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Iconoclasm, Iconography, and the Altar in the English Civil War*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jacqueline Eales
Jacqueline Eales*
Affiliation:
Hollins College, London
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Extract

On 16 January 1641 Anna Temple wrote from Broughton, Oxfordshire, to her daughter in Sussex:

God is exceeding good to us every way, both body and souls, and hath done wonderful things among us already, and gives us hope of more, and that we shall see idolatry and superstition rooted out; and God’s ordinances set up in the purity and power of them. Altars begin to go down apace and rails in many places, and yours must follow if it be not down already. Let us labour to be thankful and continue our prayers, hold up our hands that Israel may prevail.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 28: The Church and the Arts , 1992 , pp. 313 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

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Footnotes

*

The initial research for this paper was undertaken during my tenure of a 1988-9 British Academy Thank Offering to Britain Fellowship. I am grateful to the trustees of the Thank Offering Fund and to the Fellows of the British Academy for their support for my work.

I would like to thank Andrew Foster and Peter Lake for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also indebted to Judith Maltby for allowing me to make use of her unpublished paper ‘“Contentiousnesse in a Feaste of Charity”: The Altar Controversy in the Church of England, 1547-1640’, and to Sheila Hingley and the staff of Canterbury Cathedral Library for their help with printed sources.

References

1 East Sussex County Record Office, MS Dunn 51/54. For the general subject of English iconoclasm see Phillips, J., The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England, 1535-1660 (Los Angeles, 1973)Google Scholar; Aston, M., England’s Iconoclasts: Laws Against Images (Oxford, 1988).Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Newcomen, M., The Craft and Cruelty of the Churches Adversaries Discovered in a Sermon Preached at St Margaret’s in Westminster, before the Honourable House of Commons Assembled in Parliament November 5 1642 (London, 1643), pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

3 Heylyn, P., Antidotum Lincolniense. Or an Answer to a Book Entitled, the Holy Table Name, and thing, 1st edn (London, 1637)Google Scholar, sig. A2r. Heylyn was writing in reply to an anonymous tract by Bishop Williams entitled The Holy Table, Name and Thing, published in 1637. William Prynne, A Quench-Coal or a Brief Disquisition and Inquiry in what Place of the Church or Chancelthe Lord’s Table ought to be Situated, Especially when the Sacrament is Administered (Amsterdam, 1637), p. 14.

4 A Petition Presented to the Parliament from the County of Nottingham. Complaining of Grievances under the Ecclesiastical government by Archbishops, Bishops, etc arising from the Inconveniences in that form or Constitution of Government, and praying the removal of the same Inconveniences (London, 1641), pp. 12-13.

5 Lightbown, R., ‘Charles I and the Art of the Goldsmith’, in MacGregor, A., ed., The Late King’s Goods: Collections, Possessions and Patronage of Charles I in the Light of the Commonwealth Sale Inventories (Oxford, 1989), pp. 244–54.Google Scholar

6 Browne, T., Religio Medici (np, 1643), p. 5 Google Scholar. The two previous editions of 1642 were both unauthorized by the author.

7 Collinson, P., From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: the Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation-University of Reading, Stenton Lecture (1985), pp. 22–9.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, the papers of the Long Parliament Committee for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition, chaired by Sir Robert Harley, BL, MS Add. 70005, fols 107r-35r.

9 Kenyon, J. P., The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 170–1.Google Scholar

10 Tyacke, N., Anti-Calvinists: the Rise of English Arminianism c.1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

11 Gardiner, S. R., The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660, 3rd edn rev. (Oxford, 1968), p. 80.Google Scholar

12 Notestein, W. and Relf, F. H., eds, Commons Debates for 1629 (Minneapolis, 1921), pp. 144, 203–4.Google Scholar

13 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 84.

14 Heylyn, P., A Coal from the Altar, or an Answer to a Letter not long since written to the Vicar of Grantham against the placing of the Communion Table at the East End of the Chancel (London, 1636), pp. 64–6.Google Scholar

15 Foster, A., ‘Church Policies of the 1630s’, in Cust, Richard and Hughes, Ann, eds, Conflict in Early Stuart England (Harlow, 1989), p. 204 Google Scholar; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 202-8. Recent research on the implementation of the altar policy suggests that by 1640 its acceptance was extensive, indeed almost universal, in many areas: Davies, J., ‘The Growth and Implementation of Laudianism with Special Reference to the Southern Province’ (Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1987), pp. 214–64.Google Scholar

16 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 199-200, 204.

17 Hunt, W., The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County-Harvard Historical Studies, 102 (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 285–6 Google Scholar; M.A.E. Green, ed., Diary of John Rous Incumbent of Santon Doumham, Suffolk from 1625 to 1642-Publications of the Camden Society, os 66 (1856), p. 99; cited in Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 83.

