V
The early months of the Cromwellian Protectorate are a good point at which to sum up the fortunes of Puritan reformation.Episcopal government had been eliminated and no national structure of government or discipline had replaced it.There was no compulsion to attend the parish church,although the basic parish structure survived and all the evidence suggests that the majority of the population did continue to attend,even where fiery Puritan preaching,services based on the Directory,and stern administration of the sacraments were not to their taste.The rights of prominent laymen to appoint the parish clergy were challenged in the case of convicted royalists,but lay patronage was mostly protected.This in itself limited the possibilities for thorough-going reformation,although with ejections of royalist ministers and the deaths of others,there was drastic turnover in the personnel of the parish clergy.More surprisingly,tithes,the compulsory levy of a tenth of annual profit to support the parish ministry endured despite the opposition of many moderate congregationalists as well as religious radicals,No viable alternative could be found,and the payment of tithes continued to be enforced,to the particular resentment of Quakers and others who had no intention of attending parochial worship.Measures to improve the salaries of ministers had some success from the mid-1640s and they were made more systematic in early legislation of the Protectorate which also brought order to procedures for approving and appointing ministers,through the establishment of‘Triers’ and‘Ejectors’.[43]
Regimes from 1649 supported a non-compulsory national church or‘public profession’as well as preserving religious liberty.This compromise was summed up in clauses 35-37 of the Instrument of Government,the constitution establishing Cromwell as Lord Protector:‘The Christian religion,as contained in the scriptures’was to be‘held forth as the public profession’ and‘able and painful preachers’were to be supported‘for the instructing the people,and for discovery and confutation of error,heresy and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine’.There was to be no compulsion to attend the‘public profession’,but the constitution held out hopes for the restoration of religious unity through persuasion of dissenters by instruction and example.In the meantime,those who professed‘faith in God by Jesus Christ(though differing in judgment from the doctrine,worship or discipline publicly held forth)’were to be‘protected in the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion’,provided they did not disturb others;such liberty was not to be extended to those who practiced‘popery‘prelacy’or‘licentiousness’.[44]This was not a thorough-going commitment to religious liberty,rather a recognition that men and women might reach the truth in different ways.The ultimate aim of men like Cromwell was unity not diversity,although others like the Leveller William Walwyn and,to some extent,the poet John Milton argued that truth could only be achieved through debate and disagreement,and that therefore tolerating error was a positive move.[45]Cromwell,however,was not by temperament a persecutor,and was more tolerant in practice than in theory.He had an open-minded willingness to listen to those he disagreed with,whether Presbyterians or Quakers,as when the Quaker leader George Fox rode up to his coach in Hyde Park in 1656 to denounce the‘suffering of friends’.Furthermore despite the hostility to popery,only one Catholic priest was executed in the 1650s,and on charges dating back to the 1620s.[46]In practice from the early 1640s,and in theory as well after 1649,a degree of religious toleration rare in early modern Europe was established in England.
