England: Notable Religious Figures, Theologians, Philosophers, and Theorists

909 - 988 - St. Dunstan (All Facts)

• English Benedictine Monk who spurred the revival, restoration, and reform of monasticism throughout England under the reign of King Edgar

  • He set about sacking lax secular priests and installing monks who adhered strictly to the Benedictine Rule

  • His efforts led to the revival of monastic culture, learning, and art as well as the development of new monasteries

• He was made Archbishop of Canterbury by King Edgar

  • He was helped by Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, and Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester

1050 - 1154 - St. Stephen Harding (All Facts)

• English Abbot

• He was one of the founders of the Cistercian Order

  • He was known for his organizing talents which transformed the order into the fastest-growing of all the monastic orders at the time

1119 - 1170 - St. Thomas Becket (All Facts)

• Archbishop of Canterbury

• He was the London-born son of a Norman merchant

  • He rose rapidly in the royal service

  • When King Henry II of England had him installed at Canterbury, he believed he was installing a docile cleric, but he was anything but for he became a firm upholder of ecclesiastical privileges

    • One time, he waved his crozier at King Henry II of England and told him that the King of England had no right to judge him

    • When King Henry II of England had his son and heir crowned in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of York and six other bishops, the namesake had publicly denounced the action and excommunicated the bishops

    • In response, King Henry II of England cried out “Who will free me from this turbulent priest?” and he eventually had four English knights of the royal household go after the namesake to kill him

• He was known for his feud with King Henry II of England

• He was murdered and died after being struck down by swords in the north transept of his own cathedral as he stood by the altar of the Virgin Mary

  • His killers were four knights of the royal household, who rode there and began a violent argument with the namesake prelate

  • He struggled for several minutes with his assailants, while a crowd of his men and townspeople who had come to attend evensong looked on

  • When he realized that death was near, he bowed his head and joined his hands in prayer in which he is famous for having said, “I commend myself to God, the Blessed Mary, St. Denis, and the patron saints of this Church”

1220 - 1292 - Roger Bacon (All Facts)

• English Philosopher

• He argued that there could be no true understanding of religion without a solid grounding in natural science

1287 - 1347 - William of Ockham (All Facts)

• English and Franciscan Scholastic Philosopher and Scholar

  • He established himself as one of England’s most influential and controversial thinkers

  • He was the last of the great Franciscan Scholastic Philosophers

• He appealed to philosophers, scientists, and other scholars to keep their theories as simple and short as possible

• He is best known for his law of economy or “Razor” which stated that “entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity” and exhorted that scholars keep their theories short

  • For example, if an astronomer were to have to explanations for the behavior of a celestial body, one simple and direct; the other complex and convoluted; he should opt for the simpler one

  • He is accredited for the idea given his relentlessness in applying the philosophical rule to so many different modes of thinking, however, the idea itself was not invented by him

• He broke with the Aristotelian realism of St. Thomas Aquinas and took a nominalist position

  • His importance lies in his development of a sophisticated logic and epistemology of more than a purely theological signficiance, whichhad a great effect on later secular philosophy

1328 - 1384 - John Wycliffe (All Facts)

• Proto-Protestant English Christian Religious Reformer, Priest, and Theology Professor

  • He was a renowned Oxford University scholar who delivered a series of lectures in which he moved from radical criticism of the church establishment to outright heresy

  • He was once the master of Balliol College

  • He left Oxford once the Blackfriars Council of 1382 condemned him and the Lollards / Lollardy Movement’s teachings

• He founded the Lollards / Lollardy Movement, which believed as he did that

  • the bread and wine are not miraculously changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ literally, only symbolically

  • ordinary people can and should read the Bible for themselves, which rose the risk of a doctrinal free-for-all

• He launched attacks on papal authority which were sympathetically received in many regions

  • His attacks on papal power easily became critiques of state power

• Politically, he had many allies including John of Gaunt

  • Their support helped him to weather papal condemnation of a series of errors

• He died at Lutterworth, the parish to which he retired after leaving Oxford University

