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Dissent and Catholicism in English Society: A Study of Warwickshire, 1660-1720

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Judith J. Hurwich
Judith J. Hurwich*
Affiliation:
Nightingale-Bamford School, New York City
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Extract

Puritanism has long fascinated students of the relationship between religion and society. Indeed, the social history of Puritanism has probably been studied more intensively than that of any other religious movement in modern history. However, most studies of Puritanism in England end either at the beginning of the Civil Wars or at the Restoration. The history of those Puritans who became Dissenters after 1660 has been left to denominational historians, who are understandably more concerned with the ecclesiastical and theological history of their own particular groups than with the broader question of the place of Dissent in English society.

This neglect of post-Restoration Nonconformity is unfortunate for the study of the social history of Puritanism, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. When English Puritans are cited as the classical practitioners of the “Protestant ethic,” reference is often made to the success of Nonconformists in finance and industry after 1660. Tawney's application of the Weber thesis to England relies heavily on the writings of such post-Restoration divines as Baxter and Steele, and on the rise of Nonconformist capitalists in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tawney's hypotheses cannot be evaluated unless we have more information about the social background of Dissent: not merely a few exceptional individuals, but the group as a whole. From the practical point of view, quantitative studies of the social structure — both of the religious group and of the larger society—are more easily undertaken for the period after 1660 than for the period before that date.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Fall 1976 , pp. 24 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1976

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References

1. Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York, 1936), pp. 241–51Google Scholar.

2. The term “Puritan” also acquired a theological connotation in the first half of the seventeenth century, implying opposition to the Arminian tendencies of the Laudian Church. However, the divisions between Puritan and Anglican were based more upon ecclesiastical than upon theological issues.

3. “Nonconformist” was the term generally used until the early eighteenth century, but “Dissenter” became more common in the eighteenth century and was adopted as the legal designation. Colligan, J. Hay, Eighteenth-Century Nonconformity (London, 1915), p. 79Google Scholar.

4. Cragg, G. R., Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution 1660-1688 (Cambridge, 1957), p. 252Google Scholar.

5. Wilson, C. H., England's Apprenticeship 1603-1763 (London, 1965), p. 137Google Scholar.

6. Cragg, , Puritanism, p. 256Google Scholar. For a similar theme in New England Puritan sermons, see Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (New York, 1953; Boston, 1961), pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

7. Schlatter, Richard, Social Ideas of Religious Leaders 1660-1688 (London, 1940), pp. 176–77Google Scholar.

8. Bebb, E. D., Nonconformity and Social and Economic Life 1660-1800 (London, 1935), p. 57Google Scholar, (hereinafter, Nonconformity.)

9. Vann, Richard T., The Social Development of English Quakerism 1655-1755 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), p. 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing Weber, Max, “Antikritisches zum ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 30 (1910): 188Google Scholar, n. 14. Weber's model is based on the French Huguenots.

10. The Quarter Sessions records through 1696 have been printed as Warwick County Records, vols. 1-9. The relevant volumes for the period after 1660 are vols. 4-9 (Warwick, 1938-64). The Hearth Tax records (Warwick County Record Office, Quarter Sessions Records, Class 11) have been microfilmed, and a copy is deposited in the Bodleian Library. One volume of a projected series collating all the extant hearth tax returns for the county has been published: Warwick County Records, Hearth Tax Returns, vol. 1: Hemlingford Hundred, Atherstone and Tamworth Divisions (Warwick, 1957)Google Scholar. Philip Styles's introduction to this volume gives an excellent description of the administration of the tax.

