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Congregationalism and the Social Order: John Goodwin's Gathered Church, 1640–60

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Ellen S. More
Ellen S. More
Affiliation:
Dept of History, University of Rochester, College of Arts and Sciences, River Campus Station, Rochester, New York 14627, USA
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Extract

In 1644 the Puritan lawyer and parliamentary pamphleteer, William Prynne, voiced a question much on the minds of moderate Puritans: Would not Congregationalism ‘by inevitable necessary consequence subvert…all settled…forms of civil government…and make every small congregation, family (yea person if possible), an independent church and republic exempt from all other public laws’? What made Congregationalism seem so threatening? The calling of the Long Parliament encouraged an efflorescence of Congregational churches throughout England. While differing in many other respects, their members were united in the belief that the true Church consisted of individually gathered, self-governing congregations of the godly. Such a Church was answerable to no other earthly authority. The roots of English Congregationalism extended back to Elizabethan times and beyond. Some Congregationalists, in the tradition of Robert Browne, believed in total separation from the Established Church; others, following the later ideas of Henry Jacob, subscribed to semi-separatism, believing that a godly remnant remained within the Established Church. For semi-separatists some contact with the latter was permissible, as was a loose confederation of gathered churches. During the English civil wars and Interregnum, the Church polity of most leading religious Independents actually was semi-separatist.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 210 - 235
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Prynne, William, Twelve Considerable, Serious Questions Touching Church Government (1644), Question 5, A2r.Google Scholar The following article is a revised version of a paper given at the annual meeting of the American Society of Church History at the American Historical Association annual meeting, Washington, DC, 1982. I am grateful to my commentators, Richard L. Greaves and Dewey D. Wallace and my fellow panelist, Pamela B. Volkman, for useful and generous remarks made at that time. I am equally obliged to the following readers of subsequent drafts: Theodore Brown, T. Kent Gulley, Ronald Herlan, Tina Isaacs, Donald Kelley, Sears McGee, Paul Seaver, Bonnie Smith and Perez Zagorin.

2 For a discussion of the early dissenting tradition that emphasises the cultural continuum linking semi-separatism to Puritanism, see Collinson, Patrick, ‘Toward a broader understanding of the early dissenting tradition’, in Cole, C. R. and Moody, M. E. (eds), The Dissenting Tradition: essaysfor Leland H. Carlson, Athens, Ohio 1975, 3–38. Also seeGoogle ScholarWhite, B. R., The English Separatist Tradition, Oxford 1971;Google ScholarTolmie, Murray, The Triumph of the Sainls, Cambridge 1977, 1–15;Google ScholarPaul, Roberts., ‘Henry jacob and seventeenth century Puritanism’, The Hartford Quarterly vii (1967), 92–113;Google ScholarRohr, John Von, ‘The Congregationalism of Henryjacob’, Congregational History Society Transactions xix, 107–22.Google Scholar Tolmie rightly stresses the distinctness and importance ofJacob's semi-separatism. It must be reiterated that Congregationalism refers to polity, not theology; not all Congregationalists were Calvinists, as John Goodwin's church and the General Baptists demonstrate. See , Tolmie, op. cit. 91–8; cf.Google ScholarWatts, Michael R., The Dissenters, Oxford 1978, 94–9,Google Scholar where ‘Independent’ is used as the generic term, ‘Congregationalist’ and ‘separatist’ as subspecies. This schema obscures the association of religious Independency with the Cromwellian Triers and Ejectors, something many separatists rejected.

3 , Collinson, ‘Broader understanding’, 10–15;Google ScholarSeaver, Paul, The Puritan Lectureships, Stanford 1970,Google Scholar passim; , Tolmie, op. cit. 31–3Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, the debate between the separatist Katherine Chidley and Thomas Edwards over Edwards's charge that toleration would threaten the patriarchal authority of fathers and masters, discussed in Gentles, Ian, ‘London Levellers in the English Revolution: the Chidleys and their circle’, this Journal xxix (1978), 284.Google Scholar Cf. Pearl, Valerie, ‘London's counter-revolution’, in Aylmer, G. E. (ed.), The Interregnum: the quest for settlement, London 1972, 31,Google Scholar for the fear of sectarianism among London's substantial citizens; Jordan, Wilbur K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England, Cambridge, Mass. 1938, iiiGoogle Scholar.

