Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590-1644 (History of the University of Cambridge)

Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590-1644 David Hoyle

The History of the University of Cambridge: Texts and Studies Volume 6

Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590–1644

The character of the English Church at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century has always been a contentious historical issue. Concentrating on Cambridge University – where the critical theological debates took place and where new generations were schooled in learning and prejudice – this book aims to shed new light on the question, making use of a wealth of previously underexploited material from the archives of the University and the Colleges, and paying attention to some significant and unjustly neglected figures.  After setting the scene in the seventeenth-century city and university, the book goes on to provide a careful and detailed analysis of the debate about Anglicans and Puritans, Arminians and Calvinists; it offers a lively account of bitter academic and religious rivalries fought out in sermons, academic exercises and in print. David Hoyle  is Canon Residentiary at Gloucester Cathedral and Director of Ministry in the Diocese of Gloucester.

The History of the University of Cambridge: Texts and Studies ISSN  0960–2887 General Editor P. N. R. Zutshi Keeper of Manuscripts and University Archives Cambridge University Library 1. The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution, 1623–1688, John Twigg 2. Medieval Cambridge: Essays on the Pre-Reformation University, edited by Patrick Zutshi 3. Gentlemen, Scientists and Doctors: Medicine at Cambridge 1800–1940, Mark Weatherall 4. Teaching and Learning in Nineteenth-Century Cambridge, edited by Jonathan Smith and Christopher Stray 5. Cambridge in the 1830s: The Letters of Alexander Chisholm Gooden, 1831–1841, edited by Jonathan Smith and Christopher Stray

Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590–1644

David Hoyle

THE BOYDELL PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

© David Hoyle 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of David Hoyle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2007 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge in association with Cambridge University Library ISBN  978–1–84383–325–3 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record of this publication is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

vii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Introduction

1

1 Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge

7

2 Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity

41

3 Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of the Faith

71

4 Assurance and Anxiety 1595–1619

88

5 The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629

131

6 ‘Near Popery and yet no Popery’

161

7 ‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’

196

Appendix

231

Bibliography

233

Index

251

For Janet

Preface and Acknowledgements

Much of the work that has gone into this book was done while I was a research student. Those years were spent, very happily, in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. I thank the Master, Fellows and Staff of the college, for all the kindness and encouragement I was shown there. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to two fellows of Corpus, Richard Bainbridge and Patrick Bury, who both encouraged a project they did not live to see me complete. I am also delighted to have this opportunity to offer my thanks to Elizabeth Bury, and to William and Katharine Horbury who (just) saved me from taking myself too seriously. During those years of research I was supported by the Trustees of Dr Lightfoot’s Scholarship. Bishop Lightfoot’s generosity and his commitment to church history sustained this work and shaped my future life: I honour him. From Corpus I moved on, by stages, to Magdalene College, where the doctoral thesis was finally completed in a community that made me welcome then, and has since welcomed me back, to put the finishing touches to this book. I thank the Master, Fellows and Staff of Magdalene for giving me so much, so generously, over so many years. In Magdalene, I learnt what fellowship means and I will always treasure that. Now, I am a priest serving in the Diocese of Gloucester and I am indebted to all my colleagues there for the support and patience that made possible the sabbatical in which this book was, at last, completed. Particular thanks go to John Witcombe and to Roger Grey. I have been assisted at every stage by the men and women who work in university and college libraries. I thank them all for their dedicated courtesy. Archivists in Cambridge colleges gave me generous help wherever I went. The staff of the Rare Books Room, and Godfrey Waller and his colleagues in the Manuscripts Room in the Cambridge University Library were gracious and helpful day after day. I also owe particular thanks to Jayne Ringrose, Elizabeth Leedham-Green, and the late Dorothy Owen for encouragement at the beginning and for expert guidance later. Other scholars have been immensely helpful and, better still, they have been stimulating and good company. So many people helped, but I must acknowledge the particular assistance I was given by Christopher Brooke, Mark Dever, Stephen Hampton, Peter Lake, Damien Leader, Judith Maltby, Roger Mills, John Morrill, Ken Parker, Harry Porter, and John Twigg. I must also single out one such colleague, Anthony Milton, who time and again offered guidance and advice with a staggering generosity of spirit. I am also deeply indebted to Patrick Zutshi who has a rare talent for combining focused criticism with warm encouragement. The

viii   Preface and Acknowledgements staff of Boydell & Brewer, and the ever-patient Caroline Palmer in particular, have given me enormous help in turning all these words into a book. Then there are the most particular thanks. Eamon Duff y was my supervisor and became my friend. All this Anglican ‘popery’ tested his tolerance a little and in exchange he taught me so much. I think what I value most is that, from him, I learnt to be passionate about the truth. From my parents I learnt even more and I know that the research, let alone the book, would never have been done without them. In more recent years Mike and Katy have joined us and, while I am not sure they helped much with the book, they certainly made life so much more exciting and joyful. And one person, uniquely, lived this with me. On her I depend utterly and to her this book is dedicated, with my love. Whitsunday and the Commemoration of Benefactors in Magdalene College

Abbreviations

BL British Library Bodl Bodleian Library, Oxford CJ Commons Journals CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic CUA Cambridge University Archives CUL Cambridge University Library DNB Dictionary of National Biography HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission LJ Lord’s Journals RCHM Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts RGB Registry Guard Books (Cambridge University Archives) VC CT Vice Chancellor’s Court Books (Cambridge University Archives) In the text of the book the dates are given New Style.

INTRODUCTION

In the archive, in Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, among the account books, the records of college business, and the collections of private papers, a letter is kept. It was written in 1633, by a man called John Pocklington, a former member of the college, and it offered a benefaction. Cambridge colleges are usually rather charming to their old members and they become utterly craven when there might be money in the association. Perhaps that accounts for the fact that this extraordinary letter survives. In truth, Pocklington had no intention whatsoever of giving anything to Sidney Sussex except offence. He loathed the place and he had abandoned it as soon as he had had a better offer from Pembroke College. The letter he wrote, to the master and fellows, was an elaborate, academic, practical joke, a tease with no kindness intended. Pocklington claimed to be offering to endow a college lectureship, but in truth he was merely setting out a syllabus of college errors. His lecturer would put the college right, teach the faith that Pocklington believed in, but had not learnt at Sidney Sussex. It was going to be a richer diet than they were used to: Nowe next to the study of the holy scriptures (as your selfe most truly and ingenously tell me, and therein confirme me) there’s nothing that serveth more to settle the iudgment in matter of faith (and so to bring truth to light and peace into the church) then the tradition of the Church … Scripture was to be interpreted by tradition. With mounting enthusiasm Pocklington set out his curriculum in detail, with fifty-two questions that might be considered in a protestant college engaging with tradition. There were references to altars, bowing, the sign of the cross, prayer for the dead, purgatory and the real presence. Here was a glimpse of Cambridge University during the Personal Rule. It was a place riven with controversy; an academic community that was at odds with itself. Normal rules of intellectual debate had given way to something more strident and malicious. At issue was the faith and practice of the Church of England and there were multiple heads of disagreement. It was an argument that had already preoccupied the university for more than fifty years, and it was nationally significant. Although Pocklington had been gone from Cambridge for well over a decade, he still carried on his vendetta. He was very soon to be famous, or more properly, infamous, as the author of two controversial books



Sidney Sussex College, Archives, Box 1.1.



   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 destined to be burned in Cambridge and elsewhere by the public hangman. Both he and the master and fellows of Sidney Sussex knew they were in a fight and they knew it mattered. This book is a study of the controversy that raged in Cambridge for well over sixty years and which swept up John Pocklington and so many others. It explores the religious life of the university from the latter years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I until that life was radically altered by the Parliamentary Visitation of 1644. It is an important story and parts of it have been told before, so this is a book trying to find its place in occupied territory. The history of Cambridge University has been extraordinarily well served recently with some significant publications. Additionally, there is an enormous and sophisticated literature that explores the specifically religious controversies in Cambridge that will be discussed again here. Some words of explanation are necessary. The history of the English church in the reign of the last Tudor monarch and the first two Stuarts has been written and rewritten. Where once we thought there was a simple, if bitter, struggle between ‘anglicans and puritans’ we are now learning to see subtle distinctions and a spectrum of opinion. That much seems to be pretty generally accepted, but there agreement ends. The idea of ‘anglicans versus puritans’ was gradually dismissed, first by Patrick Collinson’s work, which showed us that ideas once considered ‘puritan’ in fact penetrated to the heart of the religious establishment. Then Nicholas Tyacke set out to demonstrate that a vigorously protestant faith and practice (which he described as ‘English Calvinism’) was being taught in the universities, preached by bishops and deans, and published by major printing presses from the 1590s until well into the 1620s. Historians began to speak about a Calvinist ‘consensus’ as many of them recognised that the Church of England was far more reformed at the beginning of the seventeenth century than we had once thought. In particular, more and more attention was paid to the way the theology of divine predestination held the consensus together. Tyacke went on to suggest that this dominant Calvinism was first muzzled, and then overpowered, by a new movement, called  

See DNB and below, pp.113–15, 207–8, 210. On the history of the University, see V. Morgan, ‘Country Court and Cambridge University, 1558–1640: a study in the evolution of a political culture’ (University of East Anglia PhD thesis 1983); V. Morgan, A History of the University of Cambridge with a contribution by Christopher Brooke (Cambridge 2004); J. Twigg, The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625–1688 (Woodbridge 1990). There have also been some significant, modern college histories: S. Bendall, C. Brooke and P. Collinson, A History of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Woodbridge 1999); C. Brooke, A History of Gonville and Caius College (Woodbridge 1985); P. Cunich, D. Hoyle, E. Duff y and R. Hyam, A History of Magdalene College, Cambridge (Cambridge 1994); J. Twigg, A History of Queens’ College (Woodbridge 1987).  H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Hamden, CT 1972); P. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge 1982); N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford 1987); P. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge 1992); and also some recent articles by M. Todd, ‘Anti-Calvinists and the Republican Threat in Early Stuart Cambridge’, in Puritanism and its Discontents, ed. L.L. Knoppers (Newark, DE 2003), pp.83–105, and M. Todd, ‘ “All one with Tom Thumb”: Arminianism, Popery and the Story of the Reformation in Early Stuart Cambridge’, Church History 64:4 (1995), pp.563–79.  Collinson argues the case in a number of books, but see especially P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford 1982).  Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, see especially pp.29, 31–5, 39–40.



Introduction  

‘Arminianism’, which challenged the presiding divinity of God’s providence and set out a very different theology of grace. In the 1620s and 1630s there was a sea change in English religious life, and he suggested, Archbishop William Laud was the ‘chief architect’ of that change. Dr Tyacke’s work has made a huge impact on seventeenth-century scholarship and it has been much debated. Critics suggested that one polarity, between anglican and puritan, had simply been replaced with another, between Calvinist and Arminian. Tyacke’s work, supplemented by insights from other scholars, is however much more nuanced than that. He accepts that ‘Arminianism’ (a term that implies commitment to the theological assumptions of Arminius) does not do full justice to the broad-based opposition to Calvinism that began to develop in the 1590s and finally came to power in the Personal Rule. So, Tyacke prefers to speak of ‘Anti-Calvinism’ and identifies within that movement a concern not just for doctrine (though he still believes that Laud and others were inf luenced by Arminian thought), but also for church order and for worship. Meanwhile, Peter Lake has further refined the theory by shifting the focus from particular doctrines. He prefers to identif y a Laudian ‘style’, in which churches were taken very seriously as places of God’s presence, and in which ceremonies and the beauty of holiness, order and the significance of the sacraments all loomed large. At the heart of this style was a set of assumptions about what was sacred and what was profane that differed fundamentally from Calvinist ideas. At the same time other scholars have reassessed the idea of the ‘Calvinist consensus’ of the 1590s. There are plenty of advocates for this idea, but again the model has become more complex and sophisticated. Peter Lake has distinguished different types of divinity and helped us to think of the crucial role played by a group of ‘moderate puritans’.10 Similarly, Kenneth Fincham has distinguished radical puritans pressing for sweeping change from moderate puritans equally eager for change and yet prepared to work within the established church, and has also identified a quite separate group of conformist Calvinists.11 He and Peter Lake have shown that a belief in predestination could be fashioned into a faith in which the elect could know themselves elect and might then separate themselves out into a distinctive church reserved for the truly godly. This cold and lofty conviction has been called ‘experimental predestinarianism’. Calvinist conformists refused to take this step and never accepted that there was a logic that would drive them out of the national church. The differences between these  

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.49–57. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.245, 246; N. Tyacke, ‘Archbishop Laud’, in The Early Stuart Church 1603–1642, ed. K. Fincham (London 1993), pp.59–60, 68–70. In a more recent article Tyacke has both shown the complexity of the programme that the Laudians pursued and re-emphasised his conviction that the religious history of the period is best understood in terms of a polarity: ‘Lancelot Andrews and the Myth of Anglicanism’, in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church c. 1560–1660, ed. P. Lake and M. Questier (Woodbridge 2000), pp. 5–34, especially pp.32–3. Kenneth Fincham is more inclined to say that Laud was not interested in Arminianism, but agrees that his policies in the 1620s and 1630s generated a crisis for conformist Calvinists: ‘Introduction’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, p.10.  P. Lake, ‘The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, pp.161–85. 10 P. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge 1982). 11 ‘Introduction’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, pp.6–11.

   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 puritans and Calvinists were deeply significant but their common interest in the piety that went with predestination, and their common and passionate hatred of Rome remained a powerful bond.12 Although this kind of analysis has proved persuasive and popular, there are dissenting voices. Some historians simply do not accept that Laud, or Arminianism, were novel and destructive forces that destroyed a precious consensus in the Church of England. Peter White both doubts that there ever was a Calvinist consensus or that English theologians were much interested in Arminianism. He suggests that what others choose to call ‘Arminianism’, and treat as a cuckoo in the nest, was in fact an authentic part of the English reformed tradition. In White’s work Archbishop Laud emerges as a traditional conformist resisting puritan demands for change.13 Kevin Sharpe is equally unimpressed with the evidence for English Arminianism and argues that the force for change in the 1630s was neither a new theology of grace, nor a novel Laudian programme of reform, but Charles I’s determination to impose unity and uniformity.14 Julian Davies constructs a broadly similar argument suggesting that it was neither the collapse of a Calvinist consensus, nor the impact of new Arminianism that triggered a crisis in 1640, but rather Charles I’s passion for sacramental kingship and Laud’s eagerness for good order.15 A huge amount of ink and paper has been expended in all this and still there is no agreement. The most recent publications are wary of ‘binary opposites’, and it is becoming more fashionable to identif y ‘lines of cleavage’ and to distinguish different views within a spectrum of opinion.16 We have also been reminded that, while we have been so intrigued by the percussive exchanges between Calvinists and Arminians, we should have been paying more attention to the main orchestral theme of parochial conformity.17 So, perhaps there is at least one common outcome of all this work, and that is that we now agree it is all very complicated and there is more to it than we first thought. Before we complete this survey, though, there is 12

13 14 15

16 17

See for example Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.282. David Como has shown both that there were strong grounds for agreement in a Calvinist ‘negative consensus’, and deep ‘fault lines’ inside Calvinism: D. Como, ‘Puritans, Predestination and the Construction of Orthodoxy in Early Seventeenth Century England’, in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp.66, 77. Tom Webster is equally well aware of variety of opinion but traces the existence of a spiritual brotherhood of puritans, which fragmented under Laudian pressure in the 1630s: T. Webster, Godly Clerg y in Early Stuart England (Cambridge 1997), pp.333–5. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, pp.39ff.; 83, 84, 152–9, 167–74. K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven 1992), pp.276–7, 279–80, 286–7, 289, 296, 298, 386–92, 402. Davies suggests that Charles I was no Arminian, and describes him, memorably, as rather being doctrinally dyslexic: J. Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of Anglicanism 1625–1641 (Oxford 1992), p.12, see also pp.14ff., 17, 61–86, 87–103. D. Cressy, England on Edge (Oxford 2006) notes how difficult the terms have become, when it is possible to label Laudian ‘conservatives’ as ‘innovators’, but then goes on to pursue an argument close to that of Davies and Sharpe in which the real issue is the King’s insistence on the ‘circle of order’ and Laud’s passion for ceremony; pp.129, 130–3, 137–41. ‘Introduction’, in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp.x–xx; P. Marshall, Reformation England 1480–1642 (London 2003), pp.128–31. J.D. Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge 1998), pp.105–6. Maltby finds evidence that conformists were hostile to both godly pressure for further reformation and to Laudian innovation: Maltby, Prayer Book and People, pp.107–16, 122; J.D. Maltby, ‘ ‘‘By this Book”, Parishioners, the Prayer book and the Established Church’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, p.117.



Introduction  

one more element that must be included. More and more conscious of the variety of opinion and of the ‘lines of cleavage’, historians have recently begun to point out that there were problems inherent in the English reformation settlement. The texts and teaching that the reformation handed on to the Elizabethan church were debated and discussed; they did not have an agreed meaning. Out of that uncertainty further argument inevitably followed.18 By far the most sophisticated and best-informed account of the internal debate about reformation is provided by Anthony Milton. He shows how, during Laud’s primacy, the Church of England began to renegotiate its relationship with both continental protestantism and with Roman catholicism. In this process the English church acquired a different kind of history, no longer seeing its antecedents in continental protestantism nor in an older dissident remnant inside Catholicism. Instead theologians began to explore a much closer association with the catholic past.19 In Laud’s circle it became increasingly unacceptable to trade the old polemic and call the pope ‘Antichrist’. A charge of ‘negative popery’ was levelled at theologians who seemed reluctant to condemn the errors of Rome.20 This book argues that there was indeed a preoccupation with predestination and the theology of grace in Jacobean Cambridge. It explores the power and the appeal of those ideas. It notes the way that other theologies of grace were tested and often found wanting, and it finds some Arminians in the process. It follows the arguments into the 1630s and identifies the evidence of ‘Laudian style’ in an immensely energetic campaign to introduce vesture, gesture and posture (and more besides) into Cambridge worship. Most significantly, though, it argues that in all the variety of opinion that it is possible to detect, among theologians fine-tuned for argument, there was one presiding concern. Battles over assurance, perseverance and divine foreknowledge, over altars and bowing, over whether the pope was Antichrist, over confession, justification and good works, over the beauty of holiness and the place of preaching were all part of the one war to secure a particular future for the Church of England. Debates between Calvinist and Arminian have their place within this struggle, but they are not the main theme. The weapons were various, but increasingly the warriors wielded the Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer, the Canons, and royal declarations as they insisted on their version of the church. In what follows attention is directed to some now familiar evidence, but there is new material too from manuscript sources held by the university and colleges in Cambridge. In much the same way that John Pocklington’s letter opens just one window on a process, this book suggests that what can be seen happening in Cambridge between 1590 and 1644 is but part of an argument about the nature and consequence of what we now call England’s ‘long reformation’. In this period something very particular was happening. Time had set some distance between 18

Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp.ix-x; Marshall, Reformation, pp.143ff. and pp.198– 205. 19 A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600– 1640 (Cambridge 1995), especially pp.128–72; Anthony Milton, ‘The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church: The Demise of a Jacobean Consensus’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, pp.196–7. 20 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp.68, 110–27.

   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the days of Armada and the generation that grew up in Cambridge in the 1620s. George Herbert, University Orator in 1620, could write in a way that older men and women could not: I gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he An anchor gave to me. Then an old prayer-book I did present: And he an optick sent. With that I gave a viall full of tears: But he a few green eares. Ah Loyterer! I’le no more, no more I’le bring: I did expect a ring.21 Herbert’s generation was the first that could pick up an old prayer book and notice that it belonged to the reformed Church of England.22 Again and again theologians debated the true identity of a church that was acquiring a new history and argued its relationship to the protestant and catholic past. Some recoiled in horror as previously agreed evangelical truths were challenged by preachers and teachers that they were quick to call ‘popish’ or ‘Lutheran’. Others longed to show that the English church had a rich, catholic past and that, as Crashaw put it: ‘In summe, no longer shall our people hope, To be a true Protestant, ’s but to hate the pope.’23 This is an account of a debate about the nature of reformation and English religious identity. It needs a chronological framework because it is the story of how the Church of England agreed, or failed to agree, a sense of its own history. In this one momentous struggle all other arguments find their place. The confusions it contains were not resolved and this story ends where it begins, with passionate arguments about the identity of a church that is both blessed and cursed by its conviction that only in a very different future will it know what its true identity must be.

21

The Works of George Herbert, ed. F.E. Hutchinson (Oxford 1941), p.121. I am indebted to Eamon Duff y for drawing my attention to this poem and its significance. 22 David Cressy points out that, by the time of Charles I, the Church of England was a venerable institution, England on Edge, pp.130–1 and suggests that almanacs deliberately stressed the distance from Armada and Gunpowder Plot. 23 Robert Shelford, Five Pious and Learned Discourses (Cambridge 1635), sig. Av.

Chapter One

LIFE AND RELIGION IN LATE TUDOR CAMBRIDGE

On 3 December 1572 William Charke left Peterhouse and walked up Trumpington Street towards Great St Mary’s, the University Church. The route was familiar; Charke had been a member of the University of Cambridge for twelve years. He had arrived, little more than a boy, short of funds and good breeding, but he was gifted and he had worked hard. He had made friends and earned a bit of dignity. By December 1572 he had been a fellow of Peterhouse for six years, and he left the college that day clutching the text of a Latin sermon that he was to preach to the university. It is to be hoped that he had a sense of occasion and enjoyed his short walk. This was the finest moment of his Cambridge career; it was also the end of that Cambridge career. Later, he claimed that he was surprised that he had upset a learned audience, listening to a Latin sermon in a university town. In truth, however, the sermon was breathtakingly offensive and Charke knew it. He had preached about bishops and archbishops. According to The Book of Common Prayer, bishops exist for the edif ying of the Church and for the honour, praise and glory of God. Charke however thought that they were sent by Satan and said so. His sermon was a blistering attack on prelacy and on the assumption that some ministers might be superior to others. The day after the sermon, the journey up Trumpington Street had to be repeated. This time, though, Charke was on his way to the university court, newly established in what had been a waiting room in the Schools building, just a stone’s throw from the University Church. The Vice-Chancellor and several of the heads of house were waiting for him. Charke was in very serious trouble, but he was defiant and unrepentant. In fact, when the heads suggested that an apology would be welcome, he spoke to them ‘in very unseemly manner and with taunting words’. He was given time, rather a lot of time, to think again, but he remained defiant and on 5 February 1573 he was expelled from the university. The Vice-Chancellor and heads could make no accommodation with someone so ill at ease with the Church of England. Rather surprisingly, given that he had seemed to invite this punishment, Charke was dismayed. Although he had such a 

C.H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 5 vols. (Cambridge 1842–1908), II, pp.312–13; CUL CUA RGB 6.1, fol.39.



   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 low opinion of the men who governed the university, Cambridge had been good to him and he was keen to stay. He appealed, and when his appeal was turned down, he worked hard to enlist the support of Lord Burghley, the Queen’s principal secretary, who was also Chancellor of the university. Letters were exchanged and the Vice-Chancellor and heads set about explaining to Burghley why Charke could not be allowed to return. He was a troublemaker, they argued, and his sermon had encouraged others to misbehave: Whereby the minds of some are so incensed, that in many colleges they study and devise only how to molest and disquiet their governours. Their drift, as it is wel known, being nothing else but to procure to themselves a licentious liberty. Lord Burghley did not like the sound of this. He made some further enquiries and promptly abandoned Charke to his fate, finding him lacking in ‘submission and conformity’. In Cambridge, in the late sixteenth century, submission and conformity were not negotiable. William Charke, with his seething hostility to his elders and betters and his conviction that the Church of England must change, was a problem that the university could not contain. Town and gown On consecutive days William Charke had walked into the centre of Cambridge and had visited a church and a courtroom that were at the heart of university life. He would have passed close to some remarkable buildings, the churches of St Botolph and St Bene’t, the chapel at King’s and of course, Great St Mary’s, with scaffolding round a tower that was not yet complete. He would not have been able to see these buildings as we see them now. Ramshackle homes and shops clung, like limpets, to the walls of these bigger buildings and obscured the view. Colleges, the university schools, domestic dwellings and market were crowded together, according to contemporaries ‘hugger mugger’. Charke walked through cramped and crowded streets. He would have needed to watch where he was going and he would have needed more particularly to watch where he was putting his feet: there was rubbish in the streets and, by all accounts, the air was thick with the smell. Thus, in 1577, William Harrison employed a carefully qualified enthusiasm to describe Cambridge: There are within the realm of England two noble and famous universities. … That of Cambridge … standeth very well, saving that it is somewhat low and near unto the fens, whereby the wholesomeness of the air there is not a little corrupted. Cambridge was a major English town, a minor port and the home of a celebrated university. It was also cramped, dirty and unsanitary. Seventy-five years  

Cooper, Annals, II, pp.312–13. P. Collinson, ‘Reformation or Deformation? the Reformed Church and the University’, in Great St Mary’s, Cambridge’s University Church, ed. J. Binns and P. Meadows (Cambridge Great St Mary’s 2000), p.27.  William Harrison, quoted in D. Cressy, Education in Tudor and Stuart England (London 1975), p.115.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge  

after Harrison’s remarks about the ‘wholesomeness’ of the air, John Evelyn was more outspoken: The market-place is very ample, and remarkable for old Hobson, the pleasant carrier’s benefaction of a fountain. But the whole town is a low dirty unpleasant place, the streets ill-paved, the air thick and infected by the fens. Cambridge stank. Drainage depended on the river, and the slow-moving Cam was simply incapable of scouring out the town. The King’s Ditch, an open sewer running through the south and east of the town, was the principal drain. It probably dated from pre-Conquest times, and it was already apparent by the thirteenth century that it was not up to the job. Clogged with all the filth of Cambridge’s livestock trade, as well as with domestic rubbish and dead dogs, the ditch was foul and a health hazard. In 1574, Andrew Perne, the Vice-Chancellor, wrote to Lord Burghley, the Chancellor, describing a recent outbreak of the plague. Piously, he said that he thought that sin was the principal cause of the disease, but he also pointed the finger at a visitor to the Midsummer Fair and to the ‘corruption’ of the King’s Ditch. Perne then outlined a plan for piping water into Cambridge to cleanse the sewer, but it was another thirty-five years before the idea was put into effect. Even then the scheme was only a very limited success and further attempts at cleaning the ditch continued to be made. Meanwhile plague was to return again and again. As a consequence Cambridge faced a recurring dilemma. Welcoming business, it was nonetheless constantly suspicious of visitors who might carry infection. In 1625 Joseph Mede, a fellow of Christ’s, was unhappy about sending and receiving letters, ‘not knowing what hands they passe through before they come to those to whom they are sent’. When pestilence actually reached the town the community virtually collapsed. Those who could f led; the sick were banished to makeshift ghettoes on the edge of town and colleges closed their gates on the few who remained. In 1630, Henry Butts, the Vice-Chancellor and Master of Corpus Christi College, complained that he was alone, ‘a destitute and forsaken man not a Scholler with me in College, not a Scholler seen by me without’. That year the plague was particularly cruel; nearly 350 died and hundreds more were reduced to poverty. It was too much for poor Butts, and on Easter Day 1632, while a congregation was gathering to hear him preach at the University Church, he was found, a suicide, swinging from his own garters in the Master’s Lodge. The threat to public health became more and more acute because, amid all the muck, there was brass. Business was booming and the town was growing. Economically, Cambridge was important as a centre for distribution. Wine, salt, coal, tar and foreign commodities came through Lynn, then down the river to the Quayside, by the Great Bridge. From there goods were distributed into East  

John Evelyn, Diary, ed. E.S. de Beer (London 1959), p.353. Cooper, Annals, II, pp.62, 63, 132; Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, City of Cambridge (London 1959), pp.306–8. A second open ditch, once confusingly referred to as ‘le Kynges ditch’, ran for a short distance north of the river between St John’s and Magdalene.  Cooper, Annals, III, p.179.  Cooper, Annals, III, p.228; Robert Masters, Master’s History of the College of Corpus Christi, ed. John Lamb (London 1831), p.168; M.D. Lobel, Cambridge (Ilkely 1974), pp.20–1.

10   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Anglia or the Midlands; or out, through the Trumpington Gate, towards Royston and London. This was a place for merchants, markets and passing trade. It was no accident that Cambridge had so many inns and no surprise that the man who made his fortune in the town was the carrier, Thomas Hobson. Distinguished visitors might come to Cambridge to see the colleges and the university schools, but the townspeople knew that life actually revolved around the river and the bridge from which the town quite properly took its name. The Romans had built a castle at Cambridge to guard this river crossing. Years later the Normans built another, which Cromwell later restored and used as the natural base for the army of the Eastern Association. As a market Cambridge attracted trade and visitors from a wide region. In August and September, unless plague kept them away, crowds came from all over the country to Sturbridge Fair, by the leper chapel on the Newmarket Road.10 They came too to the university, particularly to the Commencement ceremony in July. As a place of learning and opinion Cambridge had national importance and an international reputation. By the late sixteenth century it was growing fast. Increasingly, the impoverished scholars, who for hundreds of years in Cambridge had studied and said prayers, found themselves keeping company with students who might one day be bishops or businessmen, lawyers or landed gentry. The rising reputation of the university attracted fresh endowment and new buildings. So, the population of the town and the university grew steadily in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hemmed in, by the river on one side and by unenclosed fields and commons on the other, there was little room for new building. More and more people were squeezed into small, single-storey, timber properties hastily added to already crowded lanes and yards. By the end of the sixteenth century the town had not spread significantly beyond the boundaries it had reached in the 1370s. In that same period however, the population had more than doubled. By 1587 Cambridge was home to 6,500 people (about a quarter of them being resident members of the university).11 There were constant complaints about overcrowding. In 1584 the problem was brought to the attention of the Privy Council who observed that citizens of the town were building new properties and of late and at this present especially, they do not only increase and continue the same, but do more usually divide one house into many small tenements, and those for the most part do let and hire out to the meanest and poorest persons.12 The Vice-Chancellor and Mayor were given authority to regulate new building and even to command the destruction of recent alterations. Still the building went on. The Privy Council had to repeat the order in 1619, and by 1635, when there were nearly 2,000 people living in new tenements, it was forced to the much more vigorous step of forbidding any stranger to settle in Cambridge without  10

Cooper, Annals, III, pp.230–7. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Cambridgeshire, III, ed. J.P.C. Roach (London 1959), pp.92–5. 11 Cooper, Annals, I, p.114; II, p.435. Lobel argues that by the 1660s the population had risen only by a further thousand; Cooper convincingly suggests a more substantial increase: Lobel, Cambridge, p.18; Cooper, Annals, III, p.537. 12 Cooper, Annals, II, p.398.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   11

licence.13 The new buildings, concentrated around Magdalene, in Green Street between Trinity and Sidney Sussex, and on Wall’s Lane behind Christ’s, were not just ugly, impoverished and overcrowded, they were also a fire risk. In 1623 a fire in Wall’s Lane threatened both Christ’s and Sidney Sussex.14 As space for the living was at a premium, even the dead were crowded out, and the diocesan bishop joined the chorus of complaint, protesting that Cambridge churchyards were cluttered with houses and shops.15 The maps of Cambridge produced by Lyne (1574), Braun (1575) and Hammond (1592) give, with varying degrees of accuracy or imagination, a picture of the town. All of them made it rather more attractive than it really was. Nonetheless, they show narrow lanes and houses built where there are no houses now. It is also noticeable in these maps that many of the colleges were invisible from the High Street. Hidden by rows of dwellings, they had been built to be admired from within, rather than seen from without. The ancient foundations of the university were courtyards, closed to the world outside. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, however, that was beginning to change. In the 1580s Magdalene completed the final range of buildings around what is now its First Court and acquired a suddenly self-confident air. The new gatehouse, done in a renaissance style, was clearly intended to impress passers-by. Sidney Sussex, where building began in 1596, also acquired an imposing gate opening onto the street. Early in the next century the colleges consolidated their grip on the Backs. Trinity gave the land that is now Parker’s Piece to the town, in exchange for property on both sides of the river. Clare and St John’s acquired river meadows and walks. Colleges then began to design their buildings so that they might be seen to good effect from this new perspective. The town meanwhile was pushed east. The old wharves, still hinted at on Hammond’s map, were closed; the only real access that local traders had to the river was now by the Great Bridge. The growing power and mounting confidence of the university was viewed with alarm in the town. There had always been tension between the two communities and particular disputes over legal matters, tax and trade. The university had its own jurisdiction, and there was a long list of those who could claim university privilege and therefore appear before its court. In 1589 that list was suddenly extended to include, among others, the servants and children of all married graduates living in the town, all college gardeners, butchers, barbers and brewers, and the husbands of college laundresses. The mayor who made this concession to the university, in exchange for gaining control of the Sturbridge Fair, had made a poor bargain and ended his days ‘hateful to all townsman’.16 The problem was that the ‘privilege’ he had granted was more than a matter of court jurisdiction, there was money in it. A privileged person was exempt from the common charges of the borough. If they were in trade, this gave them a blatantly unfair advantage 13 14 15

Cooper, Annals, II, p.398; III, pp.127, 128; Lobel, Cambridge, p.17. Cooper, Annals, III, pp.158–9. Episcopal Visitation Records for Cambridgeshire, ed. W.M. Palmer (Cambridge 1930), p.29; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.280, 281. 16 Cooper, Annals, II, pp.473–5. On university privilege, see Victoria History, II, pp.76ff. and R. Parker, Town and Gown (Cambridge 1983), pp.104, 111, 120. On the financial and legal advantages the University enjoyed, see also V. Morgan, A History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge 2004), p.74.

12   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 over their competitors. In a town in which the university already had control of weights and measures, and of the price of bread, wine and beer, this kind of competition fuelled a vicious resentment. To add insult to injury, there were a growing number of brewhouses and bakehouses now going up within the colleges. There was tension and sometimes violence between town and gown. The university and the curriculum The growth of the university was swift and dramatic. In the 1370s it had no more than 700 resident members, by 1570 that had risen to 1,630, and it went on rising to pass the 2,000 mark by 1622. Two new colleges, Emmanuel, founded in 1584, and Sidney Sussex, in 1595, absorbed a small proportion of this inf lux, but the fact was that all the colleges were growing. Between the foundation of Emmanuel and the outbreak of the Civil War there was major building work in every college except Corpus, King’s and Jesus. Much of what was built in this period has since been demolished. Nonetheless, Great Court and Neville’s Court in Trinity, Second Court and Bishop Williams’ Library in St John’s, the Fellow’s Building at Christ’s, the Brick Building at Emmanuel, as well as the façade and Chapel at Peterhouse, are all surviving monuments to the prosperity and confidence of the Cambridge colleges in this period.17 Victor Morgan singles out Clare College, where the east range of Old Court was added last, as the most striking monument to the expansion of the university. In Clare the staircases are four storeys each, a radical departure from the common style and a testament in stone to the need to provide more rooms.18 Building on this scale was only possible because there was new money available. College revenues were rising with gifts of land and hard cash. Some of it came from within: Neville, the Master of Trinity, paid for the cloisters named after him and loaned the college much of the money used to build Great Court. Colleges were also profiting, however, from the close, almost incestuous, relationships that they were forming with communities many miles away. The link was forged first by the creation of closed scholarships, ensuring that a steady succession of boys would come to a college from the same school or region. At Corpus there was a stream of boys from Norwich. At Magdalene a new master found the college full of Welshmen and unashamedly set about removing them. A generation later Magdalene’s rooms were filled instead with students who spoke with the broad accents of the Lincolnshire wolds. Once in college, boys would be assigned a tutor and then the relationships became personal. The tutor was expected to write to and even visit a boy’s home. He would then be drawn into an association with a pupil’s parents and even with the wider family. In 1612 and 1613, for example, 17

M.H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition (Oxford 1959), p.3; V. Morgan, ‘Approaches to the History of the English Universities’, in Bildung Politik und Gesellschaft, ed. G. Klingenstein, H. Lutz and G Stourgh (Vienna 1978), p.145; RCHM, Cambridge, Part I, the chart between pp.lxxxii and lxxxiii. R. Willis and J.W. Clark, The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge 1886, reprinted 1988) provides a thorough account of building work college by college. Q. Skinner, ‘The Generation of John Milton’, in Christ’s: A Cambridge College over Five Generations, ed. David Reynolds (London 2005), pp.41–69 provides an excellent introduction to Cambridge life in this period. 18 Morgan, History of the University, p.33.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   13

Elias Travers at Emmanuel was in regular contact with the grandmother of his pupil, Thomas Knyvett. Over the years tutors could acquire a local reputation as far away as North Yorkshire. New students followed their brothers, cousins or neighbours to college, some of them staying to become tutors themselves. As the links with a local community developed, gifts were given. Further closed scholarships to local schools were added; rents from local properties followed, and engraved silver from aff luent students was added to the college endowment. In just two generations a college could acquire a dialect and a genealogy, a character and a heraldry all borrowed from distant fields and towns. No college was ever solely the possession of a particular county, but there were some celebrated associations, between Caius and East Anglia for example, and between Queens’ and Essex and Suffolk.19 Sadly, it is difficult to say very much more about the boys who came to Cambridge in increasing numbers in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only at Caius was there a register of admissions that tells us what we would like to know. The gaps in our knowledge have been plugged with vigorous argument.20 It has been widely assumed that there was a social or cultural revolution in Cambridge in this period and that more and more students came to the university from well-to-do backgrounds. It is argued that the rich and powerful began to see the universities as places that might instil virtue in their sons and offer a preparation for a career in the professions, or in government. Certainly what little evidence we do have suggests that colleges admitted more and more fee-paying students, called ‘pensioners’, who, unlike ‘sizars’, did not have to rely on a mixture of charity and menial work to see them through. So, the expansion of the university does seem to have been generated by those who could afford to pay their way. A little of the new blood was blue for, in addition to the pensioners, there were growing numbers of ‘fellow-commoners’, boys from wealthy or aristocratic families whose parents were prepared to pay to give them extra status, like the rather dubious privilege of dining with the fellows. The poet Robert Herrick, the son of a Cheapside goldsmith, was a fellow-commoner at St John’s in 1613, but his money soon ran out. William Lucy, son of Sir Thomas, was a fellow-commoner at Caius in 1613 and expected the added privilege of being accelerated through the degree course. We know a little about these men, but can only wonder what kind of homes most of the students came from. The same limitations of evidence also make it difficult for us to be sure how 19

Morgan, History of the University, pp.186–238 gives a splendid and detailed analysis of the relationship between Cambridge and ‘the country’; see also Lamb, Corpus pp.98, 99, 107, 131, 162, 172–3; Cunich et al., Magdalene, pp.85, 94–5; Bendall et al., Emmanuel, pp.52–4; Brooke, Caius, p.86; Twigg, Queens’, p.451; V. Morgan, ‘Cambridge University and “the Country” 1560–1640’, in The University in Society, ed. Lawrence Stone, 2 vols. (London 1975), I, pp.183–245; V. Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.103ff.; J. Morgan, Godly Learning (Cambridge 1986), p.303. 20 The debate about the social composition of Cambridge can be followed in Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, pp.54–81; K. Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (London 1965), pp.132–40; V. Morgan, ‘Cambridge and “the Country” ’; J. Morgan, Godly Learning, pp.229ff.; Twigg, Queens’, pp.89, 449; D. Cressy, ‘The Social Composition of Caius College, Cambridge 1580–1640’, Past and Present 47 (May 1970), pp.113–15; E. Russell, ‘The Inf lux of Commoners into the University of Oxford before 1581: an optical illusion?’, English Historical Review XCII (1977), pp.721–45. H. Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, Universities and Society in Pre-Industrial Britain 1500–1700 (London 1970), pp.22–33.

14   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 old the students were when they came into residence. Most were probably sixteen or seventeen; a few would have been older, and some much younger, perhaps only thirteen. In Magdalene, in the 1640s, when the admission register begins, the age range was 14–20; in Caius, in 1616, it was 13–22.21 We do know rather more, however, about what these boys studied during their Cambridge careers. It used to be thought that the expanding university developed a more liberal and f lexible curriculum as able college tutors introduced new subjects and new ideas. It is certainly true that students, indolent about university lectures, spent more time within their colleges, close to their tutors and we know that some tutors rang the changes. It is now also clear, however, that this new domesticity was also often cosy and conservative and there was no really systematic intellectual change. The curriculum remained conservative and thoroughly Aristotelian. There was only one development of any real significance. With grammar now being taught in schools, university education concentrated on the other two elements of the ‘trivium’: logic and rhetoric. Indeed the study of rhetoric began to be refined, providing students with a rather more broadly based education in the use of language. Where once they would have been trained only for rather stylised discussions of metaphysics, by the late sixteenth century they were being given the intellectual tools to range more widely and to argue with subtlety and power.22 The undergraduate course lasted four years.23 The student worked through a series of classical texts, with Aristotle undoubtedly the dominant inf luence. By the third and fourth year, as a ‘sophister’, the student could participate in the formal Latin debates, known as ‘disputations’. These were organised in both college and the university schools as a test of learning and technique. At the end of the course, the student, who would by now have picked up some metaphysics, was ready to ‘commence’, that is, to take his examination. This meant more public disputations at the end of which successful candidates proceeded to their degree. Three more years of study were then required for those who were going to ‘incept’ for their MA and, once more, the degree was taken through participation in disputations. Many students left Cambridge without any degree at all. Those who wanted to stay and have a voice in university affairs had to become Masters of Arts. Historically, young MAs had enjoyed a lot of power. For their first five years they were known as ‘regents’, and were responsible for the bulk of undergraduate teaching. 21

D. Cressy, ‘School and College Admission Ages in Seventeenth-Century England’, History of Education VIII.3 (1979); L. Stone, ‘The Age of Admission to College in Seventeenth Century England’, History of Education IX.2 (1980); Magdalene College Archive, B/422 (Register II), pp.5a9b; Admissions to Gonville and Caius College, ed. J. Venn and S.C. Venn (London 1887), pp.98–102, 131–4. 22 Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge argues that the curriculum changed (pp.126–48); Charlton, Education, pp.141ff., and Kearney, Scholars, pp. 77–8, 84–7 both suggest it remained conservative; see also J. Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge 1967), and Lisa Jardine, ‘The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth Century Cambridge’, Studies in the Renaissance XXI (1974); Lisa Jardine, ‘Humanism and the Sixteenth Century Arts Course’, History of Education IV.1 (1975); C. Brooke, ‘Cambridge in the Era of the Puritan Revolution’ in Morgan, History of the University, pp.467–8. 23 For what follows, see also Charlton, Education; William T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cambridge, MA 1958) and a useful summary in Twigg, Queens’, pp.98–9.

Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   15



After this period they became ‘non-regents’, and had a separate and rather less significant voice in university affairs.24 Some graduates remained in Cambridge still longer and embarked on work for a higher degree, aspiring either to be a Bachelor or Doctor in divinity, law, medicine or music. In fact only a very small number of men read music or medicine and there were just a few more lawyers. It was theology that was unquestionably the dominant discipline. Most of the senior members of the university had either proceeded to the degrees of BD and DD, or were in the course of doing so. Their study of divinity was a serious business. It took an MA a further seven years to be ready to incept for his BD. Lancelot Andrewes matriculated into the university in 1571, proceeded to BA in 1575, MA in 1578, and acquired his BD in 1585. Again, progress to the higher degrees was measured out in disputations, but the graduand also had to preach. The declamation, a Latin oration, was a basic requirement of the arts course. For those studying divinity, though, it took a very particular form and a Latin sermon, or concio ad clerum, as well as a further sermon in English, were required. Then, to proceed to the DD, a Bachelor of Divinity would have to wait another five years, participate in yet more disputations and preach again, both in English and Latin. Lancelot Andrewes’ brother, Roger, arrived in Cambridge in 1590 and only finally became a DD in 1609. The hard-earned degrees were finally conferred at the Commencement ceremony. Commencement Day was the first Tuesday in July, though the proceedings began three days earlier. A series of sermons, disputations and exercises, and the ceremonies associated with creating doctors in the various faculties, drew crowds from within the university, and many distinguished visitors from provincial society. It was even rumoured in 1622, that a number of Jesuits had found their way to Commencement.25 Every year there were crowds. For the ambitious and the opinionated this was an opportunity too precious to miss. The best and worst of Cambridge divinity were on show. Some of the candidates proceeding to a higher degree managed to secure a prominent place, preaching or disputing before a large and inf luential audience. Place-seekers fawned on powerful patrons and theologians, newly conscious of their own learning, paraded their views in a carnival of aspiring talent. Theology and the Church Religion mattered and religion was controversial. The university was crammed with theologians who had been trained, through disputations, to measure success by winning the argument. As college statutes usually insisted that most fellows should be ordained the vast majority of the men who had studied theology for so long were also priests. All were eager to make their mark and most were ambitious for the prizes of preferment. For all of them the practice of their faith was crucial. Fellows and students alike went to chapel or church not just to worship God, but also to celebrate their common life, to inform their faith and to parade their learning. There was something slightly gladiatorial about going to church 24 25

The period of regency was altered by the statutes of 1570: see below, pp.18–19. Cooper, Annals, III, p.145.

16   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in Cambridge: religion was a way of life but it was also a contest. Consequently, close attention was paid to what was said and done in sermons and in services. These were the days of the prolix protestantism of lengthy sermons and prayers. At times the diet must have been nearly indigestible. Yet, many took to it with enthusiasm. Simonds D’Ewes spent a Sunday in March 1619 hearing two sermons in the morning and a third after lunch. He later devoted his evening to writing up the notes he had taken.26 The real significance of religion was clear to Sir Walter Mildmay when he drafted the statutes of Emmanuel: The one object which I set before me in erecting this college was to render as many as possible fit for the administration of the Divine Word and Sacraments; and that from this seed ground the English Church might have those she can summon to instruct the people and undertake the office of pastors, which is a thing necessary above all others.27 His new college was to be a seminary, the first theological college of the reformed English church. Fourteen years later the statutes of Sidney Sussex College recorded virtually identical aspirations.28 The two new colleges sounded a little self-conscious about their aims and identity. There was a reason for that. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the university had been no more than an extended religious community and most undergraduates were heading towards ordination. By the early seventeenth century, however there was a growing recognition that many students had no intention of entering the ministry. Cambridge, which had a secular chancellor from 1559 and its own MPs from 1604, also had a new breadth, new associations and new ambitions. The relationship between church and university was more complex than it had been and a greater variety was creeping into collegiate life.29 Nonetheless, the universities were still seen as ‘nurseries’ or ‘fountains’ of the church, and in 1584 the English bishops recorded their conviction that Oxford and Cambridge were: ‘founded principally for the study of divinity and increase of the number of learned preachers and ministers’. Oxford and Cambridge provided the only training that the Church of England had to offer. It was important, therefore, that the university paid attention to its role as a seminary.30 By the 1620s recruitment into the ordained ministry depended almost exclusively on graduates. Many of these graduates had realistic hopes of good livings and future preferment. Most college fellows certainly entertained this kind of ambition, and it was generally assumed that they would ultimately leave Cambridge and enter 26 27 28 29

30

The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. J.O. Halliwell (London 1845), I, p.137. The Statutes of Walter Mildmay, ed. F.H. Stubbings (Cambridge 1983), p.60. G.M. Edwards, Sidney Sussex College (London 1899), p.25. R. O’Day, Education and Society 1500–1800 (London 1982), pp.77–9, 100–4. The first secular chancellor was Thomas Cromwell, in 1535, but both Gardiner and Pole subsequently held the post. On attitudes to training clergy, see R. O’Day, The English Clerg y (Leicester 1979), p.133; Kearney, Scholars, pp.22–3. J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 4 vols. (Oxford 1820–40), III, Part 2, p.304; see also Cranborne’s letter of December 1604, and Charles I’s letter of January 1626, quoted in Cooper, Annals, III, pp.11, 183; also O’Day, English Clerg y, p.133.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   17

parish ministry (at Emmanuel this was effectively made a statutory requirement).31 Some, of course, hoped to move on to still greater things and longed for the prizes of preferment. In 1607 Thomas Neville, then Master of Trinity, reported smugly that his college had provided eleven deans, seven bishops and two archbishops.32 The universities, however, were no longer educating merely the clerical elite; one study suggests that up to forty per cent of Cambridge graduates in the early seventeenth century were destined for ordination and that many of these men would spend their lives in relatively obscure parochial ministries.33 It should be noted that the education that these men brought with them was something of a mixed blessing to their parishes. Graduates with a BA or an MA would, in fact, have had no theological training and their only preparation for preaching would have been the formal declamations, over which they had stumbled in anxious Latin. Even a Cambridge DD, though theologically sophisticated, might well have known little Greek and less Hebrew. His real skill would have been in disputation. He had been schooled in a method that made controversy the test of learning. Small wonder that Charlton suggests that, ‘At the higher levels of scholarship, then, the universities had little to offer the Church other than polemic.’34 Cambridge was a seminary, producing ambitious, opinionated and often argumentative men, some of whom were destined for high office in the church. It was a centre for theological excellence and a vital resource in the weary war of words with Rome. For these reasons alone what happened in Cambridge was of intense interest to the Crown and to Parliament. The growing size, wealth and power of the university made it yet more interesting to outsiders, as did the increasingly complex and formidable links that it was developing with both provincial society and with new graduates in the professions, in business and in government. Cambridge was too important to ignore. Its growth, and the changes that accompanied that growth, prompted a curious mixture of reverence and suspicion. Those in government knew their need of both Cambridge and Oxford, but they knew too that the universities must be both watched and carefully controlled. Thus, Lord Burghley was quick to distance himself from William Charke when he realised that his scholarship was tainted with radicalism. It was important to those in authority that education exerted a conservative inf luence. New ideas were not greeted with enthusiasm, and it was assumed that the universities would bolster the existing order of things and teach young men the love of order and discipline. Writing to the Cambridge heads in December 1604, the Chancellor, Robert Cecil (then Viscount Cranborne, later Earl of Salisbury) made it clear that critical free thinking was not to be allowed to subvert the university, lest:

31

Stubbings, Statutes, pp.95–6. The statute required fellows to proceed DD as soon as they were eligible and then to resign their fellowship within a year. It was suspended in 1627: Bendall et al., Emmanuel, pp.24–6. 32 Morgan, History of the University, p.105. 33 See the figures given by R. Tyler, ‘The Children of Disobedience: the Social Composition of Emmanuel College, Cambridge 1596–1645’ (University of California, Berkeley, PhD thesis 1976), quoted in O’Day, Education and Society, p.95. 34 Charlton, Education, p.160, a point also made elegantly by Morgan, History of the University, p.128. David Cressy has pointed out just how violent and damaging the culture of polarity and namecalling later became: England on Edge, p.142.

18   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the dreggs of popery or intemperate humours of men (that cannot submitt them selfes to any order with which their owne inventions concurr not) shall still remayne to corrupt that famous nursery of learninge from whence (as from a cleare fountayne) should dayly springe sweete streames of peace and godliness…35 Twenty years later another Chancellor, the Earl of Suffolk, took up the familiar theme, urging the heads to: ‘bring home that long banisht pilgrim discipline, by whose absence the famous nursery of literature and good manners is in the eye of the state much declined’.36 There could be no question that university government was a matter of national importance; as the jurist Coke put it, the universities were: ‘the suns, eyes and minds of the kingdom, from which religion, liberal education and sound learning are spread most abundantly to every part of the realm’.37 University government All this reverence for Cambridge, and for learning, was tempered by a determination to harness and control it. A community of able and ambitious young men, some of them very young indeed, presented a peculiar kind of threat.38 Students who came into residence aged just sixteen could expect to take their BAs at twenty, and, if they had persuasive talents or persuasive patrons, could then be fellows within a matter of months. Three years later as MAs, and regents, they would have a voice in the government of both college and university. These young men were enormously inf luential, electing the chancellor, vice-chancellor and proctors. As the wealth and prestige of the university increased, these arrangements came under more and more strain. Internally, there were increasing numbers of rather older men seduced into staying on by an increasingly comfortable lifestyle. As non-regents, they resented, and feared, the power of their younger colleagues whom they thought ‘more youthful and intractable at this day than they were wont to be in times past’.39 Externally, it was becoming clear that young men in a hurry could not be entrusted with the increasingly important job of ensuring religious conformity in Cambridge. Change was inevitable and, in September 1570, a new set of statutes received the royal assent. The religious and secular significance of the university was recognised in a constitution that took authority away from the regents, who were the university teachers, and gave it to those

35

36 37 38

39

Quoted in J. Heywood and T. Wright, Cambridge University Transactions, 2 vols. (London 1854), II, pp.214–17; also J. Twigg, ‘The Limits of Reform’, The History of Universities, IV, ed. C. Schmitt (Oxford 1984), p.100. Suffolk to the heads, Feb. 1625, quoted in Heywood and Wright, Transactions, pp.236–7; see also Morgan, History of the University, pp.108–13. Quoted in C.R. Thompson, ‘Universities in Tudor England’, in Life and Letters in Tudor and Stuart England, ed. L.B. Wright and V.A. Lamar (Cornell 1962), p.60. For what follows, J.R. Tanner, The Historical Register of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge 1917), pp.1ff.,163ff.; J. Twigg, The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625–1688 (Woodbridge 1990), pp.4–6. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, p.109; Morgan, History of the University, pp.63ff.,116.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   19

more intimately involved in the compromises and confusions of national and ecclesiastical politics. In principle, the university was governed by the chancellor. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, this office had been conferred on inf luential courtiers seldom seen in Cambridge, who had only limited interest in academic affairs (two chancellors were not even graduates). 40 Under the new statutes, power to elect the chancellor continued to belong to the combined houses of regents and non-regents. In practice, however, they recognised that they had to accept a royal nominee.41 The really significant change made in 1570 was to give control over the day-to-day running of the university to the vice-chancellor and to hand to him the academic and financial powers once enjoyed by the proctors, who were the regents’ representatives. In the past the office of vice-chancellor was effectively in the gift of a majority of the regents. Now they could choose only from a short list of two drawn up by the heads of house. There was really no choice at all, the heads pressed hard for their favoured candidate and, from 1586 always chose from among themselves.42 Rapidly and, it has to be said without any real statutory authority, a meeting of the heads and the vice-chancellor acquired the decisive voice in university affairs.43 To add insult to injury the proctors were made accountable to the chancellor and were henceforth to be chosen from nominations from a fixed cycle of colleges. The university assembly was still the Senate, made up of resident members with the degree of master or above. As before, a small council, the Caput Senatus, was to assist the vice-chancellor in reviewing the proposals (‘graces’) to be put to the Senate. Now, however, the power to elect this body passed from the Senate to the heads of house, and each member of the Caput could exercise an absolute veto over any grace. Thus, enormous power was concentrated in the hands of a few. The regents, whose period of regency was extended from three to five years, were now subordinated to older men. It was these men, the heads, some with established links with the royal Court, whom Cecil regarded as the vice-chancellor’s natural counsellors. They now governed the university. These same men also enjoyed substantially enhanced authority within their own colleges. Unlike the fellows, they could marry, and their lodges, which already offered them superior accommodation, began to grow to accommodate their families. The domestic arrangements of a master occasionally irritated the bachelor fellows. At Magdalene they actually complained that they could hear the ‘chiding’ tones of the Master’s wife all over the college.44 Better paid, and better housed, they were also better placed in the vital network of patronage, which controlled so many destinies. So, the royal Court and Parliament naturally addressed the vicechancellor and heads when they wished to discuss university affairs. In the same way the great and the good in provincial society consulted the heads in matters of college business. In turn, a head of house had decisive powers of appointment 40 41

See Appendix. John Fisher was an exception among these absentees. In 1626, when there was real opposition to the nomination of the Duke of Buckingham, the university came very close to f louting this convention. 42 Morgan, ‘Country Court’, p.281. 43 Morgan, History of the University, pp.77–8. 44 Cunich et al., Magdalene, p.87.

