IV
Religious radicalism was seen by the orthodox as a threat to political and social order,and although the connections were complex,they undoubtedly did exist.In some cases religious allegiance prompted political and social movements.The intervention of the New Model Army into politics from 1647 was inspired,in part,by a commitment to religious liberty and the sense that they were not‘a mere mercenary army’but called to‘the defence of our own and the people's just rights and liberties’,amongst which freedom from compulsory Presbyterianism was crucial.[21]The democratic Leveller movement emerged from the London separatist congregations,and developed a critique of mainstream parliamentarianism when their demands for religious liberty and freedom of printing were met by harassment and imprisonment.The Leveller leader John Lilburne declared in June 1646 that God had created‘all and every particular and individual man and women that ever breathed in the world…by nature all equal and alike in power,dignity,authority and majesty—none of them having(by nature)any authority,dominion or magisterial power,one over or above another’.Consequently it was‘unnatural,irrational,sinful,wicked,unjust,devilish,and tyrannical’ for any man to claim authority over another‘without their free consent’.[22]Parliament had not fulfilled its promises to those who had rallied to their support,and attempts to limit religious liberty and to re-establish control of the press were central to this feeling of betrayal.In the popular government envisaged in the Leveller manifesto‘The Agreement of the People’,a parliament would have no power over the individual conscience:‘we do not empower or entrust our said Representatives to continue in force or to make any laws…to compel by penalties or otherwise any person to anything in or about matters of faith,religion or God's worship,or to restrain any person from the profession of his faith or exercise of religion according to his conscience—nothing having caused more distractions and heart-burnings in all ages than persecution and molestation for matters of conscience in and about religion’.[23]The Levellers’disillusion with the republican regime of 1649 was not,however,shared by most of the separatist congregations of London who saw the execution of the king as the‘climax of the revolution’.London Baptists denounced the Levellers and supported their imprisonment by the Rump.[24]
The Diggers who worked to achieve an economically egalitarian community were inspired by the religious writer Gerrard Winstanley who argued that a fundamental transformation of humanity and the creation would occur as God,the king of righteousness,the spirit,or the great creator reason(interchangeable terms for Winstanley)rose in sons and daughters.[25]He had been inspired by a mystical experience to encourage his friends to dig the common land in Surrey:‘As I was in a trance not long since,divers matters were present to my sight,which here must not be related.Likewise I heard these words,Worke together.Eat bread together;declare all this abroad.[26]Winstanley combined religious inspiration with a commitment to collective action but he has something in common with more individualist,or eccentric prophets like the‘Ranter’Abiezer Coppe or George Foster who also in the early months of the republic claimed direct inspiration for an egalitarian vision.[27]For Coppe and Foster,however,it was God's overwhelming power,rather than human action that would achieve equality:God would‘by my own power and by my bright appearing in my sons and daughters;Cut down the loftiness of men,and bring low their haughty lockes;and I like a mighty Leveller will lay low the mountains＆hills…That I alone may be exalted’.[28]
The‘Fifth monarchists’were the group whose religious beliefs most obviously inspired a political movement.Drawing on the Old Testament prophecies of the Book of Daniel,they argued that the execution of Charles I marked the end of four successive worldly empires,and so regicide should usher in the rule of the Saints in preparation for the second coming of Christ himself.‘Millenarian’notions were widespread amongst English Puritans,and the startling political upheavals of the 1640s increased expectations that God would do extraordinary things for his people.In a speech to parliament in September 1654 Oliver Cromwell condemned the‘mistaken notion of the Fifth monarchy’but agreed all should‘honour,wait,and hope for,that Jesus Christ will have a time to set up his reign in our hearts’.Christ reigning in hearts was very different,however,from working practically for the rule of the godly:Cromwell insisted the‘notion’did not justify‘men to entitle themselves on this principle,that they are the only men to rule kingdoms,govern nations,and give laws to people’.The Fifth Monarchists did believe that they had a duty to achieve godly rule.There should be no king but Jesus,and England should be a godly republic run by members of gathered congregations.They preached and petitioned against the Rump parliament,denouncing it as corrupt and welcoming its dissolution by the army in 1653.Consequently,they rejoiced,prematurely,at the calling of the Nominated or‘Barebones’parliament in 1653 but regarded Cromwell's assumption of personal power as Lord Protector in December 1653 as a betrayal of the godly cause.