Puritans, Radicals, and Levelers under Charles I Flashcards
Grand Remonstrance
List of grievances presented to King Charles I of England by the English Parliament on 1 December 1641, but passed by the House of Commons on 22 November 1641, during the Long Parliament. It was one of the chief events which was to precipitate the English Civil War.
Charles I, King of England married the French Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria
Relations between King and Parliament had been uneasy since 1625, when Charles I, King of England married the French Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria. In 1626 Charles had dissolved Parliament in order to prevent it impeaching his favourite, the influential Duke of Buckingham. Being in need of money to carry on a war with Spain as part of his strategy for intervention in the Thirty Years War, Charles resorted to means of uncertain lawfulness to raise the necessary funds, imprisoning without charge those who refused to pay. This had resulted in Parliament presenting the King with the Petition of Right in 1628, in response to which Charles had again dismissed Parliament and for the next eleven years governed without it.
Bishops’ War
The 1639 and 1640 Bishops’ Wars were the first of the conflicts known collectively as the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which took place in Scotland, England and Ireland. Others include the Irish Confederate Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652), and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
The wars originated in disputes over governance of the Church of Scotland or kirk that began in the 1580s, and came to a head when Charles I attempted to impose uniform practices on the kirk and the Church of England in 1637. These were opposed by most Scots, who supported a Presbyterian church governed by ministers and elders. Signatories of the 1638 National Covenant pledged to oppose such “innovations”, and were collectively known as Covenanters.
Although the Covenant made no reference to Bishops, these clergymen were seen as instruments of royal control and in December were expelled by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The origin of the term “Bishops Wars”, this action gave a political dimension to a conflict previously focused on religious practice. After the Covenanters took control of government following the 1639 war, the Scottish Parliament passed a series of acts that amounted to a constitutional revolution, confirmed by victory in 1640.
In order to protect that settlement, the Scots allied with sympathisers in Ireland and England, chiefly Puritans who objected to recent religious reforms, and wanted elections for a new Parliament of England, suspended since 1629. When Charles sought to reverse his defeat in 1640, the combination destabilised all three kingdoms, with the October 1641 Irish Rebellion followed by the First English Civil War in August 1642.
The Protestant Reformation created a Church of Scotland, or ‘The Kirk’, Presbyterian in structure, and Calvinist in doctrine. While ‘Presbyterian’ and ‘Episcopalian’ now implies differences in both governance and doctrine, this was not the case in the 17th century. Episcopalian structures were governed by bishops, usually appointed by the monarch, Presbyterian by presbyters, elected by ministers and elders.[2] Arguments over the role of bishops were as much about politics and the power of the monarch as religious practice.
“De’il gie you colic, the wame o’ ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?”
“Devil cause you colic in your stomach, false thief: dare you say the Mass in my ear?”
Janet “Jenny” Geddes
St Giles’ on Sunday, 23 July 1637, in objection to the first public use of the Church of Scotland’s 1637 edition of the Book of Common Prayer in Scotland.
the Tables
negotiate with the Privy Council. Characteristically, Charles turned down the Tables’ demands for withdrawal of the Anglican liturgy and more riots ensued with talk of civil war. This led to widespread signing of the National Covenant in February 1638, with its defiance of any attempt to introduce innovations like the prayer book that had not first been subject to the scrutiny of Parliament and the general assembly of the church. In November of the same year, the bishops and archbishops were formally expelled from the Church of Scotland, which was then established on a full Presbyterian basis. Charles reacted by launching the Bishops’ Wars, thus beginning the Wars of Three Kingdoms.
privy council
a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word “privy” means “private” or “secret”; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch’s closest advisors to give confidential advice on state affairs.
The Privy Council of England, also known as His (or Her) Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council (Latin: concilium familiare, concilium privatum et assiduum), was a body of advisers to the sovereign of the Kingdom of England. Its members were often senior members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, together with leading churchmen, judges, diplomats and military leaders.
The Privy Council of England was a powerful institution, advising the sovereign on the exercise of the royal prerogative and on the granting of royal charters. It issued executive orders known as Orders in Council and also had judicial functions.