1328 - 1384 - John Wycliffe: On Civil Dominion (All Facts)

• Work which proposes a propertyless church and argued for direct access to God for individuals

1370 - 1417 - John Oldcastle (All Facts)

• Leader of the Lollards in his namesake revolt in England against King Henry V of England and the Catholic Church

• Before the revolt, he escaped from the tower in which he was imprisoned and gave out word to Lollards across the country

• During the revolt, King Henry V, alerted to the plot, awaited for him and the rebels when they met outside London

• After the revolt, he was burned at the stake for heresy

• In his time, he was seen as having discredited the Lollardy Movement due to his linking it with social radicalism

1375 - 1447 - Henry Beaufort (All Facts)

• Bishop of Winchester who crowned King Henry VI of England King of France at Notre Dame

1469 - 1535 - St. John Fisher (All Facts)

• English Catholic Prelate and Bishop of Rochester

• He was executed by King Henry VIII for refusing to accept him as Supreme Head of the Church of England and for upholding the Catholic Church's doctrine of papal supremacy and the independence of the Church from control by the State

1478 - 1535 - St. Thomas More (All Facts)

• He was a greatly respected lawyer and the under-sheriff of the city of London

• He was loved by his fellow citizens who regarded him as “the fairest of judges, the general patron of the poor”

• He was a man of simple tastes, noted for his gentle sense of fun and his in those around him

• He was “born for friendship”

• He made his name as a writer early in his career when he wrote a biography and condemnation of King Richard III of England

• He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and beheaded after refusing to take the oath to Anne’s issue demanded by the Succession Act; he is thus considered a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church

1516 - St. Thomas More: Utopia (All Facts)

• Written in the Renaissance Humanist tradition

  • It was known as the “golden little book” by the Humanists at the time

  • It was published at Louvain

  • It was written by the namesake while he was in service to King Henry VIII

  • It was later translated from Latin into English

• It is a shrewd, sometimes furious look at European society

  • It is an indictment of its harsh rulers at the time

  • It is a guide to the construction of an ideal civilization, as it was written in such a style

• The title refers to an island somewhere off the New World, coming from the Greek meaning “no place”

• It is about a people who

  • are distanced from all the social ills of Europe

  • live a communal existence, sharing equally in their food, government, clothes, houses, education, and wars

  • are a part of a deeply religious community, in which God rewards by an afterlife of immortality

• Many saw the book differently, including

  • as a fantasy, a humorless travelogue of a land which could exist in the dreams of an idealist

  • as a comedy, with humorous intent

• It essentially depicts an imaginary islands that lacked the evils of Europe at the time

1521 - King Henry VIII and Thomas More: Defense of the Seven Sacraments (All Facts)

• Treatise which sets out to do the namesake task and attacks Martin Luther’s Reformation, maintaining strict orthodox theology

• As a result of its publication, Pope Leo X gave the namesake author the title “Defender of the Faith”

1494 - 1536 - William Tyndale (All Facts)

• He was known for having translated the New Testament from its original Greek text into English

  • The translation meant that many more people, readers of English but not Greek, will be able to possess their own copy of the scriptures

  • He began this task as a reaction to the ignorance of the local priests and because he believed that “it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except when the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the meaning of the text”

  • He had drawn on Desiderius Erasmus’s translation on the Greek New Testament for his own translation

  • He also made sure, in his translation of certain critical words and passages, to strip away what he saw were embellishments of Catholicism, and lay bare the original text

  • His rigorous attitude thus sent him to Worms where he completed the work and had it published there, only for it to appear shortly afterward in and throughout England, but got him in trouble with the English authorities

• His translation of the New Testament into English had contributed greatly to the English Reformation because it effectively caused the clerics to be unemployed as their religious authority was rendered obsolete to those who could at that time then read the Bible for themselves; and therefore King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell’s “Dissolution of the Monasteries” came at the right time, as they not only benefited from it; but the people did not require, in the namesake’s and English Reformation leaders’ eyes, a clerical authority anymore since they could read for themselves

• He asserted royal supremacy over the church and embroiled himself in controversy as a result with Lord Chancellor Thomas More

