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Sion College and the London Provincial Assembly, 1647–1660
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
The events which together finally resulted in a restructuring of the Church of England along Presbyterian lines had been lengthy, complex and exceedingly frustrating for all concerned. Since the earliest days of the Long Parliament, both pulpit and press had been brimming not only with invective against Laudian Episcopacy, but also with a plethora of ideas about church government. After 1643, having accepted the conditions of the Solemn League and Covenant, the Westminster Assembly laboured fitfully to fulfil its responsibility of producing a new polity for parliament's approval. The assembly conducted its work in the midst of independent Dissenting Brethren who argued for a congregational form of gathered churches in the context of toleration, Scottish commissioners who would not be satisfied with anything less than their own rigid model of Presbyterianism, and a parliament that was generally desirous of a Presbyterian settlement but committed to an Erastian structure that would make its own body the highest judicial authority in the Church.
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References
1 Minutes of the Manchester Presbyterian Classis, ed. Shaw, W. A. (Chetham Society xx, 1890; xxii, xxiv, 1891);Google ScholarMinutes of the Bury Presbyterian Classis, 1647-1657, ed. Shaw, W. A. (Chetham Society xxxvi, 1896; xli, 1898);Google ScholarShaw, W. A. (ed.), Materials for an Account of the Provincial Synod of the County of Lancashire, 1646-1660, Manchester 1890;Google ScholarCox, J. C. (ed ‘Minute Book of the Wirksworth Classis’, Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society ii (1880), 135–222.Google Scholar For evidence of classical activity in other areas of England, see Anderson, Philip J., ‘Presbyterianism and the gathered churches in Old and New England 1640-1662: the struggle for church government in theory and practice’, unpublished University of Oxford DPhil diss., 1979, 183–6;Google ScholarSurman, Charles E., ‘Classical Presbyterianism in England, 1643-1660’, unpublished University of Manchester MA diss., 1949; andGoogle ScholarYule, George, Puritans in Politics: the religious legislation of the Long Parliament 1640-1647, n.p. 1981, 263–78Google Scholar.
2 B[urges], C[ornelius], Sion College What it Is, and Doeth, London 1648, 3.Google Scholar
3 A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant, London 1647;Google ScholarGoodwin, John, Sion-Colledg visited. Or, Some briefe Animadversions upon a Pamphlet published, under the title of, A Testimonie to the Truth of Jesus Christ, London 1648.Google Scholar For a convenient list of signatories, see Matthews, A. G. (ed.), Calamy Revised, Oxford 1934, 553Google Scholar.
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6 Price, John, The Pulpit Incendiary: Or the Divinity and Devotion of Mr. Calamy, Mr. Case, Mr. Cawton, Mr. Cranford, and other Sion-Colledge Preachers in their Morning-Exercises, n.p. 18, 26, 49.Google Scholar This pamphlet must be read in the light of Price's lengthy attacks on the City Remonstrance. For other writings directed towards or in defence of Sion College, see Jenkyn, William, AλλοτριοεττιέσκοττοЅ. The Busie Bishop. Or the Visitor Visited, London 1648;Google ScholarThe Pulpit Incendiary Anatomized: Or a Vindication of Sion Colledge, London 1648;Google ScholarGoodwin, John, ΝεοΦΨτοτρεσβγτεροѕ. Or, the Yongling Elder, or,. Novice-Presbyter, London 1648; andGoogle ScholarJenkyn, W., Оδητοѕ ΤγΦλοѕ. The Blinde Guide, or the Doting Doctor, n.p. [1648].Google Scholar Much of Jenkyn's writing, however, was directed against Goodwin's Arminianism.
7 Nedham, Marchamont, The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated, London 1650, 63.Google Scholar
8 , [Burges], Sion College What it Is, and Doeth, 5.Google Scholar For Burges (158g?-1665), see DNB and Calamy Revised. Burges would have been a member of the third London classis. In a letter of 7 October 1659 to Richard Baxter, Burges's preference for modified Episcopacy was apparent (see Yule, George, ‘Some problems in the history of the English Presbyterians in the seventeenth century’, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society of England xiii [1965], 5)Google Scholar.
