Monday, April 3, 1995

Enforcing Conformity: Religion Driving Social and Political Reform in England, 1629-1640

An academic paper submitted at Middlebury College during the 1994-1995 academic year.

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Department of History; Middlebury College


The first place on this page belongs, without doubt, to Paul Monod. Courageously, Paul has undertaken to be my academic advisor through most of my years at Middlebury. This job is not always a fun task, involving signing forms, listening, and argument, and, in the end, agreement with me; he has performed ably and indeed admirably under the circumstances of my own world view and plans. Paul has also provided mindless hard labor, a listening ear, fascinating and amusing conversation, insightful thoughts and ideas, and pointers to more numerous and more varied references than I might ever have found alone. His patience with and understanding of my quirks are much appreciated, and have not gone unnoticed.

I am always grateful to Erin O'Callaghan, a very special friend whose aid in editing my work in the past continues to help me perfect my writing. She graciously offered, in advance, to edit this work in pieces and its entirety; her help in this has been integral to its success and clarity. Hopefully she has found it stimulating.

David Edwards helped me find the confidence to go through with history, and provides a goal at which to aim: a return to Ireland as a scholar.

Numerous friends have provided listening ears, understanding hearts, hopeful words, and much-needed distractions from events three hundred and sixty years gone by. Though there are too many to list here, those who cannot go unnamed are Amy Young, Erin Topping, Tracey Wilkerson, and, of course, my sister Katherine. Extra special thanks are due Denise Kmetzo, Yoko Nakao, and Colleen Oates for letting me use their space, and for many fun times.

It is a sort of custom, in acknowledging debts, to absolve of all blame regarding the final product those who gave aid to the writer of a work. Clearly, the final form of this work is my own and none but myself should be held responsible for it; those who influenced particular elements are aware of my gratitude and, though forgiving the shortfall in recognition, they will, I trust, remain mindful of their complicity in what I have done.



"[A] sinister force, based on the corruption of human nature, spread gradually through what had started out as a perfectly stable and sound institutional structure, until it was utterly subverted and undermined."[1]

Peter Lake describes the perception of popery as a gradual process of corruption, weakening a good state structure from within. Andrew Foster has described Arminianism in the same way,[2] and Charles I saw Puritanism in this light as well.[3] These two twentieth-century scholars, and a seventeenth-century English monarch, provide evidence of a great rift in English society, based particularly in religion, but with its arms extending to the political and social structure of the realm.

Kevin Sharpe argues that the person who created this rift was Charles I himself, in autocratic command of Church and state, who undertook political and religious reforms, imposing them personally from above, upon his ministers and subjects.[4] While Charles does seem to have been possessed of a will to rule without much outside input, I am not at all certain that Charles was in charge as much as Sharpe would like us to believe. We must also look at the efforts of Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, whose actions Sommerville sees as difficult to distinguish from those of Charles I.[5] That is, it is hard to say which one of the two men made any particular decision, as both enforced policy, and often the names of both were attached to important documents, like the Canons.

We must look, then, at the motivation behind decisions of policy in the 1630s, to examine the reasons the king and his Archbishop made those changes during Charles's rule without parliaments. To examine this, we must look first at the consolidation of Church and state that was a result of some innovations, and enabled others to take place. We must explore the means of this centralization, the innovations that developed as the unification of Church and state progressed, and the enforcement of those new policies, which brought them to the attention of many more people than had been aware of previous modifications.

Those opposing change also saw the Church-state alliance. They exploited the church as a vehicle for resistance to both crown and archbishop, to avoid direct criticism of the king, which was treason. We must explore the resistance to crown and Church policy. This opposition was based on the idea of the importance of tradition, and on the tradition of resisting change in the status quo. We will look particularly at Catholics and treatment of Catholics in England, as an example of a group of people resisting both religious and political influences to conform.

Non-conformity was a threat to social order, and there were also innovations in enforcing conformity. Based both on religious and secular grounds, protection of social order reached every level of society, and did not merely affect those at court. Relations between court and country, and court and towns, became closer, with the result that centrally administered ecclesiastical change and law enforcement reached the localities more directly than previously. This can be seen most clearly in the debate over the Puritan sabbatarian movement against anything but religion on Sundays.

We will see that religion was a driving force for political change in the 1630s, from the king and court to the village constable, and that religion took on a political dimension throughout the state hierarchy. We will also see that the sheer volume of simultaneous change threatened society as much as the disorder those changes were designed to prevent.

To begin, the "institutional structure" Lake describes above was a combination of the Church of England and the royal government of England in the 1630s. Inherent in Lake's argument is an assumption that the two were closely related, and that efforts to undermine that structure were carried out by a group of people with plans to weaken the status quo of the realm, and to replace it with a new institutional structure of greater worth and usefulness to them.

We must, then, examine the various "sides" in the issue of the subversion of the Church and state: we must look at who they were, what they believed, how they acted on those beliefs (and, indeed, whether or not they did so), and what the effects of their actions were. Further, we must keep a careful eye on the political developments of the 1630s, ever watchful for the conflicts over religious, political, and social issues that appear throughout our period.

Perhaps it is useful first, however, to step back and address another question. Why examine these trends during the 1630s?

It was a time in which the king ruled alone, and in which the vast majority of the population was aware not only that there was no Parliament sitting, but that there would not be one called for some time. Charles I, after dissolving the 1628 Parliament, issued a proclamation declaring his intent not to call another Parliament until his subjects, particularly those who had participated in the most recent sitting, had calmed down somewhat and come to see the correctness of the royal will.[6] Charles I kept the government to himself and his courtiers, as a result of the boisterousness of the 1629 session of Parliament. It had ended with the famous scene of defiance in which the Speaker, Sir John Finch, was forcibly held in his chair as the Commons passed the Protestation and then exited the House as the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod and the guards entered to force the Members into recess by order of the King.[7]

With the dissolution of Parliament, the peers lost influence as well as the Commons. The balance of power shifted, particularly as Charles was seen to protect Catholics both at court and elsewhere.[8] Charles's courtiers were widely suspected to be Catholics, or "crypto-Catholics," and as such, they were feared as agents of Antichrist.[9] Further, there were in 1628 and 1633 new Archbishops of York and Canterbury, respectively: these men were Richard Neile and William Laud, both Arminians, whose policies of "innovation in religion [became] associated with an assault on the liberties of the subject."[10]

The subjects, from the peerage to the peasantry, endured in the 1630s "a crisis of confidence in the government of church and state"[11] related to an upward spiral of tensions between the Crown and Parliament in the late 1620s.[12] The 1628 Petition of Right protested against arbitrary government.[13] The king had reluctantly accepted the petition, at the specific demand of Parliament, but in his acceptance had expressed his unwillingness to compromise the royal prerogative, even at the express request of his subjects.[14] The 1629 Remonstrance of the Commons against the Duke of Buckingham further clarified the Commons' "fear of innovation and change of government"[15] and blamed the state of the kingdom on Buckingham.[16] Further, the Commons were nervous that there was "some secret working . . . to introduce . . . some innovation and change of our holy Religion."[17]

By 1639, Lawrence Stone notes, the government, rather than misfortune, had become the scapegoat for the problems of the kingdom.[18] In 1640, the Commons, again assembled in Parliament, were able to discuss the fact that in the eleven years since they had last sat, many of the changes towards which they had expressed opposition had taken place. That Parliament was very concerned with redress of their grievances, and less so with the kingdom's economic state at the end of the Scottish war.[19]

Who, then, were these people whose fears of change had been justified? What did they believe, what did they do, and what were the results of those actions? We must ask the same questions of those who promoted change, unafraid of the consequences for the realm.

The major groups involved, the Puritans and the Arminians, had a considerable background in common. Both claimed to be, and indeed were, protestant. They saw Catholicism as an evil religion; neither would admit the Roman church was a true church, or that salvation was possible in the Roman church.[20] Catholicism was seen by protestants not as an alternative to protestantism, but as blasphemy of the worst kind;[21] Catholics were consorting with the Pope, who was for Puritans Antichrist.

All protestants also agreed about the increasingly sad state of religion found throughout England.[22] Papist areas were in the north and west of England,[23] and there were only piecemeal efforts to bring the light of Reformation to those far corners; none of these efforts were state-run, and "in the 1630s, even private enterprise was actively discouraged"[24] due to the evangelizing energy of Puritans and the government's Arminianism in opposition to Puritan missionary efforts.

The broadness of protestant consensus was precisely the problem of disunity in protestantism. The wide base of agreement permitted a great deal of latitude for discord underneath the protestant umbrella. Arminian ideas of control of the church from the top clashed with the Calvinist ideal of the priesthood of all believers;[25] and the Arminian-supported Prayer Book was a rival to the Calvinists' doctrinal base in the Thirty-Nine Articles.[26] Laud, to make things more clear for himself, defined Puritanism "so as to include doctrinal Calvinism,"[27] rather than its narrower definition as a group of more radical protestant reformers. Laud and his fellow Arminians had a vision of the way things were to be, in their ideal church; so did the Puritans, for theirs. Both believed that their ideals were correct and true, and that the other idea was wrong.[28]

For William Lamont, this black and white point of view was the radicalism that was Puritanism.[29] Therein lay the difficulty of the age. Puritans and Arminians each saw the other group as threatening to stability and order. Arminians wanted to restore the hierarchical ceremony and mysticism they considered "orthodox," with emphasis on saving grace through sacrament and ritual. Puritan gentry and townsfolk wanted a return to what they called the "orthodox Church," emphasizing moral propriety, sermons over rituals, and the idea that conformity with official standards could only come with true agreement to the principles behind the doctrine.

David Underdown saw this emphasis on the Puritan Calvinist heritage; preaching and scripture over sacraments and rituals, as a response to social instability, and as an element of a conflict between "great cosmic forces of good and evil."[30] Underdown called this "the rational religion,"[31] and Nicholas Tyacke found a similar trend in Puritanism.

Tyacke noted that Puritanism focused on preaching, "the chief means of salvation."[32] Yet some Puritan preachers were idealist enough to reject the idea of conformity where that would compromise their religious beliefs, though non-conformity would also deprive them of their preaching opportunities.[33] For Puritans, who were predestinarians, and often sabbatarians, the authority of the Bible was paramount; this was a main difference between Puritans and Arminians.[34] In the two decades prior to Charles's Personal Rule, Puritanism, Tyacke says, "was . . . either a refusal to conform with . . . the English Church, or . . . a presbyterian rejection of church government by bishops."[35]

Puritans were stubborn and held strong beliefs; they were evangelical,[36] and their doctrine gave them "courage to fight tenaciously, if necessary alone."[37] It was a demanding form of religion, cut out for "doers only,"[38] ones who were willing to work hard at preaching and the intellectual arts, to "rouse men to think and act about the problems of this world"[39] they lived in. It was a cerebral religion, rather than a sacramental or liturgical one, and the clergy were seen as equals, if educated equals, of the laity.[40] Indeed, clergy, for Puritans, could not be elevated above the laity, as this was for them a popish tendency.[41] Puritans demanded integrity, and did not permit deviation from the norm.[42] This earned them the support of many propertied laymen, who also liked Puritan ideals of community service and good works.[43]

John Donne saw Puritans as concerned with community, and "zealous, and fervent in reprehension of sin" in themselves and in others.[44] For Donne, Puritans were unnecessarily righteous in dress and ideas about Sunday sports, and had unconventionally inspired and earnest preaching methods.[45] Donne, a contemporary of the Puritans, felt that Puritan sermons interested their listeners,[46] though J. P. Kenyon disagrees.[47]

Kenyon sees an "argumentative austerity" in Puritanism, for him based on local issues of hierarchy.[48] D. M. Loades, on the other hand, finds Puritan opposition largely to the royal supremacy, which was for Loades a large part of the "foundations of Puritanism."[49] (The word "Puritan" was an insulting epithet in the seventeenth century.[50]) Conrad Russell does not see that Puritanism was an economic movement, but does not rule out that it could have been a politically motivated religious movement.[51] Lawrence Stone, however, argues that Puritanism was an egalitarian political movement[52] whose unity centered primarily on opposition to Arminian religious policies.[53]

John Selden, a writer of the time, noticed inherent contradictions, in both Puritanism and Arminianism, and in their opposition to each other. Puritans, as predestinarians, did not believe in human freewill, but only in God's will, and yet were willing to permit freedom of individual action. Arminians, on the other hand, believed in human freewill, and despite this preached obedience rather than liberty.[54]

Arminians did believe in their own idea of an "orthodox Church," one with emphasis on observance of outward conformity, rather than theological agreement with the meaning of Church policy. They had their own idea of "godly discipline,"[55] based on and administered by the Church, and "very hostile to lay intervention."[56] Laud in particular thought Church affairs were for churchmen, and that clerics should develop the liturgy at the request of, but without intervention by, the monarch.[57] Laud felt that after the liturgy was approved by the king, it was no longer the work of one man, but of a body of men, like an Act of Parliament.[58]

The king readily approved Laud's actions, and though Laud was reluctant to permit lay influence in church affairs, Charles seems to have been one layman Laud was very close to.[59] Charles favored Arminianism and its ideals,[60] which were often seen as popish. Though devout in his beliefs,[61] he resisted the open popery of his wife's French Catholic household.[62]

Arminians like Charles believed in "an emphasis on ceremonies and sacraments at the expense of preaching,"[63] a return to more mystical religion and a removal of the intellectual debate over theology by de-emphasizing sermons. It was not, as Johann Sommerville points out, clearly connected with altogether new ceremonies;[64] instead, it proposed restoring to the Church of England a set of ceremonies eschewed by Puritans in favor of preaching.

There were, however, Puritan objections to Arminian "innovations," as well as opposition to what they saw as increased episcopalianism.[65] In the tradition of "a century . . . of protest and complaint,"[66] John Milton argued bishops needed to be more pious, stricter in their personal habits and in self-denial.[67] This type of protest Loades considers to be "genuinely radical and sectarian," as well as insignificant prior to 1641.[68] However, Milton's idea that bishops were Antichristian and popish was common among others of his time and developed among Puritans in the 1630s.[69] Another more practical objection to increased power of bishops was that the episcopal system as it existed in the 1630s was not a perfectly functioning organization. Instead, bishops were often more interested in their own concerns. They were less concerned with the many benefices held by the same preacher and the numerous clerical livings owned by laity rather than clergy.[70] Increase in the power of bishops also corresponded to an increase in the local power of clergy. This was a new influence on local power bases, which were often Puritan in leaning, leading to religious motivations for political opposition to the government.[71] Laud wanted increased governmental power, to implement his idea of Godly Rule.[72]

His idea involved control of Catholicism, like Puritanism spread throughout all areas of society, and with its own ideas about the proper way to run things.[73] Many Catholics who could not afford the fines imposed by the penal laws converted to the Established Church, leaving the base of Catholic support in the gentry and aristocracy. The larger conflict was between Puritans and Arminians, but Catholics also provided an excellent example of official treatment of defiance of Arminian and state policy.

The historical and historiographical discussions seem to center, as we have seen, around the significance attributable to religion and to politics in the growing storm in England, which would arrive eventually at the Civil War, and indeed the regicide in 1649. A further point of confusion, not only for historians looking back on events of the 1630s, but for people living and writing then, is the problem of word choice. Terminology was loosely defined at that time: "Puritan" meant different things to different people, and ideas of the "true Church" were markedly different. The theological debate over whether God's will, apart from that found in Scripture, was knowable and intelligible made controversial the word "godly"[74] which today we bandy about with relative insensitivity, as we do other words like "papist" and "Calvinist," both of which reflected moral judgments made by the speaker, on the habits and beliefs of the individual or group so described.

These are thoughts we must keep in mind while exploring the idea that religion was a motivating factor for, and a justification behind, political opposition in the 1630s. Further, religious and political affairs became more closely related as the clergy took a more active part in the government of the nation and as the central government reined in the localities with more direct conciliar and judicial control. Eventually, over the course of the 1630s, Church and state became seen as a united front against the interests of the people; religious reform was a threat to the popularity of the state and of the monarch. The major issue, however, was religious and theological in foundation, and made more obvious by the centralization of the state and Church administrations. We will look at this centralization and the changes, called "innovations" by Puritans, but seen by Arminians as a return to the "true Church," which were given opportunity to succeed as a result of the consolidation of authority. These changes, theological and systematic, met opposition from many people, and there were popular and governmental backlashes against all deviation from each ideal of religious practice. We will explore this motivation and its effects, particularly on those most "deviant," Catholics. Those in control of the towns also cracked down on those deviating from Puritan social ideals, and attempts to control instability were an important element of local politics, as well as on the nationally, and we will examine the effects economic and social problems had on towns and townspeople.

We must begin by addressing centralizing and "innovating" reforms of the Church and state.



Church and state centralized, intertwining support of the Church for the state and the state for the Church. Innovations were introduced, both resulting from and made possible by this unification of authority. Innovation was not only in the act of centralization but also in policy of both Church and state, and in the imposition of conformity to new standards upon the populace.

Archbishop Laud changed the Church and the state, increasing non-conformity from a level previously difficult to determine to one glaringly obvious upon investigation. Before examining the innovations Laud introduced, with Charles's support and blessing, it is useful to have a brief look at the Church of England under Laud's predecessor at Canterbury, Archbishop George Abbot.