• He was a first-class linguist

• He served as a tutor near Bristol

1509 - 1547 - Henry VIII (All Facts)

• During his reign, he instituted the English Reformation in which

  • he initiated the movement by rejecting Pope Clement VII’s denial of his annulment to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon and thus formally broke with the Roman Catholic Church, but which had also occurred due to the first printing of the Bible in English under his reign

  • The English Reformation Parliament took place, in which

    • the House of Commons put forth bills against abuses amongst the clergy and in the church courts of England

    • they passed the

      • Submission of the Clergy Act

      • Supremacy Act

      • Succession Act

      • Suppression of Religious Houses Act

    • the Court of Augmentations was established

  • he oversaw, via his Principal Secretary Thomas Cromwell, and as a result of the Suppression of Religious Houses Act, the Dissolution of Monasteries, in which he appointed a commission to report on the state of monasteries in England and had his Principle Secretary Thomas Cromwell monitor it,

    • which he desired in order to

      • acquire the wealth of the monasteries to fund

        • The Crown

        • His military campaigns

      • consolidate his power and authority over the Catholic Church

      • redistribute some of its assets

        • to those who supported him in order to ensure their future support

        • as auctions in order to build new family fortunes at the time that would base their fortune on the Dissolution of the Monasteries including the families of

          • William Cavendish

          • Richard Rich

    • which had the effect of having

      • disbanded all Catholic Church properties in England, Wales, and Ireland

      • seized their wealth

      • redistributed their wealth to the Crown of England and to fund King Henry VIII’s military campaigns

      • disposed of their assets

      • destroyed buildings and relics

      • dispersed or destroyed libraries

      • provided for their former personnel and functions

        • former abbots, monks, and nuns were given pensions; however clerical unemployment rose significantly during this movement

      • turned many of the nearly 800 church properties sold into private homes for the Gentry class

      • ceased the Church’s system of distributing alms, thus causing hardship amongst England’s poor

      • made it so that monks and abbots no longer sat in the House of Lords, having lost political power in addition to religious authority

      • made him the richest king in Europe

  • he and his royalist forces brutally suppressed Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace Catholic revolt against him and the English Reformation

  • he increasingly sought the support of Parliament to his need to carry public opinion with him as he attacked the Roman Catholic Church

• He maintained a strict orthodox theology despite his matrimonial problems; having written “Defense of the Seven Sacraments” against Martin Luther and was named “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X for doing so

1539 - Great Bible (All Facts)

• First English Bible authorized and used by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII

1552 - King Edward VI: Book of Common Prayer (All Facts)

• Its use was enforced throughout England / the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, passed in the same year the namesake was published

1487 - 1555 - Hugh Latimer (All Facts)

• He served as Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI of England

• English Protestant Bishop who was burnt at the stake under the reign of Queen Mary of England

• He is one of the many “Oxford Martyrs”

1500 - 1555 - Nicholas Ridley (All Facts)

• He was considered a greatly respected friend of the poor in England at the time

• English Protestant Bishop who was burnt at the stake under the reign of Queen Mary of England

• He is one of the many “Oxford Martyrs”

1489 - 1556 - Thomas Cranmer (All Facts)

• Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Henry VIII and King Edward VI of England

  • Leader of the English Reformation

  • Martyr of the Church of England

  • He was a favorite of Anne Boleyn’s already

• He declared Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void and he declared Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Anne Boleyn valid

  • Nevertheless, he took the oath of allegiance to the pope protesting that he is doing so “for form’s sake”

• He issued England’s “The Book of Common Prayer,” the moderate Protestant Prayer Book of the Church of England during the English Reformation

  • Its use throughout England was enforced by the Act of Uniformity

• He drew up “The 42 Articles” of the Church of England, the official doctrinal statement of the Church of England under the reign of King Edward VI

  • He had help from a committee of six to draft the articles, which supplemented the new Protestant prayer book

• He was imprisoned for heresy and executed and burnt at the stake on the orders of Queen Mary of England

1549 - Thomas Cramner: Book of Common Prayer (All Facts)

