¹ By which is meant here the late 1640s and the 1650s. For one example amongst many which illustrate a revolutionary aspiration towards formalities (and its lack of fulfilment), one might take the proposals before the Nominated Assembly in August 1653 to cancel all titles and denominations in religion (‘for God's people should be under one name viz. Christians’) and in civil life to substitute ‘Freemen of England’ for all titles of honour and rank. See Cliffe, J. T., Puritans in Conflict: The Puritan Gentry During and After the Civil Wars (1988), 182Google Scholar.

² There is a manifest danger, in developing the theme of ‘antiformalism’, of substituting another piece of ‘manic abstraction’ for those from which we are seeking to escape. But since abstraction, generalisation of some kind is the historian's inescapable obligation we must journey on in the hope of arriving at a city of less manic abstraction and more substance. Attention was drawn to manic abstraction in George, C. H., ‘Puritanism as history and historiography’, Past and Present, XLI (1968), 77–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Salutary remarks on the issue are to be found in Lamont's, William seminal essay, ‘Pamphleteering, the Protestant consensus and the English Revolution’, in Freedom in the English Revolution: Essays in history and literature, ed. Richardson, R. C. and Ridden, G. M. Manchester, 1986, 72–92Google Scholar.

³ A full and proper justification of these claims will require more space than is available here, where I attempt to give some illustration of the theme and some grounds for faith in its significance. But for some anticipation of the connections, see Davis, J. C., ‘Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution’, The Historical Journal, XXXV, 3 (1992), 507–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁰ Kendall, R. T., Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford, 1979), 130Google Scholar. Compare John Everard's identification of formality with those who ‘champ the Letter between their Teeth’ but show no virtue in their lives by the pursuit of the ‘Spiritual, Practical and Experimental Life’. Everard, John, The Gospel Treasury Opened (1657), I, 416Google Scholar; cited in Smith, Nigel, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1989), 132Google Scholar.

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¹⁹ Worden, ibid., 233 and quoting Matthew Hale, Of the Nature of True Religion (1684), 16, 37, 39.

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³³ The works of Lamont, William are essential here in particular ‘Pamphleteering, the Protestant Consensus and the English Revolution’, and Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603–1660 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁵ We lack an adequate modern history of these debates. For divergence on the central issue of the Prayer Book amongst a discrete group of wealthy, puritan gentry see Cliffe, J. T., Puritans in Conflict: The Puritan Gentry During and After the Civil Wars (1988), 27–8Google Scholar. For the Harleys' attitude to the Prayer Book see Eales, Jacqueline, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar. On the significance of the Prayer Book in the 1640s see Morrill, John, ‘The Church of England 1642–9’ in Morrill, (ed.) Reactions to the English Civil War (1982), 89–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For some parallel issues of forms see Greaves, R. L., ‘The Ordination Controversy and the Spirit of Reform in Puritan England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History XXI (1970), 225–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katz, David S., Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth Century England (Leiden, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parker, Kenneth L., The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War Cambridge, 1988CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁷ An example of such ‘radical’ formalists might be found in the Chidley family with their campaigns on church bells, cathedrals, Christmas and adult baptism. Gentles, Ian, ‘London Levellers and the English Revolution: The Chidleys and their Circle’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XXIX (1978), 281–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁹ For the difficulties inherent in this exercise see Goddard, Guibon, ‘Journal of the Parliament of 1654–5’ in Rutt, J. T. (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq., 1656–9, 4 vols. (1828), I, xvii–cxxxGoogle Scholar. See also Davis, J. C., ‘Cromwell's Religion’, in Morrill, John (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1990), 194–5Google Scholar. Thomas Hobbes' ecclesiology may perhaps be more illuminatingly seen in these terms rather than under the heading of Erastianism. Glenn Burgess, ‘Liberty in the English Revolution: Hobbes and Some Contemporaries’ (unpublished typescript). I am grateful to Dr Burgess for the opportunity to read this ahead of publication. See also Sommerville, Johann P., Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴¹ Katz, Sabbath and Sectarianism; idem., Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603–1655 (Oxford, 1982). For examples of contemporary anxiety about judaizing tendencies, see Crofton, Zachary, Bethshemesh Clouded or some Animadversions on the Rabbinical Talmud of Rabbi John Rogers (1653)Google Scholar; Ludlow: A Voyce, ed. Worden, , 7Google Scholar.

