The Religious Scene in Early Modern England

2020 ◽  
pp. 10-20
Author(s):  
Francis J. Bremer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Home Town ◽  
The Church

From the start of the English Reformation in the 1530s under Henry VIII through into the early seventeenth-century there was unceasing controversy over how the new church should be defined. Some wished much of Roman Catholic belief and practice to be retained. Other, labeled puritans, sought to follow the lead of more advanced continental reformers and purge the church of all Catholic remnants. William Brewster was a young puritan who had studied at Cambridge University, traveled to the continent with the English envoy William Davison, and then, following Davison’s fall from grace, returned to his home town of Scrooby. There he sought to further the cause of religious reform and gathered around himself men and women of similar beliefs.

The Shrine of St. Winefride and Social Control in Early Modern England and Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Matthias Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
The Church

In 1534, Henry VIII declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England. In the years that followed, his advisors carried out an agenda to reform the Church. In 1536, the Crown condemned pilgrimages and the veneration of saints’ shrines and relics. By the end of the seventeenth century, nearly every shrine in England and Wales had been destroyed or fell into disuse except for St. Winefride’s shrine in Holywell, Wales. The shrine has continued to be a pilgrimage destination to the present day without disruption. Contemporary scholars have credited the shrine’s survival to its connections with the Tudor and Stuart regimes, to the successful negotiation for its shared use as both a sacred and secular space, and to the missionary efforts of the Jesuits. Historians have yet to conduct a detailed study of St. Winefride’s role in maintaining social order in recusant communities. This article argues that the Jesuits and pilgrims at St. Winefride’s shrine cooperated to create an alternative concept of social order to the legal and customary orders of Protestant society.

William Perkins versus William Bishop on the Role of Mary as Mediator

2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 249-258
Author(s):  
W.B. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Extensive Experience ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Protestant Theologian

William Perkins and William Bishop, two of the leading spokesmen for their respective religious traditions in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, clashed in print over the status of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as a number of other issues. They were formidable adversaries. Perkins, the most widely-read English Protestant theologian of the day, helped to make Cambridge University a centre of Reformed thought and practice. Bishop, an Oxford-trained theologian with extensive experience and associations on the continent, eventually became the first Roman Catholic bishop in England since the death of the last surviving bishop of Mary I’s reign. Though discussions of the Virgin Mary were not major themes in the books of either writer, their views on this subject are significant in showing how the two traditions developed, in competition with each other, during this phase of the long English Reformation.

The view from the devil’s mountain: Clarendon, Cressy and Hobbes, and the past, present and future of the Church of England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Seaward
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The lives, and political thought, of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and Thomas Hobbes, were closely interwoven. In many ways opposed, their views on the relationship between Church and State have often been seen as less far apart, with Clarendon sharing Hobbes’s Erastianism and concerns about clerical assertiveness in the 1660s. But Clarendon’s writings on Church-State relations during the 1670s provide little evidence of concern about clerical involvement in politics, and demonstrate his vigorous adherence to a fairly conventional view among early seventeenth-century churchmen about the proper boundaries to royal interference in the Church; his worries about attempts to push further the implications of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs are evident in his writings against Hobbes, as are his even greater anxieties, exacerbated by the conversion of his daughter, the Duchess of York, about the dangers of Roman Catholic encroachment.

Dissent in New England

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-266
Author(s):  
Francis J. Bremer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
New Order ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Anne Hutchinson ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
New England Colonies ◽  
Roger Williams ◽  
The Church

The New England colonies were settled in the early seventeenth century by men and women who could not in conscience subscribe to all aspects of the faith and practice of the Church of England. In creating new societies they struggled with how to define their churches and their relationship with the national Church they dissented from. As their New England Way evolved the orthodox leaders of the new order identified and took action against those who challenged it. Interaction with dissenters such as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Baptists, and Quakers helped to further define the colonial religious establishment.

scholarly journals Bishop Nicholas French and the second Ormond peace, 1648-9

1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Corish
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.

Patronage from the Privy Chamber: Sir Anthony Denny and Religious Reform

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia C. Swensen
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
The Other ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Church ◽  
Individual Interpretation

Among the accomplished humanists who flourished in the court of Henry VIII, there were a number devoted to the promotion of the “New Faith,” which, with its emphasis on classical learning and rereading of the church fathers, also called into question certain theological truths of Rome as well as the authority of the pope. The most immediate and effective means for this promotion were the various types of patronage readily available to holders of government and household office, both high and low. There is a certain irony here as Henry had, after his split with Rome, declared that there would be no doctrinal innovation, simply that the head of the English church would be the English king rather than the pope at Rome. Yet members of his own court whose actions should have supported and carried out his expressed intentions were those who advanced the very doctrinal innovations he professed to deplore. The reason for this incongruity may be found at least in part in the actions of the king rather than in his words, as he did not develop and follow through with any consistent religious program. As a result, the signals sent to court members were at best mixed and open to individual interpretation. A remarkable latitude in personal policies resulted as members of both Protestant and Catholic factions jockeyed for power. Conservatives, believing they supported the royal wishes, opposed vigorously any further innovation in religious affairs. On the other hand, courtiers who were theologically curious quite easily could believe that, in patronizing sometimes extreme reformers, they were merely carrying out Henry's real but not clearly stated intentions.

Calvin's Influence on the Theology of the English Reformation

Ecclesiology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-341
Author(s):  
Martin Davie
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
Westminster Assembly

AbstractThis paper traces the influence of John Calvin on the English Reformation from the time of the breach with Rome under Henry VIII until the great ejection of dissenting puritan clergy from the ministry of the Church of England in 1662. It argues that Calvin's teaching only began to have an impact on the English Reformation during the reign of Elizabeth I and that although his theology had a widespread impact on both individuals and groups within the Church of England it never shaped the Church's official doctrine, liturgy or pattern of ministry, although it seemed likely that this would be the case at the time of the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s. It also raises the question of whether Calvin sought episcopacy from the Church of England in the reign of Edward VI.

The Reformation in Anglicanism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alec Ryrie
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The State ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
English National Identity ◽  
Prayer Books ◽  
The Church

The outline of the English Reformation under Henry VIII and the later Tudors is no longer heavily contested. While politically led and slow to take root, it eventually took shape as a decisively Reformed Protestant, even Calvinist, Reformation with a stress on the doctrine of predestination, even though Cranmer retained some traditional trappings in his Prayer Books. Terms such as ‘Anglican’ and ‘via media’ ought not to be applied to the Church of England before 1662. However, that church’s subjugation to the state and the central position it acquired in English national identity helped to sow the seeds of later Anglican distinctiveness. The Reformation’s legacy for modern Anglicans is divisive, and it is used dishonestly, as a weapon, by all sides. This is in part because the true extent of its popularity in its own time remains open to dispute.

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