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William Harrison and the Two Churches in Elizabethan Puritan Thinking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
There are currently two approaches to the perennial problem of characterising Elizabethan puritanism. Successive attempts to establish a general taxonomy have failed to describe the historical diversity of puritan thinking. Recently the variable contemporary meanings of the epithet ‘puritan’ have been emphasised.1 Neither approach advances our understanding of reforming ideas within the Elizabethan Church, because the first tries to make individuals conform to type and the second limits the usefulness of the term ‘puritan’ in historical discussion. Both approaches ignore important facets of the intellectual environment of puritanism, particularly the contemporary historical vision. The present study offers an alternative approach to the problem through an analysis of the religious mentality revealed in the writings of William Harrison. It argues that Harrison's works reveal some of the underlying assumptions of puritan thinking. By comparing Harrison's thought with that of some radical and conformist contemporaries, it attempts to show that a distinctive historical interpretation, and the application of that interpretation to contemporary conditions, provide a consistent index to puritanism. Analysis of Harrison's thought suggests that, for radicals, divinely inspired faith and knowledge were transmitted through the past, providing a universally normative truth whose criteria could be used to evaluate contemporary circumstances. This truth, which directed every facet of life, establishing the limits of the individual's interests, of his knowledge and of its application, was centred in Israel. To depart from its criteria was to lapse into Gentilism.
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References
1 Christianson, P., ‘Reformers and the Church of England under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts’, this Journal, xxxi (1980), 413–82Google Scholar, is a recent example of the taxonomical tradition. The reply by P. Collinson, ‘A comment: concerning the name puritan’, ibid., 483–8, and Lake, P., ‘Matthew Hutton, a puritan bishop?‘, History, lxiv (1979), 182–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasise the varying contemporary usages.
2 Parry, G. J. R., ‘William Harrison and “The Great English Chronology”: Puritanism and history in the reign of Elizabeth’, unpublished University of Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation, 1981, 1–67Google Scholar, passim.
3 The ‘Chronology’ is now Trinity College Dublin (hereafter cited as TCD) MS 165; W. Harrison, An Historical Description of the Hand of Britaine, in R. Holinshed, Chronicles, for John Hunne, London 1577, and ibid, in Holinshed, Chronicles, John Harrison et at., London, Jan. 1587. On the relationship between the ‘Chronology’ and Description, see Parry, G. J. R., ‘William Harrison and Holinshed's Chronicles, Historical Journal, xxvii, 4 (1984), 789–810CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 ‘The extant evidence leaves unresolved whether Harrison was always opposed to presbyterianism; he did not discuss it during the 1570s debate but in the polarised atmosphere of 1587. F.J. Furnivall's selections from a lost second version of the ‘Chronology’, Harrison's Description of England in Shakespeare's Youth, London 1877Google Scholar, app. 1. are the only evidence of Harrison's latest ideas, but reforms Harrison added to the 1587 Description are consistent with his 1570s historical interpretation.
5 TCD MS 165, fo. 154.r; Kendall, R. T., Calvin and English Calvinists to 1649, Oxford 1979, 7–8Google Scholar, 35–6, 37, 51.
6 Description, 1587, 213, 24. Cf. the puritan establishment's complaint of ‘want of discipline’ in 1576 and Whitgift's splenetic opposition to their remedies. Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, 161–3, 206Google Scholar.
7 Those who wanted ‘change of all things… can abide no superiors’, Description, 1587, 157, a chapter ‘Of Degrees’. Other Cambridge puritans, including presbyterians, assumed their reforming ideas were congruent with existing social structures. Collinson, Puritan Movement, 128; Lake, P., ‘The dilemma of the establishment puritan’, this Journal, xxix (1978), 23–35Google Scholar, at 25
8 See below.
9 To Cartwright, the Church was ‘the foundation of the world', so ‘the commonwealth which is builded upon that foundation should be framed according to the Churche’. J. Whitgift, The Defense of the Aunswere to the Admonition, against the Replie of T. C. by John Whitgift Doctor of Divinite, Henry Binneman for Humfreye Toye, London 1574, 646; TCD MS 165, fos. 173V, 66v–6yr.
