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Chapter 3 The voice of Laudianism? Polemic and ideology in Heylyn’s 1630s writings H eylyn’s publications were the most obvious source for contemporaries to go to for an explanation of the rationale and justification of the religious policies of the 1630s. While Laud’s speech at the censure of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne offered a brief self-defence, and Francis White wrote defending the Book of Sports, there were no other apologia of the policies offered by any prominent member of the ecclesiastical establishment, whether bishop or dean. Other minor authors
Chapter 1 The making of a Laudian polemicist? W here do Laudians come from? The origins of puritans seem relatively easy to grasp. There is an established typology of the conversion experience, whereby previously ungodly individuals were spiritually reborn, which is replayed in a whole series of contemporary puritan biographies, culminating in Samuel Clarke’s enormous compilations of godly lives.1 By contrast, there appears to be no simple model of where a committed Laudian should spring from. There is sometimes an assumption that, given the antagonistic
This is a full-length study of one of the most prolific and controversial polemical authors of the seventeenth century. It provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which Laudian and royalist polemical literature was created, tracing continuities and changes in a single corpus of writings from 1621 through to 1662. In the process, the author presents new perspectives on the origins and development of Laudianism and ‘Anglicanism’, and on the tensions within royalist thought. The book is neither a conventional biography nor simply a study of printed works, but instead constructs an integrated account of Peter Heylyn's career and writings in order to provide the key to understanding a profoundly polemical author. Throughout the book, Heylyn's shifting views and fortunes prompt a reassessment of the relative coherence and stability of royalism and Laudianism.
Connecting centre and locality Chapter 4 Space, place and Laudianism in early Stuart Ipswich Noah Millstone A t eight in the evening of 11 August 1636, approximately a hundred persons assembled in the East Anglian port of Ipswich. The crowd, reportedly ‘armed’ with long staves and guns, ‘march[ed]’ through the town until they reached a residence belonging to Matthew Wren, Bishop of Norwich. Finding their entry barred, the crowd ‘riotously’ invaded the house, injuring several of Wren’s servants and demanding to speak with Wren himself. The group lingered
that was the experience in the first half of the seventeenth century, with the rise of the Laudians and their characteristic Arminian theology – at the expense of Calvinism. 1 Closely identified with the cause of Charles I, the Laudians had gone down with him in defeat during the English Civil War, and there followed the destruction of bishops and prayer-book at the hands of the victorious Puritans. Theologically speaking
, even those scholars of high-church tendencies seem to have been disinclined to devote much attention to someone who seems to have doled out as much invective as he received. The comparative neglect of Laudianism and royalism has become a more serious anomaly of historical scholarship in recent years, as Archbishop Laud and his policies have been required to bear an ever-increasing weight of responsibility for the outbreak of the Civil War. Most recent work has focused on the Laudian policies themselves, while there have also been studies of the theological
The notion that the Laudian reforms of the 1630s posed an existential threat to puritanism is a time-honoured one. This was famously a decade of persecution for puritans, of wicked oppression and noble suffering, as puritan ministers were deprived and/or fled into exile in the Low Countries or the New World. Puritan zeal was refined in the fire of persecution: the godly
town ministry he shared with the future congregationalist Jeremiah Burroughes, suggests a picture of a godly preacher who nevertheless accepted the conformity required by the Church of England. 4 Yet, by 1641 Calamy would be at the centre of parliamentarian opposition to Laudian prelacy, advocating fundamental reform of the polity of the Church of England in a presbyterian direction. This chapter will explore the radicalisation of many of London’s moderate puritans during the period 1637–40 in the wake of the crisis
of the Pulpit’.2 This very public interruption of Heylyn by his dean symbolized the dramatic reversal of ecclesiastical fortunes that was occurring in the last months of 1640. Those imprisoned or suppressed under the Laudians were now released, and Laud and his supporters were the chief targets. In this context, Heylyn himself, as the regime’s most notorious propagandist, was directly in the line of fire, not least as his immediate superior had been one of his most prominent victims. It was the failure of the Second Bishops’ War which had precipitated this sudden
that he addressed to Laud in November 1633 spelt out the danger from puritanism and assured the new archbishop of Heylyn’s support. The poem concentrates on how Laud was libelled by ‘Lewd scandals’. It has become ‘a gainefull Art’ to attack the church and its rulers, but the archbishop is assured that he will ‘survive their Plots, & Prophecies’ and the ‘desperate malice’ of those ‘who yf words could kill/Would not have any left to crosse their will’.2 Heylyn’s readiness to defend the Laudian reforms and to portray their opponents as dangerous extremists provoked