PURITANISM

PURITANISM. A movement within the Church of England, Puritanism called for the church's further reformation in accord with what was believed to be "the best reformed" tradition, which was taken to mean the doctrine and ecclesiology of Protestant Switzerland (Geneva, Zurich), of the Rhineland (Strasbourg in particular), the Palatinate, the Netherlands, and Scotland.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE PURITAN MOVEMENT

Puritanism was born out of dissatisfaction with the Elizabethan Settlement, the ecclesiastical order established by the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in 1559 by the young Queen Elizabeth (ruled 1558–1603) and her first Parliament. Many English Protestants who had survived the reign of Catholic Queen Mary I (ruled 1553–1558) and the persecution of Protestants that marked her later years, and many of the more than eight hundred clerics and laymen who had fled abroad, had hoped that Elizabeth would bring a return to the second (more Protestant) Book of Common Prayer of King Edward VI's reign (1547–1553) and to the Reformed Protestant momentum of that king's last years. Exiles, who had experienced the reformed Calvinist order of the churches in Frankfurt am Main, Arau, Strasbourg, Basel, Zurich, and Geneva, returned to England hoping that the English Church would now go beyond the Edwardian reformation and join the ranks of the "best reformed churches."

Although few quarreled with the doctrine set out in 1563 in the Thirty-Nine Articles (Articles XI, Of the Justification of Man, and Article XVII, Of Predestination and Election, were unambiguously in the Reformed camp), some did question whether the retention of the traditional disciplinary machinery of episcopacy and the episcopal and archidiaconal church courts really approximated the structure of the primitive church of the Book of Acts and the early church fathers. More objectionable were the Prayer Book rubrics requiring that parish priests officiate wearing a surplice rather than an academic gown, as worn by ministers in the Reformed Churches of the Continent, and the continued use of the cross in baptism and the ring in marriage. These were admittedly adiaphora (issues not central to a saving faith), but if so, many questioned why their use should be obligatory. Further, in a country that was still largely Catholic, it seemed a mistake to "symbolize" with the old faith, thus leading many of the laity to assume that no substantive change had occurred. Finally, the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, although largely written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), who was already a Protestant and moving in the direction of the Reformed churches when he wrote the 1552 Prayer Book, allowed little time for the sermon, and preaching had seemingly come to be central to inculcating a true saving faith: the Word preached, rather than the sacraments, was thought to be the principal vehicle of grace for those who were dissatisfied.

The first clash between the clergy who would come to be called "Precisions" or "Puritans" came over the requirement that the minister officiate in a surplice. Edmund Sandys, soon to be one of the new Elizabethan bishops, dismissed the rubric saying, "Our gloss upon this text is that we shall not be forced to use them," but events belied his optimistic view. Although strict uniformity was not enforced at first, in 1566, under pressure from the queen, Archbishop Matthew Parker published his Advertisements, which called for decency and uniformity in worship. Ministers were not to preach without an episcopal license, and all ministers were required to wear the surplice when officiating. The Vestiarian Controversy followed, brought to a head by the bishop of London, who convoked the London clergy before him; thirty-seven of the ninety-eight clergy refused to conform and were suspended for refusing to wear what Robert Crowley called "the conjuring garments of popery." As William Cecil (1520–1598), the queen's secretary of state, complained, the consequence of silencing so many "godly men at one instant" was the "utter overthrow [of almost] all exercises . . . of interpretation of Scripture" within the city.

Many of those suspended were subsequently rescued by lay supporters who had the right of presentation to parochial livings, and in a sense the Puritan movement was born from that moment. In 1570 the conflict escalated. In that year, Thomas Cartwright's divinity lectures at Cambridge on the Acts of the Apostles argued that the primitive church had a presbyterian structure and lacked bishops. The issue of governance was no longer academic when, two years later, two young London preachers, John Field and Thomas Wilcox, published An Admonition to the Parliament, which called for the abolition of episcopacy and the substitution of a presbyterian structure of church government.

Not all relations between the Puritans and the bishops were as contentious as these measures implied. An overriding problem was the inability of many uneducated parish priests to preach the kind of exegetical sermons many bishops as well as ministers believed the times required, and this perception led to officially sanctioned meetings of local clergy called "prophesyings." During these meetings, typically, two skilled ministers preached upon a biblical text before the assembled local clergy and interested laity, and afterwards the clergy withdrew to discuss the performance. Although Archbishop Edmund Grindal (c. 1519–1583) backed the prophesyings, saying "public and continual preaching of God's word is the ordinary means and instrument of the salvation of mankind," Queen Elizabeth preferred that ministers read the official homilies. Thus in 1576 she ordered Grindal to suppress the prophesyings. Nevertheless, preaching exercises in one form or another, sometimes with episcopal approval (approval of the bishop), survived in many localities into the seventeenth century.

