samuel Rutherford, Richard Mather defended the practice of lay prophesying by his analysis of the practices of the early Christian church at Corinth.35 Because he believed that the Holy Spirit worked through laymen, John Cotton justified allowing church members to ask questions and offer comments following sermons in the Boston church.36 The fact that what is perhaps the most famous sermon connected with New England, John Winthrop’s ‘Christian Charity’, was preached by a layman should alert us to a puritan acceptance of lay preaching. In cases where a clergyman was not available, a layperson could preach. During the Elizabethan 161

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reign Walter Travers had conceded that, whilst a well-established church should have a minister, a true church could stand without one if a godly clergyman could not be found.37 In Plymouth William Brewster preached to the congregation throughout most of the 1620s, when it lacked a clergyman. Though a layman could not administer the sacraments, it was customary for a gathered congregation that had not yet found a minister to ask one of its own members or a visiting layman to preach. When John Wilson returned to England for a time, leaving the Boston church without a minister in March 1631, he authorised John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley and Increase Nowell to preach to the congregation by ‘the exercise of prophesy’ in his absence.38 A few years later Winthrop visited the new town of Agawam, where there was no minister, and ‘spent the sabbath with them and exercised by way of prophesy’.39 A member of the Salem church preached by way of prophesying in Marblehead in the early years of that community, and a member of the Boston church did the same in Rumney Marsh.40 There were likely numerous similar instances that went unrecorded. The point of emphasising the various ways in which laymen were able to exercise spiritual responsibility makes it easier to understand why most of the colonial puritans insisted that the governance of the individual congregation should be in the hands of the lay members. In The true constitution of a particular visible church (London, 1642) and other writings, John Cotton insisted that Christ had bestowed the power of the keys on the lay members of each individual congregation.41 Roger Williams rejected the ‘prelates plea [that] the people are weak, giddy, and rash, and therefore should not enjoy such liberties’, insisting instead that church members had ‘a wisdom greater than theirs’.42 Thomas Hooker concluded that all decisions made by a church should be by the ‘mutual and free consent’ of the members.43 Following the civil trial of Anne Hutchinson, in which the colony magistrates had sentenced her to be banished, Hutchinson was tried for her religious errors by the First Church Boston.44 Here, in keeping with congregational polity, the membership as a whole and not just the elders were expected to decide. Attending the trial, John Davenport explained that the Scriptures made it ‘plain it is the whole church’ that Christ had given the keys of authority to, and not just the officers. He emphasised that ‘if any of the brethren have any scruples upon their spirits about this or any other point, that they should have free leave to propound it’, and that in examining the position Hutchinson had taken the members ‘can bear witness to the truth or against any error but by expressing their assent or dissent, either by silence and lifting up of their hands’. As to the question of whether Hutchinson should be excommunicated, Davenport told them ‘they may express their judgments by vote or no’.45 Anne Hutchinson’s gathering of lay believers to review sermons was an example of puritan conferencing, and the practice of prophesying was what gave Anne Hutchinson and others courage to speak out in services of the 162

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Boston church. Because the controversy that erupted in the Boston church as a result of the views that emerged from her conference threatened the civil and church order of the new colony, it is not surprising that in the aftermath some clergy reacted by questioning the lay role in religious affairs. The 1637 synod gathered in Cambridge to discuss the errors seen emanating from the Boston church condemned the practice of allowing members to speak out after sermons, either to ask questions or to offer their own insights.46 Thomas Shepard, who had led the attack on the Free Grace faction surrounding Hutchinson, heaped criticism on the practice: ‘An elder gives reasons strong and answerable for something to be done; a young fellow shall step up and say, without ground or show of it, That is your light, and mine is otherwise.’47 The synod’s findings were, however, recommendations, and whilst many scholars have assumed that such lay participation in services did in fact die out, there is evidence to suggest that the laity were not quick to give up their rights and that the practice persisted and may even have grown. Thus, in 1647 Ezekiel Rogers of Rowley attacked what he called the growing habit of members ‘making speeches in the church assemblies’.48 Clergy such as James Noyse and Nathaniel Ward had long criticised the democratic tendencies of lay empowerment.49 The outbreak of sectarian groups and ideas in England with the outbreak of civil war there in the 1640s and the reports of numerous lay street preachers, some of them women, confirmed the fears of many colonists and persuaded others of the dangers of anarchy as a result of the role of laymen in the region’s churches. With one eye on England, Thomas Shepard complained of the ‘sons of Korah [who] cast off the Lord’s government over them, who will have no rulers or governors in the churches’.50 Increasingly some clergy began to define their role in a way that diminished the importance of their call by a particular denomination and emphasised a higher understanding of their status as one called by God. John Norton asserted in 1645 that the powers of the ministry overrode those of the brethren, stating that the minister ‘preached with the power of a special right as an ambassador of God, doing all in the name not of the church but of God’.51 Richard Mather likewise decided that the clerical elders had a negative voice over the decisions of the congregation.52 Following the founding of Harvard College many placed a new emphasis on the need for learning for a proper interpretation of Scripture. One aspect of the debate over the source of ministerial authority was the question of whether a clergyman could conduct services in neighbouring churches or only in the one that had called him. This became an issue at the Cambridge assembly of 1647, where Thomas Shepard and others fought for a definition of the ministerial office that would have explicitly allowed a clergyman to administer the sacraments in churches other than his own. According to Cotton Mather, writing years after the event, this was prevented only by the intervention of John Davenport and other strict congregationalists.53 163

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The issue of who exercised authority in an individual congregation was highlighted by a division in the Hartford church in 1649. Thomas Hooker died in 1647 and his ministerial colleague Samuel Stone – who had famously stated his view that New England’s church polity was ‘a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy’ – laboured on alone for two years. During that period a rift in the church developed over Stone’s stated intention to recognise all who had been baptised as members, whether they had been admitted in their own right or not. When an effort was finally made in 1649 to fill Hooker’s place, the church members appeared to settle on Michael Wigglesworth. Stone, for reasons he never gave, opposed the choice and refused to allow the congregation to issue an invitation. At a stormy meeting of the congregation Stone acknowledged that ‘it is a liberty of a church to declare their apprehensions by vote about the fitness of a person for office upon his trial’ but insisted that ‘it is a received truth that an officer may in some cases legally hinder the church from putting forth at this or that time an act of her liberty’.54 In the 1640s the Scottish presbyterian Robert Baillie wisely observed about the congregationalists that ‘so far as we can learn, there is yet no full agreement among them, either in New or Old England, in setting the marchstones of power betwixt the eldership and the brotherhood … They cannot come to accord’.55 The Hartford dispute illustrated this, and also serves as a transition to the third area to be analysed, the question of the relationship between churches in New England.

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM: CONGREGATIONAL INDEPENDENCE OR PRESBYTERIAL ASSOCIATION? The previous pages have suggested ongoing debate among puritans over various issues relating to the governance and practices of churches. For some such discussion was welcomed. John Robinson ‘was very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word’. He bemoaned ‘the state and condition of the Reformed Churches, who would come to a period in Religion, and would go no further’. Thus, ‘for example the Lutherans they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part of God’s will he had further imparted and revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And so also,’ Robinson lamented, ‘you see the Calvinists, they stick where he left them, a misery much to be lamented; for though they were precious shining lights in their times, yea God had not revealed his whole will to them.’ He advised his flock that ‘the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word’, and his own career demonstrated a constant evolution of his own understanding of contested matters.56 A similar message is to be found in John Winthrop’s famous ‘Christian Charity’ sermon, in which he told the puritans journeying with him to Massachusetts that if they faithfully sought God they might ‘see 164

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much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with’.57 The first settlers had asserted the independence of each congregation. But what would the consequences be if clergy and laity were encouraged to seek further light? How could religious unity be maintained? Over time many clergy placed a growing emphasis on establishing an orthodox uniformity and to achieve that goal sought to curtail congregational independence and the role of the laity within churches. In the early history of the puritan movement various types of clerical gatherings had worked to provide unity to the movement if not uniformity. Clergy participating in combination lectures often dined together afterwards to discuss the day’s sermon and other matters. University commencements were also occasions for informal meetings. Conferences such as that centred on Dedham, Essex, provided more formal settings for puritan clergy to strive for symmetry on the issues that concerned godly Christians as well as a mechanism for assisting one another.58 In addition to regular meetings, special occasions could bring ministers together to address specific issues. One of the more famous of these was the meeting hosted by Henry Whitefield in Ockley, Surrey, around 1633. Thomas Hooker, John Davenport, John Cotton, Whitefield, Philip Nye and Thomas Goodwin met at a time when the pressure on nonconformity was growing to discuss the authority of the national church to demand the practice of ceremonies not prescribed in the Scriptures, and the appropriate power granted to bishops in the early church.59 It was natural for the clergy who settled in New England to meet informally to discuss the various issues they faced in creating new churches and adopting new religious practices. In 1632 the Boston church wrote to the elders of the Salem and Plymouth congregations seeking advice on a variety of issues, including whether a person could hold office both as a civil magistrate and as a church elder.60 By 1633 the ministers of the Bay colony were meeting regularly once every two weeks, each taking turns to host the sessions. But from the first some settlers questioned whether such gatherings threatened the independence of the newly formed congregations. Samuel Skelton of Salem and Roger Williams ‘took some exception against it, as fearing it might grow in time to a presbytery or superintendancy, to the prejudice of the churches’ liberties’. According to John Winthrop, who recorded their objection, ‘this fear was without cause, for they were all clear in that point that no church or person can have power over another church, neither did they in their meetings exercise any such jurisdiction’.61 One of the issues that ran through the debates over church polity was the role that other churches played in the formation of a new congregation. While strict congregationalism allowed for a group of believers to organise without any outside assistance, it was not uncommon for representatives of neighbouring churches to attend the process and to welcome the new church 165

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into the community of saints by extending a ‘right hand of fellowship’. Thus, in the Netherlands, John Forbes had represented the English classis when Hugh Peter had reorganised the English church in Rotterdam in 1633.62 Representatives of the Pilgrim Plymouth congregation sailed up the coast to participate in the formation of the Salem, Massachusetts, congregation in 1629.63 When the New Haven church was gathered Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone came from Hartford to extend fellowship.64 But what if the observers did not like what they saw? In March 1636 the Massachusetts General Court passed an order that the Court would in the future not ‘approve of any such companies of men as shall henceforth join in any pretended way of church fellowship without they shall first acquaint the magistrates and the elders of the greater part of the churches in this jurisdiction with their intentions, and have their approbation thereof’.65 A month later a group of clergy, including Thomas Shepard, interposed to stop the formation of the Dorchester, Massachusetts, congregation because they found the statements of the founding laymen inadequate.66 When the Massachusetts General Court called for a synod to refute the errors that were troubling the colony in 1637, clerical and lay representatives of all the churches gathered in Newtown (soon to be renamed Cambridge) to debate a prepared list of dangerous errors. Early in the proceedings some of the lay representatives of the Boston church withdrew, questioning the assembly’s action.67 In its aftermath, others questioned the authority that was claimed for such a gathering, but Richard Mather insisted that ‘we hold such meetings to be lawful and in some cases necessary’.’68 In 1641 the ‘Body of Liberties’ enacted by the Massachusetts General Court gave the clergy of the colony’s churches the right ‘to meet monthly, quarterly, or otherwise, in convenient numbers and places, for conferences and consultations about Christian and church questions and occasions’.69 This in effect validated what had been common practice since the first days of the colony, and which Samuel Skelton and Roger William had complained about. Whilst it did not explicitly impinge on congregational autonomy, clergy who could point to a consensus of their peers on a particular point might expect to bring more weight to discussions within a particular church. In September 1643 representatives of the churches met in Cambridge to discuss practices in the Newbury church that limited the powers of the laity at the expense of the congregation’s clerical officers. The synod also deliberated over other aspects of the presbyterian agenda advanced by the Newbury clergy Thomas Parker and James Noyse which, according to Winthrop, ‘some of the elders went about to set up’ in the region as a whole.70 Of concern to New England congregationalists was the fact that in England the Westminster assembly had begun its deliberations that July and it was known that one of the options on the table was a presbyterian reform of England’s national church. Parker would have already written The true copy of a letter written by Mr. T. Parker … declaring his judgment touching the government practised 166

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in the churches of New England (1644), which was intended to influence the deliberations of the Westminster assembly. It is likely that he had shared it with colonial clergy who he thought would be sympathetic to his position. The Newbury clergy had categorised congregationalism as a ‘democratical government’ and ‘an epidemical disease’.71 According to one of those who were present at the deliberations, the colonial synod asserted the need for church members to approve all admissions and excommunications, by yielding consent if not by actual voting; that synods were ‘comfortable and necessary’ for the good of the church, though not having power over individual congregations; that a consociation of churches on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis was ‘necessary for the peace and good of the churches’.72 Winthrop reported that the ‘assembly concluded against some parts of the presbyterial way’, but in important ways the conclusions represented an openness to some presbyterian principles.73 James Cooper has identified other examples in the 1640s of a growing tension between those who emphasised the hierarchical principles of presbyterian government against the defenders of lay congregational power, in Hingham, Boston, Salem and Wrentham among other churches.74 In an attempt to resolve such matters – and perhaps to respond to English demands for a statement of the New England Way – the Massachusetts General Court in May 1646 responded to a request by some ministers for a deliberative synod. Initially the magistrates wished to mandate attendance, but after a protest by the deputies made it an invitation.75 Three churches – Boston, Hingham and Concord – initially refused to send representatives. The case of Boston is particularly interesting. Some thirty of forty members of that congregation voted against participating. After two weeks of discussions that failed to budge the opponents of the synod, the church’s ministers, John Wilson and John Cotton, indicated that they were going to attend nevertheless, even if only in their personal capacity. John Norton then was invited from the Ipswich church to add his perspective. Following a Thursday lecture day sermon from the visiting minister, a majority of the church agreed to authorise Cotton and Wilson.76 There are a few points that emerge from an analysis of the resulting Cambridge Platform that speaks to the tug between congregational and presbyterian principles. As to the fundamental nature of the church, ‘the matter of a visible church [was defined] as saints by calling’. Efforts to expand membership was blocked by the strict congregationalists. Regarding the distribution of authority within the congregation, this was the occasion of Ezekiel Rogers’s condemnation of members speaking in church assemblies. Yet an attempt to establish ministerial authority that could be exercised outside of an individual church was blocked. Regarding synods, it was determined that they were ordinances of Christ, ‘though not absolutely necessary to the well being of churches for the establishment of truth and peace therein’.77 Though he had been successful in blocking some of the proposed polity innovations, 167

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shortly after the synod first met, John Davenport feared for the future and proposed a resolution to the commissioners of the United Colonies that the colonies guard the doors to God’s house by holding to their original rules and practices.78 The Hartford church dispute that pitted Samuel Stone against a large minority in his congregation prompted attempts to resolve the dispute through the mediation of councils of visiting clergy, but these efforts failed and ultimately the minority seceded and founded a new church in Hadley, on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. Davenport tried to avoid involvement in the controversy, but eventually concluded that the findings of a council that judged in favour of the minority should be honoured but only because both sides had voluntarily agreed to make it authoritative.79 Willing to accept that a council agreed upon by both parties to a dispute might render a judgement on an issue, Davenport was soon campaigning against the broader use of synods, specifically the recommendations of the synod of 1662. This was the body that had recommended the half-way covenant. Davenport was opposed to the innovation and argued strenuously against it, but he accepted the fact that the decision to accept or reject it was the prerogative of each autonomous congregation. He was joined in his opposition by Increase Mather, who explained that ‘one practical difference between congregational men and presbyterians … is that the congregational men would baptize none but such whose parents were fit for the Lord’s Supper, whereas the presbyterians would baptize the children of such whose parents were not fit for the Lord’s supper’. Writing from London, Increase’s brother Nathaniel made the same point, complaining that the synod’s ‘making children members of the catholic visible church … I confess I do much wonder at. But I see congregational principles are lost in New England’.80 Nathaniel Mather’s criticism included concern about another aspect of the synod’s recommendations, that it was a duty for the churches of the region to consociate, that a consociation could demand of a church that it account for its actions, and that if its response was not satisfactory the consociation could admonish a church and deny it the fellowship of the other consociated churches.81 Davenport bridled at the suggestion that a consociation, synod or council could pronounce a judgement of non-communion with a congregation and, in effect, excommunicate it from the fellowship of churches. This was, he felt, ‘to establish a new form of church [in New England], having power of church government, and exercising it over particular churches in classical or synodical assemblies – a presbyterian church’. Communion between churches must be social only, with none exercising jurisdiction over others. He reminded his readers that the quest for uniformity that the synod’s recommendations reflected had ‘brought great persecution under the prelacy upon the godly part in our native country, whereby sundry of us were driven into this wilderness’.82 168

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CONCLUSION All of the issues explored in these pages came together in the dispute that followed upon Davenport’s invitation to the pastorate of the First Church Boston. The New Haven colony had been incorporated into its larger neighbour when John Winthrop Jr secured a new charter for Connecticut following the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. Meanwhile, in Boston John Cotton had died in 1652. John Wilson had laboured on alone in the pulpit for four years, until the church agreed to call John Norton to its ministry. When Norton died in 1663 the church hoped to replace Norton with one of the luminaries of English puritanism such as Thomas Goodwin or John Owen. Those efforts had not succeeded when John Wilson passed away in 1667, leaving the church without a clergyman. First Church Boston had a long history of lay assertiveness. Wilson had been dealt with roughly by the supporters of Anne Hutchinson in the 1630s, and had been thwarted in his attempts to get the half-way procedures accepted in the congregation. On his deathbed he railed against what he saw as the sins of the time. He spoke of ‘our neglect of baptizing the children of the church, those that some call grand-children’, and the failure of ‘not subjecting to the authority of synods, without which churches cannot long subsist’. He complained of the people defying their ministers, saying it had become ‘nothing for a brother to stand up and oppose, without scripture or reason, the word of an elder’.83 A majority of the church voted to invite John Davenport to be pastor of the church, but the congregation was bitterly divided. The majority favoured a strong lay role in governing the church, wished to maintain traditional membership standards, rejected the authority of synods and was more tolerant than the colony leaders in their attitudes towards baptists and quakers – all of which were positions Davenport was noted for sharing. The minority stood on the opposite side of all these issues, and opposed Davenport’s call. They argued that such a call needed to be unanimous, and that Davenport had not been properly dismissed from the New Haven church. When their objections were overridden, they sought permission to secede and form their own church. We don’t know how Davenport personally felt about their desire to leave, but we do know that he believed this was a decision to be made not by church officers but by the members, and the members consistently refused to allow the minority the permission they sought. Thwarted, the minority appealed to neighbouring churches, and a church council ultimately found that the First Church was ‘obliged’ to dismiss the dissenters. During these proceedings, Davenport responded to the council on behalf of the Boston church that they did not ‘see that you are an orderly council [and] we cannot meet and act with you in matters that concern the church against the express mind of this church’. A slim majority of the colony magistrates sided with the council and the 169

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minority formed the new, Third Church of Boston (later known as Old South).84 Thus, John Davenport found himself addressing the decline of congregational principles before the General Court in the election-day sermon of 1669. But his arguments could not stem the tide towards presbyterian-style innovation. Following his death in 1670, the so-called ‘Reforming synod’ of 1679 stipulated that ‘the pastor of a church may by himself authoritatively suspend from the Lord’s table a brother accused or suspected of a scandal’ and insisted that a church elder possessed an absolute ‘negative on the votes of the brethren’.85 Paul Lucas has charted the development of ‘presbyterialism’ in the Connecticut River Valley, with the Saybrook Platform of 1708 establishing ministerial associations with broad powers over churches and pastors and the authority to license clergy.86 Of course, individual churches could still attempt to resist authoritarian pastors and interfering councils. But the New England way was no longer one that would have been recognised by the earliest settlers. Those who would write the history of seventeenthcentury New England, beginning with Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), did so from a clerical perspective, emphasising the role of the ministers and downplaying the contributions of lay believers. The result, as Joshua Scottow, one of the last surviving laymen of the founding generation, lamented in 1691, ‘New England is not to be found in New-England’.87 John Davenport’s fears had come true.

NOTES 1 John Davenport, A sermon preached at the election of the governor at Boston, in New England, May 19th, 1669 (1670), pp. 11, 15, 12, 13, 26. I have discussed this sermon in F. J. Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem: John Davenport, a puritan in three worlds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 339–40. 2 I would like to offer two caveats to the case set forth in this chapter. One is that, whilst I hope to suggest a greater diversity and fluidity in the evolution of colonial polity than what is commonly presented, space doesn’t allow me to more than suggest the dimensions of that complexity. The other caveat is that space doesn’t allow full discussion of how the debates were tied to English debates in the same period. 3 William Ames, The marrow of theology, translated with an introduction by J. Eusden (Boston, MA: The Pilgrim Press, 1968), pp. 175, 179. 4 For example, see M. P. Winship, Godly republicanism: puritans, pilgrims, and a city on a hill (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). I will make this case in a forthcoming study of early Plymouth that focuses on the colony’s religion. 5 Richard Mather, Church-government and church-covenant discussed (1643), p. 23. 6 E. S. Morgan, Visible saints: the history of a puritan idea (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1963). 7 See Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, pp. 185–92; F. Bremer, ‘Did John Davenport’s church require conversion narratives for church admission? A 170

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8

9

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response’, New England Quarterly, 87:1 (2014), 140–6. A more complete analysis will be found in my ‘Not quite so visible saints: reexamining conversion narratives in early New England’, under consideration for the New England Quarterly. John Norton, The answer to the whole set of questions of the celebrated Mr William Apollonius, trans. D. Horton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 36. For an excellent discussion of this see B. Tipson, ‘Invisible saints: the “judgment of charity” in early New England churches’, CH, 44:4 (1975), especially 462–6. I. H. Murray, ‘Thomas Hooker and the doctrine of conversion’, Banner of Truth Magazine, 195 (December 1979), 51. Giles Firmin, The real Christian, or, a treatise of effectual calling (1670), p. 86. D. Kobrin, ‘The expansion of the visible church in New England: 1629–1650’, CH, 36:2 (1967), 189–90. John Davenport, An apologie of the churches in New England for church-covenant (1643), p. 17. John Davenport, The saint’s anchor hold (1661), pp. 35, 53, 67. Winship, Godly republicanism, pp. 320 n. 48. Davenport quoted in Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, p. 258. F. J. Bremer, Congregational communion: clerical friendship in the Anglo-American puritan community, 1610–1690 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1994), p. 229. Matthew 16:19: ‘And I shall give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ Matthew 18:17: ‘And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen and a publican.’ S. Brachlow, The communion of the saints: radical puritan and separatist ecclesiology 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 169. Ibid., p. 171, where Parker is quoted. Ibid., pp. 186–7. See my Lay empowerment and the development of puritanism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). P. Collinson, ‘The godly: aspects of popular puritanism’, in Collinson, Godly people: essays on English protestantism and puritanism (Bloomsbury, 1983), pp. 2–3, 13. Harrison quoted in P. Collinson, ‘Sects and the evolution of puritanism’, in Collinson, From Cranmer to Sandcroft (Hambledon Continuum, 2006), p. 135. Thomas Goodwin, The Trial of a Christian’s growth (1650), p. 49. Thomas Taylor, Davids learning, or, the way to true happiness (1617), p. 271. Taylor, quoted in P. Collinson, Religion of protestants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 268. Rogers, quoted in A. Ryrie, Being protestant in reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 393. Vavasor Powell, Spiritual experiences of sundry believers (1651/2), p. 173. Collinson, Godly people, pp. 12–13. J. D. Bangs, Strangers and pilgrims, travellers and sojourners: Leiden and the 171

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57 58

59 60 172

f­oundations of Plymouth Plantation (Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2009), pp. 13–14. J. Morrill, ‘Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658)’, ODNB. Bangs, Strangers and pilgrims, p. 227. Ibid., p. 266. Richard Mather, A reply to Mr. Rutherford, or, a defence of the answer to reverend Mr. Herle’s book against the independency of churches (1646), pp. 465–6. D. D. Hall, A reforming people: puritanism and the transformation of public life in New England (New York: Random House, 2011), p. 109. Brachlow, Communion of the saints, p. 160. The journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, eds R. S. Dunn, J. Savage and L. Yeandle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 48. F. J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s forgotten founding father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 248. The colonial church records of the first church of Reading (Wakefield) and the first church of Rumney Marsh (Revere), eds J. F. Cooper, Jr, and K. P. Minkema (Boston, MA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), pp. 51–2. Hall, A reforming people, p. 107. Williams quoted in ibid., p. 108. Hooker quoted in ibid., p. 108. The best treatment of the episode is M. P. Winship, Making heretics: militant protestantism and free grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). See Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, pp. 162–6, which contains the quotes. D. D. Hall, The faithful shepherd: a history of the New England ministry in the seventeenth century (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 111. Shepard quoted in ibid., p. 110. The creeds and platforms of congregationalism, ed. Williston Walker (Boston, MA: Pilgrim Press, 1960), p. 182. Hall, The faithful shepherd, p. 110. Shepard, quoted in ibid., p. 111. Norton quoted in ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 112. Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, p. 258. Ibid., pp. 258–62. Baillie quoted in Brachlow, Communion of the saints, p. 174. John Robinson, quoted in G. Nuttall, The holy spirit in puritan faith and experience, with a new introduction by P. Lake (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 107. Winthrop papers, II, p. 294. See Bremer, Congregational communion, T. Webster, Godly clergy in early Stuart England: the Caroline puritan movement, c.1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and P. Collinson, J. Craig and B. Usher, Conferences and combination lectures in the Elizabethan Church, 1582–1590 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003) for examples of these. Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, pp. 101–2. Journal of John Winthrop, p. 71.

The New England way reconsidered 61 Ibid., pp. 102–3. 62 R. P. Stearns, Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands (Chicago: The American Society of Church History, 1940), pp. 55–6. 63 Winship, Godly republicanism, pp. 143–5. 64 Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, p. 191. 65 Records of the governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, ed. N. B. Shurtleff, 5 vols (Boston, MA: William White, 1853), I, p. 168. 66 M. McGiffert (ed.), God’s plot: puritan spirituality in Thomas Shepard’s Cambridge (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), p. 140. 67 Journal of John Winthrop, pp. 232–5. 68 Mather quoted in J. F. Cooper, Tenacious of their liberties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 55. 69 Quoted in Creeds and Platforms, ed. Walker, pp. 173–4. 70 Journal of John Winthrop, p. 476. 71 Quoted in Cooper, Tenacious of their liberties, p. 145. 72 Creeds and Platforms, ed. Walker, p. 138. 73 Journal of John Winthrop, p. 476. 74 Cooper, Tenacious of their liberties, pp. 71–5. 75 Creeds and Platforms, ed. Walker, pp. 167–8. 76 Ibid., pp. 173–4. 77 Ibid., p. 233. 78 Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, p. 257. 79 Ibid., pp. 264–6. 80 Both Mathers quoted in ibid., pp. 310. 81 Creeds and Platforms, ed. Walker, pp. 337–9. 82 Quotes in Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, p. 311. 83 Wilson quoted in F. J. Bremer, First founders: American puritans and puritanism in an Atlantic world (Hanover, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2012), p. 62, and discussed at pp. 45–62. 84 This dispute is discussed in more depth in Bremer, Building a new Jerusalem, pp. 314–38, with particular attention to the polity issues. The quotations can be found there. 85 Edward Taylor’s ‘church records’ and related sermons, eds T. M. Davis and V. L. Davis (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1981), p. xxxii. 86 P. R. Lucas, Valley of discord: church and society along the Connecticut River, 1636– 1725 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1976). 87 Scottow quoted in Winship, Godly republicanism, pp. 3–4.

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Chapter 9

The association movement and the politics of church settlement during the interregnum1 Joel Halcomb

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ew issues plagued the Commonwealth and Protectoral regimes more than religious settlement. The rise of new religious sects fractured the unity of the national church, and questions over how far to tolerate these new groups, many of which were key supporters of the interregnum regimes, kept the cases for a ‘state church’ and for ‘liberty for tender consciences’ at the centre of parliamentary and of local politics.2 The interregnum church remained skeletal in the face of these challenges. While the ancient parish system, based on rights of patronage and (despite constant sniping) tithes, remained intact, episcopacy had been abolished in 1646, and the Westminster assembly’s presbyterian replacement was stillborn. Structures were put in place for the oversight of parish ministry, but the government failed to establish a national confession of faith and resisted any set forms of discipline or worship.3 Most importantly, there was no requirement for anyone to attend public worship, and no religious test restricting access to public office. The result was easily the most curious and sparse version of the ‘established’ church in the post-Reformation era, one which had to compete in Britain and Ireland’s first open religious marketplace.4 Parish ministers were left to fend for themselves in defending ‘orthodoxy’, preserving their parish community and establishing their own reformations. One response to these circumstances was the ministerial ‘associations’.5 Throughout the 1650s as many as twenty-three county or regional associations gathered across Britain and Ireland, uniting hundreds of parish ministers into organised bodies that met regularly to share experiences and advice on the challenges of ministering to a parish in such unsettled times. Drawing on a long tradition of ministerial prophesyings and combination lectures dating back into the sixteenth century, these associations acted as a critique of the fractured and deconstructed interregnum church.6 They developed their own strategies to combat religious radicalism and created exactly the forms of worship and discipline that the Commonwealth and Protectoral regimes 174

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refused to grant them: structures of authority, defined confessions of faith and clear guidance on basic practices. The more ambitious associations even worked to cut the Gordian knot of religious settlement: they constructed irenic, accommodating platforms of church government designed to unite moderate godly ministers. These were, in a sense, an attempt at church settlement from the ground up, a moderate puritan backlash against the ‘puritan revolution’. Despite the breadth and scale of engagement with associations by parish ministers, these organisations have rarely been at the forefront of historical interest. The movement has garnered little more than a passing mention within recent surveys of interregnum religion, being sidelined by more expansive studies of toleration and new sectarian and denominational groups.7 In these brief references we are told that provincial parish ministers, brought together by the ‘common danger’8 of religious radicalism and a deep ‘crisis of parish religion’,9 united to form ‘pan-denominational’10 associations for mutual help and assistance in the work of catechising, discipline and administering the sacraments. The ‘association movement’ was one solution to ‘a decade of incipient religious plurality’.11 And while essentially reactionary, they also represented ‘a genuine growing together [of ministers] after a time of sectarian strife’.12 In fact, the movement’s history has been almost entirely linked to one man: Richard Baxter. The famous Kidderminster pastor has long been seen as the ‘driving force’ and ‘inspiration’ behind the association movement. His Worcestershire association was the first to gather, and quickly became ‘an example unto others of associating’.13 This leading role has become a cornerstone of Baxter’s reputation as an ecumenical hero, which has in turn shaped how historians have understood the associations. For instance, according to Simon Burton, Baxter was ‘motivated by a deep and sincere concern for the unity of the whole Church’. His ‘own breadth of charity went considerably beyond that of many of his contemporaries’.14 This is an image Baxter tried to cultivate himself, and even a scholar as impeccable as Geoffrey Nuttall has essentially let Baxter speak for himself: ‘God hath possessed my heart with such a burning desire after the peace & unity of the churches that I cannot forget it, or lay it by.’15 According to Nuttall, disappointment with the failure of ‘unity on a national scale’ drove Baxter to do something in Worcestershire.16 In all these accounts, the association movement was the result of an irenic spirit that spoke to England’s divided religious condition, and that spirit spoke first and most powerfully to Baxter. This chapter seeks to re-examine the ministerial associations by viewing them as an influential force in ecclesiastical politics during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Far from the irenic gatherings of ‘disengaged’ provincial parish ministers of no party that Baxter portrayed them as being, associations proved active, at times even controversial and denominational, participants in the politics of religious settlement.17 Nor were they obviously a ­homogeneous 175

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‘movement’, let alone one clearly inspired by Baxter’s extraordinary ecumenicalism. Associations were diverse: while some attempted ecclesiastical accommodation, most restricted their efforts to particular groups and a significant number were clearly presbyterian classes operating under the guise of a voluntary association. By 1658 unity through associations was both a real dynamic among moderate ministers and an effective rhetorical tool within the religious politics of the Cromwellian Protectorate. The diversity among associations speaks to the volatility and creativity of ecclesiastical politics after the civil war.

