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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Two statements written prior to 1642 have suggested the title of this piece. The first statement comes during the spring of 1623 from Joseph Mead, a Cain- bridge University don and newsletter correspondent. In a letter Mead says he has observed three sorts of puritans:
First a Puritan in politicks, or the Politicali Puritan, in matters of State, liberties of people, prerogatives of sovereigns, etc. Secondly An Ecclesiasticall Puritan, for the Church Hierarchie and ceremonies, who was at first the onely Puritan. Thirdly A Puritan in Ethicks or moral Puritan sayd to consist in singularity of living, and hypocrisie both civil! and religious which may be called the vulgar Puritan, and was the second in birth and hath made too many ashamed to be honest.
1. Joseph Mead to Sir Martin Stutevifie of Damam, Suffolk, 14 April 1623, British Museum (hereafter BM), Harleian MSS, 389 fol. 314.
2. [Henry Parker or John Ley?],A Discourse Concerning Puritans (1641), p. 101Google Scholar; for the moral puritan, see Skipps, Kenneth, “Lay Patronage of East Anglian Puritan Clerics in Pro-revolutionary England” (Ph.D. diss.: Yale University, 1971), pp. 21–28;Google ScholarRussell, Conrad, ed., The Origins of the English Civil War (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 168 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Heylin, P., Cyprianus Anglicus (1671), p. 198 ff.Google Scholar; Baxter, Richard, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. J. Sylvester (1696), 1:31 ffGoogle Scholar; Rapin-Thoyras, Paul de, History of England (1724–1731), 2, bk. 18:177 ff.Google Scholar, 198, 204, 213–214; Neal, Daniel, The History of the Puritans (1744), pp. xi–xii; pp. 122–123Google Scholar; Gardiner, S. R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of Civil War, 1603–1642 (1883–1893), 1:232–233; 3:241 ff.Google Scholar
4. George, C. H., “Puritanism as History and Historiography,” Past and Present 41 (1968): 80–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Ibid., p. 83.
6. Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-revolutionary England (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964)Google Scholar; Puritanism and Recolution (London: Seeker and Warhurg, 1958)Google Scholar; Zagorin, Perez, The Court and the Country (New York: Atheneum, 1970)Google Scholar: Seaver, Paul, The Puritan Leclureships (Stanforil University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; for a view more in line with George see Lament, William, Godly Rule (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), pp. 28 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. Cardwell, E., ed., Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England (1844), 2:210 ff.Google Scholar; Rushworth, J., ed., Historical Coflections (1721–1722), 1:65.Google Scholar
8. Hanft, Sheldon, “Some Aspects of the Puritan Opposition in the First Parliament of James I” (Ph.D. diss.: New York University, 1969), passim.Google Scholar; Meliwain, C. H., The Political Works of James I (London, 1918), p. 337,Google Scholar appendix C; Foster, E., ed., Proceedings in Parliament, 1610 (1966). 2:103Google Scholar; Gardiner, , History, 1:84–85Google Scholar; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (hereafter CSPD), James I, 9 (1611–1618), p. 237.Google Scholar Puritans attacked the prerogative in favor of religious liberty as early as the 1571 parliament. Their zeal for reform was always a potential threat to prerogative; see Porter, H. C., ed., Puritanism in Tudor England (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 142–143.Google Scholar
9. Public Record Office, State Papers (hereafter PRO, SP), 14/165 fol. 2; Oxford University, Tanner MSS, 220 fol. 177; Gardiner, S. R., ed., Notes of the Debates in the House of Lords, Camden Society. n.s. 24 (1879):96Google Scholar; Lord's Journals 3:338Google Scholar; PRO, SP, 14/164 fol. 86; BM, Add. MSS, 18,597 fol. 167v.
10. Tanner MSS, 220 fol. 117.
11. Lord's Journals, 3:389.Google Scholar
12. BM, Harl. MSS, 159 fol. 136.
13. Schwartz, H., “Arminianism and the English Parliament, 1624–1629,” The Journal of British Studies 12 (05 1973): 41–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. PRO, SP, 14/166 fol. 199, parliamentary diary of Edward Nicholas.
