Finding Elizabeth

Abstract

The "beauty of holiness," the ceremonialist agenda of the Laudians during the Personal Rule of King I (r.1625-1649), was in many ways a serious shift from and challenge to the devotional and theological ethos that had dominated the Church of England since the 1570s. So stark was this shift that scholars today regularly cite the rigid enforcement of the "beauty of holiness" as one of the precipitating causes of the English Civil Wars that broke out in 1642. The rise of Laudianism, then, and its claim on the character of the nation's established church, the church's devotional life, and England's confessional identity, was no small matter. Perhaps the most understudied aspect of the Laudian movement was the way this circle of clergy argued that their program for the church was neither a challenge nor, for that matter, innovative. Recent historians have described how the Laudians used various rhetorical strategies to present their vision as perfectly orthodox, a mere restatement of old-fashioned principles and practices long enjoyed since the happy reign of Queen Elizabeth (r.1558-1603). Developing arguments from scripture, from the practice of the early church, or simply the more obvious need to worship God with reverence, the Laudians shifted their apologetic strategies depending on the moment. This project considers in detail a particular Laudian strategythe appeal to precedents from the Elizabethan church. In addition to reflecting on the malleable nature of history in the early modern period and on the character of what one might call the rhetoric of conservatism, this project reveals the power of the image of Elizabeth Tudor in seventeenth century religious polemics. This dissertation is concerned not so much with Puritans, but rather with two groups who both claimed to be conformists and who both based that claim on adherence to Elizabethan principles. Both Laudians and, as one scholar describes them, "old style" conformists both claimed ownership of a legitimating Elizabethan past and thus ownership of a normative identity. At a broad level, my research seeks to understand a v Library, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. A PhD dissertation is not written without considerable financial assistance, and therefore I would like to thank the Department of Religious Studies for its four-year award of a teaching assistantship and the Graduate College for its award of a Ballard-Seashore Dissertation Year Fellowship during my fifth year of study. Moreover, research in the United Kingdom was supported by a T. Anne Cleary Fellowship from the university and a grant from the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church. Research in the Folger was supported by assistance from the Mellon Foundation and greatly augmented by a paleography seminar. The Department of Religious Studies" Graduate Student Organization has provided a spectacular environment for graduate training and my life and my research have been shaped immensely by a wide-range of conversations over both coffee and beer, on long car rides to conferences,...