5 Prynne, William, Independency Examined, Unmasked, and Refuted by Twelve New Interrogatories (1644), 4, 5.Google Scholar Also by Prynne on the toleration issue were A Full Reply (1644);Google ScholarTruth Triumphing over Falsehood (1645); andGoogle ScholarTwelve Considerable, Serious Questions (1644).Google Scholar Prynne's paramount concern, especially in Truth Triumphing, was the defence of the lawful government's right to establish a uniform religious polity; cf. Lamont, William, Marginal Prynne, London 1963Google Scholar.

6 For a discussion of the intellectual origins of the new Arminianism, see my ‘John Goodwin and the origins of the new Arminianism’, Journal of British Studies xxii (1982), 50–70Google Scholar.

7 For a fuller treatment of the history of Goodwin's gathered church, see my ‘The new Arminians: John Goodwin and his Coleman Street congregation in Cromwellian England’, unpublished PhD diss., University of Rochester 1980Google Scholar.

8 Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, London 1964, 493;Google Scholar, Collinson, ‘Broader understanding,’ 24.Google Scholar Also see , Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 116–19Google Scholar.

9 Another parish divided over similar issues was St Dunstan's in the East, home of one of Goodwin's followers, William Allen. Brenner, Robert, ‘Commercial change and political conflict: the merchant community in Civil War London’, unpublished PhD diss., Princeton 1970, 372–7.Google Scholar Two other examples, St Bartholomew Exchange and St Michael Crooked Lane are cited by Shaw, W. A., A History of the English Church, London 1900, ii. 130–49.Google ScholarNuttall, Geoffrey, Visible Saints, Oxford 1957, 134–8,Google Scholar also cites the case of St Mary Aldermanbury.

10 See below, nn 15, 16. However, cf. Vann, Richard T., The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655-1755, Cambridge, Mass. 1969, 181–7,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the strong role afforded parents in the choice of one's spouse.

11 Bossy, John, ‘Blood and baptism: kinship, community and Christianity in Western Europe’, Studies in Church History x (1973), 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bossy juxtaposes ‘natural’ extended kin groups, i.e. those linked by consanguinity, to ‘artificial’ extended kin groups, meaning kin-like relations not based on blood ties, such as the godparent relation. I use the phrase in the latter sense, although it is true that some of the families of Goodwin's congregation cemented their congregational loyalty through intermarriages among their children. See below, p. 224. See Bossy, John, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the people of Catholic Europe’, Past and Present xlvii (1970), 58–9, n. 27,Google Scholar for an earlier use of the term ‘artificial kin group’. Cf. Wrightson, Keith, English Society 1380-1680, New Brunswick, NJ 1982, 30–56Google Scholar for a discussion of the declining importance of blood ties and their subsumption under the rubric of ‘neighborliness’ (Wrightson's term).

12 On the subject of biography, see Pachter, Mark (ed.), Telling Lives, Washington, DC 1979,Google Scholar especially Leon Edel's essay ‘The figure under the carpet’. On prosopography, see Stone, Lawrence, ‘Prosopography’, Daedalus (1971), 46Google Scholar.

13 The titles of their three public declarations with the lists of signatories are as follows: An Apologeticall Account of Some Brethren (1647)Google Scholar, Smith, Robert, Hildesley, Mark, Saunders, Robert, Devenish, Thomas, Mountague, William, Allen, William, Gallant, Joseph, Lambe, Thomas, Taylor, Daniel, Paris, James, Norman, Thomas, Lavender, Bartholemew, Preice, Richard, Morris, Thomas, Price, John, Arnald, Richard; The Agreement and Distance of Brethren (1652),Google ScholarGoodwin, John, Lambe, Thomas, Price, John, Taylor, Daniel, Foxcroft, George, Allen, William, Arnald, Richard, Godfrey, William, Brend, Hamond, Dye, John, Hutchinson, Joseph, Tassel, Thomas, Cook, George, Sowthen, Samuel; A Declaration on Behalf of the Church of Christ Meeting in Coleman Street (1660),Google Scholar Richard Pryor, John Weekes, John Wightman, George Backlar, (Joseph Hutchinson), Edward Addenbrook. Besides the names listed above, the following have been identified as members of Goodwin's gathered church sometime between 1639 and 1660: Captain Thomas Alderne, (George) Appletree, Richard Atkins, Henry Brandreth, Mistress Mary Browne, Thomas Chaplain, Tobias Conyers, Thomas Firmin, Mrs Goodsone, Mrs Sarah Goodwin, Luke Howard, Nathaniel Lacy, Barabara Lambe, Samuel Lane, David Lordell, Henry Overton, Isaac Penington Jr, Richard Price, Edmund Rozier, Thomas Rudyard and Lawrence Steel. Walwyn's, WilliamJust Defense (1649) alone cites the names of fourteen membersGoogle Scholar.