The highest hopes of those mainstream Puritan reformers who had worked for a reformed,compulsory national church in the early 1640s were disappointed.Presbyterians were challenged by radical groups who rejected any notion of a national church,and who were protected in the main by the provisions for religious liberty;they were frustrated by the less openly provocative but more persistent resentment of those who adhered to a ceremonial and festive religious culture.But a judgement of complete failure would be too simple.[47]Presbyterians were forced to operate within a religious market place they had not chosen,and they had not succeeded in establishing a national framework of church government.More broadly,however,an educated,preaching ministry was supported by post-1649 regimes,and Presbyterians played an increasingly influential role in religious affairs under the Cromwellian protectorate.Presbyterians like Marshall and Burgess,and moderate Congregationalists like Goodwin or Philip Nye became closer after 1650.Their arguments over church government had ended with Presbyterian defeat and they could focus on areas of agreement such as orthodox Calvinism and an ordained ministry.A sense of what they had in
Puritan Reformation and its enemies in the Interregnum 1649-1660(Oxford,2012).common became more pronounced when Presbyterians and Independents alike were denounced by Quakers as corrupt servants of antichrist.Although many Presbyterians had opposed the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a republic,they became increasingly reconciled to the regimes of the Commonwealth(1649-1653)and the Protectorate.Although both regimes insisted on liberty for‘tender consciences’,they also supported a godly preaching ministry and broader measures for godly reform.At many points in the 1650s attempts were made to define the‘fundamentals of the faith’,basic tenets of Protestantism that all could agree on,and measures were taken against those regarded as attacking these fundamentals.In August 1650 the Rump parliament passed a law against‘several atheistical,blasphemous and execrable opinions’which condemned those who denied the divinity of Christ,or the existence of heaven,hell and sin.The‘Ranters’were clearly aimed at.The Quakers’challenge to Calvinism and their provocative behaviour made them a particular target of local and central governors.James Nayler who had re-enacted Christ's entry into Jerusalem in Bristol in 1656 was condemned to whipping and prison by the parliament.Many MPs had called for his execution and regretted that the provisions of the Instrument of Government seemed to permit such excesses.
Independents and Presbyterians thus cooperated to defend orthodox doctrine,and to support an educated,ordained,godly ministry.The Cromwellian Protectorate in particular proved surprisingly amenable to Presbyterian influence and participation.The‘Triers’who supervised the admission of ministers to livings after 1654 included moderate Baptists,Independents and Presbyterians—‘men of known ability,piety and integrity’as Cromwell insisted in 1654.Presbyterians had many opportunities within a loosely organised national church.They had freedom to preach and publish and to work together on an informal basis for mutual support within voluntary associations like the one established by the eminent Puritan Richard Baxter in Worcestershire.They developed intimate and supportive relationships with the godly element in their parishes,even if too many were resistant to Puritan reform.Martindale held mid-week discussion meetings with‘the people that were most eminent for profession of religion’;the group produced a publication against religious error,An Antidote against the poison of the Times.Until 1660 Presbyterians as well as Independents were close to the men at the centre of power,in the universities and in local and national government.The Presbyterian Thomas Manton,for example,was amongst Cromwell's chaplains and close to members of his council.[48]
The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was marked by widespread hostility to Puritanism and enthusiasm for a rival festive and ceremonial culture of maypoles and the book of Common Prayer.In a slow and contested process,between 1660 and 1662 attempts to reconstruct the English church by including both Episcopalian and Presbyterian/Puritan opinion came to nothing and vengeful royalist-Anglican pressure secured a narrowly defined church settlement that many Puritans could not accept.When the Act of Uniformity was imposed in August 1662,men who had spent the last twenty years opposing separation,and seeking a reformed national church found themselves expelled from their livings and treated as if they were separatists or Quakers.Despite agonising dilemmas,amongst the 2,000 ministers ejected in 1662 were many who had conformed in the pre-civil war Episcopal church,but could not bring themselves to serve the Restoration church of England.As John Spurr has suggested,the uniformity of 1662 was‘probably a doomed project from the start’as it sought to re-impose Protestant unity by compulsion after two decades of‘freedom and experimentation’.There was intermittent persecution until 1688 which saw Presbyterian meetings dispersed and ministers,including Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy,imprisoned.Radical groups suffered more with 15,000 Quakers imprisoned and some 400 dying in prison.The religious market place endured,however.Religion and politics continued to be inextricably connected,so that the‘Glorious Revolution’of 1688 which saw the deposition of the Catholic James II,also produced a Toleration Act which granted religious liberty to Protestant dissenters.In the decades after 1688 a profound division between Anglicans and Dissenters gradually came to structure English political,social and economic life.Thus religious pluralism one of the most significant results of the revolutionary decades.[49]
【注释】
[1]The author can be contacted at a.l.hughes＠keele.ac.uk.Stephen Marshall,A Sacred Record To be Made of Gods Mercies to Zion:a sermon preached to the two Houses of Parliament and the Governors of the city of London,June 19,1645(London,1645),16.
