7B

AQA A-LEVEL HISTORY (7042)

HIS1D Stuart Britain and the Crisis of Monarchy, 1603-1702

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SECTION TWO Revolution, 1629-49

Topic 7 Religious divisions: Laudianism and Puritanism to 1640

Key Question B: How serious was Puritan opposition to Charles I’s Personal Rule?

Puritan opposition to the Personal Rule, 1629-40

The term ‘Puritanism’ could be used to cover a broad range of 17th century beliefs, including Calvinism (the accepted doctrine in England) and Presbyterianism (the accepted doctrine in Scotland). In terms of attitude and behaviour, however, ‘Puritans’ were those who placed religion at the centre of their lives and pushed for further reform of the Church.

Two main features of 1630s Puritanism have been agreed upon by historians:

• a focus on the importance of the Bible;

• extreme suspicion of Charles and Laud’s increasingly Arminian (or ‘Laudian’) policies, which were interpreted as part of a ‘popish plot’ to establish a Catholic, absolutist form of government in England.

In part, the latter was a product of the feeling that the Church of England they had grown up with was changing, forcing those who had not altered their beliefs to adopt a position of non-conformity, which could be interpreted as disobedience and possibly rebellion.

As the 1630s progressed, increasing concerns about the new direction the Church of England compelled Puritans to challenge the imposition of Laudianism in number of ways.

The ‘Altar Policy’ – the St. Gregory’s and Beckington cases, 1633: In the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, parishes had been left to decide how their Altar Table should be used. In many parishes, it had been placed among the worshippers in front of the pulpit. However, Laud insisted that it was raised and railed off at the east end of the chancel (a space created around the Altar, often separated by a screen or curtain). This was so Holy Communion could take place in the ‘highest’ part of the Church. To Puritans, this was unacceptable, as it encouraged the congregation to worship the Altar itself, thus supposedly breaking one of the Ten Commandments (‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image’).

Puritan resistance began at St Gregory’s Church, near St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Those parishioners who objected to the Altar Policy were brought before the Privy Council to be lectured on the error of their ways. Quietening the congregation at St Gregory’s did not put an end to the controversy, however. Resistance continued in Beckington, Somerset: when Churchwardens refused to respond to an order from William Pierce, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, to move the Altar Table to comply to Laud’s policy, they were excommunicated. After an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Arches (the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury) they petitioned Laud directly in the Privy Council and were promptly thrown in jail.

The ‘Altar Policy’ – the case of John Williams: Laud’s Altar Policy was the subject of a 1637 publication entitled The Holy Table: Name and Thing written by the Bishop of Lincoln, John Williams. His criticism of Laudianism even extended to arguing on theological grounds that the word ‘Altar’ should itself be regarded as Catholic. In an effort to have him removed from his benefice, Williams was falsely charged with revealing State secrets. He was fined and imprisoned in the Tower of London, which Laud assumed would force him to resign from his benefice. To the Archbishop’s fury, however, Williams steadfastly refused and, as no administrative machinery existed to forcibly remove him, he retained his post until Parliament ordered his release in 1640.

The case of Henry Sherfield, 1633: Sherfield, the MP for Winterbourne, Gloucestershire, became disturbed by the revival of ritualism under Laud. In February 1633, he was summoned to the Court of Star Chamber to answer charges of iconoclasm – having allegedly smashed a window in his local church that was interpreted as portraying God in human form. Sherfield was duly fined £500 and made to issue a public apology.

The cases of John Bastwick, William Prynne and Henry Burton: The most common form of opposition to Laudianism came in the form of pamphlet attacks, in which Bishops were variously described as “tigers”, “vipers”, “bloodsuckers” and “cruel stepfathers”. Possibly the most notorious pamphleteer of this period was William Prynne, a fierce opponent of Arminianism and critic of stage plays. In 1632, he published Histriomastix, which described court masques as “feasts of Satan” and its actresses as “notorious whores”. His timing could not have been worse, given that Henrietta Maria was regularly starring in a popular masque at the time; Prynne’s reference to “whores” was therefore taken as a personal insult to the Queen. He was hauled before the Court of Star Chamber, fined £5,000, deprived of his Oxford degree, pilloried, had his ears mutilated and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1637, Prynne again found himself before the Court of Star Chamber along with two other leading Puritan writers, John Bastwick and Henry Burton. All were accused of verbal attacks on Laudian Bishops. From prison, Prynne had continued to publish anti-episcopal pamphlets such as Newes from Ipswich. What remained of Prynne’s ears were removed and his cheeks were branded with the letters ‘SL’ for ‘Seditious Libeller’. Bastwick and Burton received similar treatment, being mutilated, pilloried and imprisoned.