14 Prerogative Court of Canterbury (hereinafter cited as PCC), MS Nabbs, 48 (will of Mark Hildersley); PCC 11, 127 (will of Henry Overton); PCC Mico, 77 (will of John Goodwin).

15 These included: Alderne, Chaplain, Cook, Dye, Foxcroft, Gallant, Sarah Goodwin, Hildesley, Lavender, Mountague, Overton, Penington, John Price, Smith and Taylor. Penington and Dye did not continue to live in the parish, but their acquaintance with Goodwin's church is traceable to their years there. Cf. Guildhall Library, London, (hereinafter cited as GLL), MS 4457/2; Churchwarden's Accounts for St Stephen's Coleman Street, 1639/40; GLL, MS 4458/2, fos. 114-51, Vestry Minutes, St Stephen's Coleman Street. See also Dale, T. C. (ed.), The Poll Tax for London in 1641, transcribed for the Society of Genealogists, London 1935;Google Scholar PCC Aylett (will of Daniel Taylor); , Brenner, ‘Commercial change’, 389–92Google Scholar.

16 Cf. , Wrightson, English Society, 56, 57.Google Scholar Robert Saunders was Henry Overton's father-in-law; Richard Price and Richard Price were respectively, John Price's uncle and brother.

17 John Price and Daniel Taylor both lived in Swan Alley; Mark Hildesley and William Mountague, probably Goodwin's daughter's father-in-law, lived in Coleman Street as did the Goodwins. Of the fifteen non-residents, five lived in parishes bordering on the river (Allen, Arnald, Devenish, Godfrey and Lacy); four lived in parishes by London Wall (Addenbrook, Conyers, Morris and Wightman). The remaining six lived in parishes toward the centre of the City (Backlar, Brandreth, the Lambes and Hutchinson).

18 Substantial households here are defined, following Finlay, Robert, Population and Metropolis, Cambridge 1981, 77,CrossRefGoogle Scholar as property valued at £20 or above in the tithe assessment of 1638, Cod. Lambeth MS 272, transcribed by Dale, T. C. (ed.), The Inhabitants of London in 1638, 2 vols., London 1931.Google Scholar According to Dale's introduction, p. iv, these were ‘moderated’ valuations, i.e. assessed at 75 per cent of value; Herlan, Ronald W., ‘Social articulation and the configuration of parochial poverty in London on the eve of the Restoration’, Guildhall Studies in London History xi (1976), 43, 44 n. 5Google Scholar.

19 Pearl, Valerie, ‘Change and stability in seventeenth-century London’, The London Journal v (1979), 7, 8;Google ScholarStow, John, The Survey of London (1598), repr. London 1929, 254.Google Scholar For ‘social ecology’, see Sjoberg, G., The Pre-industrial City, Past and Prejeni, New York 1961. See alsoGoogle Scholar, Finlay, Population and Metropolis, 1–19, 168-71;Google ScholarJones, Emrys, ‘London in the early 17th century: an ecological approach’, The London Journal vi (1980), 128;Google ScholarClark, Peter and Slack, Paul, English Towns in Transition, Oxford 1976, 1–16;Google ScholarClark, Peter and Slack, Paul (eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1700, Toronto 1972, 17;Google ScholarPatten, John, English Towns, 1500-1700, Folkestone 1978, 35–8;Google ScholarPower, M. J., ‘East London housing in the seventeenth century’, in , Clark and , Slack (eds), op. cit. 237–62.Google ScholarJordan, Wilbur K., The Charities of London, 1480-1660, London 1960, 39, 52,Google Scholar placed St Stephen's Coleman Street parish in the category of ‘highly favoured’ parishes with respect to charitable benefactions.

