Although most historians of the English Civil War pay lip service to Puritanism as one of its main ingredients, as a matter of fact, the analysis of religious conviction is rarely undertaken except, perhaps, in regard to the ministers. How deeply Puritanism impinged on the laity is either ignored or treated in an imprecise fashion or explained as rationalisation of deeper economic or social concerns. The Whig historians, who coined the phrase ‘Puritan Revolution’, really see Puritanism playing a general political role, leading to toleration, with the advanced exponents of liberty, like Cromwell, or as causing the opposition to clerical episcopal tyranny in the case of people like Prynne. Even so careful an historian as W. A. Shaw fails completely to understand Pym’s use of biblical imagery and, I think, basically underplays the religiosity of the Parliament men.
IN his A Briefe discovery of the False Church 1590, Henry Barrowe, one of the leading Elizabethan Separatists, wrote, 'All the profane and wicked of the land; atheists, papists, anabaptists and heretics of all sorts; gluttonous, rioters, blasphemers. .. and who not. .. all without exception. .. are received into and nourished in the bosom of this Church. .. none are kept out. All this people with all their manners were in one day with one blast of Queen Elizabeth's trumpet of ignorant papists and gross idolators made faithful Christian and true professors.' With this rip-roaring blast from his own trumpet, Henry Barrowe underlined the Puritan unease with a church which did not, in his eyes, match up to the patterns of the Church in the New Testament. To the Puritan members of the Church of England, that church was only 'halfly reformed'. At first the Puritan attack was on what they considered to be the non-biblical elements in the Prayer Book-making the sign of the cross, responses, use of the ring in the marriage service, the use of vestments, and often the absence of preaching. When the bishops, most of whom, prior to 1580, were Puritanly inclined, acting under pressure from the Queen, said that these were tolerable matters, the attack was directed at episcopacy itself and a determined effort under John Field was aimed at 'presbyterianising' the Church of England-but always with the understanding that this must be accomplished through the civil Christian magistrate. But to those who believed reform of the Church to be above all other considerations, this was an impossible compromise. There must be, in Robert Browne's words, 'no tarrying for any' not even for the godly magistrate. So a number of Puritans broke with the whole concept of a national Church in favour of a gathered Church of true Christians. But how were true Christians to be known? This led to the importance of a confession of faith and the Church covenant. All agreed that the elect were known to God alone, but a confession of faith and the deliberate joining of a covenanted community was seen as a generally reliable test. This remained the common practice of the Separatists and the Independents (or semi-separatists who still wanted to be a National Church in a restricted sense) in Old England.
Who were the Independents? This is one of the unsolved puzzles of the English Civil War. Contemporaries gave differing answers. To some they were the godly; to others they were “the godly gang.” They were both a Puritan group and a political segment of the Long Parliament. S. R. Gardiner and the Whig historians tended to make a clear connection. Religious Independency was for toleration, and the political Independents were, simpliciter, the party of toleration opposed to the intolerant Presbyterians. This view was broadly accepted until 1938 when it was permanently shattered by J. H. Hexter, whose penetrating article showed that many political Independents (and for this purpose he defined them as the Regicides and those who survived Pride's Purge) were elders in the established church which after the Westminster Assembly had a Presbyterian form of government. He therefore urged that the term Independent was really a label for the most ardent political Puritans applied to them by the more conservative.Then in 1953 H. R. Trevor-Roper in his brilliant essay on “the Gentry” introduced a new approach by equating the Independents with the lesser and declining gentry who had been shut out from the spoils of court office and therefore pursued a policy of decentralization.It was at this stage that I wrote an introductory study on the problem of the Independents that questioned in part the suggestions put forward in both these works. Against Hexter I urged that the term Independent had a greater religious content that he allowed, for many of his “Independent” Presbyterian elders in fact became Independents in religion or certainly veered in that direction.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.