Chapter 38 - Tacking and Trimming

Summary

This chapter analyses the ways in which a variety of men negotiated the collapse of the Personal Rule and the Laudian project. On the one hand, we have the Calvinist conformist Robert Sanderson, who, by shifting the emphasis of what remained the same set of opinions was able to distance himself, and the church of England, from the excesses of Laudianism, while still protecting that church from what he presented as the reckless assaults and absurdities of the puritans, and rallying support for the king. On the other hand, we have Peter Heylyn, by this point the archetypal Laudian, engaging ideologue, tacking and trimming by emphasising his opposition to popery, even as he used the same arguments that he was deploying against the papists to continue his remorseless assault on the puritans. Here, in effect, we can watch the Laudian coalition coming apart at the seams under the pressure of the Scots war and the political crisis that ensured in England.