2. The origins of Puritanism and Separatism
The origins of Puritanism and Separatism 1. The Elizabeth settlement When Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and her first parliament made the Church of England Protestant again in 1559, after the brief but bloody
Catholic interlude under Mary Tudor (1553–8), few of the more Protestantminded Anglican clergy realized that the 1559 religious settlement was to become permanent. Many had spent Mary Tudor's reign in exile, in Reformed communities like Zurich, Basel, and Geneva, where the setting of worship was much freer from medieval ceremony than it was in Elizabethan
Anglicanism. These exiles, now that they were back in England and parish ministers in the Anglican Church, expected to see further reforms. In 1563, some of them put up a proposal in convocation (the Anglican clerical governing body) to extend official tolerance to those who had scruples about the wearing of clerical vestments, the sign of the cross in baptism, and kneeling at holy communion, to remove organs from churches, and to reduce the number of holy days in the church calendar. This very moderate proposal was defeated—but only by a single vote. This galvanized those seeking further reform to bypass the Anglican system of church government as hopelessly conservative, and begin campaigning for wider public support.
2. The vestiarian controversy Meanwhile, there was little uniformity in Anglican worship. The dioceses of London and Norwich in particular had a great variety of practices—some ministers wore vestments, others did not; holy communion was received by some kneeling, by others sitting or standing; and so forth. The bishops of London and Norwich—Edmund Grindal (c.1519–83) and John Parkhurst
(c.1512–75)—had both been Protestant exiles during Mary Tudor's reign, and were sympathetic to more Continental Reformed ideals of worship.
They were therefore reluctant to coerce their clergy into strict compliance with the 1559 settlement. Queen Elizabeth, however, insisted on compliance (she interpreted refusal to conform as defiance of her authority), and ordered her Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker (1504–75), to take action.
Parker held several conferences with the dissident clergy; their demands focused on the issue of clerical vestments (chiefly the "surplice", a white wide-sleeved gown), which they argued were relics of medieval
Catholicism, misleading ordinary people into thinking that Protestant ministers were no different from Catholic priests. The anti-vestment party was led by Thomas Sampson (1517–89), Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and Laurence Humphrey (1527–90), theology professor at Oxford and dean of the university's Magdalen College. Both Sampson and Humphrey had been in exile during Mary Tudor's reign and absorbed the worshipvalues of Continental Calvinism. Against their refusal to conform, Parker argued that a minister's garb was essentially a thing indifferent, and that every Church had the authority to institute some practice or other in such matters; to disobey was the sin of anarchy. He could not take very seriously the idea that people would be misled into thinking that men like Sampson and Humphrey were Catholic priests, when their entire teaching said the exact opposite.
When conferences and persuasion failed to win over the dissidents, Parker took sterner practical measures. In 1565 he cancelled all licenses to preach that had been granted before March of that year: from now on, licenses would be given only to those who conformed. The whole body of London's minsters were gathered in Parker's official residence, Lambeth palace, and ordered to conform or be suspended. 61 ministers conformed;
37 refused, and Parker immediately suspended them from duties and cut off
their income. Eventually most of the nonconformists did submit. The argument that prevailed with them was whether it was worth losing their congregations over a mere vestment. Most decided it was not.
Sampson and Humphrey tried to save themselves by appealing over Parker's head to Heinrich Bullinger of Zurich. With the recent deaths of Calvin and Peter Martyr Vermigli, Bullinger was now the "grand old man" of Reformed theology. He was also supremely influential on English
Protestants; he had sheltered many of them in Zurich during Mary Tudor's reign, forging close pastoral bonds with them. If Bullinger supported
Sampson and Humphrey, Archbishop Parker would be in trouble.
Unfortunately for Sampson and Humphrey, Bullinger supported Parker!
