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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
This article examines the development of Protestant thought in early Elizabethan England by analysing James Pilkington's 1560 commentary on the Old Testament book of Aggeus (Haggai). Pilkington's commentary contained ideas about the Church and its reform that had deep affinities with radical Marian Protestant thought about purity, separation and resistance to ungodly monarchs. The way in which Pilkington transformed these ideas in a time of Protestant political ascendancy provides valuable insights into the nature and development of English Puritanism.
1 Patrick Collinson, Richard Rex and Graham Stanton, Lady Margaret Beaufort and her professors of divinity at Cambridge, 1502–1649, Cambridge 2003, 49; Christina Garrett, The Marian exiles: a study in the origins of Elizabethan Puritanism, Cambridge 1938.
2 ODNB.
3 Bauckham, Richard, ‘Marian exiles and Cambridge Puritanism: James Pilkington's “halfe a score”’, this Journal xxvi (1975), 137–48.Google Scholar Cartwright would cite Pilkington as an authority in his controversy with Whitgift: The works of John Whitgift, D. D., ed. John Ayre, Cambridge 1852, 23.
4 On Pilkington's often misunderstood appointment to Durham see Brett Usher, William Cecil and episcopacy, 1559–1577, Aldershot 2003, and ‘Durham and Winchester episcopal estates and the Elizabethan settlement: a reappraisal’, this Journal xlix (1998), 393–406. See also Heal, Felicity, ‘The bishops and the Act of Exchange of 1559’, HJ xvii (1974), 227–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 David Marcombe, ‘A rude and heady people: the local community and the rebellion of the northern earls’, in David Marcombe (ed.), The last principality: politics, religion and society in the bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, Nottingham 1987, 117–51 at pp. 121–3.
6 Quoted ibid. 123.
7 James Pilkington, Aggeus the prophete declared by a large commentarye, London 1560 (STC 19926·3). ‘Aggeus’ is the Greek form of the name rendered ‘Haggai’ in modern English Bibles. A second edition was printed in 1560 and a slightly emended one in 1562 alongside a new commentary on Abdias, or Obadiah: Aggeus and Abdias prophetes, London 1562 (STC 19927). All subsequent quotations from Aggeus are taken from the 1560 edition. Pilkington's works were edited in 1842 by James Scholefield for the Parker Society, but this volume can be unreliable. Scholefield conflated various editions of the Aggeus commentary, frequently without note, and he sometimes sanitised Pilkington's language to suit Victorian sensibilities. For example, Scholefield altered Pilkington's condemnation of papists' ‘buggerye’ to read ‘unnatural lust’, remarking in a footnote only that ‘This expression is altered from the original’: The works of James Pilkington, B. D., ed. James Scholefield, Cambridge 1842, 614. Compare on this point James Pilkington, The burnynge of Paules church, London 1563 (STC 19931), sig. P2r.
8 Bauckham, ‘Marian exiles’, 139. In addition to his regular references to ‘our mild Esther’, ‘our gracious queen’ and the downfall of the Marian Church, Pilkington's critique of impropriations in Aggeus also provides a clue regarding its composition: see especially Aggeus, sig. i1r. As Brett Usher has shown, Pilkington was an active critic of the Act of Exchange and the crown's fiscal policies towards the Church in 1559–60, leading him to refuse appointment to the see of Winchester. Pilkington's critique of impropriations in Aggeus and his repeated denunciations of those seeking the Church's wealth strongly suggest that the commentary was composed during these years: Usher, ‘Durham and Winchester’, 395–6.
9 Aggeus, sigs a2v–a3r.
10 There were significant differences among Protestant commentators in the sixteenth century concerning the chronology of Israel's early post-exilic history, a seemingly minor point which nevertheless had important consequences for the dating of Haggai's prophecy and its significance. For more detailed discussion of this point see p. 695–6 below. In this paragraph, I am recounting Pilkington's version of the chronology at sigs b2r-b5v and q6r.
11 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan movement, London 1967, 24.
12 Ibid. 115, 232.
13 Aggeus, sigs l2r–l3r.
14 Ibid. esp. sigs d7r–d8r.
15 Ibid. sig. f1r–v.
16 Ibid. sig. n3r.
17 This was a problem for Reformed Protestants throughout Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century: Graham Murdock, Beyond Calvin: the intellectual, political and cultural world of Europe's Reformed churches, Basingstoke 2004, 55.
18 Aggeus, sig. c6r–v.
19 Ibid. sig. Bb6r.
20 Ibid. sig. n3r. Pilkington began his commentary by emphasising that he did not dedicate his book to any one person or sort of person, but to all people: ‘thexample of the Prophet, which writes it not to one but many, suffers me not to sende it, to any one sorte of menne particularly, but generallye to all that shoulde unfeynedlye promote the encreace of gods glorye, bycause al degrees of menne, doe owe a duetye to the buildinge, of this gods house’: sig. a2r.