Orders in Council
Powerful sovereigns often used the body to circumvent the courts and Parliament. For example, a committee of the council – which later became the Court of the Star Chamber – was during the fifteenth century permitted to inflict any punishment except death, without being bound by normal court procedure. During Henry VIII’s reign, the sovereign, on the advice of the council, was allowed to enact laws by mere proclamation. The legislative pre-eminence of Parliament was not restored until after Henry VIII’s death. Though the royal council retained legislative and judicial responsibilities, it became a primarily administrative body. The council consisted of forty members in 1553 but the sovereign relied on a smaller committee, which later evolved into the modern Cabinet.
The council developed significantly during the reign of Elizabeth I, gaining political experience, so that there were real differences between the Privy Council of the 1560s and that of the 1600s.
By the end of the English Civil War, the monarchy, House of Lords and Privy Council had been abolished. The remaining house of Parliament, the House of Commons, instituted a Council of State to execute laws and to direct administrative policy. The forty-one members of the council were elected by the Commons; the body was headed by Oliver Cromwell, the de facto military dictator of the nation. In 1653, however, Cromwell became Lord Protector, and the Council was reduced to between thirteen and twenty-one members, all elected by the Commons. In 1657, the Commons granted Cromwell even greater powers, some of which were reminiscent of those enjoyed by monarchs. The council became known as the Protector’s Privy Council; its members were appointed by the Lord Protector, subject to Parliament’s approval.
In 1659, shortly before the restoration of the monarchy, the Protector’s Council was abolished. Charles II restored the royal Privy Council, but he, like previous Stuart monarchs, chose to rely on a small committee of advisers.]
The Acts of Union 1707 united England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain, replacing the privy councils of both countries with a single body, the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
Thirty Years’ War
one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648
Under the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, states were categorised as either Lutheran, then the most usual form of Protestantism, or Catholic, based on the religion of their ruler.
“Freeborn”
term associated with political agitator John Lilburne (1614–1657), a member of the Levellers, a 17th-century English political party. As a word, “freeborn” means born free, rather than in slavery or bondage or vassalage. Lilburne argued for basic human rights that he termed “freeborn rights”, which he defined as being rights that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law.[1] John Lilburne’s concept of freeborn rights, and the writings of Richard Overton another Leveller, may have influenced the concept of unalienable rights,[2] (Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.) mentioned in the United States Declaration of Independence.[3]
John Bastwick
John Bastwick (1593–1654) was an English Puritan physician and controversial writer. He was punished for his sedition and this included having his ears removed. We was supported by petitions from his wife Susanna Bestwick.
He was a Latin stylist, and began a career as controversial with Latin works. In 1634 he published in the Netherlands two anti-Catholic Latin treatises: Elenchus Religionis Papisticae, an answer to a Catholic called Richard Short; and Flagellum Pontificis, an argument in favour of Presbyterianism. The latter came under the notice of William Laud. He had Bastwick brought before the Court of High Commission, where he was convicted of a “scandalous libel”, was condemned to pay a fine of £1,000 and costs, and was imprisoned in the Gatehouse Prison adjoining Westminster Abbey until he should recant. In 1636 Bastwick published Πράξεις τῶν επισκόπων, sive Apologeticus ad Praesules Anglicanos, written in the Gatehouse against the high commission court.
In 1637 he produced in English the four parts of his Letanie of Dr. John Bastwicke, in which bishops were denounced as the enemies of God and the tail of The Beast. For this publication he was summoned before the Star Chamber. The request for a work in English came from the publisher John Wharton. The Letanie was printed by a Dutch press for John Lilburne, who had been brought to the Gatehouse in 1636 by the clothier Thomas Hewson and minister Edmund Rosier. Lilburne was just finishing an apprenticeship with Hewson, and smuggled the text abroad, but was betrayed by his assistant in importing the Letanie, John Chilliburne who worked for Wharton. At the time Bastwick was comfortable enough in prison, living with his wife and family and complaining that he ate roast meat only once a week.
