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“An act of discretion”: Evangelical Conformity and the Puritan Dons*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Margo Todd
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In recent years, church historians have been paying increasing attention to the characters who populate that troublesome “middle ground” of the Elizabethan religious settlement. Neither doctrinaire conformists nor hot gospellers, these adherents of the “religion of protestants” have heretofore had their role in English history minimized simply because they did not fit neatly into the usual historiographic categories, and our view of Elizabethan and early Stuart religious history has thereby been simplified at the expense of accuracy. The orthodoxy now being established instead is that most English protestants in the decades before the Civil War found themselves nearer the middle than the ends of the religious spectrum. The religion of protestants turns out to be the religion of Chaderton and Hutton, Morton and Carleton, rather than that of Laud or of Ames.

But now we face a new problem—what do we do with the middle? In particular, what do we do with the ultimate failure of the middle to keep the extremists from each other's throats? The fact of war still looms large on the Stuart horizon, and ending our accounts of the religion of protestants in 1603 or 1625 does not quite eliminate the problem of conflict to come. Where was the middle in 1640?

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 581 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1986

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Footnotes

*

Research for this essay was made possible by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. I am grateful to Richard Greaves, Derek Hirst, and Dewey Wallace for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

References

1 Collinson, Patrick, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar, and Godly People (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Lake, Peter, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dent, C.M., Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar.

2 In the midst of raging debate about use of the word “puritan,” I opt for Peter Lake's apologetic for and defense of the term in his Moderate Puritans. The opposing viewpoints are well summarized by Greaves, Richard in “The Puritan-Nonconformist Tradition in England, 1560-1700: Historiographical Reflections,” Albion 17 (1985): 449–486CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Derek Hirst has discussed the problem and offers definitions of both “puritan” and “Anglican” in his Authority and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1986)Google ScholarPubMed.

3 In his voluminous correspondence with Ward, Bedell seldom failed to ask Ward to extend greetings to Chaderton, and indications of Ward's and Bedell's veneration of Chaderton and Perkins are frequent (e.g., Bodleian MS Tanner 76, fols. 148, 161). Both avid gardeners, Bedell and Chaderton exchanged seedlings and graftings along with theological opinions long after Bedell had left Emmanuel. See, e.g., letter XI (1619) in Two Biographies of William Bedell, ed. Shuckburgh, E.S. (Cambridge, 1902), p. 258Google Scholar. Bedell also greeted Perkins through Ward (e.g., Bodl., MS Tanner 76, f. 148, 11 July 1602), and he bought Perkins' library upon the latter's death in 1602. Perkins had loaned money to the young and impecunious Ward, and had encouraged him to study divinity rather than mathematics (Cambridge University Library, MS Mm.2.25, f. 162-162v); Peile, John, Biographical Register of Christ's College, 1505-1905, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1910), 1:195Google Scholar. Ward called Perkins' death a “blow given into the gospel of Christ” (British Library, MS Harl. 7038, f. 348). He later edited an anti-Catholic tract of Perkins (in vol. 2 of Perkins', Works (Cambridge, 1612–1613)Google Scholar. Among Ward and Bedell's other frequent correspondents were Richard Sibbes, Thomas Gataker, and John Preston.

4 An eloquent testimony to this is that of Bedell himself in letters to Ward dated 13 May 1628 and 16 July 1628 (both in Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 293Google Scholar).

5 Emmanuel until 1599, then Sidney Sussex, of which he was master from 1610 until his death in 1643. See the DNB entry for Ward; John, and Venn, J.A., Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922), Pt. I, 4:334Google Scholar; Peile, , Biographical Register, 1:195Google Scholar; and Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, ed. Knappen, M.M. (2nd edition; Gloucester, Mass., 1966)Google Scholar. The master of Sidney should not be confused with the more radically puritan lecturer of Ipswich of the same name and also associated with Sidney.