20   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in college and usually determined the all-important link between tutor and pupil. Whitgift, the Master of Trinity (and later Archbishop of Canterbury) who had drafted the new statutes, ref lected that neither, ‘archbishop or bishop claimeth greater authority and jurisdiction over their provinces and dioceses than is due to the master of his College’.45 Victor Morgan has neatly described these Cambridge heads as ‘Men set apart’.46 Their social origins were diverse. In the early 1630s Pembroke was governed by Benjamin Laney, the son of the Recorder of Ipswich; Corpus and Peterhouse by Richard Love and Matthew Wren, the sons of tradesmen, and Emmanuel by William Sancroft, the product of a gentry family.47 Election to a mastership was an elusive prize and it was much fought over, but once secured, it offered hopes of future preferment and real power to those even of humble birth. Discipline The university had formidable judicial powers. Using those powers was not always easy. On 2 November 1634, Peter Hausted, a member of Queens’ College, preached an extravagantly offensive sermon in the University Church. Hausted was a dramatist, with a taste for romantic comedy. In the pulpit too he set out to amuse. Essentially, he was making the case for piety, reverence and the beauty of holiness, but he did it with a series of vigorous and knockabout attacks on anyone who might think differently. The Vice-Chancellor, Richard Love, was there to hear him and did not see the joke. At the end of the sermon one of the Esquire Bedells escorted Hausted straight from the church, down University Street, and into the Consistory Court room.48 There, the Vice-Chancellor demanded a copy of the sermon, declaring that while Hausted’s sermon raised no anxieties about his conformity, it was outrageously irreverent. Edward Martin, President of Queens’, who was both tireless and tiresome in Hausted’s defence, immediately protested that the preacher should have time to copy his sermon out. Hausted was given a week. That set the pattern for proceedings that were to drag on into the middle of December. Looking around him in the court room that afternoon, it would have been quite clear to Hausted that his fate was in the hands of the heads of house. Apart from the Vice-Chancellor and the University Registrary, who recorded the proceedings, Hausted faced the heads of six colleges and the senior fellows of three more.49 The court in which he was standing had developed its powers over a long period. By 1634 it was established that anyone with university privilege had the right to a hearing in the Chancellor’s Consistory Court in most legal matters. This was a civil law court, and its competence to deal with clerics and ecclesiastical causes (and thus to call Hausted to account) was a privilege granted by Richard II. It 45 46 47

Quoted Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.370ff. Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.307ff. Cooper, Annals, III, p.47; Lamb, Corpus, p.170; T.A. Walker, Peterhouse (London 1906), p.102; Bendall et al., Emmanuel, p.222. 48 Hausted’s sermon is discussed below, pp.172–3. 49 Cambridge usually styles the senior fellow of a college ‘President’, but at Queens’ this is the title of the head of house.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   21

was a privilege that effectively made the university the arbiter of its own orthodoxy. Hausted protested vigorously and violently at his treatment, but wasted his breath. The jurisdictional and disciplinary powers of the chancellor were clear: they had been described at length in letters patent issued by Elizabeth I in 1561. His powers to imprison and investigate had been confirmed then, and in serious matters beyond his competence, like treason, maiming, or murder, the right to an examination before the High Steward established. The jurisdiction of the chancellor (and as the chancellor was an absentee nobleman that meant in practice the vice-chancellor, and so the court became known as the Vice-Chancellor’s Court), had been extended still further under James I.50 The ‘Projecte’ of 1601, a description of the government of the university, which may have been prepared for Robert Cecil, offers an earlier glimpse of the Consistory Court and its carefully defined and defended privileges.51 The court, before which the increasingly long list of ‘privileged’ persons had the right to appear, was at that stage holding weekly sessions. It met, from 1572, on the east side of the Schools Quadrangle. From its windows, looking towards the west door of Great St Mary’s, it would have been possible to watch the rather preposterous procession that brought Hausted to court. The preacher railed and remonstrated all the way. Later he was to claim that he had been made a prisoner and bundled through a throng of a thousand people. This was the dramatist in him again, but he had a point, for the proceedings against him were unusual. Sessions of the court were normally held weekly, on Fridays. Extra sessions could be organised when necessary, but a Sunday court was certainly extraordinary. A note in one court book records that, in response to royal pressure for better discipline, provision was made in 1626 for a weekly, Monday meeting.52 Evidence that such meetings subsequently took place is, however, rather limited. The proceedings against Hausted were also unusual in being so well attended. Each session of the court was presided over by the vice-chancellor (or occasionally a deputy) and he was usually assisted by a doctor of civil law, by the Registrary, and by any the heads who cared to attend. The heads, however, tended to exercise this privilege only in the more controversial cases. More often than not, just one of them sat with the vice-chancellor. It was a measure of the significance of Hausted’s sermon that six heads assembled to examine him (three years later thirteen heads were present when Sylvester Adams appeared for sentence).53 The fact that six heads could be there so promptly is explained by the fact that they would have been already assembled at the University Church. It is also more than likely that some of them had come spoiling for a fight. The speed with which the Vice-Chancellor instituted proceedings looks premeditated. In legal matters the vice-chancellor also relied on the assistance of a commissary who acted as judge in an inferior court, used for those of below MA status. Appeals from this court were heard in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. Appeals from 50

Letters Patent of Elizabeth and James the First to the University, ed. J.W. Clark (Cambridge 1892), pp.2ff.; Victoria History, II, p.82. 51 Cooper, Annals, II, pp.608, 609. On the court, see also Morgan, History of the University, ­p p.94–6. 52 CUL CUA VC CT I.49, fol.2; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.182–3. 53 CUL CUA VC CT I.56, fol.172r.

22   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the Vice-Chancellor’s Court meanwhile were laid before delegates appointed by the Senate. The only other officers of the university who came into regular contact with the courts were the bedells and the proctors. It was the bedell, Mr Buck, who hustled Hausted out of the church. Though Hausted thought him a tyrant, he was only doing his job. The bedells were responsible for the execution of any summons to appear before the courts. The proctors were not needed on this occasion. They were charged with the investigation of market trading and the policing of the university, and presented a large number of individuals for offences ranging from short measure to drunkenness and public nuisance. The machinery of the court looked and sounded imposing, and certainly Hausted wasted no time in complaining that it was so oppressive that he had been overpowered with ‘violent fear and amazement’. His protests, though, were equally rapidly dismissed by the heads that were present. Hausted had not seemed afraid, indeed they thought him ‘notorious bold and disobedient’, and he certainly knew how to play the system. It was not a difficult art to master. Despite all the organisation the courts were not particularly efficient for they were hamstrung by the lengthy procedures required in civil law. Hausted and Edward Martin were well aware of this and consistently played for time, inventing delays and launching counteraccusations. This was a real weakness in the system and occasionally infuriated those who relied upon it. Church and Crown both respected the independence of the court, but took a keen interest in its proceedings, and on occasion, all too aware of its shortcomings, were not above interference. It was no doubt for this reason that Edward Martin thought it appropriate to keep the Archbishop of Canterbury’s chaplain fully informed about Hausted’s prosecution.54 Two years earlier the examination of Nathaniel Bernard had been taken over by the High Commission, while the Crown had intervened in the investigation of Edward Simpson’s controversial sermon in 1617.55 In those cases where a decision was finally reached the court did at least have effective powers. Punishments varied, and fines or penances were common; the university also had the power to imprison, though senior members could only be held with the consent of a majority of the heads. Recalcitrant scholars could also be forced to recant, or be suspended from their degrees. Hausted’s hectoring manner earned him a brief suspension, and no doubt Dr Love hoped that the proceedings he had begun would ultimately force a recantation from the preacher. Very occasionally an offender was expelled.56 Civil law courts, like the Chancellor’s Consistory Court, have had a consistently bad press. Their use of the ex officio mero oath, by which an accused person could be compelled to answer questions that could lead to censure or punishment, was roundly condemned by many lawyers. Some aspects of civil law procedure, however, worked to the advantage of the accused. Examination and cross-examination was carried out by an impartial officer of the court, not by an adversarially inspired prosecution counsel. At the beginning of the proceedings one or both sides in the dispute submitted articles and depositions. A case was only established after the examining officer had framed questions based on this material, which secured the 54

In ‘A Letter from Dr Edward Martin’, ed. C.H. Cooper, Cambridge Antiquarian Society Communications, II (1860–4), p.151. 55 For Bernard, see below, pp.167–70; for Simpson, pp.121–3. 56 Nicholas Rush was expelled in 1610: CUL CUA VC CT I.38, fol.81.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   23

information that was sought. As a consequence, the preparation of evidence for the court was at least as significant as any discussion of that evidence. Offending preachers, like Hausted, were properly cautious about submitting their sermons when they knew that they would then be used to incriminate them. In May 1603 Thomas Taylor was prosecuted after a sermon in Great St Mary’s and played the system by refusing to give up a copy of his sermon. The court books then list a series of propositions, which witnesses testified had been uttered during the offending sermon.57 Possessing real power, protected by privilege, given oversight of markets and fairs, and authorised to deal with problems ranging from prostitution to heterodox preaching, the Consistory Court was a formidable instrument of social control. It was a potent symbol of the university’s much-resented dominance of Cambridge life and it clearly exercised effective control over economic and social activity. The court’s ability to regulate opinion and belief in Cambridge, however, is more debatable. The problem was that the vice-chancellor and heads together were the judge and jury. The court could only rule when they reached agreement. At best, the court was no more than the coercive arm of the prevailing consensus. At worst, when the heads divided and there was no consensus, the court could not work at all. More than once meetings of the court turned into a test of strength. The frantic proceedings against Hausted are a case in point. The ViceChancellor who instituted the proceedings, Richard Love, had no alternative but to call Hausted to the court room on that extraordinary Sunday, for it was his last day in office. He was to be succeeded by William Beale, a man known to be much more sympathetic to Hausted’s opinions. When Beale duly engineered the majority verdict he needed and dismissed the case, Love and his friends were left struggling to salvage their dignity while protesting at the accusations of tyranny levelled at them by Hausted. The court was a clumsy and a partial tool. The evidence suggests that scholars were a litigious lot and, as feelings ran high, only too happy to denounce one another before the vice-chancellor. Nonetheless, it was clear to Richard Love, in 1634, that it would be difficult to secure the condemnation of a genuinely offensive sermon. He knew what opinions the other heads of house would express and he could predict the likely outcome of their deliberation. Decisions of the court came to depend on which of the heads were free to attend proceedings, and when condemnation or acquittal became a foregone conclusion there was sometimes little enthusiasm for beginning the process. So, it was left to Robert Creswell, a young MA, to promote the cause against William Norwich after another startlingly indiscreet sermon in August 1641.58 The heads were too opinionated to be impartial and far too dependent on the Crown for present preferment and future prospects to be independent. So, judgments in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court ref lected both local prejudice and the broad lines of policy decided elsewhere. It was hardly surprising then that Parliament, where different opinions prevailed, questioned what sort of justice was meted out in Cambridge.59 57

CUL CUA VC CT I.6, fols.180r.–181r.; R.A. Marchant, The Church Under the Law (Cambridge 1969), pp.4ff. 58 See below, pp.199–205. 59 In 1628 and 1641: see below, pp.161–3, 196–7, 209–10.

24   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Patronage and power College communities have always been jealous of their independence and identity. In the seventeenth century they needed to be. The institutional liberties of the university, and of the colleges within it, were increasingly in question in the years preceding the Civil War. As the job of head of house was now so desirable and so powerful any election generated a good deal of interest. The Crown had the right to nominate the Provost of King’s and the Master of Trinity, but was certainly not above interfering elsewhere. In 1598, a disputed election at St Catharine’s was referred to the Vice-Chancellor, but his ruling was rapidly overturned by the Queen. On this occasion Elizabeth merely named the second of the two candidates already selected by the fellows. On other occasions she, and her successors, were less sensitive to Cambridge conventions. In 1590, John Jegon at Corpus was entirely her own choice, and in 1595 she told the fellows of St John’s that they might choose only between two nominees of her own.60 James I imposed masters on Caius in 1607 and on Christ’s in 1609. In the same way Charles I was responsible for the appointment of Matthew Wren to Peterhouse in 1628, saw another of his chaplains, Richard Love, into Corpus in 1632, and intervened dramatically in a contested election in St John’s a year later, rejecting the two favoured candidates and choosing in their place William Beale, then Master of Jesus.61 On this evidence it would seem that all three monarchs were equally careless of Cambridge privilege. All of them had abused the statutory rights of fellows entitled to make a free election of a head of house. James and Charles, however, took interference a stage further and used royal letters and mandates to secure the election of both fellows and scholars.62 The independence of the university and the colleges was increasingly compromised by this illegitimate use of patronage. Religion was an issue in many of these elections. It was James I’s determination not to tolerate a papist at Caius, or a puritan at Christ’s, that prompted him to intervene in the mastership elections at both colleges.63 Nearly thirty years later, and writing about a new generation of heads, Samuel Ward was quite clear that religion remained a decisive issue: Not but that I hope the greater part is orthodox; but that new heads are brought in, and they are backed in maintaining novelties, and them which broach new opinions.64 Ward’s Cambridge career began in 1589, when he matriculated as a pensioner at Christ’s. He was still in Cambridge when he died, in 1643, apparently held 60

61

62 63 64

H.C. Porter, ‘Catharine Hall and the Reformation’, in Essays to Commemorate the Quincentenary of the Foundation of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, ed. E.E. Rich (Cambridge 1973), p.92; H.P. Stokes, Corpus Christi (London 1898), p.76; Thomas Baker, History of the College of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge, ed. J.E.B. Mayor, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1869), I, p.190. S.A. Bondos-Greene, ‘The End of an Era: Cambridge Puritanism and the Christ’s College ­Election of 1609’, Historical Journal 25.I (1982), pp.203–6; Brooke, Caius, p.106; Walker, Peterhouse, p.101; Stokes, Corpus, p.101; Baker, St. John, pp.213–15. Twigg, Queens’ , pp.79–81; A. Austen Leigh, King’s (London 1899), pp.94–5; Walker, Peterhouse, p.101; Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.377ff. Brooke, Caius, pp.106, 107; Bondos-Greene, ‘End of an Era’, pp.203–6. The Whole Works of James Ussher, ed. C.R. Elrington, 17 vols. (Dublin 1847–64), XV, p.580.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   25

under arrest by Parliament. Ward came to a university dominated by the reformed protestant theology of William Perkins, a university in which the Master of Peterhouse had been in post when England had a Catholic Queen. When he died, those early days of reformation and even fears of Roman Catholic invasion were an increasingly distant memory. By then the Master of Peterhouse was a man with a taste for ritual and the University Press was producing editions of George Herbert’s poetry, not Perkins’ dogmatics. Ward watched and took note as successive generations of students arrived in Cambridge. These newcomers could pick up prayer books and bibles that had been in use for years. The battles for reformation were a memory and some of them thought that their king now had more to fear from his own protestant parliament than from Catholic Spain. Their experience was quite different from that of Samuel Ward and it is small wonder that he worried about new opinion. The naming of parts: Calvin, Calvinism and reformed orthodoxy What bothered Ward was not simply the difference between good and bad theology, true and false teaching. He knew that the real issue was much more personal and political than that. In Cambridge, arguments about theology and religious truth were inevitable and expected; what mattered, in a university controlled by an alliance of heads, was which side you took and who controlled the debate. Ward thought in terms of numbers and power. It really mattered to him that a majority, the ‘greater part’ was orthodox, and he was genuinely worried about ‘novelties and new opinions’ because he feared that those new opinions would get into the pulpit, or worse still into a master’s lodge and then into a position of power in the courtroom. He was concerned about what someone believed, but he was perhaps more anxious about what company he kept, about the alliances and relationships that could control the university and its teaching. Ward kept a nearly obsessive eye on belief and the balance of power in the university, and historians ever since have had to do it too. To understand the later stages of the Reformation in England and the religious background to the Civil War it is essential that we distinguish one type of theology from another and identif y where an individual fits into the arguments that united and divided the church. An enormous effort has been invested in this exercise, and the descriptive terms that are available to us, terms like ‘anglican and puritan’, ‘Calvinist and Arminian’ now all come laden with qualifications and lengthy footnotes. We need these labels but they have always been contested and they remain controversial. As early as the mid-seventeenth century Thomas Fuller was famously complaining, in his Church History, ‘I wish the word “Puritan” were banished.’ The problem is that there is a lack of agreement and precision about a word like ‘puritan’, which Fuller noted was ‘so various in the acceptations thereof ’.65 The idea that there was an identifiable group of puritans, who all knew themselves to be puritans and who all thought of themselves as opposed to another group known as ‘anglicans’, signally fails to do justice to the complexity of belief and religious 65

Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain, 3 vols. (London 1837); see also The Culture of English Puritanism, ed. C. Durston and J. Eales (London 1996), pp.1, 2.

26   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 practice in England before the Civil War. There is now a proper recognition of the richness and variety of early seventeenth-century religion. Once we might have identified a ‘Laudian’ party and made a list of its members, doctrines and practices. Now Laudianism is more often described as ‘a style’ or ‘a tone’ and historians are less eager to classif y and categorise the theologians who adopted it. English religious life is no longer neatly segmented into two or three of these parties, but is described as a ‘spectrum’ of belief and practice.66 This much can now be pretty generally agreed. Most, but by no means all, scholars would also accept that, although there was a range of opinion in the late Elizabethan church, one theological system was dominant. It is at this point, though, that the water begins to get really muddy. Again and again there are arguments about whether there really was a dominant system and, if there was, what it should be called. To pick a way through the argument, it is important to know something about how theology is done and also to know something about the controlling assumptions made by theologians in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign. One of the difficulties most people have with theologians is that they expect theology to tell us something about God. Theologians, however, are actually very reluctant to say things about God. It is of the essence of God to be beyond our comprehension, and good theology has a reverent agnosticism about things that cannot be known or described. So, it was commonplace for the Fathers to insist that while we can know things about God, we cannot know God as he knows himself. Origen famously explained: If we see a man who can scarcely look at a glimmer or the light of the smallest lamp and if we wish to teach such a one, whose eyesight is not strong enough to receive more light than we have said, about the brightness and splendour of the sun, shall we not have to tell him, that the splendour of the sun is unspeakably and immeasurably better and more glorious, than all this light he can see?67 By the same token, it was fundamentally important in Luther’s theology to acknowledge that God is Deus absconditus, a ‘hidden’ God. All theologians recognise this difficulty of speaking about God, but the protestant theologians of the Reformation felt it acutely. Like many catholic writers before them, these writers laid a heavy stress on the fact that human beings are sinful and need to be rescued by the grace of God. So serious is the sinful plight of human beings that they cannot think clearly about God. Calvin’s Genevan catechism put it bluntly: We acknowledge man by nature to be blind, darkened in understanding, and full of corruption and perversity of heart, so that of himself he has no power to be able to comprehend the true knowledge of God.68 Bogged down in superstition and ignorance human beings cannot rely on intellect or insight to guide them to God. This would be a counsel of despair and render all theology futile were it not for the fact that God bridges the gulf between 66

J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T. McNeill, trans. F.L. Battles (Philadelphia 1960), I.5.12, p.64. 67 Origen, On First Principles, ed. G.W. Butterworth (London 1936), 1.1.5, p.9. 68 Calvin, Theological Treatises, trans. J.K.S. Reid (London 1954), p.27.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   27

himself and us and chooses to reveal himself. In Christ and in scripture God shows himself. Again Calvin explains: For, since ‘God dwells in inaccessible light’ [1 Timothy 6:6], Christ must become our intermediary. Hence, he calls himself ‘the light of the world’ [John 8:12], and elsewhere, ‘the way, the truth and the life’; for no one comes to the Father, who is ‘the fountain of life’ [Ps 36:9] except through him [John 14:6]… For God would have remained hidden afar off if Christ’s splendour had not beamed upon us.69 So there is a general recognition that God is impossible to know and that good theologians concern themselves with what can be known because it has been revealed in Christ. In other words, theology is christocentric. Thus far protestant and catholic can agree. The churches of the protestant reformation, however, put a distinctive emphasis on the conviction that human beings are saved by the grace of God. In their insistence that humanity depends on grace alone they demolished a substantial part of the catholic past. In protestant faith a great gulf is set between sinful human beings (‘blind and full of corruption’ as Calvin put it) and a holy and sovereign God on whom we are utterly dependent. Something of the character of this faith can be glimpsed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, which assert that God is ‘infinite in power, wisdom and goodness’ and then describe the wretched and corrupt state of fallen humanity, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the f lesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into the world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.70 The theologians of the protestant reformation were clear that human beings are in desperate circumstances from which we can only be rescued by the intervention of God. It was quickly clear to the reformers, as they urged their understanding of the good news of salvation in Christ, that there were two challenges to meet. The first came from the Roman Catholic church, and protestants were soon plunged into a long controversy over the points at issue between the two churches. The second challenge came from within. Stressing human sinfulness and our utter dependence on God and sweeping away the consolations of catholic devotion, the reformers set out a splendidly clear, but apparently very demanding version of the gospel. The faithful, setting out for the Kingdom, have always been worried that they might not arrive. Protestants, reminded again and again of the reality of sin and of the fact that their salvation depended on God alone, had particularly good reason to be anxious. They wondered, not unreasonably, which of them God would choose to redeem and how the choice was made. These were men and women who knew that they fell far short of glory and who were forbidden from seeking help or reassurance from saints and their prayers, or from fasts, festivals and sacraments. They had nothing but their sinfulness to bring before the judgment seat. This faith could easily be a counsel of despair. Crucially, the work of 69 70

Calvin, Institutes, III.2.1, pp.543–4. Article IX; for the power of God, see Article I.

28   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 John Calvin offered hope to those struggling with this despair and also helped to equip theologians engaged in the other challenge of arguing with Rome. Through a series of revisions, Calvin turned his Institutes into a summary of basic Christian doctrine, salted with references to the church fathers, which was intended to lay the foundations for students of theology.71 Here was the beginning of a Protestant systematic theology that could be set alongside the work of Roman Catholic critics. It rapidly became a decisive inf luence in the universities and helped form the theology of the reformed English church. Calvin’s published works were a point of reference for theologians and had been printed in no less than ninety-six editions in England by 1640.72 He had fashioned a vital weapon in the war of words with Rome. It was an immense achievement, but there was more. In Geneva, Calvin had established a Christian community that others looked to as a model, ‘the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles’.73 He had created a benchmark for protestant ministry and church discipline. He had also provided, within the Institutes, a clear explanation of the theology of predestination that was salve for the bruised protestant soul. In the doctrine of predestination there was hope and help for men and women who had once relied on the sacrifice of the mass, the prayers of the saints and the mercy and pity of the Blessed Virgin. The Reformation had shouldered out the old vehicles of grace and left poor sinners shivering and forlorn before the awful majesty of God. Now, through predestination, grace was tamed once more. Here was an explanation of how providence worked, and of how God could and would redeem sinful men and women who could not help themselves. Here was an explanation of why some were favoured and others were not. Better still, in time, the story was developed in such a way that the faithful could learn to examine their consciences to search for signs that they might be elect. For the first time protestants had a map to get them to the Kingdom and, in the discipline of examining their consciences, they had somewhere to look for signs of glory. Faith could issue out into action again. There was reassurance here and, at last, something for the faithful to do. It was then inevitable that the conversation about God’s will and predestination should become something of a preoccupation for the English protestant community. As a consequence, Nicholas Tyacke has remarked that ‘the characteristic theology of English Protestant sainthood was Calvinism, centring on a belief in divine predestination’.74 So, historians seeking to identif y a prevailing mood or tone in English Protestant divinity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries talk about ‘Calvinism’. For Tyacke, Calvinism was ‘the de facto religion of the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth and King James’ and for Professor Collinson it was ‘the theological cement of the Jacobean church’.75 There is, however, a 71 72

Calvin, Institutes, p.xxxv. M. Prestwich, ‘Introduction’, in International Calvinism 1541–1715, ed. M. Prestwich (Oxford 1985), p.3. 73 Prestwich, ‘Introduction’, p.1; the words are John Knox’s. 74 N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.1. 75 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.7; P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford 1982), p.82.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   29

difficulty here and it is all to do with precisely what we mean by ‘Calvinism’. The problem is that Calvinism changed over time; as John Spurr puts it, ‘the Calvinist orthodoxy evolved’.76 Indeed one or two historians have been at pains to drive a wedge between Calvin and the theologians who came after him.77 ‘Calvinism’, they argue, is not the same thing as the theology of John Calvin. This is an argument about theological method and it begins by describing Calvin in reverent tones. Calvin, the argument goes, understood good theological method. He knew that he could not describe God and, rather than launch into speculation, he concentrated on the theological task that can be accomplished, he described the life and work of Jesus Christ and he interpreted scripture. So, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion employ scripture to demonstrate how sinful human beings are saved by Christ. Within this work, the discussion of predestination that excites so much interest comes late (in Book Three). It goes only as far as scripture allows, and is qualified by reservations that Calvin expressed elsewhere.78 For Calvin, predestination was not a fundamental article of faith. He was much more concerned that his readers should know about Christ and about scripture. He was also convinced that conversation about predestination could become a presumptuous invasion of the secrets of God.79 Calvin’s caution, however, was not infectious. The Calvinism that later became popular and powerful rushed in where Calvin himself had feared to tread. The process of change is generally considered to have begun with Theodore Beza, but it is alleged that it embraced many others, including the much-published William Perkins, who had a profound effect on English divinity. Their ‘Calvinism’ is criticised on two counts. Firstly, they made a change in emphasis. Where Calvin had made everything depend on the work of Christ, the later Calvinists put a slightly different stress. Eager to assert that God is king of his own creation and fascinated by what and how God wills, they indulged a speculative streak and pried into mysteries that we cannot know. Labouring their point, these theologians found themselves in detailed discussions of the way each event was determined solely by the will and providence of God. Dragging God down to the kitchen sink, they developed a familiarity with his character and intentions that ref lected badly both on him and on them. Less and less was said about the way Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and more and more interest was expressed in the mysterious wrath and mercy of God. Secondly, these theologians are accused of making a change in method that was more suspect still. While they were good protestants and scripture was profoundly important to them, they were not quite its servants in the way that Calvin was. In place of biblical metaphor a new discipline crept in. For Calvin, scripture was the argument, but it is suggested that in the next generation the relentless logic of the argument became all-consuming and scripture was used to illustrate an 76 77

J. Spurr, English Puritanism 1603–1689 (Basingstoke 1998), p.166. The argument can be traced in R.T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford 1979) and in B. Hall, ‘Calvin against the Calvinists’, in John Calvin, ed. G.E. Duffield (Abingdon 1966). A major and powerful critique can be found in R.A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford 2003) and R.A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI 2003). 78 W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford 1988), pp.172–3. 79 Calvin, Institutes, III.21.1, pp.922–3.

30   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 idea that the argument itself had generated. As Breward puts it, William Perkins ‘used texts to buttress positions deduced dogmatically from scripture’.80 Thus Perkins could write, as Calvin never could, Although this particular expression ‘I am elected’, is not expressely set downe in the Scriptures, yet it is inclusively comprehended in them, as the Species in his Genus, as the Logitians speake.81 So, in the hands of the ‘Calvinists’, theology apparently became a willing slave to a dogmatic principle and speculation triumphed over scripture. At its best, this Calvinism recognised the majesty of God and helped anxious sinners seek signs of salvation. Some theologians in this tradition quite brilliantly rose to the pastoral challenge of providing a description of what it feels like to be a Christian. At its worst, this ‘Calvinism’ had something close to an obsession with bare and brutal predestination. Predestination then became the key to explain all mysteries and ‘Calvinists’ went on to show that, inevitably and justly, the elect were saved and the reprobate damned, all for the greater glory of God. This analysis of ‘Calvin against the Calvinists’ has had a thorough airing and is sounding less and less convincing. The suggestion that there is a shift in emphasis over the years that caused theologians to lose their focus on Christ and concentrate instead on speculation about the mind of God is nonsense. Too much has been said about the way in which the work of one protestant theologian can be distinguished from that of another and far too little has been paid to the assumptions that they shared. In fact, in the early stages of the Reformation, the determination to be faithful to the teaching of scripture issued out into a particular theological method. Led by Melanchthon, theologians consistently looked to scripture to identif y the fundamental themes of theology. All theological enquiry had to be scriptural, and they assumed that there were ‘places’ in scripture that show us the true nature of Christianity.82 Identifying these ‘places’, theologians produced books that were both a digest of what mattered most in scripture and a handbook of doctrine. Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, which he described as ‘a common outline of the topics that you can pursue in your study of Holy Scripture’, set the tone in 1521.83 Calvin followed where Melanchthon had led, and later generations of protesants stayed faithful to the method beginning their theological work with a list of collected topics usually drawn from those who had gone before. So, just like Melanchthon, Calvin offered his Institutes as another guide to reading scripture, so that a person might ‘know what he is to look for in it’.84 This shared method was formative and it had two consequences. Firstly, it prevented any one idea becoming too dominant in a theological system. Forced back again and again to the ‘places’ in scripture that set out the truth, theologians did not have the luxury of choosing for themselves a controlling idea. Predestination could never quite rule the theological roost. Secondly, within this method there was a deep prejudice 80 81

William Perkins, The Work of William Perkins, ed. I. Breward (Abingdon 1970), p.86. William Perkins, The Works of that famous and worthie minister of Christ … M.W. Perkins, 3 vols. (Cambridge 1608–9), I, p.106. 82 Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. W. Pauck (London 1969), p.9; Muller, After Calvin, p.10. 83 Melanchthon and Bucer, p.70. 84 Calvin, Institutes, p.6 (from the French edition 1560).



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   31

against any form of speculation. Melanchthon thought his work functioned as a sort of index to scripture. He was interested in ‘What one must chief ly look for in Scripture’ and was vehement about the need to exclude the sort of speculation that he thought had caused scholastic theology to fall into error.85 The Loci Communes ends in impassioned conviction: ‘I think that the commentaries of men on sacred matters must be f led like the plague, because the teaching of the Spirit cannot be drunk in purity except from scripture itself.’86 It is simply not possible to drive a wedge between Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’, as if a different kind of theology was being done. Calvin himself, it must be remembered, was vigorous and clear in his understanding of predestination: We call predestination God’s eternal decree by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or death.87 The theologians who came after him did not let predestination run away with them. Beza, usually accused of corrupting Calvinism, actually warned others of the danger of using predestination as an organising principle.88 Even in works like William Perkins’ Golden Chaine, which are preoccupied with a discussion of predestination, there is no attempt to deduce doctrine from the decrees of God or think of predestination as the foundation of theology.89 The truth is that there was both a common understanding of theology and theological method among reformed theologians and a proper diversity of style. Calvin was never the benchmark for orthodoxy. He knew that he belonged to a theological community. At times within that community there were attempts to produce documents that could embrace a breadth of opinion; at other times theologians wrote in the heat of argument to denounce a particular point of view. Having said that, we can recognise that in the generation after Calvin there was indeed a desire to elaborate the argument that Calvin had started. This is not a different kind of theology, rather it is an attempt to ‘codify’ principles established by the earlier reformers. As a consequence in the works of people like William Perkins there is a strong focus on predestination and a clear desire to explain it. So, Perkins’ book A Golden Chaine describes itself as The Description of Theologie Concerning the order and causes of Salvation and plunges into a detailed discussion of the different opinions about God’s predestination. Perkins’ explicit intention in this work was to:

85 86 87 88 89

Calvin, Institutes (French edn), pp.19, 20, 152. Melanchthon and Bucer, p.152. Calvin, Institutes, III.21.5, p.926. Muller, After Calvin, p.95. Muller, Reformed Dogmatics, I, p.128. Even in Perkins we see these familiar shared assumptions: The Golden Chaine identifies ‘the bodie of Scripture and Theologie’: William Perkins, The Works of that famous and worthie minister of Christ … M.W. Perkins, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1616–18), I, p.11; and there is a table of ‘places’ in Scripture from which ‘some speciall doctrine or dutie is observed’, Workes, III, sig.Aa1v.

32   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 ast my mite into the treasurie of the Church of England, and for want of gold, pearle, and pretious stones, to bring a Rammes skinne or twaine, and a little Goates haire, to the building of the Lord’s Tabernacle. Exod. 35.2390 Indeed, in the early seventeenth century theologians took a rather unbecoming interest in the logic that must exist in the mind of God, distinguishing what he must have willed first and what next. This was a step beyond Calvin, but in no sense were these theologians out of step with assumptions shared within the reformed theological community. Rather there was a sure belief that, within the limits of an acceptable diversity, there was an emerging reformed orthodoxy. When it is necessary for us to apply a label it is probably better to speak of that ‘reformed orthodoxy’ than to try to explain what is meant by a ‘Calvinist’ who does not entirely agree with Calvin. Indeed, in the circumstances, it really makes little sense to speak of ‘Calvinists’ – a term neither Calvin nor the Calvinists themselves would have welcomed.91 This reformed faith did have a particular interest in the doctrine of predestination. Predestination was a window to the mind of God; it offered explanation in a world of confusion. Applied to human life, by men and women searching their consciences and experience, it also gave the faithful something to do. Not surprisingly, it was a doctrine that bred a fierce loyalty in its adherents. After all, their salvation was at stake. In published works like Perkins’ celebrated Cases of Conscience, in sermons and in pastoral work, God’s providence, God’s decree, God’s will were made the focus of Christian hope and Christian faith. The signs of election that the faithful were so desperate to find in themselves were described, and even mapped out on a chart.92 The fearful, and those overwhelmed by a sense of their own sinfulness, were given reassurance that their very anxiety was an intimation of grace, for: A godly sorrow whereby a man is grieved for his sins, because they are sins, is the beginning of repentance, & indeed for substance is repentance itself.93 Repentance then was a sign of election. Here the unknown God and his mysterious ways could at last be found out. A believer was taught to study all the signs of election and to examine his or her conscience. It was no accident that this period began to breed splendid diarists, each daily entry a search for the stirrings of the finger of God, eager to know which way it pointed. The elect were urged to know themselves elect. This was the doctrine of assurance, which required a catalogue of virtues, but promised If ye doe these things ye shall never fall, that is to say, If ye exercise yourselves, you may hereby be wel assured and perswaded, of your election and salvation.94 90 91 92 93 94

Perkins, Workes (1616), I, sig.B2. Muller, After Calvin, p.8. Perkins, Workes (1612), I, following p.8. Perkins, Workes (1608), II, p.28. Perkins, Workes (1608), II, p.25.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   33

Those elected were also told that, once elected, they could never forfeit their election. This was the doctrine of perseverance, the crowning reassurance for the doubtful. God’s purposes, the argument went, are sure and cannot change. The catechism, bound in with the Genevan Bible, which was printed in England between 1579 and 1615, was emphatic, ‘for as God’s purpose is not changeable so he repenteth not the gifts and graces of his adoption. Neither doth he cast off those whom he hath once received.’95 There were difficulties here, however, and also great sensitivities. No one wanted to suggest that the elect, confident of God’s steadfast will, could therefore sin blithely and be sure that all crimes would go unpunished. On the other hand, no one wanted to imply that the elect had it in their power to confound God’s will by sinning and lose the salvation he intended for them. So, words were chosen carefully and assertions were often quickly qualified. The Lambeth Articles picked their way through this minefield with rather more caution that the catechism in the Genevan Bible. ‘A true lively and justif ying faith, and the sanctif ying Spirit of God, is not lost, nor does it pass away either totally or finally in the elect.’ 96 However cautiously this idea was expressed it was hope and reassurance for troubled minds. Applying himself to the anxieties of the elect, all those who brooded over their inability to feel the work of God’s Spirit within them, William Perkins helpfully provided a catalogue of the effects of sanctification that would see them safely into glory. The last was the best: ‘To persevere in these things to the last gaspe of life.’97 The elect could know themselves elect and once elect could know that God would never forsake them. Here, analysed, catalogued and explained was the whole of human faith. It was a story that met a sinner in despair and guided him or her through repentance and conversion to saving faith and finally safely into glory. It was also a piety that plunged willingly into practice, picking its way through the details of every dilemma. That was an important part of its appeal, for it seemed to be more than a theory. It was a way of life, it was an answer to hard questions, it was something for the restless spirit to do. It was powerful, persuasive and popular, but it had its weaknesses. Perhaps the most unfortunate casualty of this new dogmatism was a growing confusion over whether or not Christ could be said to have died for all. Knowing God to be good, Christian theologians have consistently argued that God’s love is generous and universal. New Testament sayings like John 3:16 (‘God so loved the world’) could be taken to imply that God wills the salvation of all people, everywhere. Theologians however have pointed out that John 3:16 is more complex that it appears and says, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’. It could be argued, then, that God does not will the salvation of the world, intending rather that only those who have faith in Christ should be saved. This was in fact the position adopted by St Augustine. Reformed orthodoxy, which taught that the number of the elect was assured from the very first, was boxed into a corner. It could hardly argue that Christ had died in vain, attempting to save those whom 95 96 97

Quoted in Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.3. Article V, quoted Porter, Reformation, p.371. Perkins, Workes (1608), p.115.

34   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 God had already predestined to damnation, so they developed the theory of limited atonement. Christ, they said, died only for the elect. Calvin did not labour the point, but it certainly became a theological commonplace after his death, and there has been a persistent suggestion that here there is further evidence that Calvinists spoilt Calvin’s careful arguments.98 This is less than fair and fails to do justice to a carefully nuanced argument. Calvin, like Augustine, was clear that Christ’s saving work on the cross was effective only for those given saving faith. He could say that Christ died for all, but would not say that his death availed for all. Comfortable with the idea that God creates us good, but that we have been corrupted by sin, Calvin believed that Christ died for all, but not effectually. It is the prayer of the ascended and glorified Christ, sitting at God’s right hand, that effects the salvation of the elect, and Christ simply does not pray for those who are justly condemned as a consequence of the Fall. As reformed orthodox theologians refined their understanding of the ‘satisfaction’ Christ made for sin the idea that Christ died only for the elect began to loom larger. God, it was said, intended only to redeem the elect. the Sonne of God beeing borne man in the fulnes of time doth pay the price of redemption to God for the sins of men … the price is in it selfe sufficient to redeeme every one without exception from his sins, albeit there were a thousand worlds of men. But if we consider that actuall efficacie, the price is payd in the council of God, and as touching the event onely for those which are elected and predestinated.’99 They were pursuing an idea they could trace out of Calvin, the difference was that they stated more baldly than Calvin had ever done that Christ died only for the elect. So a new spirituality was developed, which began with vivid descriptions of humans mired in sin and remote from the glory of a distant and omnipotent God. Then, when despair seemed inevitable, a bridge was built across the abyss. Believers developed a startling capacity to know that it was God’s will to rescue some of humankind, and sinners were taught to find within themselves the proof that they were truly saints. This spirituality has been described, by R.T. Kendall, as ‘experimental Calvinism’.100 It led the wounded conscience to 2 Peter 1:10, ‘Give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things ye shall never fall’. Assured of a calling, of justification and sanctification, and confident of persevering to the end, those who subscribed to this faith were a formidable force. Their ideas were more than academic speculation, they were the promise of salvation, and to challenge this faith was to torture Christian hope. This was the great achievement of reformed orthodoxy, the creation of Perkins and others, and it gave reassurance to those who craved it.101 It was a dominant creed in Cambridge where Perkins himself taught, and it was conscious 98 99 100 101

Muller, After Calvin, p.14; Kendall, English Calvinism, pp.29–33. Perkins, Workes (1608), II, p.693. See Muller, After Calvin, p.14. Kendall, English Calvinism, pp.8–9, 57–66. Some scholars have found the intellectual roots of protestant scholasticism in the study of logic and rhetoric, W.J. Ong, Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA. 1958); B. Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford 1988), pp.475ff.; Morgan, Godly Learning, pp.109ff. I am indebted to Dr Anthony Milton for guidance on this point.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   35

of its antecedents. Even so, it will be seen that reformed orthodoxy had a vigour that issued in variety. There were, quite clearly, types of orthodoxy and slowly developing emphases and refinements. It seemed to some that reformed theologians were a little too ambitious, a little too confident that they could lay bare the secrets of the divine will. The naming of parts: Anglicans and Puritans The idea that there were types of Calvinism, or types of reformed orthodoxy, is a modern one. The contemporaries of William Perkins, and the theologians who succeeded them in Cambridge lecture rooms and pulpits, did not make the distinctions with which we are now familiar. They were, of course, trained in dialectic and attuned to theological nuance. They could sometimes confuse learning with force of argument. So they could and did debate vigorously and would distinguish shades of opinion that might escape us. They remained, however, deeply conscious of assumptions that they held in common. Although they differed in the emphasis they gave it, their shared confidence in God’s providence and their eagerness to see that confidence worked out in the realities of predestination was an important bond. So too was their abiding hatred of Rome, and their common commitment to evangelism through the preaching of the gospel. This broad agreement is important; it made unity out of much variety. Even so, there were divisions and disagreements. These divisions have been explored, explained and occasionally exaggerated ever since. Essentially, this is an argument about the character of the Church of England. From the first that identity was contested. The scale of the problem is demonstrated in John Donne’s Sonnet XVIII, ‘Show me deare Christ thy Spouse’. It is a poem about the church. Since the writing of the Revelation of St John the Divine the church has been identified as the bride of Christ. In Sonnet XVIII it becomes clear that John Donne, the Dean of St Paul’s, does not know what the church should look like. What! is it She, which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which rob’d and tore Laments and mournes in Germany and here? Sleepes she a thousand, then peepes up one yeare? Is she self truth and errs? now new, now outwore? Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore On one, on seaven, or on no hill appeare?102 Donne looked to the ‘richly painted’ catholic tradition and to penitent German protestantism in a profound uncertainty. Others were well aware of the uncertainties, but more confident that they could find a resolution and argued it out in an increasingly bad-tempered debate. Any definition of the nature of the church was fraught with difficulty and likely to sound polemical. Jewel’s work was an attack on Rome, Hooker’s an assault on evangelical puritanism. Julian Davies points out that the more honest approach was to say that the English church 102

John Donne, Sonnet XVIII in The Poems of John Donne, ed. H.J.C. Grierson (Oxford 1912), I, p.330.

36   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 took its identity precisely from the fact that it lacked the character of all others. As one hostile contemporary put it, ‘I call the religion of England Anglianisme, because it among the rest hath no one speciall author, but is set forth by the Prince and Parliament’.103 Within this argument there was a good deal of name-calling. ‘Puritan’, ‘Laudian’, ‘Arminian’: historians have worried over what these names mean. Contemporaries were bothered too. When Thomas Fuller complained about ‘the odious name of PURITANS’ he made it clear that the term ‘puritan’ has always been a slippery one: ‘Puritan’ here was taken for the opposers of the hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But profane mouths quickly improved this nickname, therewith on every occasion to abuse pious people; some of them so far from opposing the Liturgy, that they endeavoured (according to the instructions thereof in the preparative to the Confession) ‘to accompany the minister with a pure heart,’ and laboured (as it is in the Absolution) ‘for a life pure and holy.’104 Fuller cleverly turned the tables on the critics of puritanism. Although he claimed that he wished to do without the word ‘puritan’ he actually attempted a new definition. The puritans he described were not opponents of the church at all, but its best sons and daughters. Their ‘puritanism’ was but the ‘purity’ of the Book of Common Prayer made f lesh. Seizing on the fact that the Church of England had no definition, Fuller took the book that has the best claim to be its most distinctive voice and made it speak for him. It is a clear demonstration of the uncertainty at the heart of the institution that there could be such divergence of opinion on what a puritan was, and that the Book of Common Prayer could be the subject of debate and robust reinterpretation. Fuller’s conviction that the men and women dismissed as ‘puritan’ were not strangers and aliens in the church is now popular among church historians. The work of Nicholas Tyacke, and many others, has shown that attitudes once considered ‘puritan’ in fact penetrated to the heart of the ecclesiastical establishment.105 It is suggested that the English church lurched off the middle way and steered far closer to Geneva than was previously thought. The Jacobean church, then, had a fundamentally reformed character. It was a church of sermons, and lectures, of evangelistic ministers and of voluntary groups eager to meet in the study of scripture and in prayer. It was a church with a common language and a shared experience, which was expressed in terms borrowed from reformed orthodoxy, like ‘calling’ and ‘election’. The historians who identif y this close-knit and essentially reformed community at the heart of the Church of England are careful not to create a monolith. They know that there were divisions and shades of opinion within it. At one 103

Thomas Harrab, quoted in J. Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church (Oxford 1992), p.5; Harrab was a Roman Catholic. 104 Fuller, Church History, II, p.474. 105 N. Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter Revolution’, in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. C. Russell (London 1980); Tyacke, Anti-Cavinists. See also Collinson, Religion of Protestants, p.81; Fincham, ‘Introduction’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, pp.6–13; Davies, Caroline Captivity, pp.5–10.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   37

extreme were those who could still be identified as radical puritans. Urging further ­reformation, critical of the liturgy of the prayer book, and eager to see presbyterianism introduced, they were at, or beyond, the limits of conformity and were driven to deprivation or exile. At the other extreme were those who were happy to conform. Few of them, perhaps, were enthusiastic about ceremonies, but they were sufficiently comfortable with the idea of episcopacy to accept preferment if it was offered. Between these two groups were more moderate puritans, those persuaded to conform ‘for the sake of the gospel’. Unhappy with the prayer book and with the existing structure of church government, they laboured on, rather than lose the platform for evangelism that the national church alone provided. While these different groups employed similar language and shared many assumptions, there were some significant distinctions between them, of which they were very much aware. The radical and more moderate puritans were conscious of the need for change and saw themselves as slightly set apart from other believers. They thought of themselves as ‘the godly’, a distinctive and even elect minority in an impure, national church.106 Meanwhile conformists, who shared many orthodox reformed assumptions with the more radical, were uneasy about this stress on exclusivity and they were not eager to pursue the signs of election and reprobation so far. Instead, they preferred to claim that only God knows who are the elect and who the reprobate. Thus, Whitgift believed that the visible church contained both elect and non-elect; it was a ‘net that gathered of all kinds of fishes’. This is a crucial difference of opinion. It is the conviction that the elect can and should know themselves elect that distinguishes the group we often call ‘puritan’. For them a church made up of the elect alone was a real possibility, and the familiar distinctions between the visible church on earth and the invisible church in glory were blurred. So, while, conformists and puritans alike were convinced about the reality of election, they had quite different ideas about the nature of the church. Conformists believed, with Calvin, that it was necessary to make a distinction between the visible church on earth and the number of God’s elect. The visible church was prone to corruption. Calvin suggested that it could be hard to distinguish between ‘God’s children and the ungodly, between his own f lock and wild beasts’.107 Only God could identif y his elect: We must thus consider both God’s secret election and his inner call. For he alone ‘knows who are his’ [2 Timothy 2:19], and, as Paul says, encloses them under his seal [Eph. 1:13], except that they bear his insignia by which they may be distinguished from the reprobate. But because a small and contemptible number are hidden in a huge multitude and a few grains of wheat are covered by a pile of chaff, we must leave to God alone the knowledge of his church, whose foundation is his secret election.108 For more radical puritans a much purer church was both possible and desirable. Thomas Cartwright got very close to implying that the elect could know themselves elect and could separate themselves from the ‘wild beasts’ that Calvin knew. He certainly believed that a purer church was possible, 106 107 108

P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans (London 1988), p.7 and see pp.28–37. Calvin, Institutes, IV.1, p.1013. Calvin, Institutes, IV.1, p.1013.

38   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 For although there be hypocrites which bear the face of godly men in the church whose wickedness is known only to God and therefore cannot be discovered by men, yet in the churches of Christ there be no drunkards nor whoremongers etc. or else they are cut off by excommunication … although there be tares in the f lour of the church which are like the wheat and therefore being ground easily meeteth together in the loaf, yet there are no acorns which are bread for swine; and although there be goats amongst the f lock of the church because they have some likelihood with the sheep, feeding as they do, giving milk as they do, yet in the church of Christ there are no swine nor hogs. It pertaineth only to God to sever the tares from the wheat and the goats from the sheep but the churches can discern between wheat and acorns, between swine and sheep.109 Cartwright was making careful distinctions and certainly not attempting to say that we could know the secret will of God. He had an optimism about him, though, that went further than Calvin had gone in believing that the elect would inevitably make themselves visible and distinct.110 So, although reformed orthodoxy was a common bond and stimulated a common conversation there were differences of opinion that could be strongly held and expressed. Beyond this divided, but profoundly protestant community of believers there were others with different views. They were a less homogeneous group. Some were critical of the assumptions of reformed orthodoxy and probed for weaknesses in the endless discussions of predestination. Others had a slightly startling enthusiasm for bishops, or for ceremonies, or sacraments. Debate was conducted in university disputations and in sermons and books, and inevitably focused on theological propositions. Just as significant, though, were the differences of religious culture and spirituality that divided some members of the Church of England from others. For the reformed orthodox, devotion was essentially a matter of reconciling the believer with the providence of God. God, in his remote wisdom, had made all the decisions that matter; it was the job of the believer to accept, in wonder and in awe a promise already made. Spurr has pointed out that the reformed orthodox actually walked a difficult tightrope, urging believers both to accept that salvation was a gift of God’s grace (received passively) and yet simultaneously urging them to perform their part of the bargain (appropriated actively).111 Sermons, lectures and prophesyings, prayer, and the study of scripture dwelt on what God had already done and invited the believer to seek for the signs of his handiwork. In this scheme of things the only task left to the Holy Spirit was to persuade the believer of what was already true. There could be great reassurance in learning to lean on the power and sovereignty of God, but as practical piety it had its limits, for there was precisely nothing for the believer to do, but hear and obey. George Herbert struggles with this problem in The Holdfast. Seeking to articulate this faith he finds himself repeatedly reminded that his faith is not his at all, but God’s.

109 110 111

The Works of John Whitgift, ed. J. Ayre, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Parker Society 1851–3), I, pp.382ff. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, pp.28–31, 40–2, 46–7. Spurr, English Puritanism, p.166.



Life and Religion in Late Tudor Cambridge   39 I Threatned to observe the strict decree  Of my deare God with all my power & might.  But I was told by one, it could not be; Yet I might trust in God to be my light. Then will I trust, said I, in him alone.  Nay ev’n to trust in him, was also his:   We must confesse that nothing is our own. Then I confesse that he my succour is: But to have nought is ours, not to confesse   That we have nought. I stood amaz’d at this …112

Herbert’s distress is resolved by a friend who points out that he should think less about God the Father and more about Jesus Christ, ‘Christ keepeth now’. It is an important point. The reformed orthodox who lay a heavy emphasis on what God decrees out of all eternity can, if they are at all careless, struggle to place a proper emphasis on the work of Christ. It can appear that salvation and reprobation are decided by God’s predestination and hang only on the divine decrees and not from the nails of the cross. This was a weakness that both Arminius and Peter Baro pointed out. Critics of these theological assumptions urged a greater attention to Christ, and some of them also offered a different kind of piety. As attention was focused on Christ, so the sacraments, and particularly the eucharist in which Christ is made present, inevitably became more important. More than that, there was a growing emphasis not simply on what had been done by God, but on what was still being done, on the work of the Holy Spirit and on the effects of grace released through the sacraments. So, there were types of reformed orthodoxy, types of puritanism, and types of conformity. There was the conformity of John Whitgift, Master of Trinity College in the 1570s and Archbishop of Canterbury at the close of the century. He was steeped in reformed assumptions, but wary of pressing them too far, and he was wedded to the Prayer Book and the Ordinal. There was the moderate puritan conformity of men like William Whitaker and Samuel Ward, masters respectively of St John’s in the 1590s, and Sidney Sussex, for most of the first half of the seventeenth century. They pressed the conclusions of their protestant faith and grieved that the reform of the church was not further advanced. Then there was the conformity of George Herbert, University Orator in the 1620s, and later a parish priest, or of Lancelot Andrewes, Master of Pembroke in the 1590s and then a bishop for twenty years. Both men were more interested in the eucharist than in election. The working hypothesis of historians is that it was the conformity of moderate puritans, or of men like Whitgift and other, even more cautious contemporaries, that gave the late Elizabethan and Jacobean church its character. Andrewes, therefore, is often presented as a slightly uncomfortable figure, out of step with those around him. So conscious have we become of the prevailing protestant, or puritan, assumptions of the Church of England in this period that it is felt that 112

The Holdfast, in The Works of George Herbert, ed. F.E. Hutchinson (Oxford 1941), p.143; see also Herbert’s The Water-course, which affirms the reality of double predestination: ‘Who gives to man, as he sees fit, Salvation /Damnation.’

40   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Andrewes is perhaps best defined by what he lacked, and he is described, as an ‘Anti-Calvinist’.113 This account of the developing character of the church is only a working hypothesis, however, and it has had some vocal critics. A number of scholars, and among them most notably Peter White, have challenged the idea that it was reformed belief or ‘Calvinism’ that defined the Church of England.114 White has argued that there is still much more to be said about the ‘middle way’. He suggests that a distinctive Anglican character, truly committed to a via media and shaped as much by Lutherans as by Calvinists, can be traced back to the first generation of English reformers, like Hooper and Latimer. He thinks that men like Jewel and Hooker sustained this tradition, that it was understood and defended by James I, and articulated by a significant number of neglected or misunderstood seventeenth-century divines. The arguments that separate modern historians are arguments about the true nature of the Church of England. That was precisely the issue that disturbed and divided John Donne and George Herbert, Archbishop Whitgift and the presbyterian Cartwright, Archbishop Laud and the polemicist Prynne. It is an argument about theological authority and where it resides; about theological method and from what principles it should proceed. Disagreements about predestination, the sacraments, the ministry, ceremonies, faith, works and the true church, all proceeded out of the one competition to capture the Church of England and give it the tradition it lacked. In Cambridge, in the early seventeenth century, the English church had to come to terms with the startling and dramatic consequences of building on theological sand. In the bitter controversy that followed it is the lack of definition that is most striking. The preachers and teachers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century were all, in their different ways, struggling to resolve the dilemma that John Donne had felt so passionately: Show me deare Christ, thy Spouse, so bright and clear. What! is it She, which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which rob’d and tore Laments and mournes in Germany and here? Sleepes she a thousand, then peepes up one yeare? Is she selfe truth and errs? now new, now outwore?

113

N. Tyacke, ‘Archbishop Laud’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, p.63; see also the ref lection by Fincham on the term ‘Anti-Calvinist’, p.10. 114 P. White, ‘The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered’, Past and Present 101 (November 1983), pp.35–54 and ‘A Rejoinder’, Past and Present 115 (1987) pp.217–29; also P. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge 1992) and P. White, ‘The via media in the Early Stuart Church’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, pp.211–30. See also G.W. Bernard, ‘The Church of England c.1592–c.1642’, History 75 (1990), pp.183–206.

Chapter Two

CAMBRIDGE AND THE BOUNDARIES OF CONFORMITY

Reformation and Rome On 4 February 1592, the Vice-Chancellor and two of the heads wrote to the Chancellor, Lord Burghley. Their letter was a cocktail of anxiety and prejudice mixed in equal parts. In the 1590s, with the memory of the Armada still fresh, the whole nation half-expected a Spanish invasion and was convinced that a great army of Jesuits and priests was at work in the country, making ready. A proclamation, prepared towards the end of 1591, had painted an alarming picture of a popish fifth column entering the country ‘by secret Creekes and landing places’. By the River Cam they were worried, particularly as they had been told that ‘of these many doe attempt to resort into the Universities and houses of Lawe’. Consequently, a commission had been given to the Vice-Chancellor, and others, to seek out enemies of the state. In Cambridge they welcomed this opportunity, but they thought the government half-hearted. They were eager to proceed against ‘papisticall enymies’, but wanted to cast the net wider. it were very necessary that the other kynd of Papists that come to church (thoughe notwithstanding little better then the Seminaries) wer lookt unto and found out, specially in the Universitie wher they have don, and still do much harme The three men so eager to parade their hatred of the exasperatingly provocative churchgoing papists were Robert Some, Vice-Chancellor and Master of Peterhouse, William Whitaker, Master of St John’s, and Roger Goad, Provost of King’s. Their enthusiasm for this task was entirely characteristic. All three men were impassioned opponents of the Roman Catholic Church. Plundering scripture for appropriate insults to hurl at Rome in 1588, Robert Some had compared contemporary popes to the Assyrians of the Old Testament who had besieged the holy city and denounced the religious reforms of the king. Whitaker meanwhile, 

Dated October 1591, but not published until later; see P. McGrath, Papists and Puritans Under Elizabeth I (London 1967), pp.256–8.  Cooper, Annals, II, p.511.  Robert Some, A Godly Treatise containing and deciding certain questions moved of late in London and other places touching the ministry, sacraments (London 1588), pp.17–18.