9 For White (1550?-1624), see DNB. His will also established the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
10 , [Burges], Sion College What it Is, and Doeth, 4, 5, 19.Google Scholar For the history of Sion College see Pearce, E. H., Sion College and Library, Cambridge 1913Google Scholar.
11 ‘The Records of the Provinciall Assembly of London. Begunne by ordinance of Parliament May the 3d in the convocation house in Paules London 1647’, Sion College Library, London, MS ARC. L40.2/E17. All subsequent references are taken from the original minute book and are made with the kind permission of the President and Fellows of Sion College. The minutes have been transcribed with an introduction, annotations, appendixes and indexes by Charles E. Surman and are deposited in Dr Williams's Library, London (MSS 201. 12-13). In addition, the third MS volume of Westminster Assembly minutes includes forty-three folio pages of what appear to be rough notes made at provincial assembly meetings and then transferred into the minute book, Dr Williams's Library MS 38.3, fos. 383-426. The volume comprises four fasciculi, of which only the first three pertain to the Westminster Assembly. A collation of the fourth fascicle with the Sion College MS indicates almost verbatim roughs for the period from 27 November 1650 to 24 April 1655. This fascicle contributes information of two kinds that is lacking in the minute book: first, it contains minutes for six meetings of the Grand Committee of the provincial assembly concerning the preparation of a published vindication of the Presbyterian ministry; second it includes what appear to be attendance charts for the eleventh to the fifteenth assemblies, though not all equally maintained by the scribes. Prior to November 1655 the Sion College MS lists only the names of delegates to each new assembly sent from the London classes, with no indication of attendance at each session. The Sion College MS will be cited hereinafter as LPA Records.
12 Only three published histories have made use of the minutes of the London Provincial Assembly. Neal, Daniel made brief reference to them in The History of the Puritans, London 1837, ii. 432–8,Google Scholar as did Stoughton, John in Ecclesiastical History of England, from the Opening of the Long Parliament to the Death of Oliver Cromwell, London 1867, ii. 175–80,Google Scholar who observed that the minute book had been ‘strangely neglected by historians’. Shaw, W. A. made more liberal, yet piecemeal, use of the minutes in History of the English Church During the Civil Wars and Under the Commonwealth 1640-1660, 2 vols., London 1900, ii. 1–174Google Scholar (hereinafter cited as HEC.
13 CF. DeWitt, J. R., Jus Divinum: the Westminster Assembly and the divine right of church government, Kampen 1969;Google ScholarBolam, C. G. and , others, The English Presbyteriansfrom Elizabethan Puritanism to Modern Unitarianism, London 1968;Google ScholarLiu, Tai, Discord in zion: the puritan divines and the puritan revolution 1640-1660, The Hague 1973;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTolmie, Murray, The Triumph of the Saints: the separate Churches of London 1616-1640, Cambridge 1977; andGoogle ScholarWatts, Michael R., The Dissenters: from the Reformation to the French Revolution, Oxford 1978Google Scholar.
14 Mitchell, A. F. and Struthers, John (eds.), Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, Edinburgh 1874, passim;Google Scholar Dr Williams's Library MS 38.3, passim. S. W. Carruthers has written that after the Westminster Assembly was made a committee for examining ministers by an order of 26 October 1649, it ‘died of sheer inanition’; The Everyday Work of the Westminster Assembly, Philadelphia 1943, 4Google Scholar.
15 LPA Records, fo. I2r. For a list of the London triers see Shaw, HEC ii. 399-405.
16 LPA Records, fos. 10v, 12r, 18v-19v; James, Margaret, ‘The political importance of the tithes controversy in the English Revolution’, History xxvi (1941), 1–18;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLiu, Tai, Discord in zion, 100 ff.,Google Scholar 106 ff., 109, 126 ff., 132.
17 Heylyn, Peter, Aerius Redivivus: Or, the History of the Presbyterians, Oxford 1670, 454–8;Google ScholarMatthews, A. G. (ed.), Walker Revised, Oxford 1948, 42–63Google Scholar.