21 Ibid. sigs f1v–f2r.
22 Ibid. sig. q7v.
23 Ibid. sig. q8r.
24 Ibid. sigs q7v–q8r.
25 Robert Browne, A Treatise of reformation without tarying for anie, Middelburgh 1582 (STC 3910·3), sig. b3r–v.
26 Aggeus, sig. q8v.
27 Ibid. sig. f2r.
28 It is also worth noting that English Catholics, unsurprisingly, also read Haggai's message regarding civil magistrates very differently from Pilkington. While Pilkington interpreted Haggai's form of address – to Zerubbabel first and Joshua second – as teaching the supremacy of secular magistrates over priests, Thomas Dorman argued the opposite in 1564: prophets like Malachi and Haggai taught Christians to seek the ‘law of God’ from priests, rather than civil magistrates, ‘which had they [kings] bene the chiefe governours in those matters without faile they [the prophets] would have doen’: A proufe of certeyne articles in religion, denied by M. Iuell sett furth in defence of the Catholyke beleef, Antwerp 1564 (STC 7062), sig. f2v.
29 For details on this publication see Wulfert de Greef, The writings of John Calvin: an introductory guide, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, Grand Rapids 1993, 60. The lectures appeared first in Latin as Ioannis Calvini praelectiones in duodecim prophetas (quos vocant) minores, Geneva 1559.
30 John Calvin, Commentaries on the twelve minor prophets by John Calvin, trans. John Owen, Grand Rapids 1950, 324.
31 Ibid. 322. Calvin contradicts himself later by admitting that Zerubbabel and Joshua ‘were not wholly free from blame’, although he provides no details, and then suggests that Haggai presented his prophecies to Zerubbabel and Joshua so that they might together form a united front against the sloth of the people.
32 Millar Maclure includes Jewel's sermon among the undateable Paul's Cross sermons of the 1560s: The Paul's Cross sermons, 1534–1642, Toronto 1958.
33 John Jewel, Certaine sermons preached before the queenes maiestie and at Paules Crosse, London 1583 (STC 14596), sig. f3r–v.
34 Ibid. sig. f4r.
35 Calvin, Commentaries on the twelve minor prophets, 339–40.
36 Jewel, Certaine sermons, sig. f6v.
37 Stephen Alford, Kingship and politics in the reign of Edward VI, Cambridge 2002, 112.
38 Pilkington's chronology and interpretation was actually quite similar to Luther's, who wrote that the Jews faced ‘a mad and inflated king who didn't want them to rebuild the temple’, but that ‘it is the Word of God which commands such things, and to it we must listen even though the whole world resists it’: Martin Luther, Lectures on Haggai, trans. Richard J. Dinda, in Luther's works, ed. H. C. Oswald, St Louis 1975, xviii. 369.
39 Aggeus, sig. b3r–v.
40 Ibid. sig. n8v.
41 Ibid. sig. s5r.
42 John Knox, Letter to the commonalty, in On rebellion, ed. Roger A. Mason, Cambridge 1994, 124.
43 Ibid. 123.
44 Christopher Goodman, How superior powers oght to be obeyd of their subiects, Geneva 1558 (STC 12020), 185.
45 Jane E. A. Dawson, ‘Resistance and revolution in sixteenth-century thought: the case of Christopher Goodman’, in J. van den Berg and P. Hoftijzer (eds), The Church, change and revolution, Leiden 1991, 69–79 at p. 72, and ‘Trumpeting resistance: Christopher Goodman and John Knox’, in Roger A. Mason (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformation, Aldershot 1998, 131–53.
46 Goodman, Superior powers, 72–3.
47 John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. William Croft Dickinson, New York 1958, i. 335.
48 Roger A. Mason, ‘Knox, resistance and the royal supremacy’, in Mason, John Knox, 170.
49 John Knox, The copie of an epistle sent by John Knox one of the ministers of the Englishe Church at Geneva unto the inhabitants of Newcastle, & Barwicke: in the end whereof is added a brief exhortation to England for the spedie imbrasing of Christes Gospel, Geneva 1559 (STC 15064), 89–90.
50 Aggeus, sig. f1v.
51 John Knox, A faythfull admonition made by Iohn Knox unto the professours of Gods truthe in England, Emden 1554 (STC 15069), sig. f8v.