Abbot put religion first, and believed that if preaching was important, evangelism was vital to the success of the Church.[1] He was willing to put aside small degrees of non-conformity to provide a preacher to a parish without one. He did have an "all-consuming fear and hatred of Rome,"[2] and was concerned that his clergy preach against popery, but many forms of non-conformity, if not blatant, could be overlooked.[3] Abbot did not permit open challenges to the Church's authority. Those non-conformists who recognized the authority of the Church hierarchy could stay, but he did hold a hard line against those who would not recognize the Church's supremacy.[4] The real threat to the Church, for Abbot, was popery, not protestant non-conformity.[5]

After Charles's accession, Abbot and Laud, then a bishop, were rivals at court, opposing each other on doctrine and policy enforcement. Abbot did not support two Laudian goals, the relocation of the communion table to the altar's place and bowing at the name of Jesus during a service.[6] Abbot, unlike Laud later, used the highest Church court, the Court of High Commission, with discretion, to punish extremist clerical violators, rather than moderates.[7] The Abbot High Commission was seen as an instrument of clerical discipline, in contrast to the later hated Laudian High Commission,[8] an instrument of what Tyacke calls "anti-Calvinism."

Despite Abbot's clear differences from Laud, Arminian influence can be seen ahead of Laud's appointment to Canterbury. On 14 June 1626 Charles issued a proclamation "for the . . . Peace and Quiet of the Church of England," to prevent big problems arising "out of small beginnings," rumblings of discontent with possible changes in the "orthodox religion." Charles used that term to describe his own idea of a true Church, which was, he said, the Church as it was at that time. This proclamation was to quell rising fears of growing popery in the Church.[9]

Those fears were not calmed by Charles's 1628 reaffirmation of the Articles of the Church of England, ordering them to be "taken in the literal and grammatical sense" since they contained "the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's Word."[10] The same year, he proclaimed that the ecclesiastical courts' decisions held the weight of the king's authority, even without his Great Seal,[11] effectively uniting the two legal systems of the realm.

Throughout the 1630s the administrations of the Church and of the state became more centralized and closer to each other. At Charles's coronation, in the traditional oath administered to the king, he pledged to respect the ancient rights of the subject and of Parliament.[12] However, Lawrence Stone claims that Charles's reforms were in opposition to the interests of his subjects,[13] a sound idea, since many subjects were far from London and from government. Though connections between local and royal affairs increased as the consolidation of authority progressed,[14] Charles was unwilling to listen to those whom he was more closely controlling. Throughout the 1630s, as the Privy Council took more interest and action in local affairs, the upper middle class, who were often Justices of the Peace, were increasingly active in their localities, and more accountable to the Privy Council.[15]

In a move towards increased accountability of local officials, in 1631 the Privy Council issued the Book of Orders to JPs. This increased the role of the central government in local administration by formally laying out a system by which the JPs would be accountable to royal officials.[16] This was an effort by the Council to guarantee fairness and order in the future, by creating alliances with local officials.[17]

The unity of Church and state was one area in which this alliance was attempted. Laud's efforts, beyond ensuring "that the fall of one would inevitably drag the other down with it,"[18] led to the necessity of resisting both to advocate removal of unwanted influence from one. Laud and his bishops increased pressure on the localities. Perhaps in anticipation of this influence, Parliament, in the Protestation of 1629, declared that anyone who made changes in "the true and orthodox Church" was "a capital enemy to this Kingdom and Commonwealth,"[19] effectively making traitors of religious innovators. Charles, as the executor of government, could either enforce this or not, as he saw fit. Puritanism was not his idea of a "true Church." He subscribed to the Arminian idea of integration of "theology, church organisation and the power of the state"[20] and did not feel that the changes Laud made to the Church were treasonous. If he had, Laud would not have remained so central in the King's confidence, as he did.

The King strongly backed Laud, and he and his bishops were increasingly influential in the government.[21] Clergy began taking offices in the state government in what Christopher Hill calls "a union of oppositions."[22] There was a blurring of the line between political and religious issues, which gave political actions the added significance of being carried out by Church officials. The government officiate was divided between secular and clerical staff members.[23] Kevin Sharpe claims that Laud was uninterested in secular power;[24] however, it was he who above all others advocated placing bishops in government posts.

Laud's own influence with the King got William Juxon, Bishop of London but unknown at Court,[25] appointed to the Clerkship of His Majesty's Closet in 1632. In 1636, in Laud's continuing quest to have the ear of the King, Juxon was elevated to Lord Treasurer,[26] the most profitable office in the land.[27] Peers and courtiers alike resented this elevation of an unknown man to influential office,[28] and could not have been ignorant of Laud's influence in the matter. They resented Laud, and, by extension, the authority of the Church.[29] They saw the Church as "the gulph ready to swallow all the great offices"[30] through Laud's and Juxon's patronage. This was particularly evident after 1634 when Laud, elevated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury the previous year, was appointed by the King to several important royal committees.[31] Juxon, however, unlike Laud, was able to perform well in his offices on the Council and as a clergyman simultaneously, and did not cause many problems for himself among the courtiers or the populace.[32]

The king, however, proved unable to maintain such a clever balance. His authority backed the November 1633 Act of the Privy Council ordering that all parish churches follow their cathedrals' examples and place their communion tables at the east end of the church, as an altar.[33] This was three months after Laud's installation at Canterbury, and represented what Nicholas Tyacke calls the "sacramental undermining by English Arminians of the Calvinist theology of grace,"[34] giving clergy a role in the sacrament of communion as intercessory between people and God, rather than the Calvinist role as a server of a symbolic wafer. This act and its enforcement manifested Arminian policy throughout England.

In 1637 a royal proclamation forbade separation from the Church of England. That proclamation detailed enforcement of laws against, and punishment of, recusants, those who would not attend Church of England services. Also it required increased accountability of crown officials for their actions.[35]

This accountability was enhanced, in the clerical sphere, by the uniformity of purpose, after 1633, of the two Archbishops, Neile of York and Laud of Canterbury, both Arminians.[36] Neile had been installed at York in 1628, and it is from this year that we can date the elevated significance of Arminian policy in the Church of England; it was not, however, until Laud's primacy began five years later that firm enforcement of "innovations" got underway. It was Laud rather than his less confrontational ally Neile who took blame then, and now, for the religious strife of the time.[37]

Opposition to the religious policy of the Church was equivalent, Sommerville argues, to opposition to the government.[38] Even Kevin Sharpe seems to agree that Church and state were very closely tied: he argues that Laud was Charles's agent, his front man. Sharpe takes that relationship to the tenuous extreme that Laud was not influential in government apart from religious issues,[39] but government issues and religious issues were so closely intertwined that neat separation is difficult. Laud certainly took a religious stance on state issues, arguing that a "different and inconsistent Church within a Church [i.e., religious non-conformity] . . . brought hazard upon the State."[40]

Sommerville notes that Laud's basic theology was opposition to Calvinism.[41] Calvinism in a less moderate form was Puritanism, while in its most general form, Calvinism was the basis of unity of the Church of England until Laud's primacy.[42] This opposition to Calvinism was for Laud more out of loyalty to his idea of the true Church than for the crown, whose power was undermined by dissenting Puritans.[43] Closely tied to Arminianism even as early as 1605,[44] anti-Calvinism was by the late 1620s "linked with a plan to alter the government."[45] Anti-Calvinists in England also added new elements to pre-existing doctrines: they read Arminius's writings on grace and predestinarianism "with approval," and yet added "an additional, sacramental dimension" to the English version of Arminianism, a dimension not present in the practices of Arminius's subscribers in the United Provinces.[46] They also added "a new . . . source of grace . . . in the sacraments, which Calvinists had belittled,"[47] to further differentiate their sect from others.

Arminian anti-Calvinism was a powerful movement, and Puritans did have a difficult time resisting their innovations during the 1630s. Tyacke notes the Puritan tendencies of Parliament and suggests that Puritans needed Parliament for support, as "the court of Calvinist appeal."[48] Certainly it seems that power in London would have been more balanced between an Arminian king and Archbishop, a court heavily influenced by Catholicism, and Puritan ideology, had a Parliament been sitting at any point in our period. Laud had no Parliamentary opposition, and the support and ear of the king. He could and did range freely over religious and state policy.

William Laud became Bishop of London in 1628, after holding sees elsewhere in Wales and England, and was given the Archbishopric of Canterbury in 1633 upon Abbot's death. Laud was an Arminian,[49] but it is important to note that the distinction between Arminianism and popery was at times so unclear to anti-Arminians and Catholics that the Pope, following Laud's elevation to Canterbury, offered him a cardinalate if he would convert to Catholicism.[50] Obviously the Pope saw Laud's beliefs as so close to popery that he felt there was a chance of success in the endeavor to reclaim the English Church for Rome. A failed proposition, it was not even a likely prospect. As early as 1625 Laud wrote to the Duke of Buckingham that the Church should not be subordinate to anyone,[51] and especially not the Pope. Laud was unwilling to compromise on the matter of Church subordination, and in that way if no other he was a radical innovator. He stood on principle, even in the face of dissent from the populace and his clergy. This was the new element, as his predecessors, including Abbot, had compromised on certain matters on which Laud proved unwilling to conciliate.

This did not mean that Laud's efforts were entirely new. There is evidence that Laud's reforms continued Church trends dating from the reigns of Elizabeth and James.[52] He tried to prevent conflict within the Church not by explaining himself and his actions, but "by stifling public discussion of perplexing questions."[53] His attempts to elevate himself above others, to give himself more respect and authority, failed. John Bastwick wrote of Laud that he acted and was treated by servants as if he were a prince, or even superior to the king. Bastwick, no friend of Laud, saw this behavior as exemplary of "the pride, arrogancy, barbarousness, and cruelty of the prelates."[54]

It was in defense of those elements of continuity, from days before the Reformation, through the Elizabethan and Jacobean Churches, that Laud opened Parliament in 1626 with a sermon "remarkable for its aggressive tone."[55] When seven years later he moved to Canterbury, Laud's offensive had not abated, and was indeed on the increase. The 1626 speech inveighed against Presbyterianism, whose chief modification of the Church involved abolition of the episcopacy, and warned that the Puritans in the realm were advocating change in the direction of Presbyterianism.[56] Parliament, however, objected to the speaker as much as to the speech, very early on expressing the fear that Arminians were "both heterodox and the means of introducing Roman Catholicism into England."[57] What Laud failed to see was that, while his ideas were perhaps descendants of the Roman church and of the policies of Whitgift and Bancroft, European and domestic politics had become more polarized in the interim, and in extremes divergent from Laudian aims.[58]

Parliament's fear in the 1620s was justified by Laud's activities during the 1630s, and Tyacke argues that by 1640 the idea that Charles and Laud were innovators in religion is "irrefutable."[59] Clearly, to some extent, Laud wanted to "return the Church to its . . . pre-Reformation condition,"[60] to popery without allegiance to Rome. Laud and the other Arminians saw themselves as orthodox protestants, which is the opposite of the way the populace viewed them.[61] They saw a series of innovations and changes in the Church signaling the return of popery to Calvinist England.

As a result of Arminian emphasis on ritual, these were mostly ceremonial innovations,[62] but ones that had significant undertones of theological variation from Puritan ideas. Firstly, the clergy had to wear surplices and, if they had university degrees, hoods while reading the liturgy. Made official in 1634, and meant to elevate the clergy above the otherwise similarly dressed laity,[63] the addition of surplices had the effect of making clergy look more like priests than they had for some time. The rituals of "the sign of the cross in baptism, [and] kneeling at communion," among others, were "restored" after long absences;[64] Laud believed that "with Contempt of the Outward Worship of God, the Inward fell away."[65]

The key object of Laud's efforts was the modification of the place in the church of the Calvinist communion table. Laud wanted a return to "the eastward position of the communion table and its isolation by rails,"[66] which, for most Englishmen, turned the table into an altar.[67] His energies focused in this direction from very early in his time at Canterbury,[68] showing the significance of this idea for the archbishop. The altar was, for him, holier than the pulpit, for from the pulpit was preached but the Word of God, while from the altar the Body of Jesus was served to his followers.[69]

For Calvinists, who believed in the idea of God's elect people, Laud's changes to the communion table were far more than relocation of furniture: they showed the "replacement of preaching as the normal vehicle of saving grace . . . by sacraments which conferred grace indiscriminately."[70] The ideological dispute deepened because the railing of the altar elevated the status of the clergy to an intercessory role, Arminian doctrine against transubstantiation notwithstanding.[71] There was a large amount of resistance to the change of the communion table to an altar,[72] largely as a result of the significance Puritans placed on communion. Of course, Arminians also felt strongly about communion, which was their justification for advocating the changes.[73] Arminians took a more popish stance, however, which was the source of conflict. They even went as far as "advocating the novel practice of private confession before receiving . . . communion."[74] Laud also claimed that the altar changes were no innovation, though evocative of the Roman church; he cited as justification for this the practice in many English churches of using the popish phrase "Venite, adoremus" to call people to worship.[75] In the 1640 Canons, the communion tables were called altars, and were to "stand in the place where the altars stood."[76] Laud's efforts, in the end successful in achieving his reforms, were implemented to restore harmony and propriety to the Church,[77] though they "looked popish and . . . like popery, were arguably against the law."[78] Arminian doctrine itself "was clearly contrary to the wishes of a majority" of the gentry and aristocracy, as evidenced by the later reactions of Parliament to Arminian policies.[79]

The higher levels of society at court, however, saw "a renewed emphasis on ceremony and ritual,"[80] based on "the grave ceremonial" Charles had seen in the Spanish court on his ill-fated trip to marry the Infanta, during his father's reign.[81] Charles seems not to have grasped the concept that the Spanish were papists and therefore anathema to many of his subjects, and indeed his protestant courtiers as well.

He and Laud were equally cavalier while elevating the clergy and promoting their economic well-being, which was done with some disregard for the wealth of the gentry, and even for "the liberties of the subject."[82] This process strained lay-clergy relations in the 1630s,[83] a time when communication between Church administration and laity would have been particularly useful.

Communication in the dispute over predestinarianism was as lacking as it was in other areas of Church-state-subject relations. Laud rejected the idea of predestination, for the same reason as did John Donne, dean of Laud's favorite church, St. Paul's: God would not condemn without reason those whom he created, and certainly he would not have created humans only to damn them before they were even born.[84] There was the further psychological injury done those who could not believe in their own election, and who despaired of their salvation.[85]

On the heels of the royal proclamation of 14 June 1626 against predestination and other views dissenting from the Church, predestinarian teaching was outlawed at Cambridge University. The London and Cambridge printers obeyed, while Oxford University waited until 1628 to follow suit.[86] The 1628 Parliament protested the preference of non-Calvinist preachers over Calvinists, whom it termed "orthodox."[87] While these changes took place prior to Laud's appointment to Canterbury, they reflect a royal tendency towards Arminian doctrine, and the limited response by Parliament is a clue that some change in the Church was tolerable for Puritans, who would make the traditional noises against change, but might agree with removal of predestinarian teaching if nothing else were touched. This was not Laud's way. There were Puritans who felt strongly about this issue and other doctrinal differences of Arminianism.

Though episcopal approval was necessary to provide a preacher a living, non-conformist preachers did exist, and they found their way into the Church system through lectureships.[88] Lecturers, privately subsidized preachers paid by anyone who could afford to hire someone to preach what he liked to hear, were a voice of dissent in a Church attempting to impose uniformity. They were, for this reason, suppressed by Laud,[89] as were impropriations, parishes whose rights to tithes and patronage were held by laymen.[90]

The gentry, who liked being able to sponsor those clergy they liked, and to have them preach publicly in their town or village, resisted this effective reduction of lay influence in the Church.[91] This was a strong base for Puritanism: evaluation of and appreciation for the ability of a preacher to expound upon the word of God, rooted in personal involvement with theology and religious thought. Laud's efforts removed "godly and able men from the ministry,"[92] taking away their livings, and making more difficult the possibility of supporting themselves with private sponsors. Laud, however, insisted "no more must lay men take away and misemploy the Church revenues"[93] by holding impropriations or by supporting with financial assistance preachers other than the official parish priest.

A group of Puritans, the Feoffees for Impropriations, formed early in Charles's reign to buy impropriations and install Puritan ministers in the vacancies.[94] They were quite successful from 1625 to 1633,[95] but upon arriving at Canterbury, Laud suppressed them, afraid that they would come to control the important parishes, those represented in the House of Commons, and that their influence would be a political danger to the state.[96] It is perhaps telling of his power before 1633 that Laud was ineffective in limiting the activities of the Feoffees until he had an archbishopric. Laud prosecuted the Feoffees' efforts in the Exchequer Chamber, of which he was a judge,[97] and had the Feoffees under control by 1638.[98] Their memory lived on, however, and the Root and Branch Petition in 1640 asked for their reinstatement.[99] However, "both Puritans and Laudians preferred to see impropriations remain as they were rather than be delivered to the other side."[100] Laud's clergy "went out of their way" to bring Puritans, who objected to religious innovations, and property holders, who objected to the economic repercussions of the changes, "into one another's arms."[101] Many clergy approved of Laud's reforms because it gave them more power in the community, and more money.[102]

As the income of beneficed clergy increased, parishioners had to pay more and more, and they resented this increased demand on their financial resources,[103] especially in a system that had supported even its best-liked preachers with poor livings.[104] Laud, in an effort to improve the situation of his preachers, resumed tithing in kind, eliminating the cash payment that had replaced it many years before.[105] This was to support a group of people Laud viewed as "the spiritual elite,"[106] a large departure from Puritan egalitarianism.