18 The fragmentary attendance charts appended to the third volume of MS minutes of the Westminster Assembly for the years 1652-4 suggest that the attendance of some ruling elders was exceptionally regular, but that most attended sporadically; and that the attendance of ministers was generally no more consistent. For example, the attendance for the thirteen sessions of the twelfth assembly (November 1652 to Ma y 1653) of some leading ministers was: Edmund Calamy (7); Arthur Jackson (5); Thomas Case, moderator of the assembly (5); Thomas jacombe (4);Jeremiah Whitaker (4); Lazarus Seaman (3); Thomas Manton (3); Simeon Ashe (1); and William Spurstowe (1). See Dr Williams's Library MS 38. 3, fos. 425r-24v (codice verso).
19 Professor Tai Liu's analysis of the delegates appointed to the first provincial assembly in May 1647 (‘The founding of the London Provincial Assembly 1645-47’, Guildhall Studies in London History iii [1978], 119–29)Google Scholar is only marginally useful in that only eleven of the thirty-two ruling elders participated for any length of time, and of these half were inactive by 1650. On the other hand, eleven of the sixteen ministerial delegates had extended involvement in the assembly: of these, however, William Gouge gradually withdrew because of age (d. 1653); Anthony Tuckney left London in 1648 because of his duties as master of Emmanuel College Cambridge; and William Spurstowe, one of the Smectymnuans, seems to have kept a low profile. Four of the most active ministers, however, were delegates to the first assembly: Edmund Calamy and Arthur jackson from the sixth classis; Jeremiah Whitaker from the fourth classis (d. 1654); and Lazarus Seaman from the eighth classis who, despite being master of Peterhouse Cambridge, and later Vice-Chancellor of the University, maintained a steady influence in the assembly over the years, being moderator of the final assembly in August 1660.
20 LPA Records, fo. 4V.
21 The Grand Committe e functioned during each assembly with the exception of the ninth in 1651-2, the twentieth in 1657, the twenty-third in 1658-9, the twenty-fifth in 1659-60 and the twenty-seventh (final) in the closing months of 1660. Its meetings could be attended by any member of the provincial assembly. Other committees were appointed at various times: for example, to confer with parliament, the lord mayor of Common Council and to research and prepare abstracts on particular subjects. Members of the Grand Committee tended to dominate the membership of lesser committees, and ministers usually outnumbered ruling elders. In April 1652 a standing committee was appointed to advise each new Grand Committee (ibid. fos. 18r-20r, 25r, 29r, 103r, 107V and 120v).
22 For charts listing the 48 ministers and 40 ruling elders appointed most often to the Grand Committee, indicating the assemblies in which they served and the classes they represented, see , Anderson, ‘Presbyterianism and the gathered churches’, appendix 1, 282–91.Google Scholar The charts also note the chairmen of the Grand Committee and the moderators of the provincial assembly.
23 Cf. DNB; Liu, Tai, ‘Founding of the London Provincial Assembly’, 119–21;Google ScholarPearl, Valerie, ‘London's counter-revolution, in Aylmer, G. E. (ed.), The Interregnum: the questfor settlement 1646-1660, London 1972, 31ff.,Google Scholar 45ff., 48, 55, 217. For a biographical list of the assembly's membership, see Surman's transcript of the minutes, 'Index Nominum', Dr Williams's Library MS 201. 13, 180ff.
