¹ A Register or ye Records of the Church gathered in & about Cockermouth in Cumb[erlan]d [hereafter Cockermouth Church Records], Carlisle, Cumbria Record Office, DFC/C1/6/1, fols 1r, 3r. For Larkham (1609-69), see DNB; Greaves, R. L. and Zaller, R., eds, Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols (Brighton, 1981-4)Google Scholar [hereafter BDBR]; Matthews, A. G., Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934, reissued 1988)Google Scholar [hereafter CR]; Hopkins, Harold James, ‘Thomas Larkham’s Tavistock: change and continuity in an English town, 1600-1670’ (The University of Austin, Texas, PhD. thesis, 1981)Google Scholar; Windeatt, E., ‘Early Nonconformity in Tavistock’, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 21 (1889), pp. 148–58Google Scholar; Radford, G. H., ‘Thomas Larkham’, Report…of Devonshire Association, 24 (1892), pp. 96–146Google Scholar; Laurence, Anne, Parliamentary Army Chaplains 1642-1651 (London, 1990), pp. 145–6Google Scholar; Nightingale, B., The Ejected of 1662 in Cumberland and Westmorland, 2 vols (Manchester, 1911), 1, pp. 684–7Google Scholar [hereafter Nightingale, ECW].

² Cross, Claire, ‘The Church in England 1646-60’, in Aylmer, G. E., ed., The Interregnum: the Quest for Settlement (London, 1972), pp. 99–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ 171 out of the 1909 ejected ministers listed in CR can be described as Congregationalists, but by no means all gathered a church during the Interregnum: Nuttall, G. F., ‘Congregational Commonwealth Incumbents’, Congregational Historical Society Transactions, 14 (1940-4), PP.155–67Google Scholar.

⁴ Collinson, P., ‘The English conventicle’, SCH, 23 (1986), pp. 223–59Google Scholar; Duffy, E., ‘The godly and the multitude in Stuart England’, The Seventeenth Century, 1 (1986), pp. 31–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cross, ‘The Church in England’; Morrill, J., ‘The Church in England, 1642-9’, in Morrill, J., ed., Reactions to the English Civil War 1642-1649 (London, 1982), pp. 89–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, W. A., A History of the English Church during the Civil War and under the Commonwealth, 2 vols (London, 1900)Google Scholar.

⁵ Cockermouth Church Records, fol. 3r; G[lanville], F., P[olewhele], D., G[odbear], W., W[atts], N., H[ore], W., The Tavistock Naboth Provea Nabal: in an Answer unto a Scandalous Narrative Published by Mr. Tho: Larkham (London, 1658)Google Scholar [hereafter Tavistock Naboth], pp. 7, 8.

⁶ E. L. Radford’s article in the DNB took its cues from Tavistock Naboth (written by Larkham’s opponents), and has influenced CR, BDBR and Laurence, Parliamentary Chaplains.

⁷ BL, MS Loan 9, Bound 717A, ‘The Diary of the Revd. Thomas Larkham, MA’ [hereafter Larkham, Diary]. Larkham entered his accounts, and added comments on his circumstances. He left the volume behind when he travelled away from Tavistock, so it contains no entries while he was in Cumberland. The manuscript contains earlier notes of business transactions in London, c. 1597; and of Christenings in East Greenwich, 1615 (by ‘G: Lkm clerkes clerke’). Larkham acquired it either through his family or when he was in Greenwich c. 1645. The manuscript was published by Lewis, William as The Diary of the Rev. Thomas Larkham, MA. (Cockermouth, 1871), 2nd edn (Bristol, 1888)Google Scholar, but with omissions and some reordering of the text BDBR and Laurence, Parliamentary Chaplains presume the manuscript lost, but Hopkins, ‘Larkham’s Tavistock’, made use of it.

⁸ Larkham later claimed he had been ‘persecuted before all the courts in the land’, but no independent record survives of this. He was deprived of his Northam parish for absence and negligence in August 1640. Larkham, , The Wedding Supper (London, 1651)Google Scholar, ‘To the Reader’; Exeter, Devon Record Office, CC7, fol. 21r; CC165, fol. 1r.