The Swiss Reformer argued that clerical vestments were things indifferent, which for the sake of decency were acceptable garments, and that if the Church authorities had decided that vestments should be worn, then the clergy had no right to disobey. Bullinger also counselled Sampson and Humphrey not to resign over a mere vestment:
…if the edifying of the church is the chief thing to be regarded in this matter, we shall do the church a greater injury by deserting it than by wearing the vestments.
Sampson and Humphrey were staggered by Bullinger's advice, but persisted in their nonconformity. Consequently Archbishop Parker sacked
Sampson from his post as Dean of Christ Church. Humphrey managed to cling on as Dean of Magdelen College, since Parker had no direct authority over that post. Bullinger's attitude, however, may have undermined
Humphrey's dissidence; he gradually lost interest in the fight, conformed, and even personally restored the use of vestments in Magdalen College chapel.
3. The birth of Separatism The vestiarian controversy (as it was called) was the occasion when the term "Puritan" was first used as an abusive label for the Anglican dissidents. It was also around the same time that Puritanism showed its potential for Separatism. In June 1567 in London, the sheriff's officers (the 16th century police) uncovered a group of a hundred holding a meeting in Plumbers' Hall, allegedly for a wedding—but they had in reality gathered to listen to preaching and take part in holy communion. Arrested and questioned by Bishop Grindal of London, the replies made it clear that this was a functional congregation. They had met in secret as Protestants during Mary Tudor's reign. Disillusioned, however, with what they saw as the insufficiently Protestant character of the Elizabethan Anglican Church, most of whose ministers (they said) were mere papists who had conformed to the 1559 settlement, they had decided to resume meeting as a Protestant congregation outside the establishment.
On the whole, however, this group does not seem to have been committed to Separatism; most of them were willing to worship within the Church of England once it was better reformed. A few of them later became
Anglican Presbyterians (see below). Their "separation" was a temporary withdrawal, not a principled rejection of the state-established Church. So we should probably think of this congregation as fringe Puritan rather than fully Separatist. Bishop Grindal, a moderate and gentle soul, was rather scandalized by their attitude to his Church, and ultimately treated them severely; some were held in Bridewell prison for at least a year.
However, a mere month before this more famous incident, a genuine Separatist congregation had been unearthed in London, led by a certain
Richard Fitz (about whom almost nothing else is known). Here were people who had rejected the entire Anglican Church as hopelessly corrupt, so that true Christians had no option but to depart permanently. Some or all of these Separatists were imprisoned in Bridewell.4 Even worse was to come for Bishop Grindal. In March 1569, those who had met at Plumbers' Hall, now released from prison, were found to be up their tricks again: the authorities discovered 72 of them meeting as a congregation in the house of a Mr James Tynne, goldsmith, in Saint Martin's-in-the-Fields. Once again, many were imprisoned.
Grindal recorded that some folk seceded from the Plumbers' Hall congregation and joined the authentically Separatist congregation of Richard Fitz. There is some uncertainty about the reason, but it could have been the fact that the Plumbers' Hall congregation used the Geneva liturgy in its worship (in preference to the Anglican Prayer Book), whereas the Separatists used no liturgy at all. This was to be a hallmark of early
Separatists—their opposition to any element in worship that was not the immediate, spontaneous utterance of the worshiping soul. That of course meant no liturgies, but it equally meant no hymns and no psalms; all these had been written by persons other than the worshiper, and therefore could not be the worshiper's own heart-utterance. Early Separatists therefore had no liturgies, no psalms, and no hymns. This attitude was to linger long among early Baptists.5 Puritans, however, were never to take such a view; most were perfectly happy with some sort of liturgy, and all were happy with psalms or hymns.
Thereafter, our knowledge of the radical dissidents of Plumbers' Hall and the Fitz congregation fades away into vague rumour, although we know that Fitz himself died in prison. Our last sight of them may be in 1572, when
Richard Cox (c.1500–81), the ardently Protestant Bishop of Ely in Cambridgeshire, referred to dissidents who had broken off completely from the Church of England, meeting in private houses.