A further problem with the elevation of clergy was that bishops and preachers were often of low birth; though men of the cloth, their family names remained important. Many people, commoners, gentry, and peers, would not accord them the respect due their office for reasons of lineage.[107] Despite this difficulty, establishment and maintenance of hierarchy remained a priority for Laud.

He also used Church authority to increase the Church's hold on information. Laud himself suppressed many books with Puritan tendencies, including those tracts which equated the Pope with Antichrist.[108] He did permit, to the concern of many authors and thinkers, publishing of Arminian tracts.[109] Laud, claiming that sermons were for teaching listeners how to worship and be saved, cracked down on expository sermons, and on Puritan gadding to them. Sermons were not worship in themselves, because worship for him included ritual and ceremony as well as oratory.[110] Further, he tightened "thought-control in the universities,"[111] limiting what was taught to those studying to be clerics.

His right to make these changes in provision of information to the populace came from his belief in divine right episcopacy, the idea that bishops held their offices of God and no other, certainly not the Pope, and not even the King. The bishops' idea of divine-right episcopacy "inevitably led men to stress continuity with the Roman hierarchy,"[112] which was likely John Milton's justification for viewing them as "importunate wolves."[113]

Laud had a particularly bad reputation, due largely to his insistence that he was not innovating, despite the appearance or reappearance of elements of Church doctrine and liturgy left out of services for some time. Also, he refused to explain himself or his actions to critics,[114] seeing himself as either too powerful to care, or as a man alone in a wilderness, the only godly being for miles, and charged with the care of those around him, a view similar to how Puritans saw themselves.

Laud, however, invoked popish terminology, including calling himself and other clergy "priests,"[115] giving them an intercessory role between humans and God, a change codified in the 1640 Canons.[116] In the royal confirmation of those Canons, King Charles used more vague terminology, calling clergy "minister, by what name or title soever he be called."[117] Laud's power in the church before he took over at Canterbury[118] helped him support Charles's moves for increased royal authority with religious justification for royal supremacy. In that effort, he and his supporters came close "to rejecting the principles of the Reformation,"[119] and returning to a divine-right Church hierarchy. This was a signal that the realm-wide suppression of Puritanism, begun in 1633, was to be, by 1640, enshrined in the Canons of Church law.[120]

Charles's own innovations were more economic in nature, due to the sorry state of the royal treasury, even when under the control of a bishop after 1636. He restored monopolies and patents, and used a forced loan to raise money.[121] When they failed to raise sufficient funds (despite their substantial revenue) he extended Ship Money levies to the entire nation, and made it a recurring annual event by 1636.[122] The economic hardships of the realm, and the trickled-down economic pressure put on aristocracy, gentry, and the common people, encouraged fears that the wrath of God was upon England, and that Antichrist was at hand.[123]

At the same time, Laud was severing Church ties with continental Calvinists.[124] The reaction of Puritans was to combat this growing ecclesiastical isolation by keeping in touch with the Calvinist community on the continent, and with the Scottish Kirk, perhaps more than they would have had Laud not cut off official relations with those bodies.[125] As a result, domestic Puritans and the Established Church grew further apart, and though they still considered themselves "orthodox," Puritans began to be more obviously at odds with the changing standards of the Church.

A danger for them was in arbitrary justice, and Laud's increased enforcement of ecclesiastical and secular law. The highest ecclesiastical court in the land, High Commission, was, as we have seen, used sparingly by Archbishop Abbot. This was not the case for Laud, who hauled anyone and everyone possible before the court, meting out punishments far more severe than precedent allowed.[126] High Commission mostly fined people, and heavily, and the fines were used for rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral in London.[127]

Laud's legal actions were supported by Charles;[128] church courts became equated with prerogative courts, and together they earned a reputation for doling out arbitrary justice, rather than carrying on systematic legal proceedings.[129] High Commission itself was used "as a regular court" by Laud, rather than one exclusively for punishing errant clergy; so much so that Star Chamber and High Commission became seen as interchangeable.[130] Star Chamber, supposedly a secular court, had three bishops sitting on its bench by the early 1630s.[131]

The main difference between the two courts was that High Commission primarily punished with fines, while Star Chamber's punishments were often corporal.[132] Fines by the High Commission and the severe physical punishments handed down by Star Chamber, the reputable prerogative court on which Laud sat, and to which Laud brought disrepute, made people dislike the bishops before they began to dislike the Church itself.[133]

Laud's zeal for increasing the power of the Church created "an ecclesiastical regime which took its spiritual and moral jurisdiction with the greatest seriousness."[134] This included putting clergy in civil offices. Laud warned that civil service must not be "to the desertion of . . . spiritual work,"[135] but instead "to mingle pious counsel with Statesmen's wisdom."[136] He wanted to create "an ecclesiastical corporation" with political and financial clout added to the spiritual authority already held by the Church.[137] Laud was aiming to bring the state under the religious and moral authority of the Church. He undertook a coherent program of reforms and used carefully his influence with the King and at court,[138] to further his aim of a godly state.

A famous case in Star Chamber shows the depth of Laud's desire for assimilation of Church and state, as well as the opinions of Puritan intellectuals of the time towards Laud and his reforms. William Prynne, John Bastwick, and Henry Burton (a barrister, a physician, and a minister, respectively) were tried before Star Chamber for libeling the bishops, which Laud perceived as a threat to the king.[139]

During the trial, in June 1637, Laud spoke to the Lords of the Chamber,[140] as did each of the three prisoners.[141] Laud's speech assumed that the libel had occurred, and asserted that those who libeled the bishops were really targeting the state with their words, implying that they were merely trying to avoid the capital charge of treason and yet still undermine the state. Laud believed that bishops were divine right prelates, but that the King was the head of the Church. Laud meant that with regard to the Church and the state, not as joint authorities, but as a single authority over the English populace, a threat to one was a threat to the other.[142]

Prynne saw clearly the danger he was in as a prisoner of a state unified with the Church, at least in the eyes of Laud and his fellow two bishops at the Council Board. He warned of arbitrary judgment and reminded his judges of precedent and propriety in these matters.[143] While Sharpe argues that Prynne's warning was heeded and that the sentence handed down was not unprecedentedly harsh,[144] the opinion of the day was that the judgment, of pillory, mutilation and imprisonment, was excessively severe, and it was certainly a breach of the custom of not mutilating gentlemen for their crimes.[145] Sharpe is correct, however, when he observes that the "trial stained as well as the church, the court of Star Chamber, the judges, and the government"[146] with its outcome.

The severity of the conclusion of the trial of Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick made clear the developments which had occurred since Laud's assumption of Canterbury. A "stricter enforcement of conformity" was simultaneous with "non-conformity itself [acquiring] a much wider definition."[147] This new definition included after 1633 Calvinism, predestinarianism, resistance to "the transformation of communion tables into altars" and resistance to the Declaration of Sports.[148] The enforcement was "with new zeal and tactlessness,"[149] as Laud felt that "the disciplyne of the Church should be felt, as well as spoken of" and that all manner of violator should be punished, no matter how highly esteemed or how lowly.[150]

Was this enforcement more successful at eliminating dissent? It certainly is a lofty aim in even a society like England's today, with a centralized police force and excellent communications to all parts of the land. The seventeenth century was a very different time, when communities were isolated from each other and from the government by bad roads as well as distance. How did Laudian reformers and their actions measure up to this challenge?

Laudian reformers tended to be absolutist in their techniques, and conscientious and serious about execution of policy.[151] Though efficiency was the goal,[152] there was "an alarming failure of communication between government and people"[153] about what was actually going on, and, particularly, why. Laud's commitment to ideology ignored the fact that his was a provocative theological position.[154] Though there were a larger number of prosecutions of Puritans in the 1630s than in previous decades,[155] Laud was not as efficient as he would have liked to have been. He left lots of disgruntled people undisturbed. While Stone notes the obvious consequences of Laud's missing Cromwell in his crackdown,[156] it is more significant that he failed to prevent the publishing of unlicensed books, like John Lilburne's A Worke of the Beast.157 Puritans remained forceful in their own campaigns against disorder and immorality,[158] and therefore must have remained largely unmolested for their religious preference. Laud ran into the obvious problem of what was still a largely decentralized state. The ability of the Crown to execute its policy against the will of its subjects was very limited, as local officials themselves were private citizens and not full time government officials, answerable to the crown.[159] Charles I attempted to make them more accountable in 1637,[160] but this met with limited success as well. Laud was roundly criticized "for over-medling in State matters"[161] and for trying to free the Church of its post-Reformation subordination to the state.[162]

As politics and religion moved closer together in the 1630s, distinguishing between the two became more difficult. Innovations and simultaneous centralization made the changes more difficult for the populace to handle, especially in light of the great importance of practicality and tradition.



Tradition was important. Appeals to the past for justification abound throughout the period.[163] Old ways were being changed in policy and in the behavior of the court in the 1630s, and people didn't like it. Catholics were especially good examples of those who resisted all authority, Church and state, though oaths attempted to assure allegiance to the latter. Resistance took political and religious form, and was based on specific challenges to existing rights.

Resistance to government policy was common, particularly among Puritans,[164] though the predominant religious climate in the 1630s in the localities was conservative, that is, opposing change to the existing Church.[165] When Nicholas Tyacke says that by the 1630s "Calvinism was no longer the orthodoxy of the English Church"[166] it is vital to point out that orthodoxy was merely the documentation and regulations for the Church on paper, which could, and did, differ from the predominant religious opinion in England at the time. Puritans made analogies between the government of the Church and of the state,[167] and this reflected a wider popular perception that "absolutism and Arminianism became closely identified [with each other, and with the monarchy] in the popular mind" during the Personal Rule.[168] Puritan preachers taught their flocks political resistance as a form of resisting changes to the Church,[169] and it was they who often best articulated popular grievances.[170] Though they represented a wider group than their members, and were supported by non-Puritans, Puritans saw themselves in a wilderness.[171] It is hard to think of a people who conceive of themselves as "elect" not perceiving themselves to be in a wilderness of unbelievers and unregenerate. Without the wilderness, "election" is nothing special.

The king saw himself as special, though not elect. Under attack for his religious policy, Charles watched the controversy over Arminianism overwhelm the 1629 session of Parliament.[172] Francis Rous, a Calvinist episcopalian (that is, not a Presbyterian) objected in the Commons to the growth of Arminianism and its associated corruption, Catholicism.[173] Calvinist episcopalianism opposed government Arminianism,[174] in an illustration of a point important to the understanding of the conflict. The "widespread resentment of the episcopal hierarchy" most vocally represented by "Puritan militancy" and activism did grow,[175] but its objections were not against episcopacy in general but instead opposed the particular policies and persons of the Church administration.

Laud was personally blamed for the relentless efforts to increase governmental regulatory enforcement, and he became a scapegoat when the king could not be blamed for the hardships of his subjects,[176] since that was treason. It was he, not the episcopacy as a whole, against whom the objection was raised (by Puritans) that they were being persecuted while Arminians and papists went unpunished.[177] The very nature of Arminianism prevented the successful conversion of the laity: the people would not support a doctrine separating them from the clergy.[178] Patronage implies closeness and interrelationship, while Arminianism scorned clerical-lay equality.[179]

Arminians also saw themselves as "engaged in a counter-reforming movement dedicated to undoing the Protestant damage of the Reformation,"[180] making far clearer the objections of Puritans who saw popery in Arminian reforms. The "tradition" which Laud was evoking was a discontinuous one, a return to elements which had not been part of the Church for many years. The search for a tradition which would lead to Arminianism ignored the direct past of the Church.[181] For Laud, Calvinism was a "new-fangled device,"[182] an innovation. Laud was even more unfortunate, in that he earned not only the displeasure of Puritans, but was also "the main enemy of . . . Catholics at court,"[183] for his continued dislike of popery and enforcement of the laws against it.

Laud subscribed to a "tradition" as new as the ones he opposed as innovations, and Puritans were in the same situation, on the other side. Laud also was unable to secure the unity of the Established Church, and instead drove Puritans, Arminians, and even Catholics in disparate directions, by enforcing stringent regulations concerning issues of both Church and state more effectively than had been done before, but without achieving the objective of coercive government: total control of the populace. This goal eluded Laud, and the resulting splintered society looked to the past for tradition to justify present practicality.

People objected to Laud's reforms, and to his motivations behind those changes: "I have ever wished, and heartily Prayed for, the Unity of the whole Church of Christ."[184] He wanted to reunify the Church of England with the Roman Church and the other sects that had formed since the Reformation. However, Laud "did never desire a Reconciliation, but such as might stand with Truth, and preserve all the Foundations of Religion entire."[185] What Laud saw as the truth of God and as the bases of religion, we will remember, differed from what most people believed. Charles and Laud feared that non-conformity, based in differences of religious opinion, would lead to opposition to church government, which was administered by bishops and local clergy who also had a hand in the civil government of the people. Opposition to those officials and their conduct quickly spread to apply not only to Church affairs but to state business as well.[186] Opposition to the state was a particular fear of Charles and Laud, though more as a result of history and particularly isolation of the court from the people, than it was due to real subversive threats to the monarchy.

Charles was a distant monarch. He spoke very little, and with few people. The king was invisible and very much beyond influence, even beyond the contact of most people.[187] Many of those with whom Charles did come in contact were Arminian clerics or papists. Throughout his reign, a total of eight Arminian, anti-Puritan clergy held powerful offices at court,[188] and three of the most powerful courtiers, Weston, Cottington, and Windebank had Catholics in their immediate families, or were themselves papists who kept their religion quiet. Certainly neither they, nor another courtier, Sir Kenelm Digby, or any members of the Queen's Household, were opponents of the de facto toleration of Catholicism at court and in London.[189]

The court, while largely kept from the king, was even more isolated from the population. As a result, Laud's rejection of popery, and his particular dislike of the conversions to Catholicism taking place at court (due mainly to the influence of the Queen's chaplains), were unknown to those outside Westminster.[190] The court itself was unconcerned about popery; there was no urgent need to purge the realm of papists, who no longer posed a direct threat to the political structure of the state. Laud and Charles differed on Charles's pro-popish foreign policy: for Laud and the bishops, Arminianism and advocacy of popery were different.[191] The people did not see this distinction, nor did they see that popery was not a threat to the state.

This lack of concern over popery was a radical change from Tudor times, and the people saw only increasing acceptance of popery at court and on a national scale, leading to increased popular fear and resentment of government.[192] Paralleling this popular ignorance of the reasoning behind court behavior was royal ignorance of events at the local level. Bishops reported to Laud, and Laud to the king,[193] creating a series of condensations of information that necessarily highlighted the high and low extremes, and not the often more subversive occurrences (in their moderacy and possible popularity) in the middle of the spectrum of decorum.