18 HMC, Fourth Report, Manuscripts of the House of Lords (London, 1874), pp. 74,80.

19 PRO SP 16/491/119.

20 , W. I., Certain Affirmations in Defence of the Pulling Down of Communion Rails, by Divers Rash and Misguided People, Judiciously and Religiously Answered by a Gentleman of Worth (London, 1641), p. 3.Google Scholar

21 For this constitutional point see Eales, Jacqueline, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 130–5.Google Scholar

22 Birch, T., The Court and Times of Charles I, 2 (London, 1849), pp. 311–13 Google Scholar; see also Veevers, Erica, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 165–8.Google Scholar

23 PRO SP16/453/96. In November 1642 and again in the following March the House of Commons ordered that the ‘monuments of idolatry’ in the chapel should be demolished, Commons Journals, II, 843,1001, III, 27.

24 BL, MS Add. 27962 K, fol. 84r-v: I am grateful to Michelle Brown of the British Library Western Manuscripts Department for her assistance with this latter reference.

25 Commons Journals, III, 57,63; Mercurius Aulicus (16-22 June 1644), p. 1040.

26 Heylyn, A Coal from the Altar, pp. 64-6.

27 Heylyn, A Coal from the Altar, p. 2; J. Pocklington, Altare Christianum: or, The Dead Vicar’s Plea. Wherein the Vicar of Gr[antham] being dead, yet speaketh, and pleadeth out of Antiquity, against him that hath broken down his Altar (London, 1637), pp. 148-9,146.

28 Prynne, A Quench-Coal, pp. 5, 70.

29 The Book of Common Prayer called for ‘the table at the communion time’ to have ‘a fair white linen cloth upon it’, while the canons of 1604 ordered that the communion table ‘be covered, in time of divine service, with a carpet of silk or other decent stuff, thought meet by the ordinary of the place… and with a fair linen cloth at the time of ministration’: Edward Cardwell, Synodaliat: A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons and Proceedings of Convocations in the Province of Canterbury from the Year 1547 to the Year 1717, 1 (Oxford, 1842), p. 293.

30 Prynne, A Quench-Coal, p. 70; BL, MS Add. 70002, fol. 365V; A Copy of the Proceedings of Some Worthy and Learned Divines, appointed by the Lords to meet at The Bishop of Lincoln’s in West minster Touching Innovations in the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England (London, 1641), p. 4.

31 Culmer, R., Cathedral News from Canterbury: shewing the Canterburian Cathedral to be in an Abbey-Like, Corrupt, and Rotten Condition (London, 1644), pp. 2, 6.Google Scholar

32 Prynne, W., Canterburies Doom (London, 1646), pp. 62, 67–8, 466, 474, 463.Google Scholar

33 The Petition and Articles Exhibited in Parliament against John Pocklington Doctor in Divinity Parson of Yelden in Bedfordshire (London, 1641), p. 1; An Answer to a lawless Pamphlet entitled the Petition and Articles Exhibited in Parliament against Doctor Haywood, late Chaplain to the Bishop of Canterbury (London, 1641), p. 15.

34 Boreman, R., A Mirror of Christianity and a Miracle of Charity, or a True and Exact Narrative of the Life and Death of the most Virtuous Lady, Alice Duchess Dudley (London, 1669), pp. 22–4.Google Scholar

35 BL MS Add. 70002, fol. 138r; Commons Journals, III, 57. For Harley, see Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, passim.

36 PRO SP16/381/92.

37 Notestein, W., ed., The Journal of Sir Simonas D’Elues From the Beginning of the Long Parliament to the Opening of the Trial of the Earl of Strafford (New Haven, 1923), pp. 43, 46.Google Scholar

38 BL, MS Add. 70002, fol. 344r; MS Add. 70086/73.

39 BL, MS Add. 70003, fol. 99r.

40 The accusation that the secular and religious authorities in England had encouraged idolatry was particularly inflammatory, for its logical end lay in the tenets of resistance theory, see C. Dow, Innovations Unjustly Charged Upon the Present Church and State or an Answer to the most Material Passages of a Libellous Pamphlet made by Mr Henry Burton, and Entitled An Apology of an Appeal etc. (London, 1637), pp. 140-1, 191. One of the most famous resistance tracts, John Ponet’s Treatise of Politique Power, first published in 1556, and which argued forcefully for the overthrow of idolatrous rulers, was reprinted in 1642: John Ponet, A Short Treatise of Politique Power, and of the true Obedience which Subjects owe Kings, and other Civil Governors, 1st edn (Strasbourg, 1556), repr. (London, 1642). I am grateful to Johann Somerville for his help with this reference.

41 See, for example, Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 93.