11. The Compton Census returns are printed in Turner, G. Lyon, Original Records of Nonconformity, 3 vols. (London, 1911–1914), 3: 140–51Google Scholar. The totals for England are actually extrapolated from returns for the Province of Canterbury only. The returns for Warwickshire parishes are printed in Warwick County Records, vol. 7, lxxxiii-c. In calculating the proportion of Nonconformists and Catholics in the total population, it has been assumed that the column labeled “conformists” in the Salt MS. of the Compton Census actually represents “residents” or “inhabitants” in the original returns. This is demonstrably the case in Worcester diocese, which includes the southern portion of Warwickshire. See Richards, Thomas, “The Religious Census of 1676,” Supplement to Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society (1925–1926), p. 9Google Scholar.

12. A bibliography of sources used to identify Nonconformists and Catholics will be made available upon request.

13. The number of known Catholic and Dissenting households which can actually be found in the documents in 1683-86 is less than this estimated population, but exceeds the estimates of the Compton Census. The number of documented households in 1683-86 is as follows: Catholics 948, Presbyterians and Congregationalists 215, Baptists 124, Quakers 405, Dissenters of unknown denomination 420. It is assumed in this study that Dissenters of unknown denomination are Presbyterians and Congregationalists, since the vast majority of these “unknowns” are found in the court records for areas of Hemlingford and Knightlow Hundreds which were the sites of large Presbyterian and Congregational meetings. Sectaries are usually identified in official records according to their denomination, but Presbyterians and Congregationalists are almost never so identified.

14. Bossy, J., “The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism,” Past and Present, No. 21 (1962), 39–40Google Scholar.

15. Worcester Diocesan Records, Churchwardens' Presentments 807/2/xi (Brailes).

16. Baxter, Richard, Reliquae Baxterianae (London, 1696), vol. 1, 89Google Scholar, and The Poor Husbandman's Advocate (London, n. d.), pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

17. Plume, Thomas, “An Account of … the Author,” in Hacket, John, A Century of Sermons (London, 1675), p. xliiiGoogle Scholar.

18. V. C. H., Warwick, vol. 8, 218Google Scholar.

19. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley, Calif., 1967), p. 54Google Scholar.

20. Cole, Alan, “Social Origins of the Early Friends,” Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, 48 (1957), 99–118Google Scholar; Vann, Richard T., “Quakerism and the Social Structure during the Interregnum,” Past and Present, No. 43 (August, 1969)Google Scholar, and also Vann, The Social Development of English Quakerism.

21. The names of the tenants are given in the returns of papists' estates in 1715 (P.R.O., F.E.C. 1/P 106/1). “Known” Catholics alive in 1715 include those identified in the Census of Papists of 1705-6, those summoned to take loyalty oaths in 1715, those who registered estates of their own, and those who appear in the Franciscan register of Birmingham.

22. Vann, , “Quakerism and the Social Structure,” p. 72Google Scholar.

23. In my “Social Origins of the Early Quakers,” Past and Present, No. 48 (August, 1970)Google Scholar, hearth tax data were used to compare Quakers known in 1662 with Quakers identified after that date. However, records for other denominations of Dissenters are too sparse to allow meaningful comparisons within the period covered by the hearth tax.

24. The 1670 return for the County of Warwick lists 16,808 households. In cases where an estimate of the total population of Warwickshire is required, the population of Coventry has been estimated at c. 1,400 households (see note 28 below), and the remainder of the county of the city of Coventry at c. 300 households, for a total of 18,500 households in Warwickshire.

25. Hoskins, W. G., Industry, Trade and People in Exeter 1688-1800 (Manchester, 1935), pp. 118–19Google Scholar, and Styles, Philip, “The Social Structure of Kineton Hundred in the Reign of Charles II,” Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeological Society, 78 (1959), 96–117Google Scholar.

The principal change made here in Hoskins's categories is that persons having 3 hearths are placed in the same category with those having 2 hearths, instead of with those having 4 or 5 hearths. This is done to make Hoskins's categories (devised for a town) correspond more closely to the distribution of hearths in rural areas, where 3 hearths is the approximate boundary between yeomen and gentlemen. The two lowest tax brackets are then relabeled: Hoskins's “very poor” becomes “poor” and his “poor” becomes “middling”, to reflect the lower standard of living in rural areas.

