Jonathan C. Harris
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Sir Francis Hastings, Jacobean nonconformity, and the House of Commons, 1604–10
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This chapter argues that historians have misinterpreted the context and ramifications of Sir Francis Hastings’s Privy Council punishment after the celebrated 1605 Northamptonshire petition to King and Council which requested a moderation in the ‘extremitie’ of the 1604 decrees for subscription and conformity. The nature and significance of Hastings’s leadership of the puritan parliamentary cause 1604–10 are re-examined, contributing to Nicholas Tyacke’s call for a more realistic appreciation of the ‘puritan paradigm’ in parliamentary politics. Revealing that Sir Francis Hastings’s puritan parliamentary politics constituted deliberate nonconformity to the attempted Jacobean Religious Settlement, the chapter argues for a reassessment of alleged moderate lay puritan conformity in Jacobean Britain. Historiographical analyses of ecclesiastical politics 1603–10 have been too clerically focused (with emphasis upon clerical subscription and ceremonial conformity), falling into the trap of accepting King James’s definition of his Royal Supremacy in Religion: that it was his prerogative to determine policy, and then delegate implementation through his episcopal bench. This chapter draws attention to the consistent parliamentary challenge to this attempted Religious Settlement, as Hastings co-ordinated a sustained campaign of House of Commons Petitions demanding religious reform. Through a detailed analysis of parliamentary speeches, procedures, and petitions, this chapter not only exposes the extraordinary and overlooked puritan majority in the House of Commons but also highlights that they were no mere mouthpiece for puritan clerical dissent. They in fact articulated a philosophy of temporal and spiritual governance at variance to King James’s own philosophy of monarchical rule.

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