41

42   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in a series of books published in the 1580s, had set out to demonstrate that the pope was Antichrist and that the survival of popery in England was Satan’s work. Goad, like Whitaker, was signatory of an earlier letter to the vigorously reformed Thomas Cartwright, urging him to take up his pen against Rome and ‘Satan’s champions’. The assumption that these three men shared, that the pope was Antichrist, was a common one. What marked them out as distinctive, though, was their determination to put prejudice into practice. They believed that the assault on popery was a religious duty prophesied in the books of Daniel and Revelation. They were convinced that they had a part to play in a war that had begun in heaven, and they fought it out vigorously. Others more impassioned still and perhaps with less learning and less judgement brought an apocalyptic zeal to their work. In 1590, Hugh Broughton, a Magdalene graduate, produced a study of the prophecies of Daniel, which not only described the pope as ‘the man of sinne, that speaketh with the mouth of the Dragon’, but, in case the subtlety of that statement made his point opaque, also added a helpful illustration of a barebreasted woman, wearing the papal tiara and sitting on a seven-headed beast under the caption ‘The State of Rome for crucif ying our Lorde’. All Broughton was doing, though, was pressing the conclusions of arguments that had been made by people like Some, Goad and Whitaker. They were all convinced that popery was worship of the devil himself. They did not think of Roman Catholicism as bad religion; they believed it was the opposite of religion and it was to be avoided at all costs. For this generation the idea that the English church might negotiate some middle way between the hills of Rome and the valley of Geneva would have been abhorrent. They believed that the English church must reject and renounce all things Roman. Within a month of asking for greater powers to seek out papists, Whitaker and Goad were badgering Burghley again and this time their prejudices were even more apparent. The second letter was dated 27 February 1592, and was also signed by Edmund Barwell, the Master of Christ’s, and Laurence Chaderton, the Master of Emmanuel. The tortured prose, endless qualifications and careful parentheses of this letter indicate an agony of careful drafting. Lord Burghley was an important and powerful man whom no one wanted to offend. Even so, their resentment showed. Congratulating Burghley on a long life (he was now over seventy), they urged him to:



William Whitaker, Responsio ad Nicolai Sanderi … (London 1583); William Whitaker, An Answere to a certeine booke written by M. William Rainolds (Cambridge 1585); William Whitaker, Disputatio de Sacra Scriptura (Cambridge 1588); see P. Lake, ‘The Significance of the Elizabethan Identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31.2 (1980), pp.161–78; Whitaker defended the thesis that the Pope was Antichrist for his DD in 1587: BL Harleian MS 7038, p.86.  Thomas Cartwright, ‘Preface’, A Confutation of the Rhemists Translations, Glosses and Annotations on the New Testament (Leyden 1618), quoted in Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.69–70.  P. Lake, ‘Anti-popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes (London 1989), pp.72–7.  Hugh Broughton, A concent of scripture (1590?), sig.F4v.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   43 the furtheraunce of the gospell and the defense and comfort of the trew professors thereof, the papisticall adversaries in theis tymes havinge growen bould and daungerous to the state

Thus, once more, Cambridge divines paraded their conviction that papists were getting away too lightly. In this second letter, however, there was another theme: iverse of the trew freindes and lovers of the gospell (thoughe carying theimselves in dutifull and peaceable course which we also best like) having tasted in some sort of more harde severitie then many knowen papistes Apparently, while papists prospered, good protestants were being oppressed. Names were not named; Burghley’s correspondents were both too clever and too cautious for that. There can be little doubt, however, that they were thinking of Thomas Cartwright, then in prison and facing a long list of charges in Star Chamber connected with his presbyterian principles. These two letters to Lord Burghley reveal the assumptions that shaped the religious life of the university at the close of the sixteenth century. They were written by men who had the decisive voice in university affairs and who were at the very heart of the university establishment. They routinely employed the language and imagery of biblical apocalypse to describe their actions and concerns. They turned arguments about even the most mundane aspects of church order into skirmishes in the violent struggle against the Roman Antichrist. They also longed for further reformation and even seemed to f lirt with presbyterianism as they called the English church to a new and better purity. Their views have been thoroughly and helpfully explored in the work of Peter Lake. He describes these men, men like Chaderton, Whitaker and Some, as ‘moderate puritans’. ­Characterising them in this way, he has helped us to see that a group of theologians who did not necessarily agree in all particulars could still sustain a commitment to one another, a commitment to conformity and, simultaneously, a rather startling commitment to radically reformed opinion. The fact that they had to write these letters, however, shows that they were not in confident mood. They were all too aware that some in authority did not pursue their assumptions to the same conclusions. A man like Archbishop Whitgift could call the pope ‘Antichrist’ without believing it a defining principle around which the English church should organise.10 There was also clearly disagreement about who should be considered ‘godly’. Whitaker, Goad and their friends might be clear about who were the most ‘trewe and peaceable professors of the gospell’. Others were not convinced and Cartwright suffered as a consequence. In fact, there was a range and a variety in reformed opinion, which has occasionally been obscured by studies of the via media, or of English ‘Calvinism’. The arguments surged back and forth and Cambridge theologians fell out famously among themselves.   10

Cooper, Annals, II, pp.512–13. Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.279ff. Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, pp.174–5; A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge 1995), p.105.

44   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Two professors and two divinities A powerful, shared assumption, like hatred of Rome, prompted Cambridge theologians to work together, but it could make them sound more like-minded than they were. The heads of house and the professors of divinity were a small group and the good government of the university depended on their co-operation with one another, but they still found consensus elusive. Their deep learning and wide reading, their different religious experiences and their complex loyalties pulled them in contrary directions. These men after all were trained in disputation and dialectic; their greatest skill was in arguing contrary points of view. They differed from one another and are often difficult to place. In William Whitaker the tensions can easily be seen. He has been identified both as ‘a man of strong Puritan convictions’ and as a ‘moderate’.11 If you could know a man simply by the company he kept Whitaker would present no difficulty. Whisked away from papist parents, he was brought up by his uncle, Alexander Nowell, Dean of St Paul’s, a man with impeccable protestant credentials. Nowell was a Marian exile, a vigorous critic of Rome and apparently unhappy with such unreformed practices as the wearing of surplices. Nowell’s Catechism, published in 1570, hinted that presbyterianism was the faith of the apostles and stressed the importance of predestination and the reality of condemnation and punishment. He handled this discussion with care, making it clear that the reprobate have only themselves to blame for their condemnation and punishment: The ungodly, which either have not feared the justice and wrath of God, or have not trusted in his clemency and mercy … shall with Satan and all the devils be cast into the prison of hell … where, being tormented with conscience of their own sins, with eternal fire, and with all and most extreme execution, they shall pay and suffer eternal pains. For that offence which mortal men have done against the unmeasurable and infinite majesty of the immortal God, is worthy also of infinite and ever-during punishment.12 The stress that Nowell laid on the guilt of the sinful, who failed to fear and trust, has confused some historians. On the strength of this passage they have identified him as a ‘moderate’ and set him apart from contemporary ‘Calvinism’. The point they make is that there seems to be an element of human failure and human responsibility in Nowell’s account of judgment. This is not the way a ‘Calvinist’ would think, the argument goes, because Calvinists would surely argue that it is not our goodness that saves us, nor our wickedness that condemns us; rather it is the mere will of God that decides our salvation or reprobation.13 In fact, Nowell’s stress on human guilt was simply a conventional way of avoiding any suggestion that God was the author of sin. In Nowell’s Catechism human beings are sinners, but it does not follow that he had doubts about predestination or the absolute sovereignty of God. Nowell was quite convinced that God chose the men and women who would make up the true church even before he made heaven and 11

V.H.H. Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge (London 1964), p.117; Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.65. 12 Alexander Nowell, A Catechism, ed. G.E. Corrie (Oxford, Parker Society 1853), p.169. 13 See for example White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, pp.67, 91.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   45

earth. He was equally sure that this election was ‘the spring-head and original of our justification’.14 Nowell sent his nephew to Trinity College. There, Whitaker rapidly became friendly with some of the leading figures pressing for further reformation. Few of the countless evangelical study groups that have brooded over scripture in Cambridge rooms, can have been as powerful and as distinguished as those meetings when Whitaker met John Dod, Laurence Chaderton and William Fulke, to pit their piety against the text. There was godliness too when Whitaker went home to his wife, Susan Culverwell. Her father, Nicholas, and her uncle, Richard, were both celebrated in puritan circles and her sister, Cecilia, married his friend Laurence Chaderton. When Susan died Whitaker married again, this time choosing Joan, widow of Dudley Fenner, an outspoken critic of the Prayer Book. Whitaker numbered himself among the saints.15 These associations tell us a good deal, but even so Whitaker remains a little elusive. He made his name with a series of polemical works against Rome. These books were closely argued, laced with scriptural reference and with a characteristically protestant scepticism about the role of reason and the authority of the Fathers.16 He was rapidly rewarded for them, becoming Regius Professor in 1580 and, from 1587, Master of St John’s. As a critic of Rome, Whitaker had every appearance of being a faithful servant of the Church of England. Archbishop Whitgift and Lord Burghley both looked on in admiration and helped secure his preferment.17 In truth, though, like his friends in Cambridge, Whitaker was critical of the church that he defended so vigorously in print. His letters to Burghley reveal only a little of the frustration he felt. His particular distinction perhaps was his ability to contain that frustration and be cautious when giving his opinion. Writing against Rome allowed him a little luxury of expression. He could sit loose to some of the arguments within the Church of England and express his love of reformation without bringing it too close to home. As a consequence he won the approval of both conformists and radicals.18 Whitaker was sure that, as a consequence of the Fall, human beings were sinful, corrupt and entirely dependent on God for their justification. Salvation was exclusively the work of an all-powerful deity whose attributes were lovingly (and lengthily) described. Thus, Whitaker argued, God’s everlasting and unchanging predestination was decisive, and he passionately rejected any suggestion that Roman Catholic teaching about infused grace or works might have any merit. We deny that position of yours, of infused grace, whereby you defend that the grace whereby we are justified is a certain habit situate in our minds within; and we acknowledge no other justif ying grace but the great and free mercy of God, whereby he did elect and predestinate us

14 15 16

Nowell, Catechism, p.181. DNB. On Whitaker’s theological views, see Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.93ff; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p.274. 17 Porter, Reformation, pp.183–4; Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.59–60. 18 F.G.M. Broeyer, William Whitaker: Leven en Werk van een Anglo-calvinistich Theolog (Utrecht 1982), p.34.

46   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in Christ before all eternity unto life everlasting and hath called us in time and justified us.19 Salvation for Whitaker turns on the ‘eternal election of God when he saith that it is a kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world’.20 This meant, of course, that the elect were powerless and incapable of interfering with the effects of grace. Precisely for this reason the elect could be confident that they could never finally lose their status (the doctrine of perseverance); they could also know themselves elect (the doctrine of assurance). Whitaker pushed the language of predestination further than most. His confidence that we can know ourselves elect and know that we will persevere was regarded by many as a monstrous arrogance. Here was a man who argued, on the one hand, that human beings were utterly corrupt as a result of the Fall, who yet seemed to suggest, on the other hand, that some of us can still know the mind of God. Whitaker meanwhile thought he was being entirely consistent. While he was utterly convinced that all human action and reasoning is stained with sin, he knew too that God’s grace is irresistible and once it is given or imputed to us our salvation inevitably follows. The elect therefore really can know themselves elect.21 Here Whitaker was close to the rigorously reformed theology of William Perkins. Like Perkins he believed that God elected the heirs of his Kingdom before the Fall. Yet, ever cautious, Whitaker could not quite commit himself to the most austere expressions of belief in predestination. His language about election always, quite properly, found a place for the work of Christ. He thus avoided the real extravagance of those who tell the story of salvation as though it was all decided in the mind of God and then worked out in a series of decrees in which Christ is an almost incidental figure. So, there was a little moderation in Whitaker’s scrupulously protestant opinion, and although he clearly had no affection for some of the survivals of the old devotion, like surplices, he was prepared to tolerate the use of the sign of the cross in baptism. Perhaps more striking and more significant was his refusal to regard presbyterian discipline as an essential mark of the true church. In Whitaker, then, Cambridge had a Regius Professor with deep protestant convictions and associations who is yet hard to place. Here is the difficulty that lies in terms like ‘puritan’ and ‘Calvinist’ and ‘conformity’. Neither straightforward conformist, nor puritan radical, Whitaker took his place in a complex debate in which the assumptions of reformed orthodoxy were widely held but in which subtle shades of opinion were significant. Peter Baro, Whitaker’s colleague, as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, was a man of very different stamp. French by birth, he had come to England as a refugee in 1572. In 1574, thanks to the assistance of Burghley and Vice-Chancellor Perne, he was given the Lady Margaret chair. He had been ordained in Geneva by Calvin, but carried that imposition lightly. In a speech in the Schools in the late 1570s, he defended the view that ‘God’s purpose and decree taketh not away the liberty of man’s corrupt will’.22 This was clearly a position that neither Calvin nor 19 20 21 22

Whitaker, Against Campion, quoted in Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.98. Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.99. Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.101–2. Quoted in Porter, Reformation, p.379.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   47

Whitaker could have accepted. It hinted that humans might offer to co-operate, or even refuse to co-operate, in their own salvation. If we have that power then there are limits to the extent of God’s predestination, and ideas like perseverance and assurance are lost. In 1581 Baro showed his hand again when he quarrelled publicly with Whitaker’s friend, Laurence Chaderton. Both Chaderton and Baro were clear that works cannot save us. Indeed, so insistent was Chaderton on this point that he refused even to mention works when he was discussing a justification that could be given only by God.23 Baro wanted to say something more positive, suggesting that our love and good works play some minor part in the process of justification. The argument escalated rapidly and only ended, albeit inconclusively, when it reached the Vice-Chancellor’s Consistory Court. Baro now knew that he had made enemies. He was in a theological minefield and he had the good sense to tread carefully. A work on providence followed, in which Baro presented himself as a faithful pastor, offering ‘consolation’. Whether or not he really had a pastoral heart is hard to say; certainly his mind was still full of the old polemic. When he set out his ideas about predestination, foreknowledge and providence they were contentious. Predestination properly is the everlasting decree of God, wherin he hath determined to himself, what shall become of every man as touching either eternal salvation or damnation, for so did God also before the foundations of the world were laid decree that among men Peter should be saved, and Judas destroyed: and so likewise of every one …24 Here we must pick our way through complex arguments. Baro was writing against the background of a lively debate about how the theology of predestination worked. The most vigorously reformed and logically consistent theologians (and in England Perkins is the prime example) argued that God decreed first to create human beings, second that some would be elect and others reprobate (for no other reason than that he willed it so), and thirdly, to make this possible, he permitted sin and sent his Son as the means by which the elect might be redeemed. This is the theology of supralapsarianism, a theology that claims that God decrees the election and reprobation of individuals before he decrees the Fall. It is distinctive and particular. The argument that God ordains our fate, without reference to sin, purely because he has the power to do so, has a purity about it that only a few would wish to sustain. It seems to imply that God rejects part of his own creation even before he recognises it as sinful. It is important to point out at this stage that the words ‘before’ and ‘after’, which inevitably creep into these discussions of what God decrees, have nothing to do with the measurement of time. Any theologian of competence knows that God does not change his mind. No one was suggesting that God saw the Fall, decided that he was wrong about human beings after all, and so chose to damn individuals he had hoped to save. The discussion of the divine decrees is a discussion about what happens in all eternity 23

W. Dillingham, Life of Laurence Chaderton, trans. E.S. Shuckburgh (Cambridge 1884); Thomas Fuller, The History of the University of Cambridge (London 1840), pp.203–4; P. Lake, ‘Laurence Chaderton and the Cambridge Moderate Puritan Tradition 1570–1604’ (University of Cambridge PhD thesis 1978), pp.183–97. 24 Peter Baro, A Speciall Treatise of God’s Providence (1588?), sig.C3.

48   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 and about the logical sequence in which God ordains events. A supralapsarian would argue that God decreed, first, that some should be elect and some reprobate and, second, that there might be a Fall. It is however, quite possible to believe in the reality of predestination without being quite so rigorous. An infralapsarian would argue that God did not first make some holy and some reprobate, rather he created all humans holy and good. Then, foreseeing temptation, he decreed not to prevent the Fall, but decided graciously to rescue some of fallen humanity from catastrophe. These opinions are, of course, quite different. For infralapsarians the Fall is crucial. They would argue that God views his creation after the Fall when all deserve punishment. Only then does he elect some to salvation, rescuing them from their fate. The reprobate are simply passed over, left to the fate they deserve. Peter Baro was clearly exercised by this discussion for he offers a different solution. It is the reference to Peter and Judas that gives him away. Baro argues that God elects people like Peter and condemns people like Judas. With those two quick references he personalises the story of redemption and speaks of two individuals, one who has merit and one who had merit, but lost it. For infralapsarians God’s foreknowledge was important. God knew that all humanity would fall and did not prevent it. Baro goes a stage further and plunges into a much more personal and intricate discussion in which God foresees the merit or sin of each individual. It has to be said that Baro is cautious. His conclusions are more implicit than explicit. He also goes to enormous lengths to demonstrate that nothing happens, nothing whatsoever, to either the godly or the ungodly, which God does not will and intend. It is clear, he tells us: That riches, wife, children, contracts or bargains, knowledge of arts and sciences, the use or abuse of the same, that all these things (I say) do succeed or not succeed after the only will and pleasure of God.25 Baro went on, however, to declare that ‘Man hath his choice, in man there is a will, as in him also there is reason and judgement’. He then quickly added: that choice and will of his is very sore wounded, weak and feeble, so as it scarce deserveth so much as the bare name, neither can it proceed further in doing of any thing, than the Lord prescribeth.26 A human being, then, is like a horse ridden by God. The rider directs the horse, but, the horse goes forward by its own volition, ‘even so God directeth man also, and yet never the later man doth of his owne will, that which he doth’.27 For all the qualifications this was, by contemporary standards, a startling assertion of the existence of free will. Essentially, Baro was arguing that God does indeed predestine, but does it only because he knows in advance which of us will persist in grace and which of us will fall into sin and impenitence. The great strength of this position is that it acquits God of the charge of acting arbitrarily and allows human beings some sense that they have a part to play in their own salvation. 25 26 27

Baro, A Speciall Treatise, sig.D8v. Baro, A Speciall Treatise, sig.E2. Baro, A Speciall Treatise, sig.E2v.

Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   49



The weakness here is that it might imply that God’s decision to predestine counts for almost nothing. If what we do for good or ill makes a difference we might be said to be saving or condemning ourselves. Most important of all was the fact that Baro had named names. By referring to Peter and Judas he had changed theological gear. The discussion of foreknowledge was now not just speculation about what happens in the mind of God. It was a discussion about individuals: and therefore about their sin and their merit. Even so, Baro believed that human beings were only really free to sin. He thought a man or woman might have the power to co-operate with divine providence in doing good, but thought they did so out of necessity, though not by compulsion. Controversy, in Cambridge, where they studied the jots and tittles, was made of such fine distinctions. Conformity and conscience The university was a divided house; its two professors of divinity had quite different opinions and took their place in a debate that contained others eager to argue with them both. Diversity and disagreement reared up on all sides. The obvious and often-cited example is St John’s, where Whitaker was master. The college was deeply divided and Whitaker seems to have plunged into the fray with enthusiasm. In April 1588, only a year after arriving in St John’s, he expelled one of the fellows, Everard Digby, whom he accused of both popery and insubordination. There was a long list of charges against Digby, and it is revealing. Some of the complaints related exclusively to college business and to Digby’s often-remarked absence. Others were more specific. Digby had allegedly commended voluntary poverty, bemoaned the fate of the college vestments in a sermon and had ‘inveighed against Calvinians as schismatic and enemies of the church’. As the argument escalated it was inevitably made more complex as the tensions in John’s issued out into fresh accusations about the improper conduct of academic and financial affairs. This was a college row of a type that has been played out many times and in which the real issues are often much more personal than anyone cares to admit. What is striking, however, is the religious tone taken by the Master. As he saw it, the way to incriminate Digby was to paint him a papist and suggest that he lacked a proper reverence for Calvin. Others might argue about defining truth and orthodoxy; the Regius Professor of Divinity knew that both came from Geneva.28 Whitaker showed his hand again when he promoted another fellow widely suspected of presbyterian sympathy and failed to punish two others who had failed to wear the regulation surplice for chapel. St John’s began to be a by-word for the protestant purity of its worship and theology. It was becoming famous too for the hostility between some of the fellows and the Master. Soon it attracted attention it could well have done without. By 1590 a rumour was circulating that a presbytery had actually been set up in the college. Whitaker found himself in trouble. His position in college was compromised. In 1588 a group of fellows had written to the Chancellor complaining about the Master’s high-handed style. 28

Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.169ff., Porter, Reformation, pp.185ff.; Heywood and Wright, Cambridge Transactions, I, pp.507–21; CUA RGB 93.6.

50   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 In 1590 one of his chief critics among the fellows, a man called Eleazer Knox, wrote again to Lord Burghley alleging that the Master and his friends had dark secrets and feared an inquiry by High Commission, ‘As such as he knoweth to be fully acquainted with the deceitful and deceiving nature and conditions of those men, and which know their starting holes, and can fox and ferret them out, how closely soever they convey themselves.’ The arguments at St John’s at one stage or another sucked in Archbishop Whitgift, and the Earls of Leicester, Essex and Warwick. Whitaker found himself at odds with the powerful patrons at Court who had put him in St John’s and, in the college itself, had to fight on two fronts, with men whom he thought had either too little, or too much, respect for continental protestant opinion.29 Colleges have always argued about their religion. Rarely, however, have those arguments been so ill-tempered, so complex and been taken so seriously outside. Whitaker’s death, in December 1595, served only to stimulate a vigorous contest to take his place. The arguments divided the fellows again, kept Burghley at his desk and interested the Queen. The fellows could clearly not be trusted with so important an appointment. The new head, Richard Clayton, was effectively imposed on the college by the Crown. Clayton was Master of Magdalene, but had previously been a fellow of St John’s and a critic of Whitaker. His views are difficult to determine, but, as he had objected to presbyterian tendencies in John’s in 1590 and later seemed to side with a preacher who attacked the doctrine of assurance, he clearly did not aspire to the kind of protestant purity favoured by Whitaker. Under him St John’s began to lose its reputation for faction and for puritanism.30 Indeed, by 1598 things had got so frivolous that they were staging plays in the college. Whitaker would never have allowed such a thing and would certainly have been enraged by the content of the play, called A Pilgrimage to Parnassus. It was a satire that poked fun at ‘Stupido’, a ‘plodding Puritan’. The fact that the college could laugh at such humour (and they did laugh) suggests that old divisions had been healed. There were various reasons for these developments, but the new Master was a decisive inf luence. The Cambridge heads were powerful and important figures. Many of them, like Clayton, are hard to place, but a few let their prejudices show. At Peterhouse, Robert Some was one of the men who had written to Lord Burghley stoking the fires of religious intolerance in 1592.31 He had succeeded Andrew Perne as Master in 1589. This was a change more sweeping than anything seen at St John’s. Perne was Mr Facing-both-ways, a rare Marian survivor; Robert Some was all Valiantfor-Truth, ever eager to urge the reformation on. In 1570 as a young MA he had preached a vigorous sermon against ecclesiastical courts and non-residence, at Great St Mary’s.32 The sermon contained a swipe at episcopacy, and within months he was compounding his offence by petitioning for the presbyterian Cartwright. 29 30

Porter, Reformation, pp.194–201. Porter, Reformation, pp.203ff. and 307. On Clayton, see DNB; Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.583–4; Baker, St John, I, pp.190ff. J. Strype, Life and Acts of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (Oxford 1822), IV, p.473; II, p.303, suggests Clayton supported Baro, but does not substantiate the claim. 31 See above, p.41. 32 Cooper, Annals, II, p.251; W.D. Bushell, The Church of St Mary the Great (Cambridge 1947), p.105.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   51

It is a measure of the prevailing theological mood that none of this was a bar to Some’s preferment and it was, in fact, Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave him his mastership. Age and seniority duly brought a slightly more moderate tone. Indeed, in a treatise published in 1588 he actually defended the Church of England against the criticisms of the apostles of further reformation. Confronted by a presbyterianism that was now a lost cause he argued with more caution, ‘I woulde gladly knowe whether it be eyther possible or safe, to plant that discipline in this lande, before that God’s holy Trueth bee soundly both taught and received.’33 Robert Some, however, had not gone entirely soft. Too careful and perhaps too ambitious to identif y himself as a Presbyterian, he was still a firm believer in the importance of a ‘godly discipline’ among the elect. Anxious to see that discipline put into practice, and committed to the creation of an ordained ministry that could order and sustain it, the Master of Peterhouse just waited for better days. He still had a real interest in the reformation of the English church.34 In short, like Whitaker, Robert Some was one of Peter Lake’s ‘moderate puritans’, a man content to work within and even defend the structures of the English church, but yet committed to change.35 On the crucial and central question of predestination Some was a little more vigorous than Whitaker. He made his position clear in a tract published in 1596. The lengthy title provides an admirable précis of the assumptions that were beginning to dominate Cambridge: Three Questions Godly, Plainly and Brief ly Handled. I: They which are endued of God with a justif ying faith, cannot utterly lose the same. II: The true believer, by faith, is assured of the forgiveness of his sins. III: Christ died effectually for the elect alone: therefore not for every severall man. All that Robert Some had to offer to Christians brooding over their hope of glory was a decision already made, not God’s love, nor his grace, not the sacraments, not even the work of Christ. It is this last point, and his last proposition that is the most telling. Robert Some believed in limited atonement, that is, he thought that Christ did not die for all. It is a striking and disturbing claim. The Master of Peterhouse, like Beza and Perkins, was troubled by the idea that if Christ died for those who had already been condemned, then his death was both useless and powerless. Christ’s death could not possibly be useless and powerless, so, Christ obviously died only for the elect. To defend this view Some had to do some careful scriptural exegesis. There were various texts that posed problems, including John 3:16, numbered among the comfortable words in The Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps more difficult still was 1 Timothy 2:4, ‘[God our Saviour] who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’. This, the Master of Peterhouse claimed, a little desperately, meant that God intended all kinds of men to be saved. 33

Robert Some, A Godly Treatise containing and deciding certaine questions moved of late in London … (London 1588), p.36. 34 See P. Lake, ‘Robert Some and the Ambiguities of Moderation’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980), pp.254–62. 35 Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.3–5 and 6.

52   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 The words of S. Paul 1 Tim 2 are not to be understood of every man; but of those onely who are called the vessels of mercie. The meaning of the Apostle is, that god would have of all kindes of men some to be saved36 Although others had taken the same route, Some knew this was provocative and he promptly took shelter behind St Augustine.37 Logic drove Robert Some to the extremes of contemporary protestantism and indeed to the limits of orthodoxy. Yet there remained in him an abiding pastoral concern, shared by Perkins and characteristic of many others at the time. His tract closed with A Proposition Full of Comfort, which promised those who had offended the majesty of God that, in his own good time, he: ‘will heal their wounded consciences with the dew of his blessing, he will turn their mourning into dancing’.38 Robert Some, like Whitaker, shows us that it was possible to hold extreme protestant views and still find an honoured place within the English religious establishment. There may have had to be the odd compromise, but little by little, he turned himself into an apparently willing conformist. It is important to recognise, however, that this was a distinctive kind of conformity, a conformity that embraced theological assumptions that most theologians, both catholic and protestant, might well regard as unwise or unsafe. Yet the Master of Peterhouse was not an isolated figure. Among his contemporaries was Laurence Chaderton, first Master of Emmanuel and celebrated ‘pope of Cambridge Puritanism’.39 He too was a supralapsarian and he too believed that Christ died only for the elect. Like Whitaker and Some, he was eager for further reformation, and his two published sermons ref lect a deep concern for the nature of the ministry.40 He was prepared to go further than most of his contemporaries, however, and in the second of these sermons he explicitly avowed presbyterian principles. Yet still, there was moderation even about Chaderton. Much as he found fault with the contemporary church with its ‘whole swarms of idle, ignorant and ungodly curates and readers’, he hoped to purif y the church not by confrontation but by training a generation of preachers and pastors who would share his scriptural vision. This ambition inevitably focused attention on the universities and, at Emmanuel, Chaderton set about making his dream come true. He created there a celebrated holy house, in which, in regular ‘prophesyings’, a meticulous study of the Bible issued into a solid doctrinal consensus. If Robert Some’s achievement was to combine an uncompromisingly godly stance with a position of personal eminence within the establishment, Chaderton’s was the far more substantial success of finding a physical home for those same views within a college of the

36 37

Some, Three Questions, p.28. See, for example, John Bridges’ sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1570, cited in Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.249. 38 Some, Three Questions, p.44. 39 P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London 1967), p.125. On Chaderton, see DNB; Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.25ff; Porter, Reformation, pp.238ff. 40 L. Chaderton, An excellent and godly sermon… preached at Paul’s Crosse (London 1580); A fruitful sermon upon the 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 verse of the 12 chapter of the epistle of S. Paule to the Romanes (London 1584).



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   53

university. Emmanuel, with Chaderton as Master, was both seminary and citadel of Cambridge moderate Puritanism.41 Another head who longed for the new Jerusalem and who was prepared for controversy on the way was William Fulke, Master of Pembroke from 1578 to 1589. At St John’s, as a young man in 1565, he had preached blistering sermons against communion wafers, kneeling and surplices. Indeed, he managed brief ly to drive conformity right out of the college chapel.42 Like so many of his contemporaries he soon learnt to direct his anger against Rome and thereby acquired a reputation for orthodoxy. Once he began to point out the errors of a church other than his own, his fortunes changed. His published work was highly regarded and he simultaneously built a reputation as a celebrated preacher. He owed his position at Pembroke to the Earl of Leicester, whose chaplain he had been. This association is an important one, for Whitaker had also been chaplain to Leicester. A whole network of relationships tied the champions of further reformation together. The godly expected to know themselves and know one another. Once installed in Cambridge, Fulke developed, as Chaderton did, an instinct for self-preservation that was at least partially responsible for an increasing moderation in his tone. The young champion of presbyterianism defended episcopacy in his later works. Nonetheless, in the year of his death he was still regarded with reverence and affection by more radical protestants. In an anonymous tract published in 1589 he was named, with Whitaker, Cartwright and Chaderton, as one of the arbiters of orthodoxy, ‘men I hope as well able to judge as all the Lord Bishops in Christendom’.43 Interestingly, the tract was an attack on Robert Some who had compromised his own standing among the godly being altogether too critical of non-conformity. Meanwhile, Fulke’s works against the old enemy Rome rather disguised the fact that this angry young man had grown old. Inevitably his attacks on catholicism were dominated by discussions of authority, scripture, the papacy and ceremonies; even so the attentive will have noticed something more. There was a shower of references to both Calvin and Beza, an attack on the idea of free will and robust assertions of the doctrines of assurance and perseverance.44 Under Fulke, Pembroke acquired for a time a reputation for godliness, but, in that old foundation, he never quite managed to match Chaderton’s achievement in creating something in his own image at Emmanuel. Fellow travellers? Whitaker, Chaderton, Fulke and even the arguably apostate Robert Some, were all men of real, and occasionally radical, protestant opinion. It is a measure of what was happening to Cambridge divinity that these were the men who dominated the life and imagination of the university. Few of the remaining heads were capable of banging the drum quite so loudly, but they were certainly ready to 41 42

Bendall et al., Emmanuel, pp.177–86. DNB; Porter, Reformation, pp.119ff.; R.J. Bauckham, ‘The Career and Thought of Dr William Fulke’ (University of Cambridge PhD thesis 1973), pp.61–87. 43 Job Throckmorton, Mr Some laid open in his colours (1589) p.34, quoted in Lake, ‘Robert Some’, p.273. 44 Bauckham, ‘Dr William Fulke’, pp.129–33.

54   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 march behind. When rumours of the existence of a presbytery in St John’s began to circulate, a number of his peers leapt to Whitaker’s defence and, in a letter to Burghley in October 1590, declared ‘none of us ever did hear any fame or speech in the university of any such presbytery …’.45 Chaderton signed the letter and so did the then Vice-Chancellor, Thomas Preston. The other signatories were John Still, Roger Goad, Edmund Barwell, John Duport and John Jegon. These were inf luential and important men, and there have been many attempts to understand them and their place within the arguments that raged around them. The fact that they signed a letter defending Whitaker might imply that they shared his views. Sadly, the reality is a little more complicated. Thomas Preston was Master of Trinity Hall, a lawyer, a playwright, a poet and a vigorous critic of Rome. John Still, Master of Trinity, has been described by G.M. Trevelyan as being ‘innocuous’. This is a harsh judgement. Still was a fine preacher, a campaigner against non-conformity and, later, a conscientious Bishop of Bath and Wells.46 His signature on the letter to Burghley is interesting, he was no friend to presbyterians and presumably supported Whitaker because he thought he was innocent, rather than out of any sense of puritan party loyalty. Roger Goad meanwhile, Provost of King’s since 1569, was a different and more strident character with a developed taste for petitions. He was to sign the letter written in 1592, which urged Burghley to take more desperate measures against papists. In 1583, he had asked the exiled Cartwright to ‘fight against the frequent armies of heretics’. His views were never expressed in print, but they were well known and, when a crisis broke in 1595, he proved himself a staunch ally to Whitaker, Chaderton and Some.47 Edmund Barwell was Master of Christ’s, a college with a formidable reputation among those with puritan sympathies. Barwell’s own position in this holy house is not easy to gauge. It has been suggested that he was a good Calvinist and a noted preacher, but he was not of the same stamp as Chaderton, Whitaker and Some. He was, possibly, a man of more limited ability and application; certainly he made no significant contribution to the contemporary theological debate. As discipline at Christ’s foundered poor Barwell probably satisfied no one.48 John Duport, Master of Jesus, was an able biblical scholar and one of the translators who worked on the Authorised Version. He too sat in the councils of the godly in the 1590s, with Whitaker, Goad and the rest, but like Barwell he seems to have lacked the energy of expression that others expected.49 Finally, John Jegon of Corpus was generally considered a conscientious Master, though Morgan describes him less f latteringly, as an ‘efficient careerist’. In truth he was a man of principle. In 1595 he defended the doctrine of assurance in the schools, and in a contested election at St Catharine’s in 1598 he backed the candidate more acceptable to the godly sort. He was also patron of the sabbatarian author Bownde. Jegon was

45 46 47 48

BL Lansdowne MS, vol.63, no.91; quoted, Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.193. DNB; G.M. Trevelyan, Trinity College (Cambridge 1943), p.21. Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp. 69–70. Porter, Reformation, p.236; Bondos-Greene, ‘The End of an Era’, pp.199–200; J. Peile, Christ’s College (London 1900), pp.91–2. 49 Morgan, ‘Country Court’, p.574.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   55

a consistent champion of avowedly protestant opinion even if he was content to allow others to bear the brunt of the argument.50 An opposition party? Describing this group of heads who wrote to protest Whitaker’s innocence in 1590, Peter Lake has pointed out that a number of significant names are absent. He wonders if the omissions were deliberate and suggests that the letter is a statement made by people who thought of themselves as a theological party.51 The heads who would not sign, Lake tells us, were Lancelot Andrewes (recently made Master of Pembroke in succession to Fulke), Humphrey Tyndall, Thomas Legge, Thomas Byng, Thomas Neville and John Copcot. The implication of their not wanting to be named with the other heads could be that these men were outside the group of ‘evangelical protestants’. The point is well made. Lake has clearly demonstrated the associations and assumptions that bound men like Whitaker and Chaderton and Fulke together and caused others to look to them for inspiration and guidance. These people did think of themselves as distinctive. Even so, it is hard to pin down the character and identity of particular theological groups in Cambridge and, on this occasion, Peter Lake is just a little wide of the mark. Firstly, John Copcot should not be in his list at all, for he preceded Jegon at Corpus and had just died; it is, in fact, Edmund Hound, the Master of St Catharine’s, who is missing. Secondly, Lake does not point out that another name that is missing is that of Robert Some, who must surely be regarded as one of the ‘evangelical protestants’. Thirdly, the allegiance of some of remaining names is in question. John Still did sign, but he is an unlikely recruit to the ranks of moderate puritans or even evangelical protestants. Humphrey Tyndall, the President of Queens’, did not sign, but Lake himself describes Tyndall as one of ‘the Calvinist elements in the university’.52 Allegiance is a difficult thing to determine. Did men defend Whitaker against the charge that he had consented to a presbytery because they knew that he had not, or because they applauded the fact that he had? The heads had complex motives and divided loyalties. They might even have supported Whitaker in private, but condemned him in public. A Cambridge head who hoped to exchange his academic cap for a mitre might find that ambition taught him new opinions. The theological life of the university was extraordinarily complicated and those who lived it were better able than us to measure its fine distinctions. Describing the problematic Humphrey Tyndall, one College history confusingly refers to him as ‘Liberal’ and ‘Calvinistic’. As the President of Queens’ consistently sided with Whitaker and Chaderton in the crisis of the 1590s, and later backed a godly candidate in a contested election in 1598 the latter term is probably nearer the mark.53 As we pick our way through all these definitions we have learnt from Peter Lake to identif y a moderate puritan tradition in Cambridge. A number of 50 51

Lamb, Corpus Christi, p.146; Morgan, “Country Court’’, p.573; Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.263ff. Lake, Moderate Puritans argues (p.193): ‘the moderate puritan (or evangelical protestant) establishment in the university was closing ranks to protect Whitaker’. 52 Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.237. 53 J.H. Gray, Queens’ College (London 1899), p.122; but see Twigg, Queens’, p.41. Tyndall supported

56   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 significant figures, who knew one another well, shared a piety fashioned out of an unshakeable confidence in God’s predestinating grace. Though sometimes tempted by their longing for further reformation, and perhaps a little seduced by dreams of a congregation made up only of the elect, they would not separate themselves from the national church. Their allegiance to one another and to common theological principles that they all held dear was an important factor in university life. It is difficult to be sure, though, precisely how big the group was. Their commitment was real enough but was sometimes tempered by the promptings of personal ambition or university politics, and it always had to be expressed in an environment where argument was a way of life. We should be willing to permit variety of opinion within this group and recognise the power of the common assumption that shaped their conversation and informed their experience. Even so, we must still remember that in Cambridge reputations were built on individual excellence and individual insight. These men knew they were not utterly alike, and in a situation in which theological method was being debated as much as theological opinion, unity was hard to sustain. Most of the remaining heads are rather obscure figures. Thomas Legge, the Master of Caius, was trained in civil law and has been described as ‘a man of genuine tolerance’. Caius had already acquired a reputation for harbouring recusants by Legge’s time, and under him there were further allegations of popery and also evidence that the College contained some fervent protestants. Legge, it seems, was a complacent figure with no particular theological affiliation.54 Little is known about Thomas Byng, Master of Clare. Thomas Neville, on the other hand, is celebrated rather for the building programme that he supervised in Trinity than for his academic and theological achievements. In 1590 he was still Master of Magdalene and his views on Whitaker are impossible to gauge. Edmund Hound, of St Catharine’s had been accused of papist sympathies while at Caius. Though his mastership was chief ly remarkable for arguments over finance and fellowships, it seems possible that he genuinely might have been suspicious of, or even hostile to, Whitaker. Lancelot Andrewes and the candle of the Lord These men are hard to place; the fact that they did not sign the letter protesting ignorance of presbyterianism in St John’s tells us little. We do not even know if it was ever put in front of them. The remaining missing name is quite a different proposition. Lancelot Andrewes, Master of Pembroke from 1589 to 1605, was, like his predecessor William Fulke, a theologian who gave much of his energy to refuting the claims of Rome. There, however, the similarity ended. In his early years Andrewes had had contact with some of the godly sort. They would have found much to applaud in his sabbatarian views and indeed in his earliest written works in which he expressed the old certainties about predestination.55 Soon, though, Simon Robson against Overall: see Porter, Reformation, pp.314, 345, 364, 378. Porter, ‘Catharine Hall’, pp.90–1. 54 Brooke, Caius, pp.72ff., 87, 88ff. 55 Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Lancelot Andrews and the Myth of Anglicanism’, in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp.7–12.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   57

Andrewes was abandoning the convictions of his youth and he became a critic of those who once thought him a friend.56 He continued to accept the principle of predestination, but he did so distinctively, and as early as 1588 he was taking an interest in good works; by 1590, he was describing heaven as ‘God’s pay house’ where our good works are rewarded. 57 Proceeding to his DD, Andrews preached a sermon, ad clerum, to the university and seized the opportunity to defend church tithes. In itself that was hardly controversial, but the sub-text of what Andrews was saying was that a church properly endowed would be adorned not just by a learned clergy (and here the Cambridge congregation could nod an approving head) but also by glorious and decorated buildings. This was hardly a view that would commend itself to Whitaker or Some.58 Andrewes also had his own very particular ideas about grace, which soon became all too clear as he distanced himself from his early acquaintances. He accepted, of course, the orthodox assertion that, as a result of the Fall, men and women rely upon grace, man must ‘resign all his glory to God, and so the building may begin’.59 The trouble was that Andrewes’ contemporaries went on to describe our fallen condition in tones of deep despair. It was a protestant commonplace that human nature was so vile that God must actually overthrow it in order to save us from ourselves: We are so vitiated and perverted in every part of our nature that by this great corruption we stand justly condemned and convicted before God.60 In a theological system like this, grace is an invading army battering at our defences. Andrewes could not agree. Like most Catholic theologians, he believed that grace works with God’s creation, not against it. Grace perfects nature; it does not destroy it. So, in Andrewes’ scheme of things, neither God’s creation, nor human reason needed to be seen as a handicap to the knowledge of God. Indeed, nature provides us with a light, as the Wise Man saith, ‘the soul of man is the candle of the Lord’ … howbeit this light hath caught a fall, as Mephibosheth did, and thereupon it halteth; notwithstanding, because it is of the blood royal, it is worthy to be made up.61 ‘The candle of the Lord’ and the ‘blood royal’ were striking images, and Andrewes knew it. Both were used repeatedly to stress that, even after the Fall, there remained something in nature and reason that grace could perfect. As Andrewes argued in the 1580s, in lectures later written up as The Morall Law 56

57

58 59 60 61

P. McCullough, Lancelot Andrewes: Selected Sermons and Lectures (Oxford 2005) argues that we need to reconsider our understanding of Andrews with a more critical engagement with his early work: pp.xiii, xvi, xvii. McCullough, Lancelot Andrewes, p.xvii; Tyacke, ‘Lancelot Andrews’, pp.12–19 covers the same ground very effectively. On Andrewes’ early career, see also P.A. Welsby, Lancelot Andrewes 1555–1626 (London 1958). McCullough, Lancelot Andrewes, pp.81–99, especially p.83. Lancelot Andrewes, The Morall Law Expounded (London 1642), p.191. Calvin, Institutes, II.1.8, p.251. Lancelot Andrewes, Ninety Six Sermons, 5 vols. (Oxford, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology 1841–53), V, p.319.

58   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Expounded, ‘The principles of divinity always agree with true reason: truth disagrees not with truth … reason agreeth with religion. … True reason, an helpe to faith, and faith to it.’62 Andrewes was out of step. The effects of the Fall were widely held to be far more disastrous than he allowed. Protestant commentators believed that St Paul insisted on the fundamental sinfulness of humankind: ‘Except out of the lord’s mercy there is no salvation for man, for in himself he is lost and forsaken [Romans 3:23ff.].’63 So, real disagreements distinguish Andrewes from Whitaker and Chaderton. It was partly a matter of what Andrewes said, partly a matter of what he did not say. In a period when theological works were dominated by lengthy discussions of divine providence and the nature and order of God’s decrees, Andrewes resolutely avoided the issue. There is a discussion of providence in The Morall Law, but it is a thin thing, in which Andrewes shadow-boxes with pagan philosophers and comes to the less than startling conclusion that providence exists and is both general and particular. A conversation that others would have looked for is missing. The nature and consequences of predestination were not central to Andrewes’ theology, and his preaching and pastoral concern were not focused on perseverance and assurance. Those who depended on such language could only have been dismayed by Andrewes’ enthusiasm for ‘the candle of the Lord’, his conviction that ‘God would have all men saved’. Worst of all was what he began to say publicly about perseverance and assurance. This last came in a Lenten sermon, Remember Lot’s wife, preached before the Queen on 6 March 1594. Remembering Lot’s wife, ‘She was melting water; she is congealed to salt’, Andrewes urged his congregation to persevere if they wished to avoid her fate. He did not, however, understand perseverance in the way that most of his contemporaries did as something inevitable and ordained by God. For Andrewes’ perseverance was a human virtue not a divine gift. While those around him urged the importance of the perseverance that existed because God decreed that it must be so, Andrewes described a perseverance generated in the human heart: ut specially remember we leave not our heart behind us, but that we take that with us, when we go out of Sodom; for if that stay, it will stay the feet, and writhe the eye, and neither the one nor the other will do their duty. Remember, that our heart wander not, that our heart long not. This care, if it be fervent, will bring us perseverance.64 This perseverance, he claimed, was possible only for those who abandoned ‘security’: ‘Now perseverance we shall attain, if we can possess our souls with the due care, and rid them of security. Of Lot’s wife security, as of water, was this salt here made.’65 Men like William Perkins and Robert Some were sure that the elect could rest secure. Andrewes thought the faithful were in danger. Remember Lot’s wife, one who ‘had continued so long’, could still fall. Remember Lot’s wife, one of 62 63 64 65

Andrewes, The Morall Law, p.23. Calvin, Institutes, III.3.2, p.291. Andrewes, Ninety Six Sermons, II, p.74. Andrewes, Ninety Six Sermons, II, p.72.

Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   59



the very few who f led Sodom in the company of the Angel, was not safe; and ‘Who would not fear, if one may perish in the company of Angels!’ Andrewes’ startling prose, takes a cudgel to the hope that men like Perkins had gone to such trouble to proclaim. Apparently not satisfied with his new definition of perseverance, Andrewes also demonstrated that the doctrine of assurance was actually dangerous. To drive the point home he quoted St Bernard, urging his congregation to choose fear rather than security ‘the only way to be secure in fear is to fear security’.66 The conventional consolations of the godly – perseverance and assurance – would not do for Andrewes; he turned instead to the sacraments. His sermons led there, moving easily, at Christmas, from Christ in the cradle to Christ in the Eucharist, ‘in the beasts’ crib the food of Angels’.67 His private devotions revealed a still greater reverence: O Lord, I am not fit, nor worthy that Thou shouldest come under the filthy roof of the house of my soul, because it is wholly desolate and ruinous; neither hast Thou, with me, a fit place where to lay Thy head … Even so vouchsafe to admit me also, an over-worn, miserable and out of measure sinful creature, to the receiving and communicating of the most pure, most auspicious, quickening and saving mysteries of Thy most holy Body and precious Blood.68 This was a private prayer, but his opinions were no secret. Andrewes’ theology was distinctive, and both his contemporaries and historians have found him hard to place. His membership of the celebrated bible study group, his hostility to Rome and some of his early opinions account for the rather surprising epithet ‘puritan’ sometimes applied to him.69 In truth he was no puritan. He soon came to delight in ritual and in ornament. He strongly advocated kneeling to receive communion, an opinion that Fulke had once preached down in St John’s.70 In Andrewes we get a glimpse of arguments that would soon take up more and more time and energy. He was interested in devotion and practice, he urged the importance of the sacraments, he was uneasy about the prevailing view of grace. New appointments At the close of the sixteenth century Andrewes was unusual. The Cambridge in which he lived was dominated by a confident reformed orthodoxy. The vast majority of the heads might argue about detail, but they shared a language and a hope that was rooted in their experience and buttressed by logic. They knew what they meant when they spoke of perseverance and assurance, and they took comfort. The appointments of the 1590s did little or nothing to alter their conversation or their confidence. When Richard Clayton moved from Magdalene to richer pickings at St John’s, he was replaced in 1595 by the ambitious and extravagant 66 67 68 69 70

Andrewes, Ninety SixSermons, II, p.71. Andrewes, Ninety Six Sermons, I, p.213. Lancelot Andrewes, Minor Works, ed. James Bliss (Oxford 1854), p.333. See Bauckham, ‘Dr William Fulke’, p.119. Porter, Reformation, p.121.

60   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 John Palmer, a man more interested in preferment than piety. The following year, however, there was a much more substantial appointment as James Montagu became the first Master of Sidney Sussex. Sidney was a foundation with well-established prejudices. The master and fellows were required by statute to abhor ‘popery and all heresies, superstitions and errors’.71 Montagu, a royal chaplain, was the man for the job. He has been described as one of the ‘Cambridge Calvinists’ and in 1596 proved himself a valuable ally for Chaderton and the others.72 Thanks to that ability to co-operate and the sense of a common cause, it was Montagu, and men more radically protestant than Montagu, who controlled the religious life of Cambridge. We know that there were individuals unhappy with the contemporary religious climate – Andrewes, Digby, and perhaps a handful of catholics in Caius – but there is little evidence of any real or systematic opposition to the prevailing mood. When Everard Digby stepped out of line in St John’s, he was accused of popery and of criticising ‘Calvinians’, and he was made to suffer for it. It was made very clear to him that the theology of Beza and Perkins was what passed for orthodoxy in his college. His discomfort was a warning to all those tempted to def y the heads and a theology that dominated the Cambridge schools and Cambridge pulpits. Cambridge divinity in the pulpit The vast majority of sermons went unremarked and unrecorded, but a few preachers courted and won notoriety. Most celebrated of all, perhaps, were the efforts of Cuthbert Bainbrigg and Francis Johnson, in Great St Mary’s, on 5 and 6 January 1589. Both men knew that the church still lacked a truly godly and reformed ministry and they knew whom to blame for the deficiency. Bainbrigg was convinced that the university actually persecuted real godliness. He argued that the Word of God is a fire and, ‘that the fire is put out by stopping their mouths who be the bringers thereof ’.73 In a sermon laden with the resentment of frustrated reformation he also managed to express his reservations about ceremonies and included a hefty swipe at place seekers, our ministers are not like unto Moses and Jeremy, that refused to take a charge upon them when it was offered. For they seek it and speak for it, and procure others to speak for them, and pay money for it … Francis Johnson went even further and launched an explicitly presbyterian assault on the established church. He urged the congregation to accept that government by elders ‘is prescribed and commanded by God’. He then added insult to the injury inf licted by Bainbrigg the previous day by declaring, ‘we have an Amazia amongst us who forbid Amos to preach at Bethel, and that these do not exhort to feed but stay them that would feed’.74 Johnson was a protestant of the most vigorous kind. He believed that preaching was ‘the only ordinary means appointed by God to salvation’. This then was a theology that left little room for 71 72 73 74

Edwards, Sidney Sussex, p.26. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.21. CUL CUA RGB 6.1.6. CUL CUA RGB 6.1.1, 6.1.7.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   61

the sacraments, the usual consolation of the church. He and Bainbrigg were not just urging further reform, they attacked those who impeded them. Their stridency and bad manners attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but even so little progress was made in dealing with the matter. Both offenders understood the legal system, refused the ex officio mero oath and would not deliver a copy of the offending sermons. This further act of defiance earned them a spell of imprisonment in the Tolbooth. That probably only served to stiffen their resolve and it certainly added to their dignity and status. Their continued defiance raised the stakes; this was not just an argument about a sermon any more, it was becoming a test of strength. There was only one likely outcome. Eventually, both men were required to read retractions. Bainbrigg made his in December. Johnson, however, refused to capitulate and was consequently expelled from the university.75 Few could match Bainbrigg and Johnson for determination, but many shared their concerns. The Registry Guard Books and the records of the Vice-Chancellor’s Court reveal a succession of heated exchanges over sermons. Cartwright’s inf luence and a passion for presbyterianism were evident in several of them. In 1572 Nicholas Browne of Trinity launched an assault on the ordering of deacons and priests. He not only wondered if the service used by the Church of England was lawful, he was also suspicious of those ordained under Henry VIII and Mary and suggested that ‘theis were not be admitted into the ministry without a new Callinge’.76 A few months later William Charke preached his extravagantly anti-episcopal sermon, rejecting the idea that any minister might be superior to another. In October 1573 it was the turn of the belligerent John Millen of Christ’s to take up the now familiar theme. Apparently he suggested that the ordinal was ‘a horrible confusion and contrary to the word of God’ and, in what was clearly a wide-ranging sermon, he also castigated ignorant clergy and dismissed the observance of saints’ days as ‘abominable idolatry’.77 Undeterred by the furore he had provoked, he returned to the University Church the following day and in an act of f lagrant provocation had the bell rung to summon a congregation. The Vice-Chancellor forbade him to preach, apparently as he mounted the pulpit steps. Millen, like Johnson, refused to recant and he too was eventually expelled. As Whitgift’s attack on prebyterianism gathered pace it became more and more dangerous to articulate views like these and different grievances began to be heard instead. In 1587, only a matter of months before Whitaker was to move against Everard Digby, another protest was directed against non-resident clergy by Charles Chadwick, one of the first fellows of Emmanuel. Preaching in Great St Mary’s, Chadwick declared that ‘thousands of souls were murdered by the non-residents of the university’.78 He also shared with the congregation his reservations about the intercession for ‘the whole estate of Christ’s church militant’ in The Book of Common Prayer. This prayer was originally part of the canon of the mass in the 1549 prayer book. As a consequence it was doubly offensive; it was associated with the words that had taken bread and wine and made of them 75 76 77 78

Porter, Reformation, pp.157ff. Porter, Reformation, p.141; CUL CUA RGB 6.1.39 ii. CUL CUA RGB 6.1.39 i; and 6.1:39 iii; see Porter, Reformation, pp.136–7, 141. Cooper, Annals, II, pp.450–1.

62   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the very presence of Christ and, in any event, its content still needed reform. Chadwick derided it as a ‘monk’s prayer’. The whole business seems to have done no lasting damage to him as he later became royal chaplain. Time and again the pulpit of Great St Mary’s was used by young men in a hurry who felt that there had been too much tarrying and not enough reformation. There was a range and breadth of anger. Debates about grace, assurance and perseverance were significant, but it also needs to be noticed that these preachers had things to say about the prayer book and the ordinal, about ceremonies and preaching. There was more to the religious life of the university than Calvinism, there was an abiding concern about the nature and future of reformation. So, at the close of 1587, Samson Sheffield of Christ’s appeared before the Vice-Chancellor and heads following a sermon criticising the university authorities for the way they conspired against ‘their brethren’ and pronouncing a woe on those ‘putting out lights which used to shine in this town’.79 Within months, early in 1590, Hugh Gray was labouring the same point. Gray, a fellow of Trinity, suggested that the authorities had been partial, allowing some to preach freely while calling others to account. The effect, he argued, was to impede the building of God’s temple: ‘our proceeding herein is like to the journeys of the Israelites in the wilderness which went but forty days journey in forty years’.80 It was a powerful image and it called into question the whole of the Elizabethan church. Despite so many opportunities it seemed that the Kingdom of God was hardly any nearer. Gray also voiced another grievance that was becoming more and more familiar. As the university developed its sense of vocation to train young men for the ministry of the church, criticism of the shortcomings of the existing ministry grew. In Cambridge, where it was generally assumed that God’s word could release a tide of grace across the nation, there was particular anger at the survival of clergy who could not preach. These ‘dumb dogs’, who were insufficiently learned to be granted a preaching licence, were attacked repeatedly. Gray gave them short shrift, asking what king appointed messengers only to cut off their legs before they set out. Prosecution was inevitable after such an outburst, but it was complicated by the fact that Gray was obviously deep in some personal row with Eleazer Knox of St John’s. The two men richly deserved one another. Knox, the son of John Knox, was a troublemaker apparently eager to be rid of his reformed birthright. He was an enemy of all the godly and a leading campaigner against Whitaker, whipping up rumours about the John’s presbytery.81 He sharpened his claws on Gray, who had already had the temerity to find fault with one of Knox’s sermons. Knox exhibited a damning set of articles and Gray was duly disciplined. Like Chadwick, however, Gray was not confounded and went on to greater things, becoming Gresham Professor of Divinity in 1598. Again and again the preferment offered to people like Gray shows us that vigorously protestant opinion was to be found at the heart of the ecclesiastical establishment. This sermon of Gray’s is well documented. Rather less has been said about

79 80 81

Bushell, St Mary, p.102; CUL CUA Collect Admin 6.a ‘Buckle Book’, p.517. CUL CUA RGB 6.1.39 vi; VC CT I.26, fol.56. See above, p.50.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   63

the fact that he had been prosecuted once before, in January 1587.82 On this occasion he had apparently objected to all non-scriptural citations in sermons, including references to the Church Fathers, because ‘the Word of God is that alone, whereupon the conscience is to be builded’. He had also attacked church music and the way Christmas was celebrated and had then, rather cryptically, remarked that ‘nothing is done in Cambridge but they have knowledge of it at Rome’. Gray was convinced that there was a catholic fifth column at work: ‘they do lye amongst us that they may point out and set forth as it were with the finger which of us should first go to the fire’. Finally, and inevitably, Gray turned on ‘dumb dogs’ and ‘Chemarims’ (idolatrous priests). He paraded the inadequacy of ministers who were not even worthy ‘to stand in the belfry’, and alleged that there was too little control of candidates for ordination. It is really remarkable that he survived to fight another day. In the years that followed other voices took up the cry for a better and more learned ministry. In 1597 John Rudd, a twenty-nine-year-old MA who had left both Caius and John’s for more godly company at Christ’s, took his turn against the ‘dumb dogs’. He declared that a curate ‘not being a preacher, is no minister; nor doth edif y more than a boy of eight years old may do’.83 Preaching mattered to him, and he complained about the use of ‘humane arts and profane authors’ in sermons and hinted at some dark alliance between ‘Papists’ and ‘Lutherans’. Given a chance to set the record straight, he used a second sermon to repeat the offence and was ultimately handed over to High Commission where he was finally forced to recant.84 It is clear that the reform of the ministry was a particular concern for the godly, but a loathing of ceremony and ornament was an important subsidiary theme in many of these contentious sermons. It emerges in Digby’s interest in vestments at St John’s, and in an argument about the use of the sign of the cross, which brought a Mr Gold before the Vice-Chancellor and heads in 1586.85 More significantly, William Perkins used a chapel commonplace in Christ’s, before the celebration of the eucharist, to give voice to his concern over unreformed ceremonies. The outburst was sufficiently serious to cause a complaint to be lodged with the Vice-Chancellor in January 1587.86 It was alleged that Perkins had attacked the practice of a priest administering the eucharistic bread and wine to himself. He had apparently also suggested that kneeling reception was superstitious and anti-Christian, and had criticised those who knelt facing east. Defending himself, Perkins argued that he did not think it unlawful to administer communion to oneself, but he felt that a minister would do better to receive from another and thus also benefit from ‘an approbation that he is a worthy receiver’. Similarly he did not think kneeling reception unlawful, but suggested that it was preferable to sit. His reasoning went to the heart of reformed belief: ‘because

82 83 84 85 86

Corpus Christi College Archives, Vol. Misc. Documents c.1450–1694, no.51; Cooper, Annals, II, p.429. CUL CUA RGB 6.1.24; Cooper, Annals, II, p.566. CUL MS Mm.1.35, pp.348, 350, 351, 373. CUL CUA Collect Admin. 6a ‘Buckle Book’, p.380; Bushell, St Mary’s, p.101. Corpus Christi College Archives, Misc. Documents c.1450–1694, no.51.