The people thought "that members of Charles I's government were [popery's] accomplices,"[194] a reasonable assumption for those who believed that papists were power hungry. The court was the center of power and drew to itself those who wanted a piece of the pie.[195] The balance to the king and court was Parliament, the center of Puritan power. Without parliaments from 1629 to 1640, there was great concern among the people.[196]

A factor in Laud's maneuvers to put William Juxon in high office, and in the king's bedchamber, was the limited access to the king's person.[197] Sharpe, however, argues that the Charles "was not . . . as isolated in Whitehall" as is imagined. He did make annual progresses until 1637, but the distance of those progresses shrank after his trip to Scotland in 1633.[198] Charles's obsession with privacy and the rising number of Catholics at court meant he became increasingly isolated from Calvinist ideas.[199] Indeed, the rest of the kingdom also found Calvinist opinions in short supply: Arminian tracts were freely licensed and published "while Calvinism languished in silence."[200]

The Church was under the control of a prelate and a Supreme Governor who were unaware of the opinions of the people. If there had ever been any illusion of democracy in the Church hierarchy (or any idea that Church policy reflected the opinions of its members), there was no longer.[201] In 1641, despite the power they had gathered throughout the preceding decade, the bishops were afraid of the people, with whom they disagreed.[202] Laud had rid the Church of the popular idea of the priesthood of all believers and replaced it with iure divino episcopacy,[203] as an element of a program of religious reform which, paradoxically, stimulated "an enormous growth in Puritan sentiment."[204]

This led to an increase in Puritan numbers, and to a stronger reaction to opposing viewpoints. As crisis loomed, Puritans and others turned to their Bibles and read the final book, Revelation, which foretold great upheavals, as a result of the activities of Antichrist. If crisis was in the land, and it was, then the Antichrist had to be at fault for the danger to the elect nation.[205] Some people felt that the millennium foretold in Revelation would arrive during Charles' reign.[206] Puritans felt the Pope was the Antichrist,[207] but Richard Montagu, a known Arminian, argued that he was not the Antichrist,[208] and John Cosin, another Arminian, believed that there were others, including the Sultan of Turkey.[209] There was, however, a generally supported identification of the Pope as Antichrist throughout the Church of England until 1640.[210] By 1640, Hill argues, the identity had expanded among Puritans to include bishops as Antichrist as well.[211]

This was a useful analogy for all varieties of protestant, as the idea of Antichrist, as presented in the Biblical Book of Revelation, was vague enough for different interpretations in different circumstances. Antichrist "stood for bad, . . . repressive institutions: exactly which institutions was anybody's choice."[212] It was particularly useful in attacking government policies in cloaked metaphorical language.[213] The idea of popery as evidence of Antichrist was further ammunition for the anti-papists discussed by Peter Lake.[214]

Antichrist's influence was obvious to protestants in the turbulence of the time, and in no arena more than religion. Catholicism, long tied to the idea of Antichrist, was a target more than it had been previously. Fallen humanity had led clergy, laity, and papacy to bend Christianity to their whims and pleasures, idolizing Mary and the saints as much as Jesus and God, and straying from true sacramental doctrine with the belief in transubstantiation. These, protestants believed, were the results of the devil's efforts to corrupt true religion and incur the wrath of God on humankind.[215]

By claiming divine right privilege for clergy, and elevating them above the laity, popery took authority from kings,[216] who were rightful rulers of all their subjects. Worse than paganism, Catholicism was the blasphemy and corruption of Christianity, a "religion made by man and not derived from God."[217] With celibate clergy, and a laity ignorant of religious ideas, Catholicism, to its opponents, was nothing but "spiritual oppression," permitting human faults and weaknesses at the expense of the soul.[218]

The pope himself was, apart from being Antichrist, even more of an unpleasant figure, the usurper both of Christ's authority as the head of the Church and of princes' rights in their lands. Popery was allegiance to a heterodox religion, as well as to a foreign temporal power[219] that intended to subvert the English state. Popery was opposed by Laud on the grounds that it was a form of separation from the church.[220] Fear of popery was further justified for a people who had known, either personally or through stories of their parents and grandparents, the excommunication of the English monarch, a war with the papist Spanish, the Gunpowder Plot, the potential marriage of the Crown Prince to a Spanish papist, the marriage of that same prince to a French papist, and numerous papist invasion scares.[221]

A state depended for its survival on the religious homogeneity of its people.[222] Catholics were seen as agents of Antichrist plotting to subvert the state. It was believed that if given the opportunity, papists would persecute protestants as schismatics. To defend themselves, Puritans indoctrinated their children to be on the lookout for papists, and taught them "to make certain assumptions about the nature of the Catholic religion and to expect certain patterns of behaviour from papists."[223] In so doing they attempted to prevent the growth of Catholicism by persecuting papists.[224]

It did not matter that most Catholics did not have subversive plans; they were considered to be implicit criminals. Anti-popish sentiment was based on deep fears. Responding to those fears was liberating for Puritans, as a chance to justify irrational behavior with godliness.[225]

The very idea of domestic Catholic subversion of the state was an example of this irrationality. Often based on John Foxe's famous book Acts and Monuments, the actions of those afraid of Catholic anti-governmentalism ignored Foxe's true target, the threat of foreign Catholicism.[226] It is in this way that we can most clearly see that Catholicism was viewed not just as a religion but as a nationality, much as Calvinism and Englishness came to be linked, for many Puritans. Clearly, members of a nation threatening England from the outside opposed the English government, even if they lived in England. That was the logic of Puritans, in any case; it was a misunderstanding of the fact that many Catholics saw themselves as English Catholics and not opponents of the royal government.

Some Catholics did, however, convert to protestantism, since they liked that the services were held in English, though they may have felt communion was administered too infrequently.[227] These converts kept alive the stereotypes of the quiet, unpublicized Catholic world in England. To gain credibility in their new, protestant communities, they continued those stereotypes rather than inform their newfound co-religionists of the true, non-threatening tendencies of English Catholicism. Puritan ideas in this matter, if in no other were firmly entrenched and nearly immutable.

Puritans saw the real threat to themselves and their nation as coming from within England. This was the basis for their outrage against toleration by the central government, and for their opposition to Laud's popish reforms, despite their friendly relations with their popish neighbors.[228]

The authorities, for Catholics, were the real concern. It is perhaps easy to think of Catholics as a bit relaxed about recusancy laws and enforcement, since many people were unwilling to fully enforce the laws of the realm. This was a time when constables would peek in the windows of townspeople and villagers, to ensure that they were not violating any other laws. Subtlety was a virtue for Catholics (as for all law-breakers, then and now), and avoiding attention was beneficial to their well-being.[229] Masses were private affairs, and not publicly announced or attended.[230]

If discovered, Catholics were subject to large fines and ruinous loss of property.[231] They needed to keep their religious beliefs quiet because there were informers who made livings from collecting government rewards for turning in papists. Pursuivants, too, were employed by the government to track down and prosecute recusants. Pursuivants were not nearly as lenient as JPs or local officials. They were often desperate men who needed the reward money to survive. Those recusants who had money could bribe an informant not to tell. However, there were large numbers of recusants who were too poor to pay, and once in court getting an accusation of recusancy dismissed was nearly impossible.[232]

The economic implications of a recusancy conviction were serious, involving a crippling fine and confiscation of property. Interestingly, this property was confiscated for the duration of the recusant's life, but was not claimed for the crown forever. However, any confiscation made it very difficult for a convicted recusant to make a living. Additionally, for the crown to administer seized land took money, which was something Charles did not have.[233]

The solution to this problem was one which James had found as well: compounding. A form of fine, a composition was an "annual rent based upon the assessed value of two-thirds of [a recusant's] landed property."[234] Ostensibly, once compounded, a recusant was free from the threat of fines for the duration of his composition. However, because of the difficulty of record-keeping and due to royal financial extremity, this was not always the case.[235] This solution effectively released the royal government from administering recusant lands, and permitted the recusant to make a living without becoming part of the growing problem of poverty, while still benefiting the government financially.

The Commissions for Compounding were not an attempt to convert papists to the Church of England; had conversion taken place, the fines would have disappeared, depriving Charles of much-needed cash. Instead, composition was a way to enforce the penal laws in an intelligent manner,[236] while still exploiting and controlling a group considered by many to be dangerous. Charles's sentiments towards Catholicism can be seen in the duality between treatment of Catholics at court, where they were tolerated happily, and outside of court, where they were seen as a source of royal income.[237] Had religious conformity been present in these affairs, none of the exploitation would have been able to take place.

Conversion was, for most, an economically advantageous action, but devout papists who could afford it did not convert. From the lower classes, since even small fines could cause serious economic problems, many did convert.[238]

No matter their social station, all accused recusants were questioned by local officials, and sometimes their cases were passed up the line of authority, even to the Privy Council. As with criminal laws, effectiveness of enforcement varied with the region and with the official,[239] though it is safe to say that enforcement of recusancy law was more efficient under Charles than it had been under James.[240]

Despite this need to punish Catholicism, there is evidence that protestants did aid Catholics in evading enforcement of recusancy laws, notably in the area of protecting Catholic property from confiscation. Illegal transfers of property took place, from Catholics to their protestant friends and back.[241] Locally "friendships overrode very different religious sympathies,"[242] not a sign of a de-emphasization of religious and theological differences,[243] but rather evidence that there was no active fear of Catholics, save disturbances related not to locals, but to strangers,[244] or occasional panics at times of great political trauma in the state.[245]

The fact that "Catholic scares" occurred simultaneously with times of state difficulty, such as wars, shows that people were concerned with national affairs,[246] and that issues of state and religion were intertwined to a very deep degree. For Clifton, these disturbances were indicators of the popular reaction to Charles's "friendly relations with popery."[247] These events included people from a far wider range of society than just Puritans,[248] showing the width and depth of fear of popery in English society.

Not only a social phenomenon, of course, anti-popery was enshrined in the law. There were three different kinds of recusancy: those who didn't attend Church of England services at all, those non-communicants who went "to serve the king, not God," and those who communicated in the English Church but believed in their hearts the truth of Catholicism.[249] Non-communication was, however, the signal sign of recusancy.[250] Sharpe is correct in pointing out that adherence to liturgy and ceremony was the easiest way to define conformity,[251] as performance of the required acts was observable, and a true believer would not often perform rites which belief did not permit. Actions were windows to theology and religious adherence.

Recusancy, then, was technically easy to discover: simply watch everyone in the village on Sunday, and see who went to church and who did not, and of those who went to church, and determine who did not take communion. Despite this simplicity, many local officials would not prosecute even those they knew without question to be recusants. In the early 1640s, Laud stated his belief that Catholics thought he had "done them and their Cause more Harm, than they which have seemed more fierce against them."[252] Those Puritan local officials had talked much against popery, but they had done little. Laud had inveighed against popery and yet imposed reforms that looked quite popish, and come off with the worse reputation.

A final division of Catholics came with the Oaths of Allegiance and of Supremacy, splitting Catholics between those who would subscribe and those who would not.[253] Loyalty to the state was vital: as we have seen, the two main fears associated with Catholics were of Antichrist and of state subversion. A loyal Catholic was no threat to the state,[254] and yet fears of Catholicism remained, though mostly quiet in the localities.

Not so in the Parliaments of Charles's reign. The Commons, when sitting, demonstrated "fierce anti-popery" that can only be reconciled with the lenience of MPs' local social associates, JPs, in enforcing anti-popery laws, "if we reflect that attacks on popery in the Commons were . . . aimed at court popery,"[255] and not papists in the localities. Yet it was in the localities that the ultimate strength of Catholicism lay, in the houses of Catholic nobles and gentry, on whom the Catholic revival depended for financial support as well as for housing of Catholic missionary priests.[256]

The Catholic mission was another influence in solidifying Puritan anti-popish sentiments. Catholic priests came to England from the continent (often sent there by their English families, to be trained as missionaries and return) ostensibly to try to convert non-Catholics to the Roman version of the "true Church."[257] In 1625, a new person, Richard Smith, took charge of the English mission, and, like Charles, crowned the same year, he brought new policies to the English Catholic mission. He forced parish priests on the Catholic gentry,[258] much like Charles's billeting soldiers on his subjects. He also ordered them not only to house and feed the priests, but to pay them.[259] Though warned against it, Smith claimed very wide jurisdiction for the mission courts, over everything not claimed by English Church courts.[260]

He thereby antagonized his employers, and tilted the balance between the mission's importance to English Catholics and the support of that group for the continuation of the mission.[261] The mission itself split over Smith's prelacy, a rift worsened by the economic condition of the mission, which was trying to support more priests than necessary.

Smith's leadership of the English Catholic mission was not a constructive one at all,[262] but the base of support for the mission was not shrinking. Instead, it was stable, and perhaps even growing in size.[263] Laud was likely concerned about the "flow of conversions to Rome,"[264] but while the Catholic mission stayed alive, it left untouched many "dark corners." Rather than cultivate support it already had, from Catholic gentry and peers, the mission tried to evangelize in communities farther from London, where royal and ecclesiastical writ did not always run.[265]

Havran discusses the location of priests and Catholics, and argues that priests were where they were needed, and that were there were no priests, there were no Catholics.[266] The danger of reversing cause and effect is high, though, and it is possible that the priests left Catholic communicants in the southeast of England because of government persecution. It is likely that without contact with a priest for a significant period of time, many Catholics would have converted, resulting in Havran's end, that priests and congregations were in the same regions, but for the opposite reason from Havran's own, that priests were not in places because those locations had had no Catholic population.[267] Despite the losses caused by neglect, by 1640 there was fear that Catholics were increasing in number "to the high dishonour of God, and contrary to the laws of the realm," and at the expense of Puritan stability.[268]

The Catholic mission, like Charles and Laud, found a need to unite politics and religion but met resistance to innovative policies. Resistance was not only to the head of the mission, but also to the religious and political authority of the Church of England and the monarchy. Not very politically oriented, it was mostly on the basis of religious differences. The opposition to the Arminian government from both extremes, Puritanism and Catholicism, was a threat to Arminian ideas of order and hierarchy, and to the tradition they invoked.



Resistance was a threat to social order which in turn evoked religious and political concerns over hierarchy, power, control, and law. Threats to national hierarchy were mirrored in local social instability. Towns responded to disorder in a similar fashion to the way the state responded to resistance to state policy. Innovation also occurred locally, meaning that the changes on a wider scale were reproduced on a small scale, driving home for people what would otherwise have been a distant change, of little importance in their villages. The issue of Sabbatarianism was one vehicle by which a national religious dispute was taken to the localities. Law administration and enforcement were the ways in which political disputes, colored by the religious issues of Puritanism and conformity, increasingly affected people's daily lives.

The economic community liked continuity as much as the religious community, and it is to the former we now turn, to examine briefly the economic instability that is a backdrop to the political and religious events of the 1630s. The economic community approved of not only traditions in general, but of a specific tradition, that of its own autonomy.[269] Charles's reign did not make merchants very happy. In 1631 monopolies reappeared, though they had been banished "forever" by James I. That year Charles also began fining all men worth more than [[sterling]]40 who failed to present themselves to be knighted, and three years later strict enforcement of the Forest Law began, reclaiming land for the crown or fining its occupants.[270] From 1635 on, Charles imposed Ship Money levies on the entire country; rather than its traditional role as an emergency fundraiser for war, it became a new tax, collection of which was generally unsuccessful by 1639.[271] However, for the four years preceding that, most people paid the additional levy.

Buoyed by a series of good harvests between 1633 and 1640, the English were mostly accepting of economic change; new policies were protested for tradition's sake, but change happened in areas other than government policy, like poor relief. Increased economic pressure from the government was not welcome, but neither was it truly an abomination. Billeting of troops was a new economic strain put on the people. The new system of tax collection was the assessment of a county for a lump sum, with actual fundraising to be done by the sheriff at his discretion. These policies led to resistance to economic innovation on a political basis, rather than a moral one. It was not that the crown had no right to tax the people so heavily, they argued, but that doing so threatened their well-being, and they resented the exercise of power.[272]

The successful harvest brought more than hunger relief, as the 1630-1631 famines had led to the issuance of the Book of Orders to centralize control of local government in time of great difficulty.[273] Religious reforms also had an economic effect. Poor relief was seen to be a religious duty as much as an economic obligation.[274] Further, the new ceremonies and the increase of clerical livings cost money and parishioners had to foot the bill.[275]

The parishioners with money "to spare," the "middling sort," were often Puritans. Some had enough money to bring in their own lecturers, much to Laud's dismay. He rid the country of lectureships by 1638,[276] and cleared Puritans from livings as well, without replacing them.[277] Many Puritans left the country, often with their congregations.[278]

Puritans believed in moral forthrightness, devoutness, and obedience to Scripture.[279] According to Prynne, they attempted to "onely follow things of good report, and to provide things honest in the sight of all men; not giving any offence or scandall to Gods church or people."[280] The particular targets of Prynne's book Histrio-Mastix were those who went to see plays and, particularly, those who acted in them, but he bases his arguments on Puritan ideas of moral propriety.

Those who subscribed to ideas like Prynne's were influential in towns,[281] often opposing royal policies.[282] Indeed, it was said of Prynne in his first trial in Star Chamber (in 1634 for libel in Histrio-Mastix), that he wanted "a new Government, a new Church, a new King, new laws," which would make "all the people discontented," in the opinion of the judges.[283] It is telling that the members of the Privy Council believed that innovation in the administration of the realm would anger the people, and yet failed to recognize that what they were undertaking during Charles's reign was precisely that. The Council tried to achieve a via media between Puritanism and popery,[284] and feared the "innovative" ideas of Puritans, which were not new but were instead concerned with maintaining the Church of England as it was, and making it less Romish, "more pure."

Puritanism and local interest were closely tied, as the parish was the spiritual expression of the village.[285] Interests of the gentry were predominantly local,[286] with "the problem of order . . . of consuming interest."[287] Gentry advocated the teaching of subordination and obedience,[288] while at the same time desiring public participation in government.[289] This was not the contradiction it seems; instead it is very similar to an idea Americans have about government, that it should be with the consent and cooperation (as well as obedience) of those governed. Popular input in national government in the 1630s was, however, quite rare.

Even local governments operated without too much citizen participation. Oligarchies ruled most towns, in "response to the real demands of local government,"[290] enough work that a single person could not do it alone. Puritans were town leaders, and led groups including non-Puritans in times of difficulty.[291] We have already noted this local prestige among Puritans in anti-popery, but Puritans were esteemed by their townsfellows even in times of economic strife unconnected with anti-popery or any other religious issues.