Few people are likely to have agreed or even read their works, yet the sentences of Bastwick, Prynne and Burton aroused widespread horror within the Political Nation and among the London artisan community. Much of the outrage was caused by the fact that these men were professionals (Bastwick was a doctor, Prynne a lawyer and Burton a cleric) and therefore should not have received degrading punishments that were usually only reserved for common criminals. Together, they quickly assumed the status of martyrs in the anti-Laudian cause. Prynne cleverly gained more support by claiming the letters ‘SL’ stood for ‘Stigmata Laudis’ (‘the wounds of Christ’). Charles was forced to order that the three men be dispersed to distant prisons around the country to avoid further public disturbances in the capital.

Laud’s attack on the position and property rights of the gentry was felt all the more keenly because he himself was from a lower-born family of tradesmen. He had already angered the gentry by preventing them from having box pews in their local churches and by re-issuing the Book of Sports, which increased the potential for disorder in local communities. This added a social element to the religious and political resentment already felt towards Laud among members of the Political Nation.

The case of John Lilburne, 1638: Lilburne, an associate of Bastwick who had helped him draft his anti-episcopal work Litany, was arrested for printing and circulating unlicensed books. Brought before the Court of Star Chamber, he declined to take the ex officio oath (essentially refusing to incriminate himself), and thus called into question the traditional procedure of the court. As he persisted with this position, Lilburne was fined £500 and sentenced to repeated whippings while being dragged by an ox cart from Fleet Prison to the pillory at Westminster. During his incarceration, he was cruelly treated, but still managed to write and publish an account of his own punishment called The Work of the Beast in 1638. This was followed in 1639 by an attack on what he called the ‘anti-Christian’ Church of England entitled Come out of here, my people.

This would be the first in a long series of trials over what Lilburne himself described as his ‘freeborn rights’. He took ‘freeborn rights’ to include: one’s right to hear the accusation being made against them, the right to face one’s accusers in person, and the right to avoid self-incrimination. As a result of his continuous protest, a growing number of supporters began to take inspiration from ‘Freeborn John’, feeding into the Puritan agitation of the period.

Emigration to North America: Between 1629 and 1640, about 60,000 Puritans disaffected with Laudian religious policy made the journey across the Atlantic to the colony of New England. By no means all of them emigrated for religious reasons, but a high proportion of those who did valued the freedom to practise their faith without oppression. The number of ordained ministers who travelled with these pilgrims effectively demonstrates that Laudianism had become offensive to their consciences to a degree unprecedented before Charles I’s reign.

By 1640, Charles believed he faced a Puritan conspiracy. Indeed, leading Puritans linked by family connections and business partnerships had formed a network of potential opposition made up of lords, gentry, merchant adventurers and lawyers. In the absence of Parliament, this group formed the core of political opposition to the King, using meetings of two colonial ventures – the Providence Island Company and the Saybrooke Venture – as a forum for secret political discussions. Nowhere else in England was opposition to the Personal Rule so well-organised.

The imposition of Laudianism in Scotland and the Puritan reaction, 1625-37

Since the Reformation in the mid-16th century, the Scottish Church (known as the Kirk) had been Presbyterian. This was thanks largely to the work of John Knox, a colleague of John Calvin in Geneva, who in 1560 had established a regulated church government made up of ten ecclesiastical districts with appointed superintendents known as ‘presbyteries’. Although both the English and Scottish Churches followed mostly Calvinist doctrine, the key difference between them was therefore the latter’s rejection of the episcopacy (i.e., Bishops and Archbishops).

The Articles of Perth, 1618: In 1618, James I had employed all his political skill to have the unpopular Articles of Perth passed by the General Assembly in Scotland. Five different aspects of religion were brought into line with the English Church: kneeling at communion; observance of holy days; private baptism; private communion and the introduction of Bishops within the Kirk. To Scottish Presbyterians, these measures made it look like Catholicism was being forced upon them. In one of his first acts as King, Charles issued a proclamation ordering that the Kirk must continue to observe the Articles of Perth – immediately alienating his Scottish subjects.