Such cooperation between bishops and the Puritan clergy largely came to an end in 1583, when John Whitgift (c. 1530–1604) succeeded Grindal as archbishop of Canterbury. Whitgift was a disciplinarian after the queen's own heart, and he promptly instituted the three articles of subscription as a means for suppressing Puritan nonconformity. The articles required the unfeigned acknowledgment of the royal supremacy in the church (few Puritans disagreed with that requirement), that the Thirty-Nine Articles were agreeable to the word of God, that nothing in the Book of Common Prayer was contrary to the word of God, and that it should therefore be used without alteration or abbreviation by all ordained ministers. More than three hundred ministers were suspended for refusing subscription, although many subsequently subscribed in some modified form sufficient for reinstatement.

Equipped with the prerogative Court of High Commission, over which Whitgift presided, and with the support of Queen Elizabeth, the archbishop set about enforcing conformity in a series of show trials: three who had separated from the established church in despair of reforming it were executed in 1593. The nascent presbyterian program organized by Field and Wilcox was at an end, and the Puritan clergy, whether supporters of a presbyterian church or not, lost their principal champions at court, including (among others) the earl of Leicester and his brother, the earl of Warwick; Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's secretary of state; and Sir Walter Mildmay, an old privy counselor, as the first Elizabethan generation died in the late 1580s and early 1590s.

Loss of support at court did not spell the end of Puritanism in the countryside, where many Puritan clergy found support among the local gentry and country peers. Robert Rich, the second earl of Warwick, and his gentry allies in two generations of the Barrington family and their kin turned Essex into one of the principal Puritan strongholds until the episcopal attacks of the later 1620s. These attacks prompted an exodus of clergy and their lay followers to Massachusetts Bay and southern New England. The Knightleys in Northamptonshire and Sir Robert Jermyn, Sir John Higham, and Sir Edward Lewkenor in Suffolk were patrons of Puritan ministers. In the west, Sir Robert Harley and his friends made part of Herefordshire a Puritan haven. In London, where most of the parochial livings were not in the hands of the laity, Puritans found a solution in the lectureship, a minister hired to preach either because the incumbent was not licensed to preach or because the parish vestry wished more sermons than the parish minister could provide. At one time more than one hundred London parishes had preachers paid to give these extra sermons, supported either by collections organized by the vestry or by endowments made by wealthy merchants.

THE PURITAN MOVEMENT IN STUART ENGLAND

When James I (ruled 1603–1625) succeeded to the throne of England, the Puritans briefly hoped for better times; after all, as James VI of Scotland, this king had been brought up in a Presbyterian church. The so-called Millenary Petition, calling for moderate reform, was promptly organized and purportedly signed by one thousand clergymen; James responded by summoning a meeting of bishops and Puritan ministers at Hampton Court. The king was sympathetic to the Puritan demand for a preaching clergy, but he had no sympathy for what he thought might be reform leading to a presbyterian system in England. In the end, little came of Hampton Court except the new translation of the Bible published in 1611, the last official collaboration between Puritan and non-Puritan members of the Church of England. Richard Bancroft (1544–1610), who succeeded Whitgift as archbishop of Canterbury, was as rigorous a disciplinarian as his predecessor. He promulgated a revised set of canons for the church in 1604, which required subscription and conformity, and in the ensuing five years more than seventy beneficed Nonconformist clergy were deprived, including such Puritan luminaries as Arthur Hildersham and Ezechial Culverwell.

Two issues gained the Puritans support in the wider community in the course of James's reign. Many members of the church favored a rigorous Sabbath that was devoted exclusively to religious activities, and were shocked when King James issued the Book of Sports in 1618 in an effort to appease, as it seemed to many, Catholic sensibilities in Lancashire. The Book of Sports specifically forbade "Puritans and precisions" from discouraging any "lawful recreations" once the second service was completed on Sunday afternoons. Such lawful recreations included dancing, May games, Whitsun ales, and Morris dances, all of which could now legally take place in the churchyard.

More seriously, many, including Archbishop George Abbot (1562–1633), joined the more incautious Puritan preachers in criticizing King James's pursuit of a Spanish Habsburg wife for Prince Charles, particularly after 1618, when in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) the Catholic armies of Spain and Bavaria invaded the Protestant Palatinate, the hereditary electorate of Frederick and his wife, Elizabeth, James's daughter. In 1622 James attempted to stop such preaching by promulgating his "Directions concerning Preachers," but in fact the preachers were doing little more than giving voice to popular opinion.