⁹ The Journal of John Winthrop 1630-1649, ed. Dunn, Richard S., Savage, James, and Yeandle, Laetitia (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 348Google Scholar; Larkham, Diary, fols 16r, 21r, 24r, 32r, 35V, 43V. Winthrop disliked deserters of New England, and noted that Larkham left a woman with child when he went (a story that followed Larkham to Devon, Tavistock Naboth, p. 15). The Presbyterian propagandist Thomas Edwards, keen to exploit the radicalism of former colonists, described him as a ‘fierce Independent’: Gangraena (London, 1646), p. 97.

¹⁰ For Hughes, see CR. Hopkins, ‘Larkham’s Tavistock’, pp. 1-43, assesses the town’s character and history in the first half of the seventeenth century. John Pym had been the town’s MP; the family of the lawyer, Sir John Maynard, secured the living for Hughes; the Earl of Bedford was patron of the parish.

¹¹ Larkham, Thomas, The Parable of the Wedding Supper Explained (London, 1656)Google Scholar, ‘To the Saints and People of England’ (a second edition of the work below, with new prefatory material and bound with Larkham’s A Discourse of Paying of Tithes [London, 1656]).

¹² Thomas Larkham, Wedding Supper, ‘Dedication’.

¹³ London, PRO, SP19/95, nos 89, 91, 93, 106-9, 117 (original papers relating to cases before the Committee for Advance of Money); Larkham, Wedding Supper, ‘Dedication’; Larkham, Diary, fol. 9V.

¹⁴ Larkham, Wedding Supper, ‘Dedication’, p. 86. For factionalism in Tavistock caused by the Civil War, see Hopkins, ‘Larkham’s Tavistock’, pp. 228-32: it was not a primary factor in Larkham’s troubles, but the town was recovering from the stress of war, and he identified firmly with the parliamentary cause.

¹⁵ For George Larkham (c.1630-1700), see CR; Nightingale, ECW 1, pp. 684-99 and passim; Larkham, Diary, fols 3r, 4V.

¹⁶ Tavistock Naboth, p. 27. He may also have had military duties there: Larkham, Diary, fol. 9r, notes money paid ‘at a muster for my men in Carlile’.

¹⁷ Bremer, Francis, ‘In defense of regicide: John Cotton on the execution of Charles I’, William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, 37 (1980), p. 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Larkham noted receipt of £90 in Cumberland: Diary, fol. 9r.

¹⁹ Hill, Christopher. ‘Puritans and “the Dark Corners of the Land”’, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-century England (London, 1974), pp. 3–47Google Scholar; City of Exeter MSS [HMC), pp. 195-6. For Larkham’s origins as the son of a Lyme Regis linen-draper, see Hopkins, ‘Larkham’s Tavistock’, p. 55; for his son’s education, CR, s.v. George Larkham. Underdown, David, Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1992), pp. 125–8Google Scholar, discusses the generosity of Dorchester and the influence of White (1575-1648, DNB).

²⁰ For Benn (d. 1681), Polwhele (d. 1689), and Starr (1624-1711), see CR. Polwhele, Benn’s son-in-law, left the south-west in 1651 to be Lecturer at St Mary’s and St Cuthbert’s, Carlisle, but returned to Devon in 1654/5. Benn’s influence - mediated by another son-in-law, Nathaniel Mather, who had returned to England from Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1650 - probably also sent Comfort Starr to the area. In March 1651 three Harvard graduates, Nathaniel Mather, his brother Samuel, and Starr, were in London together. Starr was soon preaching at Dalston and Sedberghara, Cumberland, and later took over from Polwhele in Carlisle.

²¹ For Richard Gilpin (1625-1700), see CR; for Bernard Gilpin (1517-83). DNB.

²² Hugh Todd to John Walker, 6 July 1706, cited by Nightingale, ECW, 1, p. 378; see also p. 375. No evidence survives of Nathaniel Mather [Madder] preaching in Cumberland, though his family came from Lancashire. Walker lived in Exeter and probably knew Deliverance Larkham (see a 73 below).

²³ Cockermouth Church Records, fols 1r-4r; Nightingale, ECW, 1, pp. 687-9, 710-11.

²⁴ Gilpin and others to Richard Baxter, 1 Sept 1653, Nightingale, ECW, 1, p. 88.