6 First at Bury St. Edmund's (1604-07, 1610-15), then at Horningsheath (1615-1626).

7 Inextricably enmeshed in the puritan network, Bedell succeeded Thomas Rogers at Horningsheath and Walter Travers, Henry Alvey, and William Temple at Trinity, his competitors for the latter position being the puritan Richard Sibbes and the Cambridge millenarian beloved of puritan radicals, Joseph Mede. Bedell went to Dublin in 1627 and was elevated to Kilmore (and Ardagh, which he soon resigned) late in 1629. The biographies of Bedell edited by Shuckburgh are by Bedell's son and namesake and by his chaplain, A. Clogie. See also Life of Bishop Bedell, ed. Jones, T.W. (Camden Society, N.S. IV, 1872)Google Scholar; DNB; Rupp, Gordon, William Bedell (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar; and Knox, R.B., James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh (Cardiff, 1967), pp. 80–97Google Scholar. The Venetian interdict is described by Bedell's friend Sarpi, Fra Paulo in his Interdicti Veneti historia de motu Italiae sub initia Pontificatus Pauli V Commentarius (Cambridge, 1626)Google Scholar, which Bedell translated from Italian into Latin. English protestants saw the interdict and the period of continued strong anti-Roman sentiment which followed in Venice as a golden opportunity for the conversion of the Venetians to the Reformed faith (see CUL MS Add. 4848, fols. 212-237, Bedell to Ward, 25 March 1607).

8 Many of Bedell's private papers were apparently destroyed during the Irish Rebellion: Bedell himself died in the rebels' hands in 1642 (see letter 63, William Bedell the younger to Ward, 12 June 1643, in Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, pp. 369–370Google Scholar). What survives other than correspondence is in the Muniments Room of Trinity College, Dublin. On Ward's, extant manuscripts see my “Samuel Ward Papers of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8 (1985):582–592Google Scholar.

9 Bodl., MS Tanner 75, f. 126, Bedell to Ward, from Bury St. Edmund's, 16 October 1604.

10 Ibid., f. 126-126v, emphasis mine.

11 Ibid., f. 126v.

12 Ibid., fols. 126V-127, emphasis mine.

13 Ibid., f. 126v. Bedell attended East Anglian classes, or “sodalities of ministers” (Rupp, , William Bedell, p. 2.Google Scholar).

14 Ibid., f. 127. Bedell's citation of Melanchthon is striking in light of Dewey Wallace's findings regarding the Laudians' use of a version of Melanchthonian Lutheranism to buttress their theology. See his “The Anglican Appeal to Lutheran Sources: Philipp Melanchthon's Reputation in Seventeenth-Century England,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 52 (1983)Google Scholar. Clearly moderate puritans cast their nets as widely as did their opponents in their search for authoritative protestant precedents. Both used their sources selectively.

15 It is, in fact, a lengthy letter. Bedell noted in it (f. 126v) that “I never spake so much to any man as I do to you now” concerning conformity.

16 Bodl., MS Tanner 75, f. 129, Bedell to Ward, 26 November 1604.

17 Sidney Sussex College MS Ward B, f. 31.

18 Bodl., MS Tanner 75, fols. 129-129v.

19 Ibid., fols. 130-130v, Bedell to Ward, undated.

20 Ibid., f. 130.

21 Ibid., fols. 130-130v.

22 Ibid., f. 132, Bedell to Ward, 11 March 1605.

23 That Ward and Bedell found a place in a much larger group of moderate puritans tolerated and even patronized by the Crown in part because of their willingness to compromise in this manner is clear from Fincham, Kenneth and Lake, Peter, “The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I,” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 169–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 CUL, MS Add. 4848, fols. 212-237; Bodl., MS Tanner 75, fols. 244ff, Bedell to Ward, 25 March 1607; Rupp, , William Bedell, p. 6Google Scholar; Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, pp. 82–87Google Scholar. Despotine was among Bedell's Italian converts to Calvinism.

25 Bedell to Ward, 15 March 1627, Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 266Google Scholar, emphasis original; cf. UW, 16:442-443, Bedell to Ussher, 6 March 1627.