24 Gordon, Alexander, Freedom After Ejection, Manchester 1917, 151.Google Scholar
25 LPA Records, fo. 7V.
26 Ibid. fos. 11 v-12r.
27 Ibid. fo. 131.
28 Ibid. fo. 17V.
29 Ibid. fos. 18r-19r.
30 The Register-Booke of the Fourth Classis in the Province of London 1646-59, ed. Surman, Charles E. (Harleian Society lxxxii-lxxxiii, 1953), 59ff.Google Scholar The fourth classis reported that three parishes were without approved ministers. St Margaret New Fish Street, where Sidrach Simpson had been lecturer, had been destitute for six months prior to the election of Thomas Brooks, an Independent, as rector on 25 March 1648. He agreed to come only on the following conditions: (I) that all elders lay down their offices (apparently ruling elders had been elected); (2) that ‘ye godly partie gather themselves together’ and subscribe to a church covenant; (3) that the parish ‘receive all strangers unto you, though some differing in opinion, so you find them fitt’; (4) that ‘then if you please you may choose officers’; (5) that ‘you admitt ye Church for them to receive in’; and (6) that ‘then I will give you ye sacrament and baptise your children, and none else but ye body’. For Brooks, see DNB and Calamy Revised. In addition, St Martin Orgar had no minister or ruling elders and was hostile to Presbyterian government; St Clement Eastcheap had elected ruling elders, but had been without a minister for seventeen months because of lack of money; St Michael Crookedlane had a moderate Episcopalian minister, Joseph Browne, who refused to permit the election of ruling elders; and St Benet Gracechurch had William Harrison (the signatory of the report) as minister, active in both classis and provincial assembly, but his parishioners would not permit ruling elders.
31 For the ‘Representation’, as well as the list of 40 parishes, see LPA Records, fos. 19r-v. The churches are also listed in Shaw, HEC ii. 103ff. n. 1.
32 An Ordinance of Parliament for the True Payment of Tithes, London 1648;Google ScholarA Report made by the Committee appointed to consider the Petition of the City of London for an addition of maintenance for the Ministers, London 1648Google Scholar.
33 LPA Records, fos. 22v-23r.
34 Register-Booke of the Fourth Classis, 388., 46; 70-5, 88ff., 102, 115, 123, 130. Adam Martindale, for example, encountered difficulty with the Manchester classis which was reluctant to ordain him while he remained unconvinced of the jure divino authority of English Presbyterianism. Discouraged because the examination procedure had lasted more than two years, he travelled to London where he was examined and ordained on 24 July 1649 by Thomas Manton and the eighth classis. For the debate and Martindale's scruples in five points, see The Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Parkinson, Richard (Chetham Society iv, 1845), 67, 85ff.Google ScholarMinutes of the Manchester Presbyterian Classis xx. 44fF., 48, 51, 95, 116.
35 For a list of these ordinations, see , Surman, ‘Classical Presbyterianism in England’, 102–10.Google Scholar Between 1651 and 1658 the Wirksworth Derbyshire classis conducted over two dozen ‘foreign’ ordinations for Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Stafford-shire, Leicestershire and Yorkshire. See ‘Minute Book of the Wirksworth Classis’, passim.
36 LPA Records, fo. 23V.
37 A Serious and Faithfull Representation of the Judgements of Ministers of the Gospel within the Province of London, London 1648[9].Google Scholar
38 Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Sylvester, Matthew, London, 1696, pt. i, 63ff.;Google ScholarThe Moderate: Impartially communicating Martial Affaires to the Kingdom of England, no. 27, 9-16 01 1649, [259]-Google Scholar
39 The Autobiography of Henry Newcome, M.A., ed. Parkinson, Richard (Chetham Society xxvi, 1852), 13.Google Scholar
40 A Vindication of the London Ministers from the Unjust Aspersions cast upon their former Actings for the Parliament, London 1649.Google Scholar
41 LPA Records, fos. 25r-33r. A copy of the entire treatise was entered into the minute book.
42 Ibid. fos. 1067r-v; Dr Williams's Library MS 38.3, fos. 388V-394r.
43 Kenyon, J. P. (ed.), The Stuart Constitution: documents and commentary, Cambridge 1966, 341ff.Google Scholar It stated: ‘I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England as it isnow established, without a king or House of Lords.’
44 For the political importance but relative ineffectiveness of the Engagement, see Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament 1648-1653, Cambridge 1974, 226–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar John Dury, the indefatigable Independent peacemaker, sent a paper ‘in order to an Accommodation’ during this time, but the provincial assembly refused to consider it; LPA Records, fo. 102V.
