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Understanding Providence : The Difficulties of Sir William and Lady Waller

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Barbara Donagan
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Extract

In recent years the doctrine of providence has attracted increasing attention from secular historians. They have come to realise that it cannot be regarded as the exclusive domain of their religious colleagues, nor as an intellectual oddity, picturesque but irrelevant to serious analysis of political movements and choices. In Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas showed the pervasiveness of the belief in providence in early modern England and its function as explanation, consolation and reassurance in a world often unpredictable, inexplicable and unjust. Other historians have shown its place in the rise of Puritan activism. Most recently, Blair Worden has elucidated the doctrine and has powerfully demonstrated its importance as an engine of political action in the ‘politics of Cromwellian England’ as well as its part in crucial decisions in the career of Cromwell himself.

Type
Communication
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , July 1988 , pp. 433 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Worden, Blair, ‘Providence and politics in Cromwellian England’, Past and Present cix), (1985), 55–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan’, in History, Society and the Churches: essays in honour of Owen Chadwick, ed. Beales, D. and Best, G., Cambridge125–45Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic, New York 1971, 78–112Google Scholar; see Cliffe, J. T., The Puritan Gentry. The great Puritan families of early Stuart England, London 1984Google Scholar; Hunt, William, The Puritan Moment. The coming of revolution in an English Cambridge, Mass. 1983Google Scholar.

2 Worden, ‘Achan’, 140, 142–3; idem, ‘Providence’, 81–5.

3 Ibid. 98; see also p. 89.

4 Ibid. 79–80; Worden, ‘Achan’, 140.

5 On the rhetoric of ‘holy war’, see George, T., ‘War and peace in the Puritan tradition’, Church History liii (1984), 492–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also. [Tho. Barnes], Vox Belli, or, An Alarm to Wane, London 1626Google Scholar. On the uncertainties of war in practice (for example, the unpredictability of men, weather and arms), see Hall, A. R., Ballistics in the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge 1952, 55Google Scholar; Vicars, John, Gods Arke Overtopping the Worlds Waves, in Vicars, John, Magnolia Dei Anglicana, London 1646, 275Google Scholar; Wogan, Edward, ‘The Proceedings of the New-moulded army… 1645… 1647’, in Tho. Carte, A Collection of Original Letters and Papers, 2 vols, London 1739, i. 129Google Scholar; The Memoirs of General Fairfax, Leeds 1776, 116Google Scholar; A Relation of the Battaile lately fought between Keynton and Edgehill, Oxford 1642, 2–4Google Scholar.

6 For examples not limited to Puritans or the English Civil War, see [George Wilde], A Sermon preached… In St. Maries Oxford, Oxford 1643, 3Google Scholar, for a royalist view of the war as ‘a work… of chance’; Monro, Robert, Monro His Expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment, London 1637, ii. 151Google Scholar, 166–7. See below nn. 59–60 for Waller's use of such ideas. The use of lots (a traditional military practice) as a regular, official agent of decision-making in matters affecting the lives and deaths of soldiers may also have increased the perception of the operation of chance. See Elton, Richard, The Compleat Body of the Art Military, 2nd edn, London 1659, 184Google Scholar, 187; Sprigge, Ioshua, Anglia Rediviva: Englands Recovery, London 1647, 69Google Scholar; Diary of the Marches of the royal Army …kept by Richard Symonds (Camden Society lxxiv, 1859), 251Google Scholar.

7 Cf. Hill, Christopher, The Experience of Defeat, London 1984Google Scholar.

8 State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols, Oxford 1767–1786Google Scholar, iii. 446, 657.

9 Vindica'ion of the Character and Conduct of Sir William Waller, Knight; Commander in of the Parliament Forces in the West: Explanatory of his Conduct in taking up Arms against Charles the First, London 1793, 225Google Scholar, 24iff., 301.

10 Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, 3 vols, Oxford 1702–1704, ii. 215Google Scholar; Rushworth, John, Historical Collections, 8 vols, London 1680–1701Google Scholar, v. 808. For Waller's early life generally, see Adair, John, Roundhead General. A military biography of Sir William Waller, London 1969, 18–43Google Scholar; see also DNB, ‘Sir William Waller (1597?–1668)’.

11 Mercurius Aulicus, Oxford 1642–1645, 1147Google Scholar.

12 The Harcourt Papers, i, ed. Harcourt, E. W., OxfordGoogle Scholar, n.d., 169, 171; for Sir Simon Harcourt see ibid. 149, 152–5; see also A Letter sent from Sr. Simon Harcourt, To a worthy Member of the House of Commons, London 1641Google Scholar.

13 Harcourt Papers, i. 169–99; Vindication; Sir William Waller, Divine Meditations Upon Several Occasions: With a Dayly Directory, London 1680; Sir William Waller, Recollections, printed in The Poetry of Anna Matilda, London, 1788; ‘Sr. Wm Waller's Remarks-Experiences’, Wadham College Library, Oxford. I am grateful to the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College for permission to consult this manuscript. Many of Waller's official letters to parliament reporting the progress of his campaigns were published; some are cited below.

14 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 429, 437. Cf. Waller's fellow parliamentary commander, Sir Thomas Myddelton, whose career in many ways strikingly paralleled his own, but whose plunge into the Booth rebellion earned later reward. Chirk Castle Accounts, A.D. 1605–1666, comp. W. M. Myddelton, St Alban's 1908, [iii]-x; DNB, ‘Sir Thomas Myddelton’. Waller's ‘discouragements’ against further active engagement were already evident in 1645, although he continued to ‘wish…as well to the cause as any man’, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Seventh Report, Pi 1. Appendix, ‘MSS of the Earl of Egmont’, 237.