• Its use was enforced throughout England / the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, passed in the same year the namesake was published

1556 - 1558 - Reginald Pole (All Facts)

• Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Queen Mary of England

  • He was appointed by Pope Julius III

  • His disapproval of King Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy (assumption of supremacy over the church in England) forced him to leave England

  • He was then a longtime English resident in Italy and made into a cardinal

  • He returned to England and became its papal legate

• He

  • championed vigorously the restoration of Catholicism

  • revived the old Catholic services throughout England

  • sacked priests who married when allowed to under the reforms of King Henry VIII and King Edward VI

• He died a mere 12 hours after Queen Mary of England

1560 - Geneva Bible (All Facts)

• Bible favored by clergy and laypeople during the reign of Queen Elizabeth

• King James believed there were seditious comments in this version, which was sufficient to produce his own version

1568 - Bishops Bible (All Facts)

• Bible in authorized and used by the Church of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth

• Bible favored by bishops during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was not popular throughout England

1559 - 1575 - Matthew Parker (All Facts)

• Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England

  • He was chaplain to Anne Boleyn

• Under his leadership, Anglican church services were reintroduced throughout England

1540 - 1581 - St. Edmund Campion (All Facts)

• English Jesuit

• He was considered one of the most remarkable members of the “English mission”

• He was arrested and executed for conducting his underground Catholic ministry by “priest hunters”

  • His fate illustrated the dilemma of those English Catholics who wished to remain loyal to both their faith and the crown

1587 - 1594 - William Allen (All Facts)

• English Catholic Cardinal

• He founded the (Venerable) English College of Rome, located in Rome, not England; but which trained and educated priests for England and for the English people who remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church

1561 - 1595 - St. Robert Southwell (All Facts)

• English Jesuit (Catholic) Priest during the English Renaissance / reign of Queen Elizabeth

  • He conducted clandestine Catholic missionary operations

• He was hung for “treason” (being a Catholic Priest) at Tyburn, one of the “Forty Martyrs” of England and Wales

1554 - 1612 - John Smith (All Facts)

• Founder of the Baptists / Baptist Movement in England

• He was a preacher from Gainsborough

• He

  • believed in rejecting infant baptism in favor of adult baptism because

    • Baptism is not simply “washing in water” but also “baptism of the Spirit, the confession of the mouth”

    • Infants cannot possibly appreciate the importance of Baptism

    • Adult Baptism thus is a more fitting ceremony

• He

  • refused to read the Holy Bible in anything but the original Hebrew or Greek

  • rejected Calvinist doctrines of predestination and original sin

• He

  • caused great controversy

  • faced continuous persecution in England

  • emigrated to Amsterdam in the Netherlands as a result of the persecution they faced

• He

  • wrote “The Retraction of his Errors and the Confirmation of the Truth,” which affirmed the belief for which he was exiled to the Netherlands but withdrew his condemnation of his opponents, which had been fierce and uncompromising

1563 - 1624 - Henry Jacob (All Facts)

• English Calvinist Clergyman

  • He was associated with the Brownists

• He founded the first true Congregationalist Church in England

• Lead signer of the Millenary Petition to King James of Scotland which culminated in the Hampton Court Conference

1603 - 1625 - James (All Facts)

• He presided over the Hampton Court Conference in which he debated Henry Jacob and the Puritans after being given their Millenary Petition which resulted in

  • The revision of the original and publication of the new Book of Common Prayer

  • The publication of his namesake version of the Holy Bible (KJV)

    • Thus, during his reign, he authorized the publication of his namesake Holy Bible, or KJV translation, as a concession to these demands of Protestant clergy for reform

  • These were the only concessions the namesake made to the Puritans, having dashed Puritan hopes that he would reform the Church of England along the lines suggested by the Millenary Petition

1604 - King James: Book of Common Prayer (All Facts)

• Revision of the namesake that was published due to the Hampton Court Conference

1611 - King James / Robert Barker: King James Version, Holy Bible / KJV (All Facts)

• Authorized, backed, and published during the reign of the namesake for the purposes of conceding to the demands of Protestant (Puritan) clergy for reform