26 Bedell described the troubles he encountered in frequent letters to Ward (Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, pp. 284ff; cf. pp. 26-27Google Scholar), and to his not always sympathetic archbishop, Ussher, James: The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, ed. Elrington, J.R. (Dublin, 1843-), 15:389–398, 425–426Google Scholar [hereafter cited as UW]. On the early history of Trinity College, see McDowell, R.B. and Webb, D.A., Trinity College, Dublin 1592-1952 (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar.

27 Trinity College, Dublin, MS Mun. V.1.1, f. 104, cf. fols 99v, 102-104 [hereafter cited as TCD]; UW, 16:499, Bedell to Ussher, 20 August 1629.

28 William Bedell the younger, in Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 25Google Scholar. He continued, “Besides this and suchlike ordinary work of his place, he used on the Lord's day, between dinner ended and church, to expound in the chapel some part of the catechism; to which exercise divers of the most devout persons of the city used to resort” (p. 26).

29 TCD, MS Mun. V.1.1, fols. 98-102v, 104.

30 TCD, MS Mun. V.1.1, f. 98; Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 294Google Scholar (Bedell to Ward, 16 July 1628).

31 TCD, MS Mun. V.1.1, f. 100.

32 Bedell to Ward, 16 July 1628, Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, pp. 293–294Google Scholar.

33 UW, 16:460, Bedell to Ussher, 10 September 1627; UW, 15:390, Bedell to Ussher, 1 April 1628.

34 UW, 15:395, Bedell to Ussher, 15 April 1628.

35 Bedell to Ward, 16 July 1628, Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 295Google Scholar. Of his own efforts to learn the language, he continued, “I have taken a little Irish boy, a minister's son, of whom I hope to make good use to that purpose.”

36 TCD, MS Mun. V.1.1, f. 103.

37 UW, 15:426 (Bedell to Ussher, 5 March 1629); a MS of Bedell's Gaelic translation of the Bible is in the Cambridge University Library, CUL MS Dd.9.7.

38 Bedell to Ward, 30 July 1628, Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 296Google Scholar; UW, 16:476, Bedell to Ussher, 12 August 1628.

39 Ward's 16 May 1628 letter to Ussher (UW, 15:402) was obviously a response to Bedell's 28 April report to Ward of Ussher's opposition (Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 284Google Scholar); cf. UW, 15:540. Ussher had been apparently swamped with complaints from the fellows about the disruption of traditional college “order” brought on by Bedell's zeal—and, presumably, by his disregard of privilege in enforcing reformation on masters as well as students. Doubtless sympathetic with Bedell's goals, Ussher had nonetheless had enough trouble with Trinity's bitter factionalism since long before Bedell's arrival that he must have wished the new provost more politic.

40 As Master of a college, he was a member of the Commisary's Court and the “Monday Courts” (a joint venture of Vice-chancellor, mayor, and select heads and aldermen with some criminal jurisdiction, licensing privileges, and oversight of poor relief and plague orders), as well as the Vice-chancellor's court. He was Vice-chancellor in 1620-21.

41 Sidney, MS Ward B, fols. 3, 30v.

42 Sidney, MS Ward G, f. 42.

43 Sidney Sussex College, Acta Collegii (1604-), p. 39Google Scholar.

44 Sidney, Acta Collegii, fol. 3 from the back; Seth Ward (a member of Sidney from 1632, unrelated to Samuel) noted his Master's close oversight of Sidney students with approval in his preface to Ward's, Opera Nonnulla (London, 1658), sigs. A2-A2vGoogle Scholar. As a member of the Vice-chancellor's court, Ward was a staunch opponent of immoderate recreation (e.g., CUL MS Com. Ct. I.18, f. 144v).

45 Sidney, MSS Ward 0.8(a), Ward 0.8(g), both unfoliated. Ward indicated a particular concern with the control of alehouses.