[29]Along with male preachers such as Christopher Feake and John Rogers,a remarkable young women from a London artisan family,Anna Trapnel,acquired a prominent public influence.As would later be seen with the Quakers,the argument that God might fulfil his purposes through the weak women who were the conduits for his prophetic words could have dramatic consequences.Trapnel presented herself as‘a weak worthless creature,a babe in Christ,which makes his power the more manifest’,but she welcomed a public and political role:‘for that she had been faithful in a little,she should be made an instrument of much more;for particular souls shall not only have benefit by her,but the universality of saints shall have discoveries of God through her’.Her trances,preaching tours and printed works all helped to rally opposition to the early Protectorate although she insisted that she was merely the channel for God's message.[30]
Some strict religious separatists tended to shun the rest of the world rather than seeking to change it,and many religious radicals insisted that their concerns were with the spiritual world,not with actual social and economic relationships.The overriding duty to obey God rather than human authority could nonetheless involve a challenge to accepted social or gender hierarchies.The Quakers’refusal of‘hat honour’to their social superiors,and their use of the intimate‘thou’rather than the formal‘you’in conversation were denounced by their opponents as socially subversive,and their disruptive assaults on the parish clergy seemed to confirm their seditious potential.The prominence of women in a movement that had no formally acknowledged ministry and believed the light of Christ might rise in men and women alike was also disturbing to conventional opinion.In public,if not always so enthusiastically in private,the Quakers allowed women a major role as preachers and as authors of aggressive denunciations of religious and political authority in print and in person.[31]
Religious fragmentation and competition for membership between gathered churches inevitably disturbed social relationships.The women of the Fenstanton General Baptist congregation,for example,were argumentative,serious and independent women,although tormented by doubt and frequent deserters to the Quakers.Defending family hierarchies while insisting on the overriding duty to obey God rather than man led to contradictions that could not be resolved.The leaders were adamant that women should not obey husbands whose beliefs were erroneous.Jane Adams,for example,used her husband's command as the reason why she would not come to church:‘He had sworn she should not come,and she was unwilling to make him break his oath’.Jane was told in no uncertain terms that this was‘not a sufficient cause to keep her from the meetings’,but retorted that‘she was minded to seek her peace.We replied that she ought to seek it lawfully;and seeing he did not hinder her by force,she was in a great fault,for which we rebuked her sharply’.This case prompted a general discussion:‘after this it was propounded whether the threatenings of a husband are a sufficient warrant for a woman to keep from the assemblies.After consideration it was concluded and resolved,that unless a person was restrained by force,it was no excuse for the absenting themselves from the assemblies of the congregation’.[32]
Religious radicals were the most visible and most disturbing challengers to Puritan reformers but they were not the most numerous,or,in the end,the most intractable.John Morrill has suggested that‘the greatest challenge to respectable Puritanism of the Parliamentarian majority came from the passive strength of Anglican survivalism’.[33]In 1660 a Worcestershire Presbyterian,Thomas Hall,complained that this was‘a great year of combating with profane and superstitious persons;before he contended with white devils that pretended to extraordinary sanctity[the religious radicals],now he was to grapple with black devils’.