  • Printed by the namesake’s printer Robert Barker

• Bible translation that was produced over the course of seven years by 54 scholars based in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster using much of the original Hebrew and Greek

  • It was then reviewed by a committee of 12 scholars led by Thomas Bilson and Miles Smith, who put the finishing touches to its final version

• Critics of its time were impressed by the majesty and music of the rhythm of its language

  • The unity of the style it achieved was most impressive; nobody would have guessed it was the work of a committee

1561 - 1626 - Francis Bacon (All Facts)

• English Philosopher and Lawyer

  • He was influenced by Telesio

• He argued (generally) for the usefulness of scientific knowledge in giving man mastery over nature

• He died of a cold caught while stuffing a fowl with snow to observe the effects of cold in the preservation of meat

1597 - Francis Bacon: Essays (All Facts)

• Work subtitled, “Religious Meditations. Places of Persuasion and Dissuasion. Seen and Allowed”

1605 - Francis Bacon: Advancement of Learning (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author sets out to define and lay out the modern-day Scientific Method

• Highly elaborate survey and classification of the various types of knowledge

• It was the first of the namesake author’s works to appear in English rather than in Latin

• Its aim was to redefine the whole basis of modern learning

• Work in which the namesake author divides knowledge into three parts: history, poetry, and philosophy; and links them to three faculties of the mind: memory, imagination, and reasoning; respectively

• Work which rejects the “empirics” including astrologers, magicians, and others; who the namesake author claims simply heap up unrelated facts

• Work in which the namesake author attempts to set out what he calls “fixed laws,” denoting a system by which he claimed “levelled men’s wits” and which were used to explain the occurrence of scientific events

1620 - Francis Bacon: Novum Organum (All Facts)

• Philosophical treatise promoting the belief that scientific research should be conducted in the interests of humanity

• Work in which the namesake author elaborates a sophisticated method of establishing scientific truths, using observation and experiment to test hypotheses

• Work in which theories are drawn from hypotheses and tested by observation and experiment

1627 - Francis Bacon: New Atlantis (All Facts)

• Philosophical novel concerning the organization of a city governed by scholars

• Work in which the namesake author conceives of a scientific Utopia, foreshadowing later developments in mid-1600s scientific thought in Europe

• Published posthumously

1550s - 1633 - Robert Browne (All Facts)

• English Separatist who opposed but was later reconciled to the Anglican liturgy, having initially fled to Holland

• He founded his namesake religious movement

1564 - 1637 - John Gerard (All Facts)

• English Jesuit Missionary who

  • operated an underground ministry of the Catholic Church in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth

  • established several Catholic centers in England

  • became spiritual director of the English College in Rome

• He was imprisoned for three years and escaped to Europe

• He died at Jena

1643 - Robert Barker (All Facts)

• Printer of the KJV for King James of England

• He authored the infamous “Wicked Bible” which contained a typo in the command “Thou shall not commit adultery” in that it was rendered “Thou shall commit adultery”

1633 - 1645 - William Laud (All Facts)

• Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Charles

• He sought to enforce the liturgy of the Church of England very close to Catholicism, alienating and provoking rebellion among both English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians

  • He attempted to introduce the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer and church practices into Scotland, but Scotland rebelled against it

• He was impeached and committed to the Tower of London and executed for treason by Parliament during the Long Parliament during the First English Civil War

1583 - 1648 - Edward Herbert (All Facts)

• English Philosopher

  • He was also the First Baron of Cherbury

1624 - Edward Herbert: On Truth (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author attempts to establish a belief in God based on rational inquiry rather than faith

• Work in which the namesake author lays out his belief that the basic tenets of religion were reasonable and universal; it laid the foundations for (the growth of) Deism

1584 - 1654 - John Selden (All Facts)

• English Jurist

1635 - John Selden: Mare Clausum (All Facts)

• Work which argues that England claimed domination of the seas in response to Hugo Grotius

1600 - 1669 - William Prynne (All Facts)

