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London Levellers in the English Revolution: the Chidleys and Their Circle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Ian Gentles
Ian Gentles
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, York University, Canada
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Extract

‘There is one Katherine Chidly an old Brownist, and her sonne a young Brownist, a pragmaticall fellow, who not content with spreading their poyson in and about London, goe down into the Country to gather people to them… Katherine Chidly and her sons Books (for the mother and the son made them together, one inditing, and the other writing) are highly magnified, and the brasen-faced audacious old woman resembled unto Jael …’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1978 , pp. 281 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 Thomas Edwards, Gangraena, 2nd. ed., 1646, part iii, 170.

2 Frank, Joseph, The Levellers, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brailsford, H. N., The Levellers and the English Revolution, London 1961, 450Google Scholar.

3 Wolfe, D., Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution, New York 1944, 57–8Google Scholar; Brailsford, op. cit., 9–10; Aylmer, G. E., ‘Gentleman Levellers ?’, Past and Present, no. 49 (1970), 120–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Robertson, D. B., The Religious Foundations of Leveller Democracy, New York 1951Google Scholar; Frank, op. cit., 2—3, 246–9; Brailsford, op. cit., 33, 56—7; Davis, J. C., ‘The Levellers and Christianity’, in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, ed. Manning, B., London 1973Google Scholar.

5 H. E. Forrest, The Shrewsbury Burgess Roll, Shropshire Archaeological and Parish Register Society Publications, Shrewsbury 1924, 54. The spelling is given as Chidloe, which is a variant of Chidley, a fairly common west of England name: Ewen, C. Lestrange, History of Surnames of the British Ides, London 1931, 238Google Scholar.

6 Shropshire Parish Registers. Diocese of Lichfield. xv. St. Chad’s Shrewsbury, i. privately printed 1913, 7, 14, 19, 23, 34, 46, 52, 62, 68. Samuel was baptized on 13 September 1618. I am indebted to Dorothy Ludlow for this information.

7 H. Owen and J. B. Blakeway, A History of Shrewsbury, 1825, ii, 214–5. In 1634 Studley published an attack on his separatist enemies, The Looking Glasse of Schisme. Katherine Chidley later referred to him as ‘my old parish priest’: A New-Yeares-Gift … to Mr. Thomas Edwards (1645), British Library, Thomason Collection, E 23/13, 7.

8 Lichfield Joint Record Office, Lichfield Diocesan Records, Visitation Reports (1626), B/V/1/48. I am grateful to Dorothy Ludlow for this reference. Studley’s attack was answered by a moderate puritan Shropshire J.P., Richard More: A True Relation of the Murders committed by Enoch ap Evan (1641). Studley was deprived of his living as a delinquent in 1642: Matthews, A. G., Walker Revised, London 1948, 307Google Scholar.

9 A New-Yeares-Gift, introduction (unpaginated). The Chidleys’ last child was baptized in Shrewsbury in October 1629: Shropshire Parish Registers xw, St. Chad’s Shrewsbury i. 68.

10 Haberdashers’ Company, Freedom Book 1526—1641 (unfoliated); Apprenticeship Bindings, 1630–1655 (unfoliated), 18 April 1634. It took Samuel another 15 years to gain the freedom of the Company: Freedom Book 1642–1772, fol. 31, 9 April 1649. I am grateful to Robert Brenner for these references.

11 Daniel for example, is not listed among the contributors to the Company’s loan to parliament in 1641, though he is not found either in the list of those who pleaded poverty in order to avoid contributing: Public Record Office, Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Lay Subsidy Rolls (1641), E 179/251/22.