The Act of Revocation, 1625: This was followed by the Act of Revocation (1625), which revoked all grants of land made by the Crown to Scottish nobles since 1540. This strengthened the Crown’s authority over the Kirk, so as to give Charles scope in the future to more closely align it with the Church of England. However, all that was achieved in the short-term was a unification of the Scottish landowning elite against Charles, who was now seen as a threat to both their religion and their power.

New Canon Laws, 1636: In 1636, Charles imposed new three new Canon Laws upon the Kirk which mirrored some of the Laudian reforms in England:

• the Altar had to be placed against the east wall of the chancel;

• ministers had to wear a cope when they delivered Communion;

• all improvised prayer was banned – ministers were told they must only read from the new prayer book that was in the process of being written by Laud.

Again, these measures were interpreted as an attempt to return Scotland to Catholicism. What made matters worse was the fact they had been imposed by royal prerogative – Charles had made no attempt whatsoever to give either the General Assembly of the Kirk or the Scottish Parliament any say in the reforms.

The Scottish Prayer Book Rebellion, 1637: The introduction of the new English Prayer Book in Scotland was designed to complete the drive towards uniformity between the two churches. By yet again imposing this measure by proclamation (i.e., without the advice of the Scottish Privy Council, Scottish Parliament, or General Assembly of the Kirk), Charles aroused Scottish nationalism among MPs in Edinburgh at the very moment he needed their support for what would be a deeply unpopular new religious policy. This alienation of his natural support base would prove crucial in both the short and long-term.

Some of Scotland’s Bishops tried to prevent catastrophe by persuading Charles to modify the Prayer Book before it was issued. Changes were recommended, such as the deletion of the word ‘priest’, in an effort to make the publication more acceptable to the Scots. The King, however, not only refused to yield, but undermined their efforts by requiring them to swear they would enforce the new liturgy (i.e., the order of service) before they had even been given a chance to read its contents. Even at this stage, the King refused to listen to genuine concern that he was asking the Scots to accept ‘innovations’ in religion, naively believing that his firm stance would resolve the problem.

On 23 July 1637, a riot broke out in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh when the new Prayer Book was read out for the first time. This demonstration of popular outrage had been carefully orchestrated in advance by influential Presbyterian nobles. Elsewhere in Scotland, the Prayer Book provoked spontaneous violence, e.g., the Bishop of Brechin had to threaten his congregation with two loaded pistols to keep order.

The National Covenant, 1638: The wider political reaction in Scotland was swift and effective. In February 1638, opponents of Charles and Laud drew up the National Covenant. This was a declaration of allegiance that bound together Scottish nationalism and the Calvinist faith. Those who joined the Covenant pledged to defend ‘true religion’ (Presbyterianism) and Scottish political rights against the English.

In November 1638, the General Assembly of the Kirk abolished Scotland’s episcopacy completely. Charles’s religious policy had thus provoked a national rebellion that had undone all the painstaking work carried out by James I in ensuring there was a role for Bishops in Scotland and that the episcopal system north of the border should mirror that used by the Church of England.

By the end of 1638, Charles declared that he would rather die than yield to the demands of the Scottish Covenanters, and that their rebellion must be dealt with by force. Although some religious concessions were made, this was little more than a transparent ploy to buy time with which to prepare the English Army for war. Now under the control of the Covenanters, the Scottish government also began military preparations.

The extent of religious division by 1640

The opinion of historians regarding the reaction to the Laudian changes brought in during the Personal Rule is divided into two broad camps:

1. Laudianism was unpopular and provoked a bitter reaction from the rest of the population.

This view suggests that Laud’s changes had a negative impact on the Church, breaking the ‘Jacobethan balance’ and cumulatively leading to a Puritan backlash that ended in a revolution against the King.

2. The unpopularity, impact and significance of Laudianism has been exaggerated.

According to this view, Laudianism for many was a more acceptable form of Protestantism than Puritanism – most people enjoyed ceremony and had little interest in the intricacies of doctrine. The fact that the English Church survived this period (and the following two decades of instability) suggests the changes did little long-term damage.

Perhaps the most significant impact of the Laudianism was the perception, shared by much of the Political Nation, that it was an integral aspect of Charles’s Personal Rule. It was not necessarily what the King did, but the way in which he did it that created an impression that he was deliberately trying to dismantle, or at least undermine, the traditional institutions of the English Church and State. This led Puritans to the conclusion that the purpose of Personal Rule was to enable the King to establish both Catholicism and absolutism in England.