‘Makynge Recusancy Deathe Outrighte’? Thomas Pounde, Andrew Willet and The Catholic Question in Early Jacobean England

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
James I ◽  
Favourable Attitude ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Religious Question ◽  
The Church ◽  
Vexing Question

With the accession of James VI of Scotland to England’s throne as James I, many English Catholics began hoping that the vexing question of religion would soon be resolved in a manner not unfavourable to their faith. James, after all, was the son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and it seemed not impossible that he would convert to the Catholic faith. The diplomatic contact with Spain that would eventually produce the Treaty of 1604 was already in process and religious toleration was one element in the discussion. But the more significant grounds for Catholics’ hope came most certainly from the position on the English religious question enunciated by the King himself. As his reign began, James seemed to be demonstrating a more favourable attitude towards Catholics than towards Puritans. His Basilikon Down declared the Church of Rome and the Church of England ‘agree in the grounds’, while his first speech to Parliament in March 1604 characterized Catholicism as ‘a religion, falsely called Catholik, but trewly Papist’, while defining the Puritans, as ‘a sect rather than a Religion’.

A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt – I

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

The Exclusion of Catholics from the Lord Chancellorship, 1673–1954

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 166-174
Author(s):  
F. J. Grady
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Simple Device ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
James I ◽  
The Church

The composition and policies of Charles Il’s Cabal ministry in the years 1667-73 provoked a vigorous reaction from the Pension Parliament. It forced the king to cancel his Declaration of Indulgence in March 1672 as being both unconstitutional and dangerous to the Church, for it implied a prerogative power to suspend Acts of Parliament and it facilitated the already alarming growth of Popery under the patronage of Louis XIV. In the following year, in order to make another Cabal impossible, Parliament passed an “Act for preventing dangers which may happen from Popish recusants”, commonly called the Test Act. By it, all Catholics holding office under the Crown were deprived by the simple device of demanding that they should take the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance of Elizabeth and James I respectively; receive the Sacrament according to the usage of the Church of England, and make this Declaration : “I, A.B., do declare that I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord,s Supper, or in the elements of bread and wine at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever”.

A Comment: Concerning the Name Puritan

1980 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Collinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Time Span ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Life ◽  
The Church

With Professor Christianson, one can only deplore the paucity of books dealing with the history of the Church of England between the Elizabethan Settlement and the Civil War. With the exception of histories covering a somewhat longer time span, there has been no attempt at synthesis since Bishop W. H. Frere's The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (1904), which was part of a series answering to a semi-popular and general interest in the Church of England ‘as a factor in the development of national life and character’. It is remarkable and even scandalous that the greatly altered perspectives of twentieth-century historians are not reflected in a more recent and adequate account of the post-Reformation and pre-revolutionary Church. The Jacobean epoch is a particularly neglected subject, to which even Frere devoted no more than 100 of his 400 pages, giving it no particular shape or significance. Jacobean bishops of the calibre of Toby Matthew, James Montague and Thomas Morton were not even mentioned. Today that singular and exemplary figure, Arthur Lake, Laud's predecessor as bishop of Bath and Wells, is totally forgotten. The reason for our myopia is not very flattering to modern historiography. Unlike the Reformation of the Church of England, or the Elizabethan Church, the Jacobean Church was not a subject for Gilbert Burnet or for John Strype, and consequently (or so it seems) it is not a subject for us.

Grace and Conformity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Theological Controversy ◽  
Theological Vision ◽  
The Church

The Reformed Conformity that flourished within the Early Stuart English Church was a rich and distinctive theological tradition that has never before been studied in its own right. While scholars have observed how Reformed Conformists clashed with Laudians and Puritans alike, no sustained study of their teaching on grace and their attitude to the Church has yet been undertaken, despite the acknowledged centrality of these topics to Early Stuart theological controversy. This ground-breaking monograph recovers this essential strand of Early Stuart Christian identity. It examines and analyses the teaching and writings of ten prominent theologians, all of whom made significant contributions to the debates that arose within the Church of England during the reigns of James I and Charles I and all of whom combined their loyalty to orthodox Reformed teaching on grace and salvation, with a commitment to the established polity of the English Church. The study makes the case for the coherence of their theological vision by underlining the connections that these Reformed Conformists made between their teaching on grace and their approach to Church order and liturgy. By engaging with a robust and influential theological tradition that was neither Puritan nor Laudian, this monograph significantly enriches our account of the Early Stuart Church, as well as contributing to the ongoing scholarly reappraisal of the wider Reformed tradition. It builds on the resurgence of academic interest in British soteriological discussion, and uses that discussion, as previous studies have not, to gain valuable new insights into Early Stuart ecclesiology.