12 Whitney, Dorothy Williams, ‘London Puritanism: The Haberdashers’ Company’, Church History, xxxii (1963)Google Scholar. For an example of the moderate preaching of which the Company’s rulers approved, see Samuel Fawcet, A Seasonable Sermon for these Trovblesome Times. Preached to the Right Worshipfull Company of Haberdashers (1641). Fawcet is careful to denounce ‘the Anabaptists and those other turbulent sectaries amongst us …’ (24). Daniel’s indifferent success as a haberdasher is illustrated by the value of the house that he owned in St. Botolph’s Without Bishopsgate. In 1638 its yearly rental was assessed at a modest £9: T. C. Dale, The Inhabitants of London in 1618, 1931, i. 227.

13 Burrage, C., The Early English Dissenters, Cambridge 1912, i. 321Google Scholar; ii. 299–305. I wish to thank Dorothy Ludlow for this reference. Samuel Chidley, The Dissembling Scot Set Forth in His Coulours, 1652: B. L. Thomason, E 652/13, 4.

14 The testification of the Independent Chvrches of Christ (1641), B. L. Thomason, E 174/7. For a discussion of Katherine Chidley’s theory of congregational separatism, see Nuttall, Geoffrey F., Visible Saints, Oxford 1957, 27, 29, 52, 55, 62Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 26.

16 Ibid., 58.

17 Ibid., 67, 61, 64, 42.

18 Ibid., 27, 64.

19 The full title is A New-Yeares-Gift, or a Brief Exhortation to Mr. Thomas Edwards; That he may breake off his old sins in the old yeare, and begin the New Yeare with new fruits of Love, first to God, and then to his Brethren, 2 January 1645, B. L. Thomason, E 23/13.

20 See Davis, ‘The Levellers and Christianity’, 230–4.

21 A New-Yeares-Gift, 16, 22.

22 Good Counsell, to the Petitioners for Presbyterian Government, that they may declare their faith before they build their church, 1645, B. L. Thomason, 669.f. 10/39.

25 Gangraena, i. 111–2.

24 Browne, John, History of Congregationalism and Memorials of the Churches in Norfolk and Suffolk, London 1877, 394Google Scholar; Anon., ‘The Bury St. Edmunds Church Covenants,’ Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, ii (1905—1906), 334Google Scholar.

25 In Lanseter’s Lance for Edwards’es Gangrene, 1646, Lanseter is at great pains to establish that he is no peddler but a respectable shopkeeper, having served an eleven-and-a-half year apprenticeship to a mercer.

26 In 1653 Samuel dedicated his Thunder from the Throne of God ‘to the Church of God (in Edmonds-bury)’. See also Morton, A. L., The World of the Ranters, London 1970, 30–1, 125Google Scholar. I am not convinced by Morton’s conjectures about the relations between the Lanseters and the Chidleys.

27 Samuel refers in a number of his writings to the fact of his living in his mother’s house, first in Soper Lane, then in Bow Lane; e.g., A Cry against a Crying Sinne, 1652, B L. Thomason E 659/24, title page and 24; The Flying Eagle, 4–11 December 1652, B. L. Thomason E 801/15, 16.

28 A Christian Plea for Christians Baptisme, 1643, B. L. Thomason, E. 104/2, Introduction (unpaginated), 29.

29 A Christian Plea for Infants Baptisme. Or, a Confutation of Some Things Written by A.R., 1644, B. L. Thomason, E 32/2.

30 The Separatists Answer to the Anabaptists Arguments Concerning Baptism, 1651, B. L. Thomason, E 643/22.

31 The only known copy of the work is in the British Library, pressmark Cup. 403.1.7. Unfortunately it is defective. Chidley’s text breaks off abruptly after p. 24, to be followed by pp. 49 to 162 of a completely different book. The second work is a well-written quietistic piece on the theme of true happiness through knowledge of God.

32 Flying Eagle, 25 December-i January 1653, 35–6; 18–25 December 1652, 31–2. The only known copy of A Christian Plea against Chrismass is in the Sutro Library, San Francisco. It is dated 1656 and is combined with a shorter tract entitled An Outcry against Chrismasmongers.

33 Bells Founder Confounded, or Sabianus Confuted with his Damnable Sect, 1653, Bodl. Lib., Goodwyn Pamphlet 2314/4, 3. The title page gives the publication date as 1603, but this is evidently a misprint for 1653.

