London presbyterians and the British revolutions, 1638–64

Elliot Vernon, Jason Peacey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781526157805
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526157799
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This is the first book-length exploration of presbyterians and presbyterianism in London during the crisis period of the mid-seventeenth century. It charts the emergence of a movement of clergy and laity that aimed at 'reforming the Reformation' by instituting presbyterianism in London's parishes and ultimately the Church of England. The book analyses the movement's political narrative and its relationship with its patrons in the parliamentarian aristocracy and gentry. It also considers the political and social institutions of London life and examines the presbyterians' opponents within the parliamentarian camp. Finally, it focuses on the intellectual influence of presbyterian ideas on the political thought and polity of the Church and the emergence of dissent at the Restoration.

1

The radicalisation of conformist puritanism, c. 1638–40

In May 1639 the godly minister Edmund Calamy arrived in London having resigned his living of the Essex parish of Rochford, a parish he had served at the personal invitation of the Earl of Warwick, a patron and friend. Calamy’s move to London had been brought about by the election of the parishioners of St Mary, Aldermanbury, a wealthy parish located in the centre of the city of London.¹ The Aldermanbury living was owned by the parish itself and had been rendered vacant by the death of its puritan minister Dr John Stoughton. Calamy’s election was fortuitous. With Charles I’s personal rule about to collapse, this London location and Calamy’s friendship with the dissident Earl of Warwick placed him at the centre of the opposition to the Caroline administration of church and state. In 1643 a royalist propagandist would complain of a ‘junto’ meeting at Calamy’s Aldermanbury house. From here, the propagandist alleged, parliamentarian ‘emissaries’ among the godly ministry would ‘receive directions’ as to ‘what concerns the present opportunity, and what is necessary to be preached unto the people’.²

There is very little evidence from the 1620s and 1630s to mark Calamy out as a future parliamentarian activist. In matters of doctrine, he held to the pastorally driven ‘hypothetical universalism’ advanced by the English delegates at the Synod of Dort.³ He had attended Pembroke Hall in Cambridge in 1616, before becoming the household chaplain to Nicholas Felton, the Calvinist Bishop of Ely. His ministry at Bury St Edmunds in the late 1620s and early 1630s, a town ministry he shared with the future congregationalist Jeremiah Burroughes, suggests a picture of a godly preacher who nevertheless accepted the conformity required by the Church of England.⁴ Yet, by 1641 Calamy would be at the centre of parliamentarian opposition to Laudian prelacy, advocating fundamental reform of the polity of the Church of England in a presbyterian direction.

This chapter will explore the radicalisation of many of London’s moderate puritans during the period 1637–40 in the wake of the crisis that erupted in the Churches of England and Scotland under the Laudian administration of the 1630s. The discussion will then turn to the godly ministers’ mobilisation of opposition to Convocations’ new canons of 1640. It will be argued that the opposition to the canons revitalised the godly clergy as a political force and ushered in a somewhat cautious movement seeking further reformation of the polity of the Church of England.

The London godly scene in the 1630s

The origins of the London presbyterian movement that emerged in the 1640s can be found in the reaction of godly ministers and laity who were marginalised and harassed under the Laudian administration of the late 1630s. Throughout the 1620s and 1630s the number of beneficed ministers in London who can be happily described as ‘puritan’ or ‘godly’ was relatively small, making up 15 to 20 per percent of the beneficed clergy in the City of London’s 109 parishes.⁵ While the term ‘puritan’ and its cognate ‘the godly’ have proven contentious among historians, by the 1640s presbyterian ministers could adopt ‘puritan’ to describe ‘the best Protestants’ who did not separate from the Church of England but who ‘bewailed’ its lack of full reformation.⁶ The ministers stressed the ‘experimental’ application of Reformed theological doctrine both to the individual and collective lives of the faithful. However, at least until the late 1630s, moderate puritans did not aim at fundamentally reforming the polity of the Church of England.⁷ Many of these ministers accepted the Jacobean episcopate’s compromise of affording a tacit forbearance on issues of strict conformity in return for subscription to its doctrine and discipline.⁸ This semi-official position of latitude, often effected by the Jacobean bishops of London turning a blind eye towards partial, ceremonial conformity would come to be described in the 1640s as the ‘old conformity’. This was in contrast to the rigorous ‘new conformity’ imposed on the Church of England in the late 1620s and 1630s under Archbishop William Laud.⁹ The Laudian campaign of pressure put substantial strain on the viability of this puritan ‘old conformity’ within the national Church of England.¹⁰

The rise of William Laud, first as Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury, and the style of religious piety that historians have termed ‘Laudianism’, progressively disrupted this tacit Jacobean equilibrium. The Laudian focus on ‘the beauty of holiness’ in the parish church, with lay devotion centred on corporate participation in the church’s liturgy, was undoubtedly popular among a substantial section of London’s population.¹¹ In addition the Laudian drive for the ‘beauty of holiness’ fed into Londoners’ existing concerns to improve the fabric and aesthetic of their church buildings.¹² Nevertheless, these changes of focus in the religion of the established Church were at odds with the godly style of ‘experimental’ application of Calvinist predestinarian doctrine. This was not helped by the Laudian administration re-envisioning the godly as ‘dangerous enemies’ of the church and monarchy.¹³