20 Kirby, David, ‘The parish of St Stephen's Coleman Street, London: a study in radicalism, c. 1624-1664’. Unpublished BLitt diss., Oxford 1969, 1–3,Google Scholar estimated that approximately 70 of the 90-100 men eligible to sit on the general vestry lived in Coleman Street itself. Also ibid. 7, 16. For an estimate of 394 titheable units and about 1,400 communicants in the parish on the eve of the Long Parliament, see McCampbell, Alice E., ‘The London parish and the London precinct, 1640-1660’, Guildhall Studies in London History xi (1976).Google Scholar Based on poll tax records, Kirby calculated 278 houses and 102 tenements in 1641. See also , Herlan, ‘Social articulation’, 48, 49.Google Scholar I owe the McCampbell citation to Professor Ronald W. Herlan, who has kindly shared some of his findings concerning collections for the poor of St Stephen's parish based on Corporation of London Record s Office MS 35 B, fos 28, 38, as cited by Herlan in personal correspondence (15 June 1983).

21 Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation, London 1964, 28, 33Google Scholar; How, Samuel, The Sufficiency of the Spirit's Teaching (1640).Google Scholar

22 Calder, Isabel, The New Haven Colony, New Haven, Conn. 1934, 2Google Scholar; idem, The Letters of John Davenport, New Haven, Conn. 1937, 2.Google Scholar For information on leading parishioners in the 1620s and 1630s, see Kirby, David, ‘The radicals of St Stephen's Coleman Street, 1624-1642’, Guildhall Miscellany (04 l 1970);Google Scholar, More, ‘New Arminians’, 29–38;Google ScholarWilliams, Dorothy Ann, ‘London Puritanism: the parish of St Stephens's Coleman Street’, Church Quarterly Review clx (1959), 467;Google ScholarFreshfield, Edwin, ‘Some Remarks upon they…Parish of St. Stephen's Coleman Street’, Archeologia 1 (1867).Google Scholar Echoing Williams, I would not choose to characterise the parish leaders as ‘radicals’.

23 , More, op. cit. 26–8, 60, 61.Google Scholar

24 Nine of the eleven Goodwin followers listed in the poll tax return for Coleman Street ward in 1641 were above the median assessment £2 gs., Dale, Poll Tax. Two church members - George Foxcroft (£80) and Mark Hildesley (£50) - lent substantial sums to parliament in 1641; four others, John Goodwin, Bartholemew Lavender, William Mountague and Henry Overton, lent between £5 and £10 apiece, PRO, State Papers Domestic (hereinafter cited as PRO/SPD), 16/492/76. Unfortunately, the tithe assessments recorded for 1638 do not include St Stephen's Coleman Street, so relative standings based on housing are impossible, Dale, Inhabitants of London.

25 Grassby, Richard, ‘The personal wealth of the business community in seventeenth-century England’, Economic History Review, 2nd series xxiii (1970), 221–3;Google Scholar, Patten, English Towns, 153.Google Scholar On wills as social indices of a general rather than a precisely quantifiable nature, cf. Susan Amussen, ‘Inheritance, women and the family economy: Norfolk, 1590-1750’, paper presented at the Cornell University Colloquium on Customary Law and Social Structure, December 1981, 5.

26 The information in this and nn 27-8 was derived from the following: , More ‘New Arminians’, 88–91;Google Scholar Brenner, ‘Commercial change’; Kirby, ‘The paris h of St Stephen's’; Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints; Tolmie, Murray, ‘Thomas Lambe, Soapboiler, and Thomas Lambe, Merchant, General Baptists’, Baptist Quarterly xxvii (1977), 4–13; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarPearl, Valerie, London and the Outbreak ofthe Puritan Revolution, Oxford 1961.Google Scholar These included Thomas Chaplain, Joseph Hutchinson, Thomas Lambe, John Price, Richard Preice, Henry Rozier, Thomas Rudyard, Daniel Taylor, John Weekes, John Wightman. The other seven were Mark Hildesley, keeper of a tavern famous as a meeting place for leading Independent politicians, Richard Arnald, William Mountague, Hamond Brend, Samuel Sowthen, Henry Brandreth and Henry Overton. I have omitted females from these figures since none, to my knowledge, was active in a trade independent of husband or family.