15. Acts of Privy Council, 1623–5 entry for June 13; BM, Add. MSS, 25,278 fol. 138; this section of a treatise entitled “Eldership the Greatest Lordship,” authored by John Yates in the 1640s, recalls the 1620s. The Nicholas diary names Nathaniel Ward as Yates' fellow cleric, not Samuel Ward as Montague later wrote.
16. BM, Add. MSS, 25,278 foL 136.
17. Montague, Richard, Appello Caesarem (1625), p. 3:Google ScholarGardiner, S. R., ed., Debates in the House of Commons in 1625 (1878), appendix, 180–184.Google Scholar
18. Montague, , Apello, pp. 43–44.Google Scholar
19. McIlwain, Poltical Works, appendix C; much more detail on puritan activity in the 1624 parliament can be found in my dissertation, “Lay Patronage,” pp. 41–49; 272–279. Puritan political initiatives in 1624 as on earlier occasions arose out of religions hopec and fears.
20. The economic, social, religious and political pressures of “the people” in pre-revohitionary England have recently received scholary attention (Russell, , Origins, pp. 7–11, 25–31).Google Scholar The study of patronage is a means of connecting the research in social history with more traditional work on the political and religious origins of the English Civil War and Revolution. See Rabb, Theodore, “Parliament and Society in Early Stuart England: The Legacy of Wallace Notestein,” American Historical Review 77 (1972): 710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21. Shippa, , “Lay Patronage” appendix 2, p. 271.Google Scholar
22. Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), pp. 186–187, 203–204Google Scholar; “The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism,” in vol. 1 of Studies in Church History, ed. C. W. Dugmore and Charles Duggan (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1964).Google Scholar
23. Yates, J., Gods Arraignement of Hypocrites (1615).Google Scholar
24. Tanner MSS, 314 fol. 155v.; Norfolk and Norwich Record Office. Mayor's Court Books fol. 508v., 31 December 1623.
25. J. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1684–1601 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), p. 283Google Scholar; Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 62, 203, 257, 278Google Scholar; see algo Bacon MSS, in Folger Library, Washington D.C.
26. Gardiner, , History, 5:342–343.Google Scholar
27. Gardiner, , Debates in …1625, appendIx, pp. 180–184.Google Scholar
28. Preston, J., The Raints Qualification (1633), pp. 286, 294.Google Scholar
29. Cosin, John, The Works of… John Cosin (1843–1855), pp. 20 ff.Google Scholar
30. Morgan, I., Prinee Charles' Puritan Chaplain (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), p. 165.Google Scholar
31. Calder, I. M., Activities of the Puritan Faction of the Church of England, 1625–33 (London: S.P.C.K., 1957)Google Scholar; “A Seventeenth Century Attempt to Purify the English Church,” American Historical Review 53 (1948): 760–775.Google Scholar
32. Tyacke, N. B. N., “Arminianiam in Engand in Religion and Politics, 1604 to 1640” (Ph.D. diss.: Oxford University, 1968),Google Scholarpassim, , and Russell, , Origins, pp. 130 ff.Google Scholar; Zagorin, , Court and the Country, pp. 138 ff.Google Scholar
33. Tyacke, “Arminianism.”
34. Birch, Thomas, ed., The Court and Times of Charles I, vol. 1 (1848), p. 96Google Scholar; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Various Collections, 4:170.Google Scholar Pym's committee included his uncle, Francis Rous, Sir Nathaniel Rich, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, Christopher Sherlani, William Whitaker, Sir Walter Earle, Sir John Pickering and Sir Thomas Hoby. Following the ideas of these men could perhaps give clues as to how the political puritan differed from the “country” opposition. Obviously there was a spectrum of political opinion among those in the puritan opposition.