64   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Christ sat, the pope he kneeleth... and in things indifferent we must go as far as we can from idolatry this Mr. Calvin taught me’. Finally, he declared, I hold looking into the east or west to be indifferent and to be used accordingly. But this I marvel at, why the cross standeth still in the window and why we turn ourselves towards the end of the Chapel at the end of the first and second lesson. We are commanded to f ly every show of evil. Despite this apparently unrepentant explanation Perkins seems to have escaped further prosecution. Others were less fortunate. Fourteen years later, a man called Boardman delivered himself of some vigorous remarks concerning the organ in Great St Mary’s, suggesting that ‘in his judgement they had better to sing bawdy songs’.87 Boardman, another angry voice castigating the Church of England and its services, endured a lengthy prosecution before the then Vice-Chancellor, Robert Some. Now Some may well have been privately sympathetic to this expression of protestant sentiment. Like the other heads, however, he was publicly critical of the more radically inclined. Confronted by such challenges, the senior members of the university were well aware that they would not be permitted to shirk their responsibilities. Whatever their personal sympathies (and they probably entertained a healthy suspicion of the young), the heads had to be seen to be maintaining discipline. Thus, men like Robert Some, Humphrey Tyndall and John Jegon were to be seen prosecuting the apostles of further reformation.88 The more protestant heads were in a difficult position: they strove to promote the godly cause whenever they could, but knew that they had to conform themselves and require conformity of others when necessary. Only in anti-papal polemic and as masters in their own houses could these heads allow themselves the luxury of prejudices that had to be held in check when university discipline was at stake. Cambridge divinity and the University Press Cambridge divinity found expression not just in the pulpit but also in the press. The list of books published is short but even so, among the classical texts and biblical commentaries there were large numbers of works that urged protestantism on to a new purity. There were three, or possibly four, editions of Bastingius on the Heidelberg Catechism published between 1588 and 1595.89 Bastingius’ work included a careful discussion of the way in which Christ’s death was effectual only for the elect.90 Over the same period the names of authors like Whitaker and Andrew Willet, a man steeped in Beza and Calvin and eager to discuss assurance, also appear regularly in the list of published works, alongside those of Beza himself and the equally rigorous Zanchius. One name, however, stands out: in 1590 the Cambridge Press published William Perkins’ Armilla Aurea, translated and republished a year later as A Golden Chaine. In one form, or another, this book went through eight editions in ten years, a period that also saw the publication 87 88 89

CUL CUA VC CT I.72.23, fol.1. CUL CUA VC CT 1.26, fol.115; CUL MS Mm.1.35, p.350. R. Bowes, Catalogue of Cambridge Books (Cambridge 1894); S.C. Roberts, The Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 1921). 90 J. Bastingius, An Exposition or Commentarie (Cambridge 1589), fol.22.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   65

of a further sixteen works bearing Perkins’ name. He continued to dominate the Cambridge Press well into the seventeenth century. At the heart of Perkins’ work was a profound concern for the pastoral application of the doctrine of predestination. Here was an attempt to put a human face to a hard doctrine, but the concessions were few. This was supralapsarianism rigorously explained and defended. Here too was an insistence on limited atonement and the conviction that God’s double decree assured some of salvation but guaranteed damnation to others. Perkins pulled no punches about the nature of reprobation; it was that part of predestination whereby God, ‘according to the most free and just purpose of his will, hath determined to reject certain men unto eternal destruction, and misery, and that to the praise of his justice’.91 Perkins was the leading publicist of such views in England and his pre-eminence among the authors of the Cambridge press, and his large personal following in the town, reveal just how wide was the appeal of this theology. The divinity of the University Schools and the colleges Views preached in the University Church and printed by the University Press were also expressed in the University Schools. Information about lectures and disputations is limited, but there is evidence, at least, of the range of theological debate in Cambridge. Costello has suggested that Cambridge theology was protestant and scholastic, and that it was dominated by the debate with Rome.92 In a brief survey of the titles of some recorded disputation questions, he observed a preoccupation with grace, justification and free will, as well as arguments about the ministry, the papacy and the eucharist. This may well have been a fairly typical range of subjects, and, no doubt, the style was protestant and scholastic. The difficulty is that a disputation title does not tell us very much about what was actually said. So, Costello’s assertions need to be treated with caution. A list preserved among the Harleian Manuscripts reveals that some scholars certainly did pick a fight with Rome.93 In 1587, Whitaker, as part of the exercises for his DD, defended the propositions that the pope was Antichrist, and that papists deny every article of faith. Richard Clayton, proceeding BD in the same year, argued both that the Roman Catholic Church sweeps away the basis of salvation and that the Church of England teaches the unblemished articles of faith. Three years later, Lancelot Andrewes took his DD demonstrating both his protestant conviction and his skill as an anti-catholic polemicist, arguing that the Roman church is schismatic. This does not mean, though, that all the respondents in the Commencement House were preoccupied with refuting claims of the Roman Catholicism or with stressing the purity and decency of Protestantism. Some of the opinions paraded in the Schools had more to do with arguments within Protestantism. In 1599 William Barlow played fast and loose with Romans chapter eleven. His DD thesis asserted that the vessels of wrath cannot become vessels of glory because God’s 91 92

Perkins, Workes (1616), p.105. W.T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth Century Cambridge (Cambridge, MA 1958), p.113. 93 BL Harleian MS 7038, pp.77ff.

66   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 predestination is unchanging. Similarly, even among the questions that formed part of Costello’s survey are some that seem to have little to do with the debate with Rome, such as the proposition that God does not give grace sufficient for salvation to all. In the Schools, as elsewhere, a new protestant logic prompted a very particular kind of conversation. The same insistence on distinctive dogmatics could be seen elsewhere. Emmanuel and Sidney were, from the first, seminaries for the preciser sort. At Emmanuel, there was a weekly theological disputation for the fellowship; there were also regular expositions of Christian teaching. From 1588 the master and fellows also met for a ‘mutual conference or communication of gifts’.94 Here, what Whitaker hoped for in St John’s had become a reality. Emmanuel truly was a place where the first priority was the provision of a learned ministry and where scholarship was the servant of divinity. Like Whitaker, Chaderton could not lightly be labelled a non-conformist, but his college rapidly acquired a reputation for somewhat idiosyncratic worship and he was tolerant of much that others found unacceptable. It was said of Emmanuel, ‘they do follow a private course of public prayer, after their own fashion, both Sundays, Holy days, and work days’.95 Divine worship spelt out, in vesture and gesture, or in the absence of both, differences of opinion that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. At Emmanuel, where the chapel was reputed to be incorrectly oriented north–south, and at Sidney, where the chapel had not been consecrated, the frontiers of conformity had been reached.96 Emmanuel, founded in 1584, and Sidney Sussex, founded in 1595, were created specifically to sustain a self-consciously protestant identity. One or two of the older colleges were not far behind. In Christ’s William Perkins was made fellow in 1584, preached on reforming the eucharist in 1587 and published Armilla Aurea in 1590. His contemporaries in the college included a great cloud of godly witnesses: Andrew Willet, George Downame, Cuthbert Bainbrigg, Francis Johnson and the Baptist John Smith among the fellows; and Arthur Hildersham, John Rudd, William Ames, Samuel Ward and Paul Baynes among the junior members. In other colleges opinion was divided. Everard Digby, expelled from St John’s in 1588, could vouch for that. So too could the members of Caius. This college had a long-established reputation for recusancy and, in 1582, seven fellows produced a huge list of charges against the Master and others.97 One of the fellows, Richard Swale, was identified as a papist, on the rather less than convincing grounds that he was reluctant to buy Calvin’s Catechism or Beza’s Confessions, and because he had also failed to take appropriate action against card-playing on Sunday. These charges anticipated the language employed against Digby. Both Whitaker and Chaderton lent the rebellious fellows of Caius their support.98 It is a measure of the mood of the university and of its reverence for Calvin and Beza that such tendentious accusations were taken seriously and were becoming so common. It is clear from this catalogue of sermons, books and argument that there was 94 95

J. Morgan, Godly Learning, pp.250ff. E.S Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College (London 1904), p.35.; see also Bendall et al., Emmanuel; Collinson, Moderate Puritans, p.179. 96 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel, p.37; Bendall et al., Emmanuel, p.43; Edwards, Sidney, p.100. 97 Brooke, Caius, pp.89–90. 98 Brooke, Caius, p.92; Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.100.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   67

pressure for further reformation. The question remains whether the individuals who preached these sermons, wrote these books and disputed these points thought of themselves as a distinctive group. In much of what they did they seemed to have been prompted by personal conviction rather than by party loyalty. Occasionally, however, a crisis could stimulate some concerted activity across the university. In 1583 Whitaker, Fulke and Goad, and perhaps Chaderton too, joined the list of signatories to a letter seeking Cartwright’s help against Rome.99 In December 1589 a petition for Francis Johnson mustered 68 signatures, including 12 from St John’s and 11 from Emmanuel. Even so, it is not altogether clear that there was a godly militant tendency. Among the petitioners for Johnson was John Richardson, a man later denounced as a ‘Fat Bellied Arminian’.100 At a time when Andrewes and Chaderton met for regular study, when Cartwright was playing the moderate, and when, whatever their personal sympathies, Whitaker, Chaderton, and Goad rejected Johnson’s final appeal, it was not always easy to identif y supporters and opponents.101 Having acknowledged those reservations, it remains clear that a particular theology of grace was in the ascendant and that its champions knew it and knew one another. The remaining difficulty is that the debate about grace was not the only issue of concern. Some of the preachers who disgraced Cambridge pulpits in this period were conscious of fighting another battle, their attention being focused on the Prayer Book, on ceremonies and on the identity of the Church of England. ‘Pelagian and Popish opinions’: Samuel Harsnett The subscription crisis of 1583 and the collapse of the presbyterian movement were bitter blows for those who hoped that the English church would embrace reformation with more enthusiasm. Even so, in Cambridge there was determination and optimism to continue the fight. Within the new and rather chilling orthodoxy the godly sort in the university sustained the now familiar conversation about grace, assurance and perseverance. Of course, these assumptions had their critics, and some of them were prepared to go on to the offensive. As we have seen, Baro’s views on the freedom of the will and justif ying faith were already attracting attention in the 1570s. In 1581 another significant voice was heard. In a sermon at Paul’s Cross in that year Richard Hooker is alleged to have argued that reprobation was the consequence of God’s foreknowledge of human sin.102 Hooker was confident that he knew something of the ways of God. He was sure that God created first and elected second. In practice, he was an infralapsarian. This was hardly startling, but it was of course a belief that had relatively few friends in Cambridge. Perkins, and those who read him, had no time for a reprobation that took account of sin. The only divine foreknowledge that someone like Perkins could allow was a foreknowledge that proceeds out of the divine decree. God foreknows because he decrees, he does not decree because 99 100 101

Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.70. See below, pp.103–4. Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.71ff.; P. Lake, ‘The Dilemma of the Establishment Puritan’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29.1 (1978), pp.27ff. 102 S.J. Knox, Walter Travers (London 1962), pp.74–5.

68   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 he foreknows: ‘God hath therefore foreknown that those shall believe, whom he did foreknow would believe, because he did decree that they should believe.’ 103 Any suggestion that human achievement could effect salvation and damnation, however tentatively expressed, was intolerable. Nonetheless, what was clear to Perkins was not equally clear to everyone else. Three years after Hooker’s sermon another protest against the assumptions of men like Perkins was made when Samuel Harsnett, a young fellow of Pembroke and recent MA, made the most of his opportunity to preach at Paul’s Cross.104 Harsnett attacked the doctrines of predestination and the double decree at one of their weakest points: how can the good God choose to damn men and women before he has even created them? Harsnett’s sermon, on Ezekiel 33:11, ‘As I live (saith the Lord) I delight not in the death of the wicked,’ was a powerfully worded challenge to the idea that God was the author of sin and the architect of dam­nation. Harsnett urged his audience to believe in the goodness of God and in his desire to heal and save. The idea that God willed the destruction of individuals, was, Harsnett suggested, both unscriptural and a denial of Adam’s free will. Seizing on some of the more unpleasant consequences of double pre­destination, the preacher did his best to make that theology seem absurd. He argued that its advocates must assume that God has two wills working independently and apparently in conf lict. With one will God creates sin and chooses which individuals would be sinful, with another will he hates sin. This was, in fact, a little disingenuous. Harsnett knew perfectly well that it was a theological convention that distinctions are to be made in discussions of God’s will and that it was commonplace to distinguish God’s secret will (which only he knows) from his revealed will (which he has disclosed to us).105 The real difficulty that Harsnett had identified was that, in systems like that of Perkins, God seems to require what he then rejects. Harsnett was in an unforgiving mood and hammered home his point, urging that God gets no glory from killing f lies and that, rather than wishing the death of any sinner, God died himself to save sinners. He then provided a useful précis of his argument: 1. God’s absolute will is not the cause of Reprobation: but sin. 2. No man is of absolute necessity the child of Hell, so as by God’s Grace, he may not avoid it. 3. God simply willeth and wisheth every living soul to be saved, and to come to the Kingdom of Heaven. 4. God sent his Son to save every soul and to bring it to the Kingdom of Heaven. 5. God’s Son offereth Grace effectually to save every one, and to direct him to the Kingdom of Heaven.

103

William Perkins, ‘A Christian and Plain Treatise of the Manner and Order of Predestination’, in Workes (London 1617), II, p.607. 104 S. Harsnett, ‘A Fourth sermon’, appended to R. Stuart, Three Sermons (London 1656); although the sermon is conventionally dated to 1584 it seems increasingly likely that it was actually preached in 1594: see A. Milton, ‘Licensing, Censorship and Religious Orthodoxy in Early Stuart England’, Historical Journal 41 (1998), p.643 n.64. 105 For example, Calvin, Institutes, p.923.



Cambridge and the Boundaries of Conformity   69 6. The neglect and contempt of his Grace, is the cause why every one doth not come to Heaven; and not any privative Decree, Counsel or determination of God.106

Harsnett knew that he was treading dangerous ground and advised his listeners to choose their route with care: let us take heed and beware, that we neither (with the Papists) rely upon our own free will: nor (with the Pelagian) upon our Nature: nor (with the Puritan) Curse God and die, laying the burthen of our sins on his shoulders, and the guilt of them at his everlasting doors.107 This was a blistering attack on the double decree and the notion of limited atonement, and it was something new. Harsnett seemed to make no attempt to accommodate his views within the contemporary theological scene. He did not side with, or hide behind, other authors. He could quite easily have reconciled his views with a discussion of predestination that most theologians, both catholic and reformed, would have regarded as orthodox. He preferred however, to be provoking, a fact he acknowledged, casting himself as a David struggling against an opinion ‘grown high and monstrous like Goliath’.108 Inevitably, Harsnett fell foul of ecclesiastical authority and was apparently commanded by Whitgift not to preach on the subject again.109 This did not, however, completely cramp his style. In 1591, he defended two theses for his BD. The first was very familiar: ‘No-one is, of necessity, damned’. The second was an attack on the doctrine of assurance.110 It seems he relished the fray. He was, by his own admission, a distinctive voice. There were, of course, other critics of prevailing opinion, but they too were isolated. One example was the sometime Spanish monk, Antonio Corro, who struggled to convince the perturbed Oxford authorities of his orthodoxy.111 They were wise to be cautious. Corro’s views on providence, predestination and justification by faith alone, as published in 1569 in Tableau de l’oeuvre de Dieu, amounted to rather more than an attack on prevailing assumptions about assurance and perseverance. Not only did Corro discuss faith before he discussed predestination he also seemed to have a slightly unguarded enthusiasm for good works. He lacked Harsnett’s canny wariness of being accused of popery and was thought by some to cross right over into heresy. The implication that our efforts can save us could be said to have a Pelagian air. Corro’s voice was his own and sounded foreign in more ways than one. However, in Harsnett, in Baro and in Andrewes we catch a glimpse of a divinity at odds with the prevailing consensus. It was not just a different opinion; it sprang out of a different religious experience, expressed a different kind of hope and rested on different authorities. To its supporters it was a glimpse of a Kingdom in which God loved sinners and where men and 106 107 108 109 110 111

Harsnett, ‘Fourth sermon’, pp.148f. Harsnett, ‘Fourth sermon’, p.165. Harsnett, ‘Fourth sermon’, p.134. DNB; P. Lake, ‘Calvinism and the English Church’, Past and Present 114 (February 1987), p.35. See Bauckham, ‘Dr William Fulke’, p.127. C.M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford 1983), pp.110–25; Tyacke, Anti­Calvinists, pp.58ff.

70   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 women were not called to despise their own humanity. To its critics it was the old, discredited piety of Rome, in which God was not king in his own creation. It was these critics who controlled the debate. As yet the other piety barely dared speak its name.

Chapter Three

BARRETT, BARO AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH

‘Pelagian and Popish opinions’: William Barrett While those who wished for further reform did not have everything their own way, Cambridge was unquestionably in the grip of a self-consciously godly group. This group shared a commitment to a reformed orthodoxy that was tolerant of some variety of expression and they all hated Rome and all her works. They longed for a greater purity of faith and looked to continental reformed theologians like Calvin, Beza and Zanchius for guidance. Whatever their differences of opinion they fixed their attention on the doctrines of assurance and perseverance. Theology was not just an academic discipline for them, it was the study of how we might be saved, and the first concern of the faithful. It mattered to them fundamentally to know their place in God’s scheme of things and they craved certainty. A man like Lancelot Andrewes, who suggested a different stress and a different practice, was unusual and isolated. Cambridge knew what orthodoxy was and the arbiters of opinion were confident. Then, on 29 April 1595, William Barrett, the chaplain of Caius, put the cat among the pigeons. Barrett’s fame rests on a sermon preached in Great St Mary’s. The sermon was an attack on the doctrine of assurance. Assurance teaches that God’s decrees are sure and transparent. If God elects you to salvation it is no secret, you can know that you are elect and rejoice. Barrett argued that no one could be certain of ‘the time to come’ and that salvation and reprobation rested not upon solid and secure divine decrees but on the more fickle foundations of human holiness or sinfulness, sin being ‘the true, proper and first cause of reprobation’. The idea that the elect could be confident of their status was characterised by Barrett as both proud and impious. He pressed the point, recognising that if no one could be certain of their election, no one could be sure that their sins were forgiven. Forgiveness, he argued, was an article of faith, but not something ‘belonging to this man nor to that man’. There was no secure and superior faith. Thus far the preacher had merely provided a vigorous critique of the prevailing theological conversation. Rashly, Barrett then heaped insult on injury by accusing  

Porter, Reformation, pp.344ff.; Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.201ff.; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.29ff. Barrett’s retraction gives a summary of the sermon: Fuller, Cambridge, pp.209–10.

71

72   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Calvin of arrogance and by attacking Peter Martyr, Beza, Zanchius, Junius and others, describing them as ‘Calvinists’. This was more than an objection that had been raised (and dismissed) before. Barrett was not simply arguing a point of doctrine, he was tugging at the foundations and authority on which that doctrine was laid. By naming Calvin with Beza and Zanchius he was deliberately confusing the issue and suggesting the church had lost its way thanks to the interference of a mistaken, malign and foreign ‘Calvinist’ party. The preacher meant to be offensive, but he was probably less confident than he sounded. It has been suggested that the ideas that he challenged in his sermon were already in retreat. Barrett, though, might be forgiven for not being aware of this fact. The ‘Calvinists’ he attacked were clearly the dominant theological inf luence. It was Barrett who was on the defensive. Only months before this outburst William Whitaker had used a sermon to explore the cause and extent of election, and had set out yet again the implications of the double decree. Those who plunge into detailed discussion of predestination often have difficulty explaining why God creates individuals only to destroy them (the weakness that Harsnett had probed). One solution to this dilemma distinguished between God’s antecedent will, by which he wished the salvation of all and his consequent will, by which, recognising human sinfulness and disobedience, he decreed the damnation of some (a distinction that had irritated Samuel Harsnett). Although this approach resolves some of the difficulties that tender consciences feel, Whitaker had no time for such sophistry. He thought it made God wait for us to make up our minds, while we decide the fate of his creation. Worse still, such an approach has God thinking first one thing and then another, as though he might suffer second thoughts. Whitaker dismissed it all as Pelagian and popish. He asserted instead that the number of the predestined was fixed and that the cause of their fate was nothing more than the will and good pleasure of God. He also made it clear that God can elect to salvation or reprobation as he chooses, without injustice; that salvation is impossible without divine assistance, and that grace is not given to all, but that God does rescue some from the wrath and destruction that is our common inheritance. The only reason for the decrees, Whitaker argued, is because God wishes it so. Foreknowledge plays no part in the process and neither does the Fall. God chooses because he chooses. Whitaker, one of Dr Lake’s ‘moderate puritans’, was trespassing in the mind of God and was revealing what protestant steel there was within the moderate puritan tradition. Barrett protested, but he knew the odds were stacked against him. The ‘Calvinists’ whom Barrett attacked were not on the defensive; Whitaker’s assault on ‘Pelagian and popish opinion’ speaks of a different and much more aggressive mood. Whitaker and his friends were, in fact, in good spirits and must have been confident of their ability to deal with Barrett. Their strength, and the dominance of the divinity they defended, was perhaps best illustrated by the nature of the debate about the offending sermon. Barrett’s argument was fundamentally a theological one. Inevitably, there was  

Porter, Reformation, pp.287, 378. Praelectio habita Februarii 27 Anno. Dom. 1594/5, in William Whitaker, Praelectiones … de conciliis, ed. J. Allenson (Cambridge 1600). For examples of preachers who shared Whitaker’s assumptions, see Lake, ‘Calvinism and the English Church’, pp.35ff.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   73

a theological weakness in his argument, precisely the theological weakness that had just exercised Whitaker. If, as Barrett claimed, sin is the cause of reprobation, is it not then the reprobate, rather than God, who have the initiative? Surely their sin, not God’s justice, decides their fate? Barrett’s essential argument and basic difficulty were, however, left largely undiscussed. In the controversy that followed, it was Barrett’s manner and the fact of his having spoken against the ‘Calvinists’ that was challenged, rather than the nature of his criticisms of them. There could be no clearer demonstration of the dominance of the opinions Barrett tried to deride than that they did not merely condemn him, but could also regulate the agenda for religious debate. Barrett’s attempt to stem the tide was futile; he was swept away. He did not change the conversation, he only succeeded in provoking Cambridge theologians into defining doctrines they had long considered intolerably vague. Barrett faced three hearings in the Consistory Court, before the Vice-­Chancellor, John Duport, Barwell, Jegon, Chaderton, Goad, Clayton, Preston, Tyndall and Whitaker. The offending preacher was forced to return to Great St Mary’s to read a retraction drafted by the deeply unsympathetic Robert Some. Barrett complied, but it was not enough. Fifty-six of his opponents wanted blood, and complained, in a petition to Archbishop Whitgift, that Barrett was not properly penitent. Under intense pressure and apparently fearing expulsion, Barrett also turned to Whitgift, presenting himself as the victim of a puritan plot. Tempers and the stakes were rising, but now there was a need for greater caution. The heads might have relished a fight with Barrett, but they had no desire to antagonise Whitgift and, accordingly, they wrote to the Archbishop, on 12 June 1595, justif ying their actions and denouncing Barrett’s sermon, ‘so strongly savouring of the leaven of popery and contrary to the doctrine of the nature and quality and condition of faith set forth in the Article of Religion and Homilies. …’ Convinced that Barrett’s theological error was so self-evident and scandalous that it merited no further discussion, the heads emphasised his criticisms of Calvin and argued that his theological style was that of ‘the Tridentine Council and other popish writers’. This was, as far as they were concerned the real offence and they expected the Archbishop to agree with them. If Barrett was seeking to present the heads as extreme and partisan protestants, they sought to describe him as a romaniser. Here then was an argument about the identity of the church. While Barrett described divisions within the reformed church, the heads could admit of none. The only alternative they knew to their own theological outlook was the theology of Rome. To be fair to the heads, they had a point. Barrett did, in the end, become a Roman Catholic, and it is possible that the heads were, as they claimed, already worried by the company he kept. It is striking, though, that the Cambridge heads were so sure and so confident that they assumed that their stark insistence on the divine decrees was the agreed teaching of the Church of England. Barrett’s sermon had now become a very serious matter indeed, and both   

CUL CUA RGB 6.1.28; Porter, Reformation, pp.345ff. Quoted in Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.207. Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.207–8.

74   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Whitgift and Burghley were party to the arguments that followed. As was so often the case, much of the discussion was about issues of university privilege and legal jurisdiction. The heads, however, had badly misjudged a man they thought they knew well. Whitgift was deeply unhappy about what he took to be an excessive reverence for Calvin and other foreign divines in Cambridge. He pointed out that Calvin was responsible for a ‘badd and unchristian’ censure of Henry VIII, and that he and others had been critics of the English church. If then, someone took Calvin to task, Whitgift declared I knowe noe Article of religion agaynst it, much lesse doe I knowe any cause whye men shuld be so violentlye dealt with all for that, ore termed ungodlye, popishe, Impudent: for the doctrine of the Church of England doth in noe respect depend upon them. The doctrine of the Church of England was not perhaps quite as clear as the heads had assumed. In truth, the Archbishop was enraged more by the presumption of the heads than by their opinions. Whitgift stood on his dignity and only mellowed when the heads at last accepted that the matter was rightly one for him. Having won their recognition, he focused more clearly on Barrett and his enthusiasm for the man then rapidly dwindled. The debate about Calvin and Beza aside, Barrett was the angry advocate of some unfashionable views and Whitgift did not take to him. In his examination of Barrett and in his determination to extract a second retraction he showed his sympathies were now with the heads. The heads had assumed an easy and confident doctrinal consensus existed. In the course of this unhappy affair, however, they discovered that there were strains and divisions within the protestant establishment. In July, Robert Some, stigmatised by Barrett as the evil genius behind the campaign against him, had showed his hand with a sermon designed to prove that faith cannot fail and was gently warned off by the Archbishop. Subtlety, though, was wasted on Some, who proceeded to preach another sermon. This time he attacked ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The Master of Peterhouse must have had them on the edge of their seats. His sermon included a staggeringly inept and abrasive reference to the Jews who sat in judgment over the apostles and attempted to silence the preaching of the gospel, ‘Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander’.10 His audience knew what that meant: he was speaking about John Whitgift and the way he had used his authority. In a sense, it was a storm in a teacup, quickly forgotten, once the heads assured Whitgift, somewhat implausibly, that he had misunderstood Some and that no offence had been intended. At another level, though, it was yet one more nail in the coffin of religious consensus. Some’s attack on the Archbishop was a badly misjudged expression of a frustration and resentment that he had in common with many others. In the lengthy arguments about rights of jurisdiction and university privilege that so dominated the correspondence between Cambridge and Lambeth there was far more than a legal principle at stake. What was at issue was the question of who was to decide on   10

Trinity College, MS B/14/9, p.4 (19 July 1595). Trinity College MS B/14/9, pp.75–6; Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.218. Acts 4:6 (my italics); Trinity College MS B/14/9, p.31; Strype, Whitgift, pp.253–4; Porter, Reformation, p.357.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   75

the nature and doctrine of the church, and on what grounds any definition was to be made. Whitgift was clearly well aware of the significance of the argument, and it was his refusal to give ground that so riled the Master of Peterhouse. The heads were equally sensitive to what was at stake and observed, in a careful letter to Whitgift, that: yt seemethe unto us the principall occasion of your Gr. myslyke of us, ys, in that wee should take uppon us to determine matters of Religion doubtfull & questionable, & what in suche cases is agreeable to the Doctrine of the Church of England and what is not …11 This, they claimed, was not at all their intention, they were seeking only to, signifie our care; and to testifie our owne opynions, for the defence and preservacion of that truth of doctrine in some substantiall poynts which hath been allwayes in our memoryes, both here and elswhere taught professed and contynued; and never openlye impugned amongst us, but by some personns of late. In fact, some of the heads were clearly determined to prove Barrett heterodox, and if it was necessary to embellish definitions of orthodoxy to achieve this effect then that was a step that they were more than ready to take. Such definitions would, after all, lead the church precisely in the direction that Robert Some and his friends wished to see it go. The heads were well aware that in censuring Barrett they were trespassers. These were theological judgments beyond the scope of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The heads admitted as much in claiming that they defended doctrine ‘always in our memories’, the point being they could find this teaching nowhere else. Whitaker was rather more frank in a private letter to the Archbishop, For the points of doctrine, we are fully persuaded that Mr. Barrett hath taught untruth, if not against the Articles, yet against the religion of our Church, publicly received, and always held in her Majesty’s reign, and maintained in all sermons, disputations and lectures.12 The lack of systematic theological definition within the church grieved men like Whitaker and Some, and it was something that they were anxious to correct. They knew, however, that they were well beyond the limits of their jurisdiction, and Whitaker, at least, was cautious. His letter to Whitgift contains arguments that cannot have come entirely easily to this doyen of anti-papal polemic, That true justif ying faith cannot be utterly lost, whosoever hath once been endued therewith by the gift of God, is proved by the Scriptures, plentifully taught of the Fathers, and allowed by all Schoolmen and Popish writers.13 Whitaker’s anxiety to demonstrate the orthodoxy, and even catholicity, of his approach is startling. It was also implausible. Catholic and reformed writers were 11

Trinity College MS B/14/9, p.30 (16 July 1595); the letter was signed by Duport (the Vice­Chancellor), Goad, Some, Tyndall, Barwell and Chaderton. 12 Strype, Whitgift, IV, p.338. 13 Strype, Whitgift, IV, p.339.

76   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in much more agreement about predestination than is usually recognised, but few catholics would follow Whitaker in claiming that justif ying faith cannot be lost. Reformed theologians were marked out by their insistence on the ‘golden chain’, which offered an unbreakable link between justification and final salvation articulated in assurance and final perseverance. The extravagance of Whitaker’s language is a measure of how seriously he felt the need of further theological definition within the English church. This was an argument about doctrinal definition, and who should make it. It was also an argument about method. Barrett’s assault on ‘Calvinists’ and Whitgift’s own refusal to acknowledge the authority of ‘foreign divines’ was symptomatic of a concern about the way theology was being done in Cambridge. In a church where doctrine is defined only by the ancient creeds, the blunt assertions made by the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the reading of scripture there will always be room for theological manoeuvre. The Church of England has consequently always lived with a debate about its identity and beliefs. So long as there is some kind of agreement about first principles and about theological method this debate can be fairly fruitful. When the agreement fails, however, the debate is more dangerous.14 This is what happened in the latter part of the sixteenth century. A concerted attempt to incorporate the insights of the second generation of European protestantism overturned the fragile consensus. English theologians soon discovered that their assumptions were more various than they cared to admit. As the conversation collapsed so it became more and more important to know who could speak authoritatively and finally. It was soon uncomfortably clear that everyone was looking in different directions for guidance. It is unlikely that William Barrett was aware of these wider issues. He was arguing a particular point and was probably already finding the idea of reformation unacceptable. Whitgift, however, perceived the scale of the issues a little more clearly. He undoubtedly saw something dangerous in the heads’ response to Barrett. He was well aware that the heads were eager for doctrinal change. Lurking behind their protestations of concern were new assumptions about the nature of the church and the conviction that an appeal to a short list of Genevan saints should become the acid test of orthodoxy. Whitgift had got himself into a difficult position. Doctrinally, he was closer to Whitaker than his early correspondence with the heads implied. Nonetheless, determined to defend his own authority and anxious about the way theology was being done in Cambridge, the Archbishop found himself at odds with men and with opinions that he had once favoured. Dr Tyacke has drawn attention to the rigidity of Whitgift’s own views about predestination. The Archbishop cited Beza with approval, and, in the mid-1580s, he had personally licensed Rogers’ commentary on the ThirtyNine Articles. This was a book that asserted, Wander then do they from the truth which think: That the very elect, totally and finally, may fall from grace, and be damned. That the regenerate may fall from the grace of God … 14

P. Avis, ‘What is “Anglicanism”?’, in The Study of Anglicanism, ed. S, Sykes and J. Booty (London 1988), pp.405ff.; S. Sykes, The Integrity of Anglicanism (Oxford 1978), pp.36ff.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   77 That the number of those which be predestinate may both increase and be diminished: so thought the Pelagians … Errors and adversaries unto this truth First, the Papists, who teach that none are to think or persuade themselves that they are of the number of the predestinate unto salvation, but to be ever doubtful thereof.15

If Whitgift approved this defence of perseverance and assurance it was hardly surprising that he finally sided with the heads on the specific points of doctrine at issue. The real crisis was still hardly apparent. ‘Pelagian and Popish opinions’: Peter Baro It is unclear whether Barrett ever read the second recantation required by Whitaker. Defeated, he was no longer a very significant figure and his movements are not well recorded.16 The affair, however, was far from over. In Cambridge few could tolerate uncertainty about Christian hope. Some of them saw a chance for a new definition, a definition that would unchurch the opinions of men like Barrett. Whitaker soon persuaded Archbishop Whitgift, who had disliked Barrett and the confusion he had caused, that there was urgent need to clarify the teaching of the church. As a consequence the Archbishop and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners approved the Lambeth Articles on 20 November 1595. Again, there is a difficulty about defining Whitgift’s role. In addition to the Articles finally approved by the commissioners, we also possess the draft that Whitaker had composed. There have been arguments ever since about the significance of the changes that were made to that draft.17 Porter has argued that the changes the Archbishop made to Whitaker’s first attempt at the Articles were theologically significant. He tells us that Whitgift slipped out of the straitjacket that the ‘Calvinists’ had prepared for him, replacing their language with the doctrinal purity of the New Testament and making the original draft ‘less uncompromising and more scriptural’. Peter White agrees and thinks: ‘the stings had been withdrawn in the revision process’. Both Tyacke and Lake, however, are convinced that the Lambeth Articles remained fundamentally ‘Calvinist’. They suggest that Whitgift’s tinkering with the draft was an attempt only to demonstrate his authority and had no real theological significance. 18 This is a complex argument that demands some close textual study.19 One thing is clear, though, and that is that describing the Articles as more or less ‘Calvinist’ tells us nothing, ‘Calvinism’ is a term tolerant of too many meanings to be helpful. The arguments in Cambridge, which prompted the Articles, concerned the doctrine of assurance. The heads wanted to promote that doctrine and, through 15 16 17 18 19

Thomas Rogers, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, ed. J.J.S. Perowne (Oxford, Parker Society 1854), pp.147,150–1; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.31–2. Porter, Reformation, p.363. For the two texts, see Porter, Reformation, pp.365–6, 371. Porter, Reformation, pp.367–71; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.31; Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp. 224–6; White, Predestination, p.110. I am deeply grateful to Sean Hughes for guidance through the theological arguments here.

78   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Whitaker’s draft I God from eternity has predestined some men to life, and reprobated some to death.

The Lambeth Articles I God from eternity has predestined some men to life, and reprobated some to death.

II The efficient cause of predestination is not the foreseeing of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of anything innate in the person of the predestined, but only the absolute and simple will of God.

II The moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not the foreseeing of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works or of anything innate in the person of the predestined, but only the will of the good pleasure of God.

III There is a determined and certain number of predestined, which cannot be increased or diminished.

III There is a determined and certain number of predestined, which cannot be increased or diminished.

IV Those not predestined to salvation are inevitably condemned on account of their sins.

IV Those not predestined to salvation are inevitably condemned on account of their sins.

V A true, lively and justif ying faith, and the sanctif ying Spirit of God, is not lost, nor does it pass away either totally or finally in those who have once been partakers of it.

V A true, lively and justif ying faith, and the sanctif ying Spirit of God, is not lost, nor does it pass away either totally or finally in the elect.

VI The truly faithful man – that is, one endowed with justif ying faith – is sure by certainty of faith of the remission his sins and his eternal salvation through Christ.

VI The truly faithful man – that is, one endowed with justifying faith – is sure by full assurance of faith of the remission his sins and his eternal salvation through Christ.

VII Grace sufficient to salvation is not granted, is not made common, is not ceded to all human beings, by which they might be saved, if they wish.

VII Saving grace is not granted, is not made common, is not ceded to all human beings, by which they might be saved, if they wish.

VIII No one can come to Christ unless it be granted to him, and unless the Father draws him: and all men are not drawn by the Father to come to the Son.

VIII No one can come to Christ unless it be granted to him, and unless the Father draws him: and all men are not drawn by the Father to come to the Son.

IX It is not in the will or the power of each and every man to be saved.

IX It is not in the will or the power of each and every man to be saved.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   79

the Lambeth Articles, they managed to elevate it into dogma. Certainly Whitgift engaged them on the point and altered the language of Article VI. Indeed his redrafting is significant. Replacing certainty of faith with full assurance of faith, he had opted to use biblical language and implied that the assurance faith gives to should suffice and that we should not look for certainty.20 Even so he still gave the doctrine of assurance a confessional status it had not had before. So he stood firmly with the heads and not with Barrett. One of Whitgift’s interventions was, however, more significant. Theologians in Cambridge were largely agreed about assurance, as Barrett found to his cost. There was significantly less agreement about the order of the divine decrees. Cambridge contained both supralapsarians and infralapsarians. Whitaker’s draft of the Articles cleverly ducked this debate; he made no mention of the order of the decrees. Even so, his draft came much closer to supralapsarianism than Whitgift was prepared to allow. Supralapsarians always stressed the double decree: God elected some to glory, condemned others to damnation. Infralapsarians, concentrating on a God who rescues some of fallen humanity, tend to speak only of single predestination: God elects to glory, the reprobate are passed over. Article II, which Whitgift altered so that it spoke of ‘predestination to life’, puts the stress much more firmly on single predestination. Whitgift’s contribution, then, did moderate the rigour of Whitaker’s draft, but by throwing his weight behind the revised Article his overall contribution was to give the Church of England a sharp nudge in the direction of reformed orthodox opinion. This was a theology that had not found this sort of systematic and official expression before. The Lambeth Articles resolved only part of the confusion that Barrett had unmasked. Assurance and final perseverance were now articles of faith and, in Cambridge, men like Robert Some and Laurence Chaderton must have rejoiced. This was the fundamentally reformed theology that told the faithful that they could know themselves justified and be certain of a salvation that could not be taken away. Barrett, with most of the catholic tradition behind him, had argued that we cannot know these things. He believed that we can never be sure that the grace at work in us is grace sufficient to salvation, a grace that cannot be lost. His arguments had been dismissed. Yet for all the confidence of the Lambeth Articles there were still uncertainties. There were arguments about the order of the decrees, and deeper and more significant arguments about whether or not theologians could really know the mind of God so well. In 1595 few, if any, realised this abiding difficulty. Most of the heads welcomed the Lambeth Articles. It appeared that a new weapon had been forged for those fighting the good fight for further reformation. So, on 13 December 1595, a number of the heads wrote to the Archbishop thanking him for all his efforts ‘in bringing the controversies to so good and peacable an end’ and expressing their commitment to the Articles.21 ‘So good and peaceable an end’ was overstating the case. Lord Burleigh had already written to Whitgift, on 5 December, telling him that the Queen objected to the Articles. Whitgift had exceeded his authority in assuming that he could make this kind of statement and, in any event, ­Elizabeth 20 21

Hebrews 10:22; Porter, Reformation, pp.370–1. Quoted in Strype, Whitgift, II, p.283.

80   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 did not want a matter so ‘tender and dangerous’ discussed. She ordered the Articles suspended, and consequently in England they never acquired the confessional status that Whitaker, at least, had certainly intended.22 One of the heads, Lancelot Andrewes, who was also one of Whitgift’s chaplains, must have been pleased. He was known to have some sympathy for Barrett’s attitude to security. Asked for his judgement by Whitgift, he retreated into a careful piety, claiming that predestination was too great a mystery to argue over. Nonetheless, he hinted that security was something we cannot have in relation to our salvation and that faith, sin and the human will all play their part in our progress towards salvation or damnation.23 Andrewes might have been pleased, but many of his contemporaries were not. They still had a point to prove and might have turned on Andrews himself had not an altogether easier and more attractive target presented itself. Peter Baro was already suspected of being the eminence grise behind Barrett. It was with him that the next battle was to be fought. Roger Goad, now the Vice-Chancellor, seized on the propositions agreed by the Archbishop and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and decided to treat the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity to a very uncomfortable viva as he required him to read them over.24 Goad was living up to his name and he got the reaction he sought. Baro objected to the Articles and had to see the Archbishop twice to explain himself. Brief ly everyone seemed satisfied, but, on 12 January 1596, Baro preached in Great St Mary’s and once more the feathers f lew. The Frenchman had two basic objections to the theology of the Lambeth Articles. He was convinced that they made God the author of evil and also made the work of Christ redundant. It seemed to him that theologians, who should have been preaching of Christ crucified, were now claiming that salvation turned on the eternal decrees of God and not on events in Gethsemane or on Golgotha. The story of salvation and damnation had ceased to be a story at all, it had become two concepts in the unsearchable will of God. Baro felt strongly. He rejected the idea that Christ’s death was of secondary significance and also attacked the idea that he died only for the elect. Essentially, Baro’s own position was that God has two wills. By his primary, or antecedent, will God creates us all for eternal life and, to the same end, Christ died for all. However, by his consequent will God condemns the individuals who have rejected the grace offered to them. Baro could muster both catholic and reformed witnesses for his case, but in Cambridge it was deeply unpopular. No supralapsarian could agree of course, but even many less rigorous theologians worried that Baro made God a spectator in his own drama, waiting to see who would condemn themselves. Baro was an isolated voice. If there was a doctrinal rearguard action in Cambridge, as Porter has suggested, this was it. Nonetheless, the Lady Margaret Professor believed passionately that he was fighting for the freedom to believe what the Church of England had once allowed. Writing to Whitgift, he argued that the Lambeth Articles were being used to 22 23 24

Porter, Reformation, pp.374–5. Andrewes, Works, VI, pp.295ff. Porter, Reformation, pp.378–9.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   81

prohibit theological statements that were not only orthodox, but were actually required by the Articles of Religion, and appealed to Bishop Hooper for support.25 Writing to his friend Hemmingsen, Baro urged the Danish theologian to continue his work of defending ‘the opinion of Master Philip [Melanchthon] on predestination’, and complained, In this country we have hitherto been permitted to hold the same sentiments as yours on grace; but we are now scarcely allowed publicly to teach our own opinions on that subject, much less to publish them.26 Baro enclosed in this letter a manuscript copy of his Summa trium de praedestinatione sententiarum, which was not to be published until 1613.27 This pamphlet analysed three separate traditions of teaching within the reformed church. Not surprisingly, he distinguished supralapsarians, among whom he identified Calvin, Beza and the mature Augustine, from infralapsarians like Zanchius, Bellarmine and Augustine in mid-career. His third group included Melanchthon, Hemmingius and the early Augustine, and this was, of course, where he placed himself. These were theologians who believed that: God has predestined such as he from all eternity foreknew would believe on Christ (who is the only way of life eternal), that they might be made conformable to him in glory. But he hath likewise from all eternity reprobated all rebels, and such as contumaciously continue in sin, as persons unfit for his kingdom.28 This assertion of the role of God’s foreknowledge of human behaviour was characteristic of Baro’s work, and it was the cornerstone of his attempt to construct a theology in which the will of God was immutable, but human will was not so constrained.29 The Summa also gave Baro an opportunity to show that the work of Christ was central, and it contained an explanation of his distinction between God’s ‘antecedent’ and ‘consequent’ wills. Baro was a cleverer, and more dangerous, opponent than William Barrett. The heads had hoped to use the Lambeth Articles to condemn him, but found, to their consternation, that their new weapon was virtually useless. With both Lord Burghley and the Queen deeply unhappy about the Articles, Whitgift was in no position to enforce them, and Baro escaped condemnation. Whitgift and the heads were in a weaker position than they had realised, and the Frenchman had exploited that weakness. Perhaps unwittingly, Baro had effectively consigned the Lambeth Articles to a role of permanent impotence in England. In his sermons, and in his written opinions, he had also demonstrated that any such attempt at piecemeal doctrinal definition was doomed to failure. After a generation of theological speculation it was simply not possible to introduce a note of precision without unchurching opinion that had been allowed to become respectable. Baro made the point starkly and brilliantly by contrasting the language of the Lambeth 25 26 27 28 29

Trinity College MS B/14/9, pp.124–5. Quoted in J. Arminius, Works of Arminius, 3 vols., ed. J. Nichols (London 1825), I, p.92. There is a translation of the Summa in Nichols, Works of Arminius, I, pp.92–100. Works of Arminius, I, p.96. See also Baro, Speciall Treatise.

82   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Articles with his reading of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The new teaching of the church, he argued, was in conf lict with old and agreed orthodoxy. As the argument gathered pace he repeatedly and effusively declared that he knew Whitgift had never intended any such conf lict. It was a wily, if presumptuous, Frenchman who reminded the Archbishop how theology was done in England. Not surprisingly, Whitgift was less than delighted with Baro’s efforts. When his tenure of the Lady Margaret chair expired, in 1596, the Professor was forced to recognise that his re-election and even his continued presence in Cambridge were not to be taken for granted. ‘ “Fugio” saith he, “ne fugarer”, I f ly for fear to be driven away.’30 In the event the chair went, in December 1596, to Thomas Playfere, a man of decidedly different views.31 ‘Pelagian and Popish opinions’: John Overall By the time of Playfere’s appointment to the Lady Margaret chair, the Regius Professorship, left vacant by the death of Whitaker, had been given to John Overall. Overall had been an undergraduate at St John’s when John Still was Master. When Still left, in 1577, to become Master of Trinity, Overall went with him. His loyalty and his scholarship were rewarded with a fellowship at his new college in 1581. As a consequence of following John Still to Trinity the new Regius Professor had not been shaped by the godly assumptions of the college to which he had first been sent. It showed. By January 1596 his repeated insistence that Christ died for all had provoked William Perkins to attack him from the pulpit. Overall then further wounded tender consciences by declaring his sympathy for Peter Baro. This was not the way to win friends, and as early as December 1595 the Archbishop was inclined to think Overall was ‘something factious’.32 He was probably right, as Overall clearly enjoyed a fight. He could not afford, however, to fight the Archbishop and obviously set about improving the relationship. By March 1598 he had won Whitgift’s approval and put it to good use. The mastership of St Catharine’s had fallen vacant. The three senior fellows had voted for Overall, the three juniors for Dr Simon Robson. The Vice-Chancellor, John Jegon, was then called in. He took advice from some of the other heads and declared for Robson. The new Master of St Catharine’s lasted only a week. Whitgift and the Queen supported Overall’s claim and he got the job.33 There was no indication of a doctrinal element in this contest, but Overall’s opinions were still under suspicion. The crisis came a year later. Complaints about the Regius Professor’s teaching were made to Jegon, who was once more the Vice-Chancellor. Jegon appointed a commission of inquiry and chose Chaderton and Goad for the task. Overall was being thrown to the lions. At issue was the question of whether or not a Christian could gain and then lose justif ying faith. The vast majority of reformed theologians were quite clear that justif ying faith could not be lost. The 30 31 32 33

Fuller, Cambridge, p.289. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.35; HMC Marquis of Salisbury, X, pp.210–11. Strype, Whitgift, II, pp.305, 317–18. Jegon consulted Tyndall, Neville, Barwell, Duport, Clayton, Byng, Legge, Chaderton and Montagu. Porter, ‘St Catharine’s’, p.92; the election took a rather alarming turn: see Morgan, History of the University, p.361.

Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   83



elect were given saving faith and they could rely upon it. That assumption, after all, was the rock on which all reassurance rested. The elect, properly conscious of the horrors of being reprobate, could search their souls and take comfort; they could be assured of their election and perseverance. Overall was not so sure. There were two difficulties. The elect, he thought, might blunder into some dreadful sin and if they did they must repent. It was a fair point. Assurance might be one mark of those destined for glory, but repentance is definitely another. Overall suggested that the elect might compromise themselves and forfeit their justif ying faith until they repented and reclaimed the promise. Chaderton and Goad found that hard to swallow. Worse was to follow. It gradually became clear that Overall believed that some human beings were given justif ying faith without ever being numbered among the elect. The point was a conventional one in Catholic circles. God decrees to save the world and sends his Son for all of us. We are all of us given grace. That grace, however, is sufficient only to give us power to perform saving acts. Only with a further gift of efficacious grace will we actually perform those acts. We might have justif ying grace, but that does not mean that we will be justified. If that were true then the promise on which Chaderton and Goad relied, the promise they offered to others was vain. To feel the stirrings of grace was no promise of glory. Overall told essentially the same story that they told: of God and his decrees, of sin and grace; but he stripped it of all certainty. Salvation was not simply a statement made about us within the eternal decrees of God, it was something to be experienced in fearfulness and repentance, something to be worked out in lives that brought the grace of God to fullness and fruition. The debate dragged on for a year. Goad and Chaderton savaged Overall’s arguments, but were powerless to prevent him teaching. Robert Some tried to force the pace as he had done before and preached against the Professor. It did no good. To gain any advantage over Overall it would have been necessary to go to Whitgift, but Whitgift had shown himself sympathetic to Overall, and would hardly welcome another demonstration of the heads’ inability to keep their house in order. Chaderton, Goad, Jegon and Some, now joined by Montagu, newly made Master of Sidney Sussex, could only protest in mounting frustration as the advantage that the Lambeth Articles should have given them slipped away. They pushed Overall as hard as they could and were rewarded when he finally lost his temper at the Commencement of 1600. Members of the university and their distinguished guests were treated to a vigorous and unedif ying Latin slanging match between the Regius Professor of Divinity and the Vice-Chancellor, Robert Some.34 A victory or a defeat? Who were the winners and losers in this battle at the gates of heaven? Barrett, who had begun with little, lost all that he had. Baro, who had more, lost his chair, but kept his reputation and was carried to his grave by six doctors of

34

HMC Marquis of Salisbury, X, pp.211–12; Porter, Reformation, p.404; H. Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century Essays (London 1987), pp.46–7.

84   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 divinity.35 Overall too escaped condemnation, yet proved remarkably silent in the years that followed. The heads who campaigned against them and wrote to Whitgift congratulating him (and no doubt themselves) on the Lambeth Articles, certainly thought they had won, yet soon stopped cheering. When Robert Some commanded John Overall to be silent at the Commencement it is not at all clear who had won and who had lost. It is difficult to define the character of Cambridge divinity in 1600, yet historians have repeatedly made the effort. One historian thinks these arguments announced ‘the eclipse of high Calvinism’ and the rise of a new, indigenous theology anticipating Arminianism. Another thinks that English Calvinism was in good heart and its heyday was still to come. One argues that what we really ought to notice is an old, liberal and rational ‘Erasmianism’. Another again identifies ‘a new precisian Calvinism’.36 In part all these differences of opinion are determined differences of perspective. One historian looks forward to the 1620s when ‘Cambridge Calvinism’ was overthrown, and then finds the roots of that defeat in the 1590s. Another historian looks at the publications of the Press and at subjects discussed in the Schools, and finds ‘Calvinism’ confident and strong. There are problems here. It is already apparent that the label ‘Calvinist’ is often misleading. Whitgift, Chaderton and Whitaker had quite distinct theological positions rooted in a common inheritance, and knew it well. To call them simply ‘Calvinists’ is to create a confusion they would not have allowed. It is also a term that Whitgift at least would have found profoundly insulting. Yet all three of them were at ease with the language of the Lambeth Articles, which is widely regarded as a shibboleth. The men who took part in the arguments of the 1590s were the leading theologians of their generation, they had learning and they could split dogmatic hairs. When they made common cause, they did so with greater reservations than historians have usually allowed. So identif ying the factions proves difficult. It is tempting to watch who won and who lost in the bitter competition for preferment and use that to indicate which opinion was in the ascendant. Sadly, though, there are too many significant characters whom we struggle to place. Not knowing their views we cannot interpret careers with any confidence.37 What little evidence we do have often points in no particular direction. In 1595 Richard Clayton triumphed over Henry Alvey to become Master of St John’s. That was a setback for the more godly sort. Yet, just a few months earlier, they would have delighted to see Montagu had been appointed to Sidney Sussex. Close to Chaderton and Cartwright and executor to William Perkins, Montagu represented very different loyalties and ideas from those of Clayton.38 When Peter Baro was under examination, Clayton and Montagu reacted very differently.39 Nonetheless, some things are clear. The outraged opposition that mustered 35 36

Porter, Reformation, p.390. Porter, Reformation, p.390; Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.239; Trevor-Roper, Catholics Anglicans and Puritans, pp.42–7; Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.513–14. 37 Morgan describes Barwell as one of the older generation of ‘Christ’s puritans’ and Thomas Neville as a ‘Calvinist moderate’, yet neither man published his opinions: ‘Country Court’, pp.539, 575. 38 Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.39; Porter, Reformation, p.267. 39 Porter, Reformation, pp.376, 385.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   85

against Barrett, Baro and Overall does reveal a group of heads making common cause. The assault on assurance, on Christian hope, was more than they could bear. Significant differences of opinion were set aside because a shared account of their experience was challenged. Assurance and perseverance were words these men hung on to in moments of darkness and doubt. This was the golden chain that could drag the faithful out of unendurable despair and into unimaginable glory. It was a lifeline that the godly would not let go. Whatever their theological differences, they could agree that this was their only hope, and they defend it with a conviction bordering on obsession. Shaken, very angry and deeply suspicious that further outrages were looming, the heads who had attacked Barrett were neither defeated nor despairing. On 22 July 1600 Robert Some, once again serving as Vice-Chancellor, wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, who had now replaced his father as private secretary to the Queen. It was clear that the Lambeth Articles had resolved nothing and proved nothing. The Vice-Chancellor summed up what had happened: ‘God’s truth has been shrewdly grated on by some of very unsound judgement. The parties have been advised to embrace the truth. On refusal they were required to forbear public opposition.’40 Victory was very much less than complete, but it was clear who had the upper hand. Even so, Some could not quite contain his frustration. Referring to Baro’s death, he added ‘and I desire the death, not of the other man, but of his errors’. If the foundations of reformed belief had been shaken and a new indigenous theological tradition was gaining ground, no one apparently, had told Robert Some. Elsewhere there is more evidence that the old established assumptions prevailed. In 1599 the Cambridge Press printed various works, among them Dillingham’s ‘A Disswasive from Poperie’, Polanus on predestination, and books by Whitaker and Zanchius. In this year and for many years to come new publications betrayed little evidence of a new liberalism. In the Schools the situation was the same. It was surely no coincidence that in 1595 George Downham of Christ’s used his two theses to launch a twin assault on those who thought Christ died for all and those who argued that grace could be lost.41 One theology was dominant.42 Its opponents knew they had to tread carefully and knew how to identif y the enemy. Whatever our reservations about the term, they named it ‘Calvinism’. Digby referred to ‘Calvinians’ and Barrett to ‘Calvinists’. Both were using the term to imply an excessive reverence for continental Protestantism, and both were implying that there was a distinctive and different English tradition. Both were well aware that the term was slippery, but they were trying, simultaneously, to define and dismiss their opponents. It is unlikely that their opponents had any sense of being a defined group and inconceivable that they thought of themselves as ‘Calvinians’. Nonetheless, they played the same game. Leaving the university for Lambeth in November 1595, Whitaker promised Chaderton that ‘he would stand to God’s cause against the Lutherans’, which suggests he too envisaged some sort of corporate opposition.43 The same 40 41 42 43

HMC Marquis of Salisbury, X, p.241. BL Harleian MS 7033, p.82. The point is well made by Tyacke in his treatment of the later 1590s: Anti-Calvinists, pp.31–5 Quoted by Porter, Reformation, p.28.