27 Thomas Alderne, William Allen, George Cook, George Foxcroft.

28 Joseph Gallant, Bartholemew Lavender, Richard Price, Robert Smith and Tobias Conyers.

29 PCC, Administration Act Book, 1673, 53. At the other extreme, the future Quaker, Luke Howard, was a shoemaker.

30 PCC Aylett, 348 (will of Daniel Taylor). Thomas Devenish, a soldier, was also the keeper of Winchester House. The occupations of two other members of the Army, Nathaniel Lacy and Robert Saunders, are unknown.

31 Smith, Gallant, Lavender, R. Price, Foxcroft, Taylor, Brandreth, Overton, Hildesley, Allen and Penington.

32 , Grassby, ‘Personal Wealth’, 225.Google Scholar PCC 11/127 (wills of Henry Overton); PCC Aylett, 348 (will of Daniel Taylor); PCC Nabbs, 48 (will of Mark Hildesley); PCC 1684 137 (will of Thomas Lambe); and PCC 11 284 (will of William Allen).

33 PCC Mico, 77 (will ofJohn Goodwin). I am grateful to Professor Richard Greaves for first suggesting that the estimate of the congregation's social status be revised upward. See also Tolmie, ‘Thomas Lambe’, idem, Triumph of the Saints, 114. Some index of relative social standing among independent churches, while a difficult undertaking, is badly needed.

34 PCC 1673/63 (will of John Price). Luke Howard was a shoemaker, although his membership of the congregation was too brief to compare him to John Price.

35 Goodwin, John and Price, John, M.S. to A.S. with a Pleafor Liberty of Conscience (1644), 72–4;Google Scholar letter of Barbara Lambe to Richard Baxter, 12 Aug. 1658 in Reliquiae Baxterianae, appendix III, 51. Mrs Lambe's husband, Thomas Lambe, and John Price seem both to have been lay elders and preachers to the congregation. Goodwin never fully described the polity of his church. John Sadler, did give such an account in S, J.., Flagellum Flagelli (1645), 18.Google Scholar Richard Arnald, Samuel Sowthen and Thomas Tassel were named as church-wardens in PCC Aylett, 348 (will of Daniel Taylor).

36 Goodwin, John, Innocency and Truth Triumphing Together (1644), 8.Google Scholar For a discussion of Goodwin's conflicting loyalties, see More ‘New Arminians’, ch. iii passim. Also cf. , Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 114.Google Scholar In this context, it would appear that Tolmie may be mistaken in interpreting Luke Howard's remarks that in 1642, ‘I was as it were received as a member ofGoodwin's church’. Tolmie, took the date and Howard's qualifying phrase to suggest that Goodwin's gathered church was not meant. Actually Howard is corroborating the indirect evidence that some sort of church - apart from the parish -existed at least this early, , Tolmie, op. cit. 214 n. 41Google Scholar.

37 , Goodwin, Innocencies Triumph (1644), 17;Google ScholarGoodwin, John, Larhbe, Thomas, et al., The Agreement and Distance of Brethren (1652)Google Scholar.

38 Goodwin, John, A Quaere Concerning the Church-Government Practiced in the Separate Congregations (1643), 2–13;Google ScholarGoodwin, John, Innocencies Triumph (1644), 17.Google Scholar, Nuttall, Visible Saints, 110, 116Google Scholar.

39 The last observation was made to me by Professor Paul Seaver, private communication, 4 Aug. 1983.

40 B[rown], D[avid], Two Conferences Between Some of Those that are Called Separatists and Independents Concerning their Different Tenets (1650), preface, 1, 9–12.Google Scholar For another account of the Goodsone matter, see , Gentles, ‘London Levellers’, 289;Google Scholar, Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 22Google Scholar.