46 Sidney, MS Ward 0.8(e); cf. 0.8(g), n.f.

47 TCD, MS Mun. V.1.1, fols. 100v-101; cf. Lake, , Moderate Puritans, p. 46Google Scholar, describing a similar arrangement at Emmanuel College. Bedell reported the neglect of communion prior to his arrival in a letter to Sir Nathaniel Rich, 9 October 1627, Shuckburgh, , Two Biographies, p. 271Google Scholar, and to Ussher, 10 September 1627, UW, 16:458.

48 VCH, Cambridgeshire, 3:485. Expenditures for chapel candles also declined sharply during Ward's mastership-Sidney Sussex College, Account Book (1598-), fols. 75ff. Ward reported to Ussher on 24 May 1637 that “we have much ado both in town and country about placing of altars and communion tables,” CUL, MS Add. 40(C), 2. When the Laudian heads began campaigning for installation of an organ in the university church of Great St. Mary's in 1636, Ward, knowing his position to be the minority one on the consistory, was noticeably absent from the court's sessions (Com. Ct. 1.18, fols. 135v ff, 11 January, 8 February, and 14 February 1636).

49 UW, 15:580-581 (14 January 1635); CUL MS Add. 22, fols. 115ff; CUL MS Guard Book, CUR 6.1, items 41-46; BL MS Add. 32,093, f. 140 (Cambridge heads to Laud, 19 December 1635); CUR 78, items 28-58.

50 CUL MS CUR 78, item 41a (Beale to Laud, 17 October 1635). I am grateful to Elizabeth Leedham-Green for this reference.

51 Jenison identified his own cousin, the mayor, as “popish, though now and then he come to church.” The mayor wished to appoint an Arminian from Caius to the lectureship. Bodl., MS Tanner 73, f. 136 (29 March 1622).

52 Sidney Sussex College, Register of Admissions, vol. 1 (1598-1706), admissions for 1614, 1616, 1621, 1628, 1624, and 1629, respectively (pp. 147–204)Google ScholarPubMed. Ward also received into the college refugee Calvinists from Heidelberg during the Thirty Years War (e.g., MS Tanner 72, f. 28, Gataker to Ward, 21 April 1625).

53 Bodl., MS Tanner 73, f. 136.

54 Bodl., MS Tanner 71, fols. 186-187 (Estwick to Ward, 23 January 1634). I am grateful to Ken Parker for drawing my attention to this letter. Estwick is known as the preacher of Bolton's funeral sermon. An aspiring casuist, he queried Ward further as to whether a nonconformist minister might in good conscience satisfy the demands of the law by having a “conformable curate” publish the book in his parish (f. 186v).

55 Bodl., MS Tanner 279, f. 352.

56 In addition, however, it has recently been suggested that Sabbatarianism was not in any case a peculiarly puritan characteristic. See Parker, Kenneth L., “Thomas Rogers and the English Sabbath: The Case for a Reappraisal,” Church History 53 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 It should be noted, however, that a high regard for ceremonies was closely associated in Ward's mind with Arminianism. See, e.g., UW, 15:581 (Ward to Ussher, 16 June 1634).

58 On Ward's earlier identification of Cambridge opponents of the Calvinist view of predestination as Lutherans, see Wallace, , “The Anglican Appeal to Lutheran Sources,” p. 359Google Scholar.

59 His Opera Nonnulla: Determinationes Theologicae, Tractatus de Justificatione, Praelectiones de Peccato Originali, ed. Ward, Seth (London, 1658)Google Scholar, was collected from his lectures and his determinations at university divinity acts. Seth Ward noted in his preface to the work (sig. A3v) that his tutor was commonly called Errorum Malleus.

60 Noted by Tyacke, N.R.N., “Arminianism in England, in Religion and Politics, 1604-1640” (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1968), p. 44Google Scholar. Tyacke calls Ward the “self-appointed champion of orthodoxy in Cambridge” (ibid., p. 68).

61 Robert Jenison reported to Ward in a letter of 31 August 1626 that he had used the Gratia Discriminons (London, 1626)Google Scholar to argue against notions of free will in Newcastle (Bodl., MS Tanner 72, f. 150). The sermon was preached in Great St. Mary's on 12 January 1626. Matthew Wren's attempt to refute Ward's argument is in Bodl., MS Rawl. 150. Wren was at the time Master of Peterhouse.