Richard Fitz's church, and the seceders from Plumbers' Hall, are the first known Separatist groups in Elizabethan England. We know about them purely because they were discovered. There may very well have been other congregations that managed to stay hidden. Some of them may have been formed in Mary Tudor's reign and never gone back into Elizabeth's
Protestant Church.
4. Two types of moderate Puritan In the 1570s, Puritan-minded Anglicans crystallized into three different groups: Puritanism was never a single, uniform outlook.
First, there those who still disliked clerical vestments and other aspects of Elizabethan policy, but were convinced that active disobedience would be sinful anarchy. They did not seek any changes in church government, nor did they derive inspiration from Reformed Churches on the Continent. They conformed, told others to conform, and focused all their energies on preaching and teaching which they saw as the real priority. After the 1570s, this group became less and less Puritan in any sense, more and more loyal members of the Elizabethan Church. Their attitude was by far the most widespread one among the sincerely Protestant laity of the Anglican establishment. Prominent leaders in this group included Laurence
Humphrey (the original anti-vestment firebrand), John Foxe (the famous chronicler of the martyrs under Mary Tudor), and the bishops John
Parkhurst and James Pilkington (1520–76).6
Next, there were those who not only disliked vestments and other elements of medieval ritual, but believed that the Anglican Church needed reforming in its organization, if it was most effectively to express and perpetuate a national Protestant faith. Some of them favoured a reformed
Episcopacy, with bishops as purely spiritual superintendents of the churches rather than quasi-political figures; others favoured Presbyterianism; in general, they all wished church structures to be made simpler and more accountable. However, they refused to make any changes on their own initiative. If the Church's rulers did not carry out change, these Puritans would not be actively disruptive. Like the first group, they concentrated on preaching and teaching, but hoped by these means to build up such a popular following that eventually parliament would be permeated by their influence. Then lawful reform of the Church would happen naturally and spontaneously. Puritans of this type were supported by significant numbers of leading figures in the social and political sphere—members of the aristocracy and gentry, prosperous merchants, important politicians. Among these lay supporters, the most prominent were Sir Francis Walsingham
(1532–90), head of Elizabeth's security services, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532–88), Elizabeth's personal favourite.
This was the brand of Puritanism that had the widest level of backing in Elizabethan England. It was particularly famed for its preachers, such as Richard Greenham, Henry "Silver-tongued" Smith, and William Perkins.
Richard Greenham (c.1535–c.1594) was minister of the small country parish of Dry Drayton in Cambridgeshire, where his preaching excelled in turning theology into pastorally-oriented piety; Thomas Fuller said that "his masterpiece was in comforting wounded consciences". Richard Baxter was to praise Greenham's published sermons as among the premier works of practical divinity in English.
Henry "Silver-tongued" Smith (c.1560–c.1591) was reputedly the most popular preacher in Elizabethan London, if indeed not in all England; from his pulpit in Saint Clements Dane he attracted myriads by his spiritual oratory. Antony Wood (1632–95), who wrote the history of Oxford (where
Smith studied), remarked that Smith was "esteemed the miracle and wonder of his age for his prodigious memory, and for his fluent, eloquent, and practical way of preaching". His collected sermons, published in 1592, were a best-seller for decades. Particularly popular was the sermon God's Arrow against Atheists, which has a curiously modern feel, critiquing not only atheism, but Roman Catholicism and Islam, as the three great foes of biblical Christianity.
William Perkins (1558–1602), a native of Warwickshire, studied at Christ's College, Cambridge University, where he became a fellow (a member of the college's governing council) from 1584 to 1594, when he resigned in order to get married—only single men could be college fellows.
