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Protestant Dissent and the Law: Enforcement and Persecution, 1662–72

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2020

David L. Wykes
David L. Wykes*
Affiliation:
Dr Williams's Library, London
*
*Dr Williams's Library, 14 Gordon Sq, London, WC1H 0AR. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Religious Dissent was shaped by the law. The Act of Uniformity (1662) set out the terms of conformity, and those who could not accept those terms risked prosecution. A great many were convicted under the earlier Elizabethan and Jacobean recusancy statutes, but new laws, such as the Conventicle Acts (1664, 1670) and the Five Mile Act (1665), were also passed. Anthony Fletcher's essay, published in 1984, remains almost the only study of enforcement, in which he argued that the impact of the penal laws on Dissent has been exaggerated because the Conventicle Acts were not systematically enforced. A range of contemporary accounts will be used to suggest that their impact was greater than has been appreciated because of the enforcement of other statutes and the harassment of ejected ministers and their supporters.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 56: THE CHURCH AND THE LAW , June 2020 , pp. 306 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2020

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References

1 Matthews, A. G., Calamy Revised; being a Revision of Edmund Calamy's Account of the Ministers and others Ejected and Silenced, 1660–2 (London, 1934)Google Scholar.

2 Calamy, Edmund, An Abridgment of Mr Baxter's History of his Life and Times (London, 1702)Google Scholar; Cragg, Gerald R., Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar; Gatiss, Lee, The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans (London, 2007)Google Scholar; Alan P. F. Sell, ed., The Great Ejectment of 1662: Its Antecedents, Aftermath, and Ecumenical Significance (Eugene, OR, 2012).

3 For example, Samuel S. Thomas, Creating Communities in Restoration England: Parish and Congregation in Oliver Heywood's Halifax (Leiden, 2013).

4 Fletcher, Anthony, ‘The Enforcement of the Conventicle Acts 1664–1679’, in Sheils, W. J., ed., Persecution and Toleration, SCH 21 (Oxford, 1984), 235–46Google Scholar.

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6 Ibid. 237–44.

7 The conclusion that a large numbers of Dissenters were presented for recusancy offences at the quarter sessions and correction courts is derived from an extensive study of the original court records: for example, Cambridge, UL, EDR/B/2/54, 56, Archdeacon of Ely Visitation Book, 1662, 1663; Nottingham, Nottinghamshire Archives, A50, Archdeaconry of Nottingham Act Books, 1661–3, 1665–6, 1668–78; Northampton, Northamptonshire RO, X637.1, Archdeaconry of Northampton Court Book, 1662, 1663; QSR1/28–34, Northamptonshire Quarter Sessions, 1662–1664; Wigston, RO for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, 1 D 41/13/68, 71–76, 78, Correction Courts following Archdeacon's visitations, July 1661 – October 1673; Leeds, West Yorkshire Archive Service, RD/C/6, Archdeaconry of Richmond, Visitation and Correction Courts, 1668; Chelmsford, Essex RO, D/AEV/8, Archdeaconry of Essex, April 1665 – March 1670/1; D/AMV/1, 2, Archdeaconry of Middlesex, 1662–3, 1663/4–1665; Anon., ‘Lancashire Recusants and Quakers’, THSLC 64 (1912), 309–19, at 309, 310–15; Rogan, John, ‘Episcopal Visitations in the Diocese of Durham, 1662–71’, Archaeologia Aeliana 4th series 34 (1956), 92–109Google Scholar, at 98, 100. Wykes, David L., ‘Early Religious Dissent in Surrey after the Restoration’, Southern History 33 (2011), 54–77Google Scholar, at 58, is based on an analysis of the Surrey Quarter Sessions Records: The Order-Book for 1659–1661, and the Sessions Rolls for Easter and Midsummer, 1661, ed. D. L. Powell and H. Jenkinson, Surrey Record Society 13 (Guildford, 1934); Surrey Quarter Sessions Records: The Order-Book for 1661–1663, and the Sessions Rolls from Michaelmas, 1661, to Epiphany, 1663, ed. D. L. Powell and H. Jenkinson, Surrey Record Society 14 (Guildford, 1935).