34 Ibid., 7, 9, 10.

35 House of Commons Journals, vii. 442, 446.

36 10 December 1656. B. L. Thomason, E 896/9.

37 Thunder from the Throne of God, 36.

38 David Brown, Two Conferences between Some of those that are called Separatists and Independents, 1650, B. L. Thomason E 601/11, 9, 17, 21.

39 Ibid., 21. I am grateful to Dr. Geoffrey F. Nuttall for supplying the Christian names of Mr. Knowles and Dr. Holmes.

40 The Scope of the Humble Remembrance, B. L. Thomason, E 6531/30; The Naked Woman, Or a Rare Epistle Sent to Mr. Peter Sterry, 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 681/20.

41 The Scope of the Humble Remembrance, 15.

42 See below, 299–300.

43 Cloathing for the Naked Woman, or the Second Part of the Dissembling Scot Set Forth in His Colours, 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 683/25, gives no author on the title page, but the text makes it clear that Chidley wrote it. Although he styled himself ‘the minister of Christ-Chvrch London’, he clearly did not mean the parish of Christ Church, Newgate. So great was his abhorrence of parish church buildings that he would not have associated himself even with one dominated by millenarians and Fifth Monarchists, as Christ Church was during die 1650s. I am grateful to Murray Tolmie for his help on this point.

44 CJ., v. 368.

45 The Humble Petition of Many Free-born People, Together with a Copy of the Order of Commitment of Five of the Petitioners, 25 November 1647, B. L. Thomason, 669.f. 11/98.

46 A hostile observer maintained at the time that the five were not imprisoned at all but ‘juggld away’: A Bloody Independent Plot Discovered, 1647, B. L. Thomason, E 419/2, 9. He also accused them of plotting to murder the king, but the Commons took no notice of this accusation.

47 A Declaration of Some Proceedings of Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilbum, 1648, printed in The Leveller Tracts 1647–1653, ed., Haller, W. and Davies, G., New York 1944, 100—1Google Scholar; Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes, 263—72.

48 See above, n. 41.

49 Bodl. Lib., Clarendon MS. 46, fol. 131v.

50 Printed in England’s Moderate Messenger, 23 April 1649, B. L. Thomason, E 529/25, 2.

51 Perfect Occurrences of Every Daie Ioumall in Parliament, 22, 23 April 1649, B. L. Thomason, E 529/21, 990, 993.

52 Mercurius Militaris, 23 April 1649, B. L. Thomason, E 551/13, 13.

55 Cf. Perfect Occurrences, 25 April 1649, B. L. Thomason, E 529/21, 998.

54 Petition of Women, Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of September 11, 1648 (5 May 1649), printed in Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty, 2nd ed., London 1950, 367Google Scholar.

55 Pace Woodhouse, loc. cit., n.1.

56 This opinion is shared by H. N. Brailsford, 318, n.8, and by Patricia Higgins, ‘The Reactions of Women, with special reference to women petitioners’, in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, ed. B. Manning, 218.

57 Bodl. Lib., Clarendon MS. 46, fols. 131v–132. I am in agreement with Dr. Higgins that the woman mentioned as ‘wife to one Chidley’ must have been his mother: loc. cit., 207 n.

58 No will has been found for her, Daniel, or Samuel.

59 John Nickolls, Original Letters, 58–64. At the end of the letter Chidley asked Cromwell to acknowledge receiving it by writing to him in care of John Duppa at Colonel Pride’s house in London (60). It is not known whether he did so.

60 B. L. Thomason, E 659/24. Testimony to the tract’s popularity is found in the number of copies that have survived in various libraries. Reprinted in 1657, it also found a place in the Harleian Miscellany, iii (1811), 47 7—89.