Oxford and the Origins of Liberal Catholicism in the Church of England

1964 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Satisfactory Explanation ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Knowledge ◽  
The Church ◽  
Religious Training

The publication of Lux Mundi in 1889 has long been regarded as an important moment in the development of Anglican thought. Equally familiar is the distress which the new turn gave to H. P. Liddon, who could only regard the effort made by the Lux Mundi group to set the Catholic faith in its right relation to modern knowledge as capitulation to the snares of liberalism, and as ultimately fatal to the close coherence of Christian truth. The book represented a new grafting upon the stock of the English Catholic party, and no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered of the reasons why such a theology was produced within the post-Tractarian circle at Oxford. The new outlook involved a wholesale change from the deductive theology of the Tractarians with its imperatives against the world and all those things which liberalism accepted in the world, to an inductive theology which appealed to men for Christ by showing how the best and truest things led up to Him and found fulfilment in Him. At the same time religion appeared now as an interpretation of the world as well as of the Church, and the intense conservatism of Pusey and Keble was replaced by the radicalism of Scott Holland and Gore. The question is first why these new attitudes grew up amongst men who more than any others were conditioned against them by intense religious training, and, secondly, a question regarded by Prestige as inexplicable, how it came about that Liddon was so shocked by a publication which embodied tendencies which had been notorious for twenty years and of which, in a letter to Scott Holland in 1884, he had seemed quite clearly aware.

Tolerance as a Dimension of Hobbes’s Absolutism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franck Lessay
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Logical Consequence ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Full Independence ◽  
The Church

The sovereign’s unlimited power, including in religious matters, was a logical consequence of Hobbes’s politics. Yet this chapter argues that by making civil peace the criterion by which public doctrines must be appraised, instead of intrinsic truth or the citizens’ salvation, Hobbes restricted the sovereign’s mission in the field of religion to a secular preoccupation, thus legitimizing a policy of non-interference with theological debates. Besides, Hobbes’s ecclesiology tended to transform the church into a mere function of the state, while a comprehensive structure like the Church of England appeared to Hobbes as the best adapted for allowing maximum individual autonomy in terms of belief. By a striking paradox, this chapter concludes, it was as ‘supreme pastor’ that the sovereign could assume full independence from religious concerns and implement a policy of religious toleration oriented towards peace between contending faiths.

Refugees

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Francis J. Bremer
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
The Church ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Dutch City

Growing pressure on English separatists led many to seek refuge in the Netherlands, where there was greater religious toleration. After a few attempts that were prevented by English authorities, the Scrooby congregation migrated to Amsterdam, joining briefly with the English Ancient Church there. Shortly thereafter they moved on to Leiden, a Dutch city that Brewster was familiar with. They struggled to adapt to an urban environment, new occupations, and a different culture. With John Robinson as their pastor and William Brewster as lay elder, the congregation perfected its practices, including lay prophesying. Robinson engaged in debates with Arminians, who challenged orthodox Calvinism. Brewster started a press that published puritan books. Over time they abandoned a strict separatism that rejected all contacts with those who had not left the Church of England, to a greater openness to contacts with other godly believers.

Root or Link? Luther's Position in the Historical Debate over the Legitimacy of the Church of England, 1558–1625

1986 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald H. Fritze
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church History ◽  
James I ◽  
The World ◽  
Early English ◽  
The Church

The beginning of Elizabeth i's reign was a happy and confident time for committed English Protestants in spite of their doubtful and precarious position in the world. They had almost miraculously survived both the death of their Protestant king, Edward vi, and the reign of the Catholic queen, Mary, and her foreign husband, Philip n of Spain. It seemed that God was testing Protestantism in England. Since he allowed Elizabeth to succeed to the throne, Protestantism, it seemed, had passed the test. As a result early English Protestants confidently began to formulate their place in both the world and history while attacking the established positions of their Catholic opponents. English Catholics defended themselves from these attacks and replied with some of their own. This debate over the historical situation of the Church of England continued through the reign of James i and beyond. During the course of the debate both sides commented frequently and necessarily on what they thought was Martin Luther's place in church history.

Crypto-Catholicism, Anti-Calvinism and Conversion at the Jacobean Court: The Enigma of Benjamin Carier

1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Questier
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
James I ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

One of the most problematic tasks which the historian must address is the assessment of people's opinions and the motives for their actions. There is violent disagreement about the opinions of individuals for whom there exist extensive archives of correspondence, whose ideas are recorded in numerous printed works and whose political associations and circles of friends help to disclose their views. How much more difficult then to assess the motives of a man for whom such sources are very slight, whose ideas are set out in the shortest of polemical tracts, and whose opinions, when assembled, seem to represent a mass of contradictions? Such a man was Benjamin Carier whose change of religious opinions and notorious conversion to Rome are the subject of this article. He was a chaplain to James i but his beliefs were not fully attuned to those of the Jacobean clerical establishment and he decided towards the end of his life to embrace Roman Catholicism. He was apparently just a minor churchman whose early promise was never fulfilled and who changed horses out of pique at his enemies' dominance in the Church of England. His conversion in 1613 caused a brief stir but in less than a year he was dead. His influence in the established Church is uncertain; his real doctrinal beliefs appear to be lost or polemicised beyond the point where they can be used to analyse his transfer of religious allegiance.

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