86   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 language was employed, although in a more hysterical register, by John Rudd in his inf lammatory sermon of 1597, complaining ‘that papists and Lutherans in Cambridge are lately reconciled and dismissed. …’44 The epithet ‘papists’ was a standard term of abuse, and in the period when the pope was considered to be the Antichrist, a vigorous insult. The use of the term ‘Lutherans’ was also a powerful pejorative. The Lutheran church and its doctrine of the eucharist had been regarded with suspicion for a generation. Lutheran teaching on predestination, which hinged on God’s foreknowledge of human acts, was also routinely dismissed. Lutherans were the classic example of bad protestants. When Whitaker used the term that is probably all he meant, it had no more precision than did the word ‘Calvinist’. Just possibly, however, it was a pointed dig at Peter Baro’s known attachment to the Danish Lutheran, Hemmingsen.45 These scattered references are attempts to create a party of opposition and to characterise that party as the embodiment of evil. They are not proof that such a party existed. Barrett, Baro and Overall certainly do not seem to have been conscious of belonging to such a party. Admittedly, Baro did make an attempt to enlist the support of Andrewes, but that seems to have been exceptional and bore little fruit.46 There is precious little evidence of the theological, militant tendency that some have described in Cambridge in the 1590s. None of this name-calling tells us who agreed with whom, but it does show that there was an argument about theological authority and about what were the authentic marks of the church. The Lambeth Articles had been intended to silence debate and, in the event, had only fuelled further controversy. The problem was that the argument was not simply about the propositions that had found their way into the Lambeth Articles. It went deeper than that. In Cambridge they were asking about the first principles of theology. Who spoke and with what authority in Canterbury, Geneva or Cambridge? In this context, the Lambeth Articles, which implied not just doctrinal development, but a fresh attempt to construct and confirm theology, were, as Baro saw, part of the problem, not part of the solution. The fragile doctrinal agreement inherited from the Reformation was only possible when definitions were few and far between. A battle was being fought over the identity of the Church of England. Appealing to particular foreign divines, the protagonists were not simply debating points of doctrine; they were raising crucial questions about the foundations of the church. That battle had been going on for some time, but the furore surrounding Barrett and Baro broke new ground. In 1595, certainty – as a feeling and as a belief – came shouldering its way in. One account of what it felt like to be a Christian seemed poised to become the only permissible faith. Such a move would sound the death knell of the rather vague and ill-defined assumptions that had previously sufficed. However vague, those assumptions had held the church together and had provided the foundations for a substantial theological edifice. Alarmed at the prospect of a set of fresh and highly systematic definitions, men like Baro were quick to strike at the point where that theological system was most inf lexible 44 45

CUL CUA RGB 6.1:24. Though note that Perkins also made use of Hemmingsen and Lutheran works were fairly widely read in this period. 46 Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.234.



Barrett, Baro and the Foundations of Faith   87

and austere. It was not assurance alone that was at stake but the first principles of the theology from which it was derived. Fundamental questions now had to be asked about where authority resided and how theology should proceed from it. As the sixteenth century ended that argument was only just beginning.

Chapter Four

ASSURANCE AND ANXIETY 1595–1619

Amasia and Amos Lutheranism begins to be maintained. popery is daily spread abroad … Whitgift and the heads had argued their way into an agreement. They rapidly discovered however that, around them, the argument raged on. The campaign against Barrett, Baro and Overall had resolved nothing. Everyone knew it and some said so. In 1597, Samuel Ward poured out his dismay in his notebook: ‘Think how all things go backward in the University and in our College.’ Ward had graduated from Christ’s in 1593. Two years later he took up a fellowship at Emmanuel. It was not a difficult move – a short walk down the road to exchange one godly household for another – and Ward f lourished. In 1610 he became Master of Sidney Sussex and in 1623, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. He counted such blessings carefully, regarding each promotion not as a measure of his ability but as a mark of divine favour. What happened to him, happened because God willed it. So, in his diary, Ward picked over the details of each day looking for the footsteps of grace. A sermon he had heard, the boisterous party in Hall, the promotion or prosecution of a friend, even the wind and the rain were all analysed and interpreted as Ward struggled to see what he called the ‘strong workings of God’. Although he did this in pious Emmanuel, where surely there were all kinds of reassurance, he was often pessimistic. Like the psalmists, Ward was bewildered that the enemies of true religion seemed to prosper and grow fat. Convinced that protestant reformation was part of the good purposes of God, he could not understand why the preaching of the word had not made greater headway. The blame he decided lay with Whitgift: ‘Think how corrupt the Arch Bishop is, who will meddle in every matter.’ Ward was not being entirely fair. It was true that Whitgift was taking a keen interest in university affairs and was quick to interfere.  The Archbishop, though, 

Diary entries by Samuel Ward, 1597 and 1599, from Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, ed. M.M. Knappen (Chicago 1933), p.126.  Knappen, Two Puritan Diaries, p.125.  Knappen, Two Puritan Diaries, p.125.  CUL MS Mm.1.35, pp.367–8.

88



Assurance and Anxiety 1595–1619   89

was not alone. The heads had not acquitted themselves well in the arguments of the 1590s and a vacancy among their number was considered a serious matter not only at Lambeth but also at the royal Court. There was a commonly held assumption that Cambridge could not be trusted to choose wisely. Colleges, already used to interference, now attracted even more unwelcome attention and were never quite sure where their next head of house would come from. Thus, John Overall’s election, at St Catharine’s, commanded the attention of the Bishop of London, the Archbishop of Canterbury and even the Queen herself. In the years that followed successive elections brought more interference and gave power to men of whom Ward could not approve, but he should not have blamed Archbishop Whitgift alone. Ward was over-sensitive, but there were worrying signs. In the same year that Overall went to St Catharine’s, John Cowell, the Regius Professor of Civil Law, was elected Master of Trinity Hall. Cowell was a curious figure, a lawyer lacking in judgement. His main claim to fame rests on a learned, legal dictionary, The Interpreter, which he produced in 1607. Unfortunately, it was celebrated for all the wrong reasons and was so clumsy in its opinions that it manage to give offence on both sides of the debate about the power of monarchs. Cowell had got himself into very serious trouble and his book was ultimately burnt by the hangman. At the time of his election at Trinity Hall all this was a long way off. Even so, Ward would have distrusted this new colleague simply because, as an expert on civil law, Cowell was a servant of the church courts and by extension a man dedicated to enforcing conformity. Indeed, Cowell was vigorous in that cause, both as Archbishop Bancroft’s Vicar-General in Canterbury and as a member of the hated High Commission. Ward and Cowell knew that a battle was being fought over the life and worship of the Church of England and they knew that they were on different sides. Others though, even those quite close to Cowell or Ward, would have been perhaps less certain about the arguments and their place within them. Cowell found his way to Trinity Hall by way of the well-worn route that led from Eton to King’s. While at Kings he had brief ly shared a room with a man called William Smith who was also a product of Eton. Three years after Cowell had been made Master of Trinity Hall, Smith became Master of Clare after a complicated and contested election. Smith, though, was a very different character from Cowell, a man who never courted controversy and whose views are elusive. The promotion of men like Smith (who later rose to even greater things, becoming Provost of King’s) is a useful reminder that it was not essential to have a taste for theological controversy, in early seventeenth-century Cambridge. Even when so many men fell out so famously and so often there were always other kinds of distinction and other concerns. A glance at other mastership elections only serves to further demonstrate the complexities of religious and political life in the university. In 1604 the Lodge at Corpus was vacant, and again there was a row and again it 

On Cowell, see DNB; Morgan argues there were precisian objections to this appointment: Morgan, ‘Country Court’, p.592.  Morgan identifies Smith as an opponent of the ‘precisian faction’ simply on the strength of his friendship with Cowell. In most college histories he is almost anonymous. For the election. see Morgan, History of the University, pp.376–8.

90   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 was not at all straightforward. There were two candidates, Thomas Jegon and Benjamin Carrier, both fellows of the college. Carrier was later to turn Roman Catholic, yet surprisingly it was he, not Jegon, who was being urged on by men like Goad, Some, Tyndall and Barwell. The explanation, almost certainly, was that Carrier was chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift, and even Robert Some did not want another fight with him. A complicated situation was made more difficult still when the Queen claimed the right of appointment, on the basis that she had created the vacancy when she promoted the previous master to a bishopric, and thought it must therefore be hers to fill. Rather surprisingly, it was Jegon who ultimately triumphed thanks to the votes of the majority of the fellows and, no doubt, to the support of his brother, the outgoing master, lately made Bishop of Norwich. In the same year Barnabas Goche was elected to the mastership of Magdalene. Like John Cowell, he was a civil lawyer and an officer of the church courts; as an enforcer of conformity, he might have been unwelcome to the more militant reformers. Goche, however, had a past; he had been nurtured in the hatred of Rome. His father had translated for the English press a number of works, among them The Popish Kngdome, or Reigne of Antichrist. We cannot be sure which of the contending prejudices stirred most vigorously in Goche. As a master his religious opinions were every bit as hard to gauge as those of William Smith. So, while the anguished Samuel Ward worried about the changing religious life of the university, the evidence that there were new men to fear is actually limited. There is, however, one exception. Lancelot Andrewes’ elevation to the episcopate left a vacancy at Pembroke and removed from the university a critic of the Lambeth Articles. Both gaps were filled by the election of Samuel Harsnett in 1605. Celebrated for his sermon at Paul’s Cross and also for the fact that he had had a hand in licensing a book that had gravely offended the Queen, Harsnett was a controversial choice. It seems likely that he owed his preferment to Bancroft, to whom he was chaplain. Bancroft himself had just succeeded Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury. That was a bit of God’s providence that Samuel Ward really would have cause to regret. The arguments of 1595 had shaken the university and it seems few had the desire to open the old wounds. In the Schools the more theologically volatile subjects were avoided. Instead, there were discussions of whether tithes were owed by divine right and the familiar litany about the detestable enormities of Rome.10 In 1601 John Davenant, then a young fellow of Queens’, later its President, proceeded to his BD. Davenant was to become famous for his preoccupation with predestination, but gave no intimation of that at the Commencement. Instead he traded routine punches against idolatry and the Pope.11 Brief ly, Cambridge kept a discreet silence and pretended it did not know the mind of God. Discretion, however, was not quite universal; the righteously indignant knew   

Lamb, Corpus, pp.153ff.; Morgan, History of the University, p.351. On Goche, see Cunich et al., Magdalene, pp.101–9. The College later complained about Harsnett’s absences on Bancroft’s business: A. Attwater, Pembroke College, Cambridge, A Short History ed. S.C. Roberts (Cambridge 1936), pp.58, 83. The controversial book was a life of Henry IV containing an indiscreet dedication to the Earl of Essex. 10 BL Harleian MS 7038, pp.82ff. 11 BL Harleian MS 7038, p.83.

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they still had a job to do in the pulpit. Preaching at Great St Mary’s, late in 1602, a fellow of Trinity, George Watson, reminded the English church of its own errors and attacked both non-residency and the use of classical allusion in preaching.12 Watson backed down quickly, but the heads soon had to deal with a more difficult character. In May 1603 Thomas Taylor, a thirty-two-year-old fellow of Christ’s, was given the opportunity to preach in the University Church and made the most of it.13 Again, he covered familiar ground. He was scathing in his criticisms of non-residents and all the devices upon which they relied. like substitutes, chaplains, faculties and dispensations. He compared the non-resident’s annual visit to the parish with the devotion of the High Priest who entered the Sanctuary ‘laden with the sinnes of the people’ just once a year. Taylor was more vehement still in his criticisms of ‘dum doggs and dull mynisters’ who were unable to preach for themselves. He argued that reading the word (instead of preaching it) was ‘no ordinary means to beget faith’. Urging the importance of preaching, without a trace of irony, in a sermon that was itself an abuse of the pulpit, Taylor then also dismissed the sacraments. His offences were legion, and he could not forbear adding insult to injury. He described a whole history of corruption and named some names, in all ages those that should have most defended the church weere most agaynst it; as from Cayne & Abell: Joseph and his brothers, he came to Bishopp Gardnere & Bonner & so he went to Amasia & Amos, and sayd Amasia the high priest will tell the king that Amos is an enemy to the state and then he will deale like a fox and tell Amos in his ear he weere best begone out of the land.14 The story Taylor was telling would have been familiar to the congregation who heard it. They would have known that the prophet Amos, one of the heroes of the Old Testament, had had an enemy at the royal Court, the high priest Amasia, the man at the head of the religious establishment. Taylor, who thought that ‘in all ages’ the story was the same, was clearly suggesting that the Archbishop was an Amasia. The dismayed heads demanded a copy of the offending sermon and commanded that he deliver a retraction, which was drafted for him. Taylor refused to co-operate and was commanded to reappear before the court. When the court was reconvened Taylor remained intransigent. Having slandered the Archbishop he had the impudence to complain that the heads intimidated him. We do not know what happened next, but the silence of the records implies that Taylor must have backed down. Although he resigned his fellowship at Christ’s in 1604 he kept his connection with Cambridge and did not learn to like archbishops any better. It seems he was silenced by the Vice-Chancellor and threatened with the loss of his degrees for another attack on Bancroft in 1607. Taylor’s zeal and determination were still an issue in 1628 and made it difficult for him to

12 13 14

CUL CUA VC CT I.6, fol.89v. CUL CUA VC CT I.6, fols.180v.ff. CUL CUA VC CT I.6, fols.184v.–185r.

92   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 proceed DD. Men grew old campaigning for the fulfilment of reformation, but they seldom grew tired.15 The Hampton Court Conference There was still a reformation waiting to happen in England, and its supporters would greet any dawn with enthusiasm. The accession of James I unleashed a tide of godly propaganda. In Cambridge hopes rose again. The Millenary Petition presented to the King in London early in 1603 contained the echo of much that had been said from the pulpit of Great St Mary’s. It included demands both to dismiss ministers who could not preach and to prohibit non-residency. The petitioners also wanted to reform church discipline and to do away with the ‘burden of rites and ceremonies’. They wanted rid of the cap and surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, bowing at the name of Jesus and the use of terms like ‘priest’ and ‘absolution’. The reformers had rehearsed this list of errors and knew it well. Unfortunately, the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford had a sizeable investment in the unreformed past, in the shape of their impropriated livings. A rectory, with its income and rights, is a piece of property and the colleges farmed them, making them pay and using their power of appointment to reward their own members. The Millenary Petition wanted reform here too, and suddenly it touched not the conscience, but the purse of the university. The cost would have been enormous; it was a proposal, which as Fuller pointed out, ‘if effected, would cut off more than the nipples of the breasts of both universities’.16 James I’s apparent sympathy for this proposal increased the anxiety. Both universities moved fast. On 9 June 1603 Cambridge passed a grace declaring, That whosoever in the university should openly oppose by word or writing, or any other way, the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England established by law, or any part thereof, should be suspended ipso facto from any degree already taken, and be disabled from taking any degree for the future.’17 The anxiety was a little misplaced: the universities had friends in high places and both Whitgift and Bancroft were active on their behalf. Attention soon shifted to other issues raised by the reinvigorated clamour for reform.18 The Millenary Petition was not a broadside against the King or the church; it was an agenda for a meeting. The petitioners wanted reforms, and that was something the King regarded with suspicion; but they also wanted to talk, and that was a temptation he could not resist. They got their way at the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604. Historians have revised their opinion of 15

J. Peile, Biographical Register of Christ’s College, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1910), I, pp.205–6 suggests Taylor avoided controversy before 1604; see also Peile, Christ’s, p.103; Bushell, Great St Mary’s, p.106. 16 Fuller, Church History, III, p.196. See also C. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church (Oxford 1956), p.150. 17 D. Neal, The History of the Puritans or Protestant Non-Conformists, 2 vols. (London 1822), II, p.6. Cambridge also thanked Oxford for its detailed assault on the Millenary Petition: Fuller, Church History, III, p.196. 18 F.H. Shriver, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of James I’ (Cambridge University PhD thesis 1967), p.150.



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James I’s religious policy in general and his role in the conference in particular. It had been assumed that, for all his hostility to presbyterianism, the new King was sympathetic to some of the assumptions of the reformers.19 Certainly the King had opinions of his own, but rather than indulge them he set out to be a moderating inf luence. He wanted to create a unified church and set out to do that by appealing to moderates on either side of the debate and seeking to divide them from the radicals he could never countenance or contain.20 So it seems that James was rather more even-handed at Hampton Court than was once recognised. The King’s own theology is a little elusive. He was well informed, agile and able to keep his own council. Just occasionally, though, his prejudices showed. One incident at the conference, when the indiscretions of John Overall were being discussed, is a case in point. Both sides of the debate were represented. Among the delegates were different strands of Cambridge divinity. On the one side, Chaderton and Knewstubb (who had been a fellow of St John’s), on the other, John Overall himself, now Dean of St Paul’s. While they had been assembled in the wake of the Millenary Petition, which had been chief ly concerned with ceremony and practice, the delegates soon indulged their taste for much more speculative theology. Battle was joined when Reynolds, the chief puritan spokesman, asked that the Articles of Religion might be ‘explained and enlarged’. Reynolds was anxious that nothing contrary to the doctrine of God’s predestination should be allowed. He wanted Article XVI changed. It read ‘after we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace’. Reynolds, inevitably, wanted to add the words ‘yet neither totally nor finally’.21 He had managed to list two other alterations he wanted made when Bancroft, the Bishop of London, blustered into the argument and interrupted him. Bancroft was told to mind his manners by the King, but was given an opportunity to challenge what had been said. The Bishop made it clear that he did not like the doctrine of perseverance that Reynolds was setting out and: took occasion to signifie to his Majesty, how very many in these daies, neglecting holinesse of life, presumed too much of persisting of grace, laying all their religion upon predestination, If I shall be saved, I shall be saved; which he termed a desperate doctrine …22 ancroft quite deliberately manufactured a savage parody of the doctrine of perseverance, claiming that those who held it claimed ‘though I sin never so grievously, yet I shall not be damned’. The King suggested that further thought might be taken about the wording of Article XVI, but declared he wanted such matters ‘very tenderly’ handled. He would sanction no doubts about God’s predestina-

19

Collinson sees James as ‘more of a Calvinist than otherwise’: Collinson, ‘The Jacobean Religious Settlement: The Hampton Court Conference’, in Before the English Civil War, ed. H. Tomlinson (London 1983), p.46; Tyacke refers to the ‘greater royal favour’ shown ‘Calvinism’ under James: Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.28. On the conference, see also K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I’, Journal of British Studies 24.1 (1985), pp.169–207. 20 F.H. Shriver, ‘Hampton Court Revisited’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39.1 (1982), p.58. 21 Edward Cardwell, A History of Conferences … (Oxford 1840), p.178. 22 Cardwell, Conferences, p.180.

94   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 tion, nor any presumption about perseverance.23 The debate then moved on, but a nerve had been touched. Reynolds returned to the matter when he pressed further additions and clarifications to the Articles of Religion, when he ‘remembered the nine orthodoxal assertions concluded at Lambeth’. The King, of course, knew nothing about the Lambeth Articles, and when the background was explained was inclined to dismiss them as a purely academic exercise inappropriate for The Book of Common Prayer. Even Overall must have winced as James hinted broadly that arguments that had generated such feeling were a don’s delight and that he would not ‘stuff the book with all conclusions theological’. Certainly the conference was coming very close to home. Overall fell on his knees (the proper posture even for a regius professor arguing divinity with a king), and told James that ‘this matter somewhat more nearly concerned him ‘by reason of a controversie between him and some other in Cambridge’. He then seized his chance to vindicate himself. The Anonymous Account of the conference tells how Overall declared that: he had taught that those that have been received to grace may fall from grace, and if they do not repent they shall perish. But his Majesty there interposed, and said, the elect indeed might fall, but never finally, so that they can perish, for they shall rise again by repentance, and so cut off that difference.24 It sounds as though Overall was being corrected by the King. Describing this tense and rather complicated exchange, Dr Tyacke argues that Overall was making a distinction between justified believers who (despite being both justified and believers) might ‘fall away’ and the elect who would always persevere. The King then rejected that distinction, arguing that only the elect could hold justifying faith, an approach that, Tyacke suggests, ‘looks like orthodox Calvinist teaching’.25 In fact, James sided not against, but with, Overall. It is quite true that Overall had once argued that justifying faith might be fairly generally available and that some of those not actually elect might have it, but that was not the point he argued at Hampton Court. Barlow’s version of events, in the ‘Summe and Substance of the Conference’, reveals that Overall argued that whosover (although before justified) did commit any grievous sin, as adultery, murder, treason, or the like, did become ipso facto subject to God’s wrath, and guilty of damnation, or were in a state of damnation untill they repented.26 Overall was arguing that even the elect could fall into grievous sin. Guilty of sin, they could then only avoid damnation if they repented. He tried hard to soften the blow by declaring that the elect never fell so far that they would be denied the renewal and repentance that they needed. He believed therefore that the elect could fall totally, but not finally, from grace. His opponents, he alleged, argued that the elect might sin, but always remained justified, even when unrepentant, 23 24 25 26

Cardwell, Conferences, p.181. R.G. Ussher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, 2 vols. (New York 1910), II, pp.344–5. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.24; similarly Lake, Moderate Puritans, p.248. Cardwell, Conferences, p.186.



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and were never in danger of damnation, ‘yea, and though they never repented of them, through forgetfulnesse or sudden death, yet they should be justified and saved without repentance’. This was a theology Overall could not stomach. He knew that the wages of sin is death, even for the elect. The King agreed with him. Like Overall, James urged the necessity of repentance, arguing that, although predestination and election depend not upon any qualities, actions, or works of man, which be mutable, but upon God his eternal and immutable decree and purpose; yet such is the necessity of repentance after known sins committed, as that, without it, there could not be either reconciliation with God or remission of those sins. In agreeing with Overall, King James had implicitly rejected the fifth of the Lambeth Articles, which declared that the elect may not totally, or finally, lose a justif ying faith. More importantly, he had driven a state coach through the doctrine of perseverance. The conference produced no clearer theological definition of predestination, and the ceremonies of the church remained largely unchanged as the King endorsed the status quo and left such issues to his bishops.27 It was now more difficult than ever to use the Lambeth Articles as a standard of orthodoxy or as a disciplinary weapon. Overall and Bancroft knew that their reservations about the content of the Articles had wider sanction. The Articles were worse than useless to those who had once greeted them with such enthusiasm. For Laurence Chaderton this must have been difficult to bear, but worse was to follow. At the close of the conference the Master of Emmanuel found that an unwelcome interest was taken in his college. My Lord Cicill put his majesty in mind of a word his highnesse had used the day before, namely, of ambling communions, saying, that the indecency thereof was very offensive, and had driven many from the Church. And here Master Chatterton was told of sitting communion in Emmanuel College; which he said was so, by reason of the seats so plac’d as they be, yet that they had some kneeling also.28 It was a craven explanation and it persuaded no one. Chaderton was required to: ‘conforme his irregular Colledge to weare the surplice, and receive the Communion knelinge, or els to be putt out of yt’.29 Conformity: Cambridge after the conference Chaderton had had a taste of things to come. Not surprisingly, when the Canons of 1604 appeared, giving the reformed English church its first systematic legal code, kneeling for the reception of holy communion was a requirement.30 A set of directions appended to the Canons ref lected the views the King had aired at 27 28 29

S.B. Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London 1962), p.68. Cardwell, Conferences, p.212. Babbage, Puritanism, p.69; Fincham and Lake explain that Chaderton, who had just won a concession for Lancashire puritans, was being put in his place by a king determined on balance: Fincham and Lake, ‘Ecclesiastical Policy’, p.175. 30 Babbage, Puritanism, p.89.

96   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the Hampton Court Conference. Henceforth ‘the deepe points of predestination, election, reprobation, or the universal efficacity, resistability or irresistability of God’s grace’ were declared unsuitable for sermons for anyone of lower status than a dean. Such themes, it was suggested, were more ‘fitted for the schooles and universities then for simple auditors’.31 This was a body blow for truly reformed divinity. It is worth remembering that many of those who preached predestination did so, not out of love of theological complexity, nor to be combative, but for pastoral reasons. Predestination, assurance and perseverance were far more than ‘deepe points’ of doctrine; they were an account of what it felt like to be a Christian. They were an account of sin forgiven and of doubt seizing hold of hope. If this could not be preached, what could? James may have met some puritan concerns halfway with the promises of a new bible and a reformed ministry, but this hardly made up for the bitter disappointment he gave. Little of the hoped-for reform of ceremony or doctrine had emerged from the deliberations of either the Hampton Court Conference or the subsequent meeting of Convocation. The advocates of further reformation had lost nearly all that they hoped for and also looked likely to lose the little conversation they had been permitted. The dilemma of whether the godly could, in conscience, feel at home in the Church of England became acute. The new Canons required the clergy to subscribe to the Three Articles. That meant that each priest and deacon must ‘willingly’ accept, first, that the royal supremacy was legal; second, that both The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal (the services used to make deacons, priests and bishops) contained nothing contrary to God’s word and that ‘he himself will use the form of the said book’; and third, that the Thirty-Nine Articles were agreeable to the word of God. These were close to articles of subscription circulated in 1583, but they were now more systematically imposed and were required in Cambridge for the first time. More militant protestants found it almost intolerable to give assent to the Ordinal, which contained a service for creating bishops. That was painful enough. The Canons also stipulated that students wear surplices and that the prescribed Prayer Book services be used in college chapels. The battle William Fulke had begun, in St John’s, in 1565 had been lost.32 The Chancellor was charged with the task of ensuring obedience. He wrote to the university on 15 December 1604 urging conformity and seeking assurances about subscription and preaching. The letter prodded the heads into action.33 Over the next few weeks certificates arrived in London assuring Lord Cranborne that his wishes had been fulfilled.34 Particular attention was focused on Chaderton, who was clearly being victimised. Sir Thomas Lake had been busy stirring up the Chancellor to take action against the Master of Emmanuel, complaining that ‘he gives ill example in the university’.35 Chaderton had cause to feel aggrieved, but it was time he put his house in order. A document dated 1603, describing 31 32

Babbage, Puritanism, p.94. K. Fincham, ‘Clerical Conformity from Whitgift to Laud’, in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp.131, 139, 142. 33 Cooper, Annals, III, pp.11–12. 34 CUL MS Mm.2.22, pp.64, 218; Babbage, Puritanism, pp.118–19. 35 Babbage, Puritanism, p.69.



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the ‘Public disorders as touching Church causes in Emmanuel College’, makes clear the scale of the problem.36 It was noted that the Chapel was not built with the chancel to the east. There were also a series of criticisms of the ordering of worship. The Prayer Book had apparently been abandoned in favour of the college’s own liturgical experiments; surplices, gowns and square caps were not worn and ember days were not observed with fasting. There was also a general lack of reverence. While at other colleges the ministers at the communion table were deacons and priests, in Emmanuel, apparently, what passed for a chalice was filled and the table was attended by the fellows’ subsizars. More seriously, the congregation received the elements sitting: ‘and do pull the loaf one from the other, after the Minister hath begun. And so the Cup, one drinking as it were to another, like Good Fellows.’ Under pressure, Chaderton knew what was expected and eventually had no choice but to conform. In November 1604 Emmanuel was still giving ‘ill example’ in the university and there was talk of removing Chaderton. By December 1604 he had apparently given in and could write: I know neither Popish nor Puritan recusant in Emmanuel College.   The booke of Common Prayer and Ceremonies therin prescribed are observed in the said Colleg, according to the order of our English church.   The surplis, with the other scholasticall habit, is used in the College according to Universitie statute.  All such as are professed Ministers in the said College have exhibited their lettres of orders, whereby I find them lawfully authorized, and canonically ordeyned to that function.37 Even so, according to Ward’s diary, the order that the surplice should be worn in Emmanuel was not finally given until January 1605. It had taken a year to pass from intention to action. In Emmanuel conformity did not come easily and Ward was dismayed. ‘Alas we little expected that King James would have been the first permitter of it to be brought into our college, to make us a derision to so many that bear us no good will.’38 Ward was a reluctant conformist and he was not alone. In May John Cowell, then the Vice-Chancellor, could write to Lord Cranborne, I assuredly persuade myself there is no doubt of conformity in the performance of divine service and sacraments in our body but of some few in Emmanuel College, of whose reformation there is some hope, if it be thoroughly urged; but I perceive there be very many amongst us, both old and young, that stick at subscribing to the three articles and so will do, as I suppose, except they be hard pressed.39 Cowell was not telling the Chancellor anything he did not know. The Canons could be enforced and colleges and parish churches could not resist the pressure to conform. Individuals however, struggled with their consciences and with the prospect of having to minister the ceremonies of The Book of Common Prayer. The 36 37 38 39

Emmanuel College Archive, Bennet’s Register I, p.80. See also CUL MS Mm.2.23. p.92. Babbage, Puritanism, p. 69; Bendall et al., Emmanuel, pp.180–1. Knappen, Diaries, p.130. Babbage, Puritanism, p.85.

98   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 authorities were prepared to move gently and slowly. It was not until January 1605 that Heton, the Bishop of Ely, reproved the ministers and churchwardens of three Cambridge parishes for allowing unlicensed men to preach. The three parishes in question had clearly set about securing the preaching of the full gospel very seriously, their preachers being Chaderton, Samuel Ward and Paul Baynes, but godliness was no longer the test.40 Baynes was dismayed and subsequently refused to subscribe. Brief ly, his principles seemed to have earned a grudging kind of respect, but when Harsnett became Vice-Chancellor, later in the year, the gloves came off. Baynes was silenced and suspended from his lectureship at St Andrew’s.41 The champions of conformity, men like Harsnett, wielded with enthusiasm the weapons given to them by the new Canons. The church suddenly seemed to belong to them. Chaderton, meanwhile, struggled to persuade anxious friends that it was possible to subscribe to the Three Articles and still have a clear conscience. He hinted that he disliked ceremonies himself, but suggested that they should be regarded as things lawful and indifferent, things that did not force a principle. He clearly hoped that the bishops would meet this kind of accommodation halfway and not press wounded souls where they were most tender. It was a solution of a sort, but not without its critics. A few, unhappy with compromise and with a reformation in retreat, were disappointed that Chaderton and Emmanuel could no longer be relied upon to set the benchmark of good practice for the church.42 Choice and conformity: the Christ’s election Conformity, wearing a surplice, came to Cambridge. Even so, it was only the practice of the church that had been redefined, and little or nothing had been said about belief. Chaderton, presiding over a tamed Emmanuel, was clear that he had made no sort of compromise over doctrines essential to salvation. He might be forced to his knees at the communion table, but in the pulpit he could still preach the gospel that never changes. Indeed, Chaderton expended a good deal of energy persuading others that they could conform in the use of ceremonies, which should be regarded as things ‘indifferent’ in order not to sacrifice their calling to preach. He wrote ‘We may and ought to use them [the ceremonies] to purchase and procure liberty to win souls by preaching the gospel.’43 Chaderton had reached the limits of conformity and had drawn back a fraction. Others, exploring what conformity now meant, were not always so careful. Preaching in Great St Mary’s, on 10 September 1609, a man called Nicholas Rush rattled the cage of conformity with a will. His sermon was a particularly vigorous example of a type heard many times before, piling up criticism on an unreformed church and state. Rush, an MA of Christ’s College, recently made fellow, then compounded the crime in a funeral oration for Edmund Barwell, the Master of Christ’s who had died at the end of September. It is not easy to reconstruct what Rush actually 40

K. Fincham, ‘Ramifications of the Hampton Court Conference’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36.2 (1985), p.211. 41 Neal, History of the Puritans, II, p.94. 42 Lake, Moderate Puritans, pp.243ff., especially p.253. 43 Bendall et al., Emmanuel, p.185. Chaderton’s views are discussed very helpfully: pp.182–5.



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said. In the funeral oration he apparently used words ‘tending to the disgrace and discreditt of mr dr Barwell’.44 The sermon in the University Church certainly included an assault on the clergy, ‘terminge them the Gorbellyd [fat] clergy’, and seemed to ‘touch authoritye or some attendinge in Courte calling them develish parasytes in f latteringe and attributynge overmuch to some in higher place …’ More curiously, Rush also alleged that St Paul and Moyses did fault and err in their desires it comminge from the surge and fource of a passion too earnest and hott and not sufficiently bounded with the limits of pure charity. And also even our Saviour Christ’s prayer (Father if thou wilt let this cup passe from me …) came from nature without reason attending …45 Unusually, following the funeral oration, Rush was kept in custody between appearances before the Consistory. This was clearly a serious business. The offence at the funeral oration of course was merely a monstrous lack of tact. Rush had spoken ill of the dead. He had told everyone what they already knew, that Barwell had been a poor master who had abused his authority for personal benefit: eating the ‘children’s bread’. The sermon at Great St Mary’s is more puzzling. It is usually assumed that Rush was some sort of a puritan, but the character of his puritanism has remained mysterious.46 In fact the preacher’s concerns were all too familiar. It is the reference to Christ’s words in Gethsemane (‘let this cup passe from me’) that gives him away. Rush was preaching about assurance. The usual, and orthodox, opinion about Christ is that he willed exactly what the Father willed. Even in the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ was afraid, as any human being in his position would be, he never doubted his vocation and did not contradict the Father. The problem was, as Calvin himself recognised, that Christ’s words in the garden could be interpreted as a plea for God to change his mind. It might seem, as Calvin put it, that Christ in praying that the cup might pass from him, ‘Begged for the Father’s eternal decree of which He was not ignorant to be rescinded.’47 Could it be that, on his knees before the Father, Christ argued with the predestination of God? Beza did not really see the problem. He simply suggested that in Gethsemane Christ himself experienced doubt about election and that the faithful should draw great consolation from that.48 Rush, however, followed Perkins, believing that in the depths of his reason Christ never doubted or distrusted the divine decrees. Beza had left a door open, suggesting that doubt would never be driven right away. Perkins shut the door and bolted it: Christian assurance is real assurance and it will never fail the elect. 49 So, Rush argued, disordered human emotion might doubt the divine decrees, but perfected humanity, justified and sanctified, would be sure. This might have been impeccable logic, but it won few friends. Heads like Goad 44 45 46

CUL CUA VC CT I.38, fol.71, also fols.78ff.; I.48, fol.34 and I.39, fols.24, 26. CUL CUA VC CT I.38, fol.79. J.B. Mullinger, The University of Cambridge from Earliest Times, 3 vols. (Cambridge 1873–1911), II, p.508; Bondos-Greene, ‘The End of an Era’, I (1982), p.202. 47 John Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 3 vols., ed. D.W. and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh 1972), III, p.150. 48 J.S. Bray, Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination (Nieuwkoop 1975), p.110. 49 Perkins, Workes, (1609–12), I, p.190.

100   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 and Chaderton, both involved in the proceedings against Rush, were doubtless uneasy about a public debate so soon after the King had expressly forbidden such discussion. They would also have been deeply alarmed by what Rush had to say about the royal Court and royal power. The university moved quickly and decisively. Rush was ordered to renounce his error, but his passion was far from spent, and he declared ‘that he will be torne in peeces with horses before he recant’. He was prepared to retract what he had said about parasites at Court, but not his attack on the ‘gorbellied’ clergy and he confessed he could not see his error in relation to his words about Paul and Moses. He added sadly, ‘a man now a days may not saye anything that leadeth to instruction or reformacon’. Contumacious to the end, Rush was expelled from the university on 9 January 1610. While the anxiety and anger mounted at this latest refusal to compromise with conformity a new crisis was developing. Barwell’s death had left a vacancy at Christ’s, which had to be filled. Rush, seeing the dead man off with such peculiarly bad grace, had reminded everyone that a mastership was a significant appointment and that Christ’s was a college that would need a firm hand. In the arguments that followed, doctrinal issues loomed large. The fellows of Christ’s pressed for a free election and the King replied sympathetically, but made it clear they were to choose someone of conformist disposition. In Christ’s, however, they had ideas all their own about what conformity was like and a group of fellows promptly proposed Cuthbert Bainbrigg as Master. Bainbrigg certainly had the necessary seniority and the status – he had been a fellow for twenty-six years – but his real distinction was still the sermon he had preached in January 1589 on the reform of the ministry. This angry young man had grown older, but critics were not sure he was any wiser. The Chancellor, who had recently become Earl of Salisbury, wrote quickly to the college telling them that they might be free to elect a master, but that did not give them the liberty of choosing Bainbrigg. The fellows tried again and this time elected William Pemberton. Pemberton had previously preached before the King and had seized that opportunity to suggest that the real and dangerous ‘Puritans’ were papists urging free will, not ‘those painful ministers who laboured in preaching the Word’. Pemberton was, in effect, telling James that the puritan ministers who had recently been silenced were persecuted saints and that royal religious policy was completely misdirected.50 James apparently missed the point, but in Cambridge Pemberton’s friends did not and he rode the tide of their approval right into the Master’s Lodge. Pemberton’s opinions and the true nature of his sermon were then explained to the King. James knew that he had been made to look a fool and he did not like it. He told the college to list its nominations for the mastership so that he could exclude any unacceptable candidates. Christ’s responded by telling the King that Pemberton was already elected. That, of course was not at all what James had intended. The college had hoped that the King would not abuse their privileges by overturning a legitimate election, but they had misjudged the new politics of appointment. Pemberton’s election was overruled and Christ’s was finally forced to accept the election of Valentine Cary. Cary, who had been a fellow of Christ’s and of St John’s, was a royal chaplain and he was not a man who 50

HMC Marquis of Salisbury XXI, pp.143–4, 149.



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would ever abuse his monarch. In 1610 he proceeded to his DD with two theses reeking of craven erastiansim: ‘The clergy are not exempt from the authority of the secular prince’ and ‘It is lawful for a christian magistrate to punish heresy with death’.51 In Cary, most of the fellows of Christ’s would have felt they had a very unsympathetic master. As a fellow of St John’s he had been a critic of Alvey. Since then, in Scotland with the King, he had outraged protestant opinion by praying for the dead. He also had a reputation as a critic of ‘Calvinists’.52 This was not piety as it was known at Christ’s. Recounting the story of Cary’s election, Stephen Bondos-Greene suggests that it marks the ‘final pacification’ of Cambridge Puritanism.53 ‘Pacification’ was not a word that Samuel Ward would have chosen, but he certainly saw a dreadful finality in these events. He invested the whole affair with an eschatological significance, Woe is me for Christ’s College. Now is one imposed … who will be the utter ruin and destruction of that College. O Lord thou hast some iudgements in store for this Land of which this is no doubt a forerunner. Lord, my God, take some pity and compassion on that poor college.54 This kind of writing is characteristic of Ward’s diary; it is also an exaggeration. Pemberton’s downfall and Cary’s triumph were certainly significant. All Cambridge, not just Christ’s, was now awake to the possibility that the King was prepared to use the royal prerogative as a bludgeon against ancient privilege. James was determined to be obeyed and seized an opportunity to impose a conformist in place of a critic of conformity. Cary duly did what was expected and set about changing the tone of his college. The new Master, however, was not quite the vigorous new broom sweeping through the fellowship that some have supposed. He certainly did not bring ‘ruin and destruction’. Two fellows, Nicholas Rush and William Ames, were forced out of Christ’s, but not by Cary. Rush was expelled by the university and William Ames had no one but himself to blame. Ames was Perkins’ most brilliant pupil; in later life his theological efforts would be concentrated on giving Perkins’ work a yet more chilling rigour. He was a supralapsarian eager to demonstrate that the good works of the sanctified were proof positive of an election that could not fail.55 He was also no stranger to controversy. Almost as soon as the new master arrived Ames’ objections to the surplice had plunged them into conf lict. He had also crossed swords with the Vice-Chancellor following allegations about his views on non-residence and the sacraments.56 Then, on St Thomas’ Day (21 December) 1609, Ames preached a controversial sermon in the University Church. When he appeared before the Vice-Chancellor and heads on 22 January 1610 he was charged with publicly teaching, ‘That one might as well abuse the worde or sacraments or oathes as playe at Cards.’57 The same sermon also contained some ref lections on usury, 51 52 53 54 55 56

BL Harleian MS 7038, p.88. Porter, Reformation, p.202; Peile, Christ’s, p.128; Baker, St John, p.262. Bondos-Greene, ‘End of an Era’, p.208. Knappen, Diaries, pp.130–1. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism, pp.151–4. CUL CUA VC CT I.38, fol.42. See M. Todd, ‘Providence, Chance and the New Science in Early Stuart Cambridge’, Historical Journal 29.3 (1986), pp.697–711. 57 CUL CUA VC CT I.7, fol.9; cf. I.39, fol.50; Mullinger, University of Cambridge, II, pp.510ff.

102   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 but its main thrust was clearly related to the way Christmas was celebrated in the colleges and raised profound questions about the role of chance in a theological system that insisted on God’s providence.58 Festivity and a lack of discipline were common targets for godly preaching, but Ames had stumbled on a more disturbing problem. Games of chance raised questions for theologians who insisted on providence and Ames’ sermon set a hare running.59 Neither church nor university could contain this zealous purist, who was destined for a life of separatism abroad. Cary merely helped him on his way. Suspended from his degrees and from functioning as a Christian minister by the Vice-Chancellor, Ames was subsequently forced to resign his fellowship. More elections: the ‘Rise of Arminianism’? Cary’s election and the departure of Rush and Ames marked some kind of change. Few members of the university would now dare to preach up presbyterianism, and those that did would not expect to remain members for very long. Discipline in Cambridge was more vigorous and more abrupt. The university was more concerned than ever to placate the king and Archbishop and less optimistic of further reformation. This was a change, but it was not a watershed. Some historians have been too quick to suggest that conformity triumphed and militant Puritanism collapsed in Cambridge in 1610. Rush and Ames had indeed been expelled, but the truth was that voices as strident as theirs had always been silenced, and this was not, as some have claimed, the last hurrah for reformed orthodox opinion. Although it has been suggested that the early years of the seventeenth century saw an ‘Arminian’ faction achieving a position of dominance in the university, the available evidence makes it difficult to be quite so sure which way the theological wind was blowing.60 In Christ’s, certainly, there had been a setback for those whose hopes had been focused first on Cuthbert Bainbrigg, then on William Pemberton, but in other colleges there were other worries. In 1607 there was an ill-tempered election of a new master in Caius. Thomas Legge had nominated his own successor, a man called John Gostlin. The fellows duly voted for him and then tried to secure royal approval for their choice. The Chancellor, the Earl of Salisbury, was not sympathetic and registered a series of anxieties about the election procedure. Both he and the fellows of Caius were well aware, however, that the real issue was not the way John Gostlin had been elected, but the fact that he had been elected. Salisbury knew that Caius had a reputation for popery and he was determined that it should no longer be so. Gostlin, a medical scholar, had never been ordained. He almost certainly had no sympathy at all for popery, but he was a risk and the Chancellor would not take risks. Instead an outsider was imposed on Caius: William Branthwaite, a fellow of Emmanuel. Branthwaite, who had petitioned 58

This is the real thrust of Todd’s argument: Todd, ‘Providence, Chance and the New Science’, pp.698ff. 59 Todd, ‘Providence, Chance and the New Science’, pp.697–8. Todd has identified the connection between what Ames said and a subsequent sermon by Gataker in 1619. 60 For one attempt to chart the rise of Arminianism in mastership elections, see Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.623ff.



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on behalf of Francis Johnson, was the safe pair of hands the Chancellor wanted. Caius was being sent a message in this man, a very different message and a very different man from that sent to Christ’s.61 There were other changes within the ranks of the heads. In the year that Branthwaite went to Caius from Emmanuel, John Hills went into the Master’s Lodge at St Catharine’s. Hills, originally a member of Jesus College, was friendly with William Barlow, the man who wrote the official account of the Hampton Court Conference. Barlow was now Bishop of Rochester and an eager conformist. It is likely that John Hills shared this enthusiasm. He had no conscience about pluralism and held a number of ecclesiastical preferments while remaining in the college until his death (St Catharine’s was not a wealthy college, but Hills had found a way to make it pay). So, in due course, Hills became an archdeacon and would have been closely involved in ensuring that the Canons were being observed. One of his last acts was to vote for the Duke of Buckingham in the chancellorship election of 1626. That election divided the university, Buckingham was facing impeachment in the House of Commons at the time and had been accused of both pelagianism and popery.62 Voting for him, Hills voted for the bogeyman of contemporary protestant anxiety. Hills, it seems, had little sympathy for delicate protestant conscience. In a letter of 1616 to James Montagu, now made bishop, Hills paraded his prejudice against Richard Sibbes then offering godly sermons to his ‘crasie auditors’ at Holy Trinity.63 There was little pattern emerging among the swings and roundabouts of preferment. In 1608 the next vacancy among the heads was filled by a man of much more reformed opinion than Hills when Francis Aldrich moved from Clare to become Master of Sidney Sussex. Little is known of him, and when he died his gift to a friend on the fellowship was an even-handed bequest, which included two volumes of Zanchius as well as an Aquinas.64 Another, almost simultaneous appointment saw yet another very different head created. In 1608 Robert Some put his Christian assurance to the truly critical test by dying. Peterhouse petitioned to be allowed to elect John Richardson in his place. Richardson apparently had qualities no one had looked for in his predecessor: he was a moderate. The fellows of Peterhouse were aware that their choice appeared curious and sought to justif y themselves, explaining that they thought Richardson: ‘of that mean betwixt the opposition of extremes... our election herein hath carried with it the great contentment and approval of the whole university’.65 Richardson was a man on the move. He came to Peterhouse from Emmanuel trailing clouds of godliness; like Branthwaite, he had petitioned against the expulsion of Francis Johnson. He was also the obvious candidate for preferment. He had been one of the translators of the Authorised Version and had been Regius Professor of Divinity for two years and had quite clearly caught the eye of the royal Court. However, he was also arguing himself out of the company he once kept. At Emmanuel 61 62 63

Brooke, Caius, pp.88–90, 106–7,110; Morgan, History of the University, pp.406–7. For Buckingham’s election, see below, pp.146–8. CUL CUA Lett. 11.A.A.8d. I am indebted to Mark Dever for this reference; Hills subsequently erased the word ‘crasie’. On the chancellorship election, see below, pp.146–8. 64 Edwards, Sidney Sussex, p.62. 65 HMC Marquis of Salisbury, XXI, p.15.

104   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 his opinions began to give offence.66 Later he was chief ly celebrated as a dull, heavy man once publicly abused in the pulpit of Great St Mary’s as a ‘Fat Bellied Arminian’.67 In truth, Richardson was a more than competent theologian and kept some very sophisticated company. Through Lancelot Andrewes he met both Casaubon and Grotius. As a consequence, he came into direct contact with real Arminian thought, and there is every indication that he did indeed receive it sympathetically. Although he never published and was famed for the fact that he lectured without notes, someone else’s notes of his lectures survive. In the Schools Richardson, rather unfashionably, cited Melanchthon with approval. Urging that grace is available to all, he put far more emphasis on human activity, and far less on the omnipotence of God, than many of his contemporaries would have found acceptable.68 What was happening to Cambridge divinity? Describing these elections. Victor Morgan claims that by 1610 it was: almost certain that a committed precisian would never again sit with the other heads in the Consistory. During the next decade moderate Calvinists … would continue to serve their College and the University as best they could in conditions far different from the days of bright hope in their youth.69 And yet, alongside the promotion of men like Richardson and Cary there were indications that the days of bright hope were not done. When Francis Aldrich, Master at Sidney Sussex, died in December 1609 aged just thirty-two the executors of the college’s foundress appointed Samuel Ward, who, at last, had a mark of God’s special favour to celebrate. On assuming his mastership Ward selfconsciously resolved to maintain true religion in his new college. Soon he was tightening the regulations for the observance of the sabbath and worrying about good preaching.70 If Ward, grieving over the frustrated course of reformation, does not qualif y as a ‘committed precisian’ it is difficult to know who does. The fact is that, if the mastership elections of this period prove anything, it is precisely that there was no consistent religious policy behind preferment. In each college there were particular problems to be dealt with and there was an enormous range of attitude and belief among the heads. Clement Corbett, who moved into the lodge at Trinity Hall in 1612, was perhaps the type of man Morgan had in mind when he described the new heads. Corbett’s college memorial calls him a ‘hammer of schism’. He subsequently became VicarGeneral at Norwich, and in that job an eager desire to enforce the Canons was a basic requirement. Corbett, however, was also the obvious candidate for the job. Trinity Hall was the college of the civil lawyers, Corbett was one of the most senior of its fellows and had been Gresham Professor since 1607. He was not appointed, though, to bring a new discipline to his college; he was rather the very 66 67

Bendall et al., Emmanuel, p.45. Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus (London 1668), p.127; Thomas Fuller, The Worthies of England, ed. J. Freeman (London 1952), p.58. 68 CUL MS Gg.1.29, fols.9v-14v (from the back). 69 Morgan, ‘Country Court’, p.635. 70 M. Todd, ‘An Act of Discretion: Evangelical Conformity and the Puritan Dons’, Albion 18.4 (1986), p.591.



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incarnation of continuity. Indeed, another fellow of the college, Thomas Beech, who may well have been suffering from a bad case of frustrated ambition, tried to argue that Corbett was not the new broom that was required. Writing to the Earl of Salisbury, Beech claimed that Trinity Hall needed to be put in order: ‘in regard of a double imputation, which hath for many years been laid upon the house: the one concerning backwardness in Religion, the other weak proceeding in learning’.71 Beech went on to suggest that, in electing Corbett, the college: had an eye, not to the merit and fitness of the Party upon whome they conspired, but to his strength rather, & intending the continuance of those courses they have held, resolved upon a man, of whose concurring disposition they were well assured. Thomas Beech was out on a limb, and pompously declared that he and another fellow, called Naunton, recognised no master in Trinity Hall and invited the Chancellor to intervene with his own candidate. The arrogance and ambition of the man won no friends, and it was Corbett who stayed and Beech who went. This was one new head of house whose distinction seems to have been his very lack of a theological style.72 There were other changes in 1612. Fogge Newton was made Provost of King’s, but died almost immediately and was succeeded in the same year by William Smith, the Master of Clare. Again, both men were appointed because of their claim upon the job, rather than because of their theological opinions. Both were members of King’s and Newton was also Roger Goad’s son-in-law.73 In Clare, Smith’s job went to Robert Scot, a fellow of the college who seems to have been something of a favourite at Court; he was already Subalmoner to the King at the time of his election and later Dean of Rochester.74 Owen Gwynne was made Master of St John’s in the same year. Chief ly famous for his indolence, he could never qualif y as an energetic conformist and does not appear to have had any particular theological allegiance.75 In 1614 an extraordinary and unseemly scramble for promotion at Queens’ did produce a new head of house with very decided opinions. Humphrey Tyndall had been ailing for some time, and two former fellows, George Montaigne and George Meriton, had both been angling for the succession. Meriton was never going to win; in Montaigne he was matched against someone utterly desperate for promotion; no man could stoop lower in order to rise higher. In Queens’, however, Montaigne’s particular talents, which had already secured him the Deanery of Westminster, were not much appreciated and the college had is own candidate in John Davenant, a fellow since 1597. When Tyndall died, John Preston, one of Davenant’s supporters, had horses posted on the road to London and raced there to secure a free election. Davenant was made President before poor Montaigne could crawl into Court to plead his own case. 76 Davenant, already 71 72 73 74 75 76

CUL MS Mm.1.36, p.382. G. Crawley, Trinity Hall: The History of a Cambridge College (Cambridge 1976), pp.95–6. Venn, Alumni, III, p.252; IV, p.112; Austen Leigh, King’s, p.94. CUL CUR 84.2; J.R. Wardale, Clare College (London 1899), p.98. Baker, St John, pp.198–9 describes Gwynne as lazy and corrupt. Twigg, Queens’, pp.68–9.

106   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the Lady Margaret Professor and later one of the English representatives at the Synod of Dort and Bishop of Salisbury, was to acquire a formidable reputation as a preacher and teacher convinced that the reality of predestination was at the heart of the gospel. Three more elections followed in 1615. Richardson moved from Peterhouse to richer pastures at Trinity and was succeeded by Thomas Turner, who seems to have been an unusually unremarkable man. William Smith’s death led to yet another appointment in King’s. This time Samuel Collins was named as Provost. Collins, already a fellow of the college, was a champion of conformity whose chief theological interest lay in the debate with Roman Catholicism. If there really was a conscious determination to promote candidates hostile to the theological assumptions that had generated the Lambeth Articles it may possibly have begun with Collins’ preferment. Then, and in a series of elections that followed it, a new and more aggressively conformist style does seem to find favour. Men who would be instrumental in affecting a change in Cambridge divinity were made heads of house: Leonard Mawe made Master of Peterhouse in 1617; Nicholas Felton and then Jerome Beale at Pembroke in 1616 and 1619 respectively; John Gostlin finally came into his kingdom at Caius in 1619, and the quarrelsome Roger Andrewes moved into the lodge at Jesus in 1618. All were different, and had no sense of allegiance to one another, but they did share a desire to bite the theological hand that had fed them during their years of study in Cambridge. Most of them also owed their preferment to inf luences beyond Cambridge. Mawe was a royal chaplain, Beale a royal appointment, and Roger Andrews’ brother, Lancelot Andrewes, was both Bishop of Ely and (consequently) Visitor of Jesus at the time of his election. Only Samuel Walsall, Master of Corpus from 1618, struck a different note; hard to place, there is no reason to consider him hostile to the conversation about reform and the divine decrees that had dominated Cambridge for a generation. The preaching and teaching of assurance Reports of the death of puritanism and accounts of the end of an age are an exaggeration. Tyacke’s account of Cambridge teaching in this period clearly establishes the dominance of one theological voice, and it was talking about predestination.77 The new Canons of the church did not beat one divinity right out of Cambridge; new heads in new surplices did not introduce another faith. Not until 1616, or 1617, are there signs that new opinions were consistently winning promotion for those who held them. Even then we have to remember that Richard Sibbes, one of the most brilliant and popular of the preachers of the ‘Puritan church militant’, became Master at St Catharine’s as late as 1626.78 At the beginning of the century discussions of divinity were dominated by a very familiar conversation about grace, assurance and perseverance, and many of those who were part of that conversation had more confidence than Samuel Ward. One of the most significant bits of preferment in this period gave them 77 78

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.39. W. Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (Columbia, NY 1938), p.152.



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grounds for confidence, as John Davenant was elected into the Lady Margaret chair in 1609. Davenant was thirty-seven and the fellow of Queens’ who was soon to become its President. He was an able scholar with a strong claim on the vacant chair and had already been noticed at the royal Court. The election, however, was reported at the time as a closely fought contest. Ralph Cudworth wrote to Samuel Ward to tell him ‘Mr Davenant hath gotten the lecture though with some difficulty by two or three voices at the most: He having 26 or 27, Dr Hill 24 & Mr Collins but 12’.79 The Dr Hill in question was the Master of St Catharine’s who took such a dislike to Sibbes. Collins was the man later to be made Provost of King’s. The electors to the chair were the Vice-Chancellor and all the doctors and bachelors of divinity in the Senate. If the Cambridge theologians had wanted to demonstrate their commitment to a new style of divinity and the conformity demanded by the Canons they had plenty of opportunity. They chose to elect Davenant instead. Much of Davenant’s energy was poured into the weary war of words with Rome. His lectures on Colossians even turned biblical exegesis into protestant polemic. Discussing the claim Paul makes, in Colossians, to be considered an apostle Davenant could not resist the temptation to defend Paul’s claim and then introduce an aside making it clear that the papacy, claiming the same apostolicity, was absolutely wrong.80 Davenant was, however, also interested in points at issue within the English church, and worked on the vexed question of the atonement. Like others he needed to know if Christ died for some of us or for all. His approach was a little liberal for some tastes, arguing that the death of Christ was a universal remedy, applicable to the whole human race (and not merely to the elect). However, only to a limited number (those predestined by God) was given the faith that turned hope into salvation. Davenant was anxious to take the sting out of a difficult idea. Essentially he was offering the faithful a distinction between sufficient grace (given to all in Christ’s death) and efficient grace (given to those who would be saved). This was an idea long familiar to catholic theologians. Even so Davenant was merely offering cold comfort. He was not genuinely interested in the consolation that grace would give to us all. What he wanted to talk about was the immutable and obscure will of God: … lest the Blood of the Son of God should f low, and through the fault of the human will the same should happen in the second covenant which had happened in the first, namely, that no one should enjoy the benefit of it, God resolved with Himself a more deep and secret counsel, and determined of His mere and special mercy to give to some persons the ability and will to fulfil the aforesaid conditions of faith, and further that they should actually and infallibly fulfil it.81 Things had not changed so very much in Cambridge. Davenant’s Determinationes, his professorial judgments given at university disputations, reveal both 79 80

Bodl Library Tanner MS 75.69, fol.339. M. Fuller, The Life, Letters and Writings of John Davenant (London 1897), pp.173ff.; on Davenant and Rome, see Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp.136–8. 81 Fuller, Davenant, pp.234–5; see also pp.226–34; the significance of this debate is discussed in Como, ‘Puritan Predestination’, pp.67–72.

108   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the familiar ground covered by theological debate in Cambridge and his own views on some controversial issues. 82 They make it absolutely clear that Davenant was mounting a passionate defence of infralapsarian opinions in the chools. He explicitly rejected the notion that sin foreseen plays any part in election. His assumptions were stark and familiar: there is an eternal Decree of God, of gratuitously choosing some to eternal happiness, and of leading them, by infallible means, to the same; but, on the contrary, of willingly passing by others, and justly assigning them to eternal punishment.83 As late as 1641, Davenant was to take up this theme again in reply to Samuel Hoard’s Gods love to man-kinde. Manifested by dis-proving his absolute decree for their damnation. In his Animadversions on this book Davenant picked up arguments that had once been advanced by Peter Baro. Discussing the apostle Peter, who is the exemplar of human faith, failure and redemption, the Lady Margaret Professor made it clear that human action and belief are not what salvation is made of: A prime and eternall cause cannot depend upon the self same temporal effects which are thereby caused. If therefore, Predestination be the prime and eternall cause from whence Peter’s faith, repentance and perseverance were derived, his foreseen faith, repentance and perseverance cannot in any good sense be imagined antecedent causes, merits, conditions or motives unto the Divine Predestination.84 Davenant, then, knew which tradition he stood within. He chose his words carefully, knowing that were those who did not want such things discussed, but the language of Christian assurance was never far away. In a passage urging the elect to apply to themselves the promises of the gospels, Davenant let his convictions show: we may be allowed to contend from the nature and scope of the promises of the Gospel concerning the forgiveness of sins, and obtaining life eternal. For such is their efficacy, that as soon as any one receives them by a living faith, and applies them to himself, he straightway derives from thence firm and solid consolation.85 Davenant was well aware of the sensitivities around him and he knew that his assumptions about election had to be kept on a leash. The temptation of separatism was always before those who believed in Christian assurance. The faithful, who knew themselves elect, could too easily assume that they must first set about getting their Jerusalem builded here and then move in and shut the door behind them. These people knew that they were inevitably the citizens of heaven, and it could seem like logic to them that heaven therefore need not wait. Some of the faithful pursued the glorious logic of these conclusions and did create a separate church allowing admission to the saints alone. No longer did they live in the muddle and mess of the here in earth. They believed that their worship, 82 83 84 85

J. Davenant, Determinationes Quarundum Theologicarum, trans. J. Allport (London 1846). Davenant, Determinationes, pp.354ff. Davenant, Determinationes, p.458. Davenant, Determinationes, p.232; see also pp.226–34.