61 Veall, D., The Popular Movement for Law Reform 1640–1660, London 1970, 101, 127–8, 129, 235Google Scholar.

62 To his Highness the Lord Protector and the Parliament of England (2 March 1657), B. L. Thomason, E 903/10, 4.

63 P.R.O., State Papers, Domestic: Interregnum, SP 18/22, fols. 132–132v; SP 18/31, fols. 10–10v.

64 The Scope of the Humble Remembrance, 15; Aylmer, G. E., The State’s Servants, London 1973. 59Google Scholar.

65 Ian Gentles, ‘The Debentures Market and Military Purchases of Crown Land, 1649–1660’, University of London Ph.D. thesis (1969), chap. iii.

66 Probably Francis Freeman, previously Captain of dragoons in Colonel Okey’s regiment, and author of Light Vanquishing Darkness, 1650. Christopher Hill identifies him as a Ranter and singer of bawdy songs: The World Turned Upside Down, London 1972, 161Google Scholar.

67 P.R.O., Commonwealth Exchequer Papers, SP 28/258, fol. 480; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 65. Thomas Grace-Dieu’s wife appears to have been Chidley’s sister, Sarah, who was one of the active Leveller women: The Faithful Post, no. 123, 2005, B. L. Thomason E 217/13.1 wish to thank Dorothy Ludlow for this reference.

68 P.R.O., Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Crown Lands: Certificates as to the Sale of, E 121/1/3/33; 1/5/28, 43, 61; 1/6/48; 2/5/-; 2/9/29; 3/4/65. 107; 4/1/56; 57. 59. 63; 4/7/42; 4/8/60.

69 See below, 305—6.

70 This total is computed from several certificates of sale of crown land where Chidley is found as the ‘assignee’, i.e. purchaser of soldiers’ debentures: E 121/1/5/52; 4/1/37, 47, 57, 68, 69; 4/5/81; 4/6/91; 4/9/63.

71 P.R.O., Chancery Proceedings, Six Clerks Series (Bridges Division), C 5/460/154; Series ii, C 3/457/12; Gentles, thesis, 79, appendix i.

72 The Dissembling Scot, 12.

73 The Scope of the Humble Remembrance, 15.

74 The Dissembling Scot, 11.

75 See below, 302.

76 Gentles, thesis, 80–101.

77 SP 18/24, fol. 225.

78 B. L. Stowe MS. 184, fol. 256.

79 P.R.O., State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, SP 25/69, fol. 224; State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, Committee and Commissioners for Indemnity, SP 24/14, fols. 30–30v, 73.I am grateful to Professor Aylmer for these references.

80 C 3/457/12. The ravages of time have obliterated much of Chidley’s answer.

81 P.R.O., E 121/1/5/28, 43, 61; 2/5/-; 4/1/56, 59.

82 For the details of these transactions, see Gentles, thesis, 158–9, 265, and ‘The Purchasers of the Northamptonshire Crown Lands, 1649–1660’, Midland History, iv (1976), 207.

83 E 121/4/7/42; 4/8/60; P.R.O., Chancery, Close Rolls, C 54/3819/41. A word of caution; the fact that no record has been found of Chidley’s selling of these properties does not eliminate the possibility that they were sold without the conveyances being enrolled, or that if enrolled the enrolment has been lost. The above survey of Chidley’s land transactions is based on a search of the Certificates of Sale of Crown Lands, the Close Rolls, the Feet of Fines, the Coram Rege Rolls of King’s Bench and the Recovery Rolls of Common Pleas.

84 E 121/3/4/107; P.R.O., Court of Common Pleas, Recovery Rolls, CP 43/300/18.

85 C 5/460/154; C/., vii. 531.

86 C 54/3681/22, 22 July 1652.

87 C 54/3970/23.

88 The Dissembling Scot, 7; C 54/3635/3.

89 C J., vii. 127; Chidley, A Remonstrance to the Valiant and Well Deserving Souldier, and the Rest of the Creditors of the Common-Wealth, 1653, B. L. Thomason, E 692/5, 11.

90 C J., vii. 152.

91 Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials, Oxford 1853, iii. 446.