Local gentry, usually Puritans, often held the office of Justice of the Peace, which was the title given members of a county's royal Commission of the Peace. They were charged, individually and as a group, with enforcing the law and seeing to its administration. They assembled as a group, or with certain of their number, four times each year in Quarter Sessions, which were local sessions of courts to try particular crimes. They would try, convict, and sentence many criminals, but would recommend the more serious criminals (repeat offenders or those who committed more serious crimes) to the Assize Courts. Those were held semi-annually, and were overseen by judges from London, from the royal courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer, and Chancery, whose justices traveled on circuits, trying the more serious cases of each county. JPs were expected to attend these sessions, as witnesses or officers of the court. Their attendance lent their reputations to the proceedings, which otherwise could easily have been seen as a stranger doling out arbitrary unaccountable justice to criminals. Instead, Assizes were seen as high courts upholding the true, the right, the godly, and the law. Their decisions included suppression of churchales, condemnations of the way of life of a prisoner (beyond the context of the crime committed), and detailed the burden of responsibility for correcting the ways of those convicted of crimes. Usually held in the county towns, Assizes were the voice of central legal administration influencing the localities.[292]

As central government loomed more closely over the shoulder of local government, it became increasingly necessary for towns to have patronage at court. An agent with the ear of the king meant a voice in Laud's decisions as well.[293] Accountability of officials to their patrons, and interference of those patrons, quickly became large issues. This joined local and regional dissent with national political divisions into nationwide controversy.[294] "[U]niformity of worship and doctrine" were of high importance, as were control and eradication of Puritanism, seen as a "threat to monarchy."[295]

Social control was an issue of central government, and both Puritans and Arminians preached that the Fifth Commandment applied not only to parents but to all social superiors.[296] Protection of the elect by putting down of sin was a Puritan religious motive for social control.[297298]

The elect, though theoretical egalitarians, believed in hierarchy. It was an authoritarian hierarchy bent on enforcing what Underdown terms the "myth" of a village community.[299] This community had an idea of political obligation which "was basically functional and depended upon the Calvinist concept of the Will of God."[300] Those who headed families had the ability and "the capacity to participate in the government of the community."[301]

The entire social hierarchy was based on familial relationships, from the private citizen all the way to the king. It was a patriarchal society,[302] with reciprocal relationships of obedience of the lower orders in exchange for duties carried out by those above them, in benevolent, loving relationships.[303] Autocracy was not the norm,[304] which caused difficulty when the central government began to rule without demonstrable consideration for the populace.

The populace was not, however, uniform, nor were they all by any means orderly. Town order was "never quite secure in this violent age,"[305] in which Puritans constantly strived to achieve local stability.[306] To achieve this at home, Puritans, including Nehemiah Wallington, often used manuals for guidance in running a proper household.[307] Puritans also had generally accepted ideals for how to run towns and villages, often based on getting rid of vagrants and controlling those who could not be gotten rid of.

Vagrants were the worst kind of person to have in a community. They were people without masters, outside the system of hierarchy.[308] Any town which permitted vagrants would quickly find itself the home of many more, and so towns almost uniformly cracked down on vagrancy, forcing those without homes into workhouses or to itinerant lives, moving from one town to the next, getting ejected from each one.[309] Workhouses were good ways to get rid of the problem of unemployment, and to provide "productive labour for the welfare of the community," often work to benefit those poor who were not in workhouses.[310] Many towns saw an intensely strained social structure "with a growing . . . polarization between an increasingly pampered, narrow elite and the large army of destitute poor tramping in the streets."[311]

Puritan-controlled oligarchies controlled most towns. Though towns were legally subordinated to both county and crown, they were generally independent and semi-autonomous.[312] Most of the real power in towns was held by the freemen of the town, numbering a third to a half of all adult males, a group "roughly equivalent to the upper ranks of the tax-paying classes."[313] These men had connections to the court and government in London, which mistrusted town governors and imposed on them restrictions like the Book of Orders, while those same town authorities were pressured from below by the townspeople.[314]

Relations between towns and the central government were precarious, since magistrates could not ignore the central government, but neither could the royal administration ignore the executors of its policies.[315] Towns had influence at court, though less voice in London than when Parliament was sitting. Town agents did not try to oppose royal policy, but instead attempted to acquire exceptions, easements, or more favorable policy modifications, to benefit their towns.[316] Towns often resisted Laudian policies,[317] but this resistance could not be too obvious to the government. JPs aided in this mediation of local desires opposing central demands.[318]

JPs were local notables, men of property and means, and they had a degree of power associated with that wealth. The structure of town socio-economic levels remained the same, though Clark and Slack argue that the individuals in the system changed. As merchant families became wealthy, they bought land and moved out to the country, like landed gentry.[319] This turnover of upper levels of population also did not helped stability; those people who earned local respect as officials or as leaders of opinion would leave, vacating not only their place in the economic life of the town, but in town politics.

For those who stayed, Puritan discipline seemed a light in the darkness, a way to impose order upon "the increasingly crisis-ridden and class-divided society."[320] These "godly town corporations" made bishops suspicious, and they tried to gain control over their cathedral towns.[321] Bishops "were on the offensive" against Puritan ideas of social order; they needed to undermine the power of the local gentry, which led to the undermining of the government structure as a whole,[322] not only of the town but of the nation. Weakening of any part of the hierarchy damaged the entire structure. Towns resented the innovations, and found themselves in a conflict between their own interests and those of London.[323]

Similarly, Puritans found themselves in opposition to "the ethos of the dark corners" of the realm, far from London, when it came to observation of the Sabbath.[324] Puritans saw the Sabbath as a day for "preaching, Bible reading, and household prayers,"[325] rather than the sports most people played on their day of rest. Sunday sports caused participants to miss afternoon sermons,[326] important events given the significance of preaching to Puritans, which Lake calls an "almost idolatrous addiction."[327] Puritans opposed not only sports, but also dancing and revelry, on the Sabbath and other holy days, though some dances were permissible under certain circumstances and very strict guidelines, described in Prynne's Histrio-Mastix.328 They believed that "upon the Sabbath day, they should cease from all weekely and workeday labour . . . and also give themselves WHOLLY to heavenly exercises of Gods true religion and service."[329] The problem was, many people felt that their religion, for each of them the "true religion," permitted sports on Sunday; not everyone was a Puritan.

In response to Puritan outcry against sports in Somerset, Charles reissued his father's Book of Sports in 1633, which James had originally issued to quiet complaints in Lancashire.[330] The Caroline Book of Sports, a verbatim copy of James's version, declared that those who worked all week needed some time off "to refresh their spirits," and noted that Sunday was the only real time when they could play.[331] Fun was declared permissible by order of the monarch, but with the constraint that it "be had in due and convenient time, without . . . neglect of divine service."[332] Puritans, however, would still justify their objections to sports with this clause, since for them any activity other than "divine service" on Sunday was neglectful of the duty of a believer in God: "with all . . . unlawfull flockings and . . . sports upon the Sabbath, the worke of the Lord is hindred."[333] The king, however, rebuked "some Puritans" complaining of disrespect for the Sabbath while returning from his progress to Scotland in 1633, ordering them to conform "or leave the county."[334]

The events immediately preceding the reissue of the Book of Sports involved an assize order by Richardson CJ banning ales and revels. Laud, again intervening in royal administration, ordered him to repeal it at the next Assizes,[335] and Charles supported Laud with a royal declaration, the Book of Sports. Laud also urged the clergy to read the Book of Sports from the pulpit, which met resistance, despite its entreaties to parishioners to attend parish sermons and not gad to other places to hear other preachers.[336] Most resistance conformed to the letter of the law, but not the spirit. It was sometimes read aloud to empty churches, rather than on Sunday mornings to the parishioners.[337] The controversy over the Book of Sports demonstrated to Arminians how many people thought they were papists.[338]

The Book of Sports stipulated that disorderly behavior was to be prosecuted, but that their source, sports, was legal.[339] This frustrated Puritan hopes of dealing with the underlying causes of social phenomena, rather than just their symptoms. Worse, it was favored by "all that was unregenerate, undisciplined, and popish," and not by the godly.[340] James justified the first publication of the Book of Sports by arguing that deprivation of popular sports by the Church would breed discontent with both Church and state, leading people to go to ale-houses, where they would foment disorder and dissent, while becoming less and less fit for military service. The Laudian bishop Pierce added a fourth reason: "if men had no sports to occupy them on Sundays, they might meet for illegal religious discussion."[341]

Puritans did not like that the second Book of Sports not only condoned recreation on Sundays, but effectively encouraged it. The elite of the parish disapproved of the government's policy,[342] but did not oppose popular culture, only disorder.[343] Their objections to not observing the Sabbath also covered holy days, and were coupled with a rejection of the official Church calendar of saints' days; worship of saints was popery.[344] Church holidays (ironically, a word rooted in the words "holy days," of which Puritans approved) were seen by Puritans as continuations of paganism, since the early Church had Christianized pagan festivals to win more converts.[345]

Church holidays were occasions for churchales and great festivity, often involving the local alehouse. Pierce, who promoted the idea of Sunday sports above, put down afternoon sermons for hindering Sunday afternoon church fundraising activities, like churchales.[346] Alehouses provided income for the poor people who ran it, but were a drain on the local economy. Like Prynne's plays, they took money from those who needed it most and, adding brimstone to poverty, drove them to immorality.[347]

Others saw positive consequences to Sunday recreation. Employers who wanted regular, dependable workers desired ones who had had their fun on Sunday and arrived Monday morning ready to work. Among those who also supported Sunday sports were apprentices who, in contrast to Bishop Pierce's belief, "wanted a chance to talk theology and politics." Judges and justices supported the king's condemnation of the criminal and immoral activities resulting from churchales.[348]

Law enforcement was an important part of implementing policy changes. The law was based on the idea of contravening "basic Biblical injunctions," threats to community, which were, by extension, threats to the king.[349] Judges were concerned with "offenses against the moral law," including, even in non-Puritan Exeter, "a vigorous enforcement of sexual morality," for the same reason as they drove out vagrants, to keep the city from earning a bad reputation. It was, though, mostly "law enforcement rather than . . . the moral direction of society,"[350] which was undertaken by Puritans.

Execution of law was intended to be strict and harsh, since settling of disputes outside the law was common, assuming the infraction committed was within some limits. Infractions outside those limits headed to the court system, with the end that those who made it into the legal system had committed relatively serious offenses, were repeat offenders, or both. This was not a litigious society, and criminal law enforcement was nothing compared to what we have today. This permitted the law to be ignored if it contravened local customs, such as those permitting revelry on the Sabbath.[351]

The Council increased control over magistrates after 1631, but it was the Assize judges who were a vital contact between the localities and the central government; throughout the Personal Rule they were a major voice for the localities in government, and were a still larger voice of centralized authority in the counties.[352] In 1631, the Council asked Assize judges to supervise more closely the activity of JPs.[353]

Justices of the Peace were very busy people, with many responsibilities both as a group and as individual officials. They had clerks to aid them in their work, and their judgments were fast, though not unjust, and were often harsh corporal punishments or fines binding suspects to appear at the next Quarter Sessions or Assizes.[354] Their jurisdiction was very broad, enabling them to bind people not to breach the peace further, and giving them authority over their divisions of their counties, from poor relief through regulation of trade and alehouses, to tax collection. They also heard appeals from lower courts and officers.[355]

This authority came in part from the Book of Orders, and Laud's influence in the directions contained within are visible in the strict interpretation of the law and a "clear directive to enforce its every detail."[356] Released to protect the realm from the problems caused by poverty,[357] the Book of Orders was motivated by the religious (and economic) issue of poor relief. Pressure was kept on JPs to adhere to their instructions, including the requirement to hold monthly meetings of all JPs and to report their activities to the county sheriff. Much of the administration after 1635 was, however, left to the Assize judges, who also performed effectively.[358]

Though lacking a standing army, and with local officials of varying efficacy, the "royal government was always potentially present in the localities," either through the court circuits or royal or ecclesiastical visitations for particular purposes. The punishment of violators of the law was a major part of the exercise of power of government, and one in which Charles's officials "distinguished themselves."[359]

The hierarchy of government, from the King to the Privy Council, and down to Justices of the Peace and the constabulary, was reasonably uniform, involving Lords Lieutenant and Lords Deputy and other agents. The degree of enforcement, however, varied among officials, as well as in that individuals were not always self-consistent.[360]

Star Chamber's involvement in county affairs "was unspectacular but steady;"[361] the hand of central government was always present in the 1630s, but rarely clamped down hard, though the central government under Charles was far more concerned with regions outside London than James's government had been.[362] This pressure from the center was usually exercised in other ways, but could involve direct Council action.[363]

Church courts were another point of contact with the central government, particularly since under Laud they no longer limited themselves to punishing just sinners, but also took on political criminals.[364] They dealt with "uniformity to the theology of the Church of England, and conformity to its prescribed moral standards,"[365] breach of which was tantamount to treason. Even the lowest church court, that of the archdeacon, dealt with problems of order, in cases of drinking and immoral sexual behavior. That court met often, in rotating locations throughout the archdeaconry, enforcing ecclesiastical rule upon the inhabitants of the various deaneries and parishes, and referring appropriate cases not only up through the ranks of the ecclesiastical courts, but also to the secular courts, Quarter Sessions and Assizes.[366]

Though criminals came from all levels of society,[367] criminality was seen as a problem with the individual, rather than with society, and law and morality came closer in the courts, joining "sermons, literature, and legal dicta."[368] Those enforcing the law had to agree that the law had been broken and that the punishment fit the crime,[369] since members of the community at large were charged with execution of the sentence. Those carrying out the law were private citizens rotating through the various public positions; they were not permanent officials, and were not very different from those upon whom they could call down the force of law.[370] The same Puritan "middling sort" who were most often in the offices of law enforcement were also most likely to prosecute a violation of the law.[371]

Star Chamber had become known, since its origin in Tudor times, as a cheap court in which to achieve the closest thing available to true justice.[372] It was a prerogative court, concerned mainly with trying "breaches of the king's peace by riot, assault or intimidation," as well as fraud, perjury, forgery, and those cases which for one reason or another could not be tried in any other court. Usually this last reason was a case involving a person of considerable local influence who would potentially corrupt the decision, or who was accused of having corrupted a decision. The chamber also saw private suits, and was able to accommodate these as well as regular criminal cases, since it was a common law court operating with a different procedure from the other common law courts.[373]

In the 1630s, however, Star Chamber took on a more sinister tone, and was used instead of High Commission, when that court was deemed insufficient (i.e., when Laud wanted the king's authority directly behind a decision, rather than just implicit in the order). Star Chamber became the highest ecclesiastical court in the land, with the notable difference from High Commission that the latter court's sentences were usually fines. Star Chamber became known for its brutal corporal punishments, often visited on gentry, whom custom protected from such treatment.[374] During the 1630s Star Chamber became a harsh, arbitrary court brutally enforcing what it considered to be state security. Bishops were very influential in decisions and in sentencing, and Laud in particular, even as Bishop of London before 1633, was on center stage.[375]

Laud argued, in a case in the early 1630s, that the idea of a congregation not kneeling to take communion was a threat to the state hierarchy.[376] In 1632 he again argued to the Lords of the Chamber that defamation of church was defamation of state,[377] which was to be his chief argument in the Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick case five years later. High Commission and Star Chamber became effectively the same court, since Star Chamber tried ecclesiastical cases and High Commission cases of secular disorder.

As a result of the lack of a single center of power in legal and criminal decisions, government relied for its effectiveness upon the willingness of the subjects "to act as agents" of the government.[378] Men were willing, but their eagerness was variable, and they proved to be quite merciful in their execution of the law. Despite the moral judgment implicit in the criminal judgment handed down by a court, local officials made distinctions between "those who were too dangerous to remain in the community, and those who despite misbehavior still deserved some sympathy."[379] Crimes had varying punishments, from the most severe for the repeat offenders, to more lenient ones for those who were not considered real criminals, but merely errant in their ways this once.[380] Even before the sentencing, petty juries could redefine charges in the cases before them, to reduce the severity of the potential sentence upon the prisoner.[381]

Crime was, among other things, an outlet for frustration, which may have increased in Puritan areas as a reaction to Puritan energies expended to keep proper order. Groups of people got together occasionally, sometimes for anti-popish reasons, but more often for more serious reasons, like food shortage or enclosure,[382] and were involved in what was legally called a riot. A riot was merely anything illegal done by any group of three people, and was therefore not always a specimen of the picture we have today of riots. They were often traditional,[383] occurring on holidays, and claiming traditional loyalty to the king, so as not to be seen as rebels.[384] Riots, paradoxically, were frequently orderly and rarely directed against people; they were certainly not often out looking for a fight.[385]

Riots were of great government concern, organization and claims of loyalty notwithstanding. The government saw these disturbances as serious threats to hierarchy and order, though they often were in defense of traditional rights, rather than a large-scale social upheaval.[386] Those disturbances which threatened the government were put down with great force,[387] and probably with local official assistance of a central government effort. Riots of all sorts were, however, a last resort for the people,[388] and, though used more frequently and with more frustration after 1637, they remained a relative rarity.[389]

One orderly form of social protest which could technically be called a riot was a skimmington, named after a tool used by dairy farmers to skim their milk. It was a popular enforcement of the common people's definition of order, and was "a disorderly procession in which surrogates for the offenders . . . rode backwards on a horse and acted out a semi-jocular version of the incident [often a domestic disturbance or a disorderly drunk], accompanied by much blowing of horns and clanging of saucepans."[390] This type of event, which recognized that order had been inverted, re-inverted it to restore proper order.[391] Due to the clamor, levity, mockery, and general disorder of the event, Puritans frowned on skimmingtons.[392]

This restoration of order by re-inversion was desirable, even if undertaken in what was to some an undesirable manner. The people wanted this return to orderliness, and, where they could, they saw it done, even if only symbolically. They, too, took the issues to a personal level, and though a secular ritual, it did not miss the religious and political problems of order, conformity, and obedience.