15 Meditations, 6–7, 74, 164.

16 Ibid. 62.

17 Ibid. 16–17.

18 Ibid. 114–15.

19 Wood, Anthony, Athenae Oxonienses, 2nd edn, London 1721, 418Google Scholar.

20 Meditations, 124, 126, 147.

21 Ibid. 74.

22 Ibid. 67; Recollections, 108; ‘Experiences’, 25 ; see also Harcourt Papers, i. 178: ‘I have found him allways a God near att hand, and not farr off.’

23 Meditations, 49–55.

24 Ibid. 119; see also Vindication, 214–16.

25 Meditations, 56 ; cf. Lady Waller, Harcourt Papers, i. 170, 173, 176, 181, 185; also Sir Thomas Myddelton, who was ‘consumed’ to skin and bone by gout and, like Waller, found consolation in his books and gardens, Chirk Castle Accounts, 132.

26 Recollections, 106 ; ‘Experiences, 28.

27 Harcourt Papers, i. 174, 183–4, :95 Recollections, 106–7.

28 Harcourt Papers, i. 188–9.

29 E.g. ibid. 180–5.

30 Recollections, 108; ‘Experiences’, 9–10.

31 Recollections, 130, 132–4. These remarks should be read in conjunction with Waller's discussion of the ‘immoderate’ grief he felt at the death of those he loved, Meditations, 160, 167–8.

32 Harcourt Papers, i. 170.

33 Ibid. i. 169–71, 173, 179–80, 191–2, 196; Recollections, 127–9.

34 ‘Experiences’, 62; Recollections, 130–1.

35 Meditations, 66, 68, 71; see also Harcourt Papers, i. 189, on Waller's treatmen t ‘as if he e had bin a great offender’.

36 Recollections, 116–19 ; Vindication, 58, 100–6.

37 Recollections, 105–6, 116, 120; Harcourt Papers, i. 175, 189–92.

38 ‘Experiences’, 3 ; Recollections, 105; Harcourt Papers, i. 191–2.

39 Harcourt Papers, i. 190 an d 175.

40 Recollections, 116.

41 Ibid.

42 Vindication, 217, 224.

43 Ibid. 216–18.

44 Ibid. 10.

45 Ibid. 196–7.

46 Ibid. 162.

47 Ibid. 24 and 9–11, 143, 167, 194; see also Harcourt Papers, i. 197–8.

48 Recollections, 120–6. Compare Sir Thomas Fairfax, who saw God's judgement at work i n England and perceived ‘crises’ stemming from ‘ambition and dissimulation’ of former allies’. His hope was that God would ‘one day clear this cause we undertook so far as concerns his honour and the integrity of such as faithfully served in it, for I cannot believe that such wonderful successes shall be given in vain’, ‘Short Memorialls of some things to be cleared during my command in the Army’, BL Harl. MS 2315, fos 1, 13V. This passage was omitted in Short Memorials of Thomas Lord Fairfax, London 1699Google Scholar.

49 Ibid. 108.

50 Ibid. 110–12; ‘Experiences’, 13–14.

51 E.g. A Letter From Sir William Waller, A Member of the House of Commons, To the Right Honorable, Robert Earl of Essex… Of a Great Victory …at Malmsbury, Londo n 1643, 28 March; The Victorious and Fortunate Proceedings of Sir William Waller and hisforces in Wales, and other Places since they left Malmesbury, London 1643, 15Google Scholar April; A Narration of The great Victory, (Through Gods Providence) Obtained…At Alton, n.p. 1643, 16 December.

52 Recollections, n o, 112.

53 Ibid. 123–4, 131.

54 Vindication, 317.

55 Clarendon Papers, ii. 179, 215; Victorious and Fortunate Proceedings.

56 Recollections, no ; ‘Experiences’, 15.

57 Vindication, 14; Recollections, 131.

58 Victorious and Fortunate Proceedings, n.p.; Vicars, John, Jehovah-Jireh. God in the Mount (London 1644Google Scholar), in idem, Magnalia Dei, 375.

59 Vindication, 100–2, [3]22–3; Meditations, 135–6.

60 Vindication, 317 ; Meditations, 52, 133–4.

61 Vindication, [3]25. Waller's ‘fran k though prudent’ advice to royalist agents in 1659 entailed no more tha n cautious inactio n on his own part, Clarendon Papers, iii. 444–5. Compare the discussion of Sir William Brereton in John Morrill, ‘Sir William Brereton and England's Wars of Religion’, Journal of British Studies xxiv (1985), 311–32, esp. a t pp. 329–32.

62 Clarendon Papers, iii. 647. On the conjunction of providential and moral duty, see Donagan, B., ‘Godly choice: Puritan decision-making in seventeenth-century England’, Harvard Theological Review lxxvi (1983), 321–5Google Scholar.

63 Harcourl Papers, i. 187–8.

64 Pearson, Richard, Providence Bringing Good out of Evil, in a sermon, preached on … the day of thanksgiving for the discovery of the late treasonable conspiracy against His Majesties government, London 1684, 41–2Google Scholar. Charles 11 was ‘a Prince… signalized by the particular Care of Providence’ and ‘all along preserved by almost a continued series of Miracles’, ibid. 21; see also 27–8.

65 Seaver, Paul S., Wallington's World. A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London, Stanford 1985, 178–81Google Scholar, 194.

66 Sibbes, Richard, ‘Th e Soul's Conflict’, Complete Works, ed. Grosart, A. B., 7 vols, Edinburgh 1862–1867, i. 211Google Scholar. Cf. Richard Cromwell in 1659, quoted in Worden, ‘Providence’, 80; and the discussion of Oliver Cromwell's ‘more conventional and more stoical approach to providence’ in his last years, in ‘Achan’, 140.

67 Vindication, viii-xi.