This chapter provides essential historical and theological background for the emergence of Cambridge Platonism. It traces the fortunes of the Calvinist or Reformed (or less accurately ‘Puritan’) theological community in England, of which the Cambridge Platonists were members, through the civil wars and Interregnum, with a particular focus on controversy about predestination. It presents the major outlines of the Reformed doctrines of double predestination, election and reprobation, along with the rise of anti-Calvinist currents of thought like Arminianism and Laudianism, with a view to exploring the ways in which these theological disputes contributed to political tensions that gave rise to the civil wars. Finally, it explores the central role played by the Cambridge Platonists’ colleges of Emmanuel and Christ’s in the training of Reformed preachers and the dissemination of Reformed doctrine, with particular attention paid to Reformed attitudes to the study of philosophy and pagan thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.

This chapter analyses the ways in which a variety of men negotiated the collapse of the Personal Rule and the Laudian project. On the one hand, we have the Calvinist conformist Robert Sanderson, who, by shifting the emphasis of what remained the same set of opinions was able to distance himself, and the church of England, from the excesses of Laudianism, while still protecting that church from what he presented as the reckless assaults and absurdities of the puritans, and rallying support for the king. On the other hand, we have Peter Heylyn, by this point the archetypal Laudian, engaging ideologue, tacking and trimming by emphasising his opposition to popery, even as he used the same arguments that he was deploying against the papists to continue his remorseless assault on the puritans. Here, in effect, we can watch the Laudian coalition coming apart at the seams under the pressure of the Scots war and the political crisis that ensured in England.

This chapter charts the careers of a series of convicted Laudians; some of them coming men, rising in the establishment, in the court, the church and the universities through the patronage of the prime movers of the movement, most notably Laud himself; others, old men whose commitment to the central tenets of what emerged as Laudianism dated back, in all likelihood, to the 1590s, and who were enabled by the shifts in power in the church and court of the 1630s finally to come out of the woodwork. Still others tried to leverage local issues into appeals to central authority in order to shift the balance of power in their locality and to enhance their own careers. The chapter features a comparison between the successful attempt to do that of Peter Studley in Shrewsbury and the rather less successful attempts of Peter Hausted, whose failure to become the next Peter Heylyn has as much to tell us about the dynamics of Laudianism’s rise, as some of the success stories also told in this chapter.

Having dealt with Laudianism as an ideology, and sought to reconstruct it in all its coherences and inner tensions, this chapter introduces the notion, and explains the value, of viewing it as a coalition made up of persons and groups of different views, with different levels of commitment to the Laudian agenda; some fully signed up to the whole package, others committed to some parts of it but not to others, others still merely performing compliance and collaboration with varying degrees of intensity and conviction.

This chapter concludes Part V by returning to the topic of Laudianism viewed not as a movement or an ideology but rather as a coalition, which status, when it was winning, gave it a flexibility that enabled it to attract the support of many people who were not themselves convicted Laudians. But when the Laudians’ star was no longer in the ascendant, that same coalition could easily unravel, as a variety of fellow travellers and fair-weather friends adjusted their positions to meet the changing circumstances.

This seeks to summarise the conclusions of the book, asserting and defending Laudianism’s status as a coherent, distinctive and aggressive ideological position, and as a coalition made up of persons of varying views and degrees of commitment, and as such a set of responses to a dynamic and changing set of political circumstances. The methodological approach of the book is defended and the compatibility of the lumping, which underpinned the first four part with the splitting that characterised the fifth, is asserted. In its second half the Conclusion looks forward to the larger significance of Laudianism for the history of ‘Anglicanism’ and ends with an account of the Tractarian use of Laudianism and the ways in which the legacy of the Tractarians has, in turn, shaped the subsequent historiography of Laudianism. The attempt here, as in the book as a whole, is to free the topic from the ongoing quarrels about the historical identity and theological and pietistic essence of the church of England, so that it can be understood in terms of the period during which it first came into existence, and which it tried (so ardently and unsuccessfully) to transform.

The Laudians attempted to strike a balance between human free will and divine grace, as opposed to what they presented as the brutal determinism of the Calvinists and puritans. Their position stressed the role of human effort, whilst attempting to leave no room for any ‘popish’ notions of merit. This chapter describes how some Laudian authors did just that, by concentrating on repentance, amendment and works of penitence. The question of reprobation, and in particular of when even hardened sinners like Judas and Pharaoh could be said to have become reprobate, that is, doomed to damnation, is addressed through the treatment of the former by Edward Kellett, and of the latter by Thomas Jackson. The chapter charts a distinctively Laudian/Arminian route to assurance through works of charity, piety and penance. It concludes with a re-evaluation of the relationship between Arminianism and Laudianism, as the latter has emerged in and through the argument of this book.

The Introduction is in three parts. The first introduces the object of study and the sources and methodology used to study it and puts the topic in its historiographical context. The second locates it in terms of the religio-political developments of the period between the 1590s and the 1620s. The third addresses the immediate political and polemical circumstances in which Laudianism rose to prominence and then power in the mid- to late 1620s, and then identifies the 1630 edition of Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons as the movement’s key foundational text or mission statement.

This chapter looks at fellow-travelling Calvinist conformists, that is to say persons who had always espoused a Calvinist or reformed view of predestination, who, on certain issues and in certain modes, could sound like any moderate puritan, but who, on the issue of conformity, took a firmly anti-puritan line, and consequently on certain other issues could sound just like card-carrying Laudians. It does so through the analysis and comparison of the careers of two such men, Robert Sanderson and Humphrey Sydenham, whose views on the theology of grace, conformity and puritanism, and indeed on some of the signature values of Laudianism, are analysed and compared.

The conclusion reviews the findings of the book, noting that the ‘second Reformation’ included a series of changes and reform endeavours – Laudian, abortive, Westminster, Cromwellian, Caroline – which all in their different ways sought to push the Church of England’s ambiguous Tudor legacy in specific new directions. It notes that all religious groups were prepared to contemplate change to the church’s pre-war formularies, and that all were indeed required to adapt their religious ideas and practices in the face of the upheavals of these years. Portraying the disruptions of the 1640s as the climax of the Church of England’s early history rather than as an aberration in an otherwise continuous ‘Anglican’ master-narrative, the book has demonstrated how many elements of the reforms of the 1640s and 1650s had been anticipated in the doctrines, practices, statutes, bills, and reform proposals of earlier decades. It also maintains that compromise and negotiation were as ubiquitous as change and radicalization in the period’s religious politics, and argues the need to look beyond the simple binary oppositions of contemporary polemic. The period is best seen as a time when everyone was obliged to rethink what the established church was and how its past should be understood.

‘Laudianism’ was not simply a different perspective on the Church of England’s identity from that held by other English Protestants, but a systematic attempt to impose a particular reading of the English Church on all parishes, and to privilege and prioritize certain facets and formularies over others. This chapter focuses on how the Laudians chose to situate their reforms vis-à-vis the earlier history and formularies of the Church of England. Like the Protestant Reformation itself, the Laudian Reformation framed itself as the repudiation of an impure present, and as a return to a more pure or ‘primitive church’ that had existed before the current abuses had taken hold. However, the chapter argues that the identity of that ‘primitive church’ was subject to constant change. It demonstrates how different Laudian authors found elements of the Jacobean church and Elizabethan settlement wanting, and instead selectively appropriated and sampled elements from earlier reformations, and from the medieval and patristic churches. For all their often conservative rhetoric, the chapter also explores the Laudian readiness to promote a language of progressive reformation and revelation, and to seek to change existing structures and formularies where possible.