The disorder seen by Puritans and Arminians in England in the 1630s was founded in two main elements: religion and politics. Economics, which affected social conditions and class relations, was also an issue, but the major concerns of the day were issues of theology, church practice and teaching, religious and political control of society, and enforcing conformity. Innovation in religion was a point of serious tension between Puritans and Arminians, the former outnumbering the latter, but the latter in power and backed by royal and archiepiscopal authority.

Religious opposition was made more complex by the centralization of the state, as well as its union with the Church administration. This union, while not statutory, not by decree or other official de iure action, was effected de facto by the entrance onto the court scene of a powerful bishop, William Laud, with influence upon the king. His efforts to win the king's ear for himself and his allies resulted in the appointments of several bishops to state offices, and the involvement of clergy, down to the parish level, in administration of royal policy, in the spheres both of religion and of politics.

As the line between Church and state, never truly clear, became indistinguishable to the populace, innovations in both realms appeared. These innovations were theological and liturgical changes in the Church, and new methods of taking money from the people for the royal coffers. Opposition to any one of these changes was not significant, and indeed cases in ecclesiastical and common law courts throughout the 1630s involved not wide-ranging challenges to authority, but individual rights and obligations.[393] However, the sum of all the resistance to all of these changes, happening very quickly for a society used to tradition, was great.

The tendency towards traditional behavior caused problems for those administering Church and state regulations. First, the new rules were claimed to be based in tradition, though they were based in historical events of the distant past. A return to them was not a return to tradition but was instead introduction of new, discontinuous doctrine. Second, those opposing them claimed their justification in the past as well, a past interpreted similarly to the way the innovators saw things. The opposition, however, took a shorter look back, not to early Tudor times, but to Elizabethan and Jacobean times. Third, the general conservatism of the day meant people were reluctant to accept any change in their lifestyle, however well justified. This was particularly true of many of the ecclesiastical reforms, attempting to control events such as churchales and sports, which despite all other applicable adjectives, were fun.

The intervention in the daily life of the populace by local, county, and central government was further cause for resentment. People were used to living their own way, and keeping order using skimmingtons and their own methods of enforcing local standards of morality. A central standard of moral behavior and a common, nationwide idea of the law and legal activity had been slowly creeping up on the English for a long time; the writ of the crown ran throughout most of the country by the 1630s.

What particularly irked the people were religious issues, which were made political both by their enforcement and by the reactions to them. Religious motivations were behind the reissue of the Book of Orders, the Book of Sports, legal decisions, and relations between the court and the country in the 1630s. Religious interests, differing opinions on theology, and the propriety of ritual, sacrament, and sermon deepened the division between the court and the rest of the people.

This division was wide, and getting no narrower with the increase of popery and popish influence, even as distinct from Arminianism, at court. The people saw Arminianism as leading to popery, and therefore did not separate the two. The political conflict, a struggle for power and enforcement rights between locality and central government, was rooted in a fear that those who did not believe in the true Church would somehow end up in charge of affairs throughout the realm. Unfortunately, both Arminians and Puritans saw each other as errant in definition of the true Church, while seeing themselves as properly defining the distinction between the true Church and a false one.

Objection to modification of religious practice ran so deep in English society that even the minority Catholics got concerned when their new chief of mission, Smith, began making changes in the way the mission would run. This group was a small enough one that splintering could not result in the creation of any new factions; further, they all believed in the same idea of a true Church. Most Catholics saw Smith as an innovator, and he had little support, eventually losing his position at the head of the mission.

Laud, as the head of the Church of England, had a significant body of support in the Church episcopacy. This was partly as a result of Puritan emphasis on preaching rather than administration (hence the allegations of Puritanism having presbyterian tendencies). Additionally, approval by the Archbishop was necessary to become a bishop, giving Laud the ability to pick supporters to be his subordinates. He had the further support of courtiers wary of endorsing open Catholicism in the state, but who appreciated the value of ritual and ceremony in Church services. His power base was most firmly championed by the ultimate power in the land (especially so in a period with no Parliaments), King Charles I.

A ruler who liked ceremony at court, one who fully appreciated the value of hierarchy, Charles placed himself firmly atop it, with no man his equal. He supported a reconciliation with Rome if possible, and a return to more elaborate and ritualistic Church liturgy if not. This was the problem many Puritans had: the corruption of the Church was not only endorsed by the king, but that corruption was a turn in the direction of popery, an opening of arms to Antichrist.

Laud attempted to keep opposition to Arminianism and to popery separate, and to distinguish the former from the latter with Arminian anti-popish statements. However, it cannot be denied that Laud's reforms made the Church look and feel more like a Catholic church than it had, whether that was his intent or not. Arminians took a further stance in their own defense, one that would prove as ill-fated and self-condemning as any other, arguing that the Pope was not Antichrist. This backfired, resulting in the Puritan opinion, by the early 1640s, that not only was the Pope Antichrist, but the bishops, who claimed he was not, were Antichrist as well.

The efforts of the episcopacy and the central government to impose regulation and order upon local governments resulted in a further backlash of opinion against officials in London and their agents. Local autonomy was threatened, and men who had been semi-autonomous JPs for years were suddenly being told how to do their jobs, and were being overseen by agents of the Privy Council, to ensure that they performed satisfactorily.

Enforcement of law was more severe, as a result of increased efforts to enforce, of increased harshness of punishment, and of a broadening of the definition of what was prosecutable conduct. Laud and Charles were more efficient than their predecessors had been, and this further worsened the conditions of change under which people lived. There was no time for them to ease into the changes, disobeying many of them at first, but slowly coming to accept them, over the course of time. Instead, there was a governmental crackdown on those who did not conform immediately to what was arguably a return to the true post-Reformation Church, but was certainly a series of introductions and reintroductions of policies and rituals into Church practices of the 1630s.

This assumption of power by those in London meant that more authority had to be assumed by local officials, to properly carry out their duties. An upward shift in authority took power, ultimately, from those in the lower classes of society, resulting in a threat to social order due to their own displeasure with the events and changes they saw. Those who had authority gathered more during Charles's reign.

Control required conformity, adherence to a standard of conduct. Previously set according to local customs, the standard became one handed down from higher authority, outside the town, outside even the county, from a place to which many had never been, London. The disagreement on social conformity was best exemplified in the conflict over sabbatarianism.

The Sabbath was the holiest day of the week, God's day, on which the necessity of worship was clear. Recusants did not worship at Church of England churches because they did not believe that it was the true Church. For them it was not worth being a communicant of the Church, apart from the economic benefit of not being presented in court for recusancy. However, the tradition of Sunday behavior had long been one of festivity and playing, admittedly after a morning in "divine service." Puritans, in search of a way to make others more godly, and believing themselves to be godly, found the idea of recreation and frivolity on the Lord's Day abominable.

They did not consider any form of diversion from religion to be proper on Sundays, preferring instead to devote their own Sunday afternoons to listening to sermons, and the evening to prayer. The problem with their attitude was that it was self-righteous and evangelical. They tried to convince others that their position on Sunday recreation was the proper one, and that the "old ways" of playing and doing sports on Sunday were inappropriate.

Arminians, whom Nicholas Tyacke describes as anti-Calvinists, opposed Puritan doctrine wherever possible, and it has been argued that Laud's main goal in religious reform was to stymie Puritan ideals and actions. Charles, himself an Arminian heavily influenced by Laud, issued the Book of Sports, explicitly permitting certain sports on Sunday. The Book was in open defiance of the wishes of the town oligarchies, who were desperately searching for some semblance of public order. The Book of Sports did require all those who wished to play sports on Sunday to first attend church services. Also it forbade some sports, mostly blood sports like cockfighting, from being enjoyed on Sunday, though they were ostensibly legal on other days.

The law was the final enforcement tool, and the legal system the means by which decisions of the Privy Council were passed down to the local authorities, whether by a lengthy chain of command, or by the more direct admonition of JPs by Assize judges to improve their performance of their duties. The courts, both ecclesiastical and common law, were the stage on which godly reform of central design met godly reform by local officials, and the two were reconciled. The central government at times treated the localities as the localities themselves treated wrongdoers, as needing correction of improper and evil ways, to prevent further damage to society, hierarchy, and the realm.

James's and Charles's massive distribution of honors had, as the peers had feared, debased the power of the nobility and decreased the number of magnates, effectively bringing the gentry and the court closer together. Local policy was no longer complained of to local nobility, but to national agents like the Council and Parliament.[394] Unfortunately, Charles's government proved singularly unwilling to listen to the opinions of its subjects, even from Parliament, where opinions were phrased not as small-time individual petitions to the king, but as direct, confrontational statements of principle.[395] Perhaps it was in this peremptory tone that Parliament went awry. Law was based on the consent of the governed,[396] and though Charles and Laud did not always make good-faith efforts to gain the consent of those whose lives their decisions affected, neither did Parliament, except in adherence to tradition in verbiage, attempt reasonable petition of the crown. The law was the method for common people to gain redress of grievances, and it was through the court system that London could learn of the concerns of the populace.

This conflict between godly centralization and godly local interest, based in theology, tradition, and issues of control, led to increasing discord among all groups of people in the realm, and created disunity in the "body politic," paving the way for disaster in the 1640s. Religious concerns crossed class lines,[397] creating rifts in the power base as it realigned itself on a religiously based model, rather than previous models of necessity, political expedience, and economic advantage. Unhappiness with the central government was particularly evident outside London, in areas represented by Parliament, when it was in session. Those places, when given the opportunity by the financial extremity of the crown in the early 1640s, spoke out in elections filled with popular influence,[398] electing members to Parliament who would first speak out against, and then eventually militarily oppose, the king.

The 1640 Parliament received on 11 December 1640 the Root and Branch Petition, from a large group of clergy and others in London and outside counties, requesting that the Church government be removed, as it was "opposite to the laws of the realm" and "damaging to the king and royal government." The prelates of the Church of England, it was alleged, were keeping down the preaching of true religion with fear of retribution if preachers opposed the doctrine of the prelates, the Church hierarchy. The clergy had a different idea of "the truth of God" than the bishops had. The petition describes the petitioners as holding, and accuses the bishops of lacking, markedly Puritan opinions, including the faithful observation of the Sabbath, the and rejection of the intercessory role of the priest.[399] Church and state had so intermingled by that time that representatives of the localities were being petitioned to change the national Church. It was clear by the 1640s that conflict would continue, and would continue to escalate, if the bishops were not eliminated. That was, at least, the threat the petition made. Its basis was both religious and political, a fear that Catholicism and Arminianism would return to rule the land, and oppress the Puritans, who saw themselves as believers in the true Church.

The Church made its own confrontational move against Puritanism in 1640, issuing a new set of Canons, the most notorious element of which was to become the "Etcetera Oath," pledging allegiance in matters ecclesiastical to "archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, etc."[400] This was a very vague definition of authority, and one to which many were loath to swear loyalty.

The new Canons also declared that the rites and ceremonies restored by the Laudians were not popish,[401] and affirmed the Church of England's stance against popery,[402] more evidence for Nicholas Tyacke's observation that Charles saw his 1640 and 1641 Parliamentary opponents as separatists and atheists, rather than as Christians of Calvinist leaning rather than of his own Arminian tendency.[403]

The Grand Remonstrance of 1641 was a further indicator both of fears and of the placement of blame for the ills of the realm. Popish Arminians were targeted,[404] a warning sign of what was to come of Laud soon. At his trial, Laud, whom the Puritan Wallington calls "His little Grace,"[405] was charged with crookedness, with claiming absolute power, with believing that his power was based in God and not the King (further evidence for the union of Church and state), with subversion of true religion, and with wanting to return to the Roman church.[406]

In a long-winded speech, Laud defended himself against those charges, claiming each of them in turn to be untrue, thereby implying that his accusers were the real perpetrators of crime, religious non-conformity, and heterodoxy.[407] It was part of the "controversial religious and economic policy" of a regime which considered itself under threat from corruption of humanity and social disorder at every turn.[408] The Puritan point of view saw the same threat in the Arminians; the holding of similar opinions from opposite points of view, in reaction to policies of an opposing group was a recurring theme in the 1630s. There was a conflict between Laud's wishes to elevate certain things and Puritan wishes to eradicate those same things, both with the end of achieving a true Church.[409]

The Arminian government and the Puritan populace failed to reconcile their concerns, and each remained assured of their own righteousness and salvation. Each faction saw the other as the destroyer of a system perfectly workable without opposition. Difficult to overcome, this discord in the religious and political events in the eleven years preceding the Short Parliament are stark reminders that self-righteousness on the scale of an entire society can fail disastrously.


Primary Materials

Cardwell, Edward, ed. Synodalia: A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons, and Proceedings of Convocations in the Province of Canterbury, from the Year 1547 to the Year 1717. 2 vols. Farnborough, Hants., 1966. Precisely as the title says, this is a collection of ecclesiastical documents. It is not a comprehensive collection, and has no interpretive background on the documents it provides. The first volume has documents in both Latin and English, while the second volume is entirely in Latin.

Cobbett, William and T. C. Hansard, eds. Parliamentary History of England, II: Comprising the Period from the Accession of Charles the First, in March 1625, to the Battle of Edge-Hill, in October, 1642. New York, 1966. This is a relation of the events and speeches in and pertaining to Parliament, gleaned from the Commons Journals, Lords Journals, and other sources, compiled chronologically.

Cockburn, J. S., ed. Western Circuit Assize Orders, 1629-1648: A Calendar. London, 1976. This calendar of assize orders has a very useful introduction, index, and is well cross-referenced. In his notes, Cockburn provides a useful context for the orders.

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, ed. The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660. Oxford, 1906. Gardiner has provided a large and useful selection of state documents from this period.

Haller, William, ed. Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution 1638-1647. 3 vols. New York, 1933. In this helpful complement to Gardiner's work, Haller has collected a series of Puritan political writings of the late 1630s and 1640s.

Hughes, Ann, ed. Seventeenth-century England: A Changing Culture, I: Primary Sources. Totowa, New Jersey, 1981. Hughes provides excerpts from the work of many seventeenth-century writers, and does not limit herself to Puritans.

Jessup, Frank W., ed. Background to the English Civil War. London, 1966. Jessup has published a handy collection of state documents and writings of the 1630s.

Kenyon, J. P., ed. The Stuart Constitution 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary. Cambridge, England, 1966. Kenyon fills in the holes, and widens the chronological range, of Jessup's collection.

Lamont, William M. and Sybil Oldfield, eds. Politics, Religion and Literature in the Seventeenth Century. London, 1975. Another set of excerpts from seventeenth-century writers, this work culls from literary sources as well as political figures of the time.

Larkin, James F., ed. Stuart Royal Proclamations, II: Royal Proclamations of King Charles I, 1625-1646. Oxford, 1983. In this particularly useful reference for the text and dates of various royal proclamation, Larkin has added his own notes at the bottom, providing excellent pointers to further reading.

Laud, William. A Speech Concerning Innovations in the Church. London, 1971. The speech he delivered at the sentencing of Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton in Star Chamber, with an illuminating if obsequious prefatory note to King Charles I.

Laud, William. Liturgy, Episcopacy, and Church Ritual: Three Speeches. Oxford, 1840. These are three speeches, the last of which is also published separately, and whose reference is above this one. The first two in the volume were delivered at Laud's trial, in response to accusations by Lord Saye and Sele.

Laud, William. The Autobiography of Dr. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Martyr, Collected from his Remains. Oxford, 1839. Laud's diary entries are here, which are interesting to look at, but often provide little background to the events he describes in a line or two. This is a source for many of the most famous of Laud's quotes, however, is certainly worth examining for the longer entries in which Laud does expand his thoughts.

Laud, William. The History of the Troubles and Tryal of The Most Reverend Father in God, and Blessed Martyr, William Laud, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury. London, 1695. Laud's version of the events of his life, including his trial, written while he was imprisoned in the Tower awaiting execution.

Nichol Smith, David, ed. Characters from the Histories and Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford, 1918. A fascinating collection of biographies of various seventeenth-century people, written by contemporaries.

Potter, George R. and Evelyn M. Simpson, eds. The Sermons of John Donne. 10 vols. Berkeley, 1953-1962. Donne's sermons are an interesting insight into the seventeenth-century religious world. He was the only person in the seventeenth century to call himself a Puritan, though he was actually Catholic in his theological leanings. He did, however, incorporate both Catholic and Puritan ideas into his sermons. Potter and Simpson provide excellent background and interpretation of the often difficult to understand sermons.

Prynne, William. Histrio-Mastix: The player's scourge, or actor's tragedy. 2 vols. New York, 1972. This is a treatise on plays and corruption of the self and of the soul, from the Puritan point of view. These volumes are an indispensable insight into Puritan thinking.

Wallington, Nehemiah. Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in the Reign of Charles I. 2 vols. London, 1869. Wallington was London artisan, and a prolific Puritan writer. These are his notes of the events of Charles's reign. More information on Wallington and his writings can be found in Paul Seaver's book Wallington's World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth Century London (London, 1985).