The Laudian marginalisation of puritan ministers was brought into effect by a campaign of intimidation and pressure against the godly. One of Laud’s early campaigns as archbishop of Canterbury was to promote the prosecution of the ‘feoffees for impropriations’, a group of merchants, clergy and lawyers whose aim was to purchase advowsons in order to present godly ministers to livings. Among the leading trustees of the feoffee group were the London ministers William Gouge of St Anne, Blackfriars and Charles Offspring of St Antholin, Budge Row, as well as John White, the lawyer and later Long Parliament MP.¹⁴ Laud characterised the feoffees as ‘main instruments for the puritan faction’ and ‘dangerous to both Church and state’.¹⁵ The feoffees’ operation did not survive the Laudian challenge in the court of Exchequer in 1633 and the operation was closed down with the forfeiture of the advowsons in the feoffees’ control.¹⁶

A major aspect of the Laudian reforms was designed to bring about a stricter observance of the ‘new conformity’ required by the Laudian conceptualisation of corporate worship. In the mid-1630s Edmund Calamy, then town preacher at Bury St Edmunds, had felt compelled to conform to the requirements to wear clerical dress, but had drawn the line at reading set prayers towards the altar.¹⁷ Kenneth Fincham has noted ‘the firm and sustained pressure for conformity’ under the Laudian administration, which used extensively the tools of suspension and excommunication against godly ministers.¹⁸ In London, David Como’s research has found that in the 1630s Laud used ‘behind the scenes methods quietly to bully London’s Calvinist ministers into compliance’.¹⁹ Laudian enforcement of the ‘new conformity’ entailed a thorough policy of requiring conformity to the ceremonies of the Church of England. Ministers who failed to wear the prescribed clerical dress or strictly use the Book of Common Prayer, whose preaching ventured into issues such as the doctrine of predestination or questioned the Church of England’s hierarchy, might find themselves under surveillance, censured and even prosecuted.²⁰

The Laudian imposition of stricter conformity in the 1630s acted to unseat the latitude and forbearance that had characterised the practice of the Jacobean episcopate in the city. The ritualism of the Laudian reforms also served to raise fears among London’s godly that the protestant religion itself was under attack. Tom Webster’s research has shown how Laudian changes to the nature of conformity caused a growing number of godly ministers throughout England to begin to rethink the old arguments for conformity.²¹ The Laudian marginalisation of moderate puritan ministers in London and elsewhere therefore began to reawaken old puritan criticism of the established church that had been subsumed by the ‘old conformity’ during the Jacobean period.

The Laudian campaign for more rigorous conformity did not aim just at harassing ministers. The 1637 trial and bloody punishment of Henry Burton, John Bastwick and William Prynne for publishing books against the Laudian prelacy sent a shock wave through the godly community in London and the nation at large.²² Burton, Bastwick and Prynne took every opportunity to turn their prosecution into a public spectacle of resistance to the Laudian regime. Bastwick, who would serve the later London presbyterian movement both as a polemicist and as a ruling elder, played up his imprisonment in London’s notorious Gatehouse prison by holding readings of his controversial works with his visitors.²³ The persistence and rigour of Laud’s investigation into those connected with Bastwick, Burton and Prynne only served to radicalise local networks of godly Londoners. An example of this can be seen in the February 1639 Star Chamber investigation of Nehemiah Wallington, a relatively obscure Eastcheap wood turner.²⁴ Wallington, together with his brother John and friends such as the future presbyterian elder Daniel Sowton, had owned a number of the controversial works of Burton and Prynne.²⁵ The investigations into, and harassment of, relatively lowly puritans such as the Wallingtons and their friends served to increase the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Note on conventions
• Introduction
• 1 The radicalisation of conformist puritanism, c. 1638–40
• 2 Smectymnuus and the attack on episcopacy in 1641
• 3 The emergence of the London presbyterian movement, 1642–3
• 4 London presbyterians and the fracture of parliamentarianism, 1644–5
• 5 The campaign for presbyterian church government, 1645–6
• 6 The political presbyterian moment, 1646–7
• 7 Presbyterian church government in the Province of London, 1646–60
• 8 The London presbyterians and the projected settlements of the British civil wars, 1647–9
• 9 ‘Mr Love’s case’ and the London presbyterian struggle against the English republic, 1649–51
• 10 Cromwellian Britain, c. 1653–9
• 11 The Restoration, 1659–60
• 12 Epilogue: the Cavalier Parliament, the Great Ejection of 1662 and the first years of dissent
• Conclusion
• Index