10 R. Bancroft, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse the 9 of Februarie… 1588, for George Seton, London 1588, sig. E8v; Description, 1587, 157; Whitgift, Defense, 639.
11 Whitgift suspected the egalitarian consequences of proposals against pluralism, but Harrison believed ‘hereby most churches should quickly have bene without their pastor’. Description, ed. Furnivall, app. 1, pp. lix–lx; cf. Bancroft, Sermon, sig. C4r; Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584–1601, London 1971, 222Google Scholar. Pluralism could spread true doctrine wider, Description, 1587, 136.
12 Without the ‘Chronology’ the prophetic dimension of the Description has been overlooked by Ferguson, A. B., Clio Unbound: perception of the social and cultural past in Renaissance England, Durham N.C. 1979, 91–6Google Scholar; Porter, H. C., Puritanism in Tudor England, London 1970, 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collinson, P., ‘Episcopacy and reform in the later sixteenth century‘, Studies in Church History, iii (1966), 91–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 103; Edelen, G., The Description of England by William Harrison, Ithaca N.Y. 1968Google Scholar.
13 TCD MS 165, fo. 219r; Fraenkel, P., Testimonia Patrum. The function of the patristic argument in the theology of Philip Melanchthon, Geneva 1961, 59Google Scholar. See Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 180–271, for extended discussion of the following.
14 Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum, 64–5, cf. TCD MS 165, fos. 8Or, 74V; ibid., fo.lv, cf. Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum, 64; TCD MS 165, fo. 24J. Outside the apostolic age Harrison, like Melanchthon, saw only relative distinctions between truth and error: Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum, 76.
15 TCD MS 165, fo. 6r. The covenant line: Adam, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, Caleb, the Judges, Samuel, David, Nathan, Ahija, the rest of the prophets to Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, ‘Eliseus’ Jeremiah, Daniel, Aggeus, Zachary, ‘and after those other mo came still on and continued to Jhon Baptist who saw Christ’, ibid., fo. 71r. Their opponents before Christ continued afterwards in the supporters of transubstantiation, ibid., fo. 213v.
16 Apocalyptic myth here overcame objectivity: Harrison's claim that he was converted by the Oxford Martyrs does not fit the known chronology: Parry,’ Puritanism and history’, 13, a 1, 24, n. 78.
17 Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum, 66, 82–3, 94–6, 75.
18 TCD MS 165, fos. 175r, 29V and fo. 20 iv on the retention of organs and choirs, a seventh-century Roman invention.
19 Ibid., fo. 219r. P. Melanchthon, The three bokes of Chronicles, whyche John Carion… gathered, trans, and pr. Walter Lynne, London 1550, sigs. *4v, *5v.
20 The O.T. prophets were divinely inspired to attack idolatry. In contrast, Hooker diminished the role of grace and the Elect's monopoly of truth, idolatry offended ‘the manifest law of reason’, always part of human thinking. Harrison traced idolatry to the use of human reason in opposition to history's lessons. TCD MS 165, fos. 75r, 81v; Hooker, R., Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.8.11, Folger edn, Cambridge Mass, and London 1977, i. 93Google Scholar.
21 Brandon, S. G. F., Time and Mankind, London 1951, 97Google Scholar; Richardson, A., History, Sacred and Profane, London 1964Google Scholar; Reid, J. K. S., The Authority of Scripture, London 1957Google Scholar; Coolidge, J. S., The Pauline Renaissance in England, Oxford 1970, 17Google Scholar.
22 In Pompey's installing Antipater over Palestine, ‘the providens of god beginneth to worke, for the removing of the Scepter from Juda to thend the prophecie of Jacob may ones be fulfilled and Christ our savior sent into the worlde, which could not ere this time be worthily fulfilled', TCD MS 165, fo. 130v.
23 Contemporaneity did not depend on an apparently narrow span of six thousand years, but the prophetic content of events; Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 205–13.