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their preaching and their practice all belonged to the invisible church of the saints. In one bound they leapt over a distinction that the church had made for generations, a distinction between the church militant, straining towards glory but mired in the world of sin, and the church triumphant where the redeemed live in glory. Davenant knew that this impulse was profoundly sectarian and both undermined orthodox ideas about the nature of the church and proclaimed a confidence about the character of that church that is not ours to know. He was careful and subtle, and drew back from making judgements about who had earned the right to heaven. As Anthony Milton has pointed out, Davenant argued, in his commentary on Colossians, that all members of the visible church should be assumed to be members of the invisible church. He could, apparently, delve deep into the mind of God, but he would not count the saints.86 For all his care and skill, however, even Davenant was seduced by the image of the godly saint stalking the lonely path to glory in a sinful world. The insidious ideas of the over-assured elect crept into his work. In his treatment of the question ‘The Holy Catholic Church which we believe, consists of the elect alone’ Davenant came close to arguing that the visible church militant, as well as the church triumphant, existed for the elect alone. He noted that for the Roman Catholic controversialist Bellarmine membership of the church hinged on three things: outward profession of the faith, outward participation in the sacraments, and outward subjection to the Bishop of Rome. Davenant was reasonably comfortable with that definition and accepted that Christians became members of particular churches, the Roman Catholic Church, or Church of England, and presumptive members of the catholic church by profession, communion and subjugation to legitimate pastors. He wanted to make windows in souls, however, and looked for signs of saving grace. Christians, he argued: do not become true members of the holy Catholic Church, which we believe, unless they are sanctified by the inward gift of grace, and are united to Christ, the Head, by the inward bond of the Spirit. To this Holy Catholic Church, then, which forms the mystical body of Christ, we deny that the ungodly, hypocrites or any belong, who are not partakers of spiritual life, and are void of inward faith, charity and holiness.87 Davenant claimed that he was advancing views of impeccable orthodoxy and cited St Augustine. In truth, he was straining the sense of the argument that Augustine had developed. Davenant argued, as Augustine did not, that the non-elect were not properly members of the church at all. Thus he allowed himself the luxury of confusing the boundaries between the churches militant and triumphant and slipped the saints into glory with impertinent haste. They who are true members of the Catholic Church militant, hold true communion with the Church triumphant. … But most assuredly, all the unclean and hypocrites, whatever profession they put on outwardly,

86

A. Milton, ‘The Laudians and the Church of Rome’ (Cambridge University PhD thesis 1989), pp.195, 198; see also Milton, ‘The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church’, pp.188–90 and Milton, Catholic and Reformed. 87 Davenant, Determinationes, pp.474–5.

110   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 belong to the Church of the malignants, and are utter aliens from the Church triumphant, nay, even from the militant …88 This was the official voice and theology of the Cambridge Schools where Davenant developed and defended his ideas as Lady Margaret Professor from 1609 to 1621. It was a more cautious and slightly less austere protestantism than that of Perkins or Chaderton or Robert Some. Davenant was not prepared to pursue the logic of his understanding of the majestic divine decrees into bald statements about a God who viewed humanity uncreated, unfallen and named the reprobate simply because he chose to do so. Davenant’s Determinationes also reveal that he was prepared to recognise the authority of the church to impose ceremonies that were not contrary to the word of God. His attitude, however, could hardly be described as enthusiastic. Like Whitgift, he believed ceremonies were only necessary for the sake of decency and order, and he denounced those who ‘require us to ascribe to them a supernatural efficacy of imparting grace’.89 Such grudging conformity did not entirely protect Davenant. Despite the fact that he advanced to the rank and dignity of Bishop of Salisbury, a sermon on predestination, in 1630, had him forced to his knees in humiliation before the Council Table.90 In Cambridge, in the first decade of the seventeenth century, that would have seemed a very improbable prospect, for there he was held in reverence. Consensus and conformity Davenant was not an isolated figure, for he had good and inf luential friends. He was close to John Preston, the man who had arranged the horses and the contacts to secure Davenant’s election as President of Queens’. Preston had graduated from Queens’ in 1608 and was a junior fellow by the time he cantered to London to fix the succession. He was also an able and ambitious man. He became a point of contact at Cambridge for Puritan divines of distinction like Hildersham, Cotton and Dod and in due course was to become Master of Emmanuel, the college that had institutionalised all their hopes.91 Davenant was also friendly with Samuel Ward, with whom he corresponded regularly. Ward, in his turn, was regularly in touch with others of similar opinion. There was a frequent exchange of letters with William Bedell, sometime fellow of Emmanuel, then Provost of Trinity College Dublin and ultimately Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh. Ward also corresponded with James Ussher. There was in fact a network of contacts, within Cambridge and beyond, providing encouragement and a formidable forum for discussion for scholars who shared a common conversation about a faith that explored the reality of predestination and cared for the purity of the church. Much of the surviving correspondence dates from after 1620, but a letter from Bedell to Ward in 1604 deals with the problems of subscription and ceremonies then so topical. Bedell’s view is similar to that of Chaderton. Recognising the 88 89 90 91

Davenant, Determinationes, pp.474–5. Davenant, Determinationes, pp.330–2. Fuller, Church History, III, pp.366–7. I. Morgan, Prince Charles’ Puritan Chaplain (London 1957), pp.18, 27.



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authority of the magistrate to impose a canonical obedience even though he disliked it intensely, he explained why his opposition to the surplice would not force him into secession: As for relinquishing the Ministry, if nothing impious be required at our handes, I dare not approve it for all the inconveniences in the world: sith both to Minister and people that which is so necessary should methinkes swallow all inexpediences.92 Ward ultimately succeeded Davenant as Lady Margaret Professor in 1623, and his own Determinationes ref lect very similar theological preoccupations.93 The publications of the Cambridge Press in this period confirm the continuing dominance of the divinity of the 1580s and 1590s. The name of Perkins appears more than twice as often as any other in the list of publications between 1604 and 1618. Andrew Willett’s biblical commentaries and Thomas Playfere’s sermons were also heavily represented, both laced with reformed conviction. In 1615 the Press produced a first edition of John Yates’ God’s Arraignement of Hypocrites. Yates, a young fellow of Emmanuel, was an early voice in a protest that would soon dominate theological discussion in England. The name and theology of Arminius was now becoming familiar, and Yates knew that it must be opposed. His book defended Calvin and Perkins against the criticisms of Arminius, and refuted the all too familiar accusation that an over-eager discussion of predestination inevitably made God the author of sin.94 Another popular product of the press were the sermons of Samuel Hieron, which ran through six editions between 1606 and 1617. Hieron had published once before. In an earlier work, printed abroad, he had been scathing about godly devotion and the way in which communicants would sit at table and pass the cup from one to another ‘one drinking as it were to another, like good fellows’. It was, however, quite possible to hold views like these and still be completely at ease with doctrine that has usually been called ‘Puritan’. So Hieron, a sometime fellow of King’s, now offered a familiar reassurance in familiar terms. He urged the benefits of assurance, asking ‘is it possible for a man to knowe himselfe to have the spirit of God, and is it not then necessary for every man to make enquiry into himselfe concerning this?’95 He argued that those who are regenerate both know that they are and know how to live like the saved. This was a knowledge others were eager to share and so Hieron helpfully listed the hallmarks of the true Christian, a curriculum vitae for aspirants to glory. He went on to urge the regenerate not to quench the spirit: albeit the being of God’s spirit in those which have received it cannot be quite abolished, yet it is possible that it may through the negligence of obedience to this holy charge be brought to such a lowe ebbe, that a man himselfe shall strongly be perswaded that it is utterly gone …96 92 93 94 95 96

Bodl Tanner MS 75.39, fols.126ff. (The transcription in Two Biographies of William Bedell, ed. E.S. Shuckburgh (Cambridge 1902) is not reliable.) In Samuel Ward, Opera Nonulla (London 1658). John Yates, God’s Arraignememt of Hypocrites (Cambridge 1615). Samuel Hieron, Three Sermons (London 1615), pp.D3v., 8. On Hieron, see DNB. Hieron, Three Sermons, p.25.

112   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Election, assurance and perseverance were all here and were further developed in two sermons that appeared as A Caveat and Comfort for Believers. Of such stuff was the list of the Cambridge University Press. This was the theology they could sell. In the Schools during the same period the story was much the same. Davenant’s Determinationes (the judgments he delivered at the end of discussions in the Schools) are one indication of what was being discussed and what was considered orthodox. The emphasis fell on debating and challenging the claims of the Roman Catholic church. The same emphasis is ref lected in subjects chosen to be debated before a wider public at the Commencement.97 So, for example, in 1605 John Boyse of Corpus, keeping the act for his DD, defended the theses, ‘The Virgin Mary is not our advocate’, and ‘The interpretation of Scripture does not depend upon the Pope’. Ten years later, Thomas Turner of Peterhouse, arguing for the primacy of scripture over the church and for the separation of protestants from Rome, was sustaining the old arguments against papal authority and the integrity of the protestant church. The most striking feature of the topics debated in this period, however, is the frequency with which subjects relating to civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction occur. Some scholars were serious about investigating the limits of power, while others were simply seizing a chance to display an abject and fawning obedience before the audience of the great and the good who assembled at Commencement. James Harrison, a candidate for the BD in 1609, thought that the king in his kingdom is beneath God alone and also argued that the Church of England could legitimately command the use of ceremonies. Such a parade of eager conformity might win the friends in high places it so obviously sought, but it had not won the argument in Cambridge. Other voices and other issues were still considered more compelling. In 1610, Richard Sibbes, fulfilling the requirements of his BD, maintained, ‘The decree of God does not take away the freedom of the will’. In later life Sibbes would argue that God delivers the elect from the spirit of bondage, giving them the spirit of adoption. Chosen by God, the elect are so filled with grace that they inevitably choose good things. The language of choice of course implies freedom, but Sibbes was clear that it is God who chooses with a choice that cannot be resisted.98 Sibbes, just made lecturer at Holy Trinity, was saying what people wanted to hear. Two years after he took his BD William Sydall, of Christ’s, stood in the same place. By now the opinions of Arminius were becoming known and perhaps prompted Sydall to argue that ‘Divine foreknowledge was not the cause of the fall of mankind’. Sydall’s thesis is stated too baldly to allow us to know what he thought, but it is clear that a long familiar discussion wore on. Different, more liberal, opinion had made little or no headway. At the Commencement of 1606 Robert Kercher, a fellow of Trinity, kept the act for his DD. He had argued a point close to Sydall’s heart: ‘The decree of election and reprobation depends on the mere will of God’. Overall, as Regius Professor, had to sit through Kercher’s careful exploration of the mind of God. As the display of learning ended it was 97 98

BL Harleian MS 7038, pp.85ff. M.E. Dever, Richard Sibbes, Puritanism and Calvinism in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Macon, GA 2000), p.38; BL Harleian MS 7038, p.88.



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the Professor’s job to add yet more lustre to the occasion with words of elegant conclusion. That was more than poor Overall could bear and he challenged the assumption everyone had just heard proved, declaring that reprobation also came about because of sin. Turning on Kercher, Overall suggested that he had made God responsible for the sin of the reprobate.99 The outburst may have made Overall feel better, even if it spoiled the party rather. It clearly persuaded no one. A year later Overall had moved on and his departure took some of the passion out of the argument, but Cambridge theology had not really changed. The arguments about conformity that had attended the beginning of the reign had perhaps made everyone a little more sensitive to the dangers of scandal. More importantly, although men like Chaderton and Ward might know they had to be careful, they also knew that they still sat at the head of their respective tables and that Overall, Barrett and Baro were gone. They were confident and as determined as ever. It is perhaps a measure of the fact that Cambridge was now more at ease with its religion that preaching became less controversial. In the decade following William Ames’ sermon in 1609 few preachers were prosecuted in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. Richard Sibbes did find himself before the court, but rather for what he would not say than what he had said. In 1616 he appeared before Vice-Chancellor Hills to explain why he had failed to comply with a command to subscribe to the Three Articles. The King was now insisting that all town preachers subscribe, and Sibbes, lecturer at Holy Trinity, was once again under pressure to conform. He was clearly not enthusiastic about using the Book of Common Prayer and its ceremonies, but he was treading carefully: I said that the signe of the cross was dangerous my meaning was in regard of those that be not well instructed and not otherwise. I said that there is nihil impii in the booke of ordination. I add it is not contrary to the word of god but allowable.100 The brief entry in the court book fails to make it clear whether or not Sibbes did ultimately subscribe. As he was made preacher at Gray’s Inn soon afterwards we must assume he did indeed conform. Sibbes’ hesitation about subscription in 1616 makes his election to the Mastership of St Catharine’s in 1626 all the more remarkable and indicates what kind of religion was being preached from the pulpit of Holy Trinity. Earlier in 1616 a fellow of Pembroke, called John Pocklington, also appeared before the court. Pocklington’s talents were controversial and were always likely to secure him notoriety rather than fame. In the 1630s his enthusiasm for a Sunday divided between exhausting reverence at God’s altar and then a little recreation or a nap, which he published in Altare Christianum, and Sunday no Sabbath, put him on the national stage. It appears though that his talent for giving offence was recognised rather earlier than had once been thought. No fewer than seventeen articles were exhibited against him in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court in 1616.101 Not one of them had anything to do with Sibbes’ problem over subscription. 99 100 101

CUL MS Gg.1.29, fols.9r.-v. CUL CUA VC CT I.42; Dever, Sibbes, pp.44f. The articles appear in CUL CUA VC CT I.8, fols.255ff.; I.42, fols.163v.f., 174ff, and in BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.64. They are best seen in Pembroke College Archive MS M7. I am grateful

114   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Pocklington’s offence was popery, and on a breathtaking scale. He was alleged to have maintained the real presence in a communion sermon in chapel, arguing that the words ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ must be understood plainly not figuratively. In a subsequent discussion with one of the fellows he claimed that he couldn’t fault Bellarmine’s view of the eucharist except in his use of the ‘bare word’ ‘transubstantiation’. Not surprisingly, he was also prepared to defend the practice of attending a catholic mass. He apparently objected when the question ‘secession from the Roman church was necessary’ was discussed in the Schools. He also protested when a scholar used an oration on Gunpowder Treason Day to condemn Guy Fawkes. He was reported to have recommended that young students of divinity read Cassander’s Consultatio, a catholic commentary on protestant conviction and ‘the safest author for resolution about the true Church’. He declared that he preferred the works of Bellarmine and Baronius to Anglican apologetic, and attacked both the Tortura Torti and the Responsio ad apologiam Bellarmini, Lancelot Andrewes’ defence of the English church, as works of ‘small worth, solidity, and gravity’. In addition he was also alleged to have denied that our sins were imputed to Christ, to have disputed the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us; to have argued that scripture should be interpreted, not by scripture, but by holy men, and to have affirmed that the Roman religion was good because there was less crime under popery. Finally, in an academic exercise performed in the college chapel he was recorded to have defended the Roman church as a true church. Balcanquall, the respondent in the exercise, challenged him and cited the views of Whitaker, Fulke, Abbot, Downham, Calvin, du Plessis, Sadael, Moulin and many more. Pocklington was unimpressed by the witness of this protestant pantheon, and with great vehemencie slighted all that said so as impios, sceleratos, perniciosos atque in ipsum Christum blasphemos with other words to that effect, whereof the Master when he was publicly admonished would take no notice. Pocklington’s critics were protesting too much. All this needs to be put in context. Under the absentee Master, Samuel Harsnett, tension in Pembroke had steadily mounted. From 1612 John Pocklington had been Bursar, then later President, of the college. Harsnett was hated and Pocklington was Harsnett’s creature. The articles prepared in Pembroke against him are a part of the college’s complaint against his master and theirs.102 There had even been a row about Pocklington assuming precedence over other, more senior, fellows in chapel. The Master’s opponents were angry and organised, their efforts being orchestrated by three particularly discontented fellows: Walter Balcanquall, Matthew Wren and Ralph Brownrigg. In May 1616 this group finally forced Harsnett to resign and elected a more congenial master in Nicholas Felton. The persecution of Pocklington was no doubt a postscript to this unhappy affair. It was clearly no coincidence that among the five fellows who made depositions against Pocklington were Wren, Balcanquall and Brownrigg. To find Matthew Wren at odds with Pocklington is striking, for in later life they would agree about church practice. To find Wren to Dr Milton for pointing out that they are also printed in The Petition … exhibited in Parliament Against John Pocklington (London 1641). 102 Pembroke College Archive, Socii Pembroich II, 1562–1701 MM.m.8, M11.

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making common cause with Brownrigg who was later be an opponent would, in other circumstances, be baff ling. All of which serves as a possibly unnecessary reminder that combination room politics and college loyalties are significant factors in Cambridge life. In Pembroke these politics cut right across doctrinal allegiances. When assessing the theological balance of power in the university or analysing the extent of doctrinal factional sentiment it is as well to remember that there might be more than divinity at stake. Still, it is a further indication of the puritan spirit of the university that when Wren set out to ‘fix’ Pocklington his best bet was to accuse him of popish sympathies. Arminius Pocklington asked for trouble and got it. Cambridge colleges can forgive eccentricity, but they will never be generous to arrogance. The ease with which his opponents made common cause and agreed the charges against him reveals that, for all the anxieties, it was still relatively easy to agree what error looked like. And it looked like popery. Pocklington’s alleged enthusiasm for Rome and his distaste for Calvin, Whitaker and Abbott were utterly unacceptable. There were arguments about the identity of the English church and a debate about the foundations of its theology, but neither were conducted in the language Pocklington is supposed to have used. While Pocklington strutted about Pembroke clutching his edition of Bellarmine, men like Playfere, Davenant, Ward and many others continued to cite Calvin and the continental reformers with approval and gloried in the rigour of their protestant scholasticism. They had the upper hand and they knew it, but they were well aware that there was still a debate about what the Church of England believed and about its traditions and authority. These questions would not go away and, in time, they were to generate a real theological crisis. It was a crisis that developed slowly and, before we can turn to it, we need first to deal with a theological challenge of a very different kind, foreign in its origin and foreign in its assumptions. Jacobus Arminius has been variously described. Richard Neile, the Archbishop of York, was accused of Arminianism by the House of Commons in 1628 and argued in his defence that he had not read three lines of Arminius’ writings (many ‘Arminians’ claimed that they had never read Arminius). Nonetheless he thought he knew what Arminius said and could not see what all the fuss was about: ‘take him out of the question of Predestination and Reprobation, he is held to be in all other points a rigid Calvinist’.103 William Prynne, however, thought Arminius was responsible for ‘Hereticall and Grace-destroying’ new teaching, ‘which have of late almost shouldered out of doores, the ancient, established and resolved Doctrines of our Church’.104 Arminius was born in Oudewater, near Utrecht, in 1560. A graduate of Leiden, he then studied under Beza in Geneva and returned to Amsterdam as a pastor, in 1587, with f lawlessly protestant credentials. In 1602 he was a controversial appointment as a professor of theology at Leiden, 103 104

Quoted White, Predestination, p.274. William Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme or the Church of England’s old antithesis to new Arminianisme (London 1630), sig.A2–A2v.

116   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 where he remained, in the midst of a more and more vigorous argument about predestination, until his death in 1609. Arminius was a profoundly scriptural theologian and the arguments all began, as they began for Luther, with his exegesis of the Epistle to the Romans. In Romans 7 Paul writes ‘I am f lesh, sold in bondage to sin. I do not understand what I do. For I do not do what I want to; and what I detest that I do.’105 It is a desperate, almost hopeless, situation. The apostle knows what is good, but still lurches about in sins that he hates. It is a language echoed in the confession of The Book of Common Prayer describing a humanity at odds with God and itself: ‘we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and there is no health in us’. It was a contemporary commonplace among reformed theologians in the Genevan tradition that, in Romans 7, Paul was speaking of his regenerate self. This dreadful agony of reluctant, but inevitable sin was actually what it felt like to be an apostle. Even Paul, called by God and given his grace, could only do those things he ought not to have done. Here reformed theologians found the classical exposition of the state of the elect, still utterly dependent on God, unable of themselves to do anything and certainly incapable of earning ­salvation. Arminius, however, as early as 1591, came to the conclusion that Romans 7 was a description of the unregenerate Paul, a man not yet under grace, but still under the law. It was a decisive shift in exegesis because it allowed Arminius to reconsider what it might feel like to be one of the regenerate. Later in his life he was to return again and again to this passage, and began to offer a very different account of the life of a redeemed Christian. Once we have been given grace, he argued, our minds are illuminated by the saving knowledge of Christ. We are transformed and so thoroughly brought to order that we can actually begin to share the will of God and become the people we are meant to be. So, a regenerate individual could, with the help of the Holy Spirit, fight successfully against sin and Satan and do those things that Paul had once felt he could not do.106 It is this picture of the Christian saint, liberated from the prison that other protestant writers had explored and described in such detail, that is Arminius’ most startling creation. Here Arminius is offering a new and radically different account of Christian life and hope. Here he was most radical and disturbing. He gave believers the promise that they could co-operate with God. Contemporaries like Perkins might have a hope that was every bit as powerful and passionate, but it could look very like a passive, not an active, sanctity. Christians know that they have to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.107 Arminius allowed them the luxury of looking and feeling busy while they do it. His ideas about predestination, meanwhile, are less extraordinary than they are sometimes made to sound. He never tried to shake all the Genevan dust from his feet. Like so many others his theological imagination and conversation was dominated by an account of conversion and of life under the divine decrees. All he 105

Epistle to the Romans 7:14,15; the translation is by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (London 1993), p.472. 106 ‘A Dissertation … on the seventh chapter … of Romans’ in J. Arminius, Works of Arminius, trans. J. and W. Nichols (London 1825–8), II, pp.419ff. (especially p.497). On Arminius’ thought, see Carl Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (New York 1971). 107 Philippians 2:12.



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did was to tamper with the order of those decrees. A protestant theologian steeped in assumptions about the power and importance of the word, he accepted that the process of conversion begins with the preaching of the Law. The sinner must first realise and be repelled by his or her own sin. Only then will sin be abandoned. Here, for a theologian like Perkins, we first feel the pull of that golden chain. All humanity consists of just two tribes, the elect and the reprobate. Desperate to know their own identity, the elect first feel themselves elect when they know that they are sinners. Thus it is essential for someone like Perkins that Romans 7 describes the regenerate Christian. It is precisely in sharing Paul’s experience of horror and anxiety that we realise that we are saved. Arminius, however, thought that everyone under the law, elect and reprobate alike, knows that they are sinners. He believed that what finally distinguished the elect from those who could merely identif y sin was their capacity to co-operate with grace and actually contend with sin. There were, then, for Arminius, not two tribes, but three: people were either without law, or they had acknowledged their sin and were under law, or they had both acknowledged sin and effectively repented and were under grace. In his theology the old assurance suddenly becomes more fragile. The golden chain slips in our grasp if the experience that once told us that we are the elect now only indicates only that we might be under law or grace. Turning to Romans 9, Arminius developed a full-blooded assault on what he believed to be a fundamental error in some doctrines of predestination. He argued that our proper concern in election is not to know more about God’s eternal decree, but to ref lect on our faith in Christ. Like the good protestant that he was, he urged that faith alone saves and sin condemns. Building on what was already clear to him from Romans 7, Arminius then set out to show that sin was a voluntary act and that the reprobate were those who resisted grace and chose sin. Now here, there is a decisive shift of emphasis. The story Arminius tells about salvation and damnation is a story about us, what we do and do not do. It is not a story about what happens in the mind of God. Good protestants had got used to saying that all things turn on what God wills. Arminius said the reprobate are those who themselves choose to sin. These ideas were given a more systematic expression when Arminius produced a reply to William Perkins’ De praedestinationis modo et ordine. Here Arminius appears a profoundly Christocentric thinker. Salvation turns on Christ, and election and reprobation are meaningless without him. Christ, he suggested, died not for the elect, but for all, though the salvation he won for all was only applied to the elect. Like every other orthodox theologian he believed in election, and men and women are saved not because they will to be saved, but because God in Christ saves them and they are predestined to salvation. Like most other protestant theologians this belief amounted almost to a passion. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he argued that God did not name the elect who then inevitably believed, but rather recognised and consciously elected those who had become believers. Arminius suggested that there was an absolute predestination that committed believers to salvation and unbelievers to reprobation. There was also a predestination of individuals that was made on the basis of human faith that God foresaw. While Perkins declared that God has foreknowledge of the future only because he has determined that future, Arminius, who clearly tried

118   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 to rewrite Genevan theology from within, believed that an element of human free will crept into the process of salvation. Grace alone could save, no human could merit salvation, but a human could, through grace, choose to believe and in believing could accept offered grace. It was God’s foreknowledge of that choice that determined individual salvation. In short, while others argued that believers would persevere because they were elect, Arminius argued that believers were elected because God foresaw that they would persevere. Arminius was not alone in saying what he said, but he had the hounds of protestant conviction straining at the leash and he trod very carefully. He could sound very austere indeed. He stressed repeatedly that it was God alone who determined the dispensation of grace and that without grace salvation was impossible. What he was doing had been done before. He recognised that God had known, from the beginning, all that was possible. God knew that this world as it is, in all its detail, was a possibility and knew other possibilities too. He could have chosen differently, but chose this, and choosing knew that some would be saved and some lost. Indeed, in choosing he willed that they would be saved or lost. It was a sophisticated argument intended to prove that it is what God wills that counts.108 His beliefs achieved a final form in the Sentiments on Predestination. There Arminius distinguishes four divine decrees. The first appointed Christ as Mediator. The second determined to accept believers in Christ, but to leave unbelievers in their sin. The third appointed the means necessary to salvation: gifts necessary for faith and repentance must be given. God in his wisdom knows what those gifts are and in his justice chooses to execute what his wisdom commands. The fourth decree decided the salvation and reprobation of individuals. This was the one decree in which God’s foreknowledge played a part, and even here the language is hardly a Pelagian defence of human free will. According to Arminius, God knew from all eternity, those individuals who would through his preventing grace, believe, and, through his subsequent grace would persevere – according to the before described administration of those means which are suitable and proper for conversion and faith.109 The discussion of free will makes it clear that humans depend absolutely upon grace. In a state of sin that dependence is absolute. Even in a state of regeneration we need ‘the continued aids of Divine Grace’.110 So, Arminius could declare, ‘I ascribe to grace the commencement, the continuance and the consummation of all that is good .’ 111 He could insist on the primacy of grace as much as he liked. His critics knew that he had God waiting on our belief, tapping his fingers while we decide which way the scales will tip. Salvation, for Arminius, was an experience a believer saw 108

S.F. Hughes, ‘English Theologies of Predestination c.1580–1630’, in Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson by His Students, ed. S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger (Aldershot 1998), pp.239–40. 109 Arminius, Works, I, pp.589–90. 110 Arminius, Works, I, p.596. 111 Arminius, Works, I, p.600.



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in Christ and then struggled to possess; it was something worked out in human lives. He left little room for the language of perseverance and assurance. Those are words that God can guarantee, but Arminius did not tell the faithful how they might know what God in his wisdom knows. He claimed that he never taught that a true believer might totally or finally fall away from faith, but he was in a corner and he knew it. He wriggled and twisted, claiming that assurance is available through the Spirit and a believer can be ‘certain and persuaded’, but had to accept that, as God is the final judge, absolute certainty is not a human property. The arrival of Arminianism Arminius was dead before his ideas reached England through his published work and through his disciples. It seems probable that the first contact was personal, and in Cambridge the most likely candidate is Richard ‘Dutch’ Thomson, a protégé of Lancelot Andrewes.112 Thomson, born in Holland, was a Biblical scholar and fellow of Clare and claimed to have known Arminius well. He was certainly an enthusiast for Arminian divinity and, in a letter to Baudius, the Professor of History at Leiden, in 1605, wrote of the interest that it had stimulated in Cambridge.113 It is not entirely clear though, that Thomson can legitimately be described as an ‘Arminian’. His Diatriba (only published posthumously at Leiden, through the good offices of Overall, having been refused an English licence) struck an individual note. Here Thomson argued that the elect could lose justif ying grace, which perhaps explains why Overall was keen to see the book published. Revealing a sacramental strand to his thought, Thomson also suggested that the universal efficacy of baptism could not be reconciled with much contemporary teaching on predestination. The first point was one that Arminius had been careful to avoid; the second was quite simply alien to his thought.114 Thomson seems to have deliberately set out to confound the champions of protestant certainty. To this end he tried to demonstrate that Calvin and the reformers had been misunderstood. In an exercise that was hardly likely to win him any friends, he cited the works of the protestant fathers against their more recent interpreters. Thomson was just one scholar interested in foreign divinity. The real significance of Arminius’ work was being assessed in a quite different way. Theologians sympathetic to Arminius’ ideas met in January 1610 and produced a Remonstrance to the States General. The Remonstrance rejected five assumptions that lay beneath much of contemporary protestantism: supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, the argument that Christ died for the elect alone, the idea that grace worked irresistibly in the elect and belief in perseverance were all dismissed. Thereafter Dutch Arminians tended to be called ‘Remonstrants’ and their opponents, ‘Contra-Remonstrants’. The two groups were quickly at one another’s throats 112 113

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.38ff. covers this ground more thoroughly. Praestantium ac eriditorum Virorum Epistolae Ecclesiasticae at Theologicae, ed. P. Limborch (Amsterdam 1704), p.148. On Thomson, see DNB and Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus (London 1668), p.127. 114 Richard Thomson, Diatriba de Amissione et Intercessione Gratiae et Justificationis (Leiden 1616), pp.31–40, 45–126. See Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.38ff.

120   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in what was to become a crisis for church and state. When the Remonstrants nominated Conrad Vorstius for the divinity chair in Leiden there was an early test of strength.115 The Remonstrants, though, had chosen badly, for Vorstius was rather more than an Arminian. He was widely suspected of having doubts about the divinity of Christ, a view then associated with Socinus. Error on such a breathtaking scale was a soft target. James I, ever eager to display his ability as a theologian and a statesman, could not resist it. The King had been stung by Roman Catholic attempts to suggest that his own beliefs were actually borrowed from Vorstius and set about the Dutchman with a will. Reading Vorstius’ Tractatus Theologicus de Deo, James recoiled at its ‘monstrous blasphemie and horrible Atheisme’. In September 1611 he set out to prevent Vorstius getting the chair that would add to his dignity and inf luence. It is important to recognise that the King had not taken up the cudgels against Arminian teaching on predestination, but simply posed as a champion of catholic orthodoxy against the doubtful Vorstius. However, the damage was done, and in his eyes the Remonstrants were now compromised. The message was not lost on Cambridge. An entry in the court books reveals that between 6 and 24 September 1611 the Cambridge booksellers were interrogated about the whereabouts of copies of Vorstius’ Tractatus.116 Seven copies had been sold, and the list of purchasers reminds us that owning a book does not mean that you agree with its contents. It includes Davenant and Thomas Goad, a fellow of King’s, both of whom were to be present when Remonstrant opinion was later condemned at the Synod of Dort. Also on the list were Richard Sibbes and a man called Walter Curle, from Peterhouse, destined for notoriety as a Laudian Bishop. This was the background against which Arminian opinion was received in England. Ideas that had already been discredited when aired by John Overall or Peter Baro were now known to be associated in the King’s mind with fundamental error. Nonetheless, the Regius Professor, John Richardson, was certainly in touch with the new theology. In 1611 he met Isaac Casaubon, a scholar with an international reputation and a growing sympathy for Arminianism, while he was staying with Lancelot Andrewes at Downham.117 Two years later, again through Andrewes, Richardson met the talkative Grotius, another formidable scholar with Arminian ideas. When Richardson could get a word in edgeways the two men discussed theological developments in Holland.118 The Regius Professor was clearly sympathetic to criticisms of contemporary Calvinism, but, as we have seen, like ‘Dutch’ Thomson, his own views hardly amount to authentic Arminianism. Arminianism did not arrive in England to a chorus of approval. Its impact is better seen in its many critics than in the cautious independence of a few scholars interested in new ideas. John Yates, recently made a fellow of Emmanuel, was quick off the mark with God’s Arraignement of Hypocrites, first published in 1615.

115

F.H. Shriver, ‘Orthodoxy and Diplomacy: James I and the Vorstius Affair’, English Historical Review 85.326 (1970), pp.449ff. 116 CUL CUA VC CT I.41, fols.31v.-32. 117 Mullinger, University of Cambridge, II, p.409. 118 R. Winwood, Memorials of Affairs of State, ed. E. Sawyer, 3 vols. (London 1725), III, pp.459–60.



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Having dealt at length with Arminius’ conviction that many contemporary theologians made God the author of sin, Yates then moved on to rebut the rest of the Dutchman’s divinity and to defend the reputation of William Perkins. Where Arminius had tried to put Christ back into Christianity, Yates argued that nothing must obscure the election that precedes Christ’s work. Christ’s love might redeem us, but it only does so because God has already elected us: we are chosen in Christ, not to be elected, but redeemed; not as the cause of election, but as means appointed of God in our election; yet a meritorious cause of our salvation and redemption.119 Yates, urgently asserting the absolute primacy of God’s will, was, not surprisingly, profoundly unhappy with Arminius’ suggestion that salvation and reprobation may in some sense depend on divine foreknowledge: ‘Man is fallen, this is the will of God, and not his mere foresight …’120 God’s Arraignement of Hypocrites is a sustained assertion of the sovereignty of God and a rejection of the idea that God consulted anything but his own good pleasure when he decreed salvation and reprobation for men and women. In Emmanuel, Arminian ideas were not welcome. Elsewhere one or two theologians may have been a little more sympathetic. In 1616 Samuel Brooke, a member of Trinity College and now Gresham Professor of Divinity at London, returned to Cambridge for an academic exercise in the Cambridge Schools. There Brooke discussed the thesis ‘whether it can happen that of two people, each having the same measure of grace, one nevertheless is converted, and believes, the other not’. Brooke took Calvin, Beza and Perkins to task and argued, against them, that individuals might resist or co-operate with grace.121 Arminius would have said the same thing, but Brooke did not quote him and could quite easily have reached his conclusions independently. Real Arminians are hard to find. That was clearly the view of Archbishop Abbott. In 1617 he declared that Arminian opinion had only been maintained by Baro, Harsnett and Overall. If the best that the Arminian cause could do was to muster three names who were not Arminian at all, but independent critics of contemporary ideas, it hardly seemed likely to catch on.122 Lancelot Andrewes, host to Casuabon and Grotius, was perhaps a sympathiser, but knew he had to be careful. The King was less than enthusiastic about Grotius, and Andrewes found it necessary to deny reports about their conversation.123 There were but shades and shadows of Arminianism in England in 1617, and what there was, was viewed with intense suspicion. Then, late in 1617, a fellow of Trinity called Edward Simpson declared his hand. Simpson was apparently a stranger to discretion. He had first met the King in 1615 when he had preached to him during a royal visit to Trinity. The sermon was a long one and James had got a little impatient.124 The next encounter 119 120 121 122 123 124

Yates, God’s Arraignement, p.146. Yates, God’s Arraignement, p.111. CUL MS Ff.5.25, fols.92–112. TNA SP 105/95, fol.9v; see Lake, ‘Calvinism’, p.50. Winwood, Memorials, pp.459–60. J. Nichols, The Progresses of King James I, 4 vols. (London 1828), III, p.87. On Simpson: Venn, Alumni, IV, p.79; DNB; D. Lloyd, Memoires of the Lives of Those Personages that Suffered for the ­Protestant

122   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 is difficult to date precisely but seems to have taken place at Royston in midNovember 1617 when, in another sermon, Simpson found a new way to try the patience of his monarch.125 Preaching on John 3:6: ‘that which is born of the f lesh is f lesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit’, Simpson described the dramatic contrast between man’s original corruption and the regeneration he could achieve through grace. He quickly distinguished not just two conditions, those of f lesh and spirit, but three, and here he begins to sound rather familiar. He suggested man stood either without law, or under law, or under grace. Only the man under grace is truly spiritual. He is a man who has his mind purged from the darkness and vanity of the world and enlightened with the true saving knowledge and faith of Christ: who has his affections freed from the thralldom of sin, and fitted for a new life: who has his will brought into order, and made conformable to God’s will, who has ability and strength whereby he can fight against sin, the world, and the Devil, through the help of Christ’s holy spirit, and get the victory over them, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance.126 It is then impossible to describe the regenerate as in any way ‘carnal’. Almost inevitably, Simpson turned to Romans 7 and argued that, in verse 14, Paul speaks of himself as ‘man carnal and under the law’. No doubt aware that the ice beneath was getting thin, Simpson leant on the Fathers and on Lyra and Bucer. This was bad enough: Simpson’s saint, busy co-operating with God, was a far remove from the more conventional image of a convicted sinner seeking a sign of grace. Worse was to come as Simpson turned on this familiar piety. He denounced contemporaries who argued that true faith brings us to a tortured conscience and a life lived in the agony of serving God in the inner man, but the law of sin in the f lesh. That, Simpson said, was no sign of regeneration, rather it was ‘a dangerous conceit’, leading only to security and carnality. Once reborn, a man is freed from such bitter slavery and is under no compulsion to sin. Other people might claim, with justice, that they had not heard of Arminius and certainly never read him, Simpson could not. This man had had a shot of Dutch courage. Just how close his arguments were to Arminius’ work on Romans 7 can best be illustrated with a quotation from that work describing the spiritual man who, has a mind freed from the darkness and vanity of the world, and illuminated with the true and saving knowledge of Christ, and with faith, – who has affections that are mortified, and delivered from the dominion and slavery of sin; … who has a will reduced to order and conformed to the will of God; – who has powers and faculties able, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to contend against sin, the world, and Satan, and to gain the victory over them, and to bring forth fruit unto God such as is meet for repentance.127 Religion (London 1663), pp.614–15; and the ‘Life’ prefixed to Edward Simpson, Chronicon Historiam Catholicam Complectens, ed. P. Wesseling (Lugduni Batavorum 1729). 125 Nichols, Progresses, III, p.452. 126 CUL MS Ff.5.25, fols.83–93 (separately paginated), p.5. 127 Arminius, Works, II, p.497.

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In Simpson we encounter, at last, a real English Arminian. The King quickly grasped what had been said and a letter of complaint was sent by his chaplain, James Montagu, to the Vice-Chancellor.128 The preacher was accused of both Arminian and Socinian beliefs, which perhaps ref lected the way Vorstius had coloured James’ understanding of the new divinity. James did not get the satisfaction he desired from the Vice-Chancellor and heads, who ‘returned a favourable censure, that this and this may be said’.129 Required to re-examine Simpson and their own consciences, they finally managed to take issue with the sermon on eight counts. They concluded that Romans 7:14 described a man reborn and gave their opinion that even the regenerate are in part carnal. The works of the regenerate, therefore, though not themselves sins are polluted by sin.130 Simpson reported that he was also rebuked by the King, who ‘spoke to me sharply of Arminius and the Remonstrants. Then he afterwards greatly censured this doctrine which can drive men to desperation.’131 Simpson was not easily cowed and claimed that the heads ‘declaration’ showed that they didn’t disagree with him at all. Ordered to recant, he preached a competent sermon before the King, but ‘spake not a word of what was looked for and enjoined him’. By now very angry indeed, the King demanded another sermon.132 Simpson must finally have given satisfaction for he kept his fellowship and in due course proceeded DD. It is difficult to understand how Simpson got away so lightly. The Vice-Chancellor alone would have been able to protect him and must have done so. The Vice-Chancellor in question was John Richardson, and it seems his support for Simpson did him no good. A letter from Sir Henry Bourgchier to Ussher dated 6 December reveals: About a fortnight since, the Heads and others of the University of Cambridge, were summoned to appear before his Majesty at Newmarket, where, at their coming they were required to deliver their opinions concerning Mouns. Barneveldt’s confession, lately sent over to the king, to which as I am informed, many of them did subscribe; and principally Dr. Richardson, the king’s professor, for which he either hath already, or is in some danger of losing his place.133 Bourgchier’s account is misleading, for Richardson had already resigned his chair in September. Nonetheless, real Arminianism had at last made its unwelcome appearance in Cambridge. Dort: Arminianism condemned Edward Simpson seems to have thought of himself as an apologist for Arminianism. He was an apostle of a lost cause. Before ever he met Simpson, the King 128 129 130 131 132 133

Limborch, Epistolae, p.397. Nichols, Progresses, III, p.452. CUL MS Ff.5.25, fol.93; see also the ‘larger censure’, BL Add. MS 5960. Limborch, Epistolae, p.400. Nichols, Progresses, III, p.467. J. Ussher, The Whole Works of… James Ussher, ed. C.R. Elrington, 17 vols. (Dublin 1847–64), XV, p.130.

124   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 had been persuaded, by what he knew of Vorstius and Grotius, that he did not like Remonstrants or their views. James was also profoundly concerned about the divisions within the United Provinces, and had good political and economic cause to be anxious.134 He was increasingly inclined to intervene and by the close of 1616 he was pressing the Dutch to hold a synod to sort out their difficulties. Theologically it is unlikely that either side in the debate really captured the King’s sympathy for he consistently maintained that in the case of predestination it was best to leave well alone. He had said something to that effect at Hampton Court, it was the view expressed in his Meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, and it was a point he also made to John Overall when they discussed predestination.135 This royal reserve has been mistaken for either a broad tolerance or even active support for the critics of supralapsarianism.136 Toleration was simply not a viable option in the United Provinces, nor was it a policy that James favoured as he showed in his treatment of Simpson. He might have preferred that difficult doctrine was not discussed and have hoped thereby to permit a little latitude, but when disagreement was expressed he acted decisively. So, when the synod finally did meet in the United Provinces James sent a delegation whose opinion he could safely predict. The English party at Dort was John Davenant, Samuel Ward, Joseph Hall (who was soon replaced by Abbot’s chaplain, Thomas Goad) and George Carleton. James was determined to have the Remonstrants condemned.137 That was the obvious implication of his command to the delegates that, Your advice shall be to those churches … that they use no innovation in doctrine but teach the same things which were taught 20 or 30 years past in their own churches. And specially that which contradicteth not their own confessions so long since published and known unto the world.138 The Synod of Dort opened on 13 November 1618.139 Among its 105 members were the four Englishmen, Walter Balcanquall representing the Scottish church, and theologians from the leading protestant communities in Europe. Everyone knew why they were there. The Remonstrants arrived late, were treated as accused criminals when they did appear and were then finally dismissed on 14 January. Their opinions were subsequently condemned. The Canons of the Synod of Dort explicitly excluded the idea that election might be founded on a faith or holiness, which God foresees. The English delegates put their names to the Canons and endorsed a new statement of protestant orthodoxy. It was, however, a cautious 134 135

136

137 138 139

C. Grayson, ‘James I and the Religious Crisis in the United Provinces’, in Reform and Reformation, ed. D. Baker (Oxford 1979), pp.195–219. Fuller, Church History, III, p.182; James I, Meditation on the Lord’s Prayer (London 1616), pp.116–19; Shriver, ‘Ecclesiastical Policy’, p.193; J. Platt, ‘Eirenical Anglicans at the Synod of Dort’, in Reform and the Reformation: England and the Continent, ed. D. Baker (Oxford 1979), pp.221–43. G.J. Hoenderdaal, ‘The Debate about Arminius’, in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Th.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden 1975), pp.151–2; White, ‘Rise of Arminianism’, p.41. Lake, ‘Calvinism’, p.53. The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), ed. A. Milton, Church of England Records Society 13 (Woodbridge 2005), p.93. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.87–105; Lake, ‘Calvinism’, pp.51–60; Platt, ‘Eirenical Anglicans’; M.W. Dewar, ‘The British Delegation at the Synod of Dort’, Evangelical Quarterly 46.2 (1974), pp.103–16.



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orthodoxy and it had only been achieved after a fight. The Canons are infralapsarian, making it clear that in the decree of election God considered human beings in a fallen condition.140 They also have little to say about the decree of reprobation. Peter White has tried to distance the English delegates from the findings of the synod, suggesting that the Canons do not speak with their voice. The fact is that the English delegates clearly regarded themselves, and were regarded by others, as full participants in the conclusions of the synod. At one point, however, that accommodation was not easily reached. As the synod discussed the vexed question of whether Christ’s death was intended for all, or only for the elect, it became clear that both one of the Bremen delegates, Matthias Martinius, and Samuel Ward were uneasy about the direction the conversation was taking. The consensus at Dort was that Christ died only for the elect. The English delegates were divided, with Davenant increasingly inclining to Ward’s opinion that Christ’s death was intended for all. The discussion was suspended while a ruling from the English church was sought. The ruling came too late to be useful, after the English delegates had submitted their views to the synod and, in any event, took the form of two contradictory statements: one from Archbishop Abbott urging a restrictive theology of the atonement, and the other in a letter from the Dean of Worcester declaring that the King desired the synod to use more ‘general’ words. Davenant resolved the impasse by persuading the other English delegates and Balcanquall that scripture, the fathers and the integrity of European protestantism all demanded that they accept that Christ died for all. The arguments advanced by Ward and Davenant at Dort ref lect a little of what had happened to English reformed opinion in the early seventeenth century. No doubt, they were in part mindful of the King’s injunctions not to press complex and profound points of theology too hard. They were certainly anxious to promote peace among the protestant churches and determined that the synod should add nothing to the meaning of scripture. Nonetheless, their caution and the way in which they drew back from bald statements about the divine decrees was significant. Increasingly, English theologians, even those whose theology was dominated by the reality of predestination, were shifting their attention away from speculation about the mind of God in favour of thinking about Christian life and experience. How could the elect be helped to express their election? How could doubt and despair be avoided? At a time when assumptions about the centrality of the doctrine of predestination permeated the English church so deeply and widely it is perhaps not surprising that those assumptions began to sound a little more inclusive. Ward and Davenant were conscious of what the church must preach to all. That is why they were eager to defend the idea that Christ died for all against what was generally considered more orthodox reformed opinion.141 Their views, which were to become highly inf luential, have been described as ‘hypothetical universalism’. The word ‘hypothetical’ is crucial: salvation might be offered to all, but it did not follow that salvation was appropriated by all. Ward and Davenant had not gone entirely soft, and they and the other delegates willingly put their 140

White discusses the canons and the arguments in their preparation at length: White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, pp.183–99; cf. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.96–8. 141 Lake, ‘Calvinism’, pp.56–60.

126   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 names to the repudiation of the Remonstrant faith. Writing to Ussher after the synod, Ward was quite clear in his own mind that he had not sold the pass: Some of us were held by some half remonstrants, for extending the oblation made to the Father, to all; and for holding sundry effects thereof offered serio, and some really communicated to the reprobate. … We were careful that nothing should be defined which might gainsay the confession of the Church of England …142 The agreement reached at Dort, condemning Arminianism, put new confidence and a new weapon into the hands the godly sort. Having seen the Remonstrants soundly defeated, and having observed the King’s evident satisfaction with the outcome of the synod, no one could be in any doubt about which way the theological wind was blowing in 1618 and 1619. Those who had preached and published reformed opinion now had a useful stick with which to beat their opponents. The temptation to identify all opposition with the discredited Arminians was too great to resist, and ‘Arminianism’ became a catch-all term of abuse. Just like ‘Puritanism’, it was a term that was soon used indiscriminately, and it was sometimes far from clear what an offender had said or done to link him with the distinctive ideas of Arminius. An Arminian chamber of horrors was created, populated not just with men like Simpson, but with men whose Arminianism is hard to prove: Thomson and Richardson, and later, more improbably still, Nicholas Ferrar and William Laud. This has left us with a problem in historiography. Critics of the theological developments of the 1620s and 1630s consistently identified all that they disliked as ‘Arminian’. It is a tendency that reached its climax in the work of that very angry man William Prynne, but it began much earlier and lasted much longer. Even during the synod, Thomas Welles wrote to Ward about events in Cambridge. Branthwaite, the Vice-Chancellor and Master of Caius, was dying and ambitious men were gathering like so many vultures at the door of the Master’s lodge. According to Welles the candidates included John Gostlin, who had already been passed over in the previous election, Thomas Goad, and Jerome Beale of Pembroke, the Sub-Almoner who had the support of Lancelot Andrewes. In the unseemly scramble for preferment the charge of Arminianism was a useful weapon. The Vice Chancellor of Cambridge is sick and not like to escape and its like Dr Gosling shall be his successor; but he and the fellows have of late been branded with Popery thereby to debarr him... I hear for certain that the fellows of Pemb. Hall standeth close for Dr Goad objecting Arminianism and other matters against the Subalmoner. Whome my Lo: Elect of Winton standeth for all he can.143 The most vigorously reformed soon created a history of Arminian opinion in England, an apostate tradition that swept up all their opponents whatever their views. The tradition began with Baro and Barrett, embraced Andrewes, Overall, Richardson, and continued with men like Neile, Laud and Cosin. After the Restoration, Peter Heylyn, Laud’s great apologist, seized on the idea. He turned this 142 143

Ussher, Works, XV, pp.144–5. Bodl Tanner MS 74.79, fol.186. Has Welles confused Pembroke and Caius?



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same historic succession on its head and used it to create an apostolic succession out of the same names: Baro, Barrett, Harsnett and Overall, men who represented the true Church of England in difficult times. The non-conformist Henry Hickman then debated exactly the same ground in his reply to Heylyn.144 As a result it became a near orthodoxy that in England in the 1590s an ‘anti-calvinist’ plot was hatched and, with Remonstrant encouragement, grew to maturity in the early years of the seventeenth century. Prynne, Heylyn, Hickman, and all the others, argued about the true identity of the Church of England and about exactly who were the seducers of true religion. Prynne was utterly convinced that the English church was a reformed church and knew who the enemy was. In 1630 he called on Parliament: to further your religious and happy Proceedings, in the discovery and suppression of those Hereticall and Grace-destroying Arminian novelties, which have of late invaded, affronted, and almost shouldred out of doores, the ancient, established, and resolved Doctrines of our Church145 Prynne could name the fathers of the English church, the men who had passed on the tradition faithfully: Fulke, Whitaker, Hutton, Perkins, Greenham, Davenant and Ward.146 What Prynne thought of as true English religion was a European reformed orthodoxy, which would have been recognised as true not just in England, but in Geneva. Heylyn, on the other hand, contesting exactly the same ground as Prynne, found a very different theology. Thus, using the Homilies, just as Prynne had done, Heylyn rejected the idea of perseverance: we have many evident proofs, not only that there is a falling, and a frequent falling, but also a total, yea, a final falling from the Grace of God according to the Doctrine of the Church of England.147 Prynne and Heylyn described the same church differently. Prynne knew it to be deeply protestant and reformed, Heylyn thought it had more broadly catholic characteristics. Both thought they knew who its best servants and worst enemies were. Hickman, joining the argument, wondered how the doctrine of the Church of England was defined. He noted that King James had called Arminians ‘Hereticks’, … and seeing they were then so accounted, why now the broachers of that Doctrine, should be accounted the most obedient Sons of the Church, is a question I would be most gladly satisfied, untill such satisfaction be gained, it will at least be pardonable error to suppose that, that is not the Doctrine of the Church of England which for above threescore Yeeres after her first establishment was not averred in any one licenced Book, but confuted in many.148

144

145 146 147 148

Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme; William Prynne, The Perpetuitie of the Regenerate Man’s Estate (London 1627); Peter Heylyn, Historia Quinqu Articularis (London 1668); Henry Hickman, Historia Quinq Articularis Exarticulata (London 1674). Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, sig.A2. Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, ‘The Epistle’, sig. A4; ‘To the Christian Reader’, sig.C2. Heylyn, Historia Quinqu Articularis, chapter 14. Hickman, Historia, p.506.

128   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Prynne, Heylyn and Hickman probably thought of themselves as theologians, but they were better historians than they knew. Although a f lood of ink has been spilt upon discussions of the Church of England in the early seventeenth century the debate has really not moved on very much. Many contemporary historians are closer to Prynne than perhaps they would care to admit, arguing (admittedly with rather less passion) that the English church was dominated by the theology of Perkins, Whitaker, Ward and Davenant. In the account they provide, Arminianism and the opinions of Peter Baro or John Overall were trespassers on a tradition that was understood and respected.149 Others are close to Heylyn and think the beginnings of what would later be called ‘Anglicanism’ are to be found in the faith of Whitgift, Baro, Overall and Andrewes.150 What was the true identity of the Church of England? It is the question Hickman raised: did the church change direction, did Arminius shoulder out Calvin? The difficulty is that the identity of the Church of England had never been agreed. There was no Calvinist consensus that embraced Calvin and Beza, Perkins, Whitaker, Ward and all the rest. There were some powerful shared assumptions and a common account of Christian experience, but there were also some terrible disagreements, as the English delegates at Dort found when they tried to argue that Christ died for all. Equally, while Barrett and Baro, Overall, Andrewes and others were indeed critical of the shared assumptions of reformed orthodoxy there was precious little agreement among them. Andrewes and Bancroft seemed tempted by a new piety, with more of altar and font in it than of lectern and pulpit. Barrett became a Roman Catholic, Richardson quoted Melanchthon, Baro was in touch with Hemmingsen, and Thomson knew Dutch theology but was apparently not entirely persuaded by it and wanted to add a sacramental dimension. Overall’s views, meanwhile, were so idiosyncratic that in 1651 a survey of the theology of predestination gave him a section to himself.151 These men cannot be said to have established or defended an ‘Anglican tradition’. They were, however, exposing and exploring the ambivalences and uncertainties of a reformed church that has never had a confession faith. They were not thanked for that. At best they found their views inhibited preferment, at worst they suffered persecution. In the early years of the seventeenth century they were voices crying in the wind. Prynne, Heylyn and Hickman and historians ever since have struggled to find a tradition inside the English church, knowing that churches are founded on tradition as well as scripture. They have struggled because there were competing voices claiming to speak for the tradition. Not only did they have to account for all the shades of opinion contained within the debate about grace, they also needed to pay attention to the conversations about the Canons and conformity that preoccupied men like John Cowell and the debate about preaching and dumb dogs that emerges in the preaching of Nicholas Rush. The identity of the Church of 149 150

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.28. White, ‘Rise of Arminianism’, especially pp.35–40; Predestination, Policy and Polemic, pp.140–202, especially pp.152, 202. His argument has been developed in J.M. Atkins, ‘Calvinist Bishops, Church Unity, and the Rise of Arminianism’, Albion 18.3 (1986), pp.411–27. 151 Thomas Plaifere, An Appeal to the Gospel for the True Doctrine of Divine Predestination (Cambridge 1719), pp.16ff.



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England in the early seventeenth century was less certain than anyone cared to admit. In 1618, Frances White defended two these for his DD: ‘The sign of the cross in baptism is a legitimate ceremony’ and ‘Predestination to grace is not on the basis of foreseen works’.152 White was already making his name as a critic of Roman Catholicism; in 1617 he had produced a book called The Orthodox Faith and Way. He had also already hitched his wagon to Richard Neile ‘my patron’.153 Soon he would be part of Neile’s ‘Durham House Group’ and at the heart of a powerful ecclesiastical pressure group. Yet even White, speaking out of all this certainty, is pulled in different directions. Arguing about the use of the sign of the cross, he was returning to a debate already grown wearisome by the time of the Hampton Court Conference. Arguing about works, he was cleverly muddying the waters in the very recent discussion of Arminianism. Arminius, whatever else he was, was a good enough protestant to make it clear that God’s foreknowledge embraced only foreseen faith. White’s thesis worrying about foreseen works, no doubt deliberately, raised a quite different threat, a paper tiger, and then dismissed it. White, already blooded in the contest with Rome, knew that he worked, argued and worshipped within a community of different voices. He knew that the tradition was yet to be firmly established. To complicate matters still further, the King had views of his own and broad policy to consider. He too, can be difficult to pin down, balancing his own convictions against his desire to see conformity and unity in the church. The King was probably more open-minded than we have previously been led to believe, but even so he greeted criticism of the prevailing theology of grace with intolerant disdain. He forced Lancelot Andrewes to avoid the subject altogether and dealt vigorously with Edward Simpson. He was certainly at times a decisive inf luence.154 Here we are still in the world that John Donne inhabited and described in the sonnet. ‘Show me deare Christ thy spouse’. The identity of the church was elusive and there was more to it than arguments about foreknowledge or limited atonement. In Jacobean Cambridge earnest discussions of the way the divine decrees impinged upon us did give some direction and character to theology and piety. Even so, sent to reach a common mind with European protestants on this important matter, the English delegates were divided among themselves, uncovered divisions at home and struggled to make themselves heard or understood. All too conscious of this difficulty, it is no surprise that, having identified an Arminian error, theologians then had a rather careless conversation that found improbable Arminians everywhere. There were, without doubt, some English thinkers who can legitimately be identified as Arminian. Simpson is certainly one. It does not, however, really help us to apply labels like ‘Calvinist’, ‘Arminian’ or even ‘AntiCalvinist’ to anyone who participated in this debate. Most English theologians were wary of accepting a foreign style, and we should not impose one on them 152 153 154

BL Harleian MS 7038, p.92. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.108. M.H. Curtis, ‘Hampton Court and its Aftermath’, History 46.156 (1961), pp.1ff.; Collinson, ‘Jacobean Religious Settlement’, pp.45, 34, 50. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.24, 25, 28; Shriver, ‘Hampton Court’, pp.48ff., esp. pp.69–71; Fincham and Lake, ‘Ecclesiastical Policy of James I’, pp.190–1; Fincham, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policies’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church; Bernard, ‘The Church of England’ pp.189–90, 194.

