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Reformers and the Church of England under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Paul Christianson
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During the past forty years, the religious history of Elizabethan and early Stuart England has received a great deal of attention from intellectual, social and Church historians. Because of the nature of the general interpretation traditionally followed, most scholars have found it fruitful to concentrate their research upon particular groups or individuals and to fit the ensuing studies into either a rather narrow stream labelled ‘Anglican’ or a very broad one named ‘Puritan’. While the number of biographies of English bishops and analyses of ‘Anglican’ divines has increased at a more than respectable rate recently, studies of English ‘Puritans’ and their brethren in New England have grown to almost unmanageable proportions. With all of these riches at hand, however, no recent historian has published an overall synthetic history of the Church of England under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts to match that completed by W. H. Frere more than two-thirds of a century ago. Indeed, a good deal of controversy still ranges over the boundaries and validity of such terms as ‘Anglican’ and—especially— ‘Puritan’. Plunging into that dispute, this paper will examine the nature and historiographical origins of these categories, redefine them so that they better apply to the evidence from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and spell out some of the social and political implications that spring from this modified point of view. While the argument presented here, no doubt, will neither please nor satisfy all historians working in the field, one hopes that it will provide some with a glimpse at the outlines of a new synthesis.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 1980 , pp. 463 - 482
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

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12 Cross, Church and People.

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16 Haugaard, W. P., Elizabeth and the English Reformation: the Struggle or a Stable Settlement of Religion, Cambridge 1968, 106-7, 264–9Google Scholar . The words ol institution in the Book ol Common Prayer of 1559 allow of a more standard Reformed interpretation than that given by Haugaard; one can easily read the second sentence as glossing, not just giving devotional emphasis to, the Hrst. While Cambridge in the 1590s witnessed those debates over doctrine that later would be associated with the ‘Arrninian’ controversy in England and ihe Netherlands, such differences became crucially divisive only in die seventeenth century. Cf. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, ch. 15-18; Bangs, Carl, Arminius: a Study in the Dutch Reformation, Nashville 1971Google Scholar ; Harrison, A. H. W., The Beginnings of Arminianism to the Synod of Dort, London 1926Google Scholar ; and Armstrong, B. G., Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France, Madison 1969Google Scholar.

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19 See Keep, D. J., ‘Theology as a basis for policy in the Elizabethan church’, S.C.H., xi. Oxford 1975, 263–8Google Scholar ; and idem, ‘Bullinger's defence of Queen Elizabeth’, in , Gabler and , Herkenrath, Heinrich Bullinger, ii. 231–41Google Scholar ; R. C. Walton. ‘Bullinger's answer to John Jewel's call lor help: Bullinger's Exposition of Matth. 16: 18-19’, ibid., i. 243-56; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, parts 1 & 11; and—of course— Zurich Letters, Hastings Robinson, led.), Parker Society, Cambridge 1842, 1845. A number of Bullinger's works had a strong impact in England; perhaps the most influential were The Golden Boke of Christen Matrimonye, London 1543Google Scholar ; An Hundred Sermons upon the Apocalypse, London 1561Google Scholar ; and Fetie Godlie Sermons, London 1577Google Scholar . The last, better known as the Decades from its Latin title Sermonum Decades, Quinque de Potissimis Christianae Religionis Capitibus, was used as the official training model for unlicenced ministers in the Elizabethan Church. An Hundred Sermons provided a major source for the marginal notes on the Book of Revelation in many editions of the Geneva Bible. The Golden Boke set the mould for English Protestant writings on marriage; see Davis, K. M., ‘The Sacred condition of equality—how original were puritan doctrines of marriage?’, Social History, v (1977), 580. 563–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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21 Cf. Lamont, Godly Rule, ch. 1-4, and Tyacke in Russell. Origins, ch. 4. These who would define ‘Puritan’ by reference to moral zeal seem to forget that it was Archbishop Laud, not William Prynne, who forced the students of Oxford to shorten their long hair for the royal visitation of 1636; see Trevor-Roper, H. R., Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645, New York 1965Google Scholar , originally London 1940, 288.

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28 Christianson, Reformers and Babylon, ch. 2-5.

29 Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism, New York 1957Google Scholar . originall y New York 1938, ch. 2: and , McGee, Godly Man, 71-94, 119-42, 173–208Google Scholar ; McCee's favourites include Joseph Caryl, Thomas Case, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Goodwin. Thomas Hooker, John Preston, Richard Sibbes and John Winthrop.

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36 Even Walzer, who restores some prominence to the gentry, puts the initiative in the hands ol the divines: ‘the influence and power of an intelligentsia possessed with new ideas was quite out of proportion to its possession of land and wealth’, , Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, 125–6Google Scholar . For extreme identifications of the Puritans with the ‘middle class’ see Brian Manning, ‘Religion and politics: the godly people’, in his Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, London 1973, 83–126Google Scholar , and Schlatter, R. B., “The problem of historical causation in some recent studies of the English revolution’ Journal of the History of Ideas, iv (1943. 349–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 One need only look at the difficulties experienced by the Elizabethan Separatists, the post-Restoration dissenters, or the Roman Catholics to see the necessity of support from at least the local magistrate. Cf. White, English Separatist Tradition; Marchant, R. A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560-1642, London 1960Google Scholar , ch. 8 ; Cragg, G. C., Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution, 1660-1689, Cambridge 1957Google Scholar ; Lacey, D. R., Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England, 1661-1689. New Brunswick, 1969Google Scholar ; Aveling, J. C. H., The Handle and the Axe: the Catholic Recusants in England from Reformation to Emancipation, London 1976Google Scholar ; Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570-1850, London 1975Google Scholar ; and Miller, John, Popery and Politics in England. 1660-1688, Cambridge 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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47 For Matthew see Marchant, Puritans and Courts, ch. 3: for Abbot see Welsby, Paul, George Abbot, the Unwanted Archbishop, 1562-1633, London 1962Google Scholar . , ClarkEnglish Provincial Society. 305–6Google Scholar . and , Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 242–4Google Scholar.

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49 See Christianson, Hejormers and Babylon, th 4 & 5; and Lamont. Marginal Prynne, ch. 3 &: 4. The present article derives from a paper delivered at a joint session of the American Historical Association and the American Society of Church History held in 1977. Since then it has undergone much revision and expansion. Of the many colleagues and friends who have read and commented upon various dralts of the paper, I would like to thank Dr Leland Carlson. Dr Caroline Hibbard, Mr Conrad Russell. Dr Paul Seaver, and Drjames Stayer lor their comments and help; the errors that remain are mine.