• English Puritan Lawyer, Polemicist, and Pamphleteer

  • He was a prominent Puritan opponent of church policy under William Laud

• He was imprisoned and mutilated for seditious writings

  • He had what was left of his ears cut off in punishment for further publications he wrote while in prison

1614 - 1672 - John Wilkins (All Facts)

• English Philosopher and Clergyman

• He was a founding member of the Royal Society of London

1623 - 1673 - Margaret Cavendish (All Facts)

• English Philosopher and Essayist

  • She was the daughter of Thomas Lucas

  • She spent two unhappy years at the court of King Charles I

  • She married William of Newcastle, a Cavalier (Royalist) to become the Duchess of Newcastle in England

  • While they lived in exile in Paris during the English Civil War, she wrote poetry, philosophy, and her autobiography

  • She returned to England after the Stuart Restoration to gain a reputation as a popular writer and court eccentric

1662 - Margaret Cavendish: Orations (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author concludes that women are the powerful sex, and that their domination of men comes through the wiles of love

1609 - 1676 - Gerrard Winstanley (All Facts)

• Founder of the Diggers / Digger Movement in England

  • He was an English Religious Reformer, Political Philosopher, and Social Activist

• When he was asked to take off his hat for Thomas Fairfax upon his and his followers’ arrest, he refused, and said that any rights to common land claimed by lords of manors had ended with King Charles’ defeat in the English Civil War

  • Although Thomas Fairfax did not take action against him, local landowning squires prosecuted the namesake and he had been fined for trespassing on their land

1611 - 1677 - James Harrington (All Facts)

• English Political Theorist

• Although he was an English Republican (Parliamentarian), he was a personal attendant of King Charles of England and attended him to the scaffold when he was beheaded

1660 - James Harrnigton: Political Discourses (All Facts)

1588 - 1679 - Thomas Hobbes (All Facts)

• English Philosopher and Political Theorist

  • He lived in exile in Paris during the English Civil War

1651 - Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (All Facts)

• Book which supposes a society where human relations depend entirely on fear

• Work in which the namesake author sees humanity as locked into a state of permanent war in which “the life of Man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

• Work in which the namesake author argues that only the instinct for self-preservation, the fear of violent death, leads us to accept a form of social contract under which individuals give up their natural rights or liberties to society, to the absolute power of the state, which he calls the namesake

• Work in which the namesake author argues that the state is omnipotent and despotic and that its people have not delegated their power but abandoned it completely

• Work in which the namesake author argues that in a state of nature men would fight because of their natural selfishness and could only escape by means of a contract whereby they renounced their freedom to a supreme ruler

• Book which casts a grim light on human government and reveals man’s fundamental inhumanity

1655 - Thomas Hobbes: De Corpore (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author, following his contemporary Rene Descartes’ mathematical method, suggests that the universe comprises material particles moving in a void, an atomism which was mentioned in the namesake author’s most famous work

1653 - Praise-God Barbon (All Facts)

• English Preacher who lent his name to the namesake Parliament formed and dissolved within a year under Oliver Cromwell

1605 - 1682 - Thomas Browne (All Facts)

• English Polymath

1643 - Thomas Browne: Religio Medici (All Facts)

• Reflective study of a doctor’s spiritual life

• Work in which the namesake author mulls over the relation between his medical profession and his Christian faith

1617 - 1688 - Ralph Cudworth (All Facts)

• English Philosopher, Theologian, Anglican Clergyman, and Christian Hebraist

• He belonged to the Cambridge Platonist group of Christian Humanists associated with the religiously tolerant “Latitudinarian” followers of Arminius

1678 - Ralph Cudworth: True Intellectual System (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author admits mental as well as material forces to science

1628 - 1688 - John Bunyan (All Facts)

• English Writer and Preacher

  • He became a Baptist minister

• He began preaching in the Midlands of England, where he rapidly gained a reputation as a powerful speaker and drew large and enthusiastic crowds

• He was arrested for preaching other than in a parish church, a practice which locate magistrates of England began to prosecute after the Stuart Restoration

• He was imprisoned in Bedford county jail

1656 - John Bunyan: Some Gospel Truths Opened (All Facts)