THE ASSOCIATIONS The associations certainly created an impressive record. As many as twentythree regional ministerial associations were organised across Britain and Ireland between 1652 and 1659, making it perhaps the largest grassroots ecclesiastical development of the interregnum.18 Though there were distinct peaks of growth in 1653 and in 1658–59, associations gathered regularly throughout the mid-1650s: up to seven gathered in 1652–53 (Cheshire; Cumberland and Westmorland; Hampshire; Northamptonshire; Sussex; Wiltshire; Worcestershire; possibly Somerset);19 two in April 1654 (Dorset; Kent);20 three in 1655 (Cornwall; Devon; Dublin and Leinster);21 two in 1656 (Cork; Nottinghamshire);22 two in 1657 (Cambridgeshire; Essex);23 three in 1658 (Herefordshire; North Wales; Staffordshire);24 and three in 1659 (Dublin; Norfolk; one for Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire).25 Though we have only hints at the memberships of most associations, we do know that the Cornwall association had around thirty members, Devon 133, Norfolk over eighty and Worcestershire over seventy.26 Most claimed to promote unity across moderate puritan groups. Surviving association ‘agreements’ often begin with an acknowledgement of the Christian duty of fellowship, to associate together ‘for mutuall advice and strengthening one another’.27 The Nottinghamshire ministers claimed that Christ’s call for communion between churches was to aid the more pure administration of gospel ordinances, ‘mutuall help’, and ‘for the full discharge and exercise of that power and trust which Christ hath put into our hands’.28 The Essex and Wiltshire associations agreed: the power of religion was intertwined with unity and purity.29 Within divided communities, the formation of a unified front by local ministers was designed to remove ‘those Prejudices which many People have conceiv’d even against Religion and Worship itself’, and to ‘leave testimony to those truthes of Christ that are most opposed against the contrary errors of opinion and practice that be most perillous or pernicious, either to the purity of profession or to the power and practice of piety’.30 The greatest difficulty lay in getting ministers to agree on basic religious practices that all would enforce in their parishes. Here the irenic nature of 176

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the association ‘movement’ began to break down. Ministers often agreed to walk together ‘as far as possibly wee can’, and to bear ‘with one anothers differences, that are of a lesse and disputable nature, without making them a ground of division among us’.31 Irenic associations worked for consensus by building outward from the most basic points of agreement on fundamental practices. Baxter negotiated what Paul Lim has called a ‘supra-congregational ecclesiology’ in the Worcestershire association that reconciled presbyterians, congregationalists, episcopalians and Erastians.32 Others were less ambitious. The Cumberland and Westmorland association pitched its accommodation towards presbyterians and congregationalists. The Devon association involved presbyterian, congregationalist and episcopalian ministers, though its practices turned sharply towards episcopacy throughout 1658–59.33 The published Norfolk agreement seems to have involved presbyterians working to incorporate local episcopalian ministers.34 More than a few made no attempt at accommodation at all. At least five associations were essentially or explicitly presbyterian classes in practice and structure.35 While each association statement has its own distinct character and focus, they had four main areas of practical concern: the administration of the sacraments, discipline, catechising and ordination.36 In settling these issues, many associations turned to the documents of the Westminster assembly as a basis for authority and unity. The assembly’s ‘Directory of public worship’ was often the preferred blueprint for communion, baptism and ordination.37 Cambridgeshire ministers agreed to administer both sacraments according to the ‘Directory’, and to help protect and defend orthodox belief they turned to the assembly’s Confession of faith and Shorter catechism.38 Stipulations that no one should contradict the Confession in their preaching came from the Devon ministers.39 In Norfolk, the association tried to remove any stumbling blocks to catechising with the Shorter catechism by pointing out that it had been approved by the churches of New England, Scotland, London presbyterians and ‘in other Associations in several counties’.40 In fact, the use of the Shorter catechism was one of the most consistent practices among the associations.41 Thus, within the liberty of practice engendered by the interregnum regimes, many ministers began to voluntarily reform their parishes along the very lines of Parliament’s own unenforced presbyterian settlement of the 1640s. While the assembly’s ‘Directory’ was at the core of many association practices, some flexibility was allowed to encourage participation by ministers who dissented from specific aspects of an agreement. Some of the boundaries of toleration are evident in how associations dealt with fencing the administration of the sacraments, which they all agreed were essential practices within a true reformed church and had been ‘too long neglected’ since the civil wars.42 In large part associations used rhetorical arguments to persuade dissenting ministers to uphold basic Reformed practices. Giles Firmin, leader of the Essex association, stressed the similarities between presbyterian and congregational requirements for Communion.43 The Norfolk association tried 177

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to encourage local episcopalian ministers to enact a stricter admission policy by finding precedents among the Norwich ecclesiastical records for testing communicants’ basic knowledge in the principles of religion.44 Some granted their members limited authority to go beyond – but not below – basic standards. So while communion restrictions varied between those associations that simply barred ignorant or scandalous communicants along the lines set out by the Westminster assembly’s ‘Directory’, and those who were more willing to require competent knowledge of salvation, evidence of a godly conversation and a voluntary submission to admonitions,45 Congregationalist ministers might be granted the right to test for a ‘more positive’ sign of grace.46 A corollary to these communion restrictions was an emphasis on catechism, which instructed parishioners in the fundamentals of doctrine necessary to awaken them to their sins and the need for personal reformation. It also provided an antidote to heterodox belief by grounding them in a systematic expression of Reformed doctrine. As such it became a key part of presbyterian polemics more generally.47 In some associations attendance at catechism became a requirement for communion. Baptism was also deemed a fit time to deal with undisciplined parents.48 To bolster parochial education, catechism was combined with house-to-house instruction and regular lectures.49 Again, the Norfolk association appealed to episcopal examples, citing King James, John Donne and Joseph Hall’s use of catechism for the prevention of error and being ‘carried away with every wind of Doctrine’.50 The obvious core theme in these practices was presbyterianism.51 Associations were diverse, and attempts were often made to accommodate congregationalist or episcopalian ministers, but presbyterianism usually constituted a base line to be adhered to. Numerous associations referred to themselves as ‘classical’ or as a ‘classis’.52 Most simply incorporated Westminster assembly doctrine and practice into their agreements. Few can be comfortably described (as Baxter’s Worcestershire association has been) as Ussherian reduced episcopacy53 or as bringing together men ‘adhering to no Faction; neither Episcopal, Presbyterian nor Independent’.54 If we look at the origins of the associations we can see the embattled politics that inspired the movement.

RADICAL AGITATION AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ASSOCIATIONS The first ministerial associations grew out of petitioning campaigns in defence of an educated ministry. As Blair Worden has shown, the defeat of the royalists at Worcester ‘gave a new volume and intensity to radical religious reform’ under the Commonwealth.55 Radicals, backed by many within the army, attacked the necessity of tithes and an educated ministry 178

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and intensified their call for the complete separation of church and state. This growing vocalisation of radical religious reform, combined with the Rump’s attempts to woo religious and political presbyterians after the regicide, called moderate godly ministers into action.56 In the spring of 1652, as pressure mounted on Parliament to clamp down on radicalism, a series of publications defended tithes, attacked ‘sectaries’ and called for a healing of divisions between moderate ministers.57 In March Firmin published an attack on separatism that also called on ‘the Classicall and Congregationall men [to] joyne together (as they may if they will)’, for they would not stand long while separatists were tolerated to weaken the hands of the ministry, nurse ‘all Errours and Heresies’, ‘cause Church-Members to walke irregularly’ and draw off the godly from rightly ordered churches.58 Baxter, like many provincial ministers, recognised the gravity of these developments. In 1651 his dedicatory epistle to the second edition of his popular Saints everlasting rest praised the people and magistrates of Kidderminster for seeing the ‘mischief of Separation and Division’ and for being ‘eminent for Unity and Peace’.59 In his first published statement for how to achieve unity, he expressed hope that the Rump would call together ‘Godly, Learned, Moderate and Peaceble’ ministers (presbyterian, congregational, episcopal and Erastian), ‘to agree upon a way of union and accommodation’, to ‘come as neer together as they can possibly in their Principles’, ‘to unite as far as may be in their Practice’, ‘and where that cannot be, yet to agree on the most loving, peaceable course in the way of carrying on our different Pactices [sic]’.60 Quoting the Lutheran theologian Peter Meiderlin, he finished with what would become an iconic phrase among Christian irenicists by the late seventeenth century: ‘Unity in all things necessary, Liberty in things unnecessary, and Charity in all’.61 Throughout 1652 Baxter enthusiastically promoted this irenic formula to influential contacts and fellow ministers. In March he pleaded with Thomas Hill, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, that ‘A petition speedily in the Name of your University would in likelyhood do much Good’.62 In May he asked the irenic campaigner John Dury to present it to ‘those in Power’: ‘The thing that I propound to you is only that which I have allready propounded in the Epistle before the 2nd Edition of my Treatise of Rest’.63 Initially these pleas failed to mobilise leading ministers; the conference of ministers that Baxter envisioned never materialised, nor did a petition from Cambridge.64 When Dury finally replied to Baxter five months later he cautiously applauded Baxter’s plan while hinting that moderate presbyterians and congregationalists were ‘more likely to compose their owne differences sooner’ than Baxter’s plans, which also sought to incorporate episcopalian and Erastian ministers.65 In Worcestershire, however, he gained traction. After presenting his design to local ministers at a combination lecture they asked him ‘to draw up a Form of Agreement’. These articles were vetted and slightly amended, ‘and after several Meetings we subscribed them, and so 179

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associated for our mutual help and concord in our Work’.66 England’s first association had formed by late summer 1652.67 While working locally to construct a programme of reconciliation and reformation, Baxter continued to agitate nationally, through a petitioning campaign to defend the ministry and promote his plans for unity. In this he found plenty of encouragement throughout the spring and summer of 1652. In May and June Severall proceedings published letters from Chester and Dover calling for ‘a government settled in the church (though with all sweet liberty of conscience that might be to tender consciences …)’.68 Dury’s letter in October informed Baxter that Parliament’s committee for the propagation of the gospel had been ‘revived, & it is now seasonable to agitate something about this subject in a public way’.69 Baxter organised a petition, presented to Parliament on 22 December 1652, from ‘the Gentlemen, Free Holders, and others inhabiting the county of Worcester’, expressing their fear that ‘there is a party that desire and endevour the subversion of the Ministery’. Baxter later recalled organising the petition because ‘the Anabaptists, Seekers &c. flew so high against Tythes and Ministry, that it was much feared lest they would have prevailed at last’.70 The petitioners hoped Parliament would own and uphold ‘an able, godly, faithful Ministry’, ‘discountenance all that oppose them’, ‘maintain a competent maintenance for ministers’ and call together ‘godly, prudent, peaceable Divines of each party, that differs in points of Church-Government’ to find out ‘a meet way for accommodation and unity’.71 The Worcestershire petition was published in Severall proceedings for the week ending 30 December 1652.72 Similar petitions from Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire were quick to follow.73 They formed part of what Worden described as a period of ‘growing presbyterian assertiveness’ over the final months of the Rump.74 These campaigns helped create what is most recognisably an association ‘movement’. For one, the popularity of the Worcestershire petition coincided with, and enhanced awareness of, Baxter’s plans for union. News of Baxter’s ‘reconciliatory paper about church-government’ spread throughout late 1652 alongside his petition. Thomas Grove (MP for Dorset), Peter Ince (rector of Donhead St Mary, Wiltshire) and Henry Bartlett (vicar of Fordingbridge, Hampshire) all encouraged the project or solicited a copy of the Worcester articles. Dury requested a copy in January 1653. In March Bartlett asked Baxter to publish the Worcestershire agreement.75 By July the agreement, titled Christian concord, had been printed, together with an additional explication by Baxter.76 This brought the design to a much wider audience just before a second wave of radical agitation against tithes and the ministry re-emerged during Barebone’s Parliament.77 From late August into October petitions arrived in London from Devon, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, London, Shropshire and the northern counties pleading for the continuance of an educated, godly and state-supported ministry.78 These campaigns correlate with the timing and make-up of new associations in late 1653. The 180

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Cheshire association, for instance, was set ‘on foot in the darkest time, for even now [October 1653] were they about to vote down the national ministry’. They formalised their agreement at Knutsford on 20 October, the same day the Wiltshire association formed in Salisbury.79 Interestingly, though the Devon association was not organised until 1655, a meeting took place in Exeter just before 22 October, ‘to unite the honest people, but especially the Ministery of this place’.80 Remarkably, then, within a day or two ministers met in Knutsford, Salisbury and Exeter to formalise or call for ministerial association.81 Other moves to organise around this time were apparent in Northamptonshire, Hampshire and Somerset.82 These developments, mostly taking place within Baxter’s network, are the foundation of his reputation as the leader of the association ‘movement’. None the less, even Baxter’s own correspondence reveals that he was part of a broader trend, which involved other associations developing independently. In July 1653 after reading the Worcester petition and Christian concord, William Mewe, rector of Eastington, Gloucestershire, and former member of the Westminster assembly, wrote to Baxter to say that he had ‘framed’ a similar petition ‘of the same Cloath with yours some weeks before it, & that my designe of association & accommodation of Dissenting partyes was on Foote certayne months if not years before I saw yours’.83 That September, presbyterian ministers in Cumberland and Westmorland informed Baxter that ‘before we had heard of your Book, [they] had undertaken a Work of the like nature’. Yet just as they had begun the work, ‘the Rage and Malice of wicked Men vented in Railings and Slanders on the one hand [quakers], and bitter Censures and Suspicions of the Brethren on the other [apparently local congregationalists]. In the midst of all this we received your Book as a seasonable Refreshment.’84 One of the most interesting early associations to develop outside of Baxter’s network has been largely overlooked by historians.85 Around February 1653 George Thomason gained a manuscript copy of the ‘declaration & agreement of the ministers of the County of Sussex concerning the associating & right regulating of the Churches of Christ’.86 Little is currently known about the association, though ministers in the area were certainly well organised by 1656.87 Unlike Baxter’s attempts to unify denominational groups, the Sussex agreement was unabashedly presbyterian. Admittedly, the preface bewailed the ‘want of union in the family of God’, but it dwelt far more on the civil magistrate than religious unity: ‘having with great patience fixed our eyes upon thos that sit at the sterne of state expecting when something should come forth that might remedy thos disorders’, they found their expectations ‘long frustrated’, divisions increased and a ‘universall tolleration of the grossest errours contended for’. They were called to action, ‘least by our silence we should become guilty of the confusion’.88 Their articles of agreement were designed to be ‘so moderated’ that they would not offend ‘Dissenting Brethren’, yet they remained clearly presbyterian: though ­particular ­congregations had ‘sufficient 181

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remedyes’ for the ‘right regulating of theire owne members’, the church ‘ought all to bee governed in common’; church government was not committed to all church members, but only those ‘called in Scriptures elders’; and ordination was done by elders, not congregations.89 Their political intent was made clear by a resolution to address Parliament, ‘that if possible we may procure theire concurrence, incouragement & stamp of theire authority’. Official sanction would give ‘great satisfaction’ to ‘those of the presbyterian judgment’ while also removing ‘that suspition of tyranny’ from them.90 The polemical presbyterianism of the Sussex agreement provides a significant contrast with those associations that attempted ecclesiastical reconciliation. Even efforts at reconciliation found mixed results: congregationalists proved hesitant to participate in these early years,91 despite the publication in 1652–53 of a number of moderate ‘Confessions of the Congregational Brethren’, which encouraged discussion of the possibilities of accommodation.92 These developments, none the less, were all part of a religious and political climate that saw godly provincial ministers rethink reconciliation, parish ministry and church settlement in the face of sectarian opposition.

HUMBLE PETITION AND ADVICE AND THE POLITICS OF SETTLEMENT Despite the significant mobilisation of ministers throughout 1653, the associations made little obvious impact on the first two Protectorate Parliaments. No significant discussions of their platforms or activities survive in parliamentary journals or in the voluminous papers of Secretary of State John Thurloe. Even in December 1654, when Baxter presented his associational agenda directly to Parliament in a sermon before MPs, it fell on deaf ears.93 Perhaps associational politics were unnecessary. The success, as Ann Hughes has described it, of the flexible, tolerant but broadly Trinitarian Cromwellian church certainly helped remove the need for the intense mobilised defence of orthodoxy present in 1652–53.94 Expectations of a parliamentary church settlement were matched by MPs taking up many of the concerns of the associations: supporting the ministry, improving religious education, strengthening constitutional limits on toleration, and suppressing heresy and blasphemy.95 All this changed from the second half of 1657 onwards, when calls for a national confession of faith in the Humble petition and advice reignited the politics of church settlement. By the end of 1658 associating was deeply entwined in the bitter religious politics surrounding Richard Cromwell’s new Protectorate. Unsurprisingly, one attempt to present association ideas directly to the Lord Protector came from Baxter, whose overtures were carefully mediated through court ministers. Around 1657 Baxter began negotiating with Philip Nye, who Calamy later claimed had ‘daily employment’ in ecclesiastical matters for the court.96 Baxter knew Nye ‘had very great power’ with congrega182

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tionalists and hoped to build an associational platform that could incorporate them.97 Though these talks broke down over synodal power and ordination, discussions were resurrected in the spring of 1658, this time with mediation from John Howe, one of Cromwell’s household chaplains.98 Howe, after initiating the discussion on reconciliation, warned it was ‘very expedient’ to ‘drive the busines’ through Nye, for ‘tis likely hee will be consulted with’ anyway and ‘might possibly (being unsatisfyed) hinder what otherwise hee might greatly help’.99 Perhaps sensing the opportunity, Baxter stepped carefully and some of his proposals for reconciliation during this time reveal him working hard to accommodate Nye’s concerns. In one version from September 1657, Baxter begrudgingly agreed to Nye’s insistence that parishioners wanting to worship with a neighbouring church need not first get approval by the association: ‘let it be by exception from the common rule’.100 Howe had received Baxter’s papers on reconciliation ‘very seasonably’, for a few days earlier the Essex association’s Agreement had been presented to Cromwell for his ‘approbation’. Cromwell immediately consulted with his ministers at court. When approached by Cromwell, Howe, who was unhappy with the Essex articles, tried to pivot by suggesting the Protector might invite ‘the Godly ministers of the severall Counties, \& of severall 3 parties,/ to the worke of Associating upon such common principles as might bee found tending to generall good & not crosse to the private opinions of the severall parties’.101 A more forthright opposition can be found in a written response to the Essex agreement by an unnamed congregationalist (almost certainly Nye).102 Congregationalists, the document claimed, could not sign up to the Essex agreement ‘safely & consistently with their owne principles’. It incorporated some of Nye’s earlier arguments with Baxter, and, interestingly, some of Baxter’s concessions. For example, to the Essex agreement’s resolution to withdraw from any minister or particular church who ‘reject the counsel or admonition of the Association, in things manifestly agreeable with the Word of God’, the author responded with an argument Nye presented to Baxter and Howe:103 suppose ‘that the Major part of the Association may judge the principles of the presbyterians (wherein they differ from the congregationall) to bee manifestly agreeable to the word of God’. For the ‘securitie of such persons (as to their reputation)’ that make up the minority, the author recommended formalising the concession Baxter and Howe had made to Nye: ‘that no person bee excluded [from] the Association having been once admitted, for such principles & practices as hee was knowne to bee of at his admission (or for any difference about Church-Government or in Circumstantialls)’.104 Despite incorporating these discussions, the presentation of the Essex articles to Cromwell was exactly the type of situation that Howe had advised Baxter against. Rather than encouraging the most acceptable parts of the association movement to the Protector, they provided an opportunity for congregationalists to explain their principled opposition to a platform supposedly designed to accommodate them. 183

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Mid-1658 proved to be a crucial juncture in religious politics under the Protectorate. Throughout April and May news began to arrive in England about an Irish church settlement spurred on by Henry Cromwell, Lord Deputy of Ireland.105 Perhaps heeding the call by so many in England, he called an assembly of godly ministers to address the problems of the Irish church. On 23 April 1658 ‘about 20 the most eminent ministers’ in Ireland gathered in Dublin for a ‘synodicall meeting’.106 They had been called by Henry, ‘4 or 5 out of each province’, to consider ‘about the improvement and regulation of their maintenance’, which, according to him, ‘hath hitherto been carried in a mongrel way’ between salaries doled out through the statefunded Civil List and parish-based tithes.107 They were also asked to consider ‘the conversion of the papists from darkness to light’, the reformation of the Church of Ireland’s practices and the reformation of manners.108 In the only known surviving record of Henry’s opening speech, he praised: the healing of Breaches that Bretheren fall not out by the way; The opening the fore doore of Ordinacion, and back doore of Election; The planting truth by Catechizing; Watering the truth planted by Sacraments, and fencing both by Discipline; The suppressing of Heresy and prophanes, and promoting of Godlines (the sume of the first Table); Honesty (the sume of the Second) and in order to both, the due observance of the fourth Comandement, in the sanctificacion of the Lords day, which is placed in the midst as a ligament to fasten the Dutyes of both. All of this to be done in the Spirit of love, and Long suffering, that all such as feare the Lord, and desire to serve him in fayth and sobriety, might knowe their Liberty, and see it secured.109

This succinct and finely tuned statement was vague enough to be malleable, yet it touched on key issues of unity, ordination, the sacraments, discipline and liberty of conscience plaguing interregnum religion and the associations. The Convention ended on 26 May,110 with the presentation of ‘a large paper’, apparently lost, addressing the original agenda, and a laudatory address to Henry Cromwell signed by nineteen ministers.111 According to Henry, their resolutions were unanimously reached and they paved the way for the reintroduction of tithes as the main funding source for state-approved protestant ministers.112 Henry then sent Edward Worth, a presbyterian minister and leading light of the Cork association, to England to present the resolutions of the convention to English ministers, and ultimately to Henry’s father, the Lord Protector. Worth took with him a copy of Henry’s speech, the ministers’ address and an address from various Irish inhabitants. He met with the heads of the two universities in July, during the Cambridge Commencement and Oxford Act, and both institutions received the ­proposals with enthusiasm. Presbyterians in particular, Worth claimed in his report to Henry, felt confident that ‘with one accord they could close with the Congregationall Brethren on the terms humbly presented to yor Excellencie by the Dublin Convention’. He also met with the London Provincial Assembly, who, along with the heads of both universities, asked 184

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Worth to publish the agreement.113 (Worth also seems to have contacted Baxter.)114 He finally presented these documents to Thurloe in July 1658.115 News of an accommodating, tithe-based Irish church settlement, created through a successful synod of congregationalist and presbyterian ministers and backed by Cromwell’s own son, was bound to activate the politics of settlement in England. Indeed, the intentions and resolutions of the Dublin Convention were contested from the start. Henry Cromwell’s dispatches to the Protectoral council in London emphasised the Convention’s work on settling a more stable maintenance for ministers through the re-establishment of tithes, but some congregationalists and baptists opposed the move.116 Hugh Peter warned Henry that the Convention ‘hath not a little affected and afflicted us here’117 and within the Protectoral council both Lord Charles Fleetwood and Thurloe questioned the wisdom of, and support for, the Convention.118 Some of this opposition was co-ordinated. While Worth’s mission presented the Convention’s resolutions in the language of the associations, he was chased into England by Samuel Winter, the congregationalist provost of Trinity College Dublin, who worked hard to undermine both Worth and the settlement. Henry was forced to defend Worth from being ‘misrepresented there’ as a closet supporter of episcopacy, and, in a letter of introduction to his father, he stressed that after ‘a narrow scrutiny into his temper and demeanor’ he had found that Worth was ‘of the judgment of the associated ministers in England’.119 The Irish settlement sparked the organisation of a national gathering of congregationalists held at the Savoy Palace in London in October 1658. Austin Woolrych, John Morrill and, most forcefully, Hunter Powell have argued that the Savoy was a reaction to calls for a new confession of faith imbedded within the Humble petition and advice. While, as we have seen, the Humble petition and advice certainly renewed the politics of settlement, congregationalist reactions to the Irish settlement were immediate.120 Worth’s arrival in England that June coincided with the mobilisation of leading London congregationalists. On the 15th, Henry Scobell, clerk to the council of state and a congregational elder, summoned ‘the elders of the congregationall churches in & about London’ to a meeting at the Charterhouse, where George Griffith was minister, ‘in order to draw up a declaration of faith’.121 Two weeks later ‘more [congregationalists] than at any time before’ gathered at the Oxford Act, when Worth was presenting the Convention’s resolutions to Oxford ministers. Thomas Goodwin, president of Magdalen College, was also present, and later claimed that the decision to organise a national assembly of congregationalists was agreed upon during the Act.122 Matthew Poole, the presbyterian rector of St Michael-le-Querne, London, gave a more concerned account, writing to Baxter in August: ‘I doubt not you know the Congregationall men had a meeting at Oxford wherein 2 or 3 things were resolved’. One resolution was to ‘set up Associations against Associations’.123 These manoeuvres led to a clash of programmes in London during the last 185

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days of Oliver Cromwell’s life. Worth gained an audience with the Protector in July but had carefully refrained from fully presenting the Convention’s papers ‘because I expected the result of the Secretarie’s thoughts first’.124 Thurloe’s delay is curious; he had already given Henry a report on the papers.125 Worth, hopeful of another meeting, remained in waiting upon the Cromwell household until September, making a positive impression on Richard in the process.126 On 17 August he ominously informed Henry that Winter ‘and some of the most eminent professors among them [congregationalists] will this weeke come to London in order to an address to his Highnes for a settlement’.127 Within three days of Worth’s report, George Griffith had sent out invitations to congregationalists in England and Wales to meet at the Savoy Palace in London for a national assembly.128 Goodwin and others later claimed that the Protector granted his approval for the assembly, which must have been given at this meeting.129 Contemporary observers disagreed about how to read these developments. Worth viewed the Savoy in the context of Winter’s politicking, even though sources from the assembly omit any reference to him. Worth’s suspicions on 17 August sit awkwardly against a letter from Poole dated 24 August, just days after Cromwell approved the Savoy. In his letter, a more contented Poole informed Baxter that ‘moderate’ congregationalists had ‘diverted’ from some of their divisive plans, because ‘it would prevent an accommodation & widen our differences’. Though he begged Baxter not to antagonise Nye, he also noted that Nye was now more ‘inclinable to Accommodation then formerly … because the Lord P is much for agreement & because Associations grow every day more considerable, & they lesse’.130 The reference to the associations was surely flattery, for in the coming months Poole and the London presbyterians would push strongly against an association-based settlement. The assembly itself met on 29 September at the Savoy Palace, where Scobell was master. Around two hundred elders and messengers from 120 churches were present.131 A committee of leading ministers, including Goodwin, Nye and John Owen, drew up heads of their confession of faith while the rest of those attending ‘were employ’d in hearing and determining all cases that came before them’.132 Howe, who retained his chaplaincy at court under Richard Cromwell, attended the assembly as an ‘overseer’ (this could be read as either government sanction or suspicion).133 The politics of accommodation, settlement and association were clearly present in the proceedings. Surviving responses to invitations to the Savoy praise the ‘publick peace & unity’ of the saints and efforts to seek ‘a spirituall settlement of truth & peace’.134 When Goodwin presented the Savoy’s ‘Declaration of faith and order’ to Richard Cromwell he claimed it showed ‘our harmony with the most Orthodox at home and abroad’, and, echoing a trend among and the language of the associations, they gave their assent to the Westminster assembly’s confession, ‘the latest and the best’, which had been approved by 186

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the churches of Scotland and New England and had been ‘passed by both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines’. Their declaration had ‘laid some foundations of Agreement with [presbyterians], which we have from our hearts desired and endeavored’.135 Others were not convinced. Henry Cromwell was livid when he heard about the Savoy.136 George Thomason, the London presbyterian book collector, scornfully marked up his printed copy of the ‘Savoy declaration’ with a testy note: ‘By Philp Nie and his Confederat Crew of Independents’.137 Even congregationalist sources hint at conflicting agendas. When invited, the Welsh firebrand Vavasor Powell worried the assembly was organised ‘upon political & worldly accounts’.138 More remarkably, when the moderate Lancashire minister Thomas Jollie spoke before the assembly on behalf of congregational churches from five northern counties he presented a fiery jeremiad he later titled ‘Evill Tidings’. Jollie and his congregational brethren, he claimed, were wanting in their duty of love and peaceable spirit towards those saints who ‘differ only in some points of discipline, or other things of inferiour concernments and doubtfull disputations’. Congregationalists had shown ‘Pride of spirit and carriage under greater priviledges and profession: too much despising our Brethren and not acknowledging our owne infirmities’. They had indulged evils in their own church, yet refused to give ‘forbearance towards brethren erring in smaller matters’. And in an unmistakable use of association rhetoric, he called on his brethren to walk in communion with other godly ministers ‘soe far as they are agreed, and their light will permitt’, and to follow ‘the things that make for peace’.139 Whatever the intentions of its organisers, association ideas found a powerful voice within the Savoy assembly’s proceedings. Evidence from the Savoy’s printed ‘Declaration’ supports Goodwin’s claim that they made some real compromises and principled stands. Williston Walker, in his 1893 study of The creeds and platforms of congregationalism, struggled to explain how the watered-down ‘Savoy declaration of order’ emerged from a committee of leading theologians who had tenaciously debated church government for two decades. Juxtaposed against more detailed statements of congregational polity, the Savoy platform was ‘far inferior as a working manual’: ‘The grand outlines of the polity are roughdraw, but the detail is not yet sketched in.’140 The ‘Declaration of order’ was clearly tactical.141 For example, they avoided explicit requirements for a church ‘covenant’, which so offended presbyterians, preferring instead to speak of ‘consent’ when discussing the constitution of a church.142 They held firm on congregational views of ordination.143 On parish bounds, they insisted a believer ‘may joyn himself with any Church for his edification’, though they acknowledged that all believers within an area ‘ought rather to joyn in one Church for their mutual strengthning and edification, then to set up many distinct Societies’ and conceded that any parishioner wanting to remove to another church should first consult with their church officers.144 187

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The Savoy ­congregationalists did not relinquish their principles, but they presented them in the most accommodating language possible.