52 Aggeus, sig. a1r.
53 This was a theme to which Pilkington would return in the mid-1570s, in his posthumously published commentary on the book of Nehemiah, not coincidentally another Old Testament book about the building of the Temple after the Babylonian exile. Pilkington praised Nehemiah for boldly rebuking and directing the Jewish leaders and people, ‘which should have taken the matter in hand them-selves and encouraged others rather than he’. The lesson to be learned from this was that ‘in God's cause, when those that should be furtherers of it, waxe colde, and eyther will not, or dare not, then those whom God doeth thus earnestly move, may, and ought, so much as in them is, encourage all sortes of men, manfully to goe forward in serving the Lord’: A godlie exposition upon certeine chapters of Nehemiah, written by that worthie byshop and faithfull pastor of the church of Durham Master James Pilkington, Cambridge 1585 (STC 19929), fo. 63v.
54 Catharine Davies, A religion of the word: the defence of the reformation in the reign of Edward VI, Manchester 2002, 161.
55 For similar analyses of the continuing relevance of resistance theory in Elizabethan politics see Bowler, Gerald, ‘“An axe or an acte”: the parliament of 1572 and resistance theory in early Elizabethan England’, Canadian Journal of History xix (1984), 349–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephen Alford, The early Elizabethan polity: William Cecil and the British succession crisis, 1558–1569, Cambridge 1998, 134; and Dawson, Jane, ‘Revolutionary conclusions: the case of the Marian exiles’, History of Political Thought xi (1990), 272.Google Scholar
56 Aggeus, sig. f5r.
57 Ibid. sig. f4r.
58 Ibid. sig. f6v.
59 Ibid. sig. f6r.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid. sig. f6v.
62 Ibid. sig. Bb2v.
63 Ibid. sig. Bb3r.
64 John Bale, A soueraigne cordial for a Christian conscience, Roane [London?] 1554 (STC 5157), sig. b2r.
65 Knox, Letter to the commonalty, 125.
66 J. T., An apologie or defence agaynst the culminacion of certayne men, Wesel[?] 1555 (STC 23619), sig. a7v.
67 Aggeus, sig. q6r.
68 Ibid. sig. q6v.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 In the 1560 edition, the marginal note beside the passage urging the exclusion of false workmen reads: ‘False brethren must not be suffered to preache’. Interestingly, the 1562 joint edition of Aggeus and Abdias removed this marginalia: cf. Aggeus, sig. q6v; Aggeus and Abdias, sig. o3v.
72 Aggeus, sig. l5v.
73 Ibid. sig. h8v.
74 Quoted in B. R. White, The English separatist tradition: from the Marian martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers, Oxford 1971, 20–1.
75 On White see Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan movement, 116.
76 Dr Williams's Library, London, Seconde parte of a register, Morrice B, 602.
77 Ibid. 587.
78 Ibid.
79 This distinction has also been challenged in White, The English separatist tradition, and by Stephen Brachlow, who argues that Puritans and Separatists differed less on ecclesiological principle than on the ‘strategy, timing, and the extent to which each was willing (or unwilling) to disavow their allegiance to the church as constituted by English law’: The communion of saints: radical Puritan and separatist ecclesiology, 1570–1625, Oxford 1988, 6.
80 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan movement, 12.
81 Idem, The religion of Protestants, Oxford 1982, 277, and ‘The cohabitation of the faithful with the unfaithful’, in Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke (eds), From persecution to toleration: the Glorious Revolution and religion in England, Oxford 1991, 51–76 at p. 58.
82 Idem, Religion of Protestants, 273, and Elizabethan Puritan movement, 348–50.
83 Idem, Elizabethan Puritan movement, 24–6.
84 Recent research has stressed the highly qualified and prescriptive nature of these biblical comparisons: Thomas S. Freeman, ‘Providence and prescription: the account of Elizabeth in Foxe's “Book of Martyrs”’, and Alexandra Walsham ‘“A very Deborah?”: the myth of Elizabeth i as a providential monarch’, in Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (eds), The myth of Elizabeth, Basingstoke 2003, 27–36, 143–68.
85 Pilkington emphasised that while Zerubbabel and other post-exilic leaders were called princes, ‘yet they had not a Kyngly Majesty, crowne & power: for they were but as Maires or Dukes, and hed men amongest the people’. This non-kingly status was a crucial part of Pilkington's argument that even lesser magistrates like Zerubbabel were ‘preferred’ over the high priest: Aggeus, sig. c5v.
86 BL, ms Add. 27,632, fo. 50v.
87 Peter Lake, ‘Presbyterianism, the idea of a national Church, and the argument from divine right’, in Peter Lake and Maria Dowling (eds), Protestantism and the national Church, London 1987, 193–224 at p. 195.
88 Ibid. 196.