130   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 now. Nor should we collapse a wide-ranging debate into a narrow discussion of providence. It is precisely because the different voices and traditions within the Church of England did not think of themselves as ‘Calvinist’ or ‘Arminian’ that they proved so difficult to identify and contain. Just as the Lambeth Articles failed to end the debate, so too did the Canons of the Synod of Dort.

Chapter Five

THE SEEDS OF CONTENTION 1619–1629

we humbly submit this and all our other actions, concerning our calling, to the judgement of our most venerable mother the Church of England, from whose sacred rule, we vow that we have not swerved, nor any whit impeached her discipline, or authorized doctrine, either abroad or at home. Attestation of the English delegates at Dort Cambridge and the King The delegates returned from Dort with a commemorative gold medal and, no doubt, high hopes of preferment. Just how much more they had to show for their efforts is a moot point. The King made it quite clear that Ward, Davenant and the rest were not expected to bring back new certainties and definitions in their baggage. Ward had already been repeatedly reminded of the dangers of prying into ‘high mysteries’. John Young, the Dean of Winchester, had written to him at Dort, ‘I am sorry to hear that this contention about these abstruse points suld come there to be talked of so openly even by the vulgar of both sides.’ Young, like the King, thought the secrets of God should be discussed only in the school or, ‘but sparingly’, in the pulpit. Ward had also had to endure a lecture from Arthur Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells, on the importance of pragmatism and had been warned of the dangers of speculation: ‘if you insert any problems that may be canvassed Pro and Con you do but sow the seeds of contention’. Whatever insights the English delegates at Dort had gained they were reminded that they saw but in a glass, darkly. The men and women who brooded over the divine decrees were now in a difficult position. On the one hand, the King was telling them that what they thought was certain was, in truth, just speculation, and on the other, he was saying that speculation was improper. The point was made over and over again. In 1616 James issued a new set of Directions for the better control of preaching. The university inevitably responded with a display of frantic loyalty, seizing its chance when    

Quoted Fuller, Davenant, p.107. Bodl Tanner MS 74, fols.180, 174. Bodl Tanner MS 74, fol.134. Morgan, History of the University, p.126; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.104–5.

131

132   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 poor Ralph Brownrigg unwittingly offered himself as a sacrificial victim. Early in 1618 Brownrigg, a young fellow of Pembroke, had got into conversation, in his college room, with David Owen, Robert Byng and Humphrey Henchman, all fellows of Clare. Owen was the author of Herod and Pilate reconciled, or the Concord of Papist and Puritan … for the Coercion, Deposition and Killing of Kings, published in the university in 1610. Bearding the author, Brownrigg proposed two questions for discussion: Whither a Kinge breaking fundamentall Lawes may be opposed? What is to be thought of the Noblemen when they opposed King John making this Lande feudarye to the Pope? For this piece of careless, intellectual bravado Brownrigg was harried through the Consistory Court with almost indecent haste. He quickly confessed that he knew that Owen’s book carried the vice-chancellor’s licence and was suspended from his degrees for opposing the university’s privilege to allow and print books. The Vice-Chancellor, though, at first ducked the real issue: for the seditious and treacherous questions which the said mr. Brownrigg did propound to mr. Owen, the sayd mr. Vicechancellor left him to be censured by his Majestie, or any other his Majestyes Justices or Minister in that behalf. The King was well pleased with the university’s zeal for his dignity and declared his readiness to forgive Brownrigg. Richardson, the Vice-Chancellor, then made it clear that he was in a much less generous mood. He required Brownrigg to renounce his errors: in as full manner as his Majestie, the Church of England, and the most learned and authorised wrighters in that question of his Highnesse unquestionable supremacie doe maynteyne and teach, utterly renouncing all private opinions of mr. Calvin or mr. Beza wherin they differ from the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England … Richardson, in a show of obedient orthodoxy, had neatly seized the chance to imply that Brownrigg’s offence had its origins in a high protestantism that was foreign and unwelcome. He invoked the spectre of the resistance theories of continental Calvinism and drove a further wedge between the authority of Calvin and Beza and that of the English church. The university’s exemplary behaviour did not see off further interference. In 1619 the King issued another, and more vigorous, set of articles regulating religious life in Cambridge. These articles required each college to hold a communion service on all the major Christian feast days. They insisted that the congregation should kneel to receive the bread and wine, and that they should come in surplices, and hoods if they were entitled to them. There were also new regulations to cover college catechising and college services, and prohibiting town lectures and sermons that might offer an alternative. The articles are undated, and it is Cooper    

CUL CUA VC CT I.9, fol.22v. CUL CUA VC CT I.9, fol.24r. CUL CUA VC CT I.9, fols.25r, 25v. Cooper, Annals, III, pp.129–31.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   133

who suggests that they were issued in 1619. It seems possible, however, that they appeared later, prompted by the prosecution of John Preston in February 1620. Preston by now had an established reputation in the town and in the university. He was the man who had hurried up to London to secure Davenant’s election as President, yet his fame rested not on the London trip, but on his passion for conversion. Preston had been on the Damascus Road. A sermon by John Cotton, a man who dwelt in the borders of conformity, had converted Preston and he, in his turn, passed the message on. His catechism class in Queens’ was so popular that the chapel was regularly too full of strangers to allow members of college to find a seat. Excluded from Queens’, the townspeople approached Preston to provide something for them. He elected to preach in St Botolph’s on Sundays, and, in obedience to the Directions of 1616, he did not begin until after the sermon at Great St Mary’s was ended. Word of Preston’s plans spread fast and a substantial congregation waited for him, but so too did the Ely Commissary, Dr Newcome, who forbade him to preach and declared that he would only permit evening prayer to be said. Finding that after he had left, Preston had defied him and preached the forbidden sermon, Newcome then complained to the bishop, Lancelot Andrewes, who was attending the King at Newmarket. The matter was referred back to the Vice-Chancellor and the heads. Preston was required to apologise to Newcome and was told to preach again at St Botolph’s where he was to tell the people, That they ought not to neglect divine prayer at their owne parishe and runne gadding to sermons at an other churche contrary to the laws and canons of this lande. The King’s new articles, which would clearly have applied in this case and prohibited Preston’s sermon, were not mentioned. Preston’s growing reputation made him an obvious target and, seizing the opportunity to discredit him, Lancelot Andrewes refused to let the matter rest and complained to the King. Meanwhile, some unsympathetic fellows of Queens’ also began to voice their disquiet. They felt, that it was not safe for any man to be thus adored and doted on, unless they had a mind to cry up Puritanisme, which would in short tyme pull them downe; that the ‘Crosier staffe would not support them longe if such assemblyes were encouraged.10 This opposition was tiresome, but Preston had powerful friends. A pension from Fulke Greville, soon to be Lord Brook, was useful; the introductions Greville provided were more valuable still, and Preston used them well. He avoided further condemnation, then met and impressed the Duke of Buckingham and subsequently became chaplain to Prince Charles. Preston could negotiate little, local difficulties, but even he must have been made slightly anxious by the tone of 

CUL CUA VC CT I.9, fols.173r, 173v.; VC CT III.24, fols.87, 88; for Preston’s life, see J.D. Moore, ‘ ‘‘Christ is dead for him”: John Preston (1587–1628) and English Hypothetical Universalism’ (Cambridge University PhD thesis 2001), pp.2–7. 10 T. Ball, The Life of the Renowned Doctor Preston, ed. E.W. Harcourt (London 1885), p.41; Morgan, Puritan Chaplain, pp.46ff.

134   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 the King’s Articles, which insisted that the Vice-Chancellor take vigorous action against, ‘any fancieful conceipt savouring of Judaisme, Popish Superstition, or Puritanisme, disagreeing from the laudable and approved Customes of our Church of England’.11 Whatever the King’s theological prejudices, his concern for good order was such that he was making life very difficult indeed for the champions of a preaching ministry. Indeed, it seems that the King may at times have associated that ministry with dissent. Cambridge was conscious of royal attention again in June 1622. A sermon, in Oxford, by John Knight on the right to resist tyrannical rulers revealed that the ideas of the German theologian David Paraeus had found an English audience. Paraeus believed that there was a right of resistance to a ruler who behaved illegitimately. This was not an idea that commended itself to James I, and the authorities promptly ordered that Paraeus’ book be burnt in Oxford, Cambridge and London.12 When the order calling in copies of the book reached Cambridge it seems to have been interpreted rather enthusiastically, for the Consistory Court Books reveal that Cambridge booksellers were asked to account not just for copies of Paraeus’ Commentary on the Romans, but also for the Vindiciae contra tyrannos ascribed to Junius Brutus, and for ‘Buchanus his commonplaces’.13 The Vindiciae was a notorious work justif ying violent resistance to tyranny. Buchanus’ Commonplaces are more difficult to identif y, but this is a reference to the work of George Buchanan, author of Rerum Scoticarum historia, a book that urges the setting of limits on the power of the monarch. There seems to have been some confusion about the offensiveness of Buchanan’s book as, alone of the three, it was ultimately returned to its owners.14 Thirteen booksellers were interviewed and some distinguished men were found to be in possession of the incriminating opinion. Three heads of house were named, Samuel Ward had a copy of Paraeus, and so did Roger Andrewes at Jesus. In Pembroke Jerome Beale had acquired two copies of ‘Bucanus’. John Mansell and Thomas Bainbrigg were also implicated, but so were some dozen or so others, and no one seems to have implied that possession of any of these books was an offence. 15 The real consequence was that, once again, European reformed thought was discredited. Calvin’s ideas were being made into something approaching a theory of resistance to the magistrate, and theologians who were actually blameless of disloyalty had to bear a little guilt by association. David Owen, who had already found favour as the author of Herod and Pilate, seized his chance and, returning to the fray, produced Anti-Paraeus in the year that his opponent’s book was thrown into the f lames. John Cosin: ‘let ceremonies be significant’ Shortly after the Synod of Dort one of the English delegates, George Carleton, was made Bishop of Chichester. Two years later Davenant was also promoted, 11 12

Cooper, Annals, III, p.131. Mullinger, University of Cambridge, II, pp.562–7; J.P. Somerville, Politics and Ideolog y in England 1603–1640 (London 1986), pp.72, 75, 80. 13 CUL CUA VC CT I.48, fol.19r. 14 Prestwich, International Calvinism, p.8, and on Buchanan DNB. 15 CUL CUA VC CT I.48, fols.19v.ff.; VC CT III.26, fols.37ff.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   135

becoming Bishop of Salisbury. Here was another sign that while the King wanted to keep a lid on speculative theology, the theological assumptions endorsed at Dort were still the dominant voice of the English church. Critics of reformed orthodoxy, however, were not without their own successes. In 1617 the much translated Richard Neile was moved to Durham and began to collect around him, at his London residence, a very distinctive group of men, which included, among others, John Buckeridge, Bishop of Rochester, and William Laud, who became Bishop of St David’s in 1621. The group was London-based, but their inf luence was far-reaching and, thanks to one of Neile’s chaplains, John Cosin, ideas discussed at Durham House were rapidly aired in Cambridge.16 Cosin, like other clever Norwich boys before him, had gone to Caius, as a scholar in 1610. By 1620 he was a fellow of the college. There his talents attracted the attention of Bishop Overall. Becoming Overall’s secretary launched Cosin on a career that would make him Master of Peterhouse and Vice-Chancellor, condemn him to exile and finally see him return to England as Bishop of Durham. Through Overall, Cosin made contact with the Dutch. He corresponded with Grotius and possessed some of Arminius’ works.17 Unusually for a member of the Durham House group, he was sympathetic to some of Arminius’ ideas. His early sermons dealt critically with the presumption of those who think they know the mind of God. If we fall into sin, Cosin argued, it is not merely because God has willed that it should be so; if we avoid sin, it is not only because God has withheld his hand. Sin is a human creation, the consequence of an individual’s choice and action, … when we sin the fault is in our own wills, for we should not have consented, and then no sin would follow; and therefore it is a wicked and most pernicious opinion that some of our new masters have brought up of late, (an opinion fit for devils and not for Christians,) that some men are forced and necessitated to sin, and throw themselves away whether they will or no.18 This was, without doubt, an assault on contemporary divinity; Cosin was pitching into an argument going on within the English church. He knew what he was up against. He set out to challenge the powerful opinions held by ‘our new masters’, and he clearly felt that it was not the time for subtlety or good manners. In a further sermon he suggested that those who pinned their hopes of salvation on their election were trusting to a ‘wild conceit of predestination’.19 Cosin was well aware that what he termed a ‘wild conceit’ had been urged again and again with a host of scriptural proofs. He dismissed this cloud of scriptural witness as the work of the Devil himself, a diabolical litany, a satanic psalm, to reassure the faithful that they need only believe if they wished to be saved. And it is not I that make up this Psalm, or pick out these places for him; look abroad into the world and see whether he hath taught a great 16 17 18

On Durham House, see Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.106–24. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.119. John Cosin, Works, ed. J. Sansom, 5 vols, (Oxford, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology 1843–55), I, p.66. 19 Cosin, Works, I, p.78.

136   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 company of silly men to sing it, whether their mouths be not readier for these sayings than for any else. Aye, aye, ye may talk of works, that is a popish argument, but let a man believe faithfully, and he shall be justified well enough; we are the free born sons of God, and therefore ye shall put no yoke upon us, for they whom Christ hath set free are free indeed. Free from what? from good works and obedience to Christ’s law? No; but from sin and the slavery of Satan.20 Salvation for Cosin was not something God willed, in counsels remote from humanity; it required the co-operation of humankind. If individuals were to climb the ladder between earth and heaven they would need to employ both will and effort. This was contentious, but Cosin was eager for the fray. Now our new masters would teach us a shorter cut and make but one degree in all Christianity, as if there were but one step from the ground to the pinnacle. They teach a man to take his raise from predestination, and to give a jump into glorification without any more ado … they must not be put to go up and down the stairs like other men, for they have a by-way of solitary faith by themselves.21 These sermons identif y Cosin as a critic not only of the matter of contemporary divinity, but also of its method. He launched a formidable assault on the authority of the ‘bare words of Scripture’; he took an interest in good works and in devotion, and obviously subscribed to a theological system that is neither ‘Puritan’ nor ‘Arminian’. He also struck a distinctive note in his attitude to the Roman Catholic Church and to ‘popery’. He believed that the label ‘popish’ was used too freely. The point was made in the earliest of his extant sermons. Preaching in Cambridge on the feast of the Epiphany 1622, Cosin made reference to some of the legends surrounding the lives of the Magi and added, These kind of speculations will do us little stead, which way soever they go. Yet for their number as I would not be too curious to search, so I would not be too boisterous to condemn and think every thing popery that we read not in the text.22 At a time when the majority of English theologians feared Rome above all else and saw its shadow move in nearly everything, Cosin was displaying a bizarrely breezy confidence. His apparent tolerance of things usually called ‘popish’ is startling enough, but behind it lies the far more radical conviction that things doctrinal or ecclesiastical might have their justification somewhere other than in ‘the text’. Of all the sermons Cosin preached in this period the most significant was that delivered at the consecration of Francis White as Bishop of Carlisle, in December 1626. This was little short of a manifesto for the Durham House group. The sermon opened with a defence of the practice of consecrating bishops, def ying the criticisms of the ‘new Pharisees of our times’. Cosin then moved on to a 20 21 22

Cosin, Works, I, p.75. Cosin, Works, I, p.79. Cosin, Works, I, p.16.

The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   137



spirited defence of ceremonies, which he justified on the grounds that Christ himself conferred the gift of the Holy Spirit by employing a ceremonial action – by breathing on his disciples. Now much pity it was that these ceremony-haters of our days had not then been living and standing by, to advise and to put Christ in mind what a foundation He would lay here for superstition and popery …23 Ceremonies, then, are of Christ’s making. Ceremonies signif y things: they are, and must be, significant. Cosin was among friends, and he knew it. He turned on the ceremony-haters with a gleeful jibe at the stylised world-weariness of their piety: Themselves, have they not a ceremony to lift up the eye-lid as if they were lifting up a pound weight? and they say it signifies the heaviness of the heart. We beseech them that they would let our ceremonies be significant too …24 Cosin was trading punches in a fight over the identity of the church. Much of his language was already familiar – it had been used by Buckeridge and Andrewes as they dismissed the new style of divinity in England. Like them, Cosin thought there was altogether too much preaching and too little of anything else. Outlining the duties of priest and bishop, he declared, ‘I come not here to preach down preaching; but this I wonder at, that preaching now-a-days should be counted our only office …’.25 He denounced those who made preaching and catechism all the faith and taught that there is nothing more to be done than to believe and to be saved. Others had said as much. Cosin was prepared to go further. He could describe an alternative church. He moved the debate on, abandoning cheap jibes against ceremony-haters in favour of declaring a programme of necessary reform. For too long, he implied, the church had been led astray by its narrow insistence on word and belief. For too long it had been hijacked by an errant tradition in protestantism and had been mocked from Rome: … we suffer scandal from them of the Church of Rome in many things, in nothing more than this, that we are sent to preach sermons to the people, as men that had some pretty commodities to sell them which, if they liked, they might buy and use; if not, they might let them alone; that we talk of devotion but live like the careless; that we have a service, but no servants at it; that we have churches, but keep them not like the houses of God; that we have the Sacraments, but few to frequent them; Confession, but few to practice it; finally that we have all religious duties (for they cannot deny it), but seldom observed; all good laws and canons of the Church, but few or none kept; the people are made to do nothing; the old discipline is neglected, and men do what they list. It should be otherwise, and our Church intends it otherwise …26

23 24 25 26

Cosin, Works, Cosin, Works, Cosin, Works, Cosin, Works,

I, p.101. I, pp.101–2. I, p.96. I, p.97.

138   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 If the Durham House group had a manifesto, this was it. They aimed at nothing less than a redefinition of the Church of England. Ideas were being exchanged. Cosin’s sermon employs language borrowed from Andrewes, who had preached ‘our carriage there can hardly be termed service, there is so very little of the servant about it’ in 1617.27 Cosin, though, was undeniably now setting the pace. His sermon was something new, something more than an Arminian sacramentalism; it was a determined and much more shocking attempt to claim catholic piety for the English church. He objected to Roman Catholic criticisms of his church while others revelled in that hostility. He urged change while others feared to rock the boat. His sermon shifted the direction of debate. He did not campaign to introduce subtle and Arminian distinctions to the Articles of Religion; he sought a different sort of church. It was ritual and church order, not the theology of predestination, that was discussed behind the doors of Durham House, and the views of John Cosin illustrate the point. In exposing the devotional deficiencies of a faith founded merely on the word he revealed just how far it was from Dort to Durham House. In the years after the Admonition Controversy the debate about ceremonies had been controlled by advocates of further reformation. Those who could bring themselves to discuss ceremonies at all were eager to show that ritual had no positive religious value. The only possible justification for ceremonies was precisely that they had no religious significance. It really did not matter whether you used them or not.28 Thus the Canons of 1604 stated the case for reverence, not on the grounds of its positive value, but merely on the basis of decency and good order: In the time of divine service, and of every part thereof, all due reverence is to be used; for it is according to the apostle’s rule, Let all things be done decently and according to order.29 Similarly, when justif ying the use of the sign of the cross in baptism the Canons first catalogued all the errors associated with the practice, then made a minimalist’s case for its retention: we hold it the part of every private man, both minister and other, reverently to retain the true use of it prescribed by public authority; considering that things of themselves indifferent do in some sort alter their natures, when they are either commanded or forbidden by a lawful magistrate; and may not be omitted at every man’s pleasure, contrary to the law, when they be commanded, nor used when they are prohibited.30 It was abundantly clear that there was little interest in ceremonies, but what mattered was the authority of the church to impose order. It was against this background that Cosin attempted to argue, and he knew his opponents were formidable. Just how formidable is demonstrated by a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, during the subscription crisis provoked by the Canons of 1604. The preacher 27 28 29 30

Andrewes, Ninety Six Sermons, IV, p.374. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, pp.128–9, 122. Synodalia, ed. E. Cardwell, 2 vols. (Oxford 1842), I, p.255. Cardwell, Synodalia, I, p.264.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   139

was Samuel Collins, fellow, and later Provost, of King’s College. His sermon, a polished and somewhat aggressive defence of subscription, was dedicated to Bancroft. Collins had set himself the task of defending the use of ceremonies required by the Canons, but he was anxious to make it clear that even he knew this was a matter of only secondary importance. What really mattered was a faith founded on the predestination of God. So, he began his sermon with a vigorous attack on Pelagians. He then, confusingly, muddied the waters with the observation that: ‘God’s finger and humane indevor, may both stand togither very well.’ 31 Clearly far from eager to discuss such complex and controversial matters, he passed swiftly on to his main purpose. He castigated the opponents of the prayer book and Homilies and urged his audience to accept, ‘That Circumcision is nothing, nor uncircumcision is nothing, that is Ceremonie nor no Ceremonie.’32 Collins was supposed to be a champion of ceremonies, but he made no case for their religious worth. Indeed, he was ever conscious of the danger that they might ‘open a f loodgate to popery’. He distinguished two different types of ‘verities’, those of faith and those of order. 33 Ceremonies were definitely matters of order, important, but only of secondary importance. This was a qualified enthusiasm: yet are not our Ceremonies therefore so many that they should oppress us with their multitude and load, as they unjustly cavil at us; they are in number as few as can possibly bee in a Church, in substance as grave, in choice as discreet …34 Throughout, Collins’ hostility to Rome and to its objectionable use of ceremony was paraded as proof of his orthodoxy. He would have no part of such practice, … sacrificing for the sinnes of quicke and dead with a Wafer-cake, treading down Kings, the deputies of God, from their throne of Maiestie to set up a foxie Intruder in their roome... taking away Bibles, mangling of Sacraments … selling pardons for sixe pence, soule ease for money, heaven at pleasure …35 These were the assumptions that governed liturgical practice. Lancelot Andrewes’ private chapel in Ely Place may have been, as Higham claims, ‘famous for the beauty of its ornaments and the dignity of its ceremonial’, but even Andrewes made very limited claims for the significance of such practice.36 In his sermons one can hear some of the hostility that Buckeridge and Cosin showed to those who preached up preaching at the expense of ceremony: ‘All our “holiness” is in hearing, all our service ear service.’37 Andrewes was also prepared to make a case for reverence, arguing that worship should call on our souls, our bodies, and our worldly goods. Yet he never argued as Cosin argued. In The Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine he hedged his use of ceremonies with restrictions. They must 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

S. Collins, A sermon preached at Paules-Crosse (London 1608), pp.10–11. Collins, Sermon, p.34. Collins, Sermon, pp.38–9. Collins, Sermon p.42. Collins, Sermon, p.53. F. Higham, Catholic and Reformed (London 1962), p.50. Andrewes, Ninety Six Sermons, IV, p.377; Welsby, Andrewes, pp.214ff.

140   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 ‘be not many, and those necessary’. They must ‘be to edif y, not to pull down that which the substance setteth up’. They must ‘be for order’ and, ‘for decency’.38 Here there was just a glimpse of a distinctive approach. Andrewes’ belief that ceremonies could ‘edif y’ assumes a positive religious value in ceremonies. They were apparently, more than ‘things indifferent’, they had their own worth and value. However, the stress is laid elsewhere and Andrewes’ clear conviction that ceremonies were not of ‘the substance’ drew the sting out of his argument.39 Whatever Andrewes did in the privacy of his own chapel, he was careful not to make ceremony a requirement on others and contented himself with the contemporary insistence on order and decency.40 While Andrewes was cautious, Cosin, from a younger generation, had a brash confidence. Perhaps the difference in age and experience was significant. Andrewes, born in Mary’s reign, and Neile born as the Elizabethan settlement was being hammered out, did not have Cosin’s birthright, of a protestantism that could claim to be English and secure. In any event, the novelty of what Cosin said was startling, but gradually it was to become the common voice of the Durham House group. Buckeridge’s sermon before the King, published in 1618, had boldly suggested that internal adoration without external reverence was actually hateful to God.41 Even so, his attempt to invest ceremony with some positive value concluded with a familiar discussion of the authority of the church to impose such practices. In another sermon before the King, published in 1627, Matthew Wren returned to the theme. He characterised the opponents of ceremonies as malicious and schismatic spirits who claimed, … that our running to Church and crying out for sermons, our def ying the Devill, and rayling against Antichrist, … our singing of Psalmes, and talking of Scripture, our casting up of the eye, and making of sowre Faces, must be proofe enough to any man, that we feare God extraordinarily.42 Ceremonies were necessary, Wren argued, both to glorif y God and to edif y others. It was this repeated insistence on the positive value of ceremonies that truly marked out a new kind of English divinity. Outside Durham House only Richard Hooker developed a comparable theology. Like Cosin, Wren and Buckeridge, Hooker saw something positive in ritual acts. 43 Independently of one another, both Hooker and the Durham House group came to regard ritual not merely as a legacy of popish superstition that must be purified before it could be used, but as a means of edification. The emphasis in an old debate had shifted. Instead of arguing whether or not there was a role for ceremony in general in the life of the church, Hooker and the Durham House group argued about the meaning and value of particular ceremonies. To suggest, then, that someone like Cosin was an ‘Arminian’ is to miss the point. His views cannot be 38 39 40 41 42 43

Andrewes, Minor Works, p.127. On ‘edification’, see Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, pp.29–31, 120ff. Welsby, Andrewes, p.130. Buckeridge, Sermon, pp.12–13, 19. M. Wren, A Sermon Preached before the King’s Maiestie (Cambridge 1627), p.24. Lake, Anglicans, pp.145ff. (esp. pp.164–5).



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   141

lumped together with other contemporary protestants. He was urging something that everyone else had assumed was catholic practice. There was a changing attitude to the Roman Catholic Church and to its tradition, and it allowed both Cosin and Hooker to argue that ceremonies were not merely ‘things indifferent’ but a mark of a true church. The significance of the change is obvious and it has been admirably described by Anthony Milton.44 The language and assumptions of divinity were transformed. In the space of a few years the lovers of ritual abandoned the cautious enthusiasm of Andrewes for the aggressive advocacy of Cosin. Collins’ defence of ceremonies had been conditioned by his fear of a ‘f loodgate to popery’; Cosin turned the argument on its head. The issue was not that ceremonies bore the stain of Rome, but that a church without ceremonies ‘suffered scandal from them of the Church of Rome’. Durham House had set out its stall and it was clearly offering far more than second-hand Dutch goods. Charges of popery and Arminianism John Cosin’s attitude and his energy of expression were startling, and yet it was not Cosin, but one of his friends, Richard Montagu, who was to make Durham House notorious.45 Montagu was older than Cosin. Born in 1577, he was a fellow of King’s by 1597. He stayed in college until 1604, but he was hungry for more. By 1623 his appetite for preferment had made him Rector of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, Archdeacon of Hereford, a royal chaplain, a Canon of Windsor and Rector of Petworth near Chichester. He subsequently published two books: A Gagg for the New Gospel? No: a New Gagg for an Old Goose, in 1624, and Appello Caesarem, which appeared in 1625. A Gagg for the New Gospel revealed, for the first time, the breathtaking possibilities of a theology that abandoned old reformed prejudices in favour of a new attitude to the catholic past. That was the crucial point for Montagu. He was sure that puritanism was as much an enemy of the true Church of England as was Rome. Montagu did not argue, as so many other protestants had argued, that Rome simply had not read its Bible properly and that the English church was the true servant of scripture. He argued as catholics argued, from tradition: The warrant and authority of the holy Fathers, that is, the practise and tradition of the Church, shall regulate, I promise you, my resolution, and settle my judgement in things.46 In claiming that the Fathers were the same thing as ‘the practice and tradition of the Church’ Montagu signalled a departure from convention. Here was a protestant who thought that scripture could be difficult to interpret. Admittedly, he thought it a near infallible guide in essentials, but:

44

Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp.46ff.; also H. Davies, Worship and Theolog y in England, 6 vols. (Princeton 1975), II, pp.200–14. 45 On Montagu: Macauley, ‘Richard Montague’ and Tyacke’s excellent analysis of his work in AntiCalvinists, pp.125ff. 46 Montagu, A Gagg, sig. ¶¶¶.

142   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 In points of Faith, they [the Protestants] disclaim not the judgement of the Church, nor yet appeal to Scripture alone, understood by themselves alone without a judge, but refer it unto the Church.47 He tacitly accepted that the Roman Catholic Church was a true church, and abandoned the protestant commonplace that the pope was Antichrist.48 He thought private confession commendable. 49 He discussed the problem of works of supererogation and plunged into the vexed problems of free will and predestination, arguing that we have freedom to choose and defending his belief with a startling reference to the Council of Trent.50 He wrote about good works.51 He accepted that we have angel keepers and allowed that saints pray for us (but refused to sanction prayer to the saints). He urged the necessity of baptism and confirmation, and commended fasting while admitting that it was neither scriptural nor conferred any spiritual good. He declared a belief in Christ’s descent into Hell, but argued that it was ‘not necessary’ to believe in a purgatorial fire. He accepted the use of images, and defended the sign of the cross. Finally, he declared the legitimacy of repetitious prayers and attacked the ‘puritan’ who rejects the practice. Inevitably Montagu’s book was published to howls of protest. With so much controversial material at their disposal his opponents were perhaps a little spoilt for choice, but they quickly identified specific errors. A petition presented to Parliament recalled King James’ magnificent triumph over Arminianism in the Netherlands. Nothwithstanding, this dangerous doctrine and other erroneous opinions hath of late been hatched, and now begins to be more boldly maintained by some divines of this our kingdom, especillay by one Mr. Richard Mountagu, who hath published a book with shew of licence by authority.52 Among the signatories of this petition was John Yates, already an established opponent of Arminian error. A set of twenty-one articles against Montagu was also handed in to Parliament. It would appear that these articles, which Tyacke attributes to Thomas Goad, Daniel Featley, Dr Hall and Dr Prideaux, accused Montagu of both Arminianism and popery.53 Montagu’s critics inevitably associated him with the now discredited Arminius. Prove that he was Arminian and they proved him heterodox. That does not mean, however, that he was indeed an Arminian. Montagu’s correspondence with Cosin reveals that as late as May 1625 he had not actually read Arminius. On 19 May Montagu thanked Cosin: ‘for your Arminius. I never saw him before. The man had more in him than all the Netherlands.’54 In Montagu’s letters we also see his real conviction, and it was a conviction he shared with John Cosin: to identif y 47 48 49 50 51 52

Montagu, A Gagg, pp.14–15. Montagu, A Gagg, pp.74–5. See Hierurgia Anglicana, ed. V. Staley, 3 vols. (London 1902–4), III, p.43. Montagu, A Gagg, p.108. Montagu, A Gagg, p.109. The petition does not survive, but see J. Yates, Ibis ad Caesarem (London 1626), III, pp.45–6. On the Commons investigation: Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.125ff.; C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford 1979), pp.231ff. 53 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.148–9. 54 J. Cosin, Correspondence, ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Society, Durham 1869), I, pp.68, 90.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   143

and defend a Church of England that was not confused with either Roman or Genevan practice. Writing to Cosin, in June 1624, he hoped that God ‘will every day raise upp some to stand in the gapp against Puritanisme and Popery, the Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety’.55 Montagu probably believed that he stood somewhere in this ‘gapp’, but it is not at all clear that he thought his proper place was exactly in the middle of it. He seems to have had more sympathy for Rome than Geneva. Like Cosin, he had no time for a faith that defined itself by the purity of its hostility to Rome. He described the puritans as ‘the sect, which will have nothing approved that the Church of Rome saith, no, not that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary’.56 Avoiding Scilla, Montagu sailed much closer to Charybdis than was perhaps strictly necessary. Montagu was also a champion of ceremonies. He proudly reported that, during a visit to Windsor, Cosin had been mistaken for a Jesuit, … because, contrary to our fashion, you carried yourself so devoutly at prayers, which few of us do. Only they say myself do, with great reverence, att ministring the Communion and reading Prayers, ever bowe both [at] JESUS, and att the Altar: and such discourse of you and [me] passeth in the vulgar.57 Montagu was an apparently angry man who saw enemies everywhere. He was also fighting a sustained campaign against what he thought was the captivity of his church. When he returned to the fray with his second book, the Appello, he let loose his antagonism on the ‘Classical Puritans’ who, he said, wished their conceits upon the church like ‘Bastards upon the Parish’.58 He expanded what he had to say about purgatory, images, the eucharist and the sign of the cross, and attempted to justif y his use of controversial terms like ‘altar’ and ‘sacrifice’. His belligerent tone and his readiness to find a puritan more offensive than a papist never faltered as he rounded on his critics: ‘you must remember that all your words are not Gospel, nor all Popery that displeaseth a Puritan’.59 Again and again Montagu repeated his central theme. Denying that he was an Arminian, he argued he wasn’t a Calvinist or a Lutheran either, he was a Christian. He thought the Church of England and the Church of Rome shared common assumptions about the decisive importance of tradition, custom and the Fathers. Like Cosin, Montagu was arguing not about Arminianism, but about the nature of the Church of England and its relation to its Roman past. It was inevitable, however, that both Parliament and the authors who took up their pens against the Gagg and the Appello should attempt to convict Montagu of Arminianism. Montagu, of course, had claimed he had no knowledge of Arminius, but his critics were not to be dissuaded. So, for example, Daniel Featley castigated Montagu for his attack on the decrees of Dort and the Lambeth Articles: Neither can he yeeld any reason hereof, but because those eminent and every way accomplisht Divines at Lambhith, crushed the addled egge now 55 56 57 58 59

Cosin, Correspondence, p.21. Cosin, Correspondence, p.39. Cosin, Correspondence, p.41. R. Montagu, Appello Caesarem (London 1625), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’. Montagu, Appello, p.272.

144   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 smelling in the Appealers writings, when it was new laid in Cambridge, before Baro could hatch it.60 The Synod of Dort had identified and condemned error, and it seemed to Montagu’s critics that this was the weapon to use against him. In truth, concentrating too much on arguments learnt in the 1590s and repeated at Dort, they established a stock response to the new challenge that obscured the full extent of his offensiveness and failed to address the real crisis in English divinity. The chorus of protest raised against Montagu, with its litany of references to the Articles, Homilies, Dort and Lambeth, reveals the strength and depth of the forces ranged against him.61 Thrilling with their own sense of outrage, his opponents were scandalised, but they were also confident. As late as 1629, Davenant could write to Samuel Ward, I am still confident that if either the Doctrine of Election uppon praescience of persevering Faith, or of the Total or Finall falling away of men truly Justified adopted and sanctified, should come to bee handled in the convocation howse, none would so much disparadge their own reputation, as to maintain that ether of then was ever since Queen Elizabeths time receaved or reputed for the common Doctrine of our Church.62 The difficulty was that the balance of power was shifting. At the York House Conference Montagu found some powerful allies and the argument moved on.63 The conference (which was in truth more of a prize fight than a debate) gathered an unlikely group, but among the delegates was John Preston, now Master of Emmanuel, and a man of reformed orthodox conviction. It soon became clear that he knew what the debate was all about. On the second day of the conference Preston made an assault on the importance that Montagu had attached to tradition. Although the discussion turned on the validity of Montagu’s sources, it is clear that Preston’s real concern was that, if this argument from tradition was accepted, a new ritualism would be imposed. If tradition became binding so too would ceremonial conformity. Puritans all over the country would have held their breath if they had known what was at stake. The practices to which they objected could be dismissed as non-scriptural, but nobody could deny that they were not traditional. It was here that the real controversy was being worked out. In raising the issue at York House Preston had at last tackled a crucial question that others had ignored. Using the Articles and Homilies as ammunition, members of the English church were now involved in a battle about scripture and tradition and about how the church was to be defined.

60 61

D. Featley, A second parallel (London 1626), sig.B3v. Yates, Ibis; D. Featley, Pelagius redivivus. Or Pelagius raked out of the ashes by Arminius and his schollers [A parallel: of nevv-old Pelgiarminian error] (London 1626); A. Wotton, A dangerous plot discovered (London 1626), especially pp.5–10. 62 Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.310. 63 The York House Conference is analysed in Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.164–80. See also the chapter on the conference in Moore, ‘ “Christ is dead for him” ’.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   145

‘The Peace and Quiet of the Church’: the proclamation of 1626 In the short term the York House Conference did Montagu little good. Even though Charles subsequently named him again as a royal chaplain, the House of Commons continued to press charges against him. The King seems ultimately to have decided to leave Montagu to fend for himself, and in the event he was only saved by the dissolution of Parliament in June 1626. Yet even then the argument showed no sign of abating, and took a new turn with the publication of William Prynne’s The Perpetuitie of a Regenerate Man’s Estate. Prynne summoned up the deep reserves of righteous indignation that were his stock in trade and demanded, as Featley and Carleton and Balquancall had demanded before him, that Montagu recognise that the puritans whom he dismissed, ‘be nothing else (as they are in truth) but the true Church and Saints of God, who professe, propagate and maintaine the truth and puritie of the Gospell’.64 Eager to prove that Montagu was an Arminian, Prynne argued that the only man in England who had ever agreed with him was Richard Thomson: ‘but a Dutch-man, and a drunken one to’.65 So, he claimed, Montagu was forced to look abroad for help, from Bertius and the Remonstrants. All of which proved to Prynne that, hee is quite apostatized & fallen from the doctrine of the Church of England (I say not from the state of true and saving grace, for that I dare presume he never had as yet) into the very mire of Poperie and Arminianisme.66 Few, if any, could match the power of Prynne’s intelligently scornful prose, but it was now clear that there were altogether too many voices in this chorus of disapproval. The increasingly strident tone and violent language being employed against Montagu in press and Parliament alarmed the King. On 16 June 1626 he issued a proclamation ‘for the establishing of the peace and quiet of the Church of England’. The proclamation attempted to build a wall around the argument. It required that in future no one should maintain: … any new inventions or opinions concerning religion than such as [are] clearly grounded and warranted by the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England heretofore published and happily established by authority.67 Taken at face value, this ought to have been precisely what Prynne wanted to hear. The established teaching of the Church of England, represented by the Homilies and the Seventeenth Article of Religion, was unequivocally predestinarian. The conversation that English protestants had been having about the marks and signs of their own salvation was hallowed by recent tradition and authorised by some important texts. If ‘new invention or opinions’ were forbidden then surely the preachers of perseverance had won. Montagu certainly thought so, and in June

64 65 66 67

Prynne, Perpetuitie, sig.**2. Prynne, Perpetuitie, p.306. Prynne, Perpetuitie, p.318. The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688: documents and commentary, ed. J.P. Kenyon (Cambridge 1986), p.155.

146   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 1626 his confidence was at its lowest ebb.68 In fact, it was a little more complicated than that. Some theologians realised quite quickly that the proclamation might actually work against the preaching of predestination. Indeed, by 1629 there was a petition circulating in the diocese of London complaining that this proclamation, and a further declaration of 1628, were so interpreted as to make the preaching of predestination impossible. 69 It was, as the petitioners noted, the ‘interpretation’ of the proclamation that was the problem. The more vigorous kind of protestant had learnt to rely on the Lambeth Articles and on the Canons of the Synod of Dort. These documents gave official sanction to ideas that they were eager to defend. Dort was also a useful stick with which to beat opponents; after all, at Dort their critics had been condemned by a council of the church. The problem with the King’s proclamation was that it made it clear that the only admissible authority for theological opinion was that already published by the Church of England, and neither the Lambeth Articles nor the Canons of Dort had been officially recognised in England. The King’s proclamation prohibited an appeal to foreign opinion, be it European reformed orthodoxy or Arminianism. For the Durham House group this was nothing but good news. There were no Arminians in Durham House and precious few in Cambridge. No one there wished to introduce Remonstrant teaching into England. Their aims were quite different, the threat they posed much more insidious. The royal proclamation prohibited theological novelty, and the apostles of the new divinity set out to show that their views were not novel at all. Their critics meanwhile found that their preaching, the now familiar insistence on the golden chain that would save the helpless sinner in a fallen creation, was liable to the charge of novelty. The language of assurance and perseverance was silenced. Cosin and his friends were freed from endless discussion about an Arminianism they did not acknowledge, and were able instead to devote their energies to matters of more central concern. The chancellorship election of 1626 The York House Conference also showed where Buckingham’s theological sympathies lay. The days when John Preston enjoyed some inf luence over him were gone and the puritans now knew that they could expect nothing from him.70 It was a bitter blow, then, when the Earl of Suffolk died and Cambridge discovered that the King wanted the Duke of Buckingham to succeed him as Chancellor. Not only was Buckingham the champion of a dubious divinity, there was every appearance that he was about to be impeached by Parliament. Nonetheless, his candidacy was being pressed vigorously. Suffolk died on a Sunday morning; by midday on Monday the Bishop of London’s chaplain was in Cambridge to tell anyone who would listen that the King wanted Buckingham made Chancellor. Members of the university, conscious of their dignity, expected to be given this sort of information in a more formal and official way. Even so, a few of the 68 69

Cosin, Correspondence, I, p.95; Macauley, ‘Richard Montague’, p.330. W. Prynne, Canterburie’s doome. Or the first part of a compleat history of the… tryall… of William Laud (London 1646), pp.164–5. 70 Mullinger, University of Cambridge, III, p.47.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   147

heads, and most notably Matthew Wren (Peterhouse), Jerome Beale (Pembroke), Leonard Mawe (Trinity) and Thomas Paske (Clare), were instantly anxious to press ahead with an election. Alarmed by the determination of this group, an opposition party began to form as angry dons went scuttling from room to room. 71 They found a candidate in Thomas Howard, Lord Andover, second son of the late Chancellor, and recently created Earl of Berkshire. By Tuesday it was clear that there was going to be a fight. The Bishop of London, George Montaigne, now arrived in person and was clearly very annoyed that the university, and even his own college, had had the temerity to resist the instructions he had sent through his chaplain. More significantly, John Cosin also arrived clutching a letter for the Vice-Chancellor, from Bishop Neile, which made it clear that the King really did intend to have Buckingham made Chancellor. Feelings were running high, and Wednesday was dominated by vigorous campaigning. Masters of some colleges pressed their fellows hard, and Mawe summoned them one-by-one to persuade them where their duty lay. On Thursday morning, the day of the ballot, he had the college bell rung and required his harassed dons to go with him to the Schools.72 Paske was apparently equally determined, requiring even the sick to vote and treating Buckingham’s eventual election ‘as a particular kindness to himself, and to gratif y [the fellows], made them to exceed both night and noon in every Mess’.73 In Magdalene, the Master, Henry Smyth, was another enthusiast for the Duke’s cause, and in the Regent house in the face of the whole University call[ed] upon one of his Fellows with his voice for the Lord Andover in his hand intreating, persauding, threatening, commanding him to sit down, and it is likely private dealing with men were more violent.74 The result was a narrow, and not undisputed, victory for Buckingham. The voting figures we have suggest that the Duke of Buckingham carried the election by 108 votes to 102. Joseph Mede, a fellow of Christ’s who had voted for the Earl of Berkshire, provides a different account. Writing to his friend Sir Martin Stuteville at the end of the week, he claimed that only three votes separated the candidates.75 Protests in Cambridge and in Parliament were silenced by the King and the new Chancellor was installed on 13 July. Morgan’s account of the election, the fullest and best yet written, presents the whole thing as a contest between Calvinists and Arminians. Support for Buckingham was, he believes, a straightforward declaration of Arminian sympathy, and he describes a university polarised by ‘one further battle in an already intensely felt conf lict between doctrinal factions’.76 It is tempting to think that was indeed the case. Following the furore surrounding Montagu, it does appear that there was a sharp division of opinion and that it fitted neatly into the starkly two-sided 71 72 73 74 75 76

Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.155ff.; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.185–96; Mullinger, University, III, pp.53–63; Bodl Tanner MS 82, fols.268ff. Mede to Stuteville, in Cooper, Annals, III, p.188. Bodl Tanner MS 82, fol.272; BL Sloane MS 1775, quoted in Morgan, ‘Country Court’, p.24. Morgan, ‘Country Court’, p.25. Mullinger, University, III, p.56; Cooper, Annals, III, p.188. Morgan, ‘Country Court’, pp.15–16.

148   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 contest over the chancellorship election. Unfortunately, as we look a little more closely at the individuals involved, the definitions once again begin to slip and slide. The first difficulty is that the voting lists for the chancellorship election have proved a rather uncertain source. Successive attempts to transcribe them have all run into difficulties in deciphering and identifying the names upon them. Mullinger, who produced a more accurate transcription than that given in Cooper, was well aware that mistakes may well have been made in the Registry, as the original voting papers, with barely legible signatures, were recorded. Mullinger himself then makes further errors. The worst of these leads him to speculate why Barnabas Goche, Master of Magdalene, did not vote. Goche was dead and had been succeeded by Henry Smyth, who in fact made quite a fuss about voting.77 All of which may help to explain why Mede thought that Buckingham won by only three votes and not the six in our list. In all, ten heads of house cast their vote. Wren, Paske, Smyth, Mawe, Walsall (Corpus), Mansell (Queens’), Gwynne (St John’s), Andrewes (Jesus), Gostlyn (Caius), and Bainbrigg (Christ’s) all voted for Buckingham.78 The remaining six heads did not vote at all. It soon becomes abundantly clear that some very complex loyalties determined the outcome of the election. This was not simply a contest between Calvinists and Arminians. Henry Smyth, for example, so vociferous for Buckingham, was definitely not an Arminian. For sixteen years he kept his college largely free of the changes and squabbles that dominated other houses. He voted for Buckingham because he was a man under authority. The Visitor of Magdalene was Theophilus Howard, son and heir of the previous chancellor. Approached to stand against Buckingham, Howard had refused and declared that he wanted to see the Duke of Buckingham rather than his own brother get the job. Smyth, who had only just ceased to be domestic chaplain in the Howard household, was desperate to ensure that Magdalene did not embarrass both him and the Visitor. In Magdalene a vote for Buckingham was not a religious statement, it was an act of collegiate obligation. We know of only two heads who might have had some broadly ‘Arminian’ sympathy: Beale and Wren, and of these two only Wren voted. Some men who we might consider ‘Calvinist’, Preston at Emmanuel and the newly appointed Richard Sibbes at St Catharine’s, abstained. Preston could hardly turn on Buckingham so publicly after the years of close association, and Sibbes was in no position to make enemies at the royal Court so soon after taking office. Yet, at the same time, the distinctly un-Arminian Mansel, Bainbrigg and Gwynne all voted for the Duke, keeping unlikely company with Wren and Mawe. Loyalties and concerns other than religion mattered to these ambitious men and dictated the outcome of the election. Calvinist v. Arminian? Heads and their houses In 1626, and in the years that followed, the division between ‘Calvinists’ and ‘Arminians’ was but one factor in the religious life of the university. A few heads 77 78

Cunich et al., Magdalene College, p.110. Cooper, Annals, III, pp.186–7; Bainbrigg is listed as ‘Tho. Bambrigg’.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   149

can be identified as belonging to a particular faction, others are harder to place. The two professors of divinity, for example, were far from being at opposite ends of a religious spectrum, but were nonetheless very different. The Regius Professor, Samuel Collins, was a fine scholar with a slightly acerbic wit and had retreated from polemic after his sermon on conformity.79 Samuel Ward, the Lady Margaret Professor, had less humour and more passion. He was, of course, committed to the old certainties. He knew about Arminianism and he feared for the Church of England. In his correspondence with both Ussher and Davenant he strove to build a bulwark against innovation.80 Ward and his friends saw no place for Montagu in their church, but failed to grasp the scale of what they were dealing with. While Montagu argued for sweeping change in the church Ward was preoccupied with arguments that had been heard before. His opinion concerning Predestination and Total Falling from Grace is undoubtedly contrary to the Common Tenet of the English Church ever since wee were borne.81 Ward consistently defended the proceedings at Dort, even mustering Overall to his cause.82 Pressing home the attack, Ward used a sermon in Great St Mary’s to condemn Arminianism and later saw it through the press as Gratia discriminans. When Buckingham was elected chancellor, Ward was allegedly too ill to vote. Not surprisingly, he did not greet the result with enthusiasm.83 In the wake of the election he was one of an anxious group who proposed a predestinarian determination at the Commencement and was promptly silenced by the royal proclamation of 1626.84 Davenant commiserated and, in relation to the proclamation, wondered, ‘How farr those of Durreslme howse will stretch the meaning thereof I know not.’85 In truth it was not yet clear just how bad things had got. While Ussher was clearly concerned that true and godly opinion was about to be repressed, Davenant was still confident that it would be possible to publish ‘our Judgement’.86 Ward was certainly not silenced: writing to Ussher in May 1628, he announced that he had ceased lecturing on the real presence and was now expending his energies on showing that grace, once given, is sure. And have read this year and a half, at least, upon that point which I chief ly insist upon in my sermon in Latin, to show that the grace of conversion giveth not only posse convertere but o velle.87 Arming himself for a conf lict that he clearly believed would continue, Ward revealed that he was now collecting information about the Lambeth Articles.88 Ward was not to be shaken from his prejudices. He sustained his hostility to Arminianism long after it should have been clear to him that he was tilting at 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

See above, pp.139–40. Ussher, Works, XV, pp.177–8, 347; Bodl Tanner MS 73, fol.497; 72, fols.55, 61. Davenant to Ward, Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.61. Samuel Ward, Opera Nonulla (Cambridge 1658), p.114; Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.61. Ussher, Works, XV, pp.336–7. CUL CUA Lett. 12 A.6. Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.135. Ussher, Works, XV, p.351; Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.135. Ussher, Works, XV, p.404. Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.161.

150   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 windmills. In 1627 his correspondence contained a complex discussion of whether or not preparatory acts to conversion are pleasing to God.89 Davenant, now Bishop of Salisbury, was equally preoccupied with the old conversation about the divine decrees. In November 1628 he wrote to Ward to tell him that Montagu’s opinions on conditional predestination and on totally falling away from grace would soon be consigned to oblivion. Even so he was perplexed. Why that should now be esteemed puritane doctrine which those held who have done our Church the greatest service in beating down Puritanism, or why men should be restrained from teaching that Doctrine herafter, which hitherto has been generally and publiquely mainteined (Wise men perhapps may) but I cannot understand.90 Startlingly, Ward, despite his special gift for spiritual agony, still had a measure of confidence. In 1629 Davenant assured him that Convocation would be bound to support their opinion of perseverance.91 Six months earlier he had himself written of Arminianism to Ussher: as for our university, none do patronage these points, either in schools or pulpit; though because preferments at court are conferred upon such as incline that way, causeth some to look that way.92 If Arminianism was rife in Cambridge, no one, it seems, had told Samuel Ward. While he feared the worst elsewhere, in Cambridge, Ward and his divinity were still dominant. Was there any Arminianism in Cambridge? Certainly rumour suggested that there was.93 The rumour almost certainly concerned Jerome Beale, the Master of Pembroke. New alliances had formed in that divided college, and those old adversaries Pocklington and Wren now made common cause against Ralph Brownrigg. There was plenty of scope for intrigue as the Master, Nicholas Felton, had to divide his attention between college and the diocese of Bristol where he was bishop. He resolved this uncomfortable dilemma equitably, by being absent from both. In 1619, however, Felton was promoted to richer pickings as Bishop of Ely and could afford to resign from Pembroke. Brownrigg saw that Beale was the likely successor and, fearing for his own position, launched a vigorous spoiling campaign culminating in a letter to the King accusing Beale of Arminianism. Beale was elected nonetheless. Not only was he acquitted by the King from the aspersion of Arminianism, he also performed the remarkable feat of capturing Balcanquall’s vote, forwarded from Dort, and witnessed by the leading divines at the Synod.94 Despite such formidable testimony to his orthodoxy there was in truth cause for concern. Beale was certainly well acquainted with the Arminian divines. When, in 1629, he took issue with Ward’s Gratia discriminans he provided references to 89 90 91 92 93 94

Bodl Tanner MS 72, fols.190, 194; 114, fol.151, and most subsequent letters to Bedell until May 1628. Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.298. Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.310. Ussher, Works, XV, p.405. Bodl. Tanner MS 72, fols.308, 312. Attwater, Pembroke, pp.67–8.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   151

the works of the Remonstrants Bertius and Corvinus.95 Indeed, Ward complained that Beale had alleged, ‘that it seemed I either had never read Arminius or did not understand him’.96 The argument had begun with a disagreement over the Seventeenth Article of Religion. Ward, determined to establish that Arminian opinion had no place in England, held that that the Article was ‘repugnant’ to the Arminians given their belief in foreseen faith; Beale disagreed. In disagreeing perhaps he protested too much, hinting that this argument really mattered to him. Most of the ensuing discussion was conducted by letter, but at one point spilled over into the Consistory Court. Dr Tyacke, observing this public dimension to a public quarrel suggests that Beale and his Arminian allies were now strong enough to put a Calvinist ‘in the dock’.97 It is far from clear, however, that this was a formal prosecution of Ward. At least part of the argument appears to have been conducted after a Consistory meeting had finished. In a letter to Ussher in 1630, Ward refers to, ‘some opposition I had from some in our university, under pretence of violating his Majesty’s declaration; which, I say, I do not’.98 Presumably, there had been an objection to Ward’s lectures. But Ward clearly distinguishes this from his argument with Beale to which he also refers in the same letter. If Ward was ‘in the dock’ in 1629 he does not seem to have been seriously concerned, and he boasted to Ussher that he continued the controversial lecture course, omitting only to name the Remonstrant authors he attacked. Matthew Wren, one of Beale’s supporters at Pembroke and, from 1625, Master of Peterhouse, was equally unimpressed by Ward and Gratia discriminans. A contemporary of John Preston’s, he had hitched himself to a different star and, closely associated with Durham House, had begun to reap the benefits. Chaplain to Andrewes, he was later also Chaplain to Prince Charles and went with him on the madcap trip to Spain in 1623. The mastership of Peterhouse was but part of his reward: he was made Bishop of Hereford in 1634, translated to Norwich a year later and then went to Ely in 1638. His hostility to puritanism once he was made bishop was legendary and earned him imprisonment in the Tower during the Interregnum. In the 1620s, though, he was more cautious and attracted little attention. In a set of manuscript notes, attributed to Wren and interleaved with Ward’s sermon, he defended Arminian scholarship and took issue with Ward’s use of St Augustine. There was, though, more than Arminianism here. Wren was also clearly anxious to construct an independent and ancient tradition to set against that cited by Ward.99 Anxious to avoid close association with the Arminians, men like Wren reinterpreted history to establish that the views of Overall and Richardson were neither novel nor unusual. Theological debate was more and more often becoming a discussion of English history and tradition. Like his friends at Durham House, Wren also took a keen interest in worship. At Peterhouse he began the building of a new chapel. This interest would soon change the face of religious life in the university, and Wren clearly had an early ally in

95 96 97 98 99

Bodl Tanner MS 71, fols.10–11v., 15; 72, fol.314; 80, fols.143r–v. Bodl Tanner MS 71, fol.11v. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.50. Ussher, Works, XV, p.500. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.48.

