Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England

Christopher Hill

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781786636218
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786636232
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

In order to understand the English Revolution and Civil War we need to understand Puritanism. In this classic work of social history, Professor Hill shows Puritanism as a living faith, one that responded to social as well as religious needs. It was a set of beliefs that answered the hopes and fears of yeomen and gentlemen, merchants and artisans in the tribulations of early modern Britain, a time of extraordinary turbulence. Over this period, Puritanism, he shows, was interwoven into daily life. He looks at how rituals such as oath-taking, the Sabbath, bawdy courts and poor relief, became ways to order the social upheaval. He even offers an explanation for the emergence of the seemingly paradoxical - the Puritan revolutionaries.

Notes

1. The Definition of a Puritan

1 This tract is sometimes attributed to John Ley, for whom see p. 131 below.

2 J. H. Hexter, Reappraisals in History (1961), pp. 163–84.

3 J. W. Allen, English Political Thought, 1603–1644 (1938), pp. 255–62, 302.

4 C. H. and K. George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, 1570–1640 (Princeton, 1961), esp. pp. 6–8, 399–407. Although I cannot accept their main conclusion, that there was nothing in Puritanism significantly different from the position of the hierarchy before the Laudian innovations, there is much excellent material in this book.

1 Hastings MSS. (H.M.C.), IV, p. 330.

2 [Anon.], A parte of a Register (Middelburg, 1593), p. 129. Cf. the minister accused of Puritanism in 1574 who said that the Archdeacon of Nottingham ‘knoweth no more what a Puritan is than his old horse’ (R. Marchant, The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, 1560–1642, 1960, p. 135).

3 Owen Feltham, Resolves, Divine, Morall and Politicall (Temple Classics), p. 9. First published 1628.

4 N.R.S., IV, p. 63.

5 J. Udall, Diotrephes (ed. E. Arber, 1879), p. 9.

6 M. Marprelate, A Dialogue wherein is plainly layd open the Tyrannicall Dealing of the Lord Bishops over Gods Church (1640 reprint), Sig. C 4. This reprint includes the poem, The Interpreter, quoted on page 8 below.

7 Ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath, Works of Francis Bacon (1872–74), XIV, pp. 448–9; cf. an anonymous pamphlet, Of the Name of Puritans (c. 1620–40), printed in Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc., VI (1913), pp. 76–88.

1 Ed. J. O. Halliwell, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1845), I, pp. 158–9. D’Ewes was summarizing Thomas Scott’s Vox Populi (1620).

2 C. Downing, A Sermon preached to the Renowned Company of Artillery, September 1, 1640, p. 29. (Published by order of the House of Commons.) The last phrase was in constant use: cf. the pamphlet, A Pack of Puritans, referred to on p. 278 below.

3 G. Wither, Juvenilia (Spenser Soc. reprint, n.d.), I, p. 299. First published 1622.

4 H. Parker, A Discourse concerning Puritans (2nd ed., 1641), pp. 58–60.

5 J. Taylor, The Water-Cormorant His Complaint (1622), p. 4; cf. his Mad Fashions, odd Fashions (1642), pp. 4–5.

6 Ed. J. Ayre, The Works of John Whitgift (Parker Soc., 1851–3), I, p. 172.

7 Bacon, Works, XIV, p. 449.

8 R. Sanderson, XXXV Sermons (1681), p. 16.

9 Sanderson, Pax Ecclesiae, in appendix to J. Hough, Sermons and Charges (1821), pp. 331–4.

1 W. M. Lamont, Marginal Prynne (1963), p. 44; Sir J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliament 1584–1601 (1957), p. 151; Sir Walter Ralegh, History of the World (1820), VI, p. 97; S. R. Gardiner, History of England (1883–4), III, pp. 241–2, 337; V, p. 251; VIII, p. 85; IX, p. 88; C. H. and K. George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, pp. 401, 404.