Secondary Materials


Amussen, Susan Dwyer. An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England. Oxford, 1988. Amussen discusses the organization of society, and the imposition of domestic and local order by popular influence rather than the law.

Bossy, John. The English Catholic Community 1570-1850. London, 1975. Bossy chronicles English Catholicism from the excommunication of Elizabeth I to 1850, challenging common assumptions that the community declined steadily, that it was a threat to the state, and particularly describing the conflicts within the Catholic mission and between Catholics and the state.

Clark, Paul and Peter Slack. English Towns in Transition 1500-1700. London, 1976. This book is a series of thematic chapters, dealing with various elements of town government, society, and economics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Collinson, Patrick. The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559-1625. Oxford, 1982. Though used here as a background source, Collinson's book is a comprehensive study of the Elizabethan and Jacobean churches, with emphasis on the prevailing religious unity of those reigns.

Havran, Martin J. The Catholics in Caroline England. London, 1962. Particularly useful in this book were the chapters on the mission and on enforcement of the penal laws against Catholics.

Herrup, Cynthia B. The Common Peace: Participation and the criminal law in seventeenth-century England. Cambridge, 1987. Herrup's book deals with the mechanics of local law administration and enforcement in Sussex. A very dense book, including numerous tables, it is a detailed description of the workings of law in seventeenth-century England.

Hill, Christopher. A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical politics, religion and literature in seventeenth-century England. London, 1990. I used the second chapter of this book, entitled "Archbishop Laud's place in English history," which describes the heritage of Laudian beliefs in the Elizabethan and Jacobean churches, and describes the efforts of Laud to return to that past.

Hill, Christopher. Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England. London, 1971. Describing the concept of Antichrist from English history through the seventeenth century, this book is conveniently divided into chronological chapters.

Hill, Christopher. Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England. London, 1974. An earlier and wider study than Hill's A Nation of Change and Novelty, this focuses on the social conflicts of the time.

Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution 1603-1714. Edinburgh, 1961. The chapter entitled "Religion and Ideas, 1603-1640" is a useful background to the Church programs and the conflicts over religion in early Stuart England.

Hill, Christopher. The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution. London, 1993. Hill's most recent work, this is an interdisciplinary study of the Bible's place in English society in the seventeenth century. It incorporates literature, economics, politics, and, of course, theology, into a jumpy and not always cohesive illustration of the significance of the primary book of Christianity.

Kenyon, J. P. Stuart England. 2nd edition. London, 1985. This is a very useful survey of the reigns of James I and Charles I, and makes illuminating points, though it is largely an overview of events.

Lamont, William. Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603-1660. London, 1969. Lamont's work on the religious motivation behind social and political trends is an important starting point for research into the events of the 1630s.

Loades, D. M. Politics and the Nation 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order. Glasgow, 1979. Loades writes of the transition from positive crown-aristocracy relations to the breakdown of hierarchy after the Civil War. A political overview focusing on the central government, Loades provides another look at the events of Charles's reign.

Lockyer, Roger. The Early Stuarts: A political history of England 1603-1642. London, 1989. This work places emphasizes Charles's role as devisor and executor of government policy during his reign.

Lockyer, Roger. Tudor and Stuart Britain 1471-1714. 2nd edition. Singapore, 1992. A readable and enjoyable reference, this book argues that innovations, throughout the time period it covers, were resisted by the English people, and puts forth the monarchy as the agent of change.

MacCaffrey, Wallace T. Exeter, 1540-1640: The Growth of an English County Town. 2nd edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975. An illuminating counterpoint to Underdown's work on Dorchester, Fire From Heaven, MacCaffrey posits Exeter as a non-Puritan town, which subscribed for other reasons to ideals held by Puritans.

Russell, Conrad. The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660. London, 1971. While there were no Parliaments between 1629 and 1640, Russell's book remained useful in its description of upper middle class political and religious behavior during the Personal Rule.

Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven, 1992. A weighty tome, this book is in response to the negative attitude many historians have taken to Charles I. Sharpe paints him as an active participant in his administration, and as the driving force behind all policy decisions of his reign.

Solt, Leo F. Church and State in Early Modern England, 1509-1640. Oxford, 1990. A useful reference, with a good index, of which I made use.

Sommerville, J. P. Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640. London, 1986. Sommerville focuses on the perceptions and ideas of the early Stuart English contemporaries, to put the events of James's and Charles's reigns in their contemporary perspective.

Stone, Lawrence. The causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642. London, 1972. Though it has a very bold title, this book lives up to it, detailing Stone's idea that the revolution was avoidable, but was arrived at by the general arrogance of the parties involved in politics in seventeenth-century England.

Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641. Oxford, 1965. Stone's massive work on those who left the most records sheds light on the religious tendencies of the upper classes, and complements Bossy's account of gentle and aristocratic support for Catholicism.

Tyacke, Nicholas. Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590-1640. Oxford, 1987. Tyacke argues in this book that Arminians was successful in controlling the Church because they were a small, well-organized, well-led group who followed a particular plan of action. They slowly gained influence in the Church hierarchy and the state, and were in control of the Church from 1628.

Underdown, David. Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven, 1992. An eminently readable account of seventeenth-century Dorchester, this book discusses the rise of Puritanism in a town government and social structure, from small beginnings to an ideology of wide subscription, though with a constant antagonistic undercurrent of disorder.

Underdown, David. Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603-1660. Oxford, 1985. Underdown looks at England as a whole in this work, rather than any one region, examining the social history of the reigns of the early Stuart monarchs, and the accompanying regionalism that was in opposition to the centralization of the government.

Wrightson, Keith. English Society 1580-1680. London, 1982. This is a very strict social history, detailing the lives of the common people, and is well-researched. In the later chapters, Wrightson broadens his perspective from issues of the family and the locality to those of the region and the country.


Clifton, Robin. "Fear of Popery." In The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell, 144-167. London, 1973. Clifton argues that anti-popery was a latent feeling in English society, but one which was not acted upon except in cases of great social upheaval.

Curtis, T. C. "Quarter Sessions Appearances and their Background: A Seventeenth-Century Regional Study." In Crime in England 1550-1800, ed. J. S. Cockburn, 135-154. Princeton, New Jersey, 1977. This article details appearances before JPs, breaking them down into various categories, including socio-economic background, crime committed, and sentence handed down.

Fincham, Kenneth and Peter Lake. "The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I and Charles I." In The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham, 23-49. Stanford, 1993. Fincham and Lake argue that Caroline Church policy continued from trends apparent in the Jacobite Church. They admit that there was discontinuity in those trends, occurring in the 1620s.

Foster, Andrew. "Church Policies of the 1630s." In Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, 193-223. London, 1984. This article focuses on Neile's largely uncontroversial tenure at York, illustrating his support for Laud and his participation in the rise of Arminianism, despite his own tendency to avoid the spotlight of public outrage.

Hill, Christopher. "Dr Tobias Crisp, 1600-43." Chap. in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. ii: Religion and Politics in 17th Century England. Amherst, Massachusetts, 1986. This article discusses events in the life of a Puritan preacher attempting to reconcile Puritanism with Arminianism.

Hill, Christopher. "From Grindal to Laud." Chap. in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. ii: Religion and Politics in 17th Century England. Amherst, Massachusetts, 1986. Here, Hill traces the development of the English Church as a series of steps taken by Archbishops, away from both Catholicism and Calvinism.

Hill, L. M. "County Government in Caroline England 1625-1640." In The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell, 66-90. London, 1975. Hill illustrates the mechanics of government of the localities under Charles, treating the changes imposed by Laud and Charles upon local officials, and their reactions to those changes.

Hirst, Derek. "The Failure of Godly Rule in the English Republic." In Past and Present 132 (August 1991), 33-66. Hirst deals here with the reasons that Godly Rule was not successful in its implementation. The background he provides is a helpful retrospective on the events of the 1630s from the point of view of the 1640s.

Holland, Susan. "Archbishop Abbot and the Problem of 'Puritanism.'" In The Historical Journal v. 37 no. 1 (1994), 23-43. Holland discusses the actions of Laud's predecessor at Canterbury, Archbishop Abbot, looking particularly at his attitude toward those who would not conform to Church policy.

Ingram, M. J. "Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early-Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire." In Crime in England 1550-1800, ed. J. S. Cockburn, 110-134. Princeton, New Jersey, 1977. Ingram argues that the central government exercised greater control over the localities through the court system.

Lake, Peter. "Anti-popery: the Structure of a Prejudice." In Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, 72-106. London, 1984. Lake examines the motivations behind anti-popery, and the consequences anti-popery had for English society in disorderly times. He looks at both Puritan and Arminian anti-popery, and contrasts their ideas of hierarchy and conformity.

Manning, Brian. "Puritanism and Democracy 1640-1642." In Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays Presented to Christopher Hill, ed. Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas, 139-160. Oxford, 1987. Manning describes Puritan ideas of egalitarianism and hierarchy, and explores the contradictions therein.

Milton, Anthony. "The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church: The Demise of a Jacobean Consensus." In The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham, 187-210. Stanford, 1993. Milton discusses the collapse of Church unity in the 1630s. He sees an inherent conflict in beliefs of Arminians and Puritans and cites the unwillingness of either side to compromise as the reason for Church discord.

Sharpe, J. A. "Crime and Delinquency in an Essex Parish 1600-1640" In Crime in England 1550-1800, ed. J. S. Cockburn, 90-109. Princeton, New Jersey, 1977. Sharpe looks at the effects of centralization of government on a single parish, noting changes in policy and enforcement, and popular reactions to those innovations.

Sharpe, Kevin. "The image of virtue: the court and household of Charles I, 1625-1642." In The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey, 226-260. London, 1987. This article examines Charles's court, and sees a microcosm of the kingdom. Authority was more distant and withdrawn, and policy changes occurred at court as well as throughout the realm.

Tyacke, Nicholas. "Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution." In The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell, 119-143. London, 1975. Tyacke argues that the division in the Church was not caused by Puritans but by Arminians, who opposed the generally Calvinist consensus of the Church, and attempted to replace it with a new and different idea of the "true Church."


David Edwards, lecture at University College Cork, Ireland, 7 March 1994. This was a lecture for a class on crown-nobility relations.


Chapter 1

[1]Peter Lake, "Anti-popery: the Structure of a Prejudice," in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642 (London, 1984), 89.

[2]Andrew Foster, "Church Policies of the 1630s," in Cust and Hughes, Conflict in Early Stuart England, 193-198.

[3]King Charles I, "A Proclamation for the Establishing of the Peace and Quiet of the Church of England" (Whitehall, 14 June 1626) in James F. Larkin (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations, II: Royal Proclamations of King Charles I, 1625-1646 (Oxford, 1983), 90-92.

[4]Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), xv.

[5]J. P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640 (London, 1986), 220.

[6]King Charles I, "A Proclamation for suppressing of false Rumours touching Parliament" (Whitehall, 27 March 1629) in SRP, 226-228.

[7]William Cobbett and T. C. Hansard (eds.), Parliamentary History of England, II: Comprising the Period from the Accession of Charles the First, in March 1625, to the Battle of Edge-Hill, in October 1642 (New York, 1966), 490-491.

[8]Parl. Hist., 422.

[9]Parl. Hist., 422.

[10]Lake, 90.

[11]Christopher Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical politics, religion and literature in seventeenth-century England (London, 1990), 58.

[12]Lawrence Stone, The causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (London, 1972), 118.

[13]Parl. Hist., 374-377.

[14]Parl. Hist., 408-409.

[15]Parl. Hist., 424.

[16]Parl. Hist., 420.

[17]Parl. Hist., 421.

[18]Stone, Causes, 133.

[19]Parl. Hist., 574, 578.

[20]J. P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640 (London, 1986), 219.

[21]Robin Clifton, "Fear of Popery," in Conrad Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1975), 146.

[22]Christopher Hill, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), 20.

[23]Hill, Change and Continuity, 4.

[24]Hill, Change and Continuity, 20.

[25]Hill, Nation, 57.

[26]Nicholas Tyacke, "Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution," in Russell, Origins, 129, 133.

[27]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 139.

[28]William Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603-1660 (London, 1969), 69.

[29]Lamont, 106.

[30]David Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1985), 41-42.

[31]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 52.

[32]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 138.

[33]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 138.

[34]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 119-120, 126, 121.

[35]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 120.

[36]Hill, Change and Continuity, 17.

[37]Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603-1714 (Edinburgh, 1961), 82.

[38]Hill, Century, 82.

[39]Hill, Century, 82.

[40]Hill, Century, 82-83.

[41]Hill, Century, 83.

[42]Hill, Century, 81.

[43]Hill, Century, 79, 81.

[44]George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (eds.), The Sermons of John Donne (Berkeley, 1953-1962), II, 20.

[45]Donne, Sermons, IV, 12, 14, 15.

[46]Donne, Sermons, IV, 16.

[47]J. P. Kenyon, Stuart England, 2nd ed. (London, 1985), 121.

[48]Kenyon, Stuart England, 121.

[49]D. M. Loades, Politics and the Nation 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order (Glasgow, 1979), 391.

[50]Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660 (London, 1971), 167.

[51]Russell, Crisis, 171.

[52]Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), 745.

[53]Stone, Causes, 129.

[54]John Selden in Ann Hughes (ed.), Seventeenth-Century England: A Changing Culture, I: Primary Sources (Totowa, New Jersey, 1981), 53.

[55]Lamont, 68.

[56]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 139.

[57]William Laud, Liturgy, Episcopacy, and Church Ritual: Three Speeches (Oxford, 1840), 33-34.

[58]Laud, Three Speeches, 37.

[59]Lamont, 57.

[60]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 131.

[61]Clarendon, "Charles I," in David Nichol Smith (ed.), Characters from the Histories and Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1918), 49; Sir Philip Warwick, "Charles I," in Nichol Smith, 55.

[62]Kevin Sharpe, "The image of virtue: the court and household of Charles I, 1625-1642," in David Starkey (ed.), The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London, 1987), 257; Warwick, "Charles I," in Nichol Smith, 55.

[63]Sommerville, 220.

[64]Sommerville, 220.

[65]Loades, 390.

[66]Loades, 390.

[67]John Milton in William M. Lamont and Sybil Oldfield (eds.), Politics, Religion and Literature in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1975), 41.

[68]Loades, 390.

[69]John Lilburne in Lamont and Oldfield, 44.

[70]Loades, 390.

[71]Loades, 390.

[72]Lamont, 70.

[73]John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (London, 1975), passim.

[74]Lamont, 122, 126, 175.

Chapter 2

[1]Susan Holland, "Archbishop Abbot and the Problem of 'Puritanism,'" Historical Journal, v37, n1 (1994), 24.

[2]Holland, 25.

[3]Holland, 25.

[4]Holland, 28-29, 42.

[5]Holland, 30.

[6]Holland, 34.

[7]Holland, 39.

[8]Holland, 39.

[9]King Charles I, "A Proclamation for the Establishing of the Peace and Quiet of the Church of England" (Whitehall, 14 June 1626), in James F. Larkin (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations, II: Royal Proclamations of King Charles I, 1625-1646 (Oxford, 1983), 90-92.

[10]King Charles I, "The King's Declaration prefixed to the Articles of Religion," in Samuel Rawson Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford, 1906), 75-76.

[11]King Charles I, "A Proclamation for suppressing of false Rumours touching Parliament" (Whitehall, 27 March 1629), in SRP, 572-573.

[12]John Pym in Ann Hughes (ed.), Seventeenth-Century England: A Changing Culture, I: Primary Sources (Totowa, New Jersey, 1981), 37.

[13]Lawrence Stone, The causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (London, 1972), 131.

[14]David Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1985), 125.

[15]Cynthia B. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the criminal law in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1987), 206; Christopher Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical politics, religion and literature in seventeenth-century England (London, 1990), 71; Stone, Causes, 124; Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 443.

[16]Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660 (London, 1971), 313.

[17]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 444-445.

[18]Stone, Causes, 118.

[19]"Protestation of the House of Commons," in Gardiner, 82-83.

[20]Andrew Foster, "Church Policies of the 1630s," in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642 (London, 1984), 217.

[21]Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603-1714 (Edinburgh, 1961), 78.

[22]Hill, Century, 79.

[23]D. M. Loades, Politics and the Nation 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order (Glasgow, 1979), 395.

[24]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 144.

[25]Clarendon, in Hughes, Primary Sources, 57.

[26]William Laud, The Autobiography of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Martyr, Collected from his Remains (Oxford, 1839), 127, 164.

[27]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 57.

[28]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 57.

[29]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 57.

[30]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 58.

[31]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 144.

[32]Sir Philip Warwick, "William Juxon," in David Nichol Smith (ed.), Characters from the Histories and Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1918), 112.

[33]Nicholas Tyacke, "Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution," in Conrad Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1975), 138.

[34]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 138.

[35]King Charles I, "A Proclamation restraining the Withdrawing of His Majesties Subjects from the Church of England, and giving Scandall in resorting to Masses" (Whitehall, 20 December 1673), in SRP, 580-582. The term "recusant" is often used today to apply to Catholics, and indeed these were the most common type of people who did not attend Church of England services; however, technically, a recusant was anyone who did not take Holy Communion according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, be they Catholic or otherwise.