Neither Hoskins nor Styles makes it clear whether persons exempt from the tax are counted as “1 hearth” or “0 hearths” when computing means. In this study, “mean number of hearths” is computed by counting exempt households as “1 hearth”; and “mean number of taxable hearths” is computed by counting them as “0 hearths”. This latter statistic is useful in differentiating among the poorer status groups. In Table IV, NL stands for ‘not liable.’

26. Mathew, David, Catholicism in England 1515-1935 (2nd ed.; London, 1948), p. 89Google Scholar.

27. For the locations and brief histories of all known Dissenting meetings in the county, see Hodson, W. H., “Supplement to the Introduction: Warwickshire Nonconformist and Quaker Meetings and Meeting Houses 1660-1750,” Warwick County Records, vol. 8, lxix–cxxxviiiGoogle Scholar.

28. Coventry had 6,710 inhabitants according to the census taken after the Marriage Duties Act of 1694. (V.C.H., Warwick, vol. 8, 4–5Google Scholar). The population of the other towns is estimated from the number of households in 1670, using a multiplier of five persons per household: Birmingham—765 households, c. 3,835 persons; Warwick—622 households, c. 3,110 persons; Stratford—542 households, c. 2,710 persons.

29. The Evans List is at Doctor Williams Library, London. For a summary of the membership estimates for Warwickshire meetings, see Hodson, , “Supplement …”, pp. cxxxiii–cxxxivGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that “hearers” were not necessarily full members of the congregation.

The Evans List gives no estimate for the two large Presbyterian meetings at Birmingham, whose combined membership is here estimated at 300 to 500 adults; the list also errs in entering twice the 150 hearers of the joint Alcester-Henley Baptist meeting. The meeting which appears in the list as “Coventry Congregational” is here classed as “non-urban”, since the estimate of 200 hearers obviously refers to the whole of Bedworth Congregational Church, with which the small Coventry meeting was affiliated. The Evans List estimates for the congregations at Bedworth, Alcester, and Henley include a number of “hearers” from neighboring counties.

30. The Quaker estimates for 1715 are based on the estimates for 1689 given by Hodson, , “Supplement …”, p. cxxxivGoogle Scholar and the estimates for 1730 given in White, William, Friends in Warwickshire in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (n.p., 1873), pp. 121, 130, 135Google Scholar.

31. [Coventry] City Record Office, Coventry Presbyterian Account Book, 1703-14.

32. The movements of the ministers can be traced through the episcopal returns of conventicles in 1669; the licenses issued under the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 (both printed in Lyon Turner); the Common Fund survey of 1690 as found in Gordon, Alexander, Freedom after Ejection (London, 1917)Google Scholar; and the biographies of the ejected ministers. The basic compilation of biographies is Calamy, Edward, Account of the Ministers, etc., Ejected After the Restauration of King Charles II (London, 1713)Google Scholar; Calamy's data are corrected and supplemented in Matthews, A. G., Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar.

33. Vann, , Social Development, p. 164Google Scholar. However, this trend has not been found in studies of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, or Kent—(personal communicattion from editor of Midland History, April 28, 1975.)

34. Bebb, , Nonconformity, p. 57Google Scholar; Whiting, C. E., Studies in English Puritanism 1660-1688 (London, 1931), p. 414Google Scholar.

35. The main sources for identifying the Puritan leaders of the Interregnum are the lists of justices of the peace printed in the introductions to the volumes of the Warwick County Records, vols. 1-5. Especially valuable is the introduction to volume 2, which discusses the roles played in the Civil War by individual justices (pp. xxvii-xxxii). The Commissioners for the Ejection of Scandalous Ministers are listed in SirFirth, Charles H. and Rait, R. S. (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (London, 1911), p. 975Google Scholar.