[34]The notion that those who were hostile to Puritan reformation were profane,superstitious black devils was of course unfair,for this was really an alternative non-Puritan vision of religion and community.Neither is Professor Morrill's‘survivalism’quite accurate for it was during these years of eclipse that a confident,self-conscious Anglicanism came into being.As with mainstream Puritanism and religious radicalism,the seeds of these developments can be seen in the decades before 1640.An austere Calvinist religion,focused on preaching the word and stressing God's inscrutable decrees of damnation and salvation was not to everyone's taste.Puritanism,while empowering for some,could be exclusive and demanding;predestinarian teaching might seem of little practical use in helping people to lead decent lives;and the Puritan determination to reform both church and society was often condemned as dangerous and subversive.A more comforting stress on the importance of participation in communal parish rituals,the familiar language of the book of Common Prayer and resistance to Puritan zeal as disorderly and hypocritical went back to the early seventeenth century at least.These views became stronger as the church came under attack.In the early 1640s as Puritans destroyed pictures,stained glass and altar rails,and petitioned for the abolition of episcopacy,the affection of many for the liturgy of the book of Common Prayer,for bishops and for more ceremonial forms of worship became more intense.The rituals of the church offered meaning and reassurance to individuals at the crucial events of the human life-cycle,birth,marriage and death,and followed the natural rhythms of the year;regular parish festivities and a more inclusive approach to the sacrament of the Lord's supper were seen as more conducive to community solidarity.[35]
In 1641-2,petitions from more than half the English counties,often with many hundreds of signatures from men of all social ranks,were presented to parliament in support of the bishops.For these petitioners the English church was already reformed;the bishops were‘the lights and glorious lamps of God's church’and the Common Prayer book had been constructed through their‘great care,piety and sincerity’.[36]Bishops were removed from the house of Lords and in effect removed from church office from 1642 although episcopacy was not formally abolished until 1646.The most notorious bishops were imprisoned or exiled,while Laud himself was tried and executed in January 1645,but others continued in semi-retirement to ordain sympathetic ministers.[37]Almost 3,000 parish ministers were removed from their livings for royalist or anti-Puritan convictions,about 28%of the total,but more than a third found alternative positions in the church and were often supported by their former parishioners.[38]It is likely that many ministers continued to use the Common Prayer Book,and that the more austere services laid down in the Westminster Assembly's‘Directory’of worship were often unpopular.The royalist diarist John Evelyn managed to find Anglican ceremonies and services in the 1650s.His children were baptised according to the Common prayer book and Christmas was celebrated at home,or in semi-secret gatherings with deprived royalist ministers.Only in December 1657 did he meet trouble when an aristocratic gathering at Exeter house chapel in London was dispersed by troops.[39]Anglican religious commitment,like radical positions,had clear political implications.An adherence to festive,anti-Puritan culture was associated with and helped to preserve royalist allegiance.A rising against the parliament in Kent in 1647-8 was prompted by a defiant celebration of Christmas in Canterbury,and when the Cromwellian parliament held a routine meeting on 25 December 1656,they spent the day discussing measures against royalists who were,said Major General John Lambert‘haply,now merry over their Christmas pies,drinking the king of Scots health or your confusion’.[40]
Attempts to impose Presbyterian discipline through excluding unsatisfactory parishioners from the sacrament of the Lord's supper were particularly resented.In London the Puritan Thomas Gataker complained that many of his parishioners refused to pay his salary‘because I admit not all promiscuously to the Lord's table’.Others simply went elsewhere:in the Cheshire parish of Adam Martindale one young man was excluded from the sacrament for‘scandal’because his wife was pregnant before their marriage.He responded by joining the Quakers.[41]Martindale also described the frustrations of trying to improve the religious understanding of the people in his large parish.He distributed printed catechisms(books of instruction)to every household but when he tried to examine parishioners on what they had learned he‘met with great discouragement,through the unwillingness of people(especially the old ignoramuses)to have their extreme defect in knowledge searched out,the backwardness of the profane to have the smart plaster of admonition applied(though lovingly)to their sores,and the business real or pretended)left as an excuse why the persons concerned were gone abroad at the time appointed for their instruction.’[42]