45 The Diary of Ralph Josselin 1616-1683, ed. Hockliffe, E. (Camden Society, 3rd ser. xv, 1908), 70, 78;Google ScholarLife of Adam Martindale, 92-7. Edward Gee, scribe of the Lancashire Provincial Assembly, published on behalf of the ministers A Pleafor Non-subscribers, London 1650.Google Scholar The government was well aware of these activities and in April 1650 the Justices of Assize in Lancashire received a complaint from the Council of State that ‘in no place have the boldnesse of the ministers come to that height as in your county’, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1650, 78;Google ScholarMinutes of the Manchester Presbyterian Classis, 135ff.
46 LPA Records, to. 112r. There was nothing unusual about this request since Love was scribe at the time of the eighth assembly and there was, no doubt, concern for the safety of the records.
47 The other ministers were William Blackmore, James Cranford, Edmund Calamy, Daniel Cawdrey, Thomas Cawton, Roger Drake, Matthew Haviland, Arthur Jackson, James Nalton, Ralph Robinson and Thomas Watson. The ruling elders were William Ashurst, William Barton, Joh n Bastwick, Jeremy Baynes, George Clarke, Nathaniel Hall, Thomas Jackson, Henry Potter, Daniel Sowton, Joseph Vaughan and Christopher Meredith. As Richard Baxter recalled, ‘the London Ministers were called Traitors by the Rump and Soldiers for plotting for the King (a strange kind of Treason)’. Baxter noted that the detained ministers were released following the recantation of Jenkyn, and his confession ‘that God had now convinced him, that he ought to submit to the present Government’ [Reliquiae Baxterianae pt. i, 67).
48 , Worden, Rump Parliament, 243–8.Google Scholar
49 LPA Records, fo. 103r. This time, however, the questions were more specific: (I) number of ministers in the classis; (2) number of ruling elders; (3) ministers that admit parishioners to the Table without examination; (4) number of communicants in each parish.
50 Ibid.; Register-Booke of the Fourth Classis, 88.
51 Ibid. fos. 118v-119r. Shaw printed these directions in full (HEC ii iO5ff).
52 Ibid. fos. 119r-121r. Shaw printed all the returns except that of the fifth classis, HEC ii 108ff). There is a gap in the minutes of the fourth classis from 2 February to 17 May 1652. In light of these statistics, the general observation of Professor Yule that the London Provincial Assembly ‘controlled the church life of London fairly effectively throughout this period’ is without foundation; Puritans In Politics, 265.
53 Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S. (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, London 1911, ii. 855–8.Google Scholar
54 , Kenyon (ed.), Stuart Constitution, 347 (articles xxxv, xxxvii).Google Scholar
55 The Letters andJournals of Robert Baillie, ed. Laing, David, Edinburgh 1841-1842, iii. 302–6.Google Scholar
56 Selden, John, Table Talk, ed. Reynolds, S. H., Oxford 1892, 45.Google Scholar
57 LPA Records, fos. 228V, 234r. The committee comprised Arthur Jackson, Edmund Calamy, William Wickins, Roger Drake, Simeon Ashe, John Fuller and John Wells.
58 Ibid. fo. 234V.
59 Ibid. fos. 237V-240V.
60 Ibid. fo. 240V. Three of the four unformed classes were outside the City wall, supplying at least a partial reason for their inactivity. The ninth classis was partially inside the wall but stretched as far to the east as Stepney and Wapping. The eleventh classis comprised Westminster, with its political pressures and activity, and the western suburbs. The twelfth classis was large and unwieldy, and totally outside the north-west wall of the City. The second classis, on the other hand, was in the heart of London, but the majority of its parishes were destitute and so economically unstable that the provincial assembly was essentially helpless; cf. Liu, Tai, ‘Founding of the London Provincial Assembly’, 130ffGoogle Scholar.
61 LPA Records, fos. 241r-v.
62 ‘An unfinished exhortation from the provincial assembly of London: no date [in another hand]’, ibid. fos. 263r-64r.
63 Autobiography of Henry Newcome, 106ff.