Catholic political and military successes on the Continent were one threat; the rise of Arminianism and ceremonialism at home was even more threatening, for to Puritans and to old-fashioned Calvinists like Abbot, these clerics seemed bent on subverting Protestantism from within. Puritans and non-Puritans alike had shared a common Reformed theology during most of Elizabeth's reign, but beginning in the 1590s anti-Calvinists appeared in the universities, arguing that grace was resistible, that salvation could be lost, which was a denial of predestination, and that the sacraments were more important vehicles of saving grace than the preached Word. Eight Arminians became bishops during James's reign, including his favorite court preacher, Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626). After 1625, in the reign of King Charles I (ruled 1625–1649), they rapidly came to dominate the church. William Laud (1573–1645) became Charles's chief ecclesiastical adviser and rose to become bishop of London in 1628 and archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Calvinists were now seen as Puritans, and Puritans as "Brownists," separatists from the Established Church in tendency, if not yet in fact. As Laud preached in a court sermon in 1621, "nothing more needful for . . . State and Church, than prayer," and the peace he sought when he came to power was the peace of silent pulpits.

In 1629 Thomas Hooker, the silenced lecturer at Chelmsford in Essex, preached in his farewell sermon: "God is going, his glory is departing, . . . England hath seen her best days," and shortly after left for Massachusetts; forty-eight Essex ministers had petitioned Laud on his behalf, but to no avail. Others retreated to the Netherlands. Alexander Leighton, a Scottish minister and physician, was tried in 1630 before the Star Chamber for writing against episcopacy, had his ears cropped, and was imprisoned until released by Parliament in 1640; Henry Burton, a minister, John Bastwick, a physician, and William Prynne, a lawyer, suffered a similar fate in 1637. The Book of Sports was reissued in 1633 and was required to be read from every pulpit in the land; those ministers who resisted what many regarded as an invitation to profane the Sabbath were suspended from their ministerial duties.

THE PURITAN MOVEMENT AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

The rebellion of the Scots in 1637 over the attempted introduction of an English-style Book of Common Prayer and the summoning of the Long Parliament in November 1640 following two disastrous so-called Bishops' Wars, as Charles tried to bring his rebellious Scottish subjects to heel, brought the downfall of the Caroline regime. Laud was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and the House of Commons entertained petitions against parochial clergy who favored the Laudian regime and, after the civil war began in 1642, those who preached against Parliament and for the king. Puritan clergy who lost their livings behind royalist lines found new pulpits in London and those areas held by Parliament. As Richard Baxter (1615–1691), then a young West Country Puritan divine, later wrote: "Though it must be confessed that the public safety and liberty wrought very much with most, especially with the nobility and gentry who adhered to the parliament, yet was it principally the differences about religious matter that filled up the parliament's armies and put the resolution and valor into their soldiers."

A church settlement proved more difficult for Parliament than military victory. As part of an agreement with the Scots Covenanters, Parliament had summoned the Westminster Assembly of Divines in 1643, but argument over the definition of "the best reformed church" soon revealed a split between the Presbyterian majority, champions of a national church to which all would necessarily belong (similar to the Scots), and the Independent minority (called Congregationalists in America), who insisted on autonomy for gathered, voluntary congregations. The latter had the backing of the Baptists, always outside the national church, and the sectarian radicals in some of the parliamentary regiments. After the creation of the New Model Army in 1645, its success in the second civil war in 1648 and the conquest of Ireland and Scotland, followed by Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate in 1653, the survival of the Independents and the sects was guaranteed by the victorious army. The upshot was a Presbyterian structure without coercive sanctions, Independents and Baptists existing outside its purview, and in the 1650s these were joined by the Fifth Monarchists, Quakers, and other radical groups.

When the Restoration took place in 1660, in part due to the fear of sectarian anarchy, instead of a Puritan movement within the national church that had existed prior to 1640, denominations—Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Quakers—came to exist as persecuted congregations on the outside, and Old Dissent was born. Yet it was in this period of defeat that the two great literary expressions of the Puritan ethos appeared: John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678).

Puritanism, if it failed to create the sought-after City on the Hill, nevertheless was to have a lasting influence on the primacy given to the Bible as the word of God and to a certain type of moral seriousness and Protestant culture pervasive, if not dominant, in the English-speaking world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Baxter, Richard. The Autobiography of Richard Baxter. Edited by J. M. Lloyd Thomas. London and New York, 1931.

Dent, Arthur. The Plaine Mans Pathway to Heaven. London, 1601.

Hutchinson, Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Edited by James Sutherland. London, New York, and Toronto, 1973.

Secondary Sources

Collinson, Patrick. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967.

——. Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism. London, 1983.

Durston, Christopher, and Jacqueline Eales, eds. The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700. New York, 1996.

Greaves, Richard L. Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent. Stanford, 2002.

Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. London, 1964.

——. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution. London, 1972.

Lake, Peter. Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker. London, 1988.

——. The Boxmaker's Revenge: "Orthodoxy," "Heterodoxy," and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London. Stanford, 2001.

——. Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church. Cambridge, U.K., 1982.

Nuttall, G. F. Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660. Oxford, 1957.

Seaver, Paul S. Wallington's World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London. Stanford, 1985.

Spurr, John. English Puritanism, 1603–1689. New York, 1998.

PAUL S. SEAVER

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