92 C J., vii. 169–70.

93 The Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642—1660, ed. Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., London 1911, ii. 603—12Google Scholar.

94 Ibid., 615, 647.

95 C J., vii. 223.

96 Ibid., 245.

97 A Perfect Diumall… in Relation to the Armies, 2 September 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 797/6, 2141.

98 A copy of the broadside may be found in the correspondence of Captain Adam Baynes: B. L. Add. MS. 21, 427, fol. 187.

99 Flying Eagle, 4–11 December 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 801/15, 15–16.

100 The paper was said to be printed for ‘A.P.’ Whether this referred to a pseudonymn or to Mr. Pearson, Chidley’s collaborator on the petition, there is no doubt that Chidley wrote for the paper, either as a contributor or as the editor. Over its short career the Flying Eagle rode virtually all of Chidley’s favourite hobby horses: it promoted the public faith petition, exalted the sabbath, decried cathedrals, denounced hanging for theft, bemoaned the celebration of Christmas (printing Chidley’s remonstrance to parliament entitled A Christian Plea against Christmass), and praised the reintroduction of censorship. The tone of the paper—its compassion for the poor, indignation at social injustice, inflated rhetoric and frequent self-righteousness— is also unmistakably Chidley’s.

101 Flying Eagle, 27 November to 4 December 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 683/16, 2–3.

102 Ibid., 4–11 December 1652. B. L. Thomason, E 801/15, 16; Severall Proceedings in Parliament, 2–9 December 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 801/12, 2628.

103 Flying Eagle, 18–25 December 1652, B. L. Thomason, E 684/10, 26.

104 Frank, J., The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, Cambridge, Mass. 1961, 235Google Scholar.

105 Mercurius Politicus, 20—7 January 1653, B. L. Thomason, E 684/31, 2192.

106 The Dissembling Scot, 14.

107 A Remonstrance to the Valiant and Well Deserving Souldier, 23 April 1653, B. L. Thomason, E 692/5.

108 An Additionall Remonstrance, 1653, B. L. Thomason, E 711/7, 5, 15, 18, 14, 17. In his Remonstrance to the Creditors of the Common-Wealth Chidley gives the date of the Additionall Remonstrance as 22 June 1653.

109 A Remonstrance to the Creditors of the Common-Wealth of England Concerning the Publique Debts of the Nation, 19 December 1653, B. L. Thomason, 669.f.17/68.

110 26 March 1657, B. L. Thomason, E 905/3, 2.

111 The Lord Mayor’s Waiting Books for the 1660s preserved in the Corporation of London Records Office contain long lists of people imprisoned for short periods in Newgate for violating the Act against Seditious Conventicles.

112 Corporation of London Records Office, Calendar to the Sessions File, 7 December 1664. See also London Sessions Records 1605–1685, ed. Dom Hugh Bowler, Catholic Record Society Publications, xxxiv (1934.), 155.

113 P.R.O., C 5/597/78; 407/43; 460/155; Chancery, Entry Books of Decrees and Orders (1666), C 33/227, fols. 211v, 249v. Whitehead was contemptuous of Chidley’s claim to have lost his documents in the Fire. It was simply not possible ‘unlesse hee removed his moveables and carryed them from his dwellinge howse in Southwarke and threw them into the fier’; C 5/407/43. This is the only known reference to Chidley’s owning a house or living in Southwark. That he did live in London and not Southwark during die 1660s seems confirmed not only by his own statements but by the fact that when he was arrested in 1664 and 1667 his address was in London, as it was also in the hearth tax return of 1668.

114 He had probably been expelled from the Haberdashers’ Company, though it is unlikely that he had been admitted to the Scrivenors’. His short-lived administrative career under the Commonwealth made the humble trade of scribe the only practical alternative available to him once he had lost the status of merchant.

115 C.L.R.O., Newgate Sessions Minute Book, xxiii, 1 September, 7 October 1667; P.R.O..E 179/147/617, fol. 59v.