Bastwick’s voluminous defence, which was also published, aggravated his case. He was found guilty, and along with the other sentenced to lose his ears in the pillory, to pay a fine of £5,000, and to be imprisoned for life.[4] This sentence was carried out with a supportive audience. Bestwick supplied his own scalpel and his wife Sussana kissed his ears before they were removed. After the event she took each ear and placed them by her bosom
Bastwick was afterwards moved to Star Castle, Isles of Scilly. From there in November 1640 he was released by order of the Long Parliament, and in December entered London in triumph. Reparation to the amount of the fines imposed was ordered to be made to him (2 March 1641). In 1642, as the First English Civil War broke out, Bastwick was a captain of the Leicester trained bands, and on 22 July he was taken prisoner by the royalists at Leicester, and sent prisoner to York.[2]
Soon at liberty again, he published in 1643 a Declaration demonstrating … that all malignants, whether they be prelates, &c., are enemies to God and the church. The Parliamentary success in the war brought by 1645 a new relationship into being between the Presbyterians and other Protestant groups, classified as Independents, such as the emerging Quakers and Congregationalists. Bastwick with Prynne was a hard-liner on the Presbyterian side; Burton wanted a less harsh approach, and by then Lilburne was a very popular Independent, beginning to found the Levellers.[5]
Bastwick with Colonel Edward King arranged for Lilburne to be arrested on 19 July 1645 for words he had said against the Speaker of the House of Commons; he was in custody until October.[6] In 1648 Bastwick published two bitter tracts against the Independents, and in defence of himself against Lilburne.
William Prynne
William Prynne (1600 – 24 October 1669), an English lawyer, voluble author, polemicist and political figure, was a prominent Puritan opponent of church policy under William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633–1645). His views were presbyterian, but he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for overall state control of religious matters
According to Anthony Wood, he was confirmed in his militant puritanism by the influence of John Preston, then a lecturer at Lincoln’s Inn. In 1627 he published his first of over 200 works, a theological treatise titled The Perpetuity of a Regenerate Man’s Estate. This was followed in the next three years by three others attacking Arminianism and its teachers. In the preface to one of them he appealed to Parliament to suppress anything written against Calvinist doctrine and to force the clergy to subscribe to the conclusion of the Synod of Dort.
Like many Puritans abhorring decadence, Prynne strongly opposed religious feast days, including Christmas, and revelry such as stage plays. He included in his Histriomastix (1632) a denunciation of actresses which was widely felt to be an attack on Queen Henrietta Maria. This book led to the most prominent incidents in his life, but the timing was accidental.[3]
About 1624 Prynne had begun a book against stage-plays; on 31 May 1630 he gained a licence to print it and about November 1632 it was published. Histriomastix has over a thousand pages, in which he presents plays as unlawful, incentives to immorality, and condemned by the Scriptures, Church Fathers, modern Christian writers, and pagan philosophers. By chance, the Queen and her ladies, in January 1633, took part in the performance of Walter Montagu’s The Shepherd’s Paradise: this was an innovation at court. A passage reflecting on the character of female actors in general was construed as an aspersion on the Queen; passages attacking the spectators of plays and magistrates who failed to suppress them, pointed by references to Nero and other tyrants, were taken as seen on King Charles I.[3]
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Cottington, ordered Historiomatrix to “be burnt, in the most public manner that can be.” As David Cressy has pointed out, this was an innovative act of public censorship. It imported continental public book-burning by the hangman for the first time. “Though not used in England”, Lord Cottington noted, this manner of book burning suited Prynne’s work because of its “strangeness and heinousness”.[4]William Noy, as attorney-general, took proceedings against Prynne in the Star-chamber. After a year’s imprisonment in the Tower of London, he was sentenced on 17 February 1634 to life imprisonment, a fine of £5,000, expulsion from Lincoln’s Inn, deprival of his Oxford University degree, and amputation of both his ears in the pillory, where he was held on 7–10 May. His book was burnt before him, and with over a thousand pages it suffocated Prynne in its smoke.[4]