24 TCD MS 165, fo. 20r and fo. 2v on Cainan's prophecy of the fluctuating state of the True Church.
25 The Gentiles applied Sibylline prophecies of Christ to Caesar. TCD MS 165, fo. 133r; Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 325–30.
26 Despite his debt to Hebrew theology, Orpheus taught error. Approaching true doctrine through rational processes limited his understanding, preventing his escape from Gentilism. False prophets taught secure enjoyment of worldly pleasures, a satanic means of undermining true faith. Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 252–4, 248; TCD MS 165, fos. 56r–v, 145r.
27 This emphasis on historical actions as godly models for the Elect is a ‘Hebraic’ rendering of the abstract ‘Greek’ catalogue of Christian virtues in n Peter i. 4–10, TCD MS 165, fo. 47V; contrast the later presbyterian interpretation, noted above.
28 Ibid., fos. 297r, 253r. Description, 1577, fo. 92r, 1587, 217. The final effect was to create a tradition of radical anti-popery at Radwinter; Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 59–60.
29 TCD MS 165, fo. 69v. The ceremonial law expressed inner spiritual truth eventually lost by the Jews and taking a different external form in the New Testament. Harrison neither condemned nor praised ‘ethnike authors’ in the Church. They were not condemned by Christ, so could be read, but extremist opponents of Gentilism ‘will scasely allow the reading of any histories’ but Scripture. Ibid., fo. 167v, cf. Ded. to Description of Scotland in Chronicles, 1577.
30 Including praying to the East, images, TCD MS 165, fo. 69v; traditional social customs, ibid., fo. 119r; purgatory, fos. 245r 26gr; the date of Christmas, fo. 132r; offering candles, fo. 200r; perambulations, fo. 87r; popular festivals, fo. 118v; rogation processions, fo. 43V; praying for each other, fo. 137r; blessing with the empty chalice, fo. 48r. The’ bestly doctrine’ of transubstantiation outdid the Gentiles, fo. 48v. Some of these continued in the Church of England, and Harrison abolished them at Radwinter. See above, and Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 39–45.
31 TCD MS 165, fo. 253v. Chiefly that idolatry brought wealth, power and ‘carnall liberty’, a contemporaneous view of Israel and ‘the aptnesse of the people in my time… to come hedlong into error’. Ibid., fo. 59r.
32 The ‘Romaine Antichrist’, released from bondage in A.D. 1000, usurped “all power in heaven and yerth’ as ‘the best who hath made all the princes of the world dronke with the wine of her fornication’, TCD MS 165, fos. 270v–71r, 339v. His general church history was recently attributed to the radical William Fulke. (Bauckham, R. J., ‘The career and thought of Dr. William Fulke (1537–89)’, unpublished University of Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation 1973, 239, 242–4, 255.Google Scholar)
33 Cartwright could accept paternal rule over single congregations, Whitgift thought English bishops had the same jurisdiction as ‘the olde Bishops’, Defense, 417–21, 418. Collinson, P., Archbishop Grindal, London 1979, 126–52Google Scholar on paternal episcopacy.
34 TCD MS 165, fo. 144r. The Apostles only appointed ‘elders and deacons locally in the severall congregations to see to the flocke’. Early bishops, identical with elders, were popularly elected. Roman corruption gave bishops the nomination of elders. Ibid., fos. 138v, 169v. Whitgift cited Jerome on Titus for apostolic episcopacy over many parishes, Defense, 304, 318, 369, 377, 385, 390; Cartwright held with Harrison that Jerome meant ‘in every town there was a Bishop’, pre-eminent only in his power of ordination, ibid., 385.
35 TCD MS 165, fo. 144r.
36 ‘As dore keeper or reader, exorcist [benet collet], subdeacon, etc’ Ibid., fo. 159r, cf. Cartwright, Defense, 444.
37 Altering rites and ceremonies at will, controlling entry of foreign superstition to Rome, dedicating temples and protecting ‘the immunity of preestes and maintenauns of their estate’. Satan inspired Numa to create religious customs, TCD MS 165, fos. 88r, 253v. Cf. Cartwright on the archbishopric, below p. 387ff.