• Work which vigorously attacked Quakers / the Quaker Movement

1665 - John Bunyan: The Holy City (All Facts)

• Work written while the namesake author was serving a more than dozen-year-long prison sentence for preaching other than in a parish church

1678 - John Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress (All Facts)

• Work written while the namesake author was serving a more than dozen-year-long prison sentence for preaching other than in a parish church

• Work which is a remarkable allegory of the true Christian life, laying out in the form of a dream of a man named Christian and his journey in life from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City

  • On his way to his destination he

    • visits such places as Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond

    • meets many characters including Mr. Worldly Wiseman and Giant Despair

• Work which was equally popular among the learned and the uneducated

• Work which is notable for

  • its clarity of the English language and being the first novel written in English

  • its vivid images

  • the namesake author’s sense of the world

• Work which was an allegorical journey through life, told in plain prose with a wealth of narrative detail that overrode the narrow puritanism of its namesake author

1682 - John Bunyan: The Holy War (All Facts)

• Complex allegorical work

1615 - 1691 - Richard Baxter (All Facts)

• Nonconformist Clergyman in England

1650 - Richard Baxter: The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (All Facts)

1624 - 1691 - George Fox (All Facts)

• Founder of the Quakers / Quaker Movement in England (also known as the Society of Friends)

  • He was initially a shoemaker

  • He began preaching after he was convinced that he was summoned by the Holy Spirit for him and his followers to reject the Church of England

  • He founded this sect during England’s “Puritan Revolution”

• He taught that the essence of Christianity was the “inward light” in every man that needs no minister, sacraments, or liturgy

• After three years of spreading Quaker beliefs throughout the colonies, he returned to Rhode Island

1614 - 1702 - Margaret Fell (All Facts)

• Founder and leader of the Quakers / Quaker Movement in England (also known as the Society of Friends)

  • She came from an educated, land-owning family

  • Prior to marrying George Fox, she was a devout mother of nine and widow

  • She helped Fox to develop the political organization of the Quakers / Quaker Movement

• Her campaign for religious freedom was based on the Quaker doctrine that the Christian spirit in people has no need for church services conducted by paid ministers to sustain it

• When Quakers were sent to prison, she pleaded King Charles II for their release

  • She was denied and later sent to prison herself for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to the king

1666 - Margaret Fell: Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Knowed of the Scriptures (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author explains the revolutionary ideas of Quakerism and that of her husband

1632 - 1704 - John Locke (All Facts)

• English Philosopher

• He is considered the Father of Liberalism and was one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment

• He was expelled from Oxford University after his protector Lord Shaftesbury was imprisoned for high treason against the House of Stuart

  • He fled to Holland, where he went by the name of Dr. Van der Linden, where he worked on one of his most famous works

1690 - John Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding (All Facts)

• Considered the first thorough study of Empiricism

• Work in which the namesake author denies the existence of innate knowledge, arguing that the mind was a “tabula rasa” (blank slate) that was only filled in by sensory experience

1690 - John Locke: Two Treatises of Government (All Facts)

• Work in which the namesake author justifies the Glorious Revolution of England

• Work in which the namesake author claimed that rulers’ legitimacy depends on their protecting citizens’ rights

1649 - 1705 - Titus Oates (All Facts)

• English Priest who fabricated the “Popish Plot” to overthrow King Charles II and attributed (Catholic) Jesuit priests as the culprit, initiating a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria under King Charles II

  • He claimed to have discovered a “Popish Plot” to assassinate King Charles II and put James II on the throne

  • This caused crowds of people to roam the streets of London and threaten Catholics there

1635 - 1715 - Thomas Burnet (All Facts)

• English Theologian and Writer

1681 - Thomas Burnet: Sacred History of the Earth (All Facts)

• Work which develops fantastic ideas on evolution

1644 - 1718 - William Penn (All Facts)

• English Writer and Theologian

  • He was a religious thinker and influential Quaker

  • He is better known for having founded the Province (colony) of Pennsylvania and city of Philadelphia