36. Outward conformity is inferred in the cases of men who continued to hold seats in parliament or on the commission of the peace after 1662, those who were granted baronetcies or other titles, and those whose sons received degrees from the universities. The definite Dissenter was Waldive Willington of Hurley Hall in Kingsbury (1600-77), who licensed his house for Presbyterian meetings in 1672. The probable Dissenters were three men who played important roles as military leaders or civilian administrators during the Interregnum: Abraham Boun of Coundon (1597-1670), Major Matthew Bridges of Alcester (d. 1677) and Col. Joseph Hawkesworth (d. 1669).

37. Robert, fourth Lord Brooke (1638-77) and Fulke, fifth Lord Brooke (1643-1710) were sons of Robert, second Lord Brooke, one of the chief Puritan leaders in the House of Lords before the Civil War. Their mother was a daughter of the fourth Earl of Bedford.

38. Whiting, , Studies, p. 424Google Scholar.

39. Cooke, James, Mellificium Chirurgiae, or the Marrow of Surgery, Much Enlarged (London, 1676)Google Scholar, sig. A2.

40. Only one of the 32 ministers ejected from Warwickshire benefices received any aid from the nobility and gentry of the county: Richard Martyn was “kindly entertained” by the Earl of Denbigh (Calamy, , Account of the Ministers, p. 750Google Scholar). Denbigh, a conformist, also allowed the “silenced” minister Richard Loseby to remain in the donative of Copston, but apparently gave him little or no financial aid. The Stratford and Symonds families of Atherstone controlled the donative of Merevale, to which they appointed ministers sympathetic to Dissent, but not outright Dissenters (Bodleian Library, Tanner MSS., vol. 29, 59; vol. 131, 223). Three Dissenting ministers who had been chaplains in gentry households before 1662 retained their positions after that date.

41. On the appeal of Puritanism to the gentry, see Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar, especially Ch. 7.

42. On the Quaker ironmasters of Birmingham, see Raistrick, Arthur, Quakers in Science and Industry (2nd ed.; London, 1968), pp. 107–21Google Scholar.

43. On the attrition of wealthy merchants, see Bebb, , Nonconformity, p. 57Google Scholar. The only Puritan or Nonconformist merchant families in Warwickshire who definitely rejoined the Church of England were the Presbyterian branch of the Pembertons of Birmingham and the Hopkins and Hales families of Coventry. Many other Presbyterian merchants practiced occasional conformity, and some members of Coventry Great Meeting even served as churchwardens of the Anglican parishes.

44. Subscribers who contributed less than 5 shillings per annum made up approximately 50% of all subscribers of Great Meeting in 1703 and approximately 40% in 1720 (City Record Office, Coventry Presbyterian Account Books). However, not all those who attended the meetings were subscribers, and it is possible that poor members were simply being excused from the burden of subscribing.

45. Bebb, , Nonconformity, p. 57Google Scholar.

46. See the Quaker studies cited in note 20 above; also Taylor, Ernest, “The First Publishers of Truth”, Journal of the Friends' Historical Society 19 (1922) 66–81Google Scholar, and Braithwaite, William C., The Beginnings of Quakerism, (2nd ed.; London, 1955), p. 512Google Scholar. Hugh Barbour insists on the low social status of early Quaker leaders in The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven, 1964), p. 91Google Scholar.

47. Vann, , “Quakerism and the Social Structure”, pp. 71–72Google Scholar.

48. Vann, , Social Development, pp. 78–79Google Scholar.

49. This preliminary survey was carried out in preparation for this study of Warwickshire. The counties involved were those for which printed hearth tax records are available: Bedford, Dorset, Oxford, Shropshire, Somerset, Suffolk, and Surrey. Baptists were numerous only in Surrey and Bedford, whereas Quakers were well represented in all seven counties.

50. For a more detailed account of the Quakers, see my “Social Origins of the Early Quakers,” cited in note 23 above.