41 S[adler], J[ohn], Flagellum Flagelli (1645), 19;Google ScholarCross, Claire, ‘Popular piety and the records of the unestablished churches, 1460-1660’, Studies in Church History xi (1975), 289–90.Google Scholar For the more radical end of the spectrum, see Mack, Phyllis, ‘Women as prophets during the English Civil War’, Feminist Studies viii (1982);Google ScholarCross, Claire, ‘He-goats before the flock: a note on the part played by women in the founding ofsome Civil War churches’, Studies in Church History viii (1972), 195–202;CrossRefGoogle ScholarVolkman, Pamela B., ‘From heroics to dissent: a study of the thought and psychology of English non-conformity, 1600-1700’, unpublished PhD diss., University of Rochester 1983,Google Scholar ch. vi (‘Religious roles: giftedness and the woman minister’); and Greaves, Richard L., ‘The role of women in early English nonconformity’, Church History lii (1983), 299–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 For Henry Jacob see , Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 14.Google Scholar In contrast, see the moving account of the career of Katherine Chidley in , Gentles, ‘London Levellers’, 284–94Google Scholar.

43 , More ‘New Arminians’, 63ff;Google Scholar, Tolmie, op. cit. 111–14Google Scholar.

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46 Last wills and testaments of Henry Overton, John Price, Mark Hildesley, John Goodwin and Sarah Goodwin.

47 PCC Aylett, 348. Both of Taylor's business partners also lived in St Stephen's parish. Taylor was a close friend of the leading Independent politician Robert Tichborne and the brother-in-law of London Militia Captain Thomas Juxon; personal communication of Professor Mark Kishlansky. I am grateful to Professor Kishlansky for making available to me a copy ofJuxon's journal from Dr Williams's Library, London.

48 Carlton, Charles, The Court of Orphans, Leicester 1974, 45–8. Wills of Daniel Taylor, Thomas Lambe, William Allen, Mark Hildesley and John Goodwin. Also cf.Google ScholarLang, R. G., ‘Social origins and social aspirations of Jacobean London merchants’, Economic History Review, 2nd series xxvii (1974), 28, 29,CrossRefGoogle Scholar in which he supports Professor Willan's views in favour of the social integrity (my phrase) of the London merchant class and cautions against exaggerating the proportion of those who not only purchased country estates but also tried to discard their mercantile identities. Also see Grassby, Richard, ‘Social mobility and business enterprise in seventeenth-century England’, in Pennington, Donald and Thomas, Keith (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries, Oxford 1978, 355–81,Google Scholar esp. at pp. 358, 367, 368; and , Wrightson, English Society, 30Google Scholar.

49 Will of Daniel Taylor. Weber's hypothetical link between predestinarian Calvinism and worldly success by now has been modifed or altogether abandoned, e.g. Seaver, Paul, ‘The Puritan work ethic revisited’, Journal of British Studies xix (1980), 52, 53; andGoogle ScholarSommerville, C. John, ‘The anti-Puritan work ethic’, Journal of British Studies xx (1981), 70–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 For Goodwin's intervention in the toleration controversy of 1644-8, see More, ‘John Goodwin'. Cf. Walwyn's Just Defense (1649), 1,Google Scholar 2, 6, 7, 16; Frank, Joseph, The Levellers, Cambridge Mass. 1955, 81;CrossRefGoogle ScholarA Declaration of the Congregational Societies of London (1647);Google ScholarLilburne, John, Legal Fundamental Liberties (1649), inGoogle ScholarWoodhouse, A. S. P. (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty, repr. Chicago 1965, 342, 343;Google ScholarSir Firth, Charles, A Regimental History of Cromwell's Army, Oxford 1940, ii. 571, 72Google Scholar.

51 , More, ‘New Arminians’, 142–6;Google Scholar, Lilburne, op. cit. 342–50;Google Scholar, Frank, op. cit. 169, 70;Google ScholarLilburne, John, Second Agreement of the People (1648), inGoogle Scholar, Woodhouse, op. cit. 361, 362Google Scholar.

52 Just Defense, 29-32; Walker, George, Socinianism in the Fundamental Point 0f Justification Discovered (1641), 8, 9;Google ScholarPrynne, William, A Full Reply (1644), 17–24;Google ScholarVicars, John, Reverend Sir, Having Lately Received from You (1645), 3;Google ScholarAn Apologeticall Account, title page.

53 An Apologeticall Account, 3; Lane, Samuel, A Vindication of Free Grace (1645),Google Scholar, Breviate; The Agreement and Distance (1652)Google Scholar.