38 Ibid., fo. i8r, and cf. note 36. Hence Harrison's dismay at his papist ordination.
40 Ibid., fos. 160–61r. Bishops were’ accounted honourable’, said Harrison, and ranked after barons: Description, 1577, fo. 102r–v; 1587, 157.
41 The contrast between apostolic ideal and grubby reality was as obvious to Harrison working in the church courts as to Grindal on the episcopal bench; Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 53–6. To Cartwright Harrison's refusal to apply the presbyterian historical interpretation in the present would have resembled the papist ‘historical’ or ‘dead' faith.
42 Description, 1587, 157. Collinson, P., Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566–1577, B.I.H.R. Spec. Supp. No. 5, London 1960, p. xGoogle Scholar.
43 Bishops preached ‘not without the great misliking and contempt’ of the unregenerate who ‘hate the Word', Description, 1577, fo. 76r; 1587, p. 135. Collinson, ‘Episcopacy and reform’, 103.
44 Collinson, Puritan Movement, 101–6 on pragmatic defences of episcopacy.
45 TCD MS 165, fo. 208v.
46 Melchizedech stood in contrast to the Levitical priesthood, his unknown generation ‘a figure of the eternity of Christ’. Heb. v–vii showed his pastoral ministry prefigured Christ's, superior to the Levitical priesthood, TCD MS 165, fos. 31r, 24r. Christ bodily descended from Shem (Luke iii. 36).
47 Cf. Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 1570, i. 20, on spiritual pre-eminence and episcopal accountability for ‘all the soules of his dioces’. Cf. Collinson, ‘Episcopacy and reform’, 95.
48 T. Cartwright, trans. A full and plaint declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline out off the word of God, and off the declining of the churche of England from the same [M. Schirat, Heidelberg], 1574. 119; Description, 1587, 158.
49 Collinson, ‘Episcopacy and reform’, 118–21.
50 Northumberland was largely civilised through the preaching of Bernard Gilpin and other learned men, Description, 1587, 91. The northerner, Grindal, assured Elizabeth ‘where preaching wanteth, obedience faileth’; Seaver, P. S., The Puritan Lectureships, Stanford 1970, 55Google Scholar. Harrison accepted presbyterian criticisms of the failure to create such a pastoral ministry; Description, 1587, 136. He defended prophesyings for this reason; Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 397–402.
51 Description, 1587, 149. Contrast Whitgift's incorporation in the 1583 Articles of Walsingham and Mildmay's proposal to limit ordination to those with a named benefice in the officiating bishop's diocese, sanctifying traditional patronage, Collinson Puritan Movement, 162; Brook, V. J., Whitgift and the English Church, London 1957, 81–2Google Scholar; TCD MS 165, fo. 65r; Description, 1587, 150.
52 A Collection of State Papers…from the yeare 1571 to 1596…at Hatfield House, ed. Murdin, W., London 1759, 489Google Scholar. Parry, ‘Puritanism and history, 406 n.143; Description, ed. Furnivall, app. 1 p. lix; cf. Bancroft, Sermon, Sig. C4r–v; Description, 1577, fo. 75v, 1587, 139–40.
53 Description, 1587, 139–40. Clemens Alexandrinus opposed Gentilism with his school at Alexandria, instructing ‘Catechistes…in the principles of true relligion’, not ‘any humaine knowledg’. Martin of Tours established monasteries to produce ‘zealous ministers in the church of christ and happy was that congregation, that might have an elder out of any of his houses’, TCD MS 165, fos. 152r, 168v.
54 Harrison saw prebends could be ‘superfluous additaments unto former excesses’, Description, 1587, 140. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. Frere, W. H., London 1910, iii. 248–50Google Scholar; Bond, S., The Chapter Acts of the Dean and Canons of Windsor, Windsor 1966, 22–3Google Scholar.
55 Harrison was convinced that the 1588 prophecy was canonical long before the Armada forced the sceptical academic, William Fulke, to accept it (Parry,’ Puritanism and history’, 312–8).