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⁴⁴ Kellet, Joseph, Pomroy, John and Glisson, Paul, A Faithful Discovery of a treacherous Design (1655), title page, 27, 39–40, 50, 52Google Scholar. The tract was recommended by Christopher Feake, John Simpson and George Cokayn.

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⁵⁰ Dell, William, The Crucified and Quickened Christian (1650?) 4–5Google Scholar; see also 33. Dell had been secretary to William Laud, attended Fairfax in 1645–6, officiated at the marriage of Henry Ireton and Bridget Cromwell in 1646 and became a reforming Master of Caius College in May 1649.

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⁵³ Walwyn, William, The Power of Love (1643), 27, 7–8Google Scholar. For the concession by his enemies that Walwyn consistently urged a shift of priorities from form to substance see [Price, James], Walwins Wiles (1649), 7Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Rogers, , Dod, 40–1, 65, 67, 212CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an attempt by an individual congregation to achieve this shift of emphasis see Bedford, John Gifford's congregation set up in 1650 ‘without respect to this or that circumstance or opinion in outward or circumstantiall things’Google Scholar. New members, identifying the distinction between substance and form, were to solemnly agree that ‘union with Christ is the foundation of all Sainte's Communion, and not any ordinances of Christ, or any judgement about externalls’. White, B. R., ‘The Fellowship of Believers: Bunyan and Puritanism’, in John Bunyan, ed. Keeble, , 8, 11–12, 17–18Google Scholar. However, for the paradox whereby the testing for substance could result in the emergence of forms see Richard L. Greaves, ‘Conscience, liberty and the Spirit: Bunyan and Nonconformity’, in ibid., 24.

⁵⁵ Rogers, , Dod, 346Google Scholar; see also 454. Cf. Trapnel, , A Legacy, 4Google Scholar; on the Grindletonians, Smith, Perfection Proclaimed, f2. For Baptist concern at the idolisation of ordinances see White, B. R., ‘Henry Jessey in the Great Rebellion’, in Reformation, Conformity and Dissent: Essays in honour of Geoffrey Nuttall, ed. Knox, R. Buick (1977), 143, 151Google Scholar.

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⁶⁵ Evans, Arise, The Voice of King Charts the Father (1655), 34–5Google Scholar. Less immediately Evans argued that godly order and authority in the family could only be restored if there were such in the commonwealth at large.

⁶⁶ Sprigge, Joshua, A Testimony of Approaching Glory (1649), 127Google Scholar; quoted in Nuttall, , Puritan Spirit (1967), 120–1Google Scholar. Cf. Rogers, , Dod, 453Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ In an Augustinian frame of reference, coercion and persuasion were not seen as mutually exclusive. See Goldie, Mark, ‘The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England’ in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, ed. Grell, Ole Peter, Israel, Jonathan and Tyacke, Nicholas Oxford, 1991, 331–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷⁰ Hall, John, The True Cavalier Examined by his Principles (1656), 4, 5, 90Google Scholar. Hall was one of several in the 1650s urging a reconciliation between Cavaliers and Cromwellians. See also Huntley, , Jeremy Taylor, 55Google Scholar. Also, Walwyn, William, The Compassionate Samaritan (1644), 45: ‘the diversity of mens judgements is not the occasion of division’Google Scholar. Cf. The Vanitie of the Present Churches, 8.

⁷¹ This is the principal theme of Coppe's, A Fiery Flying Roll.

⁷² Bunyan, , I will Pray with the Spirit (1662?)CrossRefGoogle Scholar quoted in Hill, , Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People, 126Google Scholar.

⁷³ Walwyn, , A Still and Soft Voice (1647), 2–3, 7–8Google Scholar.

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⁷⁵ Rogers, , Some Account, 29–30, 33–4, 58, 68Google Scholar. Cf. John Lilburne's argument that three sorts of men gained from the twin social evils of ‘living on other men's lights’ and self-love—the clergy, lawyers and formalists. Iilburne, , An Answer to Nine Arguments (1644), To the ReaderGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁶ Bond, John, Eschol (1648), 1Google Scholar, cited in Worden, , ‘Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England’, 95Google Scholar. Worden's essay remains the best introduction to providentialism in the period.