PRESBYTERIAN REACTIONS Attempts at association and reconciliation that were supported by Baxter and provincial ministers, and which appeared at least present among congregationalists at the Savoy, were quickly brushed aside by London presbyterians, who staged an aggressive campaign against the Savoy congregationalists’ overtures for settlement. The presbyterian-dominated Stationers’ Company refused to allow the congregationalists’ ‘pretended confession’ to be printed.145 In early September, on the orders of the London Provincial Assembly, Poole published a treatise against the congregational position on lay preaching, and a second edition of the Essex association Agreement, which had been deemed so unacceptable to congregationalists, was published at the end of that month.146 In mid-November Samuel Hudson’s A Vindication of the essence and unity of the church catholick visible, a response to congregationalist views of the visible particular church, was reprinted from its original 1650 edition, without Hudson’s knowledge.147 The second edition was ‘wholly against’ Hudson’s mind, and he rushed off An addition or postscript to the vindication, which provided much more moderate arguments against congregationalism than those that would be put forward by leading London presbyterians in the coming months.148 A key work in this campaign was Irenicum; or an essay towards a brotherly peace and union between those of the congregational and presbyterian way, published on 24 April 1659.149 While the work was originally ascribed to Matthew Newcomen, the Essex and Westminster assembly presbyterian,150 Baxter scholars have more recently claimed that Irenicum was a publication by Newcomen of Baxter’s papers on reconciliation at the behest of the London Provincial Assembly.151 The attribution to Baxter is unlikely. In early 1659 the London Provincial Assembly and Poole in particular, wrote to Baxter about exactly such a publication: to help ‘rectify the errors about Church government’ the London presbyterians sought ‘a breviate of the controversyes betwixt Presbyterian and Independents’ that would ‘faithfully & candidly’ state questions out of congregationalist writings, and answer the three or four objections that ‘are most specious, principall notice \being/ taken of what is sayd by Mr Hooker, Mr Norton & Mr Cotton’.152 This describes Irenicum perfectly. Baxter, however, sensing that their intentions were not principally for ‘healing & concord’, but rather for the ‘defence of the presbyterian cause & confutation of the Independent’, refused to send any breviates without assurances about how they would be used.153 On 23 March Poole was still imploring Baxter for a written response, eagerly suggesting catchy titles and providing wily, or perhaps heavy-handed, persuasions for why their design was not an assertion of presbyterianism, ‘but destruction of those principles 188

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& practises which to mee in your writings you seeme to bee as sensible of their ill efferts as wee’, adding, in a somewhat wheedling tone, ‘your love to truth & peace obligeth you, though in meeknesse & moderation[,] to oppose them’.154 No response from Baxter survives, and the contents of Irenicum are wholly inconsistent with his efforts at reconciliation leading up to 1659.155 Irenicum is certainly not meek and moderate. In contrast to Baxter’s remarkable efforts to moderate his own position to accommodate Nye, Irenicum was an uncompromising, even devious, propaganda piece. The enticing title acknowledged the ‘good design begun at the Savoy’,156 but the work’s entire structure sought to prove that English congregationalists ‘must either disclaim their Patronage’ to the nonconformist tradition and revered New England ministers like John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, ‘or change their present practices’.157 ‘Very few, if any Non-conformists of special note, who stayed in England, ever turned Independent’, it insisted. Elizabethan and Jacobean nonconformists ‘were Presbyterians, and utterly against even Semiseparation’. ‘The godly Ministers of Scotland … the world knoweth, that they are Antagonists to Independency.’ Even Cotton and Hooker, had they stayed in England, would have held closer communion with presbyterians than current English congregationalists, ‘For doubtless their conscientious tendernesse would have wrought them to practices answerable unto their judgement, held forth in this book’.158 The London Provincial Assembly’s ‘essay towards a brotherly peace and union’ began with thinly veiled attacks on congregationalists’ godliness, character and ancestry. The body of the work focused on the very issues most offensive to presbyterians, which they had outlined in their letter to Baxter: church power (including ministerial authority), the ‘matter of churches’ (members), the use of church covenants and separation (gathering churches out of churches).159 Efforts to compromise along the association model were rejected. On covenants, for instance, where Baxter had proved willing to use them for the sake of unity, and the ‘Savoy declaration’ applied the softened language of ‘consent’, Irenicum dismissed them or any ‘explicite consent’ entirely: it was ‘not required to the constituting of a Church’.160 For church ­officers, using Hooker, Cotton and the Cambridge Platform, they claimed that New England congregationalists believed that, as ‘an act of rule’, ordination ‘pertaines to the Presbyters or Presbytery … Therefore not to the fraternity or body of the people.’161 Their quotations were, however, ripped out of context. Surrounding sections of the Cambridge Platform which were not quoted in Irenicum give a different view, one entirely consistent with the ‘Savoy declaration’: ordination was ‘nothing else, but the solemn putting of a man into his place and office in the church’; it ‘doth not constitute an officer, nor give him the essentials of his office’, for ‘the essence and substance of the outward calling of an ordinary officer in the Church, doth not consist in his ordination, but in his voluntary and free election by the Church, and in 189

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his accepting of that election’.162 Similar misleading quotations were used when discussing parishioners separating from impure churches.163 Irenicum, therefore, was anything but irenic. Rather than building unity, such selective quotation of New England authorities was designed to embarrass English congregationalists just as moves for a settlement reached their peak under Richard Cromwell, and there are indications that this is exactly how it was perceived.164 Nor did Irenicum engage with the association model. It did not highlight common ground and promise liberty on circumstantial differences. Rather, it highlighted differences and explicitly defended established presbyterian positions, just as Baxter feared. Baxter’s response to the Savoy assembly was more complicated and conflicted. Whilst his memoirs controversially attacked congregationalists, particularly Owen, for consummating ‘the Confusion [of the Church], by confirming and increasing’ ecclesiastical divisions by organizing the Savoy assembly,165 his letters indicate that, in the weeks before the Savoy, he was working hard to form an accommodation that might be acceptable to the congregationalists, including, in late August 1658, descriptions of a very brief, four-article agreement resonant with his discussions with Nye.166 His immediate reaction to the Savoy was also more nuanced than his later memoirs. Though his extant correspondence is strangely silent on the Savoy, a draft response to the ‘Savoy declaration’ does survive. When Baxter first saw the ‘Savoy declaration’ his expectations were initially frustrated, ‘Having before heard that [the assembly] tended much to healing’. Many of ‘the moderate healing concessions of Mr Norton, M Cotton & others of New England, yea of Mr Nye & Dr Goodwin’ were left out, he complained, and many of ‘the most erroneous & dividing passages published formerly by particular men, do here seeme to me expressly owned’. But, upon reflection and ‘by conference with some of that Assemblie, & credible report from others, I have reason to believe that many good & peaceable men that were there present, intended not that dividing distant sense’ of some of the Declaration’s articles. His ‘Postscript Concerning the Independants Confession’, in which he implicitly connected his response to the request of the London Provincial Assembly, was left unfinished. He initially intended to create ‘a breviate of the Reasons of our Dissent, … And this I do, lest while we study peace, we lose the Truth, or wrong it by complyance’. Separating himself from his London presbyterian colleagues, he promised ‘to shew that we may hold Communion’ with the Savoy congregationalists despite their views.167 Baxter’s forays into national politics were never as successful as his efforts in Worcestershire. His uncomfortable, if determined, negotiations with Nye had an impact none the less, partly because they coincided with news of the Irish church settlement and pressure from at least some congregationalists to work towards national peace and union. These efforts were ultimately devoured by the fall of the Protectorate. In May 1659 Howe reported from London that expectations of a settlement were ‘now at an end’: 190

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Growing pressure for a national church settlement excited fears, especially among the army, that liberty of conscience would be restricted, and reassurances by Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate failed to overcome concerns that the new Protector was really a presbyterian.169 It was exactly these suspicions that emboldened London presbyterians. Irenicum was part of their co-ordinated print campaign designed to undermine any broad accommodation and to defend presbyterian positions. Despite appropriating an association-style posture of reconciliation, a posture that seemed necessary under Commonwealth and Protectoral regimes led by men with strong ties to moderate congregationalists, Irenicum swept aside the association-influenced concessions made at the Savoy. Metropolitan politics had trumped a provincial movement for reconciliation and settlement.

CONCLUSION It is hardly a coincidence that the associations reached the zenith of their growth and influence just as the wheels were coming off the Protectorate. Their activity was most prominent during peaks of religious and political turmoil. They emerged, to borrow Austin Woolrych’s phrase, during the revolutionary ‘climacteric’ of 1653, responding aggressively to sectarian growth and radical attacks on an educated ministry.170 The association movement went quiet politically during the early Protectorate, which gave clear support for ministers and moderate religious reform; it emerged again during the troubled religious politics of the late Protectorate. Far from being ‘an alternative to purely politically-driven efforts at Church unity and conformity’, as Simon Burton has argued, association ministers – including Baxter – were motivated into action by religious and political crisis. Ministers responded to the idea of associating in diverse ways. Some worked seriously to create irenic platforms that could unite Britain’s bitterly divided moderate puritans, others tactically adopted the language of ‘voluntary’ associations, protesting not to meddle with ‘the civill affaires of the commonwealth’,171 while essentially organising themselves as a presbyterian classis. All of this, from their politics to their diversity, firmly situates the associations as a phenomenon of the 1650s, even if they appropriated long-standing forms of clerical organisation. Clerical co-operation did not begin with ministerial associations, nor would efforts at denominational reconciliation end in 1659, but the associations none the less had their moment of resonance and practical application. The contextualised approach presented here helps us see the ­associations 191

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not simply as a product of Baxter’s ecumenical mission, but rather as coming from a particular set of political and religious circumstances affecting hundreds of parish ministers across Britain and Ireland. While Baxter was recognised at the time as a leading campaigner for associational unity, even his own correspondence reveals that few associations shared Baxter’s hopes for a broad, inclusive settlement that could incorporate presbyterian, congregational, episcopal, ‘Erastian’ and (later on) even baptist ministers.172 As William Shaw recognised in 1900, Baxter’s ‘laditudinarian mind’ does ‘not explain the movement in its entirety’.173 Most associations were predominantly presbyterian and appropriated the theology and practices of the Westminster assembly. None the less, published association agreements reconsidered what was ecclesiastically necessary and what might be permissible by rival ecclesiastical programmes. In that sense they reinvigorated debates over church polity that had grown stale after the Westminster assembly. Finally, the breadth and diversity of the association movement invite us to re-examine religious politics during the interregnum, to move beyond our existing accounts focused on Parliament, Cromwell and leading court ministers, and to explore in greater depth the experiences and politics of provincial parish ministers. As this chapter has shown, their stories were anything but detached from central politics, and yet their agenda so often diverged from, and clashed with, politics in London, even within denominational groups.

NOTES









1 I would like to thank Emily Cockayne, Polly Ha, John Morrill, Claire Jowitt and particularly Ann Hughes and Elliot Vernon for their thoughts on various drafts of this chapter. 2 Most recently: B. Worden, God’s instruments: political conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. chs 2, 3 and 8; P. Little and D. Smith, Parliaments and politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), ch. 8. 3 A. Hughes, ‘“The public profession of these nations”: the national church in Interregnum England’, in C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds), Religion in revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 93–114; J. Collins, ‘The church settlement of Oliver Cromwell’, History, 87 (2002), 18–40. 4 A. Hughes, ‘The Cromwellian church’, in A. Milton (ed.), The Oxford history of Anglicanism volume 1: Reformation and identity, c.1520–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 444–56; A. Hughes, ‘Religious diversity in revolutionary London’, in N. Tyacke (ed.), The English revolution c.1590–1720: politics, religion and communities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 111–28; B. Capp, ‘The religious marketplace: public disputations in civil war and Interregnum England’, EHR, 129:536 (2014), 47–78. 5 The classic study is W. A. Shaw, A history of the English church during the civil

192

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6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21

22

23

wars and under the Commonwealth, 1640–1660, 2 vols (Longmans, Green and Co., 1900), II, pp. 152–74, 440–56. P. Collinson, The Elizabethan puritan movement (Methuen, 1967), pp. 168–76; P. Collinson, ‘Lectures by combination: structures and characteristics of church life in 17th century England’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 48 (1975), 181–213. C. Cross, ‘The Church in England, 1646–1660’, in G. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: the quest for settlement, 1646–1660 (Basingstoke, 1972), p. 119; A. Woolrych, Britain in revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 585; Hughes, ‘Cromwellian Church’, pp. 453–4. J. Spurr, English puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), p. 125. M. Spufford, Contrasting communities: English villagers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 272–6. P. C. H. Lim, In pursuit of purity, unity and liberty: Richard Baxter’s puritan ecclesiology in its seventeenth-century context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 123–38. A. Fletcher, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the godly nation’, in J. Morrill (ed.), Cromwell and the English revolution (Longman, 1990), p. 229. Cross, ‘Church in England’, p. 119. W. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the millennium: protestant imperialism and the English revolution (Croom Helm, 1979), p. 165; Spurr, English puritanism, p. 125; G. Nuttall, Richard Baxter (Nelson, 1965), p. 75. S. Burton, ‘The heavenly pattern of the church: Trinitarian and covenantal themes in Richard Baxter’s “association ecclesiology”’, Ecclesiology, 10 (2014), 60. Nuttall, Baxter, p. 67. Nuttall, Baxter, p. 66; G. Nuttall, ‘The Worcestershire association: its membership’, JEH, 1:2 (1950), 197. Baxter, RB, II, p. 148. The citations below represent efforts to gather associations; some are inconclusive. The autobiography of Henry Newcome, M.A., ed. R. Parkinson (Manchester, 1852), p. 46; The life of Adam Martindale, ed. R. Parkinson (Manchester, 1845), pp. 112–13; Baxter, RB, II, pp. 148, 162–4, 167–9; CCRB, I, pp. 107, 111; BL, Thomason MS E.804[15]; A collection of state papers of John Thurloe, ed. T. Birch, 7 vols (1742) (hereafter TSP), III, p. 122. CCRB, I, pp. 94–5, 111, 112, 120, 128, 136–7. Minutes of the Bury presbyterian classis, 1647–1657, ed. W. A. Shaw (Manchester, 1896–98) (hereafter Bury classis), pp. 175–6; R. N. Worth, ‘Puritanism in Devon, and the Exeter Assembly’, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, 9 (1877), 279–81; Baxter, RB, II, pp. 169–72. Bury classis, pp. 153–5; The agreement and resolution of several associated ministers in the county of Corke for the ordination of ministers (Cork, 1657) (hereafter Cork agreement); T. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English government and reform in Ireland 1649–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 117–22. Bury classis, p. 193. The date of the Essex gathering is unclear. See: Baxter, RB, II, 193

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24

25

26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 194

p. 167; Shaw, English church, II, pp. 161, 451; T. W. Davids, Annals of evangelical nonconformity in the county of Essex (1863), p. 458. CCRB, I, pp. 331–2, 336, 343; Sheffield University Library, Hartlib Papers, 51/15A–16B; Matthew Henry, An account of life and death of Philip Henry (1698), pp. 59–61. The agreement and resolution of the ministers of Christ associated within the city of Dublin, and province of Leinster (Dublin, 1659) (hereafter Dublin agreement); The agreement of the associated ministers in the county of Norfolk and the city and county of Norwich (1659) (hereafter Norfolk agreement); R. Halley, Lancashire: its puritanism and nonconformity, 2 vols (Manchester, 1872), II, pp. 87–90; Parkinson, Martindale, pp. 128–31. Bury classis, pp. 176, 202; Worth, ‘Exeter Assembly’, pp. 281–3; Norfolk agreement, sig. [A4r]; Nuttall, ‘Worcestershire membership’, pp. 197–206. Parkinson, Martindale, p. 112; Bury classis, p. 153; Henry, Philip Henry, pp. 60–1; Norfolk agreement, sig. A2v. Bury classis, pp. 153–4. The agreement of the associated ministers of the county of Essex (1658) (hereafter Essex agreement), sig. A2r; Baxter, RB, II, pp. 167–8. Henry, Philip Henry, p. 61; Bury classis, p. 183; Dublin agreement, p. 2. Bury classis, p. 193; Essex agreement, p. 1; The agreement of the associated ministers & churches of the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland (1656) (hereafter Cumberland agreement), p. 2. Lim, Pursuit of purity, pp. 123–38. J. Halcomb, ‘A social history of congregational religious practice’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010), pp. 224–7. For example, Norfolk agreement, p. 10. Sussex, Cornwall, Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Cork. S. Hardman Moore, ‘Arguing for peace: Giles Firmin on New England and godly unity’, Studies in Church History, 32 (1996), 259, n. 30; Lim, Pursuit of purity, p. 135. Worth, ‘Exeter Assembly’, p. 282; Bury classis, pp. 182, 195–6, 199–200; Cumberland agreement, pp. 8, 12, 46–8; Essex agreement, pp. 7, 10, 21; Cork agreement, p. 18. Bury classis, pp. 193, 195, 199. Worth, ‘Exeter Assembly’, p. 280. Norfolk agreement, sig. [B4v], p. 21. Cumberland agreement, p. 5; Dublin agreement, pp. 5–6; Essex agreement, sig. [A4v], p. 2; Norfolk agreement, sig. [B4v], pp. 16–22. Bury classis, pp. 182, 194; Worth, ‘Exeter Assembly’, p. 287; S. Hardman Moore, ‘“Pure folkes” and the parish: Thomas Larkham in Cockermouth and Tavistock’, in D. Wood (ed.), Life and thought in the northern church c.1100–c.1700: essays in honour of Claire Cross (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999), pp. 493, 500–5; E. Vernon, ‘A ministry of the gospel: the presbyterians during the English revolution’, in Durston and Maltby, Religion in revolutionary England, pp. 128–9. Lim, Pursuit of purity, p. 136. Norfolk agreement, sig. Bv. Bury classis, pp. 159, 162, 187–8, 193, 194–8; A&O, I, pp. 1188–215.

The association movement 46 Essex agreement, p. 6; compare pp. 1–24 with Cumberland agreement, pp. 1–22, 51. 47 Vernon, ‘Ministry of the gospel’, pp. 122–3. 48 Norfolk agreement, sig. Cr, p. 28; Cumberland agreement, p. 35; Essex agreement, p. 12. 49 Cumberland agreement, p. 5; Bury classis, pp. 164–6, 182, 193–4. 50 Norfolk agreement, p. 10. 51 This would be enhanced by a consideration of associations’ implementation of ordination. 52 Parkinson, Newcome, p. 46; Bury classis, pp. 169, 189. 53 Burton, ‘Heavenly pattern’. 54 Nuttall, ‘Worcestershire membership’, pp. 203–4. 55 B. Worden, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 292. 56 Among others, see Isaac Penington, Jr, A voice out of the thick darkness (1650); Lazarus Seaman, A glasse for the times (1650), pp. 14–16, 20–2; Thomas Goodwin, Christ the universall peace-maker (1651), pp. 12, 41. 57 Worden, Rump, pp. 292–8. 58 Giles Firmin, Separation examined (1652), pp. 91–3. Similarly from Essex, Enoch Grey, Vox Coeli (1649), particularly p. 9. 59 Richard Baxter, Saints everlasting rest (2nd edition, 1651), sigs A3r, a1r. 60 Baxter, Saints everlasting rest, sig. a1v; T. Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the formation of nonconformity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 141. Compare G. Abernathy Jr, ‘Richard Baxter and the Cromwellian Church’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 24:3 (1961), 218. 61 Baxter, Saints everlasting rest, sig. a1v. The phrase is borrowed from Conrad Bergius, Praxis catholica (1639): Baxter, The true and only way of concord of all the Christian churches (1680), III, p. 25. 62 CCRB, I, p. 76. 63 Ibid., I, p. 78. 64 Cromwell did organise meetings for unity: Worden, Rump, pp. 230, 246, 295. 65 CCRB, I, pp. 85–6. 66 Baxter, RB, II, p. 148. 67 Nuttall, Baxter, p. 67. 68 Severall proceedings in Parliament, no. 136 (29 April–6 May 1652), p. 2124; no. 140 (27 May–3 June 1652), p. 2194; Worden, Rump, pp. 296–7. 69 CCRB, I, p. 85. 70 Baxter, RB, I, pp. 69–70, 115; Severall proceedings, no. 170 (23–30 December 1652), pp. 2644–70. 71 The humble petition of many thousands, gentlemen, free-holders, and others, of the county of Worcester (1653). 72 Severall proceedings, no. 170 (23–30 December 1652), pp. 2664–70. 73 Worden, Rump, pp. 323–4; Severall proceedings, no. 172 (6–13 January 1653), p. 2697; no. 183 (24–31 March 1653), pp. 2890–92; no. 185 (7–14 April 1653), pp. 2918–20; CCRB, I, pp. 94–5. 74 Worden, Rump, p. 322. 75 CCRB, I, pp. 87–9, 90, 94–5, 111, 112. 195

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 76 Christian concord: or the agreement of the associated pastors and churches of Worcestershire (1653). 77 A. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 235–50, 333–8. 78 Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 244–7, 333. 79 Parkinson, Newcome, p. 46; Parkinson, Martindale, p. 112; CCRB, I, pp. 111, 113. 80 Mercurius politicus, no. 176 (20–7 October 1653), p. 2825; G. Nuttall, ‘Presbyterians and independents: Some movements for unity 300 years ago’, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society of England, 10:1 (1952), 11. 81 See also Severall proceedings, no. 214 (27 October–3 November 1653), p. 3391; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 324–5. 82 CCRB, I, pp. 107, 111, 112, 120. 83 CCRB, I, p. 103; DWL, Baxter Correspondence, vol. 4, fo. 279r. 84 Baxter, RB, II, pp. 162–3. 85 Worden noticed the Sussex agreement but did not link it explicitly to the association movement: Rump, p. 324. 86 ‘Declaration & Agreement of … Sussex’, BL, Thomason MS E.804[15] (hereafter ‘Sussex agreement’), fo. 1r. 87 CCRB, I, pp. 219–20. 88 ‘Sussex agreement’, fos 1r–v. 89 ‘Sussex agreement’, fos 1r, 1v, 3r, 3v. 90 ‘Sussex agreement’, fo. 7r. 91 Baxter, RB, II, pp. 163, 167–9; Shaw, English Church, II, p. 445; Cumberland agreement, p. 27; B. Nightingale, The ejected of 1662 in Cumberland and Westmorland: their predecessors and successors, 2 vols (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1911), I, p. 696; W. Lewis, History of the congregational church, Cockermouth: being selections from its own records (1870), pp. 164–6; CCRB, I, p. 113. See also Mercurius politicus, no. 176 (20–7 October 1653), p. 2825. 92 A platform of church discipline: gathered out of the word of God, and agreed upon by the elders and messengers of the churches assembled in the synod at Cambridge in New England (1652); Jeremiah Burroughs, Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace (1653). 93 No discussion among MPs followed his sermon and it was left to a friend of Baxter’s to print the ‘heads’ of his sermon: Humble advice: or the heads of those things which were offered to many honourable members of Parliament by Mr Richard Baxter (1655). 94 Hughes, ‘Cromwellian Church’. 95 Little and Smith, Parliaments and politics, pp. 199–206. 96 Hartlib Papers, 4/3/52A–53B. See also Edmund Calamy, An account of the ministers, lecturers, masters and fellows of colleges and school masters, who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration in 1660, 2 vols (2nd edition, 1713), II, pp. 29–30; CSPD, 1656–7, p. 318. 97 Baxter, RB, II, p. 188. 98 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 6, fo. 232. 99 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 3, fo. 198v. 100 Baxter, RB, II. pp. 195, 196; DWL, Baxter Treaties, item 62(5). Thanks to Neil Keeble and Tim Cooper who kindly discussed these complex sources with me. 196

The association movement 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112 113

114 115 116 117 118 119 120

121

122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

Baxter Correspondence, vol. 3, fo. 198r. Society of Antiquaries of London, SAL/MS/138, fos 265r–266v. Baxter, RB, II, p. 188; Baxter Correspondence, vol. 3, fo. 196r. Society of Antiquaries of London, SAL/MS/138, fo. 265r; Baxter, RB, II, p. 188; Baxter Correspondence, vol. 3, fo. 196r. The classic account is Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, pp. 126–32. TSP, VII, p. 21; St J. D. Seymour, The puritans in Ireland 1647–1661 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 153. Henry Cromwell claimed ‘about 30’ ministers attended: TSP, VII, p. 101. TNA, SP 63/287, fo. 176r; TSP, VII, pp. 21, 101. BL, Lansdowne MS 1228/3, fo. 14r. BL, Lansdowne MS 1228/3, fo. 14r. Compare: TSP, VII, pp. 145, 146; TNA, SP 63/287, fo. 178r. TSP, VII, p. 145. The address survives in the British Library, Lansdowne MS 1228/3, fo. 14r. TSP, VII, pp. 145, 146, 161. P. Gaunt (ed.), The correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 1655–1659: from the British Library Lansdowne manuscripts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 394. Baxter Correspondence, vol. 4, fo. 68r. Gaunt, Correspondence, p. 394. TSP, VII, pp. 129, 145, 146, 153, 161. Gaunt, Correspondence, p. 415. TSP, VII, pp. 129, 161. TSP, VII, p. 162. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, p. 373; J. Morrill, ‘The puritan revolution’, in J. Coffey and P. C. H. Lim (eds), The Cambridge companion to puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 82; H. Powell, ‘The last confession: a background study of the Savoy declaration of faith and order’ (MPhil Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008). Francis Peck, Desiderate curiosa (1779), p. 501; The Savoy declaration of faith and order 1658, ed. A. G. Matthews (Letchworth: Independent Press, 1959), pp. 14–15 (hereafter ‘Savoy declaration’). Mercurius politicus, no. 438 (14–21 October 1658), p. 924; Peck, Desiderata, p. 506. CCRB, I, p. 326. Gaunt, Correspondence, p. 394. TSP, VII, p. 243. Gaunt, Correspondence, pp. 399–400, 401. Gaunt, Correspondence, p. 399. Peck, Desiderata, pp. 505–6, 509. Mercurius politicus, no. 438 (14–21 October 1658), p. 924; Calamy, Account, II, pp. 29–30. Baxter Correspondence, vol. 6, fo. 113. For participants, see Halcomb, ‘Congregational’, pp. 45–7. John Asty, ‘Memoirs of the life of John Owen, D.D.’, in John Asty, A complete collection of the sermons of the reverend and learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), p. xxi. 197

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 133 Edmund Calamy, Memoirs of the life of the late revd. Mr John Howe (1724), p. 26; Asty, ‘Life of Owen’, p. xxi. 134 Peck, Desiderata, pp. 505–12; esp. pp. 508, 511. See also Halcomb, ‘Congregational’, pp. 238–9; Asty, ‘Life of Owen’, pp. xxi–xxii. 135 Mercurius politicus, no. 438 (14–21 October 1658), pp. 922–5. 136 TSP, VII, p. 454. 137 BL, Thomason Tract, E.968[4]. 138 Peck, Desiderata, p. 507. 139 DWL, MS 12.78, pp. 1, 5–6. 140 The creeds and platforms of congregationalism, ed. W. Walker (New York, 1893), pp. 351–2. 141 For the ‘Savoy declaration’ see Powell, ‘Last confession’. For the ‘Declaration of order’, see Halcomb, ‘Congregational’, pp. 236–8. 142 Savoy declaration, pp. 34–5, 122. Compare Platform of church discipline, pp. 4–6. 143 Savoy declaration, pp. 114, 123–4. 144 Ibid., pp. 125–7. 145 A chronology and calendar of documents relating to the London book trade, eds D. McKenzie and M. Bell, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 413; Powell, ‘Last confession’, p. 81. 146 Matthew Poole, Quo warranto; or, a moderate enquiry into the warrantablenesse of the preaching of gifted and unordained persons (1658); Essex agreement, Thomason Tract E.955[2]; Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS Sion L40.2/E64 (Minutes of the London Provincial Assembly 1647–1660), fo. 243r. Thanks to Elliot Vernon for this reference. 147 Samuel Hudson, A vindication of the essence and unity of the church catholick visible (2nd edition, 1658). 148 Samuel Hudson, An addition or postscript to the vindication (1658), sig. A2r. 149 [Matthew Newcomen], Irenicum; or an essay towards a brother peace and union between those of the congregational and presbyterian way (1659). 150 Edmund Calamy, An account of the ministers, lecturers, masters and fellows of colleges and schoolmasters, who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration of 1660 (2nd edition, 1713), II, p. 294. 151 Cooper, Owen, Baxter and nonconformity, p. 232, particularly n. 32. 152 Poole enclosed CCRB letter 549 in his own letter of 3 February 1659: Baxter Correspondence, vol. 2, fos 278r, 305r; vol. 3, fo. 190r. 153 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 3, fos 190r–v. 154 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 6, fo. 164r. 155 Irenicum also provides an extensive defence of the use of ruling elders, which Baxter opposed: pp. 26–32. 156 For a historian lured into misunderstanding by the title page, see Halcomb, ‘Congregational’, p. 240. Thanks to Michael Winship for his thoughts on this work. 157 Irenicum, sig. a[2]v. 158 Irenicum, sigs av–a[2]v. 159 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 2, fo. 278r. 160 Irenicum, pp. 4–15, quote at p. 10. 161 Irenicum, pp. 23, 34. 198

The association movement 162 Platform of church discipline, p. 11. Compare Savoy declaration, p. 123. Irenicum quotes ch. 9, sec. 5, to prove that outside officers should be used to ordain when a church has no elders, but they fail to acknowledge sec. 4 of that chapter which says that imposition of hands can be used by the ordinary brethren of such a church: Irenicum, p. 23; Platform of church discipline, p. 12. 163 Platform of church discipline, pp. 19, 22–3. Compare Savoy declaration, p. 127. 164 See the response of James Sharp quoted in Little and Smith, Parliaments and politics, p. 218. 165 Baxter, RB, I, p. 104. 166 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 1, fo. 249r. 167 DWL, Baxter Treatises, vol. 6, item 201, fo. 203r. 168 Baxter Correspondence, vol. 6, fo. 235r. 169 Little and Smith, Parliaments and politics, p. 219. 170 Woolrych, Britain in revolution, pp. 155–6, 523. 171 Bury Classis, p. 193; Worth, ‘Exeter Assembly’, pp. 279–80. 172 Nuttall, Baxter, p. 75. 173 Shaw, English Church, II, p. 152.