35. PRO, SP, 16/25 fol. 87.
36. CSPD, Charles I, 23 (Addeada: 03 1625-01 1649), pp. 112–113.Google Scholar In this curious letter from Sir James Bagg, Sir Walter Earle appears as a protégè of Lord Say and twelve others seem to have found their places from Pembroke; Rowe, V. A., “The Influence of the Earls of Pembroke on Parliamentary Elections, 1625–41,” English Historical Review 50 (1935): 242–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37. Schwartz, , Arminianism, pp. 63 ff.Google Scholar; Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston, Sir Francis Barrington, Sir Walter Earle and Sir John Corbot were men who also supported puritan clerics; see Shipps, , “Lay Patronage,” pp. 83, 107 ff., 228, 272.Google Scholar It would be interesting to see how many other conscience-stricken laymen were puritans (CSPD, 1627–1628, pp. 16, 299, 366; Zagorin, , Court and the Country, p. 109).Google Scholar
38. BM, Trumbull Add. MSS, 50 fol. 18v. My thanks to Professor Robert Zaller for bringing the materials for this and the MSS citations in notes 39 and 41 to my attention.
39. Oxford University, Bodlelan Library MSS, English History, c. 330, fols. 15–16; Mitchell, William, The Rise of the Revolutionary Party in the English Honse of Commons, 1603–1629 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp. 122 ff.Google Scholar
40. BM, Harl. MSS, 383 fol. 70. After the parliament reports spread that puritans were powerful in parliament (von Ranke, Leopold, A History of England [1875], 5:446).Google Scholar
41. Rushworth, J., Historical Collections, 1:670.Google Scholar Of particular note is the following speech made by Sir Earle, Walter, a parliamentary leader and prominent supporter of puritan causes, as reprinted in Commons Deixites for 1629, ed. Notestein, W. and Reif, F. H. (Minneapolis: University Press, 1921), pp. 18–19Google Scholar:
Mr. Speker, I am of the number of those that at our last meeting thought the time best spent in vindicating those rights and liberties of the subject which had formerly been impeached and were then in most eminent danger; and in that respect thought it not amiss (for a while) to postpone the business of Religion.…Now give me leave to tell you, that Religion offers itself to your first consideration at this time.… I know full well that the cause of justice is God's cause as well as the cause of Religion. But what good will these rights do me, or any man else, that resolves to live and die a Protestant? Nay, what good will they do any man, of what Religion soever he be, that resolves to live and die a freeman and not a slave, if Popery and Arminianism. joining hand in hand as they do, be a means. together with the Romish Hierarchy, to bring in a Spanish tyranny amongst us; under which those laws and liberties must of necessity cease? … how otherstand affected, I know not; but for my part, that which for an undoubted truth I have from the Church of England heretofore received, that I will stand to, and forgo my estate, my liberty, yea my life itself, rather than forgo it.… Take away my religion, you take away my life, and not only mine, but the life of the whole State and Kingdom. For I dare boldly say, never was there… a more near conjunction between matter of Religion and matter of State in any Kingdom in the world than there is in this Kingdom at this day.
42. Bridenbaugh, C., Vexed and Troubled Englishmen (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 464–468, 472.Google Scholar
43. Seaver, , Puritan Lectureships, pp. 264–265.Google Scholar
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45. Sources for puritan leetureships and ministry in parliamentary boroughs appear in the previous footnote, and estimates on town wealth and population appear in Hoskins, W. B., Local History of England (London: Lougmans, 1959), p. 177.Google Scholar
46. According to Lawrence Stone peers could not expect to influence more than ten percent of the parliamentary elections in 1640. See his Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 128.Google Scholar
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48. Ibid., chap. 5; PRO, C2/N3/104; PRO, C2/Y/1/58; Swindon, Henry, The History… of Great Yarmouth (Norwich, 1772), pp. 477–520.Google Scholar
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52. Tanner MSS, 68, passim.; Norfolk Record Office, Consignation Books, 16, Misc. Files, 1637–1641.
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57. Ibid., p. 94.
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62. Ibid., p. 186.
63. Ibid., p. 184 f.
64. Ibid., p. 187.
65. ibid., p. 188.
66. Ibid., p. 178; Tanner MSS, 68 fols. 8v., llv., 248.
67. Shipps, “Lay Patronage,” appendix 14; Essex Record Office T/B211/1(39).
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