Continuity in Change: Bishops of London and Religious Dissent in Early Stuart England

1978 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ogbu U. Kalu
Keyword(s):  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Ecclesiastical Administration ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Phoenix

A significant aspect of the religious scene in the early Stuart period was the survival of vibrant religious nonconformity in spite of Bancroft's “reconstruction of the English Church.” Historians have recently concentrated on the periods of excited religious politics under Elizabeth and the latter part of Charles I's reign and have tended to accept Hacket's Restoration apology that there was no serious opposition to official religious policy in the intervening years. But attempts to explain the phoenix-like rise of Puritanism in Caroline England by reference to socio-economic disequilibrium are not fully satisfactory.Decades ago, Roland G. Usher, who did much to highlight Bancroft's reconstruction, explained the origins of the resurgent Puritanism of the Laudian period by pointing to the mid-Jacobean period. W. H. Clark concurred: lax ecclesiastical administration under Abbot made it possible for Puritans to re-group, starting from about 1614. Both men assumed that there had been effective enforcement of the new Canons of 1604, and of the official policy enunciated at the Hampton Court Conference, until Abbot came on the scene. Analysis of the Church court records indicates that this was simply not so. The number of Puritans continued to rise while vigorous enforcement was spasmodic.Ironically, the years to which Usher and Clark attributed the origins of Caroline Puritanism were in fact the period when enforcement was possible. First, the Pamphlet War aroused by the new settlement had died down. Second, only two bishops, John King and George Mountain, held the See of London between 1611 and 1628.

LICENSING, CENSORSHIP, AND RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY IN EARLY STUART ENGLAND

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 625-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY MILTON
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
Important Means ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Government ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Church

This article engages with recent work on the nature of religious censorship in the early Stuart period that has emphasized that the government possessed neither the power nor the will to control systematically what was written. It is argued here, instead, that there is evidence of attempts to control the presses' output of religious materials during the Laudian period and earlier, by all parties within the Church of England. Nevertheless, the intention here is not to revive a simplistic view of government ‘control’, but rather to study the means by which licensers could exert an influence over what would be printed with an aura of mainstream legitimacy. Texts were often interfered with by official licensers with a variety of motives. Interference might sometimes be essentially ‘benign’, conferring legitimacy on marginal works by massaging their contents, or texts might be modified in order to make their authors appear to endorse the views of their opponents. The issue of whether it was practically possible to publish work clandestinely is here seen to be something of a red herring, since by publishing in this illicit fashion authors were effectively resigning their right to be considered as spokesmen of the orthodox mainstream. It is the control and manipulation of the licensing process which emerges as one important means by which the religious middle ground was defined and controlled in the early Stuart period.

scholarly journals The Doctrine of Passive Obedience in Stuart England, 1603–1688

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 20-29
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuravlev
Keyword(s):  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Church

The article examines the history of the doctrine of passive obedience in England during the Stuart period. Traditionally weak financial and legal basis for royal absolutism in England forced monarchs to rely thoroughly on ideology. The concept of passive obedience promoted by the loyal Anglican clergy was one of the key elements of the absolutist ideology of the 17th century. This doctrine was employed as a counterbalance to revolutionary resistance and monarchomach theories embraced by protestant dissenters and papist recusants alike. During the course of the century the doctrine was embraced by numerous representatives of the Church of England’s establishment, including, but not limited to, John Donn, Roger Maynwaring, George Hickes, Edmund Bohun and many others and disseminated via an array of sermons and pamphlets. One component of the doctrine: non-resistance, was particularly stressed. Several political, social and economic factors conditioned the employment of this doctrine. The first instance of its pronouncement followed the failure of the Gunpowder plot and the necessity to refute catholic contractual theories. Charles I saw the doctrine of passive obedience as both the means to maintain social peace and promote fiscal interests. The new impetus the doctrine gained in the later years of the Restoration: an attempt to integrate it into the ‘ancient constitution’ failed, yet the doctrine of passive obedience was taken up as the chief ideological tool by the Anglican church and employed as a mighty instrument of suppressing resistance and dissent. The Glorious Revolution weakened the grasp of the doctrine in the minds of the English, though by no means killed it. Yet, the regime erected by the Convention of 1689 and strengthened by William of Orange claimed as much of its legitimacy in revolutionary resistance. Thus, henceforth the ideas of passive obedience and non-resistance could not be used as the sole basis of legitimate power in England.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosamund Oates
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
James I ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Church

Tobie Matthew (c.1544–1628) lived through the most turbulent times of the English Church. Born during the reign of Henry VIII, he saw Edward VI introduce Protestantism, and then watched as Mary I violently reversed her brother’s changes. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, Matthew rejected his family’s Catholicism to join the fledgling Protestant regime. Over the next sixty years, he helped build a Protestant Church in England under Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I. Rising through the ranks of the Church, he was Archbishop of York in the charged decades leading up to the British Civil Wars. Here was a man who played a pivotal role in the religious politics of Tudor and Stuart England, and nurtured a powerful strain of Puritanism at the heart of the established Church....