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Chapter 10

Polity and peacemaking: to what extent was Richard Baxter a congregationalist? Tim Cooper

O

n 17 July 1658 Edward Burton wrote a penitent letter to Richard Baxter in which he regretted ever allowing himself to believe, as he recently had, that Baxter’s church at Kidderminster was one of those ‘Congregated Churches in the Independent way’.1 In his reply, written a few days later, Baxter testily pointed out the absurdity of Burton’s error by listing six distinctive markers of ‘the Separatists and Independants’: they gather new churches; they take in members from other parishes; they allow the people a vote in the affairs of the church; they require an account of conversion before admission to membership; they think pastors have authority only in their own churches; and they do not ordain elders.2 Baxter distinguished his own practice at Kidderminster from each of these markers. Burton could consider himself soundly corrected: Richard Baxter was no congregationalist. Indeed, to anyone who knows Baxter that conclusion will appear selfevident. It would seem absurd to question it. Yet we might bear in mind that Burton was a member of Baxter’s own parish. He may have been an unreliable one, apparently accused of being ‘a Cavileere or Malignant, An Episcopall man, the great Enemie to you [Baxter] and your Church’.3 He may not have possessed the greatest theological acumen, letting himself be persuaded by the malicious gossip of others regarding the nature of Baxter’s church. But he had witnessed Kidderminster practice with his own eyes and on the basis of that experience he found it at least plausible that Baxter’s practical ecclesiology was congregationalist. Furthermore, when Baxter published Confirmation and restauration that same year he expected some readers to object that it would ‘encourage the Anabaptists and Congregational … by our coming so neer them’ on some points.4 And his Five disputations of church-government, published the following year, was taken by some to be too close to congregationalist principles.5 Even as he wrote it he was aware that part of it might be seen ‘too much [to] favour the Congregational way’.6 Baxter was clearly more proximate to the congrega200

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tionalists than he wanted to let on in his letter to Edward Burton, whose misperception was not entirely fanciful. It suited Baxter’s purpose in that letter to emphasise, in the words of Bruce Lincoln, ‘distance, separation, otherness, and alienation’ from the congregationalists. In other contexts, however, he needed to convey ‘likeness, common belonging, mutual attachment, and solidarity’. For Lincoln, the formation of group identity involves a balancing of ‘similarities and dissimilarities’, ‘affinity and estrangement’. This process creates sentiment or feeling ‘out of which social borders are created’. But it is crucial to remember that a ‘social border’ is a metaphor. Groups are marked off from each other by lines that are entirely imaginary and always potentially unstable. A society ‘is basically a grouping of people who feel bound together as a collectivity and, in corollary fashion, feel themselves separate from those who fall outside their group’. When sentiments of difference predominate, borders are evoked. But the balance of affinity and estrangement can quickly change, which will lead to the construction of new borders. That can be brought about in two main ways. The first of these is the use of force or coercion, but this can be effective only so far – what is also required is discourse. Discursive acts have the power to bring new societies into being.7 During the 1650s and beyond Baxter engaged himself in exactly this sort of discursive act, primarily through his many publications designed to bring about peace and unity among the orthodox godly. The dynamics here were quite different from his letter to Burton, where all Baxter wanted to do was evoke estrangement from the congregationalists. We should not be too much taken in by it. As John Coffey has demonstrated, Baxter’s posture towards the congregationalists varied according to context, audience and issue – he could be irenic, accommodating and inclusive.8 Thus in the broader context of his peacemaking efforts Baxter attempted to call forth a new alignment of existing borders, that is, a redrawing of the borders as he thought they then existed in the minds of others. In this context, he showed a quite remarkable degree of affinity with those he (and we) might otherwise mark off as congregationalist. The contrast of these two contexts illustrates Lincoln’s point: In practice there always exist potential bases for associating and for dissociating one’s self and one’s group from others, and the vast majority of social sentiments are ambivalent mixes in which potential sources of affinity are (partially and perhaps temporarily) overlooked or suppressed in the interests of establishing a clear social border or, conversely, potential sources of estrangement are similarly treated in order to effect or preserve a desired level of social integration and solidarity.9

In his letter to Burton, Baxter sought to establish ‘a clear social border’; in his labours for peace he desired ‘social integration and solidarity’. So in this chapter I hope to demonstrate how these dynamics played out. I intend to revisit Baxter’s practice within the parish of Kidderminster; to connect that with his broader efforts to establish a lasting peace among the 201

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rival factions of the godly; to reconsider Baxter’s proximity to the polity of the congregationalists by evaluating all the main markers of distinction – those he included in his letter and those he chose to leave out; and to do all of this with recourse to the analytical framework of Bruce Lincoln. While I am choosing to focus only on Baxter and the congregationalists so as to offer just one detailed case study, I might well have done a similar thing with his view of the moderate episcopalians or the high presbyterians. For reasons that will soon become apparent, similar dynamics would have been in play in those relationships as well. Therefore, I hope this will cast some helpful illumination on the unstable formation of religious group identity in mid-seventeenth-century England and show just how fluid, precarious and contingent those groups, parties and polities could be. They were not the static, discrete, self-evident entities they are often made out to be.

BAXTER’S PASTORAL PRACTICE For Richard Baxter, peacemaking – even on a national scale – began in the parish; it was rooted and grounded in practice.10 For that reason, a brief description of his pastoral success at Kidderminster is in order. Looking back from the mid-1660s he recalled that when he began there was only one family in each street that comprised faithful Christians, but by the close of his ministry there was only one family in each street that did not. Even if the impression is exaggerated, five galleries had to be added to his church to accommodate his growing Sunday-morning congregation.11 In Confirmation and restauration he offered an audit of his parish by identifying ‘twelve sorts of People’.12 The biggest group by far was ‘about five hundred persons, such as the vulgar call precise, that are rated to be serious Professours of Religion’. Another hundred comprised less stellar believers whose sincerity nevertheless could not be questioned.13 In a letter written at about the same time, Baxter confirmed the tally: ‘Among Eight-Hundred Families, Six-Hundred Persons are Church-Members’.14 A variety of factors accounted for Baxter’s success,15 but among the most important was the one he identified in his letter to Edward Burton: ‘The Separatists and Independant gather new Churches; and so did not we, but only sett up some Discipline in the old ones, with so many as would consent to Discipline.’16 Strategic, conscientious, time-consuming, painstaking, effective parish discipline lay at the heart of Baxter’s reformation at Kidderminster. First, he took the process of confirmation in deadly earnest. His own experience of confirmation involved the bishop showing up without warning and hurriedly mumbling a few indistinct words of blessing to a group of around thirty or forty boys who scarcely knew what was going on.17 Baxter showed no such laxity in his turn. Such was the critical importance of a rigorous admission to the full rights of church membership that he published Confirmation and restauration – a whole book on the subject. Second, he extended a similar 202

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sort of rigour to adults as well, meeting annually with all the families in his parish who were prepared to do so. He or his assistant would test each family on their basic understanding of the Christian faith, assessing their knowledge of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, and coaching them in the Westminster assembly’s Shorter catechism.18 Third, Baxter put into practice the mechanism laid out in Matthew 18:15–17 whereby obvious sinners were confronted with their sin first privately, then publicly, and if they refused to repent they were excommunicated from the church and barred from taking Communion. When he first arrived in Kidderminster that process had lain in a long neglect: ‘Common drunkards that were for twenty or thirty years together drunk usually once or twice a week, were the stated members of this Parish Church where now I live.’19 Baxter sorted that out. Only those who wanted it and only those who were not visibly unworthy were allowed full participation in the life of the congregation. As Baxter’s Kidderminster reformation grew so too did his influence, first locally and then nationally. Most notably, Baxter persuaded most of his nearby ministers to join the Worcestershire association – a grouping of clergy who agreed to imitate the outlines of Baxter’s practice at Kidderminster and to meet once a month for mutual edification and discussion of difficult cases of church discipline. In 1653 these ministers published Christian concord: or the agreement of the associated pastors and churches of Worcestershire, which set out how the ministers would work together. Three years later Baxter published one of his most enduring works, The Reformed pastor. This emerged from a series of lectures presented to the Worcestershire association in which he advocated his practice of private instructing and catechising. Evidently he persuaded his fellow minsters. In the same year they published The agreement of divers ministers of Christ in the county of Worcester. This described the outlines of their practice of discipline and urged their parishioners to submit themselves to it. All of this served to establish Baxter’s pastoral reputation and it helped the association movement to spread. By the end of the decade there were as many as twenty-three other voluntary associations throughout the country. In Chapter 9 above Joel Halcomb rightly argues that Baxter was far from the sole driving force behind the movement. Even so, his ideas were having some appeal beyond the bounds of his own parish.

BAXTER’S PLAN FOR PEACE: PRACTICE, NOT PRINCIPLE At some point early on in the interregnum it dawned on Baxter that the new environment was surprisingly conducive to effective reformation.20 As he explained in The Reformed pastor, it certainly exceeded the 1630s when the prelates cast out and silenced the most godly and able of England’s ministers.21 In 1659 he suggested that the general condition of the church was a great deal better than many people made out.22 He was confident that those who sought a restored prelacy would soon regret they had backed the wrong horse.23 Of 203

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course, subsequent events rapidly eroded his confidence, but in the 1650s Baxter witnessed with his own eyes a practical reformation on the ground that provided the road-map to national reformation if only others were drawn in to share it. Increasingly, it seemed, others were. Meanwhile, back home in Worcestershire, Baxter experienced the fruit of his parish-based, disciplinefocused reformation. ‘Look into this County where I live’, he said in 1659, and you shall find a faithful, humble, laborious Ministry, Associated and walking in as great unity as ever I read of since the Apostles daies. No difference, no quarrels, but sweet and amicable Correspondency, and Communion, that I can hear of. Was there such a Ministry, or such love and concord, or such a godly people under them in the Prelates reign? There was not: I lived where I do: and therefore I am able to say, there was not.24

Above all, then, Baxter’s innovations had given forth in ‘love and concord’. In this way pastoral practice was the basis for national peacemaking among the rival parties. For this reason, Baxter’s plan began with practice, not principles – a point that he never ceased to emphasise. For instance, in Christian concord (1653) he explained that ‘our business is but this: To improve the Points wherein we are all agreed, for unanimous practice’. This ‘Practice of so much Discipline as we are agreed in, is a likelier way, to bring us to agreement in the rest, than all our Disputings will do without it’.25 It did not matter if ‘we are not of the same intellectual complexion in every point’. After all, ‘why must we needs agree in our Reasons, as long as we agree on our practice?’26 That was the point: once godly ministers constructively got on with the business at hand they would recognise that they were all seeking broadly the same end. The time and labour involved would keep them too busy to focus on their divisions. They would see that so many of the differences they thought existed between them were, to use Baxter’s distinction, only verbal, not real.27 That is, they used different language but they intended the same thing, which would be easily demonstrated when they worked together in the shared project of parish discipline. The next step in his plan was to bring the moderates in each party to recognise the points of practice they held in common. Typically, Baxter recognised four main parties: ‘the Episcopall, Presbyterians, Congregationall [and] Erastian’.28 The reason: ‘We mean only those Parties who acknowledge a Discipline’.29 Potentially, however, Baxter could also include moderate papists,30 though he never let his ambition stretch quite that far, and in the closing years of the 1650s he was able to encompass even moderate anabaptists who could, at a pinch, be brought into a scheme predicated on a shared practice of discipline.31 In essence, he had to persuade all these colleagues that the borders or lines of division between them lay in quite a different place from where they supposed. If we return briefly to the analysis of Bruce Lincoln, such borders do not exist in any sort of concrete reality; these are 204

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Presbyterians

Episcopalians

Congregationalists

Erastians

10.1  The four parties

‘only imaginary lines that distinguish one group of persons from another’.32 In his various discursive acts Baxter proposed a new way of conceiving group boundaries. Figure 10.1 shows the boundaries of the four main parties as he thought they were conceived in the minds of others. Figure 10.2 shows the groupings in Baxter’s mind, where the differences between the individual parties were masked or suppressed by the overlay of one larger group comprising the moderate figures in each of the parties. The overlaid circle in Figure 10.2 was possible because of that shared commitment to discipline: ‘that is proper to none of them, which is common to them all’. The sentiment in that pithy phrase had the effect of dissolving existing apparent boundaries by emphasising what was held in common by all. There were, therefore, no congregationalists or presbyterians as such, only those who held in common a shared practice of discipline with some minor, incidental and tolerable differences around the edges of that practice. Thus four discrete parties would become one unified group. Perhaps sensing that an alternative label was necessary to describe it, Baxter reached for the best he could find: these were ‘meer Catholicks; Men of no Faction, nor siding with any Party, but owning that which was good in all, as far as they could discern it’.33 Here we are not helped by the fact that scholars have generally used the label of ‘presbyterian’ to describe this particular grouping of ­moderate 205

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‘Mere Christians’

Congregationalists

Episcopalians

Presbyterians

E ra s ti a n s

10.2 The ‘mere Christians’

orthodox godly.34 In fact, they were no more nor less congregationalist than they were presbyterian. They really were ‘meer Catholicks’, people of no party except that broad society Baxter tried to call into being. Creating this self-conscious, coherent grouping of the moderates is what John Coffey calls ‘Baxter’s visionary scheme’.35 And it was a fine plan, at least on paper: the trouble lay in its execution. According to Bruce Lincoln, three things need to happen for discourse to be effective. First, it has to gain a hearing. This was difficult for Baxter, given his geographical distance from the main centres of power, but not impossible. Above all, publication supplied a means of being heard; and the number of titles, sales, editions and replies from other authors suggests he built up a considerable audience. Second, discourse needs to be persuasive. This relies on ‘logical and ideological coherence’, something Baxter certainly provided. His plan for peacemaking, first articulated in print in the second edition of The saints everlasting rest in 1651,36 remained consistent and coherent throughout the decade. But persuasion also depended on the reaction of his audience, and this is where the problems began. Baxter was not unique in trying to forge a common middle ground of the moderates among the competing parties, but the approach that was privileged by the interregnum regime ran along entirely opposite lines.37 Baxter began with practice, not 206

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principle; this rival approach began with principle, not practice. At its core lay the ‘fundamentals of the faith’; that is, those orthodox, Trinitarian, Christian beliefs that were essential for salvation. Anyone, or any congregation, who agreed with the fundamentals would be tolerated, even if they differed on minor beliefs or practices. Those fundamentals were to be expressed in language that went beyond the words of scripture, but in Baxter’s view scripture alone united the godly.38 This rival approach, therefore, would lead the godly onto ground that would only exacerbate their differences, not remove them. For all Baxter’s frustrated, principled objections, this approach was the one sponsored by the regime.39 To the extent to which force was in play, as distinct from discourse, it lay entirely on the other side. At this point we come to the third requirement for discourse to be effective: ‘there is the question of whether – and the extent to which – a discourse succeeds in calling forth a following; this ultimately depends on whether a discourse elicits those sentiments out of which new social formations can be constructed’.40 Here, Baxter struggled. He had a regrettable knack of evoking entirely the opposite sentiments (that is, feelings) he was hoping for and needed.41 Inasmuch as he could be a warm, personable communicator, he had a habit of writing in such a vehement manner as to cause offence. His friend John Humphrey warned him that he was ‘too dogmaticall’ in his style, ‘so violent, eager, sowre, from the very first’.42 His antagonist, Bishop George Morley, agreed about Baxter’s demeanour, ‘which is so Magisterial, and with that contempt, undervaluing and vilifying those he writes against, or that write against him, and sometimes with such exasperating and provoking language as very ill becomes him that pretends to be a Peace maker’.43 So Baxter surely had his work cut out for him if those discursive acts by which he tried to call a new society into being were to have their effect: he resided at a distance from his most important audiences; his plan was not the one that enjoyed the most political patronage; and his personal style tended to alienate those he most needed to convince. Given that he struggled so badly with all three requirements of effective discourse it is no surprise that his plans were never broadly implemented. Not only that, as other chapters in this volume reveal, the forces of boundary formation were all too successful in other contexts and he could do little to counter them. The effect of all these difficulties on the way through the 1650s was to intensify the pressure he felt to find common ground or, in other words, to emphasise affinity over estrangement. And that produced what might seem a surprising proximity to a group such as the congregationalists.

MEASURING BAXTER AGAINST THE CONGREGATIONALISTS It is worth repeating that Baxter was not a congregationalist. But that statement involves an exercise in boundary definition and it is also worth ­repeating 207

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that those boundaries did not exist in reality. To put this in other ways, he was just as much not a congregationalist as he was not a presbyterian; and he was far more of a congregationalist than he made out in his letter to Edward Burton. Given the weight of a peacekeeping mission that compelled him to emphasise affinity and common ground, and when he was not writing letters like the one to Burton in which he needed to emphasise difference and separation, Baxter could look surprisingly congregationalist. I want to demonstrate this by assessing his position according to eight main markers of congregationalism. I will take six of these from his letter to Burton, but in the opposite order. This is because Baxter began with the marker that indicated the greatest distance, and he failed even to mention two related markers that allowed the greatest proximity. Let us begin, then, with those two markers that Baxter chose not to include. Congregationalism rested on the conviction that each congregation was complete in itself. William Bartlet, a congregationalist minister at Wapping in Middlesex, made this clear in his Model of the primitive congregational way: That this visible Church-state, Order, and Politie which Jesus Christ onely hath instituted and ordained under the New Testament … is a free society or communion of visible Saints, embodyed and knit together by a voluntary consent, to worship God according to his Word, making up one ordinary congregation, with power of Government within it selfe onely.44

This meant that each congregation had the power to ordain its own pastors and to discipline its own members without those decisions having to be ratified by a higher body such as a synod or classis. So there was, therefore, ‘little ground for a Nationall, Diocesan, and Provinciall Church’.45 It is no wonder that this approach earned the epithet of ‘independent’, but congregationalists rejected the inference this carried. In their Apologeticall narration, the Dissenting Brethren were careful to say they were ‘not clayming to our selves an independent power in every congregation, to give account or be subject to none others, but only a full and entire power compleat within our selves, until we should be challenged to erre grosly’.46 Many congregationalists were comfortable with synods or their equivalents as long as the decisions of those bodies were not binding on the individual congregation.47 Thus the individual congregations were not free-floating bodies bereft of any external connections or mechanisms for correction. Baxter’s views were substantially in concert with all of these. In his Five disputations he defined the local church as: A competent Number of persons in Covenant with Christ (or of Christians) cohabiting, by the appointment of Christ and their mutual expressed consent, united (or associated) under Christ’s Ministerial Teachers and Guides for the right worshiping of God in publick and the Edification of the Body in Knowledge and Holiness. 208

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If this sounds a lot like Bartlet’s definition, it was. And Baxter anticipated the obvious objection: ‘This is meer independency, to make a single Congregation, the subject of the Government’. His response is revealing. ‘I am not deterred from any truth by Names. I have formerly said, that it is my opinion that the truth about Church-Government, is parcelled out into the hands of each party, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Independent, and Erastian: And in this point in Question the Independents are most right.’ He was quick to say that the parish should not be divided into ‘several settled Societies or Congregations’, and that each congregation should associate with other congregations ‘by the mediation of their Officers’, but the congregationalists would not disagree with that.48 So this was a powerful statement of agreement with them on one of their most cherished, foundational convictions. No wonder he left it out of his letter to Edward Burton. As is well known, Baxter staunchly advocated the ‘ancient parochial episcopacy’ over the more modern ‘diocesan episcopacy’.49 He frequently returned to the letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who was martyred some time before AD 110 and who showed that bishops were merely ‘the Governours or Ministers of one Congregation, or of no more people then one of our Parishes’: ‘Here it is manifest that the particular Church which in those dayes was governed by a Bishop, Presbytery and Deacons, was but one congregation; for every such Church had but one Altar.’50 Thus Baxter was the bishop in his parish: he governed the flock, aided by his presbyters and deacons, and not unaccountable to the wider network of ministers and congregations. In his view of early church history this primitive simplicity steadily gave way to a more elaborate and hierarchical structure, a process nurtured by the fourth-century privileging of the church and its officers within the Roman Empire.51 This is essentially (though not exclusively) a congregationalist view of the ministry. Moreover, Baxter took a similar view of synods. They ‘are not directly for Government, but for Concord and Communion of Churches, and so consequently for well-governing the several flocks: Nor hath a Synod any Governing Power over a particular Pastor, as being his superior appointed to that end: but only a Power of Consent or Agreement’. Once again his reader might ‘think that this doth too much favour the Congregational Way’ but he was not only unperturbed, he was hopeful ‘that some of the Moderate Congregational Party, will joyn with us in a reconciliation on these Terms’.52 The Worcestershire Association was in effect a local synod in which the ministers resolved to ‘use all good means for the maintaining of this Union and Communion, and to do as much of our work as we can in concord with one another, and as little as may be dividedly, and by ourselves’, and to meet four times a year with delegates from other nearby associations for ‘the more unanimous carrying on the work of the Gospel’.53 So far, Baxter is in extensive agreement with the congregationalists, but we might return to Bartlet’s point that the local congregation was ‘a free 209

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society or communion of visible Saints’. That is, the ‘prophane and the scandalous’ were not to be admitted; ‘this is no work for drunkards, swearers, blasphemers, ignorant and scandalous persons’.54 If the body of the church was complete in itself, then that body had to be pure, not mixed and defiled.55 In essence, this was a rejection of parish worship as it was commonly experienced, in which all and sundry were allowed at the Lord’s table. Indeed, as we have seen, that was precisely the condition at Kidderminster upon Baxter’s arrival; and even as late as 1658 he could look around and see the inadequacy of so much of England’s parish life in which drunks, whores and the most malignant of sinners could still partake in Communion.56 So Baxter’s ideal was indeed a church of ‘visible Saints’ even if that did not entail a rejection of parish ministry. Recall his definition of the local church as a ‘competent Number of persons in Covenant with Christ … co-habiting [by] mutual expressed consent’. And think of his Kidderminster audit: only six hundred people were allowed to take Communion in his parish, all of them sincere Christians who had voluntarily given their consent to submit to church discipline. This was, surely, as much a church of visible saints as Bartlet could ever hope for. We might add that Baxter went even further in distilling the godly: every Thursday and Saturday evening he gathered out of his parish the most committed believers to pray together, to repeat that week’s sermon and to engage in mutual edification.57 His approach was not so different from those ministers who returned to England from congregationalist New England during the 1640s and 1650s: out of seventy-nine such ministers, sixty took up parish appointments; and around half of them formed a gathered congregation out of the parish and in addition to parish worship.58 Given the standard narrative, then and now, which sets English parish puritans against New England congregationalists, this is not what we would expect. ‘The presence in parish pulpits of ministers who had been ministers and members of New England’s gathered churches underlines the tenacity of the parish ideal. Let loose on English soil, they still wanted to preach to the community at large, as well as to gather saints for closer fellowship.’59 Baxter’s position illustrates how the godly responded to a shared strategic imperative even as they developed a range of tactics in practice. Even then, while he did not go so far as formally to gather the godly into a distinct congregation, Baxter’s practice was proximate to many of those whom we might label congregationalist. And when it came to peacemaking, common practice mattered most. Much more might be said on these first two markers of ­congregationalism – markers that Baxter broadly agreed with and, therefore, omitted from his letter to Burton – but all this should suffice to demonstrate the extensive agreement on fundamental issues of definition. The next two markers related to ordination: the congregationalists do not ordain elders (or presbyters) and they think that pastors outside of their own congregations ‘do act but as private men’.60 Baxter gave little weight to these issues because they made 210

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so little difference in practice: ‘I would not quarrell about the notions or Titles while we agree about the work to be done.’ The underlying impulse of Baxter’s peacemaking was not ‘to Reconcile differences in judgment … but to practice unanimously so much as we are agreed in’. And while the congregationalists did not see it as necessary to ordain elders, neither did they view it as unlawful. ‘So that it is past doubt, that we are all agreed, that there may be such Officers or Elders chosen to do the work that is here expressed.’61 The fifth marker concerned admission to membership in the local congregation. If it was to comprise only ‘visible saints’ then each individual had to give evidence of his or her right to the title. Here the congregationalists ‘require an account of the manner of mens conversion or their spirituall experiences before they admitt them to be members’.62 Baxter had two main problems with this. First, insincere Christians were quite capable of telling a plausible story, while sincere Christians, especially those who were poor and illiterate, might struggle to make a coherent account.63 Second, plenty of his parishioners who gave no great hope of spiritual life on the surface had surprised Baxter, once he took the time and effort to delve deeper, with their knowledge and piety. Ministers thus had a pastoral care to tend these seemingly weak souls, not exclude them. Jesus Christ, the Great Shepherd, who ‘gently drives and carrieth the Lambs in his arms, will not thank you for shutting them out or casting them in the ditch’.64 So the stricter test of the congregationalists was in danger of including those who should be excluded, and excluding those who should be included. Yet here again Baxter shared the sentiment that drove congregational practice: ‘I would not have you blind under pretence of Charity, nor to let in known swine, for feare of keeping out the sheep.’ He took a more Augustinian view of the church, with its implicit criticism of Donatist separation in pursuit of a purer church: a minister should not try to separate the wheat from the tares.65 Even so Baxter’s practice was different in degree, not in kind, since he also screened for membership. All he required was a ‘credible profession’ of faith. The onus was not on the individual to prove the genuineness of his or her faith; it was for Baxter to demonstrate its insincerity if he wished to exclude them from Communion.66 In his parish, one was innocent until proven guilty. So his church comprised six hundred people: ‘not very many of these without such a Profession as giveth us good Hopes of their Sincerity, and none whose Profession I am able any way to disprove’.67 The sixth marker had to do with the location of authority: the congregationalists allowed government by majority vote.68 This rested on a particular understanding of the power of the keys that Jesus gave to Peter in Matthew 16:18–20. The godly never agreed on precisely whom Peter represented when he received the keys, whether all believers or only the officers of the church. As Hunter Powell has demonstrated, the congregationalists agreed with John Cotton and his book Keyes of the kingdome of Heaven, which the Dissenting Brethren republished in England in 1643 as a way of advertising their own 211

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views when they were prevented by mutual agreement from publishing them.69 In that book, Cotton put forward a brief but complex understanding of the keys of the kingdom in which their component parts were distinguished and shared out among both pastors and people.70 In contrast, Baxter argued that the keys were given to ministers alone,71 and he could not allow that the people had any share in the power of the keys: this was a ‘great mistake’ that he called on the congregationalists to renounce.72 Even so, here again, in practice, Baxter’s approach was not entirely dissimilar in that he gave an essential role to the people’s consent. First, as in the primitive church, so in Kidderminster: ‘the People were used Expresly to Consent to their Chosen appointed Teachers, if not to choose them (yea even the Bishops themselves;) (yea that they might Reject unworthy Bishops when established)’; and the people could choose their own deacons.73 Second, the people gave their consent to the outcome in each case of church discipline.74 At Kidderminster this involved ‘above twenty persons chosen annually by the Church, as their Trustees or Deputies’ who met monthly with Baxter and his fellow officers to resolve cases of discipline.75 Therefore, this was one more marker where the difference in theory could easily obscure a shared sentiment and even some commonality of practice. Certainly there was in Baxter’s mind no sufficient degree of difference in practice to justify any ongoing division. And so we come to the final two markers, ones in which considerable obstacles to a practical unity began to emerge. It is no wonder that Baxter started his list with these. The congregationalists ‘gather new Churches’ instead of reforming the existing ones and they ‘take in members out of other parishes’.76 These practices eroded a fundamental principle in Baxter’s ecclesiology: ‘Cohabitation is the Aptitude requisite to Church Membership’.77 Those who lived together should worship together.78 This created the risk of tares among the wheat, but that was preferable to any attempt to gather out the godly and leave the rest to languish. First, this more exclusive approach was ‘disorderly’: ‘what confusion will follow the plucking up of Christs and the Magistrates and the Churches bounds?’79 Second, it would lead to a relatively few large congregations formed around gifted leaders and communicators while the remainder foundered under leadership that was merely ordinary. Baxter felt that he could have been one of those flashy communicators with a huge following.80 It would have made for an easy life, certainly much easier than the labour he put in at Kidderminster;81 but, even so, ‘I think Parish Work the best’.82 Third, working only with the elite left Christ’s ‘weakest Members’ to their own devices, but ‘the saving of souls and propagation of the Gospel must be preferred before our comforts’.83 Fourth, gatherings of the godly produced only comfortable, complacent Christians, with little lasting fruit. Looking around Acton in the 1660s Baxter could see precious little remnant of the ministry of Philip Nye, one of the Dissenting Brethren who had been rector at Acton from 1643 until 1656.84 ‘He that keeps in Gods order under a meaner honest Minister is like to be a more humble, thriv212

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ing Christian, than he that will break that order under pretence of edification.’ Gathered congregations were bad for the soul, then, and bad for piety. ‘Christians should not first ask [Where my I have the best Minister, or company, or purest Ordinances? Or where may I receive most good?] but they must first ask [Where lieth my Duty? And where my I do most good?]’85 Finally, it was unnecessary. Baxter’s parish-based discipline had produced a reformed church, one that addressed all the main objections of the congregationalists, one that to varying degrees took account in practice of their most cherished convictions. Indeed, on witnessing the change at Kidderminster ‘some Independents and Anabaptists … did quite change their Minds … and began to think … it is a better Work thus to reform the Parishes, than to gather Churches out of them, without great Necessity’.86 If it were possible for most of England’s parishes to be so reformed – and perhaps to Baxter in the late 1650s that was no pipe dream – then this practice of forming new congregations would be unjustified and unnecessary, since it was the lack of adequate parish discipline that had provided the main impulse towards separation.87 Baxter’s bottom line, therefore, was the integrity of the parish structure. Two related developments showed him bumping up against the very outer limits of what he was able to concede. In the first of these, some time around 1658, he explored with Nye a possible platform for peace with the congregationalists. Nye listed two concessions that would be required: a recognition that each congregation had power complete in itself; and that such congregations might take members out of other parishes.88 On the first, there was (as we have seen) no problem: ‘therefore take it for granted, that we are at one’. On the second, Baxter proposed a mechanism by which a limited degree of inter-parish transfer might take place. The starting principle was that ‘Parishes shall be the ordinary Bounds, but in necessary Cases and no other, you shall except and be free from them’. He identified seven technical grounds that might qualify as a necessity (for example, where the parish is too big or too bad) and specified that the local ministerial association had to approve any transfer from one parish to another.89 Baxter’s efforts went nowhere. By the late 1650s Baxter had precious little credibility with Nye.90 This is one instance where he failed to evoke the sentiments necessary for his discourse to be effective. Nye did the least amount possible in practice to advance the discussion and finally threw in the additional matter of ordination when it seemed as if Baxter might have found a way through on the two issues Nye had first identified. Not only that, it is highly unlikely that Nye would ever have approved the right of a ministerial association to adjudicate matters, given congregational nervousness about the power of synods or their equivalents, and the room Baxter allowed for inter-parish transfer was so small as to seem practically negligible. Perhaps Baxter realised this. Shortly after he drew up a long proposal that was finally published in 1691 as the first part of Church concord.91 Whilst he began with a concession that a ‘Tolerated Private Church’ was not necessarily 213

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a bad thing – that depended on why it was formed in the first place – he quickly moved on to offer twenty reasons why it was so harmful to have a public church and a private church in the same parish. Basically it transgressed ‘the Catholick Principles and Interest’ and fostered division and separation.92 His solution, as always: ‘If we would avoid Separations, we must keep up holy Discipline.’ He then worked his way through ten ‘seeming differences’ with the congregationalists. The last of them concerned inter-parish transfer. For the first nine differences Baxter had adamantly asserted that none was a ‘real’ difference and all could be easily overcome. But on this final question ‘there is a Practical Difference to our woe’. He hoped that agreement on all the previous points of difference would allow the congregationalists to give ground on this one. ‘This Controversie is de fine, and seeing we grant them much in the rest for this, therefore we cannot grant them this.’93 Finally, we have reached a real border, one that clearly was a matter of practice, beyond which Baxter could not step (though he devoted the largest single portion of the work to demonstrating just how reconciliation even on this issue might be possible). The point of all this is to demonstrate the proximity of Baxter to the congregationalists. Indeed, that is why he wrote Church concord, to show the Nearness of both Parties; and easiness of Reconciliation, as to their Principles, and that there is nothing among them, owned by either Party, that should hinder a loving Consociation, Correspondency and Communion of the Churches, for their mutual strengthening, and the healing of the Mischiefs of that Divisions, Emulations, and Contentions have long caused among us.94

Even if in the end Baxter had to confront the one issue that kept them worlds apart there was a very great deal of common ground between them, especially on the questions that mattered most.

CONCLUSION All of this has important implications for the way in which we understand groups and borders in mid-seventeenth-century England and the way in which issues of church polity functioned to bring the godly together or to drive them apart. It is in the nature of labels such as ‘presbyterian’ or ‘congregationalist’ to convey hard-and-fast boundaries, if only because they are useful shorthands whose linguistic value lies in allowing a writer or speaker to convey in just one word what would otherwise take several sentences to explain. In addition, each label can signal not just what one was, but also what one was not: by virtue of being ‘congregationalist’ one is not ‘presbyterian’. In different ways, therefore, the force of such binary thinking and oppositional labels is to imply that each label has a life of its own that is stable, consistent, coherent, and this is how historians have tended to use them. We might look back on one of the most important historians of the Puritans and of Richard 214

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Baxter: Geoffrey Nuttall. In The holy spirit in puritan faith and experience, first published in 1946, he offered an influential schematic of ‘the parties within Puritanism’: a middle party (with two wings led respectively by Baxter and John Owen); a conservative party of presbyterians; and a radical party of congregationalists.95 This allows Nuttall and other scholars to convey a great deal through the deployment of just one label, but it relies on the assumption that each scholar shares the same understanding of what is meant by each label. This is not necessarily a safe assumption, especially when scholars have generally tended to use these labels without defining them explicitly. Again, this implies that they are fixed and self-evident. I do not mean to dismiss whole swathes of scholarship, least of all Geoffrey Nuttall’s, and there are exceptions. Recent examples would include Ann Hughes, who departs from these existing patterns in the historiography that are ‘based on boxes, linear developments, or factions’ to show that such identities were ‘more fragmentary, contradictory, and contingent than dominant modes of analysis imply’; and Mark Goldie, who sees that the differences between presbyterians and congregationalists during the Restoration period ‘were sometimes scarcely perceptible’.96 Even so, we may have missed an important conversation going on within sociology, anthropology and religious studies in recent decades. Speaking generally, scholars in these disciplines have shifted from an essentialist to a constructivist understanding of group identity. The consensus now is that this identity is constructed, contested and contingent.97 Bruce Lincoln is a part of this conversation. ‘Because there are virtually infinite grounds on which individual and group similarity/ dissimilarity may be perceived and corresponding sentiments of affinity/ estrangement evoked, the borders of society are never a simple matter.’98 What we have seen is that Baxter could distinguish between himself and the congregationalists in quite different ways depending on whether he needed to emphasise affinity (with Philip Nye, for instance) or estrangement (with Edward Burton). The precise matrix of difference and similarity could differ from year to year (and especially from the beginning of the 1650s to their end) so that, while there was a broad continuity across time, Baxter never distinguished himself from the congregationalists in quite the same way twice. And the way in which Baxter distinguished himself from the congregationalists could easily differ from the way another of his colleagues distinguished himself from the congregationalists. That is, that person might introduce other markers of difference, or leave some out, or place them in a different order of priority. Among the congregationalists a similar variety of self-understanding could take place, thereby creating numerous unique ways in which each person distinguished their own position from that of the other group. Therefore, ‘such borders being neither natural, inevitable, nor immutable, affinity may in the course of events come to predominate over estrangement, with the consequential emergence of a new social formation in which 215

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­ reviously separate social groups are mutually encompassed’.99 This is prep cisely what Baxter hoped for. Through various acts of discourse he attempted to call forth a new society that would encompass the moderates from each of the distinct parties, thereby making those party distinctions redundant in practice. As I have noted elsewhere, he was at the height of his confidence in 1658 and 1659 when Richard Cromwell was in power.100 I can now more clearly see why. Until then, force had trumped discourse in that the power of the regime rested on that rival plan that began with principles, not with practice. With the ascension of Richard Cromwell, Baxter may have sensed that force could now be allied to discourse, and that the power of the state might swing in behind practical efforts for unity that were broadly in keeping with his own. But it was not to be: Richard Cromwell’s regime lasted only a matter of months. Who can say what Baxter might have achieved had the circumstances turned out otherwise, though we might note a persistent failure even in the Worcestershire association. Though the terms of accommodation were large and generous, Baxter could not bring any of the local presbyterians or congregationalists to join, and none of the prelatists except for ‘three or four moderate Conformists that were for the old Episcopacy’.101 Baxter did his best to bring about this new society, making all the concessions he possibly could, bending over backwards till it hurt, but he failed because he did not achieve the three requirements necessary for discourse to be effective: he might have gained a hearing but he was not persuasive to those important actors who pursued a similar vision of a moderate society that was formed along different lines, and he did not call forth a sufficient following. Instead, his ‘magisterial style’ served to alienate those he most needed to reach. He evoked the most unhelpful sentiments, ones of alienation rather than affiliation. But he was also up against something more fundamental than that: the unstable nature of the godly alliance. Certainly there were centripetal forces that served to keep them together and reasonably united at certain points during the 1640s and 1650s, but their story demonstrates the pattern Bruce Lincoln identifies. A society like theirs ‘may be split apart by the persisting tensions between those entities that conjoined in its formation, with the resultant formation of two or more smaller syntheses’.102 That is the broader process of the seventeenth century: the fragmentation of dissent. It is not necessarily the case that in the beginning these individual elements were self-consciously aware of themselves as such. Faced with a common threat, most notably in Archbishop William Laud, they could easily find themselves in accord. But as they confronted key questions in the Westminster asssembly and as they navigated the high-stakes political developments of the 1640s they came to see that they did indeed have different points of view and that those differences mattered,103 as small as they might now seem to us. Baxter and others kept trying to bring the orthodox godly to see the vast extent of what they had in common, but in the end it was not enough. His efforts at peacemaking 216

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may not have succeeded as he wished, but they certainly caution us against taking easy labels at face value. In fact, Baxter, whom we call a ‘presbyterian’, had an awful lot in common with those we call ‘congregationalist’. If we are to appreciate the complexity of these godly groupings during the 1650s, we would do well to keep that in mind.

NOTES In the development of this chapter I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the encouragement and advice of Tom Charlton, John Coffey, Crawford Gribben, Neil Keeble, Ben Schonthal and Elliot Vernon.



1 Edw[ard] Burton to Baxter (17 July 1658): DWL, MS Baxter Correspondence [BC], vol. 3, fo. 46 (CCRB, letter 465, I, p. 318). 2 Baxter to Edward Burton (22 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 62v (CCRB, letter 467, I, pp. 319–20). 3 Edw[ard] Burton to Baxter (17 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 46 (CCRB, letter 465, I, p. 318). 4 Richard Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, the necessary means of reformation, and reconciliation (1658), p. 248. 5 Baxter, RB, I, 113, §171. 6 Richard Baxter, Five disputations of church-government and worship (1659), p. 348. 7 B. Lincoln, Discourse and the construction of society: comparative studies of myth, ritual, and classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 9–11. 8 J. Coffey, The congregational lecture 2012: brethren or sectaries? Richard Baxter on the congregationalists (Congregational Hall Trust, 2012), pp. 14, 16, 21. 9 Lincoln, Discourse and the construction of society, p. 10. 10 For recent discussion of Baxter’s ecclesiology in principle and in practice, see P. C. H. Lim, In pursuit of purity, unity, and liberty: Richard Baxter’s puritan ecclesiology in its seventeenth century context (Leiden: Brill, 2004); J. W. Black, Reformation pastors: Richard Baxter and the ideal of the reformed pastor (Bletchley: Paternoster, 2004); G. J. Segger, Richard Baxter’s reformed liturgy: a puritan alternative to the Book of Common Prayer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); and S. J. G. Burton, ‘The heavenly pattern of the church: Trinitarian and covenantal themes in Richard Baxter’s “association ecclesiology”’, Ecclesiology, 10 (2014), 53–75. 11 Baxter, RB, I, 84–5, §136. 12 Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, p. 165. 13 Ibid., pp. 157–8. 14 Baxter to Thomas Lambe (29 September 1658): Baxter, RB, appendix III, 63 (CCRB, letter 503, I, pp. 348–50). 15 Baxter offered a long list of ‘advantages’ that he felt worked in his favour (Baxter, RB, I, 86–96, §137). 16 Baxter to Edward Burton (22 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 62v (CCRB, letter 467, I, pp. 319–20). 17 Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, pp. 154–5. 18 [Richard Baxter], The agreement of divers ministers of Christ in the county of Worcester (1656), pp. 4–6. 19 Baxter, Five disputations, Preface, p. 21. 217

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This is evident, for instance, in Reformed pastor, pp. 188–9. Baxter, Reformed pastor, Preface, sig. [B4]r–v. Baxter, Five disputations, Epistle Dedicatory, sig. A1v. Ibid., p. 103. Ibid., Preface, p. 29. Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, p. 172. Baxter, Christian concord (1653), Explication, 1v–2, 32. See, for instance, Baxter, Reformed pastor, p. 292; and Richard Baxter, Judgment and advice of the assembly of the associated ministers of Worcester-shire (1658), p. 7. Baxter, Five disputations, p. 337. In the opening section of part II of the Baxter, RB, written in 1665, Baxter described each of these four groups in turn by explaining what he liked and did not like: ‘each one had some Truths in peculiar, which the other overlookt, or took little notice of, and each one had their proper Mistakes, which gave advantage to their Adversaries; though all of them had so much truth in common among them, as would have made these Kingdoms happy, if it had been unanimously and soberly reduced to practice’ (II, 135, §1). Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, 2v. See also Baxter’s correspondence with Barbara Lambe, Thomas Lambe and William Allen (Baxter, RB, appendix III and IV). Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 94. Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, Epistle to the Reader, sig. [B1], and p. 216. Lincoln, Discourse and the construction of society, p. 9. Baxter, RB, I, 97, §140. See also Universal concord, To the Reader, where Baxter wanted to be known only as a ‘Christian & Catholike’; and A third defence of the cause of peace (1681), p. 110, where he referred to himself as ‘a Catholick Christian’ and ‘an Episcopal-Presbyterian-Independent’. In this they follow the example of ‘the Vulgar’ in Baxter’s day, who also labelled these people-of-no-party ‘by the name of Presbyterians’ (Baxter, RB, II, 146, §23). Coffey, Brethren or sectaries?, p. 20. Richard Baxter, The saints everlasting rest, 2nd edition (1651), Dedication of the Whole, sig. a1r–v. See S. Mortimer, Reason and religion in the English revolution: the challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 221; Lim, Pursuit of purity, pp. 181–2. This did not preclude Baxter from using the Westminster assembly’s Shorter catechism for educational purposes in his parish, but when it came to a test of orthodoxy for believers and congregations only the language of Scripture would do. For a full account of this rival plan, see Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the formation of nonconformity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), chs 5 and 6. Lincoln, Discourse and the construction of society, p. 8. For a full discussion of this tendency, see T. Cooper, Fear and polemic in seventeenth-century England: Richard Baxter and antinomianism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 46–51. John Humfrey to Baxter, 11 May 1654: DWL, MS BC. vol. 1, fo. 193v (CCRB, letter 179, I, pp. 138–9), and [c. autumn 1657]: DWL, MS BC, vol. 1, fo. 197 (CCRB, letter 397, I, pp. 266–8).

Polity and peacemaking 43 [George Morley], The bishop of Winchester’s vindication of himself from divers false, scandalous and injurious reflexions made upon him by Mr. Richard Baxter in several of his writings (1683), p. 48. 44 William Bartlet, Ichnographia: or, a model of the primitive congregational way (1647), p. 30. 45 Ibid., p. 51. 46 Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Jeremiah Burroughes and William Bridge, An apologeticall narration (1643), p. 14. 47 H. Powell, The crisis of British protestantism: church power in the puritan revolution, 1638–44 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, pp. 167–73; R. W. Dale, History of English congregationalism (Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), p. 274. 48 Baxter, Five disputations, pp. 67–8. 49 Ibid., p. 335. 50 Ibid., pp. 88–9. Ignatius wrote that ‘there is one flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ … and one cup … there is but one altar for the whole Church, and one bishop, with the presbytery and the deacons’ (Ignatius, Letter to the Philadelphians, IV (Ante-Nicene Fathers, gen. eds Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols (1885–87; reprinted Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2012), I, p. 81)). 51 Baxter, Five disputations, p. 92. 52 Ibid., pp. 347–8, 349. See also pp. 12–13. 53 Baxter, Christian concord, Propositions, sig. B3v, B4v. 54 Bartlet, Model of the congregational way, p. 31. 55 Dale, History of English congregationalism, p. 274. 56 Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, pp. 152–6. 57 Baxter, RB, I, 83, §135. 58 S. Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World settlers and the call of home (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 139. 59 Ibid., pp. 124, 127–8. 60 Baxter to Edward Burton (22 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 62v (CCRB, letter 467, I, pp. 319–20). 61 Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, pp. 5–9. 62 Baxter to Edward Burton (22 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 62v (CCRB, letter 467, I, pp. 319–20). 63 Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 38. 64 Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 40. See also Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, p. 225. 65 See also Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, p. 226. 66 Ibid., p. 228. 67 Baxter to Thomas Lambe (29 September 1658): Baxter, RB, appendix III, 63 (CCRB, letter 503, I, pp. 348–50). 68 Baxter to Edward Burton (22 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 62v (CCRB, letter 467, I, pp. 319–20). 69 John Cotton, The keyes of the kingdome of Heaven (London, 1644); Powell, Crisis, pp. 122–3. 70 For a subtle investigation of Cotton’s understanding, see Powell, Crisis, ch. 5. 71 Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, pp. 52–3; Richard Baxter, Certain disputa219

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72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93

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tions of right to the sacraments and the true nature of visible Christianity (1657), pp. 2–3; Baxter, Universal concord (1660), p. 74. Baxter, Five disputations, p. 101. Baxter, Christian concord, pp. 14, 15. Ibid., Propositions XV and XVIII. Baxter, Universal concord, p. 84. See also Baxter, RB, I, 150, §31. Baxter to Edward Burton (22 July 1658): DWL, MS BC, vol. 3, fo. 62v (CCRB, letter 467, I, pp. 319–20). Baxter to Barbara Lambe (22 August 1658): Baxter, RB, appendix III, 57 (CCRB, letter 483, I, pp. 332–4). Baxter, Judgment and advice, p. 6. Baxter to Barbara Lambe (22 August 1658): Baxter, RB, appendix III, 57 (CCRB, letter 483, I, pp. 332–4); Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 36. Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 36. For a sense of the effort involved, see Baxter, Confirmation and restauration, pp. 175–80. Baxter to Thomas Lambe (29 September 1658): Baxter, RB, appendix III, 63 (CCRB, letter 503, I, pp. 348–50). Ibid.; Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 37. Baxter, RB, III, 46, §103, and III, 67–8; Baxter to John Eliot [January 1669]: DWL, MS BC, vol. 4, fo. 7 (CCRB, letter 768, II, pp. 69–71). See also Coffey, Brethren or sectaries?, p. 12. Baxter, Christian concord, Explication, p. 37. Baxter, RB, I, 86, §136. R. Baxter, A sermon of judgement preached at Pauls … and now enlarged (1655), Epistle Dedicatory. Baxter, RB, II, 188, §46. Baxter to Philip Nye (c. March 1658): Baxter, RB, II, 188, §46 (CCRB, letter 441, I, pp. 298–9). For evidence of this, see Cooper, Formation of nonconformity, p. 234. The title page says that this part was written in 1655, but that is most likely an error or a misreading of 1658. This is almost certainly the document that is referred to in the margin of Baxter, RB, II, 193, §47 as ‘being some how or other mislaid’. For another discussion of its contents, see Coffey, Brethren or sectaries?, pp. 23–7. Richard Baxter, Church concord: containing a disswasive from the unnecessary division and separation (1691), p. 5. Ibid., pp. 42–3. The Latin term means ‘concerning an end or telos’; this is what the controversy was in the end all about, and Baxter could not concede that. I am grateful to my colleague John Hale for clarifying my understanding on this point. Ibid., p. 54. G. Nuttall, The holy spirit in puritan faith and experience (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), p. 2. A. Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 330; M. Goldie, gen. ed., The entring book of Roger Morrice 1677–1691, vol. 1, Roger Morrice and the puritan whigs (Woodbridge: The

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97 98 99 100 101

102 103

Boydell Press, 2007), p. 227. Baxter himself lamented that the force of persecution squeezed all nonconformists into an ‘Independent and Separating Shape, and outward Practice, though not upon the same Principles’ (Baxter, RB, III, 43, §96). See A. Wimmer, Ethnic boundary making: institutions, power, networks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 1–2. Lincoln, Discourse and the construction of society, p. 10. Ibid. Cooper, Formation of nonconformity, pp. 228–30. Baxter, RB, I, 97, §140. Geoffrey Nuttall is more positive, noting the breadth of the movement reflected in the seventy-two ministers who were at one time or another members of the Association (‘The Worcestershire association: its membership’, JEH, 1:2 (1950), 203). Lincoln, Discourse and the construction of society, p. 11. See Richard Baxter, Catholick unity: or, the only way to bring us all to be of one religion (1660), pp. 292–5; and Cooper, Formation of nonconformity, pp. 302–3.

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Chapter 11

‘Promote, protect, prosecute’: the congregationalist divines and the establishment of church and magistrate in Cromwellian England Hunter Powell 1

I

t might be said that England’s attempt at a reformation of the national church in the 1640s failed because it was a British experiment. Forced by the need for a Scottish military alliance, it was derailed by clashing notions of the relationship between church and state within the divergent British traditions of church polity. By contrast, the effort to achieve a church settlement in the 1650s was an English effort, albeit one that sought to realise ideas most fully developed in New England in the churches of old England. In the 1640s, the Westminster assembly set out to model its settlement on that of the ‘best reformed churches’, with Covenanter Scotland offering itself as the pre-eminent pattern. That attempt was the assembly’s ultimate undoing. What continental and Scottish divines failed to grasp was that the magisterial foundations of the Church of England could not easily be replaced by reconstructing a national church whose power was ultimately coextensive with, but independent of, the state. Just as it had been Charles I’s Church of England before the civil wars, in the 1640s the new ‘Church of England’ had to be Parliament’s church. Indeed, the entire programme of the Westminster assembly precipitously unravelled when Parliament insisted on claiming the final say on excommunication to itself. This parliamentary power play forced the frustrated Scottish commissioners in the assembly to beat a retreat back to Scotland, laying the failure of the Westminster assembly squarely at the feet of England’s ‘Erastian’ Parliament. A common presbyterian trope against the congregationalists was to describe congregationalists by the offensive description ‘independents’, a phrase connoting a radical separation from both other churches and the state. During the Westminster assembly debates, Philip Nye, one of the  leading congregationalist divines, had turned the polemical tables on the Scottish presbyterians by calling them the real ‘independent’ party. Nye cleverly 222

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played the ‘foreigner’ card on the Scots. They were the true ‘independents’, he argued, because they viewed the national church as standing alongside the state, complementing it, rather than being subordinate to it. The state was foundational to the English Reformation, and, even when Charles fled London, Parliament never intended to recuse itself from the religious oversight vested in the state by the Tudor Reformation. If the Britannic presbyterian vision of the Westminster assembly was defeated by the revolutionary turn of events in 1648, the question of finding a way to regulate religion and churches across the country remained. Parliament’s civil-war settlement, what Robert Baillie called its ‘lame Erastian’ presbyterianism, had not survived the revolutionary turn of events. This had almost led to a de facto separation of church and state in the early years of the Rump Parliament. The situation was rife with the contradictions inherent in the new republic: much of the post-Reformation structure of the Church of England remained, such as the parish system and rights of patronage, without any replacement for episcopacy being in place. The assembly’s congregationalists, together with those presbyterians still willing to work with the post-regicide regimes, began to recognise that England’s puritan revolution had flirted too much with religious toleration and a wider acceptance of formerly marginalised sects and opinions. With the emergence, throughout the 1650s, of disruptive sectarian groups and heterodox beliefs like Socinianism and quakerism, the divines who represented the mainstream of pre-civil-war ‘puritanism’ sought ways to clamp down on what they saw as burgeoning religious extremism or see their own revolution completely undone. Perhaps no group had a greater impact on the various interregnum regimes’ successive attempts at a holistic church settlement than the small band of congregationalists known in the 1640s as the ‘Dissenting Brethren’ (I will use this collective title throughout this chapter as convenient shorthand, even though by the late 1640s and the 1650s they ceased to be ‘dissenting’.) This band, including Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sydrach Simpson, William Bridge and, later, John Owen, would become the most influential theologians of the interregnum state. They formed the clerical heart of England’s repeated attempts to find a way to legislate a religious settlement of church and state during the 1650s. This chapter seeks to unpack the congregationalists’ political theology of the magistrate’s role in religion. It will look at the interregnum debates surrounding religious toleration to identify the magistrates’ oversight of the church. The argument will be that the congregationalist idea of the magistrate’s role in the government of the church was essentially borrowed from John Cotton’s New England. Cotton’s view of the magistrate in New England became a model for the congregationalists’ repeated attempts both to protect Reformed doctrinal orthodoxy and to promote religious toleration in England. In turn, this model would be adopted, albeit with caution, by Cromwell and his Protectorate.2 The chapter will conclude by a closer reading of the 223

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Dissenting Brethren’s final and most complete confessional statement on the relationship between the magistrate and the church: section three of chapter XXIV of the ‘Declaration of faith and order’. This document, produced by the congregational elders who gathered at the Savoy Palace in 1658, represented the mature fruit of years of congregationalist experiments in formulating the relationship between the polity of the church and the civil state.3

CONGREGATIONALISM AND THE MAGISTRATE Congregationalism as a theory and practice of church polity needed the magistrate. Without the overarching ecclesiastical superstructure of presbyterianism or episcopacy, congregationalists relied heavily on the magistrate to keep watch over the boundaries of true religion. The magistrate’s role, which they viewed as fundamentally biblical and based on Hebrew precedent, was to promote the gospel and protect the state.4 As the Dissenting Brethren made clear in their 1644 Apologeticall narration, the label ‘independent’ was ‘abh[orrent]’ and ‘detest[able]’ precisely because the theoretical basis of their view of church polity was predicated on the power of magistrate in spiritual and civil matters.5 Indeed, the congregational way worked with the power of the magistrate in ways that presbyterianism denied. As William Lamont has stated, ‘what to the Independents [in the 1650s] was a step towards “godly rule” was to presbyterians a step away from it.’6 Thus they distinguished the dependency on the magistrate in ‘the congregational way’ from the complete separation of church and state held by some separatists and from the ecclesiastical imperium of a presbyterian system.7 The Dissenting Brethren’s understanding of the magistrate’s role in religion was firmly rooted in transatlantic congregationalist views of church polity. As Woolrych notes, the congregationalists’ 1658 confession, the ‘Savoy declaration’, sought ‘the fullest accord with the churches’ brethren in New England’.8 To some degree, the Dissenting Brethren had been Cotton’s informal representatives at the Westminster assembly, publishing his leading treatise on church polity, The keyes of the kingdom of Heaven, in England in 1644. They continued to promote the New England way (or at least, Cotton’s version of it) in matters dealing with the church settlement debates of the 1650s.9 New England represented a political and ecclesiological model that the Dissenting Brethren sought to implement in old England. It would be of a variant kind – for example the Dissenting Brethren were more willing to accept those who believed in believer’s baptism than their New England fellows – but this does not mean, as a number of historians have argued, that the Dissenting Brethren were beginning to distance themselves from Cotton.10 In 1959 A. G. Matthews set the tone for much subsequent historiography when he dismissed the continuity between New England’s view of the magistrate and the English congregationalist statements in the ‘Savoy 224

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declaration’ on the basis of New England’s apparent intolerance.11 The misconception that the Dissenting Brethren became embarrassed by New England’s alleged religious intolerance has sometimes undermined the study of the congregationalists in the 1650s.12 In a statement that Cromwell certainly would have concurred with, Cotton shows just how much New England congregationalists were willing in theory to tolerate: And for the Civill State, we know no ground they have to persecute Jewes, or Turkes, or other Pagans for cause of Religion, though they all err in Fundamentalls. Nor would I exempt anti-Christians [i.e. Roman Catholics] neither, from Toleration, notwithstanding their Fundamental Errors, unlesse after conviction still continue to seduce simple soules into their damnable, and pernicious heresies.13

Non-Christians were to receive toleration, provided they did not proselytise or disrupt the affairs of society. Cotton was grappling with an issue that would also dominate England in the 1650s: how to do justice both to the conscientious scruples of the person involved as well as to the protection of the body politic.14 For Cotton and the Dissenting Brethren, the question was how the magistrate should act ‘towards an individual who sincerely, or conscientiously, adheres to religious beliefs or follows religious practices that are generally held by society at large to be wrong?’15 Cotton expressly denied persecution of a differently held belief publicly manifested, provided those beliefs did not threaten to lead souls to damnation or disrupt the order of the state. In 1669 the Dissenting Brethren would lead other congregationalists in old England in reminding the governors of the Massachusetts Bay colony of these principles when New England began to persecute otherwise doctrinally orthodox congregationalists who held to the doctrine of believer’s baptism.16 By all accounts, John Cotton had a strong spiritual impact on Cromwell, and New England was devoted to Cromwell and his cause.17 Indeed, when examples of New England and Cotton’s policies against sectaries were presented to Cromwell, he responded that the New Englanders had ‘acted like wise men, and God had broken the design of evil instruments’.18 In his study of toleration in the 1640s, Avihu Zakai notes that ‘The controversy about liberty of conscience and the magistrate’s power over religious matters reveals’ that ‘Massachusetts’s goal of constituting religious order and authority was in fact the very aim of the majority of orthodox Puritans in England’.19 The same could be said of the 1650s. Rather than regarding the variant strain of the Dissenting Brethren’s attempts at a church settlement as an example of their divergent views with the New England puritans, it is more accurate to recognise the confines within which the old England congregationalists were working. Cotton was free to develop his views on the magistrate in Massachusetts’s wilderness laboratory. Oliver Cromwell and the Dissenting Brethren had to develop a state church that would complete the Reformation in a country beset by competing religious interests. 225

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Though it would have been impossible for Massachusetts to be replicated in England, New England was still a prototype for Cromwell’s England. John Cotton knew this limitation. Most obviously, he acknowledged the uniqueness of England’s religious divisions by pleading for unity between those presbyterians and congregationalists who held to confessional orthodoxy, something Cromwell certainly came to favour.20 In his rationale for allowing a presbyterian to join a congregational church, we hear a refrain that would echo throughout the 1650s and down to the 1658 ‘Savoy declaration’: ‘Error in Judgment about Discipline is not a Heresie against the Foundation of Christian Religion’.21 It is quite clear that Cotton would have supported the cause to rebuild godly unity in interregnum England.

THE HUMBLE PROPOSALS OF 1652: THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY In September 1652 John Owen preached a sermon before the Commons replete with dire warnings against sectary views of the magistrate’s power. ‘Say some’, Owen told Parliament, ‘the magistrate must not support the gospel; say others, the gospel must subvert the magistrate’. Owen continued that there were those who say ‘your rule is only for men as men, you have nothing to do with the interest of Christ and the church’. By contrast, another group argued ‘You have nothing to do to rule men but upon the account of being saints’.22 It was a telling summary of the tumultuous last year of the Rump Parliament. The Humble proposals, the congregationalists’ March 1652 manifesto for church settlement during the English republic, had been percolating beneath the legislative activities of a Parliament beleaguered by an increasingly active sectary movement.23 There was an alarming radicalisation of those who advocated a complete separation of church and state. For ‘magisterial’ congregationalists like John Owen, who believed that the magistrate was an agent of the gospel’s propagation, decisive action needed to be taken.24 On 10 February 1652, John Owen, accompanied by ‘divers Ministers’, had appeared before the bar of Commons with a petition, a warrant and a book.25 The book in question was the Socinian, anti-Trinitarian Racovian catechism, the warrant was for the seizure of all copies of the catechism, and the petition was a request to suppress those promulgating the doctrines of the catechism.26 On 27 January the Council of State had issued a warrant for the seizure of the Racovian catechism. The Council, it seems, had Owen, Simpson, Goodwin and Nye present the Warrant to the Commons.27 Parliament created a committee to examine the Racovian catechism and a subcommittee to enter into dialogue with ‘these ministers’ and ‘to consider with them upon such Proposals as shall be offered for the better Propagation of the Gospel’.28 The result of these deliberations, the Humble proposals, exposed the depths of fear and anxiety permeating the various religious parties in post-civil-war England. The Humble proposals basically promoted an extension to England of the 226

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model for the propagation of the gospel and approval of ministers that had already been used by the Rump Parliament in Wales.29 The proposals sought to encourage and protect the right preaching of the word through the vetting, supervising and disciplining of the clergy.30 The main sticking point of the Humble proposals was the fourteenth proposal, which addressed the power of the magistrate and called for a confession of faith that ‘[none] be suffered to preach or promulgate any thing in opposition unto such principles’.31 This was the first call during the interregnum for a holistic church settlement: a structure for approving and ejecting ministers, preventing disruptive heresy and creating a corresponding confessional statement. The Humble proposals caused something of a stir among advanced protestant supporters of the England republic. Carolyn Polizzotto has noted that the sectaries, who had believed the Dissenting Brethren to be their ‘erstwhile protectors’, were now forced to ‘take a separate stand’.32 Spearheading the sectaries’ counter-attack was the relentlessly provocative Roger Williams, who came home from America to see what he perceived to be theocratic New England being erected in old England. Williams was in a transatlantic fighting mood and published an attack on John Cotton’s Massachusetts. Attached to this diatribe against his colonial enemy was an appendix that directly attacked the congregationalists in old England.33 It is important to note Williams’s experience on both sides of the Atlantic. His critiques are suggestive in their ability to validate the transatlantic similarity in the magistrates’ role in religion. Attacking John Cotton and the Dissenting Brethren separately, in his mind, was killing one bird with two stones. As he stated in a letter in late 1652, ‘It hath pleased God … to engage me in divers skirmishes ag[ain]st priests both of old and New England’.34 For Williams, a state-run system of approving and rejecting ministers meant that the ‘Independents implicitly and silently challenge[ed] the power of ordination’.35 In so doing the Dissenting Brethren, Williams believed, were effectively arrogating the power to ordain to themselves.36 Williams represented a fear that liberty for tender consciences, fought so hard for during the civil war, was eroding. In this, he had an unwitting ally in Richard Baxter, who saw the Dissenting Brethren as destroying any hope for unity among the godly in England. ‘Upon hearing of the Ministers’ proposals’, Baxter wrote to a friend, ‘I hear the Independents are now cutting out all [but] themselves’.37 However, the Humble proposals, far from being a divisive, congregationalist power grab, was a real attempt for a broad religious settlement. If anything the Humble proposals, as Blair Worden has noted, were ‘almost presbyterian’.38 This is not surprising when we keep in mind how many concessions the Dissenting Brethren were willing to make to reunite the Reformed centre ground. This was England, not New England, and the Dissenting Brethren knew there had to be an accommodation uniting the Calvinistic centre ground in England if there was to be any hope of settlement. The Humble proposals, as Michael Lawrence has argued, provided ‘a 227

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common cause and a common vehicle which had the potential to reunite puritans on both sides of the ecclesiological divide’.39 Of course, religious liberty had its limits. In the fourteenth proposal of the Humble proposals, Owen and the Dissenting Brethren had committed themselves to a confession of faith that fenced the field of toleration. This would be produced in December 1652 when a modified version of the Humble proposals was published with a sixteen-point confessional statement of the Principles of Christian religion.40 Given the relative broadness of the church settlement hinted at in the proposals, and the ‘generous freedom of worship and association outside of it’, Parliament would have been well advised to have accepted the petition.41 Indeed, as Austin Woolrych observed, had Parliament acted on these proposals, ‘religion might have been a potent means of rallying the centre against the extremes. In the event, by contrast, it was to become a trigger for the Parliament’s expulsion.’42 The frustrating failure of reforms under the Rump Parliament necessitated a ‘surrogate’ governing body that would be strictly limited in tenure: the Nominated assembly, more colloquially known as ‘Barebones’ Parliament’.43 Cromwell had high hopes for the Nominated assembly. Francis Bremer and Robert Paul have pointed out the latent connection between the Nominated assembly – as it was intended to function – and the Massachusetts Bay colony.44 New England was a society governed where visible saints exercised power and it is quite conceivable that Cromwell had this in mind when he created the Nominated assembly.45 The congregationalists William Bridge and John Owen were both involved in the nominating process. The Nominated assembly, as Austin Woolrych has shown, was, at least at the beginning, characterised by a sober congregationalism.46 Indeed, Cromwell’s opening speech before the assembly suggests that he was thinking of it as a kind of ‘Church-meeting’ met within the parish of a whole nation.47 John Owen preached before the assembly and it can be assumed that he had hoped it would finally enact the religious legislation he and the Dissenting Brethren had advocated. Like Cromwell, Owen was optimistic about an assembly of visible saints and on more than one occasion stated that God’s favour would be poured on a nation that had redeemed rulers.48 However, the Nominated assembly soon became a disappointment to both Cromwell and the magisterial congregationalists. The camel’s back was broken when radicals defeated proposals that went some way towards the settlement of a national church administration in terms similar to the Humble proposals.49 The defeat of these proposals led the moderates in the assembly to resign their seats on 8 December 1652, inevitably leading to its dissolution.50 In 1657 John Owen reflected on the dissolution of the Nominated Assembly and the consequent adoption of the Protectoral constitution, the Instrument of government (1653), as the time when the ‘Governor of all things so quickly defeated all [the] councils and all [the] attempts … of those whom better things might have been expected’.51 Yet, with the Instrument, the 228

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issues of a confessional basis for the public Church and religious toleration had moved beyond the suggestive. Developing the Humble proposals, the Instrument of government required that a ‘provision’ be made by the government for the ‘maintenance of able … teachers’, and the ‘discovery and confutation of error’.52 In 1654 Oliver Cromwell, in consultation with the Dissenting Brethren and some moderate presbyterian ministers, established two Protectoral ordinances with the goal of ‘purging of the minsitrye’.53 A central committee of thirty-eight ‘triers’ would examine new ministers, and local committees known as ‘ejectors’ would provide oversight of ministers already in post. The settlement was largely a recapitulation of the Humble proposals’ request for an administrative system for ministerial approval and maintenance, albeit in an inverted form.54 This ministerial vetting system, however, was not the only way the Humble proposals resurfaced with the establishment of the Protectorate. The Dissenting Brethren’s pleas for ecclesiastical order were the flipside of their fears of ecclesiastical anarchy. This is why the proposals had also required that the magistrate promote and protect the fundamentals of Christian religion. ‘Triers’ and ‘ejectors’ could only monitor the godliness of local ministers. The nation still needed to arm itself against theological anarchy outside the church. What we also find when examining the articles on Christian religion in the Instrument of government is that they incorporate many of the themes articulated in the fourteenth proposal of the Humble proposals. The proposals explicitly requested that those ‘who oppose those Principles of Christian Religion … may not be suffered to preach or promulgate anything in opposition unto such Principles’.55 There was to be a basic confession of the faith (later presented as the Principles of Christian religion), which people were permitted to dissent from, but were not to attack publicly. Likewise, the Instrument of government called for a public profession, but one that none might be ‘compelled’ to follow.56 Dissenters were to be won over ‘by sound doctrine and the example of good conversation’, not state compulsion.57 The Dissenting Brethren had been arguing against religious coercion by the magistrate for almost a decade. Jeremiah Burroughs, the well-respected congregationalist, had stated in 1646 ‘that persuasion and example were the only ways to combat error, force was not to be used’.58 This toleration, however, would not be allowed for those who ‘abuse this liberty to the civil injury of others and to the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts’.59 John Lambert, the Cromwellian major general and author of the Instrument of government, appears to have used the Dissenting Brethren’s Humble proposals in framing the Instrument. It has not been possible to definitively connect Lambert to Owen in 1653, but Lambert was certainly worshipping in Owen’s gathered congregation by 1659.60 It is possible, however, that Lambert had become close to Owen when Owen was Cromwell’s army chaplain. Sir Gilbert Pickering and William Sydenham, both opponents of the religious radicals in the Nominated assembly, and who assisted Lambert in ­establishing the 229

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Protectorate, apparently had a close relationship with Owen in 1653 and also joined Owen’s gathered church in 1659. Like Cromwell, these draftsmen all shared a zeal for liberty of tender consciences.61 Five months after the drafting of the Instrument, Pickering and Sydenham were placed on a small committee to meet with Nye and Owen to discuss the implementation of the ‘triers’ scheme.62 This suggests that Pickering and Sydenham saw continuity between Owen’s proposals and the Instrument of government’s vision of a church settlement. In any event, the Instrument of government carried forward many of the themes promulgated in the Humble proposals, themes that reappear in the subsequent Humble petition and advice, and later the ‘Savoy declaration’. The first half of the interregnum, therefore, saw the development and acceptance, ultimately into legislation, of the Dissenting Brethren’s ideas on the polity of the church.

TOWARDS A NEW CONFESSION OF FAITH: THE PROTECTORATE With the Instrument of government, magistrates were taking on the role the Dissenting Brethren had been asking them to assume since the 1640s. The Dissenting Brethren certainly intended to keep their end of the bargain, for that same year Cromwell would once again call upon them to provide England with the public profession called for in the Instrument of government. The resulting New confession of faith was another attempt to complete revolutionary England’s incipient religious settlement.63 The theological ambiguity of the religious clauses of the Instrument necessitated confessional clarification. This would not be easy; a confession would expose the limits of toleration and test the permissiveness of the new Protectorate. On 4 September 1654 Thomas Goodwin preached the opening sermon of the first Protectorate Parliament. The text of Goodwin’s sermon has not survived; however, Cromwell made direct references to it in his speech before Parliament the same day. Cromwell’s comments are revealing: Truly another reason, new to me, you had today in the sermon. Much recapitulation of providence, much allusion to a State, and dispensation in respect of discipline and correction, of mercies and deliverances, – the only parallel of God’s dealing with us that I know in the world, which was largely and wisely held forth to you this day, Israel’s bringing out of Egypt through a wilderness, by many signs and wonders towards a place of rest: I say, towards it.64

That Goodwin and Cromwell concurred that England had not yet arrived at the Promised Land indicates the parallel between England and theocratic Israel. Between Egypt and Canaan, God had constituted a godly nation, with rules and ordinances administered by the magistrate for the protection of his nation and the promotion of Godly worship. Owen, Goodwin and Nye had hoped that the godly rule of the Nominated assembly would fulfil this 230

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role. When this failed, it was hoped that the Protectorate and the Instrument of government would do what that Barebones’ Parliament could not. The English had been redeemed from ecclesiastical bondage, yes, but, as with the ancient Israelites, the people were prone to grumble and disobey, and always tempted to return to slavery. Just as in the Hebrew Bible, the people needed guidance if they were to safely cross the Jordan.65 Goodwin had, Cromwell reminded Parliament, recounted what ‘this Government’ (referring to the Instrument of government and the Protectorate) ‘hath endeavored to put a stop to the heady way of every man making himself a minister and preacher’ and ‘hath endeavored to settle a method of approving and sanctioning of men of piety and ability to discharge that work’ for ‘the expulsion of those who may be judged unfit for this work, who are scandalous and who are the common scorn and contempt of that administration’.66 The ministerial vetting system, though still lacking a confession of faith, was working in practice. Even Richard Baxter was forced to admit Cromwell’s ‘trier’ and ‘ejector’ system was successful.67 For the Dissenting Brethren, however, the magistracy had not yet completed its work. John Owen’s speech at the opening of the Protectorate’s second Parliament on 17 September 1656 reflects the anxiety of the previous decade and seems to presciently anticipate the crisis over the quaker James Naylor only months later. One senses that Owen recognised that he was standing on the edge of a sustainable religious settlement, yet was fully aware just how precarious the situation really was. His confidence, so high at the beginning of the interregnum, seemed to be waning: If, instead of repairing to the Work of God [in establishing Zion], you should be found contending against it, and setting up your own wisdom in the place of the wisdom of God, it would not be to your advantage. I know many things will be suggested unto you; settling of religion, establishing a discipline in the church, not to toleration errors, and the like. From which discourses I know what conclusions some men are apt to draw, if no otherwise, yet from what they have been doing for years. Do we, then, plead for errors and unsettlement? God forbid! God hath undertaken to found and establish Zion, to settle it, and he will do it; and I pray you may be instrumental therein, according to his mind.68

The congregationalists’ attempts at religious settlement discussed above – the Humble proposals (1652) and the Instrument of government (1654), together with the Humble petition and advice (1657) which, although largely the work of presbyterian-leaning Cromwellians, was adapted from the Instrument – chart the progress of increasingly restrictive views on toleration.69 The Dissenting Brethren’s view of the magistrate was an essential part of their theological outlook. In reading Owen’s statement, we see that, in discussing the state, he also knew that magistrates needed theological boundaries to guide them. Aside, perhaps, from its source, there was nothing in the Humble petition and advice that the Dissenting Brethren would have found objectionable. Like the Instrument, ‘the new constitution barred all those who dissented from the 231

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public profession from state support and restricted their freedom to air contrary views’.70 Although the second Protectorate Parliament would not last to complete its programme of religious legislation, many of that Parliament’s MPs had come round to the call to complete the Cromwellian ecclesiastical administration by establishing the doctrinal boundaries provided by a confession of faith.

THE LAST CONFESSION: THE ‘SAVOY DECLARATION’ The dissolution of the second Protectorate Parliament once again frustrated the Dissenting Brethren’s attempt to finally establish their vision of a broad but definitely congregationalist ecclesiastical settlement in England. Seizing on the call for such a settlement in the Humble petition and advice and with the, at least tacit, support of Oliver Cromwell, the congregationalists met at the Savoy in October 1658 to thrash out their last confession. An explicit purpose of the ‘Savoy declaration’ was, as Thomas Goodwin told Richard Cromwell on 12 October 1658, to lay the foundations of agreement with the presbyterians.71 Such an agreement, naturally, would be in accord with the Dissenting Brethren’s programme throughout the 1650s. As such the ‘Savoy declaration’ represented the final attempt by the Dissenting Brethren to bring together the congregationalist magisterial church settlement that they had developed throughout the years of the civil wars and interregnum. Discussion of the ‘Savoy declaration’ will focus on the importance of the magistrate set out in the third section of chapter XXIV. This section reads: Although the Magistrate is bound to incourage, promote and protect the professors and profession of the Gospel and to manage and order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the world, and to that end to take care that men of corrupt mindes and conversations do not licentiously publish and divulge Blasphemy and Errors in their own nature, subverting the faith, and inevitably destroying the souls of them that receive them: Yet in such differences about the Doctrines of the Gospel, or ways of worship of God, as may befall men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways or worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the Magistrate under the Gospel to abridge them of their liberty.72

This part of chapter XXIV is significant on several levels. The section attempted to bridge the rift between liberty of conscience and the promotion of gospel religion, a chasm, as we have seen above, that had made a church settlement and corresponding confession of faith so elusive. This chapter of the ‘Savoy declaration’, therefore, represents the culmination of these attempts to codify a viable role for the magistrate in regulating religious policy while protecting the tender consciences of dissenters. In this and the following sections, we shall break down the main components of section three of chapter XXIV, sentence by sentence, and use the work of John Owen 232

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and other congregationalist divines to understand the theological reasoning behind it. In so doing, we shall see that congregationalists believed their model for a Christian magistrate could both promote the gospel and protect the state from heterodoxy. Turning to the first part of the third section of chapter XXIV of the ‘Savoy declaration’: Although the Magistrate is bound to incourage, promote and protect the professors and profession of the Gospel and to manage and order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the world …

For John Owen, the duty of the magistrate to promote and protect the true gospel faith was bound up in the architectonic structures of revelation and ‘from the Light and Law of nature’.73 God reveals himself to humanity, and it is incumbent upon humanity to worship God according to the light of God revealed to them. The human race was created to worship God, and, though humanity’s ability to obey God had been ruined by the Fall, God’s right to demand obedience remained. As Owen put it, ‘to revile, or to blaspheme this God, or his Name, is an evil punished by them who have jus peniendi, or the right restraint in them or committed to them’ (i.e., the magistrate).74 For a magistrate to neglect this duty would be to violate the very law of God revealed in the ‘Light and Law of nature’.75 The duty was further bound up in the covenant principles declared in the post-diluvian account of Noah. The magistrate ‘ought to exert his power and authority for the supportment, preservation and furtherance of the worship of God, and to coerce and restrain that which would ruine it’.76 In a similar vein, Thomas Goodwin, commenting on God’s command to Noah in Genesis 9:6 (‘He that sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’), states that this commission was given because ‘it was necessary for the due and orderly execution hereof that there should be orderly societies of men, which should be the seat of a government by which this punishment should be exercised’.77 Thus the power of the magistrate was to bring order and stability, otherwise, as Goodwin notes, Cain would have feared in his conscience that any man ‘or every man’ might have killed him.78 For Owen, the basis of the magistrate’s involvement in religion is to be found in the ‘positive law of God given in reference unto doctrines of Faith, and wayes of worship, and pure Revelation; such as were professed, and walked under the Old Testament’.79 Although the nation of Israel was a type of the spiritual Christian nation to come, the commands of the Lord for the rulers of nations to protect and promote the right worship of God had not been abolished. Theocratic Israel was thus a model for congregationalism on both sides of the Atlantic.80 There was a fascination among congregationalists with Hebrew scriptures, and along with that a devotion to the model of ‘moral and civil government of a nation’.81 This fascination with the Hebrew Bible coloured their reading of Israel’s New Testament antitype, namely the 233

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church and Christ’s present reign with his people. For Owen the temple cult and the concomitant ceremonies prescribed in the Mosaic Law were only types and therefore existed only for a season; nevertheless, the worship itself continued. While, along with other Reformed divines, the congregationalists would argue that the ceremonial aspects of worship were fulfilled (and thus disappeared) with the advent of Christ, they also believed that the magistrates’ ability to protect the right worship of God’s people was a blessing and nowhere annulled in the New Testament.82 Indeed, for Owen, the peace provided for the commonwealth in the gospel dispensation is promised through the prophet Isaiah: ‘the magistrates shall lay out their power, and exert their authority, for the furtherance and preservation of the true Worship of God, the profession of Faith, the worshippers and professors thereof, and therein the whole interest of Sion’.83 The great fear in the negligence of such duties was God’s judgement on both nation and the magistrate. William Strong, an influential member of the congregationalist community until his death in 1654, stated in a sermon before the Lord Mayor of London: That men are to obey you for conscience sake, and conscience respects God only; and if you set their consciences at liberty in things of God sinfully, you may expect God shall let their consciences loose from obedience unto you, judicially; for surely they that are to obey you only out of conscience to God, if they make no conscience of obedience to him, it cannot be rationally expected, that they should be conscientious in obedience towards you. The Magistrate is to rule with God; and his great care is to be, that nothing provoke God to depart from his Government.84

Strong was expounding the godly trope that a magistrate who departs from his duty to promote the gospel will find that God departs from his nation. The ultimate fear, however, was not only God’s departure but God’s wrathful return to a nation that had forsaken its duties. Strong states in another sermon, ‘if a magistrate in his Government neglects religion, he rules without God in the world’.85 Such a godless magistrate would be unable to perform his protectoral duty of shielding the nation from God. By promoting godliness and preventing heresy the magistrate protected people from divine punishment. Strong declared: ‘The magistrate is to be a shield to them. But let the magistrate in his government neglect religion: what then? The judgment of God breaks in upon the people immediately.’86 A godly guide in the form of the Christian magistrate was needed to protect the people of God in their wilderness wandering. Moving on to the second sentence of the third section of Chapter XXIV of the Savoy declaration: and to that end to take care that men of corrupt mindes and conversations do not licentiously publish and divulge Blasphemy and Errors in their own nature, subverting the faith and inevitably destroying the souls of them that receive them. 234

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Tolerating error was one thing, tolerating heresy was quite another.87 This was, however, a knotty problem. Cromwell, along with the congregationalists, disavowed any form of liberty of conscience that threatened a stable government.88 Yet, even here, Cromwell was conflicted. The power of the magistrate to promote and protect the gospel was far easier to implement than a system of prosecuting heresy. In fact, Cromwell never prosecuted anyone for their privately held beliefs; he left that to the eternal judgement of a higher power.89 Congregationalists on both sides of the Atlantic grappled with how to deal with heretical beliefs. John Coffey has persuasively pointed out that Owen himself was undecided over the issue of punishing the silent heretic, and perhaps even changed his mind on the subject between 1649 and 1654.90 This lack of clarity resurfaced at the time of the Savoy conference when Owen struggled to delimit the power of the magistrate in matters of heresy. Owen concluded: ‘And though it cannot be proved, that any Magistrate is authorised from God to take away the life or lives of any man or men, for their disbelief or denying any heads or Articles of Christian Religion’, it does ‘not seem to be the duty of any professing obedience to Jesus Christ, to make any stated, legal, unalterable provision for their immunity, who renounce them’.91 In this section of the Savoy declaration, however, there was no lack of clarity of what should be punished. It was the disruption of the publicly held core doctrines of the gospel that necessitated the intervention of the magistrate. As Owen states elsewhere, ‘actual disturbances must have actual restraints’.92 Philip Nye’s deference to the state and suspicion of religious pluralism, if anything, outstripped that of John Owen.93 Nye stated: ‘to restrain or coerce is an Authority or Jurisdiction peculiar to Civil Magistrates, and by Christ himself denied to the highest ecclesiastical powers’.94 The authority of a pastor in ecclesiastical matters was restricted to his congregation through persuasion. If there was to be any unity in doctrine and protection of religious orthodoxy then the magistrate, whose power extends over the whole state, must be empowered with the ability to restrain disruptive heresy.95 This does not mean the magistrate serves no spiritual purpose, for that would be conceding to the arguments of the sectaries. Rather, church and the state worked symbiotically in their effort to bring about a godly society. As Nye states, ‘There is so such a Harmony and Neighbourhood between the outward and inward Man, that what works upon the one, affects the other’, so ‘also being brought into outward Subjection and Conformity (by Magistracy) the Mind and Spiritual part is more fitted for Christian Union’.96 For the Dissenting Brethren, this was a pointed rebuttal to the accusation that congregationalism was, by its very nature, anarchical. In the 1650s John Owen spent a great deal of time refuting the persistent charges that congregationalists were guilty of schism.97 For Nye, as Douglas Nobbs perceived, ‘Independency was consistent with the ruler’s power, as presbyterianism never could be, and that political office is in harmony with both conscience and congregationalism, as in Anglicanism it never could be’.98 The extent of 235

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the power of the magistrate was bound up in, and ancillary to, the congregationalists’ view of church polity. The last clause of the section of chapter XXIV of the Savoy declaration attempted to settle what was, perhaps, the most hotly contested religious topic during the British Revolution: Yet in such differences about the Doctrines of the Gospel, or ways of the worship of God, as may befall men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways or worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the Magistrate under the Gospel to abridge them from their liberty.

The definition of the terms, ‘Doctrines of the Gospel, good conscience, and foundation’ were determinative of the limit of the magistrate’s jurisdiction to intervene in a Christian’s life. Alongside this sentence, the ‘Savoy declaration’ specifically precluded imposing a confession of faith on the nation by force.99 Owen’s own interpretation of this clause was predicated upon the issue of liberty for tender consciences. The magistrate does not have the authority to compel any who hold to the head Christ Jesus, to subscribe to [a] confession of faith. That [is] because the Authority required after, exerted to the ends mentioned, would immediately affect the Conscience, and set up it self in direct opposition to the light of God therein; A defect of conveyance of such authority over Consciences of men holding the head, having been long since discovered.100

For the magistrate to force subjects to conform to a confession of faith would violate the conscience. Nevertheless, this liberty would remain true only for those who ‘hold the head Christ Jesus’. What did it mean to ‘hold to the head Christ Jesus’, or, as the Savoy declaration states, ‘holding the foundation’?101 At the very least, it meant repentance and faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection, and a Trinitarian understanding of the godhead. This ‘foundation’, therefore, amounted to belief in the minimal fundamentals articulated in the Apostles’ Creed rather than the more expansive theological statements of the Westminster confession. As the English congregationalists’ defence of baptists in the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1669 shows, the magistrate had to allow a latitude to those, like baptists, whose ‘judgment and practice’ on theological matters falling outside of these foundational doctrines were contrary to that of the magistrate and the majority of orthodox divines.102 Likewise, while the ‘Savoy declaration’ agreed a modified version of the Westminster confession for the better accommodation of the godly, especially the large contingent of presbyterians, at the same time, it refused the magistrate the power to force conformity from peaceable dissenters holding to Trinitarian Christianity. This, then, was the Dissenting Brethren’s theological understanding of the magistrate’s role in religion. It represented the culmination of some twenty years of ecclesiological thought within this core band of congregation236

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alists. The Savoy divines stated in the preface to the ‘Savoy declaration’: ‘That amongst all Christian states and Churches, there ought to be vouchsafed a forbearance and mutual indulgence unto saints of all persuasions that keep unto and hold fast to the necessary foundations of faith and holiness.’ All other issues were ‘extrafundamental, whether Faith or Order. This to have been our constant principle, we are not ashamed to confess the whole Christian world.’103

CONCLUSION Views over the magistrate and liberty of tender consciences, while rooted in Scripture, were none the less moulded by the heated and complex religious debates of the 1650s. Throughout the interregnum, the Dissenting Brethren were at the centre of a ‘concerted effort to reunify the English church around a doctrinal platform which was broadly protestant and in some sense “catholic”’.104 The state needed to fence the boundaries of orthodoxy, and, to do so, the Dissenting Brethren recognised the need for a confessional standard to act as this hedge. Enclosing the boundaries of orthodoxy, however, created a potential contradiction with the various interregnum regimes’ commitment to liberty of conscience. It was one thing to say that the magistrate should protect the church and promote the gospel; the difficulty was finding a means whereby these aims could be put into practice without trampling on the consciences of peaceable dissenters. Throughout the 1650s congregationalists attempted to chart revolutionary England’s transit between these two extremes. Ultimately, the solution to the attempt simultaneously to tolerate and to restrict was a tension that perhaps could only have been resolved in the person of Oliver Cromwell. His death would ultimately undo and end the puritan revolution.

NOTES

1 I would like to thank John Morrill, Joel Halcomb, John Coffey and Anthony Milton for their advice and input on this chapter. 2 J. Coffey, Persecution and toleration in protestant England 1558–1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000); J. Coffey, ‘The toleration controversy during the English Revolution’, in C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds), Religion in revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); B. Worden, ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate’, in W. J. Sheils (ed.), Persecution and toleration (Studies in Church History), vol. 21 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). 3 For the Savoy assembly, see The Savoy declaration of faith and order 1658, ed. A. G. Matthews (Letchworth: Independent Press, 1959); J. Halcomb, ‘A social history of congregational religious practice during the puritan revolution’, PhD Thesis (University of Cambridge, 2010), pp. 45–7; 207–42. 4 J. R. Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 104. 237

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 5 Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Jeremiah Burroughes and William Bridge, An apologeticall narration, ed. R. S. Paul (Philadelphia, PA: United Church Press, 1963), p. 23. 6 William M. Lamont, Godly rule: politics and religion, 1603–60 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1969), p. 147. 7 Collins, Hobbes, pp. 104–5. 8 A. Woolrych, Britain in revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 716–17. 9 I am indebted to Michael Lawrence for pointing out Cotton’s relationship to the assembly via the Dissenting Brethren. 10 For examples of authors who suggest this embarrassment see Bremer, Congregational communion, ch. 7. Hardman Moore, Pilgrims, p. 48, n. 71; Paul, The assembly of the Lord, pp. 31, 124; C. Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in the age of revolution, 1640–1661 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004), p. 72. 11 Savoy declaration, ‘Introduction’, p. 37. 12 Robert S. Paul has even stated that Cotton’s embarrassment of the Dissenting Brethren’s pleas for liberty for tender consciences ‘was nothing compared’ to the embarrassment Cotton caused the Dissenting Brethren. An apologetical narration, ed. Paul, p. 52. 13 Cited in C. Wright, ‘John Cotton washed and made white’, in F. C. Church and T. George (eds), Continuity and discontinuity in church history: essays presented to George Huntston Williams (Leiden: Brill, 1979), p. 348. 14 Ibid., p. 345. 15 Ibid., p. 344. 16 F. J. Bremer, ‘When? who? why?: re-evaluating a 17th-century source’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd series, 99 (1987), 63–75 17 The correspondence of John Cotton, ed. S. Bush Jr (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 469, 459. For New England’s attempts to influence religious policy in England see William Greenhill, ‘Preface’, in Thomas Allen, A chain of scripture chronology (1659); Thomas Hook, A survey and summe of church discipline (1648); Edward Johnson, A history of New-England (1653). 18 The writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. W. C. Abbot, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), IV, p. 345; F. J. Bremer, Congregational communion: clerical friendship in the Anglo-American puritan community, 1610–1692 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1994), p. 178. 19 A. Zakai, ‘Orthodoxy in England and New England: Puritans and the issue of religious toleration, 1640–1650’, Proceedings from the American Philosophical Society, 135:3 (1991), 429. See also A. Zakai, ‘Religious toleration and its enemies: the independent divines and the issue of religious during English civil war’, Albion, 21:1 (1989), 1–33. 20 J. C. Davis, ‘Cromwell’s religion’, in John Morrill (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Longman, 1990), p. 196. 21 John Cotton, Certain queries tending to an accommodation and communion of presbyteriall and congregational churches (1654), p. 8. 22 John Owen, A sermon preached to the Parliament, Octob. 13. 1652 (1652), p. 20, see also the charge to the magistrate on p. 44. 238

‘Promote, protect, prosecute’ 23 For the Humble proposals see R. Kelly, ‘Reformed or reforming? John Owen and the complexity of theological codification for mid-seventeenth century England’, in K. M. Kapic and M. Jones (eds), The Ashgate research companion to John Owen’s theology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 6–8. 24 B. Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 294. 25 CJ, VI, pp. 85–6. 26 T. M. Lawrence, ‘Transmission and transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the puritan project, 1600–1704’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002), pp. 144–6; S. Mortimer, Reason and religion in the English revolution: the challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), esp. ch. 8. 27 Lawrence, ‘Thomas Goodwin’, p. 145. 28 CJ, VI, pp. 85–6. 29 Worden, Rump, pp. 120, 234–5. 30 Collins, Hobbes, p. 167. 31 The Humble proposals of Mr. Owen, Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sympson, and other ministers (1652), p. 6. 32 C. Polizzotto, ‘The campaign against the Humble proposals of 1652’, JEH, 38 (1987), 570. 33 Roger Williams, The bloody tenet made more bloody (1652), pp. 314–20. 34 The correspondence of Roger Williams, ed. G. W. LaFantasie, 2 vols (Providence, CT: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1988), I, p. 366. 35 Polizzotto, ‘Campaign’, p. 573; Williams, Bloody tenet made more bloody, pp. 318–19 36 Polizzotto, ‘Campaign’, p. 573. 37 Lawrence, ‘Goodwin’, p. 147; T. Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the formation of noncomformity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) p. 168. 38 Ibid., p. 149. 39 Lawrence, ‘Goodwin’, p. 151. 40 Proposals for the furtherance and propagation of the gospel in this nation (1652). 41 Woolrych, Britain in revolution, p. 517. 42 Ibid., p. 517 43 For a thorough study of this transitional period see A. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), ch. 5. 44 Bremer, Congregational communion, pp. 193–4; R. S. Paul, The Lord Protector: religion and politics in the life of Oliver Cromwell (Lutterworth Press, 1955), p. 280. 45 Bremer, Congregational communion, p. 193. 46 Woolrych, Britain in revolution, p. 540. 47 Paul, The Lord Protector, p. 280. 48 P. Toon, God’s Statesman: the life and work of John Owen, pastor, educator, theologian (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1971), p. 88. 49 Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 336–9. 50 Ibid., pp. 342–6. 51 John Owen, The Oxford orations of John Owen, ed. P. Toon (Callington: Gospel Communication, 1971), p. 42. 52 Gardiner, The constitutional documents of the puritan revolution, 1625–1660 (3rd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 416. 239

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic 53 Lawrence, ‘Goodwin’, pp. 166–7. 54 A summary of this period can be found in A. Hughes, ‘The Cromwellian church’, in A. Milton (ed.), The Oxford history of Anglicanism, volume 1: Reformation and identity c.1520–1662 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 449–51. 55 The humble proposals, p. 6. 56 Gardiner, Constitutional documents, p. 416. 57 Ibid., p. 416. 58 Paul, The Lord Protector, p. 172, n. 4; Jeremiah Burroughs, Irenicum: to the lovers of truth and peace (1646), p. 41. 59 Gardiner, Constitutional documents, p. 416. 60 D. Farr, John Lambert, parliamentary soldier and Cromwellian major-general, 1619–1684 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003), p. 188. 61 B. Coward, The Cromwellian Protectorate (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 14–15; T. Venning, ‘Pickering, Sir Gilbert’ ODNB; C. H. Firth, rev. S. Kelsey, ‘Sydenham, William’, ODNB. 62 CSPD series 1654, ed. M. A. Everett Green (1886), p. 1. 63 [John Owen], A new confession of faith, or the first principles of the Christian religion (1654). 64 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell 1644–1658, ed. C. L. Stainer (Henry Frowde, 1901), pp. 128–9. 65 This interpretation of the Exodus theme and the Mosaic path to liberation was a core tenet of Puritan theology and would certainly have been on the minds of Goodwin and Cromwell. 66 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell 1644–1658, pp. 139–40. 67 C. Cross, ‘The Church in England 1646–1660’, in G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: the quest for settlement, 1646–1660 (Macmillan, 1972), p. 105. 68 John Owen, The works of John Owen, ed. W. H. Goold, 23 vols (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965–91), VIII, pp. 421–2. 69 P. Little and D. L. Smith, Parliaments and politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 214–15. 70 Lawrence, ‘Goodwin’, p. 153. 71 Mercurius politicus, no. 438 (14 October–21 October 1658), p. 923. 72 Savoy declaration, p. 37. 73 John Owen, Unto the questions sent me last night (1659), p. 1. 74 Ibid., p. 1. 75 Coffey, ‘The toleration controversy during the English Revolution’, p. 58. 76 Owen, Unto the questions, p. 2. 77 Thomas Goodwin, Of the constitution, right order, and government of the churches of Christ (1696), p. 50. For the dating of this work and how it relates to the interregnum see Thomas Michael Lawrence, ‘Transmission and transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the puritan project 1600–1704’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002), ch. 3. 78 Goodwin, Of the constitution, p. 50. 79 Owen, Unto the questions, p. 3. 80 G. F. Nuttall, Visible saints: the congregational way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), p. 143. 81 Nuttall, Visible saints, p. 143. 240

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98 99 100 101 102 103 104

Owen, Unto the questions, p. 3. Owen, Unto the questions, p. 4. William Strong, A voice from heaven (1654), introduction (not paginated). William Strong, XXXI select sermons (1656), p. 400. Ibid., p. 401. Worden, ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate’, p. 211. Collins, Hobbes, pp. 168–9. J. Morrill, Unpublished Baxter Memorial Lecture (Kidderminster, 2000), p. 5. I am grateful to John Morrill for showing me a copy of this paper. Coffey, ‘Toleration controversy’, p. 50. Owen, Unto the questions, p. 6. John Owen, A sermon preached to the honourable House of Commons (1649), p. 80. Collins, Hobbes, p. 105 Cited in D. Nobbs, ‘Philip Nye on church and state’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 5:1 (1935), 49. Nobbs, ‘Philip Nye’, 51. Cited in Nobbs, ‘Philip Nye’, 51–2. See Owen’s debates with Daniel Cawdrey. Daniel Cawdrey, The inconsistencie of the independent way (1651); Daniel Cawdrey, Independencie a great schism (1657); Daniel Cawdrey, Survey of Owen’s review (1658); John Owen, A defence of John Cotton against Cawdrey (1658); John Owen, Of schism (1657); John Owen, Owen’s review of schism in answer to Cawdrey (1657). Nobbs, ‘Philip Nye’, 54. Savoy declaration, preface. Owen, Unto the questions, p. 7. 101 ‘Savoy declaration’, p. 37. 102 See Bremer, ‘When? who? why?’, 66. Savoy declaration, p. 56. Lawrence, ‘Goodwin’, p. 144.

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Chapter 12

The Restoration episcopate and the interregnum: autobiography, suffering and professions of faith Sarah Ward Clavier1

R

estoration bishops came in all flavours: Laudians, Calvinists and those who have apparently left so little indication of their religious views that they still remain a mystery to posterity. They ranged from authoritarian micromanagers to those who seemed barely interested in the business of their individual dioceses. On the whole, however, it is difficult to imagine the events of 1660 to 1688 unfolding without their contribution as a group. The Restoration episcopate was involved not only in religious controversy but also in questions of toleration and persecution, monarchical power and political liberty. As leaders of their dioceses they had at least notional influence over their local clergy, as well as representing the established church at Court, in Parliament and (for some, at least) in the press. Given this, it is surprising that bishops’ own views and experiences of the civil wars, interregnum and Restoration have been so little explored by historians. More than most clergy, bishops had the opportunity and the means to provide a personal narrative, and to explain their actions and ideas in private and public ways: high-profile sermons, pamphlets, narratives, wills and correspondence. A significant number of Restoration bishops took this opportunity. They leave behind evidence of the interregnum experiences of the clergy within the Church of England. The autobiographical writings of these bishops had a meaningful impact upon the restored Church of England from 1660, embodying the survival of the church and its polity through their sufferings. The polity of the restored church, therefore, was formed both physically and mentally by the persecution of the 1650s, which makes it essential to examine the record of those experiences. This chapter examines these autobiographical gleanings. It explores common themes within writings produced by men of very different theological standpoints, and proposes that there were shared experiences of suffering and resistance that temporarily united clergy throughout the church polity. This not only addresses a historiographical neglect of such evidence, which falls between the disciplinary stools of history, theology and

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literature. More importantly, it reassesses the character of the Restoration episcopate, and proposes a new angle for considering the behaviour and actions of senior churchmen after the return of Charles II.

EPISCOPAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY Spiritual autobiography2 is an acknowledged and somewhat regularly discussed subgenre, but while scholars tend to focus on the inner lives of puritan or nonconformist individuals or communities, their episcopalian counterparts are frequently neglected.3 This is partly because self-­examination and self-criticism in diaries or notebooks were inherent to most strains of puritanism, emerging from within experimental Calvinism within the Elizabethan period, whereas it was apparently not so crucial to mainstream or conservative episcopalians.4 A search for the life-writing of Restoration bishops, therefore, is necessarily more difficult. None the less, such texts do exist. Several of those who were to be appointed to the episcopate petitioned Charles II in 1660, telling the story of their recent experiences. Others related their experiences in correspondence and in sermons intended to commemorate their clerical friends and contemporaries. Many used their will as an opportunity to provide a statement of their beliefs and their life experience, while a very few wrote narrative accounts or poetry. Although all of the individuals discussed herein were university graduates and, after 1660, members of the clerical elite, their social, geographical and economic origins were diverse.5 Some were from comparatively humble origins, like Humphrey Henchman (son of a London skinner) or Thomas Sprat, described by himself as ‘from an obscure Birth and Education in a far distant Country where I was the son of a priuate Minister’.6 Others, for example Nicholas Monck and William Lucy, were members of prominent gentry families.7 Furthermore, they occupied theological positions across the spectrum of post-Restoration religious conformity. Reynolds was a presbyterian, Gauden was a ‘conciliator’; Cosin, Wren and Sheldon were high churchmen; while Hacket, Henchman, Sanderson and Frewen occupied a middle ground.8 Historians have argued that the Restoration bishops were chosen for this very reason – to provide a politically stable religious balance within the episcopate and to ensure a broad base of support for the government.9 The literary theorist John Sturrock criticised historians for treating autobiographical writings ‘as typical, and certainly not as the work of resolutely idiosyncratic individuals whose experiences and responses were unlike those of anyone else’.10 This is only partially fair. It is clear that the individuals discussed herein are indeed ‘resolutely idiosyncratic’. Yet, as their autobiographical texts reveal, they also had much in common. First, many of them felt themselves to have suffered in the interregnum alongside a good proportion of their episcopalian colleagues, and felt it strongly enough to write about it. The acknowledgement and discussion of this experience 243

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could function as one way of unifying the church polity, for the bishops to emphasise their role and commitment to the church. Second, a significant proportion of them made a profession of their faith, emphasising the value of doctrine and government of the Church of England. This restated an organisational rationale, as well as principles of faith. Finally, they were in charge of implementing the legislation designed, in part, to prevent such events happening again – the act of uniformity of 1662. The episcopalian ‘sufferers’ of the 1650s, their supporters and their families needed a sense that they were rebuilding a church polity that would last, one that would never again be challenged in the same way as it was in the interregnum. This need constantly to balance their episcopal responsibilities with their varying degrees of commitment to the conservative legislation of the Cavalier Parliament appears to have led to a close consideration of their own position in relation to the Church and to nonconformity. Episcopal autobiographies are documents of self-fashioning and selfrepresentation, ways that individuals tried to ensure they were remembered as they wished, as well as ideological statements. They tell their own stories, integrating them with the narrative of the church. If, as John Spurr argues, the ‘church’s own history was, therefore, an essential part of its message and mission’, episcopal autobiographies have a twofold purpose: to relate the bishops’ own experience as individual men, but also to bear witness and take part in that ‘chain of testimony’ of which the church’s history was composed.11 The church polity was reconstructed in the 1660s. The bishops were part of a community of memory that wanted to see the church restored in a form that they had protected. Christ’s donation of power to the Apostles was transmitted in the church through the historical episcopal succession. Therefore, as Sarah Mortimer has argued, a congregation could not be part of a true church unless it was under episcopal government.12 The Restoration bishops discussed herein felt strongly that apostolic succession gave them their authority, and gave structure and order to the church. Whatever else they disagreed on, they conducted their defence of episcopacy partly on that basis. This chapter will use autobiographical evidence to highlight one way that Restoration bishops conducted this defence. Autobiographical statements were one way of speaking to the wider church polity about the place and organisation of the church, and of the role of the episcopate within it. Such documents reassured conforming clerical subordinates that their bishops shared their vision of the church and its position within British society and government, but also spoke to those loyalists who had supported the church throughout the interregnum. Finally, they self-fashioned a sense of unity within an episcopate that diverged significantly theologically and personally. Establishing common ground was crucial. This implied continuity and a sense that of pre-1642 comprehension within the re-established church.

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‘THEY HAD SPOYLED ME OF ALL’: MEMORIES OF SUFFERING DURING THE INTERREGNUM In the early 1640s Joseph Hall was horrified at the ‘furious sacrilege’ done to Norwich cathedral and to the bishop’s chapel. His account of the destruction within the cathedral is striking enough to be quoted in full: what clattering of glasses, what beating down of walls, what tearing up of monuments, what pulling down of seats, what wresting out of irons and brass from the windows and graves! what defacing of arms, what demolishing of curious stonework, that had not any representation in the world, but only the cast of the founder, and skill of the mason; what blowing and piping upon the destroyed organ pipes, and what a hideous triumph on the market-day before all the country; where, in a kind of sacrilegious and profane procession, all the organ pipes, vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden cross, which had been newly sawn down from over the green-yard pulpit and the service books and singing books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the public market-place; a lewd wretch walking before the train in his cope, trailing in the dirt, with a service book in his hand, imitating, in an impious scorn, the tune, and usurping the words of the Litany used formerly in the church.13

Hall’s experience was not necessarily uncommon amongst the orthodox clergy. Ronald Bedford, Lloyd Davis and Philippa Kelly argue that, in an era that emphasised the identity and delineation of the self in terms of office, social function and position, the impact on the psyche of civil war and violence was potentially enormous. In these situations, they claim, an attack on the institutions that helped to determine selfhood caused a ‘dismemberment of both social relations and the self’.14 Bedford et al. specifically discuss the impact of sieges and battles on those who lived through them, either as soldiers or civilians, in the first English civil war. Yet the long-term impact on the episcopate, even on those bishops who by some chance did not experience or witness battle, siege or violence, must have been just as significant. For most of the Restoration bishops, their university education was crucial in forming them both as clergymen and as individuals. They grew up within the Church of England, attained adulthood while training for the ministry, and their minds and ideas were moulded in their Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Indeed, those who left bequests to their college referred to them as the place ‘where I had my Education in the wayes of learning and vertue’ or as ‘my deare Mother’.15 An attack on the church, therefore, was for many orthodox clergymen an attack on them, and vice versa. This is evident in the life-writing of many bishops after the Restoration. A consistent theme is the suffering of the bishops, the church and the clergy during the civil wars and interregnum. For those who became bishops after 1660, that suffering represented violence against their self-fashioned identities as clergymen. For those who were already bishops, either from before 1642 or during the first civil war, the Commonwealth and Protectorate aimed at nothing less than 245

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the destruction of their order, the Church of England as they knew it, and an important indicator of their personal identity. Those memories became part of family traditions, inscribed on tombs, and written into later accounts of the sufferings of the church.16 Descriptions of suffering are spread across the autobiographical materials of the episcopate. Several bishops wrote narrative accounts of their own personal losses – spiritual, intellectual and material. Others provided evidence of their experiences in Restoration petitions for restitution, whilst autobiographical testamentary evidence gives explanations for bequests (or the lack thereof) on the basis of interregnum suffering. Sermons and correspondence related the experiences of their authors, often when explaining the actions of their colleagues and peers. Oral testimony is given, often second-hand, in John Walker’s Sufferings of the clergy. Finally, there was an acknowledgement that the entire orthodox church polity was affected, in bequests to aid poor Church of England clergymen or the widows of those ejected during the 1640s and 1650s. Many of these documents touch on all three themes, binding them together when describing the sacrifices made for the Church and crown in the interregnum. They emphasise constancy, loyalty and suffering. The period from the outbreak of the first civil war to the end of the Protectorate was portrayed as the darkest of times. Those who died during the war or just subsequently recognised them as ‘dangerous’, and made their wills accordingly.17 For those who survived into the Restoration they were ‘euill dayes wherein wee haue liued to see such sad Reuolutions and dismall Catastrophes’, times of ‘the late miserable distractions’ and ‘the late uncivill Warr’.18 Those who governed were described as ‘a Monster of many heads’ and a ‘Bed of Snakes’.19 The ‘late Troublesome tymes’ depleted the physical, mental and financial reserves of many of the orthodox clergy, and this was memorialised years after the fact. Mark Stoyle has argued that the civil wars scarred many people, who avoided using contentious phrasings such as ‘rebels’ because of the fear of opening up badly healed divisions in their communities. On the other hand, he describes the Restoration government as having much less option in this regard, having to remove the visible and symbolic features of the 1650s.20 The bishops sit at the intersection of these two groups. As individuals, they may have wished to forget and heal, but their position within the church polity forced them to remember, and memorialise their suffering. Thus, the wills of bishops such as William Piers (d. 1670) recalled with an apologetic tone the reason why their legacies were not as large as they would have liked.21 These phrases appear consistently in a huge range of ecclesiastical and secular documents, their authors spanning the socio-economic spectrum. For the clergymen discussed herein, however, they were the prelude to descriptions of their sufferings, and those of their friends and colleagues. Either by celebrating the return of the church or by bemoaning the spiritual wilderness of the interregnum, bishops described the spiritual suffering 246

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of the orthodox during the 1640s and 1650s. Henry King spoke of the interregnum as a time when ‘by these Juggles they had got off some of the wisest Heads in the State, and Highest in the Church’, while Brian Duppa opened his will with the statement that he had ‘the happynesse to see the peaceable returne of his Majesty and the Church in some measure restored’.22 The pleasurable restoration of the liturgy of the Church of England, and its place as ‘by lawe established’ was a constant refrain.23 The prevention of the clergy from carrying out their ‘function’ was clearly a cause of distress. Sequestration from ecclesiastical preferments meant, for some, that they were unable to carry out their priestly role – at least openly. The petition of Brian Walton, then chaplain in ordinary to Charles II but shortly to be bishop of Chester, emphasised this point.24 The church clearly survived during the interregnum. Prayer book services were available (with varying degrees of ease and regularity depending on one’s location), whether provided by ejected bishops, chaplains or the interregnum equivalent of ‘church papists’: clerical conformists.25 Some of those who carried out covert prayer book services, including William Thomas, George Griffith and Hugh Lloyd in Wales and Peter Gunning in England, would later become bishops in the Restoration church.26 John Warner discussed his provision of orthodox services while on the run in Wales, describing how ‘as I trauailed, or sojourned, I frequently preached, and administred the blessed Sacrament’, later discussing how, when he ‘liued in my owne house, or sojourned in such as were conformable, or of my judgment, I read the Leiturgy morning & euening: weekly I preached priuatly or publickly; monthly I administred the sacrament, & I confirmed such as came to mee, or I went and confirmed them in orthodox congregations’.27 Ordinations continued in the interregnum, albeit under pressure. Joseph Hall’s Hard measure describes attacks on him and his palace when it was revealed he was continuing to ordain in Norwich during the civil war, as being against the covenant.28 John Spurr comments on the scale of ordinations in the interregnum, pointing to several prominent figures (Dolben, Stillingfleet and Tillotson, for example) who received orders in the 1650s.29 Those who undertook secret ordinations were not ‘theologically monochrome’, and were geographically spread out.30 The covert nature of both worship and episcopal ordination was distressing. Whilst, paradoxically, it may have sustained the determination of royalist plotters to restore the church and state to their preferred form, it was a wounding blow to those whose identity and belief were formed within the church. A frequent theme was the intellectual deprivation caused by either the plundering of books or the period of forced inaction. The generation of bishops who were in post during the interregnum lost libraries of books that they had spent their whole careers building up. Henry King, bishop of Chichester, lost his ‘whole library’ after the siege of Chichester. He mentioned the same in his petition to Charles II of 1660 and again nearly ten years later in his Will, where he bequeathed his ‘books being now a small 247

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remainder of a large library taken from me at Chichester contrary to the condition and contracte of the Generall and Counsell of warre at the taking of that Cittie’.31 John Warner suffered similar deprivation, being robbed of ‘all my books’ and other goods.32 Joseph Hall’s library was sequestered and sold, and grudgingly some of the proceeds given to him for his maintenance, and that of Humphrey Henchman suffered a similar fate.33 Gilbert Ironside described himself in the preface to his printed sermon celebrating the Restoration as ‘an old man, much decayd in Strength, Lungs, Parts, plundered of Abilities as well as Books, by the Discouragements and Distractions of our late Confusions’.34 John Pearson, consecrated bishop of Chester in February 1673, was prevented from taking his degree of doctor of divinity, and petitioned the king in 1660 to have the degree conferred upon him.35 Whilst John Warner was able to escape imprisonment in disguise and flee to Wales, and his fellow bishops were released from the Tower of London after several months after submitting a bond of £5000, Matthew Wren spent twelve years under close confinement in the Tower of London.36 Wren was, according to his own testimony, deprived of his books and visits from those with whom he could discuss theological ideas. Inspecting these ideas when writing his will, he found them inadequate due to this intellectual starvation. According to Wren the great Bulke of my Theologicall meditacons written all in folio with myne owne hand while I was Caged up in the Tower … composed by me without the helpe of my old notes or of any Authors & books, my Bibles and Crispons Lexicon excepted without necessary alsoe or conuenient conference with others I cannot thinke them worthy enough of Publike viewe, and now finde that I am not able to reuiew them my selfe.37

Whilst Wren was rare in suffering lengthy imprisonment, the work and study of others was disrupted or halted by the wars and interregnum. The nature of the times meant that Robert Sanderson did not have copies of his own work, as ‘most of those things I wrote which are now abroad in other mens hands were written soe hastily and send away That I had not tyme to reserue the Coppyes of many of them for my selfe’.38 Intellectual ‘discouragement’, alongside the loss of time and resources to write and study, would signify a blow to those who partially identified themselves through their learning. Those who were able to continue to write during their deprivation did so at the pleasure of the noble or gentry families who sheltered them, or with resources that they managed to buy or recover. Whilst the experience of defeat no doubt spurred intellectual debate, it was not a spur that the church polity could celebrate. Furthermore, while intellectual deprivation was hardly the same as physical injury or poverty for most, one can only imagine the potential impact upon scholars of the loss of a modern academic library, such as the Bodleian or the National Library of Wales.39 Their early modern regional equivalents were cathedral libraries, and the plunder of many of 248

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them during the civil wars was a crisis for those who had previously relied on them.40 Others recognised that the church polity as a whole had suffered by the civil-war plunder of cathedrals. Herbert Croft, for example, in petitioning the king that the seized library of the Jesuits at Cwm be added to the library at Hereford Cathedral in 1678, explained that the ‘fairbuilt Library’ was ‘well furnished before ye late Rebellion, but then rifled of all’.41 George Morley, meanwhile, left the majority of his books to Winchester Cathedral, alongside a bequest to set up a lending library, for the ‘use and benefitt of such Clergy Men and Country Parsons Vicars and Curates of my Dyocesse as haue not a sufficient stock of Bookes of their owne nor of money to buy them’. As well as the books, the new library was to have two new globes and all of the volumes of the ‘great Atlas’.42 This was a resource for ordinary clergymen as well as a legacy for their bishops. It acknowledged the poverty of many livings, and the problems of curates and poorer clergy in obtaining the printed materials they needed to maintain their learning and scholarship. The memorialisation of financial or material suffering was extremely common. For some bishops and clergy the losses were staggering. Thomas Westfield, bishop of Bristol, could not even itemise his belongings in his Will, because ‘(as the times now are) I know not well, where they be, nor what they are’.43 Brian Pearson listed the plunder of ‘all his personall estate’ as one of his three demonstrations of his loyalty ‘to your Majestie, & your late father of euer blessed memory, & for his constant adherence to the Church of England’, while Henry King asked for restitution from those who since April 1643 had ‘seized all your Petitioners Rents then due from the Bishopprick together with his goodes’.44 King’s will and sermons allude to his and his colleagues’ experience during ‘these unfortunate tymes’. He described how his wealth was allmost totally consumed, Publick calamitie or priuate iniurie suffered in these dayes of disiention which I mention not as being galled by an impatient apprehension of my suffering or any uncharitable thoughts towards those whose iniustice robbed me of my Temporall meanes after the common Gulfe of sacriledge had swallowed any reuennue by the Church, But rather out of Thankfulnes to my good god who hath not depriued me of a resolution proportioned to my sufferings who in taking away that abundance which formerly bestowed, and reduced me to the Apostles short allowance food & raiment is pleased to make mee an example of that Christian patience which I was wont to preach to others.45

Brian Walton, writing his will in 1658, railed against ‘the many losses which I haue in theese tymes Sustained by the ffury of the Rebbells, who as much as in them lyes haue Sought to depriue mee of all meanes of Subsistance’.46 John Prideaux spoke often of his poverty, due to sequestration (although his legacies suggest that this is at the least exaggerated).47 John Warner wrote a lengthy narrative after the Restoration describing his sufferings. He believed 249

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there was no other ‘Clergy man in England, who hath done, and suffered (put them both together) more for the King, the Church, and the poor Clergy, then I haue’. As he refused to pay parliamentary taxes the parliamentary authorities ‘depriued mee of all my Estate ecclesiasticall & temporall; they robbed me of all my Books, and other goods; & released all bonds and debts due unto mee, which amounted to some thousands of pounds’. He was forced to pay ‘the tenth part of my Estate reall & personall’, and sent £100 overseas to Charles II.48 William Piers described the ‘losse of the Revenues of my Bishoppricke for many yeares And after the utter losse of all my goods and personall Estate in the late Troublesome tymes’, while John Hacket described his sequestration as ‘long & sharpe’, and begged relief from Charles II for his ‘great losses for 17 yeares past’.49 There is little doubt that some bishops (for example Wren and Warner) suffered more than others, and yet there is no reason to suspect that any of those who memorialised their experiences found the interregnum comfortable. Whether it involved loss, compromise or uncomfortable accommodation with the new authorities, bishops faced deprivation as did the lower clergy. The symbolic value of episcopal suffering was, however, of wider significance. Their humbling represented the destruction of an order, and the structure and hierarchy of the Church of England. Not for nothing did Bishop Thomas Howell, ‘a dutifull Sonne to the Church and an obedient Subject to this State of England’, request that his monument contain the word ‘expergiscar’ meaning ‘I will awake’.50 Fiona McCall has perceptively argued that this could as easily refer to his hopes for the church as well as for his own resurrection at the day of judgement.51 It was remembered by those who were created bishop in 1660, and those who followed on from them who were lower clergy, soldiers or simply young men at the time of the interregnum. Senior churchmen were not oblivious to the sufferings of those lower down the hierarchy of the church polity. They attempted to gain compensation for individuals who had been deprived, or provide aid to clergy, cathedral employees and their families who had been left impoverished in the interregnum. As Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, John Pearson petitioned the king on behalf of Dr George Chamberlayne. He and the fellows of the college asked that Chamberlayne, as senior Doctor of Divinity, should be collated to the valuable rectory of Orwell. They cited his suffering in the ‘late troublesome times’ and his ejection for loyalty to the crown as well as his seniority and experience.52 Brian Duppa’s support was effective even beyond death for one individual. John Lowen was resident at Christ Church, Oxford, until ‘ejected by an Order of the Rebells at Westminster Anno Domini 1650 for refuseing to subscribe and giueing a publique defiance to the nationall engagement’. He was ‘the onely kinsman that was bred a scholler under the Care and Tuition of Brian Duppa late bishopp of Winchester’ and on those grounds asked for promotion to the archdeaconry of Winchester.53 Several bishops petitioned the king on the behalf of Christopher Gibbons, one of the 250

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king’s organists in the Chapel Royal and at Winchester Cathedral, who ‘in the tyme of the uiolent prosecution of the Church he was constrayned with the reuerend Deane and Prebends to flye into his late Majesties Garrisons, where he tooke upp Armes and faithfully serued his Majestie during all the warr’. These bishops included Cosin, Frewen (archbishop of York), Duppa, Gauden, Morley and John Earle, at the time dean of Winchester.54 Whilst petitions to help individuals arguably could be imputed to patronage or favouritism, several bishops left money to sequestered clergy, their widows and their sons. John Warner set up an almshouse or hospital for poor widows ‘beinge ye Relicts of Orthodox and loyall Clergy men’, while Brian Walton left money in his will for ‘Twentie of my bretheren of the Clergie who haue suffered in theese tymes for theire Loyaltie and Constancy in the Truth’.55 In this there was an acknowledgement that the lower clergy had suffered severely, and that it was the duty of the loyal bishop to ameliorate that suffering where he could. Bishops’ autobiographical writings, therefore, demonstrate a fellowship of suffering within the church. Their desire for their experiences to be memorialised may represent an aim to bolster support for the episcopate, and to remind the laity of the consequences of bowing to the ‘rabble’ in religious matters.56 Equally it also serves the purpose of creating within the church a community of remembrance, one of shared suffering of the clergy, whatever their place within the polity. This could take the form of violence, sequestration, poverty or spiritual suffering, but was common to many orthodox clergy. Bishops were leaders of the church and their dioceses, and their narratives related the experiences of the clergy to a wider audience, urging their readers to remember the sacrifices made during the civil war and interregnum. Ian Green argues that new nominees in 1660 had suffered no more than the ordinary clergymen who were not promoted.57 This may be true, but, rather than invalidating the suffering they did experience, it drew the church together with a shared experience. These sacrifices, the experience of repression and fears for the future of the church led to many bishops making public statements of their orthodoxy, and of that of the church. This aimed to protect not only their office but the church as a whole from attack by nonconformists, radical protestants or Roman Catholics.58

‘A SINCERE MEMBER OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH’ William Laud, in his speech on the scaffold in 1645, made a declaration that I was born and baptized in the bosom of the Church of England established by law; in that profession I have ever since lived, and in that I come now to die. This is no time to dissemble with God, least of all in matters of religion: and therefore I desire it may be remembered, I have always lived in the Protestant religion established in England, and in that I come now to die. What clamours and slanders I have endured for labouring to keep an uniformity in the service of God, according 251

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic to the doctrine and discipline of the Church, all men know, and I have abundantly felt.59

He echoed this in his last will and testament: I die as I have lived, in the true orthodox profession of the Catholic faith of Christ, foreshadowed by the Prophets, and preached to the world by Christ Himself, His blessed Apostles and their successors; and a true member of His Catholic Church, within the communion of a living part thereof, the present Church of England, as it stands established by law.60

This was not a Laudian aberration. Amongst the generation of bishops who were appointed before, and lived through, the interregnum, there was a marked tendency to include a similar declaration in their wills, as there was for those appointed by Charles in 1660. Out of twenty-seven available wills of those bishops, seventeen made a profession of their loyalty to the Church of England.61 This is noticeably more than those who died before 1642, and significantly more than those appointed later in the Restoration.62 While some of these declarations were brief, others were extremely detailed. The bare minimum was Brian Duppa’s profession of dying ‘in the ffaith of his Catholique Church being confident that imbracing the ffaith, I shall receiue pardon of all my Sinns’. Alternatively, Seth Ward proclaimed that he was ‘resolved to dye as I have lived according to the ffaith and practice of the Church of England’.63 On the other hand, Thomas Morton, John Cosin and William Lucy all made long explanations of their faith and the place that the Church of England occupied in the world. The fullest declaration is that of Thomas Morton, bishop of Durham. He not only annexed it to his will but ordered his chaplain, Dr John Barwick, to publish it in print after his death.64 Morton was a ‘moderate Calvinist’ who saw himself as occupying a middle ground in matters of religion.65 While Morton’s profession of faith is by far the fullest, encompassing a history of episcopacy and a justification of its role and merits, it contains many elements common to other, shorter, accounts.66 Central to them were the principles that the church doctrine and discipline were the soundest and were established by law. The Church of England was a constituent part of the broader Catholic Church, in which the testator died, believing in all the canonical scriptures, the creeds and the validity of the church councils. The value of bishops within that structure was that they were able to compose differences within the church (as they had done at the early church councils), that they were derived from a divinely inspired apostolic succession, and that they kept order within the church. Order in terms of a set form of worship was vital, as otherwise ‘itt will quickly fall in peeces’.67 As an appeal to the church polity on behalf of the episcopate, and as a defence of the church, it made strong arguments. One key element of these declarations was the condemnation of sects and schisms, ‘perverse’ protestants and papists.68 While the outward appearance 252

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was that of the episcopate uniting in favour of a via media, in fact there are clear divisions between those who made anti-catholic declarations, those who railed largely against radical protestant groups, and those who urged unity in the face of both. John Thornborough and Herbert Croft both made strong anti-catholic statements. Thornborough had been an enthusiastic pursuer of recusants while dean of York, and perhaps this was at the root of his insistence that it was ‘the Common practise of Seminary Preists Jesuits & Popish Recusants to scandalize; and lay aspersions upon Reverend Bishops, Deanes & other Pastors and Preachers of the true auncient apostolicall faith that is now taught in the Church of England, that they died Roman Catholique’.69 This, he averred, was the reason he made a declaration of his own beliefs, ‘that I dye in that faith which Jesus Christ and his Apostles did preach and teach heere on earth and which is now taught and professed in the Church of England; And that I have an assured hope to bee saved by Christs death and passion, without the intercession of either Saint or Angell, altogeither renouncinge the Popes pardons, and all the doctrines errors & superstitions of the Church of Rome’.70 Herbert Croft had himself been a Catholic convert at St Omer before converting back to the Church of England.71 He, therefore, despite his actions against the Jesuits of Cwm, felt the need to declare his thankfulness that God had been pleased to rescue him from the darknesse of Popish errore and grosse Superstitions into which I was seduced in my younger dayes and to sende mee againe in the true Antient Catholicke and Apostolick ffaith Professed by our Church of England in which I was borne and baptized and in which I joyfully die with full Assureance by the merrits of my most blessed Sauiour Jesus, to enjoy Eternall happiness Amen.72

This concentration on early church history and the apostolic succession was not confined to Thornborough and Croft. Many important episcopalian writers, including Jeremy Taylor and Henry Hammond, emphasised the ancient nature of the hierarchy in their writings from the 1640s onwards. This became the basis of many defences of episcopacy in the face of attack by Parliament and radical protestant groups, as well as by Roman Catholic writers.73 The ‘sectaries’ and ‘papists’ decried by Thornborough and others followed a perverted version of the church polity, one that eschewed papist ‘superstitions’ but had a hierarchy that respected Christ’s divine gift of authority to the apostles. Gilbert Sheldon, Brian Walton, George Hall, Thomas Morton and Robert Sanderson, despite their doctrinal differences, all agreed that radical protestants (seen as ‘sectaries’) and papists were damaging to the church and the nation. Walton condemned members of ‘sects’ as destructive and uncooperative, Rejectinge all Schismaticke, Heretiques, and Sacralegious Persons marked in theese Latter ages under the vineur of Protestants or Reformers; whether they bee 253

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic Presbyterians, Independants, Anabaptists, ffamilists, Libertines Quakers Seekers or any other Sect, who haueinge by theire Schismes and Heresyes broken the Communion of the Church, No ffellowshipp in Worshipp or discipline Cann bee lawfully mainetained with them.74

Sheldon rejected sects and ‘tyranny in religion’ in a similar manner.75 George Hall, later bishop of Chester but a Cromwellian conformist, railed in the preface to a 1655 printed sermon against ‘that Generation of men, who are haters of Ministers Toto genere, who are for … nothing lesse then utter extirpation of us; and who, if they were Basilisks (as they are Serpents) would look us dead’ as well as ‘the other sort, who face us, and with the force of their pretended Gifts, do invade our Pulpits, and pull away the Cushion from us’.76 Thomas Morton decried presbyterian ordination, and proclaimed his ‘Charitye to All the World, And more particulerlie both towards those perverse Protestants and Papists, whom I haue soe much Endeauoured to undeceive’, while Robert Sanderson examined the ‘grounds aswell of Popery as Puritanisme’ and found them wanting in comparison to the doctrine and government of the Church of England.77 These condemnations are significant because they speak to the purpose of these autobiographical declarations. They were intended to demonstrate, initially against catholic claims and subsequently against those of ‘puritan’ opponents, that the bishops were orthodox members of the Church of England, and both lived and died believing that doctrine and form of church government was the best. If dead bishops really were part of the ‘living tradition of the Church of England’, then soon-to-be dead bishops wanted to make sure that tradition continued for future generations. Bishops had become ‘marginal’ for many episcopalians during the interregnum, as the episcopate was unable to renew itself through new appointments. The numbers of bishops decreased, and it has been argued that they failed to provide the leadership that their clergy needed.78 At the Restoration, therefore, they needed to re-establish their importance within the church polity. The bishops who explain their reasons for providing a profession of faith demonstrate this. Thomas Morton gave two reasons. First, In the ffirst ages of the Church It was a very Excellent Custome, That whensoever any was Consecrated Bishopp of any Patriarchall or Cheife See, hee should by an Encyclycall Epistle give an Account of his ffayth to his Bretheren of the same Order and Dignitie for the Better strengtheninge of that Catholicke Communion, which the Bishopps and Churches then had, and still should preserue amonge themselves.79

Second, it was a good idea for bishops ‘to leave a Testimony of theire ffayth unto the world, when itt shall please God to take them out of itt, that soe neither theire names may be traduced after their death nor any weake brother misled, by ffatheringe any falce Opinions uppon them’.80 John Thornborough, writing in 1641, had ascribed this pejorative tendency to catholic writers, but 254

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by 1659 the fear of false accusations was directed more towards protestant sectaries and polemicists. Although the production of such testimonies clearly was not a tendency invented by those writing in the interregnum or Restoration, its occurrence increased dramatically following 1660. The Restoration bishops were determined to prevent 1641 from happening again, and to make clear the strength of the episcopate, the church and the church polity.

CONCLUSION The autobiographical writings of the Restoration bishops demonstrate a commonalty otherwise dismissed in discussions of the episcopate. Their disunity, historians have argued, was one of the main causes of their failure to defeat the radical protestant challenge and to put the genie of religious division back in the box. Yet, at least amongst the first generation of bishops appointed by Charles II, there was the potential for a unified anti-sectarian, Anglican and episcopalian front. Clearly, the texts discussed herein are complex and cannot individually be taken purely at face value. Taken together, however, they build up a picture of an episcopate that wanted to represent itself as aiding the return of a historically British, stable institution that would create a church polity of the same nature. Their testimonies of faith and suffering demonstrated that they had much in common with each other and with the lower clergy and accounts of civil war and interregnum chaos seemed to demonstrate that once the founding stability of the British church was gone, destruction and division would follow.

NOTES 1 My thanks to Mark Clavier, Mary Chadwick, Peter Sedgwick and Stephen Roberts for kindly commenting on earlier drafts of this work, and to Elliot Vernon for his extremely helpful advice. 2 The scholarly definition of an autobiographical text has greatly broadened since the 1990s. Evidence as diverse as financial accounts, almanac notes, marginalia, correspondence and wills are now used when discussing the life-writing of the past. This chapter will use a similarly catholic definition of ‘autobiography’. 3 Only Kenneth Fincham, in his study of the Jacobean episcopate, uses similar biographical and autobiographical sources from conformist writers. K. Fincham, Prelate as pastor: the episcopate of James I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); D. B. Hindmarsh, The evangelical conversion narrative: spiritual autobiography in early modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); S. Wright, ‘“Truly dear hearts”: family and autobiography in quaker women’s writings, 1680–1750’, in S. Brown (ed.), Women, gender, and radical religion in early modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 97–113; P. Morgan, ‘A private space: autobiography and individuality in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Wales’, in R. R. Davies and G. H. Jenkins (eds), From medieval to modern Wales: historical essays in honour 255

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4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13

14 15 16

17 256

of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press, 2004), pp. 160–74. I will use the term ‘episcopalian’ throughout this chapter to refer to those who wished to maintain the structures and liturgy of the pre-1642 Church of England, agreeing with Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor that this term takes account of the differences within the group without using the anachronistic ‘Anglican’. As they argue, it is a ‘neutral and accurate shorthand’. I will use ‘Anglican’ when referring to the orthodox Church of England polity post-1660, seeing the Restoration as a distinct break from both the pre-1642 church and the interregnum experience. I define the ‘Church of England’ as the episcopate, loyalist lower clergy and prayer book users amongst the laity. K. Fincham and S. Taylor, ‘Episcopalian identity, 1640–1662’, in A. Milton (ed.), The Oxford history of Anglicanism, volume 1: Reformation and identity, c.1520–1662 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 457. As, indeed, had been the case with their Elizabethan and Jacobean counterparts. Fincham, Prelate as pastor, p. 19. J. Spurr, ‘Henchman, Humphrey’, ODNB; TNA, PROB 11/534/152 (Will of Thomas Sprat, 20 June 1713). C. S. Knighton, ‘Monck, Nicholas’, ODNB; J. Parkin, ‘Lucy, William’, ODNB. J. Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 35. I. M. Green, The re-establishment of the Church of England 1660–1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 81–3; 89–90; R. Hutton, The Restoration: a political and religious history of England and Wales 1658–1667 (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 145; A. Milton, Laudian and royalist polemic in seventeenth-century England: the career and writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 191; Spurr, The Restoration church, p. 35. J. Sturrock, The language of autobiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 12. J. Spurr, ‘“A special kindness for dead bishops”: the church, history, and testimony in seventeenth-century protestantism’, in P. Kewes (ed.), The uses of history in early modern England (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2006), pp. 307, 309. S. Mortimer, ‘Kingship and the “apostolic church”, 1620–1650’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 13:2 (2011), 234. Joseph Hall, Contemplations on the history of the New Testament, by the right rev. Joseph Hall … together with his life and hard measure, written by himself (1777), pp. lx–lxi. R. Bedford, L. Davis and P. Kelly, Early modern English lives: autobiography and selfrepresentation, 1500–1600 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 147–8. TNA, PROB 11/321/406 (Will of William Roberts, 10 August 1666); PROB 11/334/428 (Will of John Hacket, 1 December 1670). G. Tapsell, ‘Introduction: the later Stuart church in context’, in Grant Tapsell (ed.), The later Stuart Church, 1660–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 6–7. TNA, PROB 11/202/234 (Will of Walter Curll, 10 November 1647).

The Restoration episcopate and the interregnum 18 TNA, PROB 11/405/306 (Will of Herbert Croft, 23 July 1691); SP/29/9, fo. 146 (Petition of Richard Ball and John Pearson, ?July 1660). 19 M. Hobbs (ed.), The sermons of Henry King (1592–1669) bishop of Chichester (Aldershot: Scolar, 1992), p. 235. 20 M. Stoyle, ‘Remembering the English civil wars’, in P. Gray and K. Oliver (eds), The memory of catastrophe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 22–3. 21 TNA, PROB 11/371/79 (Will of William Piers, 9 September 1682). 22 Hobbs (ed.), The sermons of Henry King, p. 248; TNA, PROB 11/308/196 (Will of Brian Duppa, 16 May 1662). 23 TNA, PROB 11/328/409 (Will of George Hall, 2 December 1668). 24 TNA, SP 29/12, fo. 205 (Petition of Brian Walton, ?August 1660). 25 Spurr, Restoration Church of England, pp. 2, 8; A. Walsham, Church papists: catholicism, conformity, and confessional polemic in early modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), pp. 1–2; G. Williams, ‘Part I: 1603–1660’, in N. Yates (ed.), The Welsh church from Reformation to disestablishment, 1603–1920 (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press, 2007), pp. 35, 41, 47; J. Maltby, ‘Suffering and surviving: the civil wars, the Commonwealth and the formation of “Anglicanism”, 1642–60’, in C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds), Religion in revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 163, 168. 26 Williams, ‘Part I: 1603–1660’, p. 47; Spurr, Restoration Church of England, p. 18. 27 Incidentally, Warner was not alone (as he claims) in seeking refuge in Wales: others such as Jeremy Taylor, John Williams, Godfrey Goodman and Thomas Price all stayed with Welsh families during the interregnum, as did many less prominent figures. Bodleian, MS Smith 22, fo. 22 (‘A plain and true narratiue of the Bp of Rochester’; Williams, ‘Part I: 1603–1660’), p. 35. 28 Hall, Contemplations, p. lviii. 29 Spurr, Restoration Church of England, p. 9. 30 Maltby, ‘Suffering and surviving’, pp. 158–80, p. 168. 31 TNA, SP 29/17, fo. 31 (Petition of Henry King, n.d.); PROB 11/331/371 (Will of Henry King, 16 November 1669); D. S. Smith, ‘“This strange conglomerate of books” or “Hobbs’ Leviathan”: Bishop Henry King’s library at Chichester Cathedral’, in M. Dimmock, A. Hadfield and P. Quinn (eds), Art, literature, and religion in early modern Sussex: culture and conflict (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 121–44. 32 Bodleian, MS Smith 22, fo. 21. 33 Hall, Contemplations, p. lv; ODNB for Henchman. 34 Gilbert Ironside, A sermon preached at Dorchester (London, 1660), sig. A3–4. 35 TNA, SP 29/9, fo. 146 (Petition of Richard Ball and John Pearson, ?July 1660). 36 Bodleian, MS Smith 22, fo. 21; Hall, Contemplations, pp. xlviii–liii. 37 TNA, SP PROB 11/324/218 (Will of Matthew Wren, 10 June 1667). 38 TNA, SP PROB 11/310/467 (Will of Robert Sanderson, 28 March 1663). 39 An Edwardian royal injunction of 1547 stipulated that every cathedral should establish a new library within a year, to include good protestant texts rather than older monastic volumes. York Minster library showed signs of regular use before the civil war for readers such as canons, dignitaries, but also others. C. B. L. Barr and D. Selwyn, ‘Major ecclesiastical libraries: from Reformation to civil war’, in 257

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40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

258

E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber (eds), The Cambridge history of libraries in Britain and Ireland, volume I: To 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 366–7, 374. It is difficult to establish exactly who had access to cathedral libraries but it seems that in the eighteenth century, at least, learned clergy and those they introduced could use cathedral libraries. My thanks to Elizabeth Biggs for discussions on this matter. S. Hingley, ‘Ecclesiastical libraries: libraries for the higher clergy’, in G. Mandelbrote and K. A. Manley (eds), The Cambridge history of libraries in Britain and Ireland, volume II: 1646–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 122–4, 128–31. This is not quite borne out by other sources. TNA, SP 29/408, fo. 205 (Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, to Henry Compton, bishop of London, Hereford, 30 December 1678). TNA, PROB 11/377/465 (Will of George Morley, 31 October 1684). TNA, PROB 10/641/98 (Will of Thomas Westfield, March 1644). TNA, SP 29/12, fo. 205 (Petition of Brian Pearson, ?August 1660); SP 29/17, fo. 31 (Petition of Henry King, n.d.). TNA, PROB 11/331/371 (Will of Henry King, 16 November 1669). TNA, PROB 11/308/196 (Will of Brian Walton, 16 May 1662). F. McCall, Baal’s priests: the loyalist clergy and the English revolution (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 167. Bodleian, MS Smith 22, fos 21–3. TNA, PROB 11/371/79 (Will of William Piers, 9 September 162); TNA, SP 29/23, fo. 74 (Petition of John Hacket DD, 6 December 1660). TNA, PROB 11/211/841 (Will of Thomas Howell, 22 April 1650). As McCall comments, funerary monuments were (like wills) one of the few public settings where royalists could make public commentary. McCall, Baal’s priests, p. 60. TNA, SP 29/449, fo. 50 (Petition of John Pearson, Master, and eight senior fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, 4 July 1664). TNA, SP 29/142B, fo. 34 (Petition of John Lowen, DCL, ?1665). TNA, SP 29/31, fo. 130 (Archbishop of York, four bishops and Dean Earle to the Dean and Chapter of Winchester, 28 February 1661). Bodleian, MS Smith 22, fo. 30 (Will of John Warner, 4 September 1666); TNA, PROB 11/306/520: Will of Brian Pearson, 17 December 1661). Hall, Contemplations, pp. xliv–xlv. Green, The re-establishment of the Church of England, p. 94. Many of the bishops considered here described these radical protestants as ‘puritans’. For clarity, their varying definitions of ‘puritanism’ could include only the most radical of groups, or every nonconforming protestant post-1660. Most used the term as a slur, although not all. William Laud, The works of the most reverend father in God, William Laud, ed. James Bliss, 7 vols (Oxford, 1854), VI, p. 434. TNA, PROB 11/307/43 (Will of William Laud, 8 January 1662); Laud, Works, VI, p. 442. Fifty-nine per cent, therefore, made a profession of faith. Fifty-two per cent of those were substantive. All of the wills discussed herein are at TNA, PROB 11,

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62

63 64

65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

except for those of Richard Sterne and Accepted Frewen, whose probate records sit in the Borthwick Institute, York. Out of the sixteen bishops who died from 1642 to 1659, seven (44 per cent) made a profession of faith, five of which were substantive (36 per cent). From the thirtythree wills consulted that were proved between 1660 and 1713, only nine made any kind of declaration, and of these five were substantive (15 per cent). TNA, PROB 11/308/196 (Will of Brian Duppa, 16 May 1662); TNA, PROB 11/394/58 (Will of Seth Ward, 12 January 1689). Barwick, a staunch royalist and secret agent, was in many ways the ideal man for the job. Indeed it was edited and printed by Barwick within a biography of Morton. John Barwick, The life and death of Thomas lord bishop of Duresme (1660). B. Quintrell, ‘Morton, Thomas’, ODNB. Indeed as Spurr argues, the appeal to history was of central importance within English Protestantism and to the definition of the Church of England. Spurr, ‘“A special kindness for dead bishops”’, p. 321. TNA, PROB 11/300/154 (Will of Thomas Morton, 1 October 1660). Ibid. B. Usher, ‘Thornborough, John’, ODNB; TNA, PROB 11/187/21 (Will of John Thornborough, 6 August 1641). TNA, PROB 11/187/21 (Will of John Thornborough, 6 August 1641). W. Marshall, ‘Croft, Herbert ’, ODNB. TNA, PROB 11/405/306 (Will of Herbert Croft, 23 July 1691). For Croft’s actions against the Jesuits of Cwm, see H. Thomas, ‘The Society of Jesus in Wales, c.1600–1679: rediscovering the Cwm Jesuit library at Hereford Cathedral’, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 1:4 (2014), 572–88. Mortimer, ‘Kingship and the “apostolic church”’, 237–8. TNA, PROB 11/308/196 (Will of Brian Walton, 17 December 1661). 75 TNA, PROB 11/355/330 (Will of Gilbert Sheldon, 1 December 1677). George Hall, Gods appearing for the tribe of Levi (1655), p. A3v. TNA, PROB 11/300/154 (Will of Thomas Morton, 1 October 1660); PROB 11/310/467 (Will of Robert Sanderson, 28 March 1663). Fincham and Taylor, ‘Episcopalian identity’, p. 470. TNA, PROB 11/300/154 (Will of Thomas Morton, 1 October 1660). Ibid.

259

Index

Index

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Ames, William 157, 160 antinomianism 9, 163 apostolic fathers 6 association movement 10, 174–92 Worcestershire association 203 Aston, Sir Thomas 25, 29, 40–1 autobiography 242–55 Baillie, Robert 84, 93, 105, 106, 112, 113, 143, 144, 164 Baker, Thomas 73 Bakewell, Thomas 145 Ball, John 51, 89 Bancroft, Richard, archbishop of Canterbury 20 baptists 2–3, 75, 192, 236 Barker, Matthew 131 Barrow, Henry 157 Bartlett, Henry 180 Bartlett, William 208 Barwick, John 252 Bastwick, John 38–9 Baxter, Richard 5, 9, 74, 113, 130, 175, 178–81, 182–3, 188, 190, 191–2, 200–17, 231 Baynes, Paul 159 Beza, Theodore 130 Bilson, Thomas, bishop of Winchester 5 Binning, Hugh 93, 96 Blair, Robert 87 Bodin, Jean 142 Book of common prayer 7, 22, 23, 30, 32, 62, 63, 64, 66 Bourne, William 51, 52 260

Bradshaw, William 5, 142, 159 Brereton, Sir William 40–1, 53, 66 Brerewood, Edward 45 Brewster, William 161, 162 Bridge, William 223, 228 Bridgeman, John, bishop of Chester 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 47, 51, 53 Brodie, Alexander 95, 97 Brooke, Lord see Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke Broxupp, John 43, 44, 47 Bruce, Robert 82 Bulkeley, Peter 89 Bullinger, Heinrich 133 Burges, Cornelius 106, 135 Burroughes, Jeremiah 229 Burton, Edward 200–2, 208, 215 Burton, Henry 141, 145 Byfield, Nicholas 45 Byfield, Richard 137 Calamy, Edmund 2, 113, 135, 140 Calderwood, David 87 Calvin, Jean 80–1, 96, 164 Cambridge Platform (1648) 167, 189 Cameron, John 82 Carbery, earl of see Vaughan, Richard, 2nd earl of Carbery Cartwright, Thomas 137, 160 Case, Thomas 120 catechising 17, 147, 177–8 Racovian catechism (1605) 226 Cawdrey, Daniel 88 Chaderton, Laurence 50

Index Charles I, King of Great Britain 2, 22, 27–8 Eikon basilike (1649) 27–8, 66, 134 Charles II, King of Great Britain 28, 243, 247, 250 Church of England 12, 17, 31, 135, 160, 222, 244, 246–55 Church of Ireland 23, 31, 184–5 Church of Scotland 23­, 24, 31, 81, 83–4, 86, 88, 93, 97, 115, 134 Second book of discipline (1578) 87 church officers 115–16 Clarke, Samuel 43, 52, 53 classes (presbyterian) 72–3, 178, 208 fourth Shropshire classis 73 Clement of Rome 6 Coleman, Thomas 130, 137, 139, 140, 143, 144, 147 Collett, William 161 committee for plundered ministers 69, 70, 72, 73, 74 conciliarism 3 confirmation 17–19, 20–1, 32–3 congregationalism 5, 40, 53, 64, 83, 109–10, 118­–19, 121, 141–2, 147, 158, 161, 163, 164, 165–7, 177, 178, 185, 200, 204, 207–14, 217, 222–37 Constantine I, Emperor of the Roman Empire 138–9 Cosin, John, bishop of Durham 243, 251, 252 Cotelier, Jean Baptiste 6 Cotton, John 11, 48, 89, 90, 91, 155, 161, 162, 165, 167, 188, 189, 190, 211–12, 223, 224–6, 227 Covenanters 8, 85, 95, 134, 222 National Covenant (1638) 83, 84, 91, 94, 97, 98 covenanting 80–5, 88, 89, 91, 94–8 Cradock, Walter 60, 71, 72, 74 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury 7, 17–19, 25, 33 Croft, Herbert, bishop of Hereford 249, 253 Cromwell, Henry 184–5, 187 Cromwell, Oliver, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland 11, 12, 29, 60, 61, 64, 92, 146–7, 161, 183, 185, 223, 225, 228, 229, 230, 231, 235, 237 Cromwell, Richard, Lord Protector of

the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland 75, 186, 190, 191, 216, 231 Culpepper, Sir Cheney 142–3 Davenport, John 155–6, 157, 159, 162, 163, 165, 169–70 Declaration of Breda (1660) 28–9 Dennison, Stephen 135 Derby, earl of see Stanley, William, 6th earl of Derby; Stanley, Henry, 4th earl of Derby; Stanley, James, Lord Strange, 7th earl of Derby Dering, Sir Edward 136 Devereux, Robert, 3rd earl of Essex 67 Dickson, David 85–6, 96 Dissenting Brethren 89–90, 91, 121, 208, 211–12, 222–37 Dolben, John, archbishop of York 247 Dugard, Thomas 46 Du Moulin, Louis 146 Dunster, Henry 51, 52 Duppa, Brian, Bishop of Winchester 68, 247, 250, 251, 252 Durand, William 19 Dury, John 179 Earle, John, bishop of Salisbury 251 Eaton, Samuel 38–44, 53 ecclesiology 1, 85–8, 105, 108, 110, 115–16, 120–2 definition, contrasted with church polity 1, 87–8, 120–1 Edwards, Thomas 53, 65, 71, 72 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 4, 160 episcopacy 3, 5, 17, 30, 62, 64, 97, 107, 114, 178, 209, episcopalians 177–9, 204 episcopate 12, 242–55 Erastianism 11, 114, 118–19, 130–2, 134, 141–4, 145, 146, 147, 179, 192, 204, 223 Erastus, Thomas 11, 130, 133 Erbury, William 65, 74 Essex, earl of see Devereux, Robert, 3rd earl of Essex excommunication 87, 111 Fiennes, William, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele 123, 136, 141, 143, 145 Firmin, Giles 88, 158, 177, 178 Fisher, Edward 97–8 261

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic Five Articles of Perth (1618) 23 Fleetwood, Charles 185 Forbes, John 83, 166 Frewen, Accepted, archbishop of York 251 Gataker, Thomas 107 Gauden, John, bishop of Worcester 30, 243, 251 Geree, John 145–6 Gibbons, Christopher 250–1 Gillespie, George 8, 87, 92, 93, 105, 106, 107, 109, 112, 113, 114–19, 140, 143 Gillespie, Patrick 96–7 Glynne, John 70, 138 Goodwin, Thomas 11, 51, 88, 107, 123, 161, 165, 169, 185–6, 187, 190, 223, 226, 230–1 Gouge, William 140 Gower, Stanley 74 Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke 136 Griffith, George, bishop of St Asaph 185–6, 247 Griffiths, Alexander 75, 76 Grove, Thomas 180 Gunning, Peter, bishop of Chichester 247 Guthrie, John 94 Guthrie, William 96, 97 Hacket, John, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry 250 half-way covenant 9, 92, 155, 159 Hall, George, bishop of Chester 253, 254 Hall, Joseph 6, 245, 247, 248 Hammond, Henry 6, 7, 146, 253 Hampton Court conference (1604) 20–2, 26 Harley, Edward 71, 72 Harley, Sir Robert 10, 61, 64, 65, 66, 71, 72 Harrington, James 146 Harrison, William 47 Hartlib, Samuel 142 Harvard College 163 Henchman, Humphrey, bishop of London 243 Henderson, Alexander 88, 105, 110 Henry, Philip 73 Henry VIII, King of England 139 Herle, Charles 42, 44, 45, 52, 53, 113, 120, 140 262

Heywood, Oliver 43 Hill, Thomas 179 Hobart, Peter 159 Hobbes, Thomas 137, 146 Holford, Thomas 45 Holt, Edmund 51 Honyman, Andrew, bishop of Orkney 95 Hooker, Thomas 48, 89, 91, 157, 158, 163, 164, 165, 166, 188­, 189, 190 Howe, John 183, 190 Howell, Thomas, bishop of Bristol 250 Hudson, Samuel 188 Humble petition and advice (1657) 182, 185, 230, 231, 232 Humble proposals (1652) 226–8, 230, 231 Hutchinson, Anne 9, 162–3 Hyett, James 47 Ignatius of Antioch 6, 209 Instrument of government (1653) 228–31 Ironside, Gilbert 248 Jacob, Henry 5, 157, 160 James VI and I, King of Great Britain 4, 20 Basilcon doron (1599) 20–1 Jerome 19, 20–1 Johnston, Archibald, of Warriston 84, 96 Jollie, Thomas 187 Jones, Philip 67 Kay, Nevil 47–8 keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16:9) 2, 40, 86, 90, 115, 160 King, Henry, bishop of Chichester 247, 248 Knox, John 8, 80, 90, 96 Lambert, John 229 Laski, Jan 4 Laud, William, archbishop of Canterbury 26, 39, 156, 216, 251–2 Laugharne, Rowland 66, 67 lay preaching 162, 164 Leighton, Robert, archbishop of Glasgow 95, 97 Lewis, John 70 Ley, John 44–5, 52, 53 Lightfoot, John 65, 106, 139 liturgy 17–19, 31–2

Index Lloyd, Hugh, Bishop of Llandaff 68, 247 Llwyd, Morgan 60, 72, 73, 74, 76 London Provincial Assembly 188–9 Lord’s supper 111, 133, 135, 136 suspension from 111, 135, 145, 203, 211 Loukaris, Cyril, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople 6 Lucy, William, Bishop of St Davids 243, 252 Luther, Martin 4, 164 Manchester, earl of see Montagu, Edward, 2nd earl of Manchester Mansel, Bussy 68 Marrow Controversy 98 Marshall, Stephen 113, 120, 135 Marsilius of Padua 3, 146 Massachusetts Bay Company 156–7 Massie, Edward 71 Mather, Cotton 163, 170 Mather, Increase 48, 49, 159, 168 Mather, Nathaniel 159, 168 Mather, Richard 41, 43, 46–8, 53, 89, 90, 91, 157, 161, 163, 166 Meiderlin, Peter 179 Melville, Andrew 137 Millenary Petition (1603) 20 Milton, John 146 Molyneux, Sir Richard 47 Monck, Nicholas, bishop of Hereford 243 Montagu, Edward, 2nd earl of Manchester 72 Morély, Jean 4 Morgan, William 68 Morley, George, bishop of Worcester 207, 249, 251 Morton, Thomas, bishop of Chester 47, 252, 253, 254 Musculus, Wolfgang 133 Myddleton, Sir Thomas 63–4, 65, 66, 68 Mytton, Thomas 70 Negative Confession (1581) 81, 83, 84 Neile, Richard, archbishop of York 46 Nero, Emperor of the Roman Empire 138 Northumberland, earl of see Percy, Algernon, 10th earl of Northumberland

Norton, John 158, 163, 167, 169, 188, 190 Noyse, James 159, 163, 166 Nye, Philip 11, 88, 107, 108, 113, 121, 140, 141–2, 147, 159, 165, 182­–3, 186, 187, 190, 212, 213, 215, 222, 223, 226, 235–6 Olevanius, Kaspar 133 ordination 18–19, 68, 109 Owen, John 169, 186, 215, 222, 226–8, 232–7 Palmer, Herbert 109, 113 Pareus, David 144 Parker, Henry 136 Parker, Robert 160 Parker, Thomas 159, 166 Pearson, Brian 249 Pearson, John, bishop of Chester 248, 250 Percy, Algernon, 10th earl of Northumberland 136 Peter, Hugh 73, 157, 166, 185 Pickering, Sir Gilbert 229–30 Piers, William, bishop of Bath and Wells 246, 250 Polycarp of Smyrna 7 Poole, Matthew 185–6, 188 Powell, Vavasor 60, 73, 74, 75, 161, 187 presbyterianism 73, 93, 104, 107, 109, 111–12, 114–23, 139, 159, 170, 177, 182, 214, 217, 223 presbyterians 2, 61, 83, 90–1, 139, 144, 147, 168, 184, 188­–9, 191, 204, 205, 222, 229, 237 Prideaux, John, bishop of Worcester 249 protesters (Scotland) 92–4 Prynne, William 39, 40, 46, 130, 145, 147 Prys, Edmwnd 68 Pym, John 62, 64 quakers 95 Renwick, James 94 resolutioners (Scotland) 92–4 Reynolds, Edward, Bishop of Norwich 133, 243 Reynolds, John 20 Ridgely, John 51 Robinson, John 164 263

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic Rogers, Ezekiel 163 Rogers, Richard 161 Rollock, Robert 82 Roman Catholicism 3, 63, 253 anti-catholicism 252–3 recusants 39, 63, 253 ‘Root and Branch petition’ (1641) 24–5, 136 Rothwell, William 50, 51 Rous, Francis 65 Rudyerd, Sir Benjamin 141 Rutherford, Samuel 82–5, 90, 94, 96, 105, 120, 137–8, 161 Rutter, Samuel 46 Saltmarsh, John 138 Salway, Humphrey 65 Sanderson, Robert, bishop of Lincoln 248, 253, 254 sanhedrin 87, 92, 133, 140 Savoy conference (1658) 185–7, 190 Declaration of faith and order (1658) 226, 232–7 Saye and Sele, Lord see Fiennes, William, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele Scobell, Henry 185 Seaman, Lazurus 8, 105, 108, 109–10, 113, 118, 120, 139, 140 Selden, John 130, 139, 140, 143 separatism 2, 5, 63, 157, 160, 179, 200 Sheldon, Gilbert, archbishop of Canterbury 30, 68, 243, 253–4 Shepherd, Thomas 49, 89, 91, 163, 166 Shields, Alexander 94 Simpson, Sydrach 223, 226 Skelton, Samuel 165, 166 Smectymnuus 5, 135 Socinianism 226 Solemn League and Covenant (1643) 25, 30, 88, 98, 108, 112 Sprat, Thomas 243 Stanley, Henry, 4th earl of Derby 44 Stanley, James, Lord Strange, 7th earl of Derby 11, 43, 46, 51, 52, 53 Stanley, William, 6th earl of Derby 43, 44, 51 Stillingfleet, Edward 247 Stone, Samuel 168 Strong, William 234 Sydenham, William 229–30 synods 26, 42, 65, 89, 93, 104, 109, 112, 264

116, 138, 142, 155–6, 159, 163, 167, 168, 208, 209 Tate, Zouch 65 Taylor, Jeremy 6, 7, 26–7, 68, 253 Taylor, Thomas 161 Temple, Thomas 107, 113 Thomas, Oliver 73 Thomas, William, bishop of St Davids 247 Thomason, George 181, 187 Thompson, William 46, 52 Thornborough, John, bishop of Worcester 253 Thorndyke, Herbert 6, 146 Thurloe, John 182, 185 Tillotson, John, archbishop of Canterbury 247 tithes 51–2, 174, 180 Travers, Peter 50–1, 52, 53 Travers, Walter 162 two-kingdoms theory 3, 11, 130, 132–3, 137–9, 141, 146 Ussher, James, archbishop of Armagh 6, 26, 29, 45, 178 Vane, Sir Henry (the younger) 136, 137 Vaughan, Richard, 2nd earl of Carbery 67 Venner, Thomas 29–30 Vines, Richard 113, 138, 140 Walker, John 75, 246 Walter, Henry 60, 71 Walton, Brian, bishop of Chester 247, 248, 253 Ward, Nathaniel 163 Ward, Seth, bishop of Salisbury 252 Warner, John, bishop of Rochester 247–51 Wedderburn, Alexander 97 Werden, John 40–1 Westfield, Thomas, bishop of Bristol 249 Westminster assembly 4, 7, 8, 53, 104–5, 114, 130, 131, 139, 145, 177, 178, 222–3, 236 Confession of faith (1646) 128, 174, 177 Directory for the public worship of God (1644) 65, 66, 68, 70, 74, 177, 178 Shorter catechism (1649) 177, 203

Index Whitaker, Jeremiah 107 Whitelocke, Bulstrode 144 Williams, John, bishop of Lincoln 39 Williams, Roger 5, 162, 165, 166, 227 wills 243, 246–7, 252 Wilson, John 167, 169

Winthrop, John 49, 161, 162, 164–5, 167 Worth, Edward 184–6 Wren, Matthew, bishop of Ely 243, 248, 250 Zwingli, Huldrych 130, 144

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