²⁵ For Hopkins, Atkinson, Polwhele, and Starr, see CR; for Wilkinson, who became a prominent Quaker, see Nightingale, ECW, 1, pp. 749-53. The church at Broughton had been gathered by 1650 (perhaps by 1648, under army influence); Gilpin gathered the Greystoke church soon after his arrival c.1652; Kirkoswald formed in 1653; the Cockermouth Church Records, fol. 13r, refer to the church at Carlisle in 1658. An unusual feature of Kirkoswald gathered church was the number of parish clergy who became members without holding office: John Davis (CR), preacher at Hutton and Castle Sowerby, 1651, who was in Kirkoswald by 1655; Daniel Broadly, vicar of Addingham (CR); John Rogers (CR), vicar of Croglin; and, for a short time before the Restoration, George Nicholson (CR). Nightingale, ECW, 1, pp. 319-24, 334-8, 384; 2, pp. 1258-9.

²⁶ Nuttall, ‘Congregational Commonwealth Incumbents’, pp. 161-3. Seven of the twenty clergy ejected in Cumberland were Congregationalist Denominational labels need to be used with care, of course, because of the fluidity and ambiguity of local practice in the 1650S.

²⁷ Hill, ‘Dark Corners’, pp. 6, 9; Nightingale, ECW, 1, p. 87.

²⁸ Cockermouth Church Records, fols 2r-15r. The Cockermouth church also had members from further afield, such as Grace, wife of Comfort Starr of Carlisle.

²⁹ Cockermouth Church Records, fol. 7r.

³⁰ The Agreement of the Associated Ministers …of… Cumberland and Westmorland (London, 1656), cited by Nightingale, ECW, 1, pp. 91-2.

³¹ Agreement, Nightingale, ECW, 1, p. 94.

³² Agreement, Nightingale, ECW, 1, p. 103. Hill, ‘Dark Corners’, p. 39, cites the belief of Congregational churches of the north in October 1653 that the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gospel had ‘proved the greatest blessing that ever the North had’, and that if their work had continued, ‘all places might have been well provided for ere now’.

³³ Nightingale, , ECW, 1, p. 684Google Scholar.

³⁴ Larkham, Parable of… Wedding Supper, ‘To the Saints’. He left Cumberland on 5 April 1652.

³⁵ Tavistock Naboth, p. 11. Larkham successfully defended himself against a charge of riot brought to the Committee for Plundered Ministers, but incurred costs of £50, which the church helped him to meet: Diary, fols 11v-13r.

³⁶ Tavistock Naboth seems to be the only tract to survive from this exchange. Larkham published Naboth, in a Narrative and Complaint of the Church of God at Tavistock (1657); he replied to his opponents’ riposte, Tavistock Naboth, with Judas Hanging Himself (1658); his opponents responded with A Strange Metamorphosis in Tavistock, or the Nabal-Naboth improved a Judas (London, 1658). Windeatt, ‘Early Nonconformity’, pp. 152-3.

³⁷ Committee for Advance of Money, papers relating to the Lamerton dispute: PRO, SP19/11 fols 364-5; SP19/12, fols 29, 76, 241, 341, 387;SP19/25, fol. 11;SP19/95, nos 68, 89, 108-13, “5-33. 387- Larkham went to London twice more to sue for arrears. In August 1657 he noted that nothing had been paid for three and a half years: Diary, fol. 26. Glanville, son of Francis Glanville (JP), had royalist sympathies; Pointer was a merchant, Godbeare a clothier; Grills, another merchant, served many times on the Tavistock Court Leet. See Hopkins, ‘Larkham’s Tavistock’, pp. 130-2, 232.

³⁸ Larkham, Discourse… of Tithes; Tavistock Naboth, p. 62.

³⁹ Tavistock Naboth, pp. 18-50, prints the articles against Larkham. For Watts, see note 64. For Polewhele and Gove, see Shaw, , History of the English Church, 2, p. 449Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Tavistock Naboth, pp. 17-41; Larkham, Diary, fol. 26V. For the tracts published as part of the dispute, see n. 36. Glanville served as a feofee of Tavistock parish lands with Pointer and Godbeare, and was churchwarden (1657). Pointer served as an overseer of the poor (1656). Watts served as overseer (1655), and as churchwarden (1656). Hore was a collector for the poor (1655), an overseer (1656), and churchwarden (1657). See Exeter, Devon Record Office, 482A/PF135, ‘Feofees of lands belonging to the parish of Tavistock’; 482A/PV1, Tavistock Vestry Minutes 9 July 1660-1740’ [with a backlist of parish officers to 1655], fols 1v-2r.