ARMINIANISM, CATHOLICISM, AND PURITANISM IN ENGLAND DURING THE 1630S

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL QUESTIER
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The relationship between Arminianism and Roman Catholicism in the early Stuart period has long been a source of historiographical controversy. Many contemporaries were in no doubt that such an affinity did exist and that it was politically significant. This article will consider how far there was ideological sympathy and even rhetorical collaboration between Caroline Catholics and those members of the Church of England whom both contemporaries and modern scholars have tended to describe as Arminians and Laudians. It will suggest that certain members of the English Catholic community actively tried to use the changes which they claimed to observe in the government of the Church of England in order to establish a rapport with the Caroline regime. In particular they enthused about what they perceived as a strongly anti-puritan trend in royal policy. Some of them argued that a similar style of governance should be exercised by a bishop over Catholics in England. This was something which they believed would correct the factional divisions within their community and align it more effectively with the Stuart dynasty.

scholarly journals Church-State Relations in the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921)

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Dimitry Gegenava
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Republic Of Georgia ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) was one of the unique states in the first quarter of XX century. Despite the historical relations between the Church and the State in Georgia, the social-democratic government changed its official policy and chose French secularism, which was very unusual for the country. This was incorporated in the Constitution of 1921. This article is about the Georgian church-state relations during 1918-1921, the positive and negative aspects of the chosen form of secularism and the challenges that the newly independent State faced in the sphere of religious freedom until the Soviet occupation.

Introduction: The Reformed Conformist Style of Piety

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Stephen Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
The Church

This Introduction opens with an account of the consecration of Exeter College Chapel in 1624 and explains why the ceremony cannot accurately be described as either ‘Laudian’ or ‘Puritan,’ since it reflects theological emphases associated with both groups. It goes on to establish that the historiography of the Early Stuart period has generally acknowledged the presence of English clergy who were committed to both an orthodox Reformed understanding of grace and the established polity of the Church, although no dedicated analysis of their religious tradition has been undertaken before the present study. The ten significant Reformed Conformist theologians who will be the focus of the study are then introduced, and the personal links between them set out.

Charles I and the Erosion of Trust, 1625–1628

1990 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Young
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

In contrast to their predecessors, who emphasized constitutional conflict and opposition in the parliaments of early Stuart England, revisionists emphasized harmony and cooperation. There was a problem with this new, anti-Whig orthodoxy from the outset, however, and that was the problem of trust. Defying the revisionist model of harmonious relations between Crown and Parliament, the M.P.s of early Stuart England perversely refused to trust James I and Charles I. Revisionists adopted two strategies to deal with this problem of trust. Conrad Russell exemplified the one strategy: he acknowledged the existence of distrust but treated it as a deep mystery requiring ingenious explanations. Surveying the reign of James I, Russell discovered “profound distrust, but it is hard to show how this distrust was implanted.” Perplexed by this enigma, Russell observed, “One of the most crucial, and one of the most difficult, questions of the early Stuart period is why this distrust developed.” For Russell, then, it was not natural for M.P.s to distrust the king. It was, instead, an unnatural attitude that had to be “implanted” or “developed.” In time, of course, Russell solved the mystery of distrust by providing a series of explanations: distrust resulted from the pressures of war, friction between the localities and the center, the functional breakdown of an inadequately financed government, court factionalism, and the growth of Arminianism. In Russell's view, the underlying problems that gave rise to distrust had more to do with circumstances and structures than with people, least of all James I and Charles I. A second strategy for dealing with the problem of trust is best exemplified by Kevin Sharpe: he solves the problem neatly by denying its existence. Steadfastly adhering to the revisionist model of harmony and cooperation, Sharpe claims that M.P.s did in fact behave the way that model predicts they should have. “In the early Stuart period,” writes Sharpe, “compromises between king and parliaments…were common because fundamental beliefs were shared and there was an atmosphere of trust.” Sharpe admits that there was an “erosion of trust” in the latter part of Charles's reign. “But,” he insists, “there is little evidence that it unfolds in the parliaments of early Stuart England.”

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