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⁸² [Sexby, Edward and Titus, Silius], Killing Noe Murder (1657)Google Scholar. Both this, and the reply to it, were based on the premise that it was inconceivable that God ‘had left the world to be governed by Fortune’. See Killing is Murder (1657), 7.

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⁸⁴ Cf. ibid., II, 113–14 for one example amongst many of Cromwell as such an instrument. Sterry, , The Clouds in Which, 40–1, 46, 47–8Google Scholar; Owen, , God's work in Founding Zion, 41Google Scholar.

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⁸⁸ Lamont, William, ‘Puritanism as History and Historiography: some Further Thoughts’, Past and Present, XLIV (1969), 145Google Scholar. Cf. Certain Quaeres, 7.

⁸⁹ Camm, John and Howgill, Francis, This Was the Word of the Lord (1654)Google Scholar. Cf. Abiezer Coppe's insistence that the forms of levelling having been tried the ‘substantiality of levelling’ was to come from God's hands. The strange postures of formality were the obstacle which was to be swept away. Coppe, , Some Sweet Sips in Ranter Writings, ed. Smith, , 43, 44, 46, 53, 54, 63, 76–7Google Scholar; A Fiery Flying Roll in ibid., 86–7, 90, 103–4.

⁹⁰ In this respect, interregnum antiformalism may have had some role as a generator of the detestation of popery, priestcraft and ideology which Mark Goldie has shown to be such an influential feature of post-Restoratian mentalité. Goldie, Mark, ‘Ideology’, in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, eds. Ball, Terence, Farr, James and Hanson, Russell L. (Cambridge, 1989) 266–291Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Davis, ‘Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution’. John Locke's formulation; ‘Freedom of men, under Government, is, to have a standing Rule to live by common to everyone of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it …’ expressed a seventeenth century commonplace. Locke's Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter, (Cambridge, 1970), 302Google Scholar.

⁹² Winstanley, , Law of Freedom, 554–5, 591Google Scholar; The Mysterie of God (1648) in Works, 82; The Saints Paradice (1648?) in ibid., 94, 96.

⁹³ Cf. [Overtoil, ], Commoners Complaint (1647), 8, 12Google Scholar; [Lilburne, ], England's Birthright (1645), 8, 12Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Warr, John, The Corruption and Deficiency of the Lowes of England Soberly Discovered (1649)Google Scholar in Divine Right to Democracy ed. Wootton, David (Harmondsworth, 1986), 157, 159Google Scholar.

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⁹⁶ The debates, arguably much more important than Putney in terms of the outcome of the revolution, have been strangely neglected. The most accessible edition of them remains Selections from the papers of William Clarke, Secretary to the Council of the Army, ed. Firth, C. H., 4 vols. (Camden Society, 1891–1901), IIGoogle Scholar. Also available in a new edition with an introduction by Austin Woolrych (Royal Historical Society, 1992).

⁹⁷ Ibid., 84–7. Note also comments by Peter and Clarke.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 119–20.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 184–6. Cf. Walwins Wiles, To the Noble and Successful Englands Army, where the New Model is urged to leave matters to God not to Agreements.

¹⁰⁰ For example, ‘A Word for God’ in State Papers of John Thurloe, ed. Birch, IV, 381Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Perhaps the Cromwellian Protectorate came closest to holding these responses in some sort of coexistence. See Fletcher, Anthony, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the godly nation’, in Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution ed. Morrill, John (1990), 209–33Google Scholar; Davis, ‘Cromwell's Religion’ in ibid., 196–99.

¹⁰² Both Christopher Hill and John Pocock, in one of the few points of agreement between them, have seen the origins of the debate on authority in reaction to the rise of antinomianism. The rise of antinomianism is as spectral as the rise of the middle class.

¹⁰³ Sancroft, William, Modern Policies taken from Machiavel, Borgia and other choice Authors (1652), B3Google Scholar. This work had gone through seven editions by 1657.