With this substantial and handsomely produced biography of the seventeenth-century Oxford theologian John Prideaux (1578–1650), John Maddicott draws attention to ‘an undeservedly neglected figure’, an individual who, during his long career, served as Rector of Exeter College, regius professor of divinity, vice-chancellor of the university and bishop of Worcester. In highlighting Prideaux's accomplishments, Maddicott contributes to a growing body of literature which explores the diversity of religious identity within the early Stuart Church (p. vii). Work by Anthony Milton, Peter Lake and Stephen Hampton, among others, has considered the significance of a group described variously as ‘conforming Calvinists’, ‘Reformed conformists’ or, to use one of Maddicott's preferred terms, ‘moderate Calvinists’ (p. 93), a group which included prominent churchmen like John Davenant, James Ussher, Joseph Hall and others who do not fit comfortably within an interpretive binary focused exclusively on Laudianism and Puritanism. The subject of the present study, the royalist, high-Calvinist, anti-popish, jure divino episcopalian John Prideaux, was a leading member of this group. What sets Between scholarship and church politics apart from other works in this area, however, is its close attention to Prideaux's role within his university and college. ‘No biography’, writes Maddicott, ‘should allow the regius professor of divinity to edge out the rector of Exeter’ (p. ix). Given this volume's place within Oxford's History of Universities series, this emphasis feels thoroughly appropriate and, moreover, by thus setting Prideaux within his college context, readers typically more interested in theological controversy are helpfully reminded that the authors of polemical divinity cannot be reduced to their published works.
The book is organised around three main sections, the first and third of which treat Prideaux's life chronologically, while the second works thematically. In the first section, stretching from 1578 to 1624, Maddicott traces John Prideaux's origins and entry into Exeter College through to what he describes as his subject's ‘halcyon years’, a decade during which Prideaux rose to prominence both as Rector of Exeter from 1612 and as a regius professor of divinity from 1615. Here Maddicott both uncovers less well-known local conflicts in which Prideaux was directly involved (for example, a protracted dispute between Exeter College and William Lord Petre, the grandson of the college's refounder) and locates Prideaux in relation to episodes of wider significance (for example, the Synod of Dordt). Readers are also given a convincing account of Exeter's growing ‘reputation as a special bastion of Calvinist orthodoxy’, an accomplishment largely fuelled by the rising theological profile of its Rector (p. 53).
The book's second major section comprises chapters iii through vi and presents thematically arranged studies of Prideaux's everyday administrative work, his wildly successful campaign to rebuild and expand the college, his dealings with family, friends and academic colleagues, and his reputation and work as a scholar. In many ways, this section, with its painstaking archival spadework evidenced throughout, represents the heart of the book. Drawing upon hitherto under-utilised archival resources including Prideaux's memorandum book, his personal correspondence and an impressive array of college records, Maddicott compellingly recreates the work and world of his subject. While the detail might, at times, overwhelm the casual reader, taken together it represents, by any standard, an impressive evocation of the period and place.
The book's third and final section resumes the chronological narrative, tracing Prideaux's life from 1624 until his death in 1650. Roughly the first half of this section is dominated by Prideaux's efforts to stand against the rising tide of Arminian ceremonialism within the Church of England, and his contentious and complicated relationship with that movement's chief proponent, William Laud. The second half of this final section follows Prideaux's rapidly changing fortunes as the country descended into civil war, a period during which his ‘unwavering royalism’ was rewarded with a long-desired bishopric in 1642 and was the cause of his unceremonious forced flight from Oxford the very same year (p. 346). In the book's concluding chapter, Maddicott assesses Prideaux's posthumous reputation and legacy, offering reflections on why Prideaux has attracted neither significant biographical interest nor a republication of his complete works.
In setting forth his Life, or ‘Lives’, of Prideaux, Maddicott indicates three main goals: first, to offer ‘a narrative account of Prideaux's life’; second, to ‘expound and explain Prideaux's complex theology’; and, third, to ‘explor[e] in some detail’ Prideaux's significant roles within his college and university (p. viii). The strength of this volume lies in its author's very fine accomplishment of the first and third goals. By contrast, I found his pursuit of the second to be relatively less satisfying. There is less substantive engagement with theological topics than the above description might lead some readers to expect, and the sections which do treat Prideaux's doctrine feel somewhat derivative, with the author's judgement seemingly less sure-handed than when he is analysing other subjects. For example, in his consideration of Prideaux's soteriology as exemplified in his nine Act lectures given between 1616 and 1624, Maddicott seems to represent Prideaux as teaching that saving grace is always inherently resistible – ‘grace might be inefficacious if the recipient dissents from it’ (p. 44) – a conclusion that seems unlikely. It should also be noted that Maddicott consistently uses the term ‘Anglican’ to describe what he takes to be the theological mainstream within the Stuart Church – as in references to ‘middle-ground Anglican Calvinists’ (p. 79) and ‘traditional Anglicanism’ (p. 188) – a usage which feels somewhat anachronistic in view of the trenchant critiques of this practice offered in recent years by Anthony Milton and others. In fairness, Maddicott himself acknowledges that Prideaux's theology ‘is a subject on which more remains to be said’ (p. viii), and an acknowledgment of this limitation should in no way detract from what this book does marvellously well: as already indicated above, here Maddicott provides a richly researched, full-orbed account of John Prideaux that contextualises this important but understudied figure within the university and college milieu that defined his life and work.