[2]J.P.Kenyon,The Stuart Constitution(Cambridge,1966),204;a good account of the religious divisions of the early seventeenth century is in Kenneth Fincham(ed.),The Early Stuart Church(Basingstoke,1993).
[3]S.R.Gardiner(ed.),Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution(Oxford,1906),206-207.
[4]See,for example,D.Underdown,Revel,Riot and Rebellion(Oxford,1985);A.Hughes,The Causes of the English Civil War(Basingstoke,1998).
[5]For an up-to-date discussion see the chapters in John Coffey and Paul C.H.Lim(eds.),The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism(Cambridge,2008).
[6]Anthony Burgess,The Difficulty of,and Encouragements to a Reformation (London,1643),preached before the House of Commons,27 September 1643,sig A4r-v,9,20,28.
[7]Gardiner(ed.),Constitutional Documents,229.
[8]Gardiner(ed.),Constitutional Documents,137-9,for the‘root and branch’ petition.General developments are outlined in A.Hughes,‘Religion 1640-1660’,in B.Coward(ed.),A Companion to Stuart Britain(Oxford,2003),350-373.
[9]Gardiner(ed.),Constitutional Documents,268.
[10]See Hughes,‘Religion’,355-6;W.A.Shaw,A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and Under the Commonwealth(London,1890).
[11]P.Collinson,‘Voluntary Religion:its forms and tendencies’,in his The Religion of Protestants(Oxford,1982),chapter 6.
[12]Marshall,A Sacred Record,16.
[13]For London separatism see Murray Tolmie,The Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge,1977).
[14]See in particular,D.Como,Blown by the Spirit:Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England(Stanford,CA,2004).
[15]For a wonderful account see C.Hill,The World Turned Upside Down(London,1972,and subsequent editions).
[16]B.R.White(ed.),Association Records of the Particular Baptists of England, Wales and Ireland(Baptist Historical Society,1971-4),61-63,69.
[17]J.C.Davis,‘Against formality:one aspect of the English Revolution’,Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,6th series,3(1993),265-288.
[18]The Life of Adam Martindale(Chetham Society,1845),117;A.Macfarlane (ed.),The Diary of Ralph Josselin(Oxford,1976),379-380.
[19]Tolmie,The Triumph of the Saints;A.Hughes,‘Religious Diversity in Revolutionary London’,in Nicholas Tyacke,The English Revolution(Manchester,2007),111-128.
[20]J.F.McGregor,‘The Baptists:fount of all heresy’,in McGregor and B.Reay(eds.),Radical Religion in the English Revolution(Oxford,1984),23-64;Mark Bell,‘Freedom to form:the development of Baptist movements during the English Revolution’,in C.Durston and J.Maltby(eds.),Religion in Revolutionary England(Manchester,2006),181-201;W.C.Braithwaite,The Beginnings of Quakerism(London,1912).
[21]A Declaration or Representation,June 1647,printed in William Haller and Godfrey Davies(eds.),The Leveller Tracts 1647-1653(Gloucester,Mass,1964,first published 1944),55.
[22]John Lilburne,The Freeman's Freedom Vindicated(London,1646),in Andrew Sharp(ed.),The English Levellers(Cambridge,1998),31;for the Levellers see Brian Manning,The English People and the English Revolution(London,1991;first published 1976),and John Rees,The Leveller Revolution(London,2016).
[23]Sharp(ed.),English Levellers,173(May 1649).
[24]Tolmie,Triumph of the Saints,184-190.
[25]Gerrard Winstanley A Declaration to the Powers of England(London,1649), 13-14.For the latest scholarship on Winstanley see T.N.Corns,D.Loewenstein and A.Hughes(eds.),The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley(Oxford,2009).
[26]Gerrard Winstanley,The New Law of Righteousnes(London,1649),48.
[27]D.Loewenstein,Representing Revolution in Milton and his Contemporaries(Cambridge,2001),79-80,98-100.
[28]George Foster,Sounding of the Last Trumpet(London,1650),14.