8 The Diary of Roger Lowe, of Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, 1663–74, ed. William L. Sachse (London, 1938), 58–9 (17 April 1664).

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10 Wykes, ‘Early Religious Dissent in Surrey', 58. See also Nottinghamshire Archives, Archdeaconry of Nottingham Act Books, 1661–3; RO for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, 1 D 41/13/68, Archdeacon’s Correction Courts, July 1661 – April 1664.

11 Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, M. A. of Broad Oak, Flintshire, A. D. 1631–1696, ed. Matthew Henry Lee (London, 1882), 72, 81, 82, 97.

12 Wykes, ‘Early Religious Dissent in Surrey’, 59–60.

13 Diaries of Philip Henry, ed. Lee, 83, 84, 89, 93 (11, 14 April, 16 June, 25 August 1661).

14 ‘Rev. O. Heywood's Autobiography’, ed. J. Horsfall Turner, in The Rev. Oliver Heywood, B.A. 1630–1702; His Autobiography, Diaries, Anecdote and Event Books, 4 vols (Brighouse, 1882), 1: 178–9.

15 Ibid. 178, 179 (25 August 1661).

16 Ibid. 179–80.

17 The Cockermouth Congregational Church Book (1651–c.1765), ed. R. B. Wordsworth, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Record Series 21 (Kendal 2012), 21.

18 Ibid. 22.

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20 Cockermouth Church Book, ed. Wordsworth, 23–4.

21 Northamptonshire RO, Fermor Hesketh (Baker) MS 708, ‘An Account of the Conventicles held in the 7 Western Deaneryes of the Diocese of Peterborough’, 76 (11 August 1669).

22 Cockermouth Church Book, ed. Wordsworth, 37–8, 135 (10 February, 9 March, 1670/1, 26 March, 16 April, 14 July 1671).

23 ‘Heywood's Autobiography’, ed. Turner, 1: 182, 184. Once the excommunication had been published Heywood would have remained under its sentence until he purged himself. Yet he makes clear that another excommunication was published against him in January 1663 and a third in December that year. There is no evidence to suggest he had purged the earlier offences; indeed all the evidence is that he remained a contumacious person.

24 Ibid. 184–5.

25 Ibid. 185.

26 Ibid. 190.

27 Ibid. 192.

28 Ibid. 193.

29 Ibid. 185.

30 Ibid. 192.

31 Ibid., cf. 196.

32 Ibid. 198 (17 September 1665).

33 Ibid. 201 (14 February 1665/6).

34 Ibid. 232 (November 1666).

35 Reliquiae Baxterianae, or, Mr. Richard Baxters Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times (London, 1696), part 3, 3–4, §10.

36 Wykes, David L., ‘Dissent and Charity, 1660–1720’, in Binfield, Clyde, Ditchfield, G. M. and Wykes, David L., eds, Protestant Dissent and Philanthropy in Britain, 1660–c.1920 (Woodbridge, 2019), 28Google Scholar.

37 ‘Heywood's Autobiography’, ed. Turner, 1: 201 (24 March 1665/6).

38 Edmund Calamy, An Account of the Ministers … who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration in 1660, 2 vols (London, 1713), 2: 672 [sic 687].

39 Ibid.

40 Mathews, Calamy Revised, lix.

41 Diaries of Philip Henry, ed. Lee, 129 (14 February 1662/3).

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid. 157, 159 (14 July, 14 August 1663)

44 Diary of Roger Lowe, ed. Sachse, 18, 19 (23, 26 April 1663).

45 Analysis of Lowe's diary undertaken by the author.

46 Diary of Roger Lowe, ed. Sachse, 20 (3May 1663).

47 Ibid. 44, 78, 90–1.

48 Ibid. 25, 57.

49 Ibid. 120 (7 February 1667/8).

50 Matthews, Calamy Revised, 12, 234–5, 486, 540–1; Diary of Roger Lowe, ed. Sachse, 57, 63.

51 Bolam, C. G. et al. , The English Presbyterians: From Elizabethan Puritanism to Modern Unitarianism (London, 1968), 87, 98–9Google Scholar.