On 11 June Prynne addressed a letter to Archbishop Laud, whom he saw as his chief persecutor, charging him with illegality and injustice. Laud handed the letter to the Attorney-General as material for a new prosecution, but when Prynne was required to own his handwriting, he contrived to get hold of the letter and tore it to pieces. Prynne wrote in the Tower and published anonymous tracts against episcopacy and the Book of Sports. In A Divine Tragedy lately acted, or a Collection of sundry memorable Examples of God’s Judgment upon Sabbath-breakers he introduced Noy’s recent death as a warning. In an appendix to John Bastwick’s Flagellum Pontificis and in A Breviate of the Bishops’ intolerable Usurpations he attacked prelates in general (1635). An anonymous attack on Matthew Wren, Bishop of Norwich[5] brought him again before the Star Chamber. On 14 June 1637 Prynne was sentenced once more to a fine of £5,000, to imprisonment for life, and to lose the rest of his ears. At the proposal of Chief Justice John Finch, he was also to be branded on the cheeks with the letters S. L., standing for “seditious libeller”. Prynne was pilloried on 30 June in company with Henry Burton and John Bastwick; Prynne was handled barbarously by the executioner. He made, as he returned to his prison, a couple of Latin verses explaining the ‘S. L.’ with which he was branded to mean ‘stigmata laudis’ (“sign of praise”, or “sign of Laud”).[3]
His imprisonment was then much closer: no pens or ink, nor any books allowed but the Bible, the prayer book, and some orthodox theology. To isolate him from his friends, he was sent first to Carnarvon Castle in July 1637, and then to Mont Orgueil in Jersey. The governor, Philippe de Carteret II treated Prynne well, which he repaid by defending Carteret’s character in 1645, when he was accused as a malignant and a tyrant. He occupied his imprisonment by writing verse.
Became a royalist & supported the Restoration in the 1660’s
Thomas Erastus
Thomas Erastus (original surname Lüber, Lieber, or Liebler;[2] 7 September 1524 – 31 December 1583) was a Swiss physician and Calvinist theologian. He wrote 100 theses (later reduced to 75) in which he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. They were published in 1589, after his death, with the title Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis. His name was later applied to Erastianism.
Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis
1589
In his Theses, he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. This view is now known as Erastianism.
In his Theses, Erastus explained that sins of professing Christians are to be punished by civil authority, and not by the withholding of sacraments on the part of the clergy. Those holding this view in the Westminster Assembly included John Selden, John Lightfoot, Thomas Coleman and Bulstrode Whitelocke, whose speech in 1645 is appended to Lee’s version of the Theses. However, after much controversy, the opposite view was carried, with Lightfoot alone dissenting. The consequent chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith (Of Church Censures) was not ratified by the English parliament.[7][8]
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “The Theses and Confirmatio thesium appeared together in 1589. The central question about which the “Theses” turned was that of excommunication. The term is not, however, used by Erastus in the Catholic sense as excluding the delinquent from the society or membership of the Church. The excommunication to which [it] alludes was the exclusion of those of bad life from participation in the sacraments.
Socinianism
Most famous for its Nontrinitarian Christian beliefs about the unitary nature of God and the human nature of Jesus
Contains a number of other distinctive theological doctrines, such as the denial of divine foreknowledge regarding the actions of free agents and rejection of the pre-existence of Christ.
Nicodemite
The term was apparently introduced by John Calvin (1509–1564) in 1544 in his Excuse à messieurs les Nicodemites.[8] Since the French monarchy had increased its prosecution of heresy with the Edict of Fontainebleau (1540), it had become increasingly dangerous to profess dissident belief publicly, and refuge was being sought in emulating Nicodemus.
In the Gospel of John (John 3, John 3:1-2) there appears the character Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin. Although outwardly remaining a pious Jew, he comes to Jesus secretly by night to receive instruction. Although he was eventually made a saint, his dual allegiance was somewhat suspect.
There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.
Notable suspected Nicodemites
1-. Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon (c.1527–1556), courtier of Mary I of England
- Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII of England
- Michelangelo (1475–1564), who sculpted a portrait of himself as Nicodemus in his Florentine Pietà
- Isaac Newton (1643–1727), eminent scientist and theologian
- Reginald Cardinal Pole (1500–1558), last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury[13]