2 J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry (1932), II, pp. 280, 282; cf. Miss E. Rosenberg, ‘Leicester can be seen as a genuine “Puritan” if we abandon the nonconformist overtones of that word’ (Leicester Patron of Letters, Columbia University Press, 1955, pp. 196–7).

3 Giles Widdowes, The Schismatical Puritan (1631), Sig. A 3, quoted by Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–50 (Harvard University Press, 1933), p. 21.

4 M. H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558–1642 (1959), p. 172. Cf. p. 9 below.

5 J. Udall, Diotrephes (1879), p. 9.

6 M. Marprelate, Hay any Work for Cooper? (1589), p. 25.

1 e.g. W. Bradshaw, English Puritanisme (1605); J. Wilkinson, An Exposition of the 13 Chapter of the Revelation (1619), pp. 34–5.

2 Ed. M. Sylvester, Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), I, p. 3 John Geree, The Character of an old English Puritane (1646), passim.

3 The list is from Capel’s Remains (1658), with Life by Valentine Marshall, Sig. A 8. First published 1633.

4 Ed. E. B. Underhill, The Records of a Church of Christs meeting in Broadmead Bristol, 1640–97 (Hanserd Knollys Soc., 1847), p. 6.

5 For the social significance of swearing, see pp. 360–1 below.

6 J. Donne, LXXX Sermons (1640), p. 493.

7 L. Bayly, The Practice of Piety (55th ed., 1723), p. 115.

8 J. Dod and R. Cleaver, A plain and familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (19th ed., 1662), p. 7. Dod, a protégé of the Knightleys, had been a member of a classis in the fifteen-eighties. Cf. also H. Smith, Sermons (1675), p. 31. First published 1592.

9 Wither, Juvenilia, I, p. 264.

1 Cottoni Posthuma (1679), II pp. 61–3.

2 F. Quarks, Judgment and Mercy (1807), p. 302. First published 1644.

3 J. Rushworth, Historical Collections (1680), II, p. 224.

4 H. Parker, A Discourse concerning Puritans, To the Reader.

5 F. Osborn, Traditional Metnoyres on the Raigne of King James the First, in Secret History of the Court of James I (ed. Sir W. Scott, 1811), I, pp. 188–9.

6 Fuller, Church History (1842), III, p. 307. Contrast P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus (1671), p. 119.

7 Feltham, Resolves, p. 9.

8 R. Parr, Life of … James Usher (1686), p. 16.

1 Rutland MSS. Behoir (H.M.C.), IV, pp. 212–13.

2 Portland MSS. (H.M.C.), III, p. 13.

3 Osborn, Traditionall Mermoyres, pp. 187–8.

4 Parker, A Discourse concerning Puritans, p. 13.

5 Ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne, Correspondence of Matthew Parker (Parker Soc., 1853), p. 478.

6 Gardiner, History of England, I, p. 178.

1 Parker, op. cit., p. 11.

2 The Interpreter, attributed to Thomas Scott, in E. Arber, An English Garner (1895), VI, pp. 235–6. Originally published, abroad, in 1622.

3 Bacon, Works, XIV, p. 449.

4 Ed. I. M. Calder, Letters of John Davenport (Yale, 1937), p. 13.

5 T. Scott...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface to First Edition
• Abbreviations
• One: The Definition of a Puritan
• Two: The Preaching of the Word
• Three: The Ratsbane of Lecturing
• Four: The Industrious Sort of People
• Five: The Uses of Sabbatarianism
• Six: Discipline, Monarchical, Aristocratical and Democratical
• Seven: The Poor and the Parish
• Eight: The Bawdy Courts
• Nine: The Court of High Commission
• Ten: The Rusty Sword of the Church
• Eleven: From Oaths to Interest
• Twelve: The Secularization of the Parish
• Thirteen: The Spiritualization of the Household
• Fourteen: Individuals and Communities
• Fifteen: Conclusion
• Notes
• Index