Bishops with Puritan Sympathies Flashcards
Edmund Grindal (1519-83)
Grindal was a Marian exile in favor of Calvinist Puritanism → return to England in 1559 when he became bishop of London. he was a moderate puritan whose views were the source of conflict between himself and Elizabeth → hesitated to become archbishop of London due to sections of the prayer book he disagreed with. He was not as ready as Whitgift to persecute nonconformists, aligning with the government’s policy of moderate persecution.
He disagreed with Parker on the matter of vestments, which he saw as traces of popery. He became archbishop of York in 1570. He then became Archbishop of Canterbury (1575, following Parker) in the hope that he could mediate moderate and radical puritans. Grindal was both backed by most of Elizabeth’s counselors but also by the Lord of Leicester, a prominent godly lay man.
He was dismissed of his functions in 1577 and put under house arrest on the matter of prophesying and the remonstrance he addressed to the queen on the limits of her power on ecclesiastical matters (“Bear with me, I beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly majesty, than to offend the heavenly majesty of God.”) He was reinstated in 1582 after having apologized to the Queen but died quickly afterwards.
George Abbot (1572-1633)
His parents suffered persecutions during Mary Tudor’s reign. Abbot graduated from Balliol College (Oxford) in 1582 and was licensed to preach in Oxford in 1584.
His work shows that he embraced the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination but made an effort to maintain a certain distance from puritans (defended episcopacy, condemned sermon-gadding).
Abbot attended the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 (he later commented on the defiance of puritan demands during the conference). He opposed Laud’s crypto-catholic criticism of the Calvinist doctrine and his controversial views on Reformation at large. In the early years of James’s reign, he became more and more prominent at court, especially his trip to Scotland to unify the Churches of England and Scotland in 1608 which led him to the archbishopric of canterbury in 1611 (he was sworn in as a privy counselor the same year and became chancellor of Trinity College Dublin the following year).
His elevation was seen by Catholics as a threat since he was committed to the cause of international protestantism. His desire to intervene abroad was not followed by the king during the conflict between Calvinists and Arminians in 1618-20. His voice carried very little weight in the privy council, especially after a hunting incident in June 1621 where he shot a keeper → a shadow cast on the rest of his life. After James’s death, he was eventually deprived by Charles I which was opposed by the Parliament and his function as archbishop was therefore restored. Yet, this final blow left room for Laud’s ascendency. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikipedia)
Bishop Arthur Lake
Moderately sympathetic to puritains
Edwin Sandys
bishop of Worcester and then of London after Grindal,
“evangelist” bishop.