152   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Jerome Beale who, in 1628, had the whitewash stripped from the chapel walls to reveal the medieval paintings.100 Ward, Beale and Wren were certainly involved in an argument about Arminianism, but even Wren cannot really be described as having Arminian opinions. Others fought different battles altogether. Leonard Mawe was certainly no stranger to controversy. He was one of the architects of Buckingham’s election to the chancellorship in 1626. Almost immediately he was commissioned to investigate the election of Thomas Batchcroft as Master of Caius. Batchcroft was a loyal member of Caius, having been admitted a pensioner of the college in 1590 and never leaving. He was a blameless, if rather undistinguished, choice as master. The other heads soon discovered that they were divided over Batchcroft’s claim to the lodge, with Mawe, Wren and Beale against confirming the election and Ward, Butts, Mansell and Collins all supporting him. It seems there were no good grounds to overturn the election and Batchcroft stayed. His association with men like Ward and Mansell and his subsequent behaviour in the Consistory Court suggest that he may have been of a mildly puritan disposition. Nonetheless, during his mastership Caius was far from immune from the tide of ornament sweeping through the chapels of the university. Perhaps Batchcroft was, as Professor Brooke has suggested, a reed bending before the prevailing wind.101 Batchcroft, a Laodicean head of house, neither quite one thing or another, was fairly typical. There has been a tendency to think in terms of a bitter contest in Cambridge and to paint every member of the university in strongly contrasting colours. In truth, many belonged to neither one side nor the other. Mansell at Queens’ was sympathetic to his predecessor Davenant’s reformed convictions, but never gave those convictions voice and certainly did not allow them to prevent him from voting for Buckingham.102 Meanwhile, Thomas Bainbrigg at Christ’s was not a party man. In 1644 it was suggested that he had been ‘taking a nap and sleeping at our distractions’.103 At Clare, Thomas Paske had campaigned for Buckingham, but was his own man. One of the theses he defended for his BD in 1613, ‘the subject of divine predestination is fallen man’, reveals a moderate Calvinist outlook.104 Confusingly, in later years, the chapel at Clare would be decorated in a way that suggested some sympathy for new ritualism, yet, crucially, in the Consistory Court, he sided against Cosin one of the moving spirits behind that ritualism.105 Thomas Eden, Master of Trinity Hall, has been variously described as a ‘moderate’ and a ‘puritan’. If he had opinions at all, he either kept them to himself or they were staggeringly nondescript. When put to the test, in 1644, he was prepared to take the Covenant, which tells us something. He and his college were criticised both for the carelessness and the fussiness of their worship, which perhaps tells us even more about the independence of his views and position.106 Little too is known of the views of Henry Butts, Master of Corpus. A conscien100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Walker, Peterhouse, p.103; Attwater, Pembroke, p.68. Brooke, Caius, pp.121–3; Mullinger, University, III, p.69. Twigg, Queens’, pp.44, 69. Mercurius Britannicus, quoted in Peile, Christ’s, p.132. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.89. See below, p.177. G.B. Tatham, The Puritans in Power (Cambridge 1913), p.101; M.B. Rex, University Representation in England 1604–1690 (London 1954), p.158.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   153

tious Vice-Chancellor, he is chief ly celebrated for his suicide. His association with Ward against Wren, Beale and Mawe in the matter of Batchcroft’s election suggests that, if he had religious prejudices, they were of a protestant kind. A contemporary critic certainly thought him a believer in predestination, but we know no more.107 In Magdalene, Henry Smyth is just as difficult to place. Preoccupied with financial and legal difficulties, he governed a college that accommodated some liturgical change in the 1630s, but he was not close to those who urged such change and occasionally even opposed them.108 Only a few heads are the controversial characters we seek. At St Catharine’s, Richard Sibbes, Master from 1626 until his death in 1635, was a man of impeccably reformed conversation and practice. He repeatedly crossed swords with William Laud.109 John Preston’s preferment as Master of Emmanuel in 1622 was also undoubtedly the promotion of a puritan. This, though, was the high-water mark of his inf luence.110 His death in1628 left a vacancy in a society eager to sustain its identity. The subsequent election of Wiliam Sancroft provided the college with a godly successor whose views they could approve. In 1636 those who accounted to Archbishop Laud for the progress of the new piety in Cambridge saved their sharpest criticism for Emmanuel.111 Finally, another election, in 1628, made Samuel Brooke the successor to Mawe at Trinity. Brooke has already been identified as a critic of the theology of Calvin and Perkins. He had clearly not changed his mind since the Commencement of 1616, and in letters to Laud in 1630 he declared his mind on predestination, which he thought ‘the roote of Puritanisme’. Puritanism, in turn, he thought ‘the roote of all rebellions’.112 Calvinist v. Arminian? The Schools There was variety among the heads of house. Clearly, a number of them were committed to the aspirations of Durham House. Whether any can usefully be described as ‘Arminian’ is a moot point. No one was so foolish as to glory in foreign association, and anyway the arguments had become more complex and more contemporary. What is clear is that while Durham House could take delight in the election of Buckingham as chancellor of the university they still had a long way to go if their aim was to dominate and control the university. The election had been carried by the narrowest of margins and only after intense lobbying from the Court. Other promotions had favoured men of very different outlook. Ward could well afford his rather uncharacteristic confidence. 107 108 109 110

111 112

Lamb, Corpus, p.168. E. Duffy, ‘Smyth versus Smith’ Magdalene College Magazine NS 28 (1983–4); Cunich et al., Magdalene, pp.109–20; Cooper Annals, III, p.283; BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.83. Dever, Sibbes, pp.71f. Moore places Preston very carefully among the ranks of the godly: an ‘infralapsarian hypothetical universalist’, ‘“Christ is dead for him”‘, pp.59ff., 82ff., 192; also Morgan, Puritan Chaplain and Ball, Life of the Renowned Doctor Preston, p.65. The election at Emmanuel is discussed helpfully by Steven R. Pointer, ‘The Emmanuel College Cambridge Election of 1622: The Constraints of a Puritan Institution’, in Puritanism and its Discontents, ed. L.L. Knoppers (Danvers, MA 2003), pp.106–21. Cooper, Annals, III, p.283; Bendall et al., Emmanuel, pp.222–3. TNA SP 175.69, fols.384–5; 176.2, fol.396; 177.8, fol.411.

154   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 In the schools too there was precious little evidence of Arminian teaching.113 The bulk of Commencement theses continued the war of words with Rome. Edward Simpson joined in when he proceeded DD in 1624, tackling papal dogma on heresy. More controversially, his second thesis declared that the incarnation of Christ presupposes the fall of humanity into sin.114 Arminius had held that predestination took place in Christ (as opposed to writers like Perkins, who seem to have argued that God decreed our damnation or salvation and only then willed incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection). Arminius was sure that predestination was also consequent upon human sin. Simpson may have been arguing a similar point, urging that the work of Christ is decisive. In any event, he seems to have been sufficiently cautious to avoid giving serious offence. Others proved it was possible to use the language that Simpson detested. One of the two theses defended by Ralph Brownrigg, proceeding BD in 1621, was, ‘Aid sufficient for salvation is not given to all’.115 It was a point that could be argued in a variety of ways. Catholic theologians would have been content with the idea that grace is given to all, but grace effective to salvation is bestowed on only a few. Protestant theologians meanwhile seemed to be irresistibly attracted to earnest discussion of the limits of atonement and were a little too eager to decide who was in and who was out. This was the tradition in which Brownrigg stood. Carefully avoiding the word ‘grace’ by speaking of ‘aid’, he could hint that for all those who were given grace, assurance and perseverance inevitably followed. In the following year an Emmanuel man, named Garnans, argued, ‘the grace of conversion determines the will’.116 Sancroft, now Master of Emmanuel, proceeded DD in 1629, arguing that the faithful can have certainty.117 The opponents of this familiar divinity, however, were not without their successes. In 1626 an attempt to table the determination, ‘Against absolute predestination no-one may dispute’ for the Commencement, was prevented. A letter arrived from Neile citing the recent royal proclamation and demanding that the question be abandoned.118 Four years later, at the same Commencement at which Sancroft determined, Edward Quarles of Pembroke kept the act for his BD and argued, ‘all baptised infants are, without doubt, justified’.119 This was clearly a contribution to the long-running debate about perseverance. It was generally recognised that baptism could not mechanically guarantee salvation, not all the baptised were ultimately saved. It followed that, if you argued that the baptised were at least guaranteed justification, you must also believe that some lost the grace of justification and did not persevere. That was clearly what Quarles believed, and he presumably also believed that the sacraments were effective, and baptism achieved something; it passed on justification. Others, of course, would argue that only the predestined received grace. Ward was incensed by Quarles and attempted to have the question prohibited. The Vice-Chancellor, Smyth, with the support of 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

BL Harleian MS 7038, pp.87–98. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.95. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.93. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.94. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.94. CUL CUA Lett. 12 A.6. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.96.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   155

the majority of the heads, refused and Quarles who was ‘importunate to have that question’ got his way. Ward, though, had the last laugh; as Lady Margaret Professor he was able to conclude the discussion to his own advantage.120 There was one further cause célèbre in the Schools. In 1627, Isaac Dorislaus began his history lectures in Cambridge on the foundation just established by Lord Brooke. Dorislaus, a scholar from (of all places) Leiden, was Brooke’s own choice for the new chair and was apparently warmly received by Ward. He gave only two lectures. Matthew Wren, unhappy with the first, was outraged by the second and complained publicly to the Vice-Chancellor and, confidentially, to his friend Laud, now Bishop of Bath and Wells. Significantly, Laud was known to be close to the Chancellor.121 Dorislaus’ offence was that in his exposition of Tacitus’ Annals, ‘he was conceived of by some to speak too much for the defence of the liberties of the people’.122 His crime, in fact, was to develop from reading Tacitus a political theory that made resistance to tyrants legitimate and suggested that the roots of political authority lay with the people. Bainbrigg, the Vice-­Chancellor, was clearly reluctant to proceed against the university’s newest professor. A formal complaint would be monstrously tactless after the generosity of Lord Brooke. In any event, as Wren was forced to acknowledge in his letter to Laud, the case against Dorislaus was weak. The professor had ‘used some distractions towards the end which might well satisf y all’.123 Having got onto his high horse, however, Wren was not a man to clamber down easily. With the support of Eden he forced the issue. Dorislaus duly had to appear before the heads. There he acquitted himself so well that the prevailing mood was to allow him to continue his course of lectures. They reckoned without the determination of the Master of Peterhouse and they were outmanoeuvred. Letters arrived in the name of the King prohibiting the lecture. Cambridge’s Camden Chair of History thus had hardly any history. It was a pyrrhic victory, but a startling one. Patronage was rejected and a man who had had the support of heads and Senate was muzzled. Wren and his allies had real power at their disposal and they were learning how to use it. Calvinist v. Arminian? The pulpit Little by little the university was becoming conscious of a struggle for power. Few would have suggested, however, that Arminians now had reformed orthodoxy by the throat. It was still not clear to some what the argument was really about, let alone who was winning it. A staggeringly provocative sermon by William Lucy on Commencement Sunday 1622, which was definitely Arminian in tone, took everyone by surprise.

120 121

Ussher, Works, XV, p.504; Ward, Opera, pp.50ff. Mullinger, University, III, pp.83–9; Trevor-Roper, Catholics, pp.80–1; Morgan, History of University, p.86 n.85. 122 Ussher, Works, XV, p.40. A lively account of the Dorislaus affair is provided by Margo Todd, ‘Anti-Calvinists and the Republican Threat in Early Stuart Cambridge’, in Knoppers, Puritanism and its Dioscontents, pp.85–105, though she is mistaken about Cosin’s role in the affair. 123 Quoted in Mullinger, University, III, p.87.

156   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 On Sunday, in the face of the whole Commencement assembled, Mr Lucie preached a sermon totally for Arminianism, wonderfully boldly and peremptorily, stiling some passages of the contrary by the name of blasphemy.124 As pressure mounted for Lucy to be censured he went to the Regent House seeking permission (a ‘grace’) to proceed BD the following year. Joseph Mede watched in disgust: though the faction was strong against him, yet he carried it by main force, though this be a favour not ordinary for every one to have this grace before his year. What it means, and what the event will be, I know not. Either he has had some encouragement, or else he used not so much discretion as he might.125 Mede’s instincts were correct. Lucy did have some important friends, for he was Chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham. The whole business was complicated because Lucy was appealing for a special privilege. In Cambridge it was held that noblemen should not be kept waiting, and the blue-blooded Lucy was arguably entitled to expect more seniority than he had strictly earned. Correspondence in 1623 reveals that Lucy was petitioning not for his bachelor’s degree, but for a doctorate. Opposition had continued and was only finally silenced by a letter from the King requiring that the grace to proceed DD be left undisturbed.126 Even so, when Lucy appeared to take the degree the affair was regarded ‘with such distast of the regents that they hummed when he came in’.127 Clearly Arminianism had not yet carried the day in the Regent House, but its opponents were worried. In the year of Lucy’s sermon a man called Doublet wrote to his former teacher, Vossius, telling him how things stood in Cambridge: I thought there was in the Cambridge Senate rather more bile directed against those rigid professors of the reformation at Geneva, whether on account of the fact that they hold everything that can be called Puritan in hatred; or because many there are very closely committed to the opinions of the Remonstrants… one or two of the doctors… told me that they could not tell me which party, the Remonstrants or the ContraRemonstrants, had more followers in the university.128 The university knew that it was caught up in a contest and knew that neither side was winning. Doublet was well aware that the talk in this contest was all about Arminianism, but was sufficiently alert to wonder if that was really the key issue. The only other celebrated sermon of this period was preached by Thomas Edwards at St Andrew’s, in 1627. Edwards took as his text Matthew 7:13, ‘Enter in at the straight gate’. He then offered some stern advice for those having difficulty finding the narrow way. Guidance, he suggested, must only be sought from those equipped to give it: 124 125 126 127 128

T. Birch, The Court and Times of James I (London 1848), II, pp.319–20. Heywood and Wright, Transactions, II, pp.309–15. TNA SP 14.149, fols.60, 67, 69. Heywood and Wright, Transactions, II, p.315. Quoted in White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, p.208.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   157 let not a pupill goe to his carnall tutor, a servant to his carnall master, a sonne to his carnall husband, but to some in whom the spirit appeared effectually.129

Opinion was divided over Edwards; some clearly believed that he had urged the distinctive authority of spiritual men and was setting up a godly alternative to episcopacy; others believed he had proclaimed the authority of scripture. It appears that Edwards had also dealt with the way the sabbath might be sanctified by preaching and prayer and had enlisted the support of Zanchius, Bucer and Melanchthon. This preacher was a man of decided opinion. Thumping the Bible in the course of the sermon, he had announced that if he was mistaken then this book ‘was full of falsehoods and God himself is a lyar, and Christ himself a deceiver’.130 In the Consistory Beale, the Master of Pembroke, and Mr Duncon were inclined to press the matter, while Dr Chaderton was more readily satisfied with Edwards’ explanation. Duncon was a member of Beale’s college and, perhaps more significantly, was also for a time one of Neile’s chaplains. In the event, the King got to hear of Edwards and took exception to what he took to be an assault upon ‘the soveraigne Right of Kings’. As a result Edwards was required to preach an explanation, which he did on 6 April 1628. The division of opinion in the Consistory was entirely predictable. Chaderton would have found no offence in a sermon that relied so excessively on the authority of scripture and the godly brotherhood. Beale and Duncon would have had other ideas about what constituted proper authority. Control of the Cambridge pulpits was always an important and sensitive matter. In 1624 it became a matter of national importance. John Jeffray, who had been put into the Holy Trinity lectureship on Sibbes’ departure, himself resigned. John Preston, still anxious for a town pulpit, immediately petitioned for his place. Preston managed the business in a determined fashion. He had clearly engineered Jeffray’s resignation by arranging for him to be tempted away with a better offer. He subsequently marshalled all his remaining inf luence at Court to his cause. He was opposed by Paske, then Vice-Chancellor, by Neile, and apparently by the King, who attempted to buy him off with offers of other preferment. Preston’s intransigence paid off and, after a protracted argument, he got his lectureship and Cambridge its godly preaching.131 Calvinist v. Arminian? The University Press The publications of the 1620s were largely uncontroversial fare. Almanacks, poetry, and visitation articles clutter up the lists of the Press. It would be unwise to claim too great a significance for what was or was not published. However, it is worth noting that there is little evidence among the books produced in the 1620s that Cambridge was preoccupied by the arguments between Calvinists and Arminians, and there is no sign at all of an Arminian ascendancy. It is the 129 130

CUL CUA VC CT I 49, fol.25, and Morgan, History of the University, p.127. Heywood and Wright, Transactions, II, p.361; CUL CUA CUR 6.1.39, fol.21v., and VC CT I.49, fols.24ff. 131 Morgan, Puritan Chaplain, pp.117–24; Fuller, Cambridge, pp.227–8.

158   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 familiar names that stand out in the list. Willet’s study of Romans appeared in 1620, Davenant’s work on Colossians was published in 1627, the same year as Mede’s celebrated Clavis Apocalyptica. Bedell’s assault on recusancy came out in 1628, and a year earlier Ralph Winterton published an edition of Gerhard’s Meditations. Gerhard was a leading Lutheran theologian and a vigorous critic of non-scriptural tradition. He had developed an uncompromising theology of election and reprobation that was hardly likely to commend itself to anyone with Arminian sympathies.132 In addition to the oversight of the University Press, the Vice-Chancellor was occasionally required to investigate unwelcome publications from other presses. Inevitably, one author who gave particular cause for concern was William Prynne, who was turning opposition to what he had decided was ‘Arminianism’ into a personal crusade. In 1629 he published Anti-Arminianisme or the Church of England’s old antithesis to new Arminianisme. Prynne knew that there was more than an argument about grace going on; there were deeper and more serious questions about protestant identity. His book was an attempt at a definition of the doctrine of the Church of England, a definition that would of course exclude Arminianism. Prynne made a great deal of Barrett’s prosecution, and of James I’s opposition to Vorstius. Well aware of the real nature of the debate, he nonetheless picked up familiar weapons and indulged in routine and knock-about name-calling. He viciously denounced anyone guilty of Armininiasm, and many Cambridge names attracted unwelcome attention, including Baro, Thomson and Simpson. The Vice-Chancellor launched a detailed investigation into the circulation of the book in May. Prynne was not going to get a sympathetic hearing in Cambridge as long as the Vice-Chancellor was Matthew Wren.133 ‘Doctrines of our Church or no?’ As the 1620s drew to a close Cambridge was clearly beginning to be affected by the intrigues and arguments of rival theological factions. Mawe, Wren, Beale, Paske and their friends obviously combined on occasion to formidable effect. No one can have doubted the importance of the issues facing the university. The royal Court and Parliament were clearly taking a keen interest in Cambridge, and the House of Commons was becoming strident in its denunciations of Arminianism. Arminianism was, without doubt, a major concern. Yet, in Cambridge, William Lucy’s sermon apart, it was rarely sighted. Everyone, of course, was aware of the significance of the label ‘Arminian’. It was used freely and effectively in an increasingly ill-tempered debate, to link the enemies of godliness with an error identified and condemned at Dort. The problem is that not everyone who was called an Arminian really was an Arminian. There was no Arminian ascendancy in Cambridge in the 1620s. Not only were there few real Arminians about, but also it is clear from elections to college masterships, determinations in the Schools and the publications of the Press that 132

J. Gerhard, A Golden Chaine of Divine Aphorisms, trans. R. Winterton (Cambridge 1632), pp.8, 66–136. 133 CUL CUA VC CT I.51, fols.167–8; Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, pp.268, 271.



The Seeds of Contention 1619–1629   159

those inaccurately labelled ‘Arminian’ did not have everything their own way. Arminianism was not the issue. The writings of Montagu and the sermons of Cosin reveal an interest in the nature of theological authority and a passion for an old, and apparently Roman, piety. The use of scripture and tradition, the proper attitude to England’s inheritance from its catholic past, the interpretation of the Articles and the Homilies, and the authority to be accorded to the Fathers, the schoolmen and the reformation divines were all at issue, and contemporaries clearly knew it. Letters, sermons and published works abound with references to the process of definition confronting the church. Davenant, writing to Ward, complained that what was once considered orthodox was now misrepresented and labelled ‘Puritan’: wee favour not those absurd opinions which some falsely conceav to have been allowed in the Synod of Dort: though we oppose those newfangled opinions which some would father uppon our Church.134 Ward struck an almost identical note in his correspondence with Ussher. Writing of Davenant’s difficulties following a sermon at court, he added sadly, ‘I am right sorry, the delivery of the established doctrine of our Church should thus be questioned.’135 Ward and Davenant were aware that this was an argument about what the church believed. Others saw it too, though from a different perspective. Samuel Brooke, writing to Laud, denounced the Puritans who, began to use the name of Church, and our Articles of the Church of England, etc. and wounded our Church at the very heart, with her owne name, And by pretence of putting downe Arminianisme and defence of that Church, against which indeed they tooke up Armes... cry out now the Church of England, and will have the Church of England to be theirs.136 The vituperative Prynne, of course, saw it differently again and feared that Arminianism was but a beginning and that another danger lurked, for Arminianism he suggested was but ‘an Usher unto grosse Popery’. 137 It was a good point; Montagu and Cosin, and soon many more, looked to the catholic past with far more interest and than they ever looked to the Netherlands. Prynne castigated these innovators and urged a return to orthodoxy: shall we now beginne to question, whether they are the Doctrines of our Church or no? because some pur-blinde, squint-eyed, ideall Arminian Novellists, begin for to dispute it? What is this but to make a scruple, whether the day be light or no; because Buzzards and blind men cannot see it?138 Drawing on Scripture, and then on the Fathers, the Articles, the Homilies and the Prayer Book, Prynne set out to demonstrate what the church believed. Like 134 135 136 137 138

Bodl Tanner MS 72, fol.298. Ussher, Works, XV, p.500. See below, pp.192–3. Quoted in Prynne, Canterburies doome, p.167. Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, p.258. Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, sig.A.3.

160   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Montagu and Cosin, like Brooke, like Davenant and Ward, like a host of others, Prynne knew what was at issue in the theological controversies of the 1620’s. It was not just Arminianism. It was an argument about theological method and the rival claims of scripture and tradition. It was an argument about the authority of Rome and Geneva. It was an argument familiar to English divines since the 1530s, and it was still not resolved.

Chapter Six

‘NEAR POPERY, AND YET NO POPERY’

A grave divine, preaching before the university, at St Mary’s, had this passage in his sermon, that, as at the Olympian Games, HE was counted the conqueror who could drive his chariot wheels nearest the mark, yet so as not to hinder his running, or stick thereon … so he who in his sermons could preach near popery, and yet no popery, ‘there was your man’. The ‘current doctrine of the Church of England’ Late on the night of Monday 23 February 1629, Matthew Wren, now the ViceChancellor, received an unwelcome letter from the Speaker of the House of Commons. The Commons had a sense of high purpose and the letter was a little peremptory: … I am commanded by the House of Commons assembled in Parliament, to pray and require you to send forthwith to unto them, true information of the names of all such persons within your University of Cambridge as since the 13th of Queen Elizabeth, have written or published any points of doctrine contrary to the Articles of Religion established in that year, or contrary to the true and generally received sense of those Articles, or the current doctrine of the Church of England... and withal to certif y what Acts, Determinations, Censures, Recantations, Subscriptions or other proceedings, have been thereupon had or made, together with true copies of the same, wherein have observed the commands of the House and nothing doubting of your care and endeavour for the spedy and effectual satisfaction of the House therein I rest. Wren must have wondered what all this was about. The letter could be interpreted as an opening shot in a campaign against the university. In truth, the Commons’ real concerns lay elsewhere. In 1625 an attempt had been made to launch proceedings against Richard Montagu, but Parliament had been promptly prorogued. Other business had then proved even more compelling and the matter had been left unresolved. In 1628, however, Montagu had been made Bishop of Chichester and that was something that the Commons could not ignore. For some time men like Ward, Davenant and Prynne had been arguing that there was  

Fuller, Cambridge, pp.231–2. Cooper, Annals, III, p.212; CUL CUA CUR 6.1 38, fol.1r.; CJ, p.928.

161

162   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 altogether too much freedom about theological debate and that old protestant certainties no longer looked so certain. Those concerns were now being shared at Westminster, where MPs suddenly recognised that it was the very bishops and theologians who were expected to defend the truth that were actually leading the church astray. The Church of England was dealing not just with a quarrel about predestination, it was facing conf licting claims about its character and was confronted with quite different images of itself. So, the problem for the Commons was to settle on some agreed fundamentals. MPs turned to the Articles of Religion, but even these needed interpretation, and they knew that not all the interpreters could be trusted. As Sir John Eliot put it: Mark the ground of our religion, it is contained in the body of these articles; if there be any difference in opinion concerning the sense and interpretation, the bishops and clergy in convocation have power admitted to them to do any thing that shall concern the countenance and maintenance of the truth professed... And for ought I know, Popery and Arminianism may in a sense be introduced by them, and then it must be received. Eliot was well aware that Richard Montagu now sat among the bishops who were supposed to decide upon questions of faith. It was time to lay down some boundaries that men like Montagu could not cross. I desire (to the end to avoid confusion and distractions) that we may go presently to the ground of our religion, and lay that down for a rule, on which all others rest; then, when that is done it will be time to take into consideration the breakers of and offenders against this rule. How were these boundaries, ‘the ground of our religion’, to be set? One possibility was for the Commons itself to assume new responsibilities. If MPs could not trust the hierarchy of the church then perhaps MPs themselves might define and defend fundamental beliefs. John Pym certainly explored this possibility. ‘And howsoever it is alleged that the Parliament are not judges in matters of faith, yet ought they to know the established and fundamental truths and the contraries unto them...’. Working in the Committee for Religion, Pym even went so far as to compile a list of the Fathers of the Church of England, including Cranmer and Bucer, but omitting Calvin and Perkins in his desire to create something generally acceptable. Pym had clearly grasped that the real issue was the nature and tradition of the Church of England. The Commons knew, however, that this sort of activity strained the limits of its competence and it looked for other solutions. It was Benjamin Rudyerd who suggested that the way to achieve its aim was to write to the universities, as Henry VIII had once done, and require of them a list of the occasions on which they had condemned opinions contrary to the Articles. So, the Commons wrote to the Vice-Chancellor not because it     

Russell, Parliaments, pp.409f. Russell, Parliaments, pp.409f. Russell, Parliaments, p.411. Russell, Parliaments, pp.410–11. CJ, p.930; Russell, Parliaments, p.410.

‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   163



was suspicious of Cambridge, but rather because it wanted some guidance on how the truth had been taught and maintained at Cambridge. On that February night, however, Wren was instantly suspicious. On the Chancellor’s advice, the university prepared a document not for Parliament, but for the King. It was exactly what Parliament had asked for, a catalogue of crime. It included accounts of the proceedings against Bainbridge, Johnson, Rudd, Rush and several others. The university also supplied records concerning Gray, Edwards, Brownrigg, Barrett and Baro. These were added, Either bycause some of them are repugnant to the discipline and Canons of our Church. … Or bycause it was affirmed by some among us, that they verily thought, the House of Commons did most cheefely and principally ayme at having from us the Records of Barrets case, and the next following [Baro’s case]. This wilfully misdirected reply to the Speaker was only despatched, on 20 April, after an argument among the heads. Fourteen names were subscribed, including the head (or his deputy) of every college except St Catharine’s and Sidney. Ward was only persuaded to add his name after a delay of over two weeks. Sibbes was perhaps away from Cambridge attending to his duties at Gray’s Inn. But by then it was all a little pointless. Parliament had been dissolved on 10 March and would not meet again until April 1640. Thus the Personal Rule began with a bitter and impassioned argument over the fundamental doctrines of the Church of England. The House of Commons, in its letter to the university, and the university in its reply to the King, both recognised that this argument was not simply about Arminianism. Popery was clearly another concern, but so too was the fundamental question of the interpretation of the Articles of Religion. At this stage Cambridge was still considered orthodox by the opponents of innovation – it was, after all, the university of Perkins, Whitaker and Davenant. In the years that followed men like Eliot or Rudyerd began to wonder if their confidence had been misplaced. Freed from the restraining hand of Parliament, and encouraged, after 1633, by William Laud newly made Archbishop, Cambridge embraced dramatic changes in belief and practice that owed little to Arminianism, but were proof of new assumptions about the English Church. The new heads of house As the argument became more public and the issues became clearer, so it became more ill-tempered and personal. By 1635, Joseph Naylor, once a fellow of Sidney Sussex, but now resident in Northumberland, had heard of the divisions in Cambridge. He wrote encouragingly to Samuel Ward describing a friend newly made Master of Peterhouse:

 

CUL CUA CUR 6.1.38, fol.2r. CUA CUR 6.1 38, fol.2r. Richard Love of Corpus signed for Butts, Robert Welles of Caius signed for Batchcroft, and Thomas Harrison of Trinity for Brooke.

164   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 He seems to me (& I dare say truly) to be very sensible of the great distraction or disaffection or what er’ you’d call it amongst the heads & certainly if he be not otherwise swayed ab extra He will endeavour rather to make up than enlarge the breach.10 As Naylor’s old friend was John Cosin, it is unlikely that Ward viewed the appointment with anything like the same enthusiasm and optimism. Cosin’s promotion was just one in a series of victories for Durham House. Over the road in Pembroke, Benjamin Laney, Neile’s chaplain, had moved into the Master’s Lodge in 1630.11 Two of Laud’s chaplains also benefited as the gravy train shuttled back and forth. Edward Martin was made President of Queens’ in 1630 and Richard Sterne became Master of Jesus in 1634. Martin was a pugnacious man. Though he was not, as Lord Dacre implies, the author of the controversial Historicall Narration, he did license it for publication and presumably approved its assertion that Arminian opinion was no more than the agreed doctrine of the English church. He proved himself one of the most aggressive champions of the beliefs and practices that now began to take hold in Cambridge.12 Sterne was made of similar stuff. Proceeding DD in 1635, he defended two interesting theses, ‘It is lawful for a priest to exercise civil power’ and ‘Sin is an adequate cause of divine enmity’.13 The first title was an explicit attack on the argument that civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were separate, the two swords argument to which Calvin had given his imprimatur. The second thesis is too tersely worded to communicate a great deal. The implication, however, is that Sterne advanced a theology that placed the emphasis on sin, not on the divine decrees. If our sinfulness is sufficient cause for God to condemn us, we do not need to seek instead an account of how and why God himself decides on the numbering of the reprobate. Sterne was also an advocate of ceremonies and acquired a reputation for forcing reverence on his students.14 The final member of this group was William Beale. Beale, who had only recently been made Master of Jesus College, was imposed on St John’s by the King in 1634, following a bitter election dispute after Gwynne’s death. A graduate and fellow of Jesus, he had been made Archdeacon of Camarthen when Laud was Bishop of St David’s. He too was a staunch supporter of the new ceremonies and a man whom Prynne accused of being the ‘creature’ of Archbishop Laud.15 This was a coherent group of heads loyal to one another and to shared assumptions. They came up to university in the first decade of the seventeenth century, served a common apprenticeship to the leading lights of Durham House and were made heads of house in a five-year period that transformed the religious and political life of the university. Periodically, it seems, two other heads, Thomas Eden at Trinity Hall and Samuel Collins at King’s, were prepared to throw their 10 11 12

Bodl Tanner MS 70.10, fol.43. On Laney, BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.53, 63, 65, 66, 81. Prynne, Canterburies doome p.508; Gray, Queens’ College, pp.154–5; Twigg, Queens’, pp.45, 69; TrevorRoper, Laud, p.206. 13 BL Harleian MS 7038, fol.100. 14 BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.80; BL Loan MS 29/50/Bundle 74. I am grateful to Dr Milton for this latter reference. 15 Baker, St John, I, pp.213ff.; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.258–9; Prynne, Canterburies doome, p.73; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.194.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   165

weight behind them.16 Others, though, stood loose to what rapidly became a battle between two factions. Thomas Paske at Clare and Henry Smyth at Magdalene remain difficult to place. That is not entirely surprising; they were survivors from a slightly earlier generation. Thomas Comber, meanwhile, had matriculated at Trinity in 1592 and became a fellow five years later. A good scholar, he was one of James I’s chaplains, but had only slowly reaped the rewards of royal favour. He was made Dean of Carlisle in 1629 and then Master of Trinity in 1631. He proved willing to permit ceremonial and decoration into his college chapel, but belonged to no party. His failure to vote with Edward Martin on one important occasion caused the latter, rather spitefully and unreasonably, to describe him as ‘very stiff in the faction’. In truth, Comber came as close as any head to being genuinely independent.17 The remaining heads had clear, but different loyalties and also rapidly became a cohesive group. By far the most senior of them was Samuel Ward. Ward’s allies included Thomas Bainbrigg at Christ’s, Richard Sibbes at St Catharine’s, and Sibbes’ successor, Ralph Brownrigg. Brownrigg was a complicated character and opinions of him differ.18 Born in 1592, he had been a student and, from 1611, a fellow of Pembroke, where he had first been an ally, then an enemy of Matthew Wren’s. He held a number of college livings and had a reputation as a preacher less interested in awesome pieties and truths than in being heard and understood, ‘fitting his net to the fish he was to catch’. In 1631 he became Archdeacon of Coventry (while Thomas Morton was bishop) and, in 1635, Master of St Catharine’s. In 1642, as Charles struggled to demonstrate a more even-handed policy of ecclesiastical preferment, Brownrigg made a final move to become Bishop of Exeter, only to lose the job when episcopacy was abolished in 1645. Lurching about on this religious roller-coaster, he saw perhaps more than his share of prejudice. His biographer described his antipathy, ‘against those unquiet and pragmatic spirits which affect endless controversies, varieties and novelties in Religion’.19 During his Cambridge career, however, Brownrigg’s sympathies were undeniably of a very particular kind. As a young man he had got into trouble for his opinions on resistance to the monarch. He had also defended the view that not all of us are given grace sufficient to salvation when he proceeded BD. Later he preached vigorously protestant sermons in which he attacked the ‘Pelagian’ opinion that humans could resist sin. In truth, a friend of Thomas Morton and related to John Pym by marriage, Brownrigg may have been a more supple thinker than some, but his loyalties were to reformation and the old certainties of assurance.20 Richard Holdsworth, Master of Emmanuel from 1637, was another committed opponent of what Parliament styled ‘popery and Arminianism’ who yet found himself out of favour with Parliament on the eve of the Civil War. Educated at St John’s, which he entered as a lowly sizar in 1607 and where he became fellow in 16 17

See below, p.177. DNB; BL Harleian MS 7019, fol. 77; see the ‘Letter’, ed. by C.H. Cooper, in Cambridge Antiquarian Society Communications, II (1860–4), p.151. 18 DNB; D. Lloyd, Memoires of the Lives of Those Personages that Suffered for the Protestant Religion (London 1663), p.406; Porter, Catharine Hall, pp.99–103. 19 J. Gauden, A Sermon … at the funeral of Dr Brownrigg (London 1660), p.166. 20 R. Brownrigg, Sixty-Five Sermons, ed. W. Martyn (London 1660), p.166.

166   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 1613, he was appointed Gresham Professor of Divinity in London, in 1629, and began to acquire a formidable reputation as a preacher. Unsympathetic to ceremonialism in his college chapel, he was nonetheless a conformist and as Archdeacon of Huntingdon forced the people of St Ives to make their communion kneeling. His religious opinions and his association with Emmanuel secured him appointment to the Westminster Assembly of Divines in 1642. Subsequently, though, he made eloquent expression of his loyalty to the Crown and fell from grace. He was ejected from Emmanuel and from a London living, brief ly confined in the Tower and twice refused permission to accept a new ministry.21 He bequeathed to Brownrigg, his executor, a ring ‘which many yeares since was given me by the Parliament’, a testimony of happier days. Unlike Holdsworth, Richard Love, Master of Corpus, uniquely managed not only to keep his mastership throughout the Commonwealth, but actually won preferment from Charles II. Despite such apparently impeccable credentials as an archetypal Vicar of Bray, Love occasionally blundered into opinions of his own. During the 1630s he was an opponent of Cosin’s party and, when Vice-Chancellor, set out to frustrate its aims.22 He owed his promotion to the fact that he had been one of Charles I’s chaplains. Transferring his loyalties effortlessly, he also served on the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Dr Twigg styles him one of the ‘recognizable puritans’.23 The one remaining head, Thomas Batchcroft of Caius, regularly sided with Love and the others, but has already been identified as a man of distinctive views.24 Although we have here clear evidence of sort of factions that historians have struggled to identify in earlier periods, it is important to recognise that there were tensions within this group. Each of these men was different, and a ‘Calvinist’ label is no more helpful than an ‘Arminian’ one. As Civil War drew near the fragility of their common interest grew more and more apparent. Both Holdsworth and Love were nominated to the Westminster Assembly of Divines, but their fortunes thereafter were very different. Batchcroft managed to survive the Visitation of the university in 1644. Like Love, he took the Covenant, which Holdsworth refused, but unlike Love he subsequently lost his place in 1649. Meanwhile, Ward, whose protestant credentials were never in doubt, was imprisoned by Parliament. Bainbrigg kept a very Laudian-sounding chapel at Christ’s, while Eden maintained a little more reserve at Trinity Hall, yet it was Bainbrigg and not Eden who consistently voted against Cosin and his friends. The inadequacy of the conventional party labels for describing any of the heads is striking. Nonetheless, it is clear that in the 1630s they repeatedly divided down the same lines into two opposing factions. The heads divided – Sermons Control of the university pulpit in Great St Mary’s was essential to those engaged in the controversy that gripped the university. The Vice-Chancellor and heads 21

BL Harleian MS 7019, fol. 82; J. Ward, The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (London 1740), pp.56–65; CSPD 1639–1640, p.455 and below, pp.207–9. 22 See below, pp.172–3, 176–7. 23 Twigg, The University of Cambridge, p.9. 24 See above, p.152.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   167

had the necessary statutory powers to achieve this control. The effectiveness of the statute, however, depended on agreement among the heads on what was and was not heterodox. Now the frailty of this crucial consensus was to be rapidly and rudely exposed. The problems began with a sermon by Nathaniel Bernard, an Emmanuel graduate who had taken his MA in 1622 and had then become a lecturer at the Temple Church in London. Bernard was an opinionated and angry young man with more zeal than good sense. In 1629 he had distinguished himself by praying for the Queen’s conversion and had been hauled before High Commission for his trouble.25 Now, in a sermon in Great St Mary’s, on 6 May 1632, he threw caution to the winds. Bernard’s text was 1 Samuel 4:22, ‘And [Phinehas] said, “The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken” ’, and his basic premise was that Phinehas was a prophet telling of ‘the sad and disastrous condition wherein the Church of God was’. Phinehas, according to Bernard, was talking about the Church of England. It took some intricate exegesis to get from the text to this particular conclusion, but Bernard went at it with a will. The ark of the covenant, he argued, was the ‘glory’ of Israel. It contained all the true marks of the church; it was the voice of God and the presence of the Messiah. Through the ark, and more particularly through the ordinances it contained, God governed the worship of Israel. Therefore it followed (and Bernard was eager to show that logic was on his side) that if the ark was the glory of Israel, then God’s ordinances for public worship ‘are the glory of any nation’. It must have been at about this point that the purpose of the sermon became apparent, for Bernard now reminded the congregation that these precious ordinances must not be ‘blended and adulterated with any superstitious inventions of man’. That raised the question which ‘ordinances’ did Bernard have in mind? Initially, he offered a fairly generous definition, they were Word, sacrament and praise. He went on, however, to establish that, ‘the preaching of the word, which is God’s ordinance, is the glory of our church (and nation)’.26 It was, then, the preaching of the gospel that was England’s glory. It is that means by which God manifesteth his omnipotent and irresistible power in the conversion & salvation of all those who from eternity were ordained thereunto by God’s absolute and immutable decree.27 There were old arguments here, but there was much more besides. Bernard attacked those who had ‘departed from the purity of God’s worship’, suggested that ‘superstitious innovations’ f louted God’s ordinances for worship and ‘spake very bitterly’ against all those responsible for this corruption.28 His list of offenders was a long one, including those who favoured altars, crucifixes and bowing, those who counted reading as preaching, those who neglected holy duties, those who called the singing of a psalm ‘a Geneva gigg’ and those that held the possibility of salvation in the Church of Rome. Worst of all, though, were those who were mean and base in their attitude to preaching: 25 26

P.S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships (Stanford 1970), pp.248–9. CUL MS Mm.6.54, fols.1ff. and CUA CUR 18.6.6; Heywood and Wright, Transactions, II, pp.392ff.; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.249–51; Prynne, Canterburies doome, pp.362–7. 27 CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.6v. 28 Prynne, Canterburies doome, p.364.

168   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 These men turn their glory into their shame, for is there not a generation of prophane men among us who are afraid and ashamed to preach twice on the Lord’s day, to preach plainly, powerfully, & spiritually to the soules and consciences of these people Lest they should be counted puritanes?29 Bernard obviously thought that too many people were sensitive of their reputations and over-anxious about being called names, for he also pointed out that many Christians feared to hear weekday preaching ‘Lest they should be accounted Bible-bearers and gadders after sermons’. There was plenty here for the Vice-Chancellor and heads to be getting on with, but Bernard compounded the offence by praying again for the Queen’s conversion and by some spectacularly ill-advised remarks on treason. He suggested that those he criticised were worse than traitors, because treason against the state is greater and worse than treason against the King. … Against all such traitors, then, let us take up arms (there he made a good long pause) – I mean the arms of the church, our prayers, desiring God to convert them all.30 Immediately after the sermon, Bernard returned to London and had to be ordered back to Cambridge. There he discovered that two fellows of Pembroke, Eleazer Duncon and John Tourney, supported by their Master Benjamin Laney, were promoting a carefully orchestrated case against him. When Bernard finally appeared before the Vice-Chancellor on 18 June, Laney asked some startling questions. He required Bernard to explain why he placeth the integrity and purity of religion to be in that state which Christ left it. 2dly, that we are to be saved by faith in Christ alone. 3dly, and why in his prayer before his sermon … he prayed to God to honour the gospel with the queens conversion.31 Laney was also disturbed that the sermon had made no mention of the power of the keys in its discussion of God’s ordinances. Bernard was an easy and obvious target for Pembroke prejudice, but that should not disguise the fact that the language Laney was using was nearly as controversial as the content of the sermon. The questions he asked Bernard suggest that Laney had doubts both about the perfection of the primitive church (presumably he thought it was improved when it had a little tradition) and about solafidianism. Fortunately for him perhaps, Bernard seemed determined to become a martyr. Although he denied some of the charges against him, he refused to retract the offensive prayer and declared himself ready to defend his views on election. Although it persisted for four months, the university could make no headway with Bernard. He wrote to Laud seeking protection, but remained irreconcilable. 32 Bernard’s attitude is explained at the close of his ‘Answers’ to the charges against him, 29 30 31 32

CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.7. CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.11. Heywood and Wright, Transactions, II, p.395. CSPD 1631–1633, p.360.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   169 if further suffering in this Cause be imposed upon me, I shall submit, with this comfort; that I suffer not as an evil doer but one that endeavoured to stand in the Gap, to stop all Innovations from breaking in upon this Blessed Church.33

It is to be hoped that this thought did comfort him for he was handed over to High Commission, and, obstinate to the end, died in prison.34 Bernard’s sermon was ambitious and wide-ranging. Within it there was some discussion of old arguments about predestination and free will. Indeed, Dr Tyacke thinks that Bernard is best understood as an opponent of Arminianism.35 Certainly Bernard’s sermon included an attack against those who endeavour to quench the light and abate the glory of our Israel, by bringing in their Pelagian errours into the Doctrine of our Church established by Law, and the superstitions of the Church of Rome into our worship of God.36 There was concern about Arminianism here and it prompted an important discussion of the King’s Declaration within the Consistory Court. In the furore surrounding Montagu, Charles I had issued a proclamation expressing ‘his utter dislike’ of ‘new opinions’.37 Two years later he tried again to commit himself and the church to stability and tradition. A new edition of the Articles of Religion was provided with a preface, The King’s Declaration, asserting that here was the ‘true doctrine’ of the Church of England and prohibiting ‘the least difference from the said Articles’. The Declaration was specifically intended to silence the argument about predestination, demanding ‘that all further curious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God’s promise’.38 Inevitably, this was one of the weapons used against Bernard. It was alleged that his remarks about election were a transgression of the Declaration. Bernard protested, ‘it was not his M[ajesties] purpose to supresse any part of God’s holy truth. But that which I preached was a part of God’s holy truth.’39 Here was the rub. The wording of the Declaration was clear. Theological debate in general, and discussion of the theology of election in particular, was to be conducted exclusively in the terms laid down in the Articles. Bernard, however, rapidly discovered that the Declaration was being used to prevent such matters being discussed at all. The preaching and conversation that had dominated godly life for something like fifty years was being driven underground. Bernard was left protesting that he had said nothing that could not be found in scripture and the doctrine of the church. Peter Baro would have rejoiced to see this day. The Declaration was a useful weapon against Bernard; indeed, it was too useful to ignore. Employing it, his critics implied that Bernard’s real offence lay in what he had to say about predestination. This was less than the truth. Bernard 33 34 35 36 37 38

CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.15v. Fuller, Cambridge, p.232. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.52–3. Prynne, Canterburies doome, p.365. Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, pp.154–5. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, ed. S.R. Gardiner (Oxford 1906), pp.75–6. 39 CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.12.

170   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 had attacked crucifixes, altars and bowing. He had bewailed the failure of the preaching ministry, and had complained of innovations and railed against those who held the possibility of salvation in the Church of Rome. What motivated Bernard was hatred of Rome and a conviction that the Church of England was now modelling itself on Rome. Again and again in the pulpit and later in the courtroom he reiterated his theme, that the church had changed: ‘I spake not of the simple practice of Bowinge, but of them that labour to bring it into our Churches and Chappells, and settle it where it was not before.’40 It was Bernard’s contention that the church was now in a ‘sad and disastrous condition’. The blame lay with those ‘Cassanders’ too sympathetic to Rome. The Catholic church might be a visible church, but there was no salvation within it. This is what Bernard and his critics were arguing about – not Arminianism, but popery. The whole affair ref lected little credit on anyone, save possibly Comber, who made a genuine attempt to come to terms with Bernard. It was a hopeless enterprise. The heads had begun to take sides, and it was these allegiances that would determine what happened to Bernard. Despite the rather intemperate language Laney employed, he had no difficulty in summoning his allies to support this Pembroke persecution. Edward Martin quickly began to argue that Bernard should be sent to a court with power to impose a ‘condign punishment’.41 Matthew Wren was later said to have pressed the prosecution with ‘terrifying discourses’. 42 Bernard’s belligerence, meanwhile, made it impossible for the other heads to save him, even had they wished to. The heads were soon busy again. In 1633, Lionel Gatford, a young fellow of Jesus and Vicar of St Clement’s, preached in the University Church. His text, 1 Kings 18:21, was uncompromising: ‘How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God follow him.’43 Laney was now Vice-Chancellor and Gatford was summoned before his court. Despite a series of hearings the case had not progressed far when Laney’s term expired and a new Vice-Chancellor, Richard Love, took office and immediately dismissed the case. As a consequence few details survive. We do know, however, that Gatford’s text was used by Sir Richard Grosvenor in the House of Commons in 1629 as the basis for an assault on Arminians.44 Laney’s hostility and Love’s support are strongly suggestive that Gatford may have had similar prejudices to those of Bernard. The outcome of the prosecution reveals the way a divided university was beginning to function. Having cleared Gatford, Love was soon on the offensive. Carrying the battle to Laney’s own college, he mounted a prosecution of John Tourney, the fellow of Pembroke who had pursued the unfortunate Bernard. On 9 February 1634, Tourney had preached in Great St Mary’s and had echoed the interest in the ‘faith alone’ question already shown by Laney. Tourney argued that faith alone was insufficient for salvation:

40 41 42 43 44

CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.13r. CUL MS Mm.6.54, fol.16v. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.91. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.93. Commons Debates for 1629, ed. W. Notestein and F.H. Relf (Minneapolis 1921), pp. 67–8.

‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   171



faith worketh with & directs our works to heaven … it must be working and so it is not fides mortua … it doeth but co-operate and so it is not fides sola … an associate cause, not a solitary one, a partial not the only cause, so faith alone being unsufficient it brings us unto … the necessity and efficacy of good works.45 Not content with merely compromising basic protestant doctrine, Tourney glanced in the direction of Rome and used the language John Cosin had already employed: ‘And now we see it is a mere scandal that lyeth upon our Church, we are no such enemies to good works as the Papists make us.’ This was shocking stuff, trespassing far beyond the categories employed in the discussion of Arminian opinion. Tourney was called into the court room to answer what was, on the face of it, a blatant breach of the Eleventh Article of Religion and the King’s Declaration. It is a measure of the state of Cambridge divinity that Vice-Chancellor Love, anxious for a conviction, could not secure a majority among the heads, ‘some of them seeming to countenance Mr. Tourney’. Love, however, did manage to force Tourney to acknowledge ‘that justification as it is used in the Articles and Homilies, and as it signifieth the remission of sins and acceptance to life eternal is by faith alone’. Tourney then had to subscribe to a careful definition of the theology of justification. He was allowed to declare that works, understood as acts of fear, love, sorrow, and the like, were to be found in one who had been justified, but he had to add that such works were a consequence, not a cause of justification. Tourney apparently ‘soon repented him of his subscription’ and was not subdued for long. Within months, preaching ad clerum for his BD, he reasserted his belief ‘that we are justified in part by works and by inherent righteousness’. Love demanded a copy of the sermon and was refused. The result was inevitable, and a day or two later, the votes of Love, Ward, Bainbrigg, Sibbes, Batchcroft and Sancroft denied Tourney his degree. It is also no surprise that two voices were raised in protest, Laney and Martin apparently causing ‘much trouble and disquiet’ to the Vice-Chancellor. Love and his allies celebrated their victory by choosing William Flathers, of Sidney Sussex, as respondent on Commencement Day. Flathers’ choice of subject was a foregone conclusion: ‘Faith alone justifies’.46 In a letter to Ussher, Ward recounted the story. He was well aware that Tourney had the support of some of the heads and had been a candidate to take Flathers’ place as respondent. I pray God we may persist in the doctrine of our Church, contained in our Articles and Homilies. Innovators are too much favoured now a-days. our vice- chancellor hath carried business for matter of religion, both stoutly and discreetly.47 Despite Love’s success, Ward was deeply disturbed. The familiar note of pessimism crept back. He had noted the arrival of young men bred in Durham House. Describing university affairs to Ussher, he continued,

45 46 47

BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.53. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.100. Ussher, Works, XV, p.580.

172   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 I never knew them in worse condition since I was a member thereof, which is almost forty six years. Not but that I hope the greater part is orthodox; but that new heads are brought in, and they are backed in maintaining novelties, and them which broach new opinions. Ward’s concern was well founded. Tourney hastened down to the royal Court and obtained a letter from the King ordering that he be allowed to proceed BD.48 The whole affair reveals that the King’s Declaration on the Articles, used against Bernard, was a very partial tool. There was a singular failure to employ it against Tourney’s f lagrant assault on the Eleventh Article. It also showed once more that, in Cambridge, the range of opinion and consequently, the area of controversy, was enormous. Consensus was impossible even on points that might be considered basic protestant teaching, and as opinion hardened the divisions in the university were paraded again and again. Peter Hausted’s sermon in Great St Mary’s, on 2 November 1634, laid these divisions bare. The preacher was a fellow of Queens’ and close to the President, Edward Martin. Martin was Rector of Uppingham and Hausted was his curate there. He was also a well-known, if not well-liked, playwright. His highly colourful sermon demonstrates that he had a taste for burlesque. Essentially, he preached about order and discipline, arguing that it was needed to fend off a new secularism and slovenliness in church. He condemned the ‘man of yesterday’ who had bought his knighthood and must have his chaplain. Then he turned on the fashion for lectureships. Burgesses and Shopkeepers when they have got a little wealth and their thumbs under their girdles they must have a Lecturer, a second dish of their own cooking, and the poor man must please his good master and good dames. Flegmatique women for their 2d or 3d or 7d a peece may have what divinity they please, Pidling preechers that preach according as the wrought night caps and apron benevolence come in, preechers that unbutton themselves when they pray and strip up themselves unto the elbows as if they were about to show some feats of activity.49 Hausted wanted order and more reverence in church. He urged the practice of bowing. He also attacked those who cried down pictures in church more vigorously than they denounced fornication. Finally, turning on the Great St Mary’s congregation, he suggested that, ‘divers of the graver sort came thither as into a stable or barn’. This attack on irreverence included the interesting suggestion that it was a Dutch vice. That does not mean, however, that his sermon was a contribution to an argument between ‘Calvinists’ and ‘Arminians’ imported from Holland. For him the Dutch were not the champions of a particular divinity, but merely the type of slovenly protestantism. Proceedings then took a dramatic turn for this was Love’s last day in office as Vice-Chancellor and he knew he had to act fast. Hausted was therefore escorted straight from the church to the Consistory Court room. Once there, he was required by the votes of Love, Ward, Bainbrigg, Batchcroft and Sancroft to produce 48 49

CSPD 1639–1640, p.203; BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.54. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.54r.; see also CUL CUA VC CT I.53, fols.231v.ff. and VC CT I.54, fols.3ff.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   173

a copy of his sermon and was suspended for his lack of manners. Martin and Laney protested, but had no cause for real concern. Love’s weak hand was quickly exhausted. His successor as Vice-Chancellor was William Beale, a man whom Ward described as one who ‘favoureth novelties, both in rites and doctrines’.50 Beale did what Love himself had done for Gatford and had the case dismissed. There were some angry exchanges, and Martin marched round to Corpus to tell Love, ‘Now that you have slept upon the business I pray consider what you have done through ignorance pride and factious zeal. …’51 Martin proudly reported this exchange in a letter to William Bray, another of Laud’s chaplains. The heads were deeply divided and behaved very differently from their predecessors. Once, the Consistory had seen conservative heads close ranks against the more radical young. Now, the heads encouraged the intemperance of their juniors and then stood alongside them and cheered. This antagonism between the heads grew, and with it all hope of any theological consensus was lost forever. When John Normanton of Caius preached himself clean out of the Church of England in January 1636 there were still those ready to see some good in him. Normanton had first troubled the heads on 24 March 1633 with a sermon ‘touching Irresistability of Grace contrary to his Ma[jes]ties declaration’. He appeared before the Vice-Chancellor charged with contravening the King’s Declaration, was admonished and promised better behaviour in future.52 Within three years, though, he was made university preacher by William Beale and was back in the pulpit of the University Church. His second sermon began as an exegesis of Christ’s temptation by the devil, but Normanton was not a man to be restricted by his text. His preaching embraced criticism of the doctrine of ‘justification by faith alone’, a defence of fasting and penance, praise for the Carthusians, for Baronius, Bellarmine and the Papacy, and an assault on the ‘Puritan’ who would sell his principles for a rochet and mitre. He also made the novel suggestion that the old scurrilous tales about the Roman Catholic Church were spread by protestant clergy wives who had a vested interest in overthrowing clerical celibacy.53 Normanton was soon to turn Roman Catholic, and it his important to be clear that his views are not really representative of contemporary protestant opinion. His sermon is significant, though, because it again divided the heads. Although he and his supporters (he had help from Martin and Laney) took every opportunity to frustrate the workings of the court, a set of articles was exhibited against him and the prosecution revealed just how outrageous his opinions were. His enthusiasm for Roman Catholic writers had led him to imply that Bellarmine towered over his critics, mere ‘mice nibbling at him’.54 His sensitivity to criticisms of Rome was a sure herald of his own future conversion and led him to overturn a familiar image of protestant polemic. It was commonplace to suggest that when Satan 50 51 52

Ussher, Works, XV, p.581. ‘Letter’, in Cambridge Antiquarian Society Communications, II, p.151. Magdalene College Archive, C Smyth’s Book, fol.37; CUL MS Mm.1.44, pp.225–6. See M. Todd, ‘ “All one with Tom Thumb”: Arminianism, Popery and the Story of the Reformation in Early Stuart Cambridge’, Church History 64:4 (1995), pp.563–79. 53 Cooper, Annals, III, pp.257–8 and others confuse the two sermons; for the second, see BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.56. 54 Todd, ‘ “All One with Tom Thumb” ’, pp.566, 569.

174   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 appeared to Christ in the wilderness he dressed as a monk; Normanton thought it more likely he appeared as a puritan.55 Yet, these extraordinary opinions went uncensured. Cosin accepted that the sermon might have been indiscreet, but, ‘for any popery or propension thereto he discovered none’.56 It is interesting to note Cosin’s words. Although Normaton had apparently questioned the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the argument in the Consistory Court was all about popery. For Normanton’s generation, the name of Rome did not necessarily conjure up images of terrible armies mustering on foreign shores for invasion. Rome was not the enemy it had been, and some aspects at least of Roman Catholicism were not viewed with the old fear and loathing. Indeed, there might be something to learn. Cosin never followed Normanton into the Roman Catholic communion, but he understood the argument and he was supported by Laney and Martin.57 Laney, who had a talent for weasel schemes, immediately promoted a prosecution of Thomas Riley of Trinity, which the Commons later suggested was intended ‘to take Mr. Normington off ’.58 Riley was a young man, perhaps only twenty-six, and lacked the powerful friends who had done stout service for Hausted and Tourney. That does not mean, however, that he was an innocent victim of prejudice. It seems he had had offensive things to say about the royal Court, the power of kings, senior members of the university, ceremonies and, most significantly, the efficacy of baptism. He answered back far too often for his own good and had to make several apologies. He only escaped the consequences of his belligerence when Bainbrigg, Batchcroft and Smyth, meeting without the other heads, seized their chance to dismiss the case. The heads had been testing their strength against one another and by now were spoiling for a fight. They got their chance in the summer of 1637. The affair began with a sermