Insolent proceedings

Rethinking public politics in the English Revolution

Peter Lake, Jason Peacey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781526164995
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Insolent proceedings brings together leading scholars working on the politics, religion and literature of the English Revolution. It embraces new approaches to the upheavals that occurred in the mid-seventeenth century, in daily life as well as in debates between parliamentarians, royalists and radicals. Driven by a determination to explore the dynamic course and consequences of the civil wars and Interregnum, contributors investigate the polemics, print culture and everyday practices of the revolutionary decades, in order to rethink the period's 'public politics'. This involves integrating national and local affairs, as well as 'elite' and 'popular' culture, and looking at the connections between everyday activism and ideological endeavours. The book also examines participation by – and the treatment of – women from all walks of life.

1

‘Great conformitants’ and ‘right ambidexters’: puritans, conformity and the challenge of Laudianism¹

Anthony Milton

The notion that the Laudian reforms of the 1630s posed an existential threat to puritanism is a time-honoured one. This was famously a decade of persecution for puritans, of wicked oppression and noble suffering, as puritan ministers were deprived and/or fled into exile in the Low Countries or the New World. Puritan zeal was refined in the fire of persecution: the godly gained their martyrs and exiles at the hands of the evil Archbishop Laud as puritanism underwent its own version of the Marian persecution (and certainly puritan sufferers were not averse to comparing their plight directly with that of the Marian martyrs).² Modern historians have sometimes been prone to suggest that for puritans the only choice was between different forms of suffering. Thus, Frank Bremer has commented that puritans in the 1630s ‘had to choose between two painful options that confronted them – deprivation and persecution at home or exile in the Netherlands or the New World’.³ But there was of course a third option – reluctant conformity – and therein lay the problem, and the capacity of Laudianism, not to unite puritans in opposition, but to divide them.

The place to begin, as with all inter-puritan conflict, is with Thomas Edwards and his notorious Gangraena (1646). As Ann Hughes has demonstrated, the irascible Edwards was in no doubt that, among their other plentiful sins, some of his Independent foes of the 1640s had been notably lacking in zeal in opposing Laudianism in the previous decade. In fact, not only had they complied with the Laudian reforms, but some of them had done so with positive enthusiasm. They had been ‘not only conformists in the way of old conformity, but great Innovators and forward Episcopall men’ in the 1630s.⁴ But they could reply in kind. The radical John Saltmarsh complained of how ‘these Ministers who preach so for Presbytery through bloud and persecution now, did but a few yeers since preach as confidently for the Service-book, for Bishops, or against the Presbytery, & our Brethren of Scotland’.⁵ As another Independent added:

Some of you were great conformitants in the dayes of Episcopacie, have you indeed a minde to return again? Doe your soules long after the Summer fruits of Poperie, Organs and Altars, cringings and crouching, Tapers and Wafers, Copes and Rochets, Tippets and Surplices, Caps and Hoods, Crucifixes and Crosses, Pilgrimages and pictures, with all the accoutrements, and the whole prophane glory of the Romish Synagogue?⁶

The intent, of course, was to equate Presbyterian clericalism with its Laudian equivalent, but the charge of earlier compliance with Laudianism was more damaging than a mere suggestion that their policies unwittingly echoed Laudian ones.

The Presbyterian Edmund Calamy was a particular target. He was accused of complying with Bishop Wren’s ceremonial innovations. The Independent John Price was emphatic that this was not just a matter of conforming to pre-Laudian ceremonies (‘we say not wearing the Surplice, reading the Service book, crossing in Baptisme, &c. which many honest and godly Ministers in those dark dayes did likewise performe’). Rather, Calamy was ‘such a notorious conformitant unto, and notable stickler for the Prelats fooleries’ that he read the second service at the altar, bowed at the name of Jesus, and was a zealous ‘observer of times and seasons’ who insisted on preaching on Christmas Day despite being ill.⁷ Henry Burton similarly accused Calamy of ‘yeelding to the Prelates superstitious and idolatrous innovations in Gods worship’. Calamy was forced to write a self-defence (and naturally got in his counter-charge against Burton as having complied with a bishop’s order to satisfy the consciences of those worried by the ex officio oath).⁸ Similarly, Richard Hollingworth and Samuel Eaton traded accusations over whether ‘in the worst times’ [of Laudianism] ‘the greatest and godliest Independents in the Kingdome’ had been as prelatical as the Presbyterians had been.⁹ It is notable that the puritan sufferer Charles Chauncey, despite having been driven into exile in the 1630s, felt it necessary to publish in 1641 an account of his attack on the Laudian altar policy ‘for the satisfaction of all such who either are, or justly might bee offended with his scandalous submission, made before the high commission court’.¹⁰ The flood of anti-Laudian pamphlets published by puritan authors in 1641 doubtless reflected the loosening of the licensing controls that had inhibited publication of such material in the 1630s, but was also perhaps prompted by the need for puritans who had conformed in the 1630s to display their anti-Laudian credentials to their fellow-godly.¹¹

These clashes take us into ongoing 1640s inter-puritan contests for legitimacy, where the protagonist’s status as erstwhile sufferer or collaborator could play a significant role. Skirting the edge of conformity had been established puritan practice in the pre-war church, and these hostile attempts to misrepresent the extent of adversaries’ collaboration reflect vividly the broader breakdown in puritan unity in these years. But they also represent the after-shocks of a more troubling phenomenon. It is notable that all sides did not seem short of ammunition for these attacks (and royalist opponents were happy to add to the fire with their own accusations of time-serving hypocrisy against their puritan adversaries, which were eagerly picked up by warring puritans themselves),¹² and these clashes reflected the troublesome legacy of what had sometimes been an uncomfortably ambiguous puritan response to Laudianism. Writing in a more generously inclusive tone in 1641, John Bond reflected of the anti-sabbatarian doctrines and commands of the 1630s that ‘we have (many of us) yeelded too farre unto them, both within booke and without … we have basely (as it were) held that stirrop to those men’. Of the innovations in worship, he lamented that ‘we have bin too tame and passive, and such silence (I feare) must needs contract the guilt of consent’.¹³ It is that awkward and often neglected process that is the focus of this chapter.

I

There was, of course, nothing new about puritan struggles over degrees of ceremonial conformity. It was a crucial issue from the vestiarian controversy of the 1560s onwards. For all puritans who resisted separatism, the task was to find ways of making degrees of partial conformity acceptable. As Peter Lake and others have explained, the standard ‘moderate puritan’ position on conformity was based on the calculation that the benefits achieved by the godly preaching of the word of God exceeded the infelicities of conforming to an insufficiently reformed church. This calculation only worked according to certain conditions; namely, that the unreformed ceremonies themselves were ‘trifles’, things indifferent, which did not impinge on religious belief; that offence should not be taken by others when confronted by such godly conformity; and that such obedience was not obviously incompatible with the conscience, given the other duties of obedience to superiors, of maintaining the peace of the church, and of showing Christian charity. But it was emphasised that conforming puritans must not be acting directly against their conscience (they must be persuaded of the lawfulness and indifferency of the ceremonies), and that governors too should exercise forbearance (they should not enforce conformity in a way that threatened unity, nor should they say that the ceremonies were in themselves necessary to be observed). This all made for a marked diversity of liturgical practice and modified conformity – but tact and discretion were observed.¹⁴ From this perspective, puritan preachers as famous as John Rogers of Dedham and Samuel Ward of Ipswich could condemn puritan conflicts over ceremonies as pointless distractions from the real business of teaching and living godly lives, rebuking those who ‘spend all their zeale in crying out against Ceremonies’.¹⁵

But the phenomenon of partial conformity was not as smooth and consensual as this model might imply. The problem of course was that so many variables could threaten this position of partial conformity. What if ceremonial conformity caused offence among the fellow-godly? Much depended on the attitudes of civil and ecclesiastical governors, and the vigour with which ceremonies were imposed. What if bishops ceased to show forbearance in dealing with partial conformity? What if ceremonies were imposed so rigorously that it no longer appeared that they were seen as indifferent? And what if conformist divines started to insist that such ceremonies must necessarily be observed because they had inherent religious value, and were a necessary part of true worship? The mechanics of partial conformity also had their own unwritten rules – not least that these transactions between bishops and puritan ministers should remain discreetly private. Thus, when in 1604–5 the puritan John Burges struck a tactlessly defiant note before King James and prominent bishops, culminating in an open letter to his diocesan bishop where he complained that his modified subscription had permitted him to exercise a high degree of non-conformity in practice (an implicit deal that had now been reneged upon by the authorities when they had imposed new canons) he found himself suspended and deprived. By contrast, Laurence Chaderton got away with similar levels of non-conformity by displaying more tact and discretion, on the basis of private conferences and letters.¹⁶ Conforming puritans could still struggle with the issues: while William Bedell publicly repeated the conventional argument that the necessity of preaching justified compliance with undesirable ceremonies, he still requested after the Hampton Court Conference that doubtful cases involving ceremonies be ‘left to be an act of discretion among us’ until offensive ceremonies might be removed. He admitted in private correspondence with his fellow puritan Samuel Ward in 1604 that he had privately told those ministers refusing subscription (such as Burges) that he would stand with them if he saw cause. Ward himself was struggling to be convinced by Bedell’s arguments, and was preoccupied with the concern that, even if the ceremonies were indifferent, subscription might cause offence to his fellow-godly.¹⁷ Both men would ultimately gain further promotion in the church – in Bedell’s case to a bishopric – but their struggles over partial conformity and subscription had been anxious and protracted.

There were evidently many difficult line-calls here, and often puritans might disagree about when a Rubicon had been crossed (and even if they could agree, the varying diocesan experience meant that puritans might not suffer the same intolerable oppression at the same time). There was never entire agreement within the puritan community, and non-conforming puritans could on occasion condemn the conformity of their godly brethren in the most emphatic terms. Thus, while in 1583–4 the fudged agreement over the Three Articles (which permitted ‘modified subscription’ whereby puritans had to subscribe only to those articles that concerned ‘the confession of the true Christian faith and the doctrine of the sacraments’) was a defeat for Archbishop Whitgift, it was also a defeat for the puritan activist John Field who had wished to secure mass non-conformity.¹⁸ Partial subscribers were then attacked by their fellow-godly as ‘the demi-pure’, or it was claimed that conditional subscriptions were rigged and subscribers misled.¹⁹ When further subscription was required to the book of canons at the beginning of James’ reign, there were similar condemnations of those moderate puritans who complied. Thomas Brightman insisted that only those puritan ministers who steadfastly refused subscription were true members of the godly, while William Bradshaw attacked ‘this lye, or politique subscription’ which would purchase the right to preach ‘with the price of blood, yea the blood of souls’ by its...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface: ann hughes as historian, friend and mentor
• List of abbreviations
• Note on conventions
• Introduction: rethinking public politics in the English Revolution
• 1 ‘Great conformitants’ and ‘right ambidexters’: puritans, conformity and the challenge of Laudianism1
• 2 Killing (Catholic) officers no crime? The politics of religious violence in England in 1640
• 3 Anatomy of the General Rising: militancy and mobilisation in London, 1643
• 4 ‘In the hollow of his wooden leg’: the transmission of civil war materials, 1642–9
• 5 Puritanism, parish and polemic in civil war London: the case of Thomas Bakewell
• 6 William Walwyn’s Montaigne and the struggle for toleration in the English Revolution
• 7 An accursed family: the Scottish crisis and the Black Legend of the House of Stuart, 1650–2
• 8 Indemnity, sovereignty and justice in the army debates of 1647
• 9 Milton and Winstanley: a conversation
• 10 Women, print and locality: Richard Culmer and the practices of polemic during the English Revolution
• 11 ‘Threshing among the people’: Ranters, Quakers and the revolutionary public sphere
• Index