[29]A.Woolrych,Commonwealth to Protectorate(Oxford,1982);B.Capp,The Fifth Monarchy Men(London,1972).
[30]A.Hughes,‘“Not Gideon of Old”:Anna Trapnel and Oliver Cromwell’,Cromwelliana,Series II(2005),77-96;for female prophecy more generally see Phyllis Mack,Visionary Women(Berkeley CA and Oxford,1992).
[31]Hester Biddle,Wo to the City of Oxford:thy wickedness surmounteth the wickedness of Sodom(1655)is a typical example.
[32]E.B.Underhill(ed.),Records of Churches of Christ Gathered at Fenstanton,Warboys and Hexham(Hanserd Knollys Society,1854),218,233,242.
[33]J.Morrill,‘The Church in England 1642-1649’,in Morrill(ed.),Reactions to the English Civil War(Basingstoke,1982),reprinted in his The Nature of the English Revolution(Harlow,1993),148-175,at 150.
[34]Hall quoted in A.Hughes,Politics,Society and Civil War in Warwickshire 1620-1660(Cambridge,1987),326.
[35]For‘Anglicanism’see J.Maltby,‘Suffering and surviving:the civil wars,the Commonwealth and the formation of‘Anglicanism’,in Durston and Maltby(eds.),Religion in Revolutionary England,158-180;Morrill,‘The Church in England’;John Spurr,The Restoration Church of England(New Haven,1991).
[36]The petition from Huntington,quoted in K.Lindley(ed.),The English Civil War and Revolution:A Sourcebook(London,1998),63-64.
[37]P.King,‘The episcopate during the English civil war’,English Historical Review,83(1968),523-37;K.Fincham and S.Taylor,‘Vital Statistics:Episcopal Ordination and Ordinands in England,1646-1660’,English Historical Review,126(2011),319-44.
[38]Ian Green,‘The persecution of“scandalous”and“malignant”parish clergy during the English civil war’,English Historical Review,94(1979),507-531.
[39]E.S.Beer(ed.),The Diary of John Evelyn(Oxford,1955),Ⅰ.61,76-9,185,203-205.
[40]Lambert quoted in A.Hughes,‘The frustrations of the godly’,in J.Morrill, (ed.),Revolution and Restoration.England in the 1650s(London,1992),70-90,at.74.
[41]For Gataker and Martindale see Hughes,‘Religion’,361;The Life of Adam Martindale(Chetham Society,4,1845),114.
[42]Life of Adam Martindale,122.
[43]A.Hughes,‘“The public profession of these nations”:the National Church in Interregnum England’,in Durston and Maltby(eds.),Religion in Revolutionary England,93-114,at 96-97.
[44]Gardiner(ed.),Constitutional Documents,416.Hughes,‘The public profession’,97-99.
[45]Blair Worden,‘Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate’,in W.J.Sheils(ed.),Persecution and Toleration(Studies in Church History,21,1984),199-233;John Coffey,Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689(Harlow,2000);S.Achinstein and E.Sauer(eds.),Milton and Toleration(Oxford,2007).
[46]N.Smith(ed.),The Journal of George Fox(Harmondsworth,1998),207-8; for Catholics see W.Sheils,‘English Catholics at war and peace’,in Durston and Maltby(eds.),Religion in Revolutionary England,137-157.
[47]For different views of this question see D.Hirst,‘The failure of godly rule in the English Republic’,Past and Present,132(1991)33-66;C.Durston,‘Puritan rule and the failure of cultural revolution’,in Durston and J.Eales(eds.),The Culture of English Puritanism(Basingstoke,1996),210-233;A.Hughes,‘The frustrations of the godly’.A balanced account is now available in B.Capp,England's Culture Wars.
[48]See further,Hughes,‘The Public Profession’;Life of Adam Martindale,110.
[49]For an introduction to developments after 1660 see John Spurr,‘Religion in Restoration England’,in Coward(ed.),Companion to Stuart Britain,416-435.