⁴¹ Tavistock Naboth, p. 28. Richard Ham was appointed vicar of Lamerton in 1650 by the Parliamentary Commissioners: Matthews, A. G., Walker Revised (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, s.v. John Cooper.

⁴² Tavistock Naboth, pp. 7,40.

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 15-16.

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 46.

⁴⁵ Ibid, pp. 12-14.

⁴⁶ Tavistock Naboth, p. 67.

⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 59-60.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 67.

⁴⁹ Larkham, Diary, fol. 30r.

⁵⁰ Ibid., fol. 13V, and passim.

⁵¹ Larkham, Wedding Supper, pp. 21-2. Hopkins, ‘Larkham’s Tavistock’ pp. 236-41, analyses the economic status of Larkham’s supporters using hearth tax returns from 1662: 58 of 77 donors were not listed, and those that were included many artisans, husbandmen, and women. Tavistock Naboth, pp. 11-12, alleges that Larkham had support from significant parishioners.

⁵² Larkham, Diary, fol. 40V.

⁵³ Ibid., last folio. Among those who received copies were William Hore (later excommunicated from the church); William Webb, and John Brownsden, who took Larkham’s side in the Lamerton tithe dispute and later gained the Lamerton tenancy, Augustus Bond, Thomas Thorne, and John Sheere, who testified for Larkham over the riot on his return to Tavistock; and members of the Devon Commissioners for Sequestrations. Larkham, also listed those who bought his The Attributes of God Unfolded, and Applied (London, 1656)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Larkham, Discourse of…Tithes, p. 25.

⁵⁵ See, for example, Larkham, Diary, fols 12v, 14V, 15V, 16r, 17r, 20v, 26r, 36r.

⁵⁶ Tavistock Naboth p. 60; Larkham, Diary, fol. 27V, and passim. The frequency of Communion in Tavistock’s gathered church contrasts sharply with Ralph Josselin’s parish, where the Sacrament was suspended for nine years: Collinson, ‘English conventicle’, p. 257.

⁵⁷ Exeter, Devon Record Office, Tavistock add 2/PRI. Parliament ordered that from 29 September 1653, births rather than baptisms were to be entered in the record. The Tavistock register followed this order, but often also supplied a date of baptism. This might allow us to compare the number of births and baptisms, but one or two cases where one would expect a baptism to be recorded, and it is not, suggest that the record is not wholly reliable. Before the 1653 order, the record states where a child was baptized, if not in Tavistock parish church. The entries up to 1660 contain no information of this kind. The register reverts to recording just the date of baptism soon after Larkham surrendered the living. Larkham, Wedding Supper, p. 250, states ‘how…are they deceived, that think it enough to be born in Christian lands, and to perform outward actions of religion; and to buy for their babies 12 penniworth of water to sprinkle in their faces…I tremble to think how this sealing ordinance is abused, prophaned, even every week almost.’

⁵⁸ Larkham, Parable of…Wedding Supper, ‘To the saints’.

⁵⁹ Larkham, Wedding Supper, ‘Dedication’.

⁶⁰ Tavistock Naboth, pp. 65,67.

⁶¹ Tavistock Naboth, p. 66.

⁶² Larkham, Diary, fol. 32V. For Bartlet and Stucley, see CR. In 1658 Stucley’s Exeter church was also engaged in controversy.

⁶³ Larkham, Diary, fols 30V, 31V, 32V, 33r, 34r.

⁶⁴ Ibid., fols 30r, 35r, 35v, Windeatt, ‘Early Nonconformity’, p. 153. The Council of State, 17 March 1659/60, ordered that the new lecture should continue despite Larkham’s protests: PRO, SP25/99, fols 226-5 [sic]. Other preachers included Larkham’s opponents, Digory Polewhele and Andrew Gove.

⁶⁵ Tavistock Naboth, p. 49.

⁶⁶ Shaw, , History of the English Church, 2, p. 449Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Larkham, Diary, fol. 26r; Thomas Larkham, Attributes, 1, p. 61.

⁶⁸ Tavistock Naboth, p. 62.

⁶⁹ Larkham, , Attributes, 11, p. 125Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Ibid, p. 233.

⁷¹ Collinson, ‘English conventicle’, p. 256.

⁷² Larkham, Diary, ed. W. Lewis, pp. 93-4, 105-6.

⁷³ Nightingale, , ECW, 1, p. 699Google Scholar.