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‘From Fire and Water’: the Responsibilities of Godparents in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

William Coster
William Coster*
Affiliation:
Bedford College of Higher Education
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Extract

Richard Hooker, in justifying the formula of the baptismal rite of the Elizabethan Prayer Book, objected to the Puritan preference for referring to godparents as witnesses ‘… as if they came but to see and to testify what is done’, adding,

It savoureth more of piety to give them their old accustomed name of Fathers and Mothers in God, whereby they are well put in mind what affection they ought to bear towards those innocents, for whose religious education the Church accepteth them as pledges.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 301 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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References

1 R. Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the Fifth Book, ed. R. Bayne (London, 1902) p. 338. All spelling in extracts has been modernized, except in the case of personal names.

2 E. N. Goody, ‘Forms of pro-parenthood: the sharing and substitution of parental roles’, in J. Goody, ed., Kinship, Selected Readings (London, 1971), pp. 331-45.

3 B. Hanawalt, The Ties Thai Bound. Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford, 1986), p. 246.

4 Printed in translation in J. D. C. Fisher, Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West. A Study in the Disintegration of the Primitive Rite of Initiation (London, 1965), p. 175.

5 Ibid., pp. 172-3.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 177.

8 G. W. Bromiley, Baptism and the Anglican Reformers (London, 1953), p. 127.

9 W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy, eds, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, vol. 2, 1536-1558 = Alcuin Club Collections, 15 (London, 1910), pp. 6, 7 and 48.

10 The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (London, 1910), p. 241.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 241.

14 Ibid., p. 399.

15 However, in Geneva a single godparent was retained and Calvin’s baptismal rite did not specify who should present the child. See Bossy, J., ‘Godparenthood: the fortunes of a social institution in early modern Christianity’, in Greyerz, K. von, ed. Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (London, 1981), p. 199 Google Scholar. Early English opposition to godparents can be seen in Nicholson, W., ed., The Remains of Edmund Grindal, D.D., Successfully Bishop of London and Archbishop of York and Canterbury, PS, 9 (1844) p. 205 Google Scholar.

16 W. H. Frere and Douglas, C. E., eds, Puritan Manifestoes. A Study of the Puritan Revolt, with a Reprint of the Admonition to the Parliament and Kindred Documents, 1572 (repr. London, 1954), p. 28 Google Scholar.

17 Ayre, J., ed., The Works of John Whitgift, PS, 40, Pt 2 (1853), p. 120 Google Scholar.

18 Hale, W., A Series of Precedents and Proceedings from Criminal Causes, Extending from the Year 1475–1640, Extracted from the Act Books of the Ecclesiastical Courts in the Diocese of London (Edinburgh, 1973), p. 256 Google Scholar; this case was however dismissed on the grounds that ‘by error he did stand and that Mr. Pease [presumably the incumbent] did not tell him to the contrary’, see also Bromiley, , Baptism, p. 128 Google Scholar, and Robinson, H. R., ed., The Zurich Letters (Second Series) Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others, with some of the Helvetian Reformers, During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, PS, 8 (1845), pp. 149 Google Scholar and 133.

19 The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical (Made in the Year 1603, and Amended in the Year 1865:), to Which are Added the Thirty-Nine Articles of The Church of England (London, 1908), p. 16. The 29th Canon referred to stated that ‘no parent shall be urged to be present, nor be admitted to answer as Godfather for his own child …’. See also Bailey, D. S., Sponsors at Baptism and Confirmation, an Historical Introduction to Anglican Practice (London, 1952), p. 92 Google Scholar.

20 Gennep, A. van (trans. M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee), The Rites of Passage (London, 1960), p. 63 Google Scholar.

21 Schückling, L. L., The Puritan Family: A Social Study from the Literary Sources (London, 1969), pp. 56–95 Google Scholar.

22 York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, Exchequer and Prerogative Wills, vols 9 to 52 and boxed wills for 1636 to 1652/3.

23 Ibid., vol. 23a, fol. 394, will of Hugh Synne, 1586. In this period the term gossip/gpdsib usually referred to the relationship between two godparents of the same child or between a godparent and natural parent of a child; therefore Burrowe is probably the godparent of Agnes.

24 Ibid.

25 P. Clark, ‘The migrant in Kentish towns, 1580-1640’, in P. Clark and P. Slack, eds, Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1700, Essays in Urban History (London, 1972), p. 136.

26 York, Borthwick Institute, Exchequer and Prerogative Wills, vols 9 to 52, boxed wills for 1636 to 1652/3 and Parish Registers of Bilton-in-Ainsty, Bil. 1 and Bil. 2.

27 Ibid., Exchequer and Prerogative Wills, vol. 28b, fol. 556, will of Henry Brigge, 1599.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., vol. 22b fol. 391, will of James Turner, 1583.

30 Ibid., vol. 28b, fol. 691, will of Robert Caplewood, 1602.

31 Ibid., Register of Tuitions and Curations, 1592-1638.

32 H. Labras and K. W. Wachter, ‘Living forebears in stable populations’ in K. W. Wachter, E. A. Hammel and P. Laslett, eds. Statistical Studies of Historical Social Structure (New York, 1978), p. 187.

33 W. J. Kaye and E. W. W. Kaye, eds. The Registers of Newchurch in the Township of Culcheth = Lancashire Parish Register Society, 22 (1905), p. 9.

34 Fisher, Christian Initiation, p. 178, and Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, p. 16, No. 29.

35 Cited in Macfarlane, A., The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenth-Century Clergyman: an Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), p. 144 Google Scholar.

36 Cited in Houlbrooke, R. A., The English Family, 1450-1700 (London, 1984), p. 131 Google Scholar.

37 Parkinson, R., ed., The life of Adam Martindale, Written by Himself = Chetham Society, os 4 (1845), p. 5 Google Scholar.

38 C. Jackson and Morehouse, H. J., eds, Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Surtees Society, 65 (1877), p. 5 Google Scholar.

39 Dick, O. L., ed., Aubrey’s Brief Lives, 3rd edn (London, 1962), p. 114 Google Scholar.

40 York, Borthwick Institute, Exchequer and Prerogative Wills, vol. lib, fol. 678, will of Richard Palmes, 1543.

41 Hanawalt. The Ties That Bound, p. 248, and Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, p. 145. Interesting comparisons can be drawn with Stephen Guedman’s investigations into the parallel complex of compadrazgo (co-parenthood) in Veraguas Province, Panama, in ‘The Compadrazgo as a reflection of the spiritual and natural person’, Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1971), pp. 41, 56 & 60.

42 S. Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws, Kinship and Marriage in England (London, 1988), pp. 22-3.

43 This concept of baptism as entry to the household of God can be seen in Ayre, J., ed., The Catechism of Thomas Becon S.T.P., Chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, Prebendary & C, With Other Pieces Written by Him in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, PS, 11 (1844), p. 202 Google Scholar.

44 Davis, H., Worship and Theology in England. From Andrews to Baxter and Fox, 1603–1600 (Princctown, 1975). p. 410 Google Scholar.

45 Hooker, , Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, p. 342 Google Scholar.