In 1585 he was appointed lecturer at Great Saint Andrews Church, opposite Christ's College, a post he held for the rest of his life. Perkins won huge repute as a preacher of plain-spoken, practical Calvinism, and a theologian who used scholastic and Ramist methodology to communicate biblical doctrine.7 Perkins' definition of theology was famous: "the science of living blessedly for ever". He was also an early exponent of a full-blooded covenant theology.8
Among Perkins' many theological writings, A Reformed Catholic (1597) was perhaps the most conspicuous; its purpose was to demonstrate that 16th century Protestants were the true Catholics, having more affinity with the patristic heritage than Rome could honestly claim. Even Roman Catholic opponents, taking up the pen to refute so dangerous a book, admitted that it was a monument to scholarship and fairness, and non-Puritan Anglicans
referred to it as a masterpiece of anti-Roman polemic. Perkins also blazed a trail of "casuistry" in Puritan theology: the study of "cases of conscience", a well-known feature of medieval Catholic theology, now baptized afresh into a Reformed context. His student William Ames would build impressively on this foundation.9 Perkins' Art of Prophesying (Latin edition 1592;
English 1606) became the standard Puritan textbook on preaching.
By the time Perkins died in 1602, he was widely acknowledged as Elizabethan England's most influential Reformed theologian. His works were translated and frequently reprinted for the Continental market, where they made a notable impact on Dutch, Swiss, and German Reformed thinking.
5. Presbyterian dawn: Thomas Cartwright The third Puritan group were militant Presbyterians who actively and aggressively challenged the Anglican establishment. They believed that Presbyterian church government was the only biblical pattern, so that they could invoke divine authority for its establishment. They also advocated changes in the Anglican confession of faith (the Elizabethan 39 Articles were insufficiently Reformed for them) and forms of worship (they disliked the Book of Common Prayer and wanted a more Continental Reformed liturgy). They were less English, more international in outlook; they looked to the model of church life found in the Scottish, French, Dutch, Swiss, and German Reformed Churches. More often than not, they appealed directly to parliament to take control of the Church and introduce these changes in government, doctrine, and liturgy.10 This Presbyterian group still operated within the Church of England, so we should think of them as Anglican
Presbyterians.
Anglican Presbyterianism found its eloquent, scholarly champion in Thomas Cartwright (c.1535–1603). A native of Hertfordshire and Cambridge-educated, he was appointed to the prestigious post of Lady
Margaret professor of divinity in Cambridge in 1569.11 Cartwright was already a Puritan; he had actively opposed vestments. He was also a brilliant scholar; Theodore Beza, the post-Calvin leader of Geneva, spoke of Cartwright as the most learned man he knew. A celebrated university preacher, his sermons drew huge crowds. Cartwright now used his new position as Lady Margaret professor to launch a searching critique of Anglican Church government, arguing against both diocesan Episcopacy and any form of clerical hierarchy. Diocesan Episcopacy involved a bishop governing all congregations and ministers in a particular region, a "diocese"—the model Anglicanism had inherited from its medieval
Catholic past. For Cartwright, however, there was no office higher than the minister of a local congregation: all ministers were equal. Further, ministers should collectively rule the Church according to the Presbyterian form of government whose outlines Martin Bucer and John Calvin had drawn in the previous generation. Cartwright also criticized various other Anglican practices: the sign of the cross in baptism, fasting at Lent, bowing at the name of Jesus—all superstitions, according to the Lady Margaret professor, because nowhere commanded in Scripture. More ominously for the
Anglican authorities, he maintained that each congregation should choose its own minister: neither landowner nor monarch had any rights here.
Cartwright's critique was given in the course of lectures on the first two chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. The lectures electrified an enthusiastic student body. Moderate Protestants, however, were alarmed; they saw a revolutionary assault on established authority. Several months of frantic controversy finally ended with Cartwright's dismissal by the new university vice-chancellor, John Whitgift (c.1530–1604). Whitgift would be
Cartwright's arch-enemy throughout the two men's lives. Lincolnshire-born Whitgift had been chaplain to Bishop Cox of Ely, and Cartwright's predecessor as Lady Margaret professor at Cambridge; in the early 1560s he had himself been a Puritan opponent of vestments. Always a strong
Calvinist and fierce foe of Rome, Whitgift soon abandoned his Puritanism and became a firm defender of the Anglican establishment. His loyalty would be rewarded; a dozen years later, a grateful Queen Elizabeth would make him Archbishop of Canterbury.
