From the publication of An Admonition to the Parliament in 1572, and throughout the ensuing controversy waged between Archbishop John Whitgift and Thomas Cartwright, Presbyterianism posed a distinct threat to the stability of the established Church of England. In the 1590s, the polemics reached a fevered pitch with the arrest of dissenters and the publication of such conformist broadsides as Richard Bancroft's Dangerous Positions and Proceedings (1593) and A Survay of the Pretended Holy Discipline (also 1593), the latter work reprinted during the hostilities of the Civil War and after the Restoration, other works by John Bridges and Matthew Sutcliffe, and perhaps most significantly, Richard Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593, 1597). In the midst of this, the eminent Puritan divine, Walter Travers, Hooker's sometime sparring partner in the pulpit of the Temple Church, was busy working out the finer points of a Reformed ecclesiology which would hopefully provide a manual of sorts for the “further reformation” of the English Church. In her monograph English Prebyterianism, 1590–1640 (2010), Polly Ha argued compellingly that far from running out of steam at the end of Elizabeth's reign, English Presbyterianism was moving forward at full tilt. The hard evidence of this vitality can be found in a hitherto unpublished manuscript titled ‘The Reformed Church Government Desired’ dated by Dr Ha to 1594. It constitutes “one of the most extensive responses to the onslaught of anti-puritan literature dating from the late 1580s to the early 1590s” (RG xi).
In 2001, Polly Ha was conducting research in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, on a collection of manuscripts that had circulated among late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean puritans. Among these, Dr Ha identified a MS titled “The Reformed Church Government Desired” (TCD MS 140.2). This MS, and others in the collection, have largely gone unnoticed by historians of early-modern religion. Ha's critical edition of this remarkable work of presbyterian ecclesiastical polity follows closely on the heels of her monograph English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640, and provides ample corroboration of the argument presented there. The volume under review consists of an extensive Introduction (lxx pp.) followed by an exacting, diplomatic transcription of the manuscript (191 pp.) given the abbreviated title Reformed Government (RG) by the editor. Such abbreviation is potentially misleading for what is essentially a work of ecclesiology. The volume's subtitle, of course, clarifies any such confusion. The Introduction commences with a revisionist historiographical argument “Rewriting the Elizabethan Civil Wars of Religion” in which Ha rejects the received interpretation of the collapse of Presbyterianism in the 1590s. Most intriguingly, the author of RG appropriated Richard Hooker's historical-critical reading of Patristic texts and employed them against other conformist writers. The second introductory step raises the question of charges of “ecclesiastical innovation.” Accusations of “novelty” (xxiii) could fatally undermine claims of orthodoxy. Hooker, Machiavelli and the “politiques” are examined and compared with RG with a view to establishing what might constitute “permissible change.” The distinguished scholarship of Jean-Louis Quantin's The Church of England and Christian Antiquity (2009) looms here. The third introductory chapter addresses the “leveraging” of historical contingency in late-Elizabethan scholarship. Here, the division of the discussion follows the four-fold scriptural classification of ministries: pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons, a key structural feature of reformed church polity or the Disciplina. Next follows a discussion of the relevance to RG of the now-fashionable trope of Monarchical Republicanism. Civil constitutional theory is shown to have application to matters of ecclesiastical governance. Finally, Dr Ha provides an exceptionally helpful “Reader's Guide” with instructions on editorial protocol to assist study of this text.
The text of Reformed Government itself consists of five main chapters, together with a “Preface to the Christian Reader” and a “Conclusion to the Reader.” The Preface commences with a vigorous defense of the compatibility of reformed church government with the institution of Royal Supremacy. This had been one of the more hotly contested topoi in the Admonition Controversy, and occasioned treatment in an entire book (VIII) of Hooker's Lawes. It becomes quickly apparent that the methodology employed owes a good deal to Hooker's example. The “summe of the thinge desired” in framing church government is “the true, antient, catholick, and Apostilick order of Churchpolicy or Churchgovernment, which is a thinge most meet and suitable to our Religion” (RG 9). The Queen is acquitted of blame in preventing a full reformation of the Church, “but our misinforminge Bishops be in all the fault” (RG 11). John Jewel's authority is invoked in defense of the jurisdiction of Elders in the primitive Church (RG 21–29). Certain bishops have been exonerated.
Chapter 1 of RG is an extended exposition of the four-fold Presbyterian Disciplina of Pastors, Doctors, Elders, and Deacons as exemplifying the “true, antient, catholick, and Apostilick order.” There is further discussion of ordination and the role of the laity in election of ministers, as well as the exclusion of ministers from the exercise of civil office or magistracy. Chapter 2 reopens the problematic question of the relationship between ecclesiastical and civil governance. RG affirms that Church government “may stand united with the Civil government and policy off this Kingdome with conveniency, and without any great alteration” (RG 118). There can be no seats for pastors in the House of Lords. With a swipe at Separatist congregationalism and Millenarianism, RG affirms that “the church government desired is farre from Anarchy” (RG 118). The fourth chapter asserts the plausibility of realizing this proposed reform of Church government. Chapter 5 reaffirms the perpetuity and antiquity of the Presbyterian model.
This edition of the late-Elizabethan manuscript Reformed Government is masterly in execution. This reader was especially impressed by the irony of the remarkable degree to which Walter Travers has imbibed the historical-critical methodology of his rival Richard Hooker in this sophisticated work of ecclesiology. The critical apparatus inspires confidence at every turn. Dr Polly Ha and her colleagues Jonathan Moore and Edda Frankot have made a highly significant contribution to the ecclesiastical and constitutional historiography of this formative period in English history. The revisionist stance laid out in the substantial Introduction will undoubtedly provoke a much-needed reassessment and reevaluation of the religious climate of this period, and particularly of the proleptic role of Presbyterian principles in the advent of the Civil War.