56 The Remains of Edmund Grindal, ed. for Parker Society by Nicholson, W., Cambridge 1843, 107, 97–100, 93Google Scholar.
57 Defense, 746.
59 The Rest of the second replie of Thomas Cartwright agaynst Master Doctor Whitgiftes second answer touching the Churche Discipline [Zürich?], 1577, 125. Defense, 475.
60 The second replie of Thomas Cartwright agaynst Maister Doctor Whitgiftes second answer touching the Church discipline [Zurich, C. Froschauer?] 1575, 82,94. If the Word did not guide us, there must be some ‘star or light of reason’ which did; Scripture showed this only led to error. Ibid., 56.
61 Defense, 638; Rest of the second replie, 40; cf. Exod. iv. 29. We must ‘have the worde of God go before us in all our actions…for that wee cannot otherwise be assured that they please God', Second replie, 6i. God had decided ‘to set before our eyes a perfecte forme of his Churche’, Defense, 77.
63 Ibid., 470; Defense, 321. God ‘translated diverse things out of the Lawe unto the Gospell’ – elders, deacons, excommunication. Second replie, 410.
64 Defense, 149,625. To Cartwright this was the same as comparing Israel with the Gentile Idumeans or Ishmaelites, Rest of the second replie, 142–3.
65 The papists had some true doctrine, government, prayers. Defense, 476; ibid., 474.
67 Cartwright stigmatised the Elizabethan hierarchy in the apocalyptic imagery popularised by such as John Bale, e.g. ‘these smokie titles of honor’, Second replie, 581; cf. Rev. ix, and Bale, The Image of Both Churches in Select Works, ed. Christmas, H., Cambridge 1849, 352Google Scholar.
68 Defense, 349. This clear perception explains some of Whitgift's actions. Contrast Lake, P., ‘The Significance of the Elizabethan identification of the pope as Antichrist’, this Journal, xxxi (1980), 161–78Google Scholar, and Christianson, ‘Reformers’, 471, on Whitgift and Antichrist. Nicaea, ‘the godlyest, and the most perfect Councell’ since the Apostles, allowed archbishops and patriarchs, Defense, 445, 349. Harrison quoted Bale on Nicaea, ‘wherein Jezebelles Bedde was made’, TCD MS 165, fo. 153v; Defense, 378.
69 Ibid., 394–6, esp. 395. Whitgift's argument here appeared indistinguishable from popery to Knollys. W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’ campaign against the Jure Divino theory of episcopacy’, in Cole, C. R. and Moody, M. E. (eds.), The Dissenting Tradition, Ohio 1975, 39–77, at 61, 42Google Scholar.
70 Defense, 426, 744–7.
71 Ibid., 432, 744–7.
72 Lake, ‘Matthew Hutton – a puritan bishop?’, 182–204, esp. 183–96.
73 Workes 1, 483, quoted in Breward, I., The Work of William Perkins, Appleford 1970, 39Google Scholar. Professor Breward points out that this is not congruent with Perkins's Christology. Harrison resolved this problem by seeing Christ as the perfect Reformer.
74 Ibid., 32–60, 88–9.
75 Perkins, Works, 1631, III, second pagination, 468. From Harrison's viewpoint Perkins was dangerously close to those false prophets who allowed their audiences to luxuriate in temporal felicity, Parry, ‘Puritanism and history’, 319–25.
76 Breward, Perkins, 55, 40, 56, 26–28.
77 TCD MS 165, fo. 168r. Bauckham, R. J., ‘Hooker, Travers and the Church of Rome in the 1580s’, this Journal, xxix (1978), 37–50Google Scholar, contrasts Whitgift and Hooker. Hooker, Lowes, i, 8. 3. Folger edn, i. 83–4, and 1. 8. 8, Folger edn, i. 88–9. [T. Cartwright?], A Christian Letter…unto…Hooker [Middelburg?] 1599, sigs. A4r–B2r, C1r–C2v, reasserts the distinction between the covenant line and Gentilism, and the self-evident truth of Scripture.