[36]Russell, Crisis, 313.

[37]Foster, passim.

[38]J. P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640 (London, 1986), 224.

[39]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 143.

[40]William Laud, The History of the Troubles and Tryal of The Most Reverend Father in God, and Blessed Martyr, William Laud, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (London, 1695), 163.

[41]Sommerville, 220.

[42]Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987), 186.

[43]Loades, 392.

[44]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 131.

[45]Hill, Nation, 64.

[46]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 129.

[47]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 130.

[48]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 137.

[49]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 266-270.

[50]Hill, Nation, 78.

[51]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 206.

[52]Sommerville, 217; Hill, Nation, 57.

[53]Hill, Nation, 58.

[54]Bastwick in Hughes, Primary Sources, 53-54.

[55]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 134.


[57]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 134.

[58]Hill, Nation, 72; "The Root and Branch Petition," in Gardiner, 140.

[59]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 143.


[61]Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559-1625 (Oxford, 1982), 81.

[62]Sommerville, 221.

[63]Laud, History, 521.

[64]Loades, 392.

[65]Laud, History, 156.

[66]Loades, 392.

[67]Loades, 392.

[68]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 203.

[69]William Laud, A Speech Concerning Innovations in the Church (London, 1971), 47.

[70]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 130.

[71]Hill, Nation, 68; Loades, 392.

[72]Russell, Crisis, 315.

[73]Derek Hirst, "The Failure of Godly Rule in the English Republic," Past and Present 132 (August 1991), 34.

[74]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 130.

[75]Laud, Speech, 44.

[76]Edward Cardwell (ed.), Synodalia: A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons, and Proceedings of Convocations in the Province of Canterbury, from the Year 1547 to the Year 1717 (Farnborough, Hants., 1966), I, 404.

[77]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 129.

[78]Sommerville, 221.

[79]Sommerville, 221.


[81]Sharpe, "Image," 227.

[82]Sommerville, 217.

[83]Foster, 201.

[84]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 269; George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (eds.), The Sermons of John Donne (Berkeley, 1953-1962), II, 34; Donne, Sermons, VII, 17.

[85]Christopher Hill, "Dr Tobias Crisp, 1600-43," in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. ii: Religion and Politics in 17th Century England (Amherst, Massachusetts, 1986), 143.

[86]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 133.

[87]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 132.

[88]Russell, Crisis, 317.

[89]Russell, Crisis, 317.

[90]Hill, Century, 86.

[91]Loades, 390-391.

[92]"The Root and Branch Petition," in Gardiner, 138.

[93]Laud, Three Speeches, 210.

[94]Hill, "Crisp," 142.

[95]Hill, "Crisp," 142.

[96]Hill, "Crisp," 142; Hill, Century, 88.

[97]Laud, Autobiography, 128-129.

[98]Hill, Century, 90.

[99]"The Root and Branch Petition," in Gardiner, 138.

[100]Russell, Crisis, 316.

[101]Hill, Century, 91.

[102]Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain 1417-1714, 2nd ed. (Essex, 1992), 243.

[103]Stone, Causes, 120.

[104]Hill, Century, 86.

[105]Hill, Nation, 68.

[106]Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain, 242.

[107]Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain, 242.

[108]Hill, Century, 99; Sommerville, 219.

[109]Gardiner, 140.

[110]Laud, Three Speeches, 73.

[111]Hill, Century, 76.

[112]Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1971), 67.

[113]Nehemiah Wallington, "Wallington, from Historical Notices," in William M. Lamont and Sybil Oldfield (eds.), Politics, Religion and Literature in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1975), 47.

[114]Loades, 392.

[115]Laud, Speech, 76.

[116]Synodalia, I, 410.

[117]Synodalia, I, 414.

[118]Christopher Hill, "From Grindal to Laud," in Hill, Collected Essays, vol. ii, 75.

[119]Hill, "Grindal to Laud," 66.

[120]Hill, Change, 17.

[121]"The Root and Branch Petition," in Gardiner, 140.

[122]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 124.

[123]Hill, Antichrist, 68.

[124]Hill, Antichrist, 67.

[125]Hill, Antichrist, 71.

[126]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 55; Clarendon in Nichol Smith, 102.

[127]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 55.

[128]Sommerville, 217.

[129]Hill, Century, 80.

[130]Hill, Nation, 64.

[131]Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain, 244.

[132]Hill, Nation, 64.

[133]Clarendon in Hughes, Primary Sources, 55.

[134]Loades, 392.

[135]Laud, Three Speeches, 212-213.

[136]Laud, Three Speeches, 242.

[137]Collinson, 75.

[138]Foster, 198.

[139]Laud, Speech, preface.

[140]Laud, Speech.

[141]Contemporary accounts of the proceedings of the trial can be found in Hughes, Primary Sources, in Lamont and Oldfield, and in Nehemiah Wallington, Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in the Reign of Charles I (London, 1869), I.

[142]Laud, Speech, passim; Laud, "Archbishop Laud," in Lamont and Oldfield, 45-47.

[143]Wallington, I, 98.

[144]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 445.

[145]Bastwick in Hughes, Primary Sources, 54; Wallington, I, 95, 98.

[146]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 764-765.

[147]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 139.

[148]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 139.

[149]Sommerville, 217.

[150]Clarendon in Nichol Smith, 101-102.

[151]Hill, "Grindal to Laud," 78.

[152]Hill, Nation, 73.

[153]Stone, Causes, 121.

[154]Foster, 213; Hill, "Grindal to Laud," 78.

[155]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 139.

[156]Stone, Causes, 120.

157John Lilburne, A Worke of the Beast or a Relation of a Most Unchristian Censure, Executed upon John Lilburne, in William Haller, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution 1638-1647, 3 vols. (New York, 1933); Stone, Causes, 121.

[158]David Underdown, Fire From Heaven: Life in and English Town in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 1992), 102.

[159]Russell, Crisis, 310.

[160]King Charles I, "Proclamation restraining the Withdrawing," in SRP, 582.

[161]Thomas Fuller, "William Laud," in Nichol Smith, 103.

[162]Sir Philip Warwick, "William Laud," in Nichol Smith, 106.

Chapter 3

[163]See on this J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1967).

[164]David Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1985), 124.

[165]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 129.


[167]Brian Manning, "Puritanism and Democracy 1640-1642," in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds.), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1987), 142.

[168]Nicholas Tyacke, "Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution," in Conrad Russell, (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1975), 140.

[169]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 140.

[170]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 128.

[171]Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 747.

[172]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 134-135.

[173]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 134-136.

[174]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 137.

[175]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 139.

[176]Christopher Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical politics, religion and literature in seventeenth-century England (London, 1990), 81.

[177]Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain 1417-1714, 2nd ed. (Essex, 1992), 245.

[178]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 221.

[179]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 221.

[180]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 140.

[181]Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, "The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I and Charles I," in Kenneth Fincham (ed.), The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642 (Stanford, 1993), 42.

[182]William Laud, A Speech Concerning Innovations in the Church (London, 1971), 7.

[183]Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660 (London, 1971), 310.


[185]Laud, History, 154.

[186]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 735-736.

[187]David Edwards, lecture at University College Cork, Ireland, 7 March 1994.

[188]Fincham and Lake, 37-38.

[189]Martin J. Havran, The Catholics in Caroline England (London, 1962), 135-137.

[190]Robin Clifton, "Fear of Popery," in Russell, Origins, 152.

[191]Leo F. Solt, Church and State in Early Modern England, 1509-1640 (Oxford, 1990), 198.

[192]Clifton, 166.

[193]Laud, History, 523; Andrew Foster, "Church Policies of the 1630s," in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642 (London, 1984), 210.


[195]Peter Lake, "Anti-popery: the Structure of a Prejudice," in Cust and Hughes, Conflict in Early Stuart England, 88.

[196]Lake, 88.


[198]Sharpe, "Image," 243.

[199]Sharpe, "Image," 244; Tyacke, "Puritanism," 137.

[200]Tyacke, "Puritanism," 137.

[201]Hill, Century, 78.

[202]Hill, Nation, 59.

[203]D. M. Loades, Politics and the Nation 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order (Glasgow, 1979), 392.

[204]Lawrence Stone, The causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (London, 1972), 128.

[205]Clifton, 163.

[206]Lake, 87.

[207]Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1971), 6.

[208]William Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603-1660 (London, 1969), 66; Hill, Antichrist, 35.

[209]Hill, Antichrist, 35.

[210]Hill, Antichrist, 40.

[211]Hill, Antichrist, 44.

[212]Hill, Antichrist, 44.

[213]Hill, Antichrist, 45.

[214]Lake, 81.

[215]Clifton, 146-147.

[216]Clifton, 147, 149.

[217]Clifton, 146, 149.

[218]Lake, 75-76.

[219]Lake, 74, 78-79.

[220]Anthony Milton, "The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church: The Demise of a Jacobean Consensus," in Fincham, The Early Stuart Church, 201.

[221]Lake, 80.

[222]Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), 726.

[223]Clifton, 145.

[224]Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London, 1993), 50.

[225]Lake, 97.

[226]Clifton, 150.

[227]John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (London, 1975), 122.

[228]Clifton, 150.

[229]Roger Lockyer, The Early Stuarts: A political history of England 1603-1642 (London, 1989), 293.

[230]Bossy, 127.

[231]Havran, 92.

[232]Havran, 120-121.

[233]Havran, 92, 96.

[234]Havran, 92.

[235]Havran, 92.

[236]Lockyer, Early Stuarts, 301.

[237]Lockyer, Early Stuarts, 302.

[238]Havran, 119.

[239]Havran, 101, 106.

[240]Lockyer, Early Stuarts, 302.

[241]Clifton, 164.

[242]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 361; Clifton, 164.

[243]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 362.

[244]Clifton, 165.

[245]Clifton, 157-158, 161.

[246]Lake, 94.

[247]Clifton, 161.

[248]Lake, 94-95.

[249]Stone, Crisis, 725.

[250]Bossy, 123.

[251]Sharpe, Personal Rule, 362.

[252]Laud, History, 160.

[253]Clifton, 154.

[254]Clifton, 154.

[255]Hill, Nation, 76-77. Hill's italics.

[256]Stone, Crisis, 729, 731.

[257]Bossy, passim.

[258]Bossy, 54.

[259]Bossy, 55.

[260]Bossy, 56-57.

[261]Bossy, 194.

[262]Havran, 88.

[263]Bossy, 189, 194.

[264]Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain, 245.

[265]Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain, 246.

[266]Havran, 80.

[267]Havran, 80.

[268]"The Root and Branch Petition," in Samuel Rawson Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford, 1906), 143.

Chapter 4

[269]Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Exeter, 1540-1640: The Growth of an English County Town, 2nd edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975), 72.

[270]J. P. Kenyon, Stuart England, 2nd ed. (London, 1985), 117-118.

[271]Kenyon, 119; MacCaffrey, 243.

[272]Kenyon, 119-120.


[274]MacCaffrey, 100.


[276]Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603-1714 (Edinburgh, 1961), 89-90.

[277]Christopher Hill, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), 21.

[278]Hill, Century, 90.

[279]William Prynne, Histrio-Mastix: The player's scourge, or actor's tragedy (New York, 1972), II, 799.

[280]Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, I, 236.

[281]Hill, Century, 89.

[282]Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988),

[283]"Judgment of the Court of Star Chamber Against William Prynne, 1634" in Frank W. Jessup, Background to the English Civil War (London, 1966), 19.


[285]David Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1985), 13.


[287]Amussen, 34.

[288]Manning, 142.

[289]Manning, 144.

[290]Paul Clark and Peter Slack, English Towns in Transition 1500-1700 (London, 1976), 129.

[291]Lake, 95.

[292]J. S. Cockburn, Western Circuit Assize Orders, 1629-1648: A Calendar (London, 1976), passim, notably orders 66, 117, 140, 195, 279, and 590; Cynthia B. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the criminal law in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1987), passim.

[293]Clark and Slack, 140.

[294]Clark and Slack, 140.

[295]Fincham and Lake, 24.

[296]David Underdown, Fire From Heaven: Life in and English Town in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 1992), 112.

[297]Amussen, 176.

[298]Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, II, 816-828.

[299]MacCaffrey, 72; Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 11.

[300]D. M. Loades, Politics and the Nation 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order (Glasgow, 1979), 394.

[301]Manning, 159.

[302]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 9.

[303]Amussen, 38-39.

[304]Amussen, 39.

[305]MacCaffrey, 94.

[306]Russell, Crisis, 166.

[307]Amussen, 44, 46.

[308]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 36.

[309]MacCaffrey, 94.

[310]Hill, Century, 84.

[311]Clark and Slack, 125.

[312]MacCaffrey, 203.

[313]Clark and Slack, 115.

[314]Clark and Slack, 136.

[315]MacCaffrey, 204.

[316]MacCaffrey, 205, 244.

[317]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 78.

[318]Herrup, 54.

[319]Clark and Slack, 111, 117-118.

[320]Hill, Nation, 70.


[322]Foster, 209.

[323]Foster, 208.

[324]Hill, Change and Continuity, 20.

[325]Hill, Century, 85.

[326]Hill, Century, 85.

[327]Lake, 85.

328Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, I, 240, 253.

[329]Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, I, 242. Prynne's capitalization.

[330]Hill, Change and Continuity, 21.

[331]"The Declaration of Sports," in Samuel Rawson Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford, 1906), 99, 101.

[332]"The Declaration of Sports," in Gardiner, 101.

[333]Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, I, 363.

[334]"The Declaration of Sports," in Gardiner, 101.

[335]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 66.

[336]"The Declaration of Sports," in Gardiner, 102.

[337]Russell, Crisis, 316; Underdown, Fire From Heaven, 173.

[338]Foster, 208.

[339]"The Declaration of Sports," in Gardiner, 103.

[340]Hill, Century, 85.

[341]Hill, Century, 85.

[342]Hill, Nation, 71.

[343]Lake, 93.

[344]Hill, Century, 84.

[345]George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (eds.), The Sermons of John Donne, 10 vols. (Berkeley, 1953-1962), X, 301.

[346]Hill, Century, 85.

[347]Amussen, 170; Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, I, 322.

[348]Hill, Century, 86.

[349]Herrup, 3.

[350]MacCaffrey, 97.

[351]Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680 (London, 1982), 156, 158-159, 168.

[352]Herrup, 52.

[353]Wrightson, 154.

[354]L. M. Hill, "County Government in Caroline England 1625-1640," in Conrad Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1975), 69.

[355]Hill, "County Government," 69-70.

[356]Hill, "County Government," 78.

[357]Hill, "County Government," 79.

[358]Hill, "County Government," 80, 82.

[359]Wrightson, 150-151.

[360]Wrightson, 152-153.

[361]M. J. Ingram, "Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early-Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire," in J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England 1550-1800 (Princeton, New Jersey, 1977), 113.

[362]T. C. Curtis, "Quarter Sessions Appearances and their Background: A Seventeenth-Century Regional Study," in Cockburn, Crime in England, 153.

[363]Curtis, 147.

[364]Hirst, 50.

[365]J. A. Sharpe, "Crime and Delinquency in an Essex Parish 1600-1640," in Cockburn, Crime in England, 91.

[366]Sharpe, "Crime and Delinquency," 91-92, 106.

[367]Sharpe, "Crime and Delinquency," 96.

[368]Herrup, 7.

[369]Herrup, 192, 195.

[370]Amussen, 135.

[371]Herrup, 2.

[372]See on this G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1960).

[373]J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, England, 1966), 117-118.

[374]Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, 118-119.

[375]Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, 120, 122-123.

[376]Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, 123-124.

[377]Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, 186.

[378]Herrup, 2, 205.

[379]Herrup, 5, 166.

[380]Herrup, 172, 174.

[381]Herrup, 197.

[382]Wrightson, 173-174.

[383]Wrightson, 173.

[384]Wrightson, 177.

[385]Wrightson, 177.

[386]Wrightson, 175.

[387]Wrightson, 179.

[388]Wrightson, 176.

[389]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 113, 117.

[390]Underdown, Fire From Heaven, 100.

[391]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 111.

[392]Underdown, Fire From Heaven, 100.

Chapter 5

[393]M. J. Ingram, "Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early-Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire," in J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England, 1550-1800 (Princeton, New Jersey, 1977), 119.

[394]Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680 (London, 1982), 153.

[395]Wrightson, 154.

[396]Wrightson, 172.

[397]David Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1985), 132.

[398]Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion, 132.


[400]Edward Cardwell (ed.), Synodalia: A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons, and Proceedings of Convocations in the Province of Canterbury, from the Year 1547 to the Year 1717 (Farnborough, Hants., England, 1966), I, 403.

[401]Synodalia, I, 383.

[402]Synodalia, I, 393.


[404]Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987), 144.

[405]Nehemiah Wallington, Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in the Reign of Charles I (London, 1869), I, 149.

[406]Wallington, I, 148.


[408]J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1966), 118, 115.

[409]Anthony Milton, "The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church: The Demise of a Jacobean Consensus," in Kenneth Fincham (ed.), The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642 (Stanford, 1993), 188.