6. The conflict widens: Puritans and parliament Cartwright's sacking by no means quenched the Presbyterian fire he had ignited. His supporters took the struggle to parliament. Puritan MPs had already tried to enact Church reforms through the House of Commons in 1566 and 1571, led by the intrepid William Strickland (d.1598), MP for Scarborough. Strickland was a former world-explorer with Venetian navigator Sebastian Cabot (whose father John had discovered the coast of North America); his outspoken approach in parliament, which got him into serious trouble with Elizabeth, earned him the name "Strickland the Stinger" from a satirist in 1566. But while Elizabeth was busy trying to shut
Strickland up, an anonymous broadside struck the House of Commons in June 1572—a Presbyterian manifesto entitled Admonition to Parliament.
The Admonition set out the basics of Presbyterian church government, calling on parliament to establish it for England; it also named various other church abuses that parliament should rectify, e.g. replacing the Anglican
Prayer Book with a more Continental Reformed liturgy. The treatise was written in clear, energetic English; its authors were John Field (1545–88) and Thomas Wilcox (c.1549–1608). Field was a Londoner and an Oxford graduate who preached at Holy Trinity Minories Church in London; here, the preacher was appointed and supported by the congregation (unusually, the church had legal exemption from the Bishop of London's jurisdiction).
It was a hotbed of extreme Puritanism. In fact, the very word "Puritan" seems first to have used of the Minories worshipers in 1567. Field had a flair for leadership and was unhampered by the slightest respect for the Anglican establishment. His confederate Wilcox was curate of All Hallows
Church, Honey Lane, in London, a gentler sort with a more pastoral turn of mind, but loyal to Field.
Elizabeth was outraged by the Admonition and its appeal to parliament.
She, not the House of Commons, was supreme governor of the English Church! Field and Wilcox were soon unmasked by the Elizabethan security services as authors of the Admonition, and imprisoned for a year for violating the 1559 Act of Uniformity. However, the Admonition had stirred up a wasps' nest of controversy, and for several years proand antiPresbyterian treatises swarmed off the printing presses. There was an anonymous Second Admonition (1572); a response by John Whitgift
(Answer to the Admonition, 1572); a counter-response by Thomas
Cartwright who had just returned from Geneva (Reply, 1573); Whitgift's Defence (1574); the Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline by distinguished Presbyterian preacher Walter Travers (c.1548–1635), published in Latin in 1574, but translated into English by Cartwright and published in 1580 at Geneva; Cartwright's Second Reply (1575), and The Rest of the Second Reply (1577). After a few years' silence, a new spate of tracts from both sides appeared in the 1580s, culminating in the Martin
Marprelate tracts of 1588–9 (see below). The whole tone of the literary war was harsh, even bitter, on both sides.
Moderate Puritans were dismayed by the radical aggression of their Presbyterian brethren. One of the Puritan MPs for London, the influential
Thomas Norton (1532–84), translator of Calvin's Institutes into English, complained that the Admonition "was fond [foolishly optimistic], and with unreasonableness and unseasonableness hath hindered much good and done much hurt". Needless to say, parliament did not Presbyterianize the Anglican Church. Few MPs supported the idea, most Puritans were not convinced of the need for anything so drastic, and Elizabeth was implacably hostile. The Presbyterian wing of Puritanism therefore found itself comparatively isolated and weak. Even so, we can glimpse in Elizabeth's early parliaments, and the attempts by Puritan MPs like Strickland and Norton to introduce moderate church reforms, the seeds of a Puritanparliament coalition of interests.12 80 years later, this would be a key ingredient in the outbreak of the English Civil War.