62 In Kenyon, J.P., The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 154–155Google Scholar. cf. the Directions to Preachers, 4 August 1622, ibid., p. 146, and on the 1628 prohibition of discussion of predestination, Tyacke, , “Arminianism in England,” p. 54Google Scholar.

63 UW, 15:320 (13 February 1627).

64 Ibid., p. 404 (Ward to Ussher, 16 May 1628).

65 Ibid., p. 404.

66 Ibid., p. 480, Ussher to Ward, 15 March 1630, and p. 500, Ward to Ussher, 25 May 1630.

67 Ibid., pp. 500-501; UW, 16:526, Ward to Ussher, 6 May 1635, describing his reading on the ninth article of the confession, chiefly “to show the truth of original sin, against the Arminians, who hold that there is no sin properly so called in infants. … I did, before his Majesty's declaration came out, confute them about the matter of grace and free will, but that coming out I did surcease.”

68 UW, 15:500-501, and p. 405, Ward to Ussher, 16 May 1628.

69 Among the Arminian members of the court in the 1630s were Matthew Wren (Master of Peterhouse, 1625-35), Thomas Eden (Trinity Hall, 1626-45), Benjamin Laney (Pembroke, 1630-44), Edward Martin (Queens', 1631-44), Richard Sterne (Jesus, 1634-44), and William Beale (St. John's, 1634-44). The St. John's election of 1633 was disputed and appealed to the king, who opted for the Laudian Beale.

70 An alliance between Jerome Beale, the Arminian Master of Pembroke (1619-30), and Wren is noted in the 1626 registers of the Vice-chancellor's court (CUL, MS VC Ct. I.11, f. 72). In 1627 Wren and Eden joined to oppose Dorislaus, Lord Brooke's history lecturer (Wren to Laud, SPD, 101:86, no. 87, 12 December 1627). CUL, VC Ct. I.57, f. 69v, noted Martin and William Beale allied against the puritan Thomas Riley in 1637.

71 UW, 15:504, 25 May 1630.

72 CUL, MS Com.Ct. I.18, fols. 69, 70, 72v, 78v.

73 CUL, MSS Com.Ct. I.18, fols. 58-66v; CUR 18.6(6), Mm. 6.54, fols. 1-24.

74 Ward to Ussher, 14 June 1634, UW, 15:581.

75 Ibid., pp. 579-581; cf. UW, 16:521, Ward to Ussher, 12 August 1634.

76 CUL, MSS VC Ct. I.53, fols. 231v-233; CUR 18,6 (7).

77 CUL, MS CUR 18,6(7); Thomas Batchcroft was Master of Caius from 1626 and is frequently found allied with the Ward group in divisions.

78 CUL, MSS VC Ct. I.53, fols. 196-197v, 202, 214-215; VC Ct. III.33, f. 47.

79 Sidney Sussex College, MS Ward F, fols. 37ff.

80 CUL, MSS CUR 18,6(9); VC Ct. I.57, fols. 64-64v, 69v, 74-74v, 82; Com.Ct. I.18, fols. 138v-143v, 147-147v.

81 CUL, MS VC Ct. I.55, fol. 10; cf. VC Ct. I.53, f. 228v (27 October 1634).

82 CUL, MS VC Ct. I.57, fols. 91-91v; cf. VC Ct. III.35, f. 130.

83 When this happened, Ward moved right rather than left; however, it is clear that this indicated support for the king rather than for Laud. CUL, MS Mm.2.25, f. 160, Ward's letter probably to Laud, ca. 1640, makes it clear that his commitment to the principles of obedience and gratitude to the sovereign prevented him from siding with those who opposed Charles. The same letter also makes it clear that his support for the royalist cause was limited: the purpose of the letter was to refuse personal financial contribution to the king. Ward concludes, “My life and all that know me, can testify for me, that I have studied peace, and have withstood any disturbance in the Church, to my most ability.”