Anti-puritans Flashcards
Archbishop Bancroft (1544-1610)
Richard Bancroft was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1604 to 1610. He was educated in Cambridge and was a fierce defender of conformity.
By 1585, Bancroft had written a series of articles against puritan practices and in the defense of episcopacy (“Opinion and Dealings of the Precisians” against the congregationalist theologian Robert Browne or “Discourse upon the bill and book exhibited in parliament by the puritans for a further reformation of the church principles”).
By royal prerogative, he became the treasurer of St Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1586.
In 1588-9, Bancroft investigated and discovered where the “Marprelate Tracts” had been printed.
In February 1589, he also responded to the Marprelate Tracts in his Paul’s Cross sermons by claiming the legitimacy of episcopalian church government since apostolic times, attacked the non-conformists congregations and their practice of prophesyings (‘Arians, Donatists, Papists, Libertines, Anabaptists, the Familie of Love and sundrie other’ heresies (R. Bancroft, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, 1589, 3).
The sermon also assessed the anti-establishment nature of the puritans, who were trying to introduce bills in Parliament. Bancroft also opposed Catholics and Jesuits.
With Whitgift’s support, Bancroft was elected Bishop of London in Arpil 1597.
He locally implemented reforms and ensured the conformity of London ministers.
In November 1604, Bancroft was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (predecessor : Whitgift).
Bancroft visited parishes to make sure ceremonial conformity was respected and required to remove the ministers who would not subscribe to it.
In 1608, Bancroft became chancellor of the University of Oxford. He also supervised the publication of the King James Bible. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikipedia).
Richard Hooker (1554-1600)
A clergyman in the Church of England, considered one of the most influential theologians of the 16th century.
In 1585, he was appointed Master of the Temple by Queen Elizabeth, leading to conflicts over matters of faith with the Lecturer of the Temple, the leading puritan Walter Travers.
The debates between Hooker and Travers were instrumental in the production and publication of Hooker’s best-known work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the “first major work of English theology and philosophy to be written in English” (Bremer & Webster), the first part of which was published in 1593, while the final parts were published posthumously.
The book came as a response to Puritan principles - with at its core an expansion of the concept of adiaphora (“things indifferent”), based on the idea that the interpretation of God’s will relied on past experience, human reason and scriptures - an idea which later influenced the development of Anglicanism.
Hooker has been regarded as the originator of the Anglican via media between Protestantism and Catholicism, but in more recent historiographies, he was rather considered as being in the mainstream Reformed theology of his time.
As a matter of fact, for Hooker, the Elizabethan Settlement was not merely a compromise but the ideal form of the CofE; Hooker was not willing to move the CofE away from Protestantism, but was an opponent to the Puritans. He notably criticized their overemphasis on preaching, emphasizing instead the sacraments, liturgical prayer and ceremonies. (Sources: Bremer & Webster, Wikipedia)
John Whitgift
Archbishop of Canterbury (1583-1604).
A Calvinist, he was deeply committed to the Elizabethan settlement and was a firm disciplinarian.
His father was a prosperous merchant and his uncle Robert was an abbot of the Augustinian house in Lincolnshire. He was educated at Cambridge where martyr John Bradford was his tutor.
In 1563, he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of Divinity, a position of influence within the university.
In 1570, he deprived Thomas Cartwright of his professorship, and of his fellowship the following year, after a disagreement regarding the customs and constitutions of the CofE.
Between 1572 and 1575, he wrote back and forth with Cartwright, debating his Admonition to the Parliament.
Unlike Cartwright, Whitgift believed that the church comprised both good and evil, hence the necessity of discipline, provided by the Christian magistrate according to the government in place.
His high regard for hierarchical authority meant that he often went against other radical positions (ie. on the surplice). In 1583, he introduced the Three Articles, to which the clergy was required to subscribe.
He succeeded in arresting Cartwright and other presbyterians during the Marprelate controversy and pushed the Act against Seditious Sectaries, which passed in 1593. He crowned James I before dying in 1604. (Sources: Wrightson’s Yale course, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikipedia) –Annabelle