54 The schismatics shared Goodwin's Arminianism; hence the designation ‘General Baptist‘. The secession was led by Thomas Lambe and William Allen. In 1658, after five years'; existence, the Lambe-Allen church dissolved, Reliquiae Baxterianae, Appendix III, 5iff; Goodwin and Lambe et al., The Agreement and Distance. For an account of Goodwin's conversion to Arminianism, see , More, ‘John Goodwin’, 56–66Google Scholar.

55 It remains to be investigated just how far religious tolerance by, and personal connection with the Cromwellian Independents improved the economic and social status of London's separatists and independent congregations. That investigation is beyond the scope of this paper. The following men had held modest offices before: George Foxcroft, John Price, Joseph Gallant, Daniel Taylor, Nathaniel Lacy, George Cook, Thomas Alderne (St Stephen's Coleman Street select or general vestry); William Allen and Thomas Morris (assessor and collector for parliament, 1642, respectively). Mark Hildesley was on the St Stephen's select vestry, a church-warden, and was already a member of the London Common Council prior to the Army's victory in 1648. The remaining seven include: Henry Brandreth, Thomas Lambe, Edmund Rosier, Samuel Sowthen, Joseph Hutchinson, Richard Arnald and Hamond Brend. Richard Price may have been on the Common Council in the early 1640s, PRO/SPD 16/453, fos 37ff., Assessors to Raise Money for Parliament from Coleman Street Ward; PRO/SPD 4458/1, fos 114-51, St Stephen's Coleman Street Vestry Minute Books; Journal of the Common Council of London (hereinafter cited as JCC), 41X, fos. 8-65. See also More, ‘New Arminians’, Appendix B; Kirby, ‘The radicals’, 105.

56 Beaven, A. B., The Aldermen of ike City of London, i. 60, 84, 161;Google ScholarGardiner, S. R., History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, London 1913, ii. 282Google Scholar; Challen, William, Register of Marriages, Croydon 1927, 49;Google ScholarCalendar of the Committee for Compounding of Delinquents' Estate,. i 172, 173, 183, 204, 443, 475, 523, 818; ii. 1307; iii. 1769, 2199. Shaw, William, A History of the English Church, London 1900, ii. 516–17;Google Scholar will of Daniel Taylor.

57 The six included Lacy, Richard Price, Foxcroft, Brandreth, Hildesley and Lambe. For investment in delinquents' estates see Gentles, Ian, ‘The management of Crown lands, 1649-1660’, Agricultural History Review xix (1971), 5–41;Google ScholarHabakkuk, H. J., ‘The parliamentary army and the Crown lands’, Welsh History Review iii (1967), 403–26.Google Scholar For the excise farm see , Brenner, ‘Commercial change’, 509–10;Google Scholar, Kirby, ‘The Parish of St Stephen's’, 104;Google ScholarAshley, M. P., Financial and Commercial Policy under the Cromwellian Protectorate, London 1934, 51–4, 62-5;Google ScholarHMC, 7th Report, House of Lords Calendar, 6 03 1949, 71.Google Scholar For Richard Price, a scrivener, these investments may have represented the natural extension of his regular business activities. See Holmes, Geoffrey, Augustan England, London 1982, 5, 118–19Google Scholar for a discussion of the evolution of the ‘scrivener’.

58 , More, ‘John Goodwin’, 56–8.Google Scholar

59 See Tyacke, Nicholas, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution’, in Russell, Conrad (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War, London 1973, 119–43;CrossRefGoogle Scholar, More, op. cit. 50, 51, 68-70;Google ScholarBangs, Carl, ‘Arminius and the Reformation’, Church History xxx (1961), 158–63;Google ScholarWallace, Dewey D., Puritans and Predestination, Chapel Hill, NC 1982, 79–111.Google Scholar I am grateful to Nicholas Tyacke for sending me his chapter ‘Arminianism and English culture’, in Duke, A. C. and Tanse, C. A. (eds), Britain and the Netherlands, The Hague 1981, ch. vii, 94–117Google Scholar.

60 See, for example, , Goodwin's tract, The Pagan's Debt and Dowry (1651)Google Scholar fora theological discussion of the tenet that all men and women have the capacity to choose salvation although (manifestly, to Goodwin) not all do so. See More, ‘John Goodwin’, passim; and Tyacke, ‘Arminianism and English culture’, passim, for discussions of the connections between Arminianism, ‘anti-determinism’ and Enlightenment theology.

61 In the 1649 elections, Mark Hildesley moved up from the Common Council to the Aldermanic Board. Cf. Woolrych, Austin, ‘The Calling of Barebones Parliament’, Ehr Ixxx (1965), 500–1,509-10;Google ScholarFarnell, J. E., ‘The usurpation of honest London householders: Barebones Parliament’, Ehr lxxxii (1967), 24–31, 42;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWorden, Blair, The Rump Parliament, Cambridge 1974, 382 n.Google Scholar In particular, see JCC 41X, 11/49, 9, 10/50, 2 3, 6/51. Farnell lists Praise-God Barebones, Lt-Col Thomas Fenton, Richard Shute, Samuel Mover and William Steel as Baptist allies of the ‘Goodwin Independents’.

62 T[aylor], D[aniel], Certain Queries (1651).Google Scholar Also cf. Ronald W. Herlan, ‘Poor relief in London during the English Revolution’ and Pearl, Valerie, ‘Puritans and poor relief: the London Workhouse, 1649-1660’, in , Pennington and , Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries, 206–32Google Scholar.

63 JCC 41X, 12, meeting of 11 December 1649; , Farnell, ‘The usurpation’, 32;Google Scholar, More, ‘New Arminians’, 292, 293.Google ScholarWren, Melvin C., ‘The Chamber of London in 1633’, Economic History Review, 2nd series i (1948), 49–51.Google Scholar Most of these abuses were the rule - not the exception - at least since the reign of James 1.

64 The number of London freemen has been estimated recently to be at least 30,000 by , Pearl, ‘Change and stability’, 13.Google Scholar Liveried freemen were estimated to number about 4,000, or approximately 12.5%. Cf. Zagorin, Perez, The Court and the Country, New York 1969, 128; andGoogle ScholarPearl, Valerie, London, 50Google Scholar.

65 London's Liberties in Chains (1650), frontispiece, 6;Google ScholarNews From Guildhall (1650), 1–3,Google Scholar 12; JCC 4IX 35, 36, 39, 40; James, Margaret, Social Problems and Policy During the Puritan Revolution, London 1930, 196–223.Google Scholar The story has a postscript: on 4 November 1651, Common Council passed an act to broaden the membership of Common Hall. The Rump promptly ordered the measure suspended until the Council of State could study it, thus deflecting City reformers' gains: , James, op. cit. 232;Google Scholar, Farnell ‘The usurpation’, 39;Google Scholar, Worden, Rump Parliament, 292.Google Scholar For a broader perspective on the urban franchise issue see Hirst, Derek, The Representative of the People?, Cambridge 1975, 92–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Price, John, Tyrants and Protectors Set Forth (1654), 23, 31, 32, 35.Google Scholar

67 Reliquiae, 51-2, Barbara Lambe to Richard Baxter; Reliquiae Baxterianae, Appendix III, 53-4, Richard Baxter to Mr s Barbara Lambe, 22 Aug. 1658; Goodwin, John, Water-Dipping No Firm Footing (1653);Google ScholarGoodwin, John, Philadelphia, or XL Queries (1653);Google ScholarAllen, William, An Answer to Mr. John Goodwin his XL Queries (1653);Google ScholarLambe, Thomas, Truth Prevailing Against the Fiercest Opposition (1655)Google Scholar.

68 Isaac Penington, Jr, Luke Howard, Thomas Rudyard and Thomas Firmin.

69 Thomas Alderne, Hamend Brend, Richard Arnald and Thomas Devenish.

70 Henry Overton (1649), Robert Smith (1650), Thomas Chaplain (1651), Nathaniel Lacy (1652), John Dye (1655), Daniel Taylor (1655), Thomas Morris (1656).

71 They were Richard Price and Henry Brandreth. In addition, Mark Hildesley became an alderman.

72 Goodwin, John, Triumviri, or the Genus (1658), sect. 4;Google Scholar PRO/SPD 29 fos 80, 82, 90 (letters of John Goodwin to Sarah Goodwin from Leigh, Essex to Bethnal Green). See also Masson, David, The Life of Milton, London 1880, vi. 54, 55, 173-7, 181-4;Google ScholarWalker, ClementThe Compleat History of Independency (1660), 113, 120Google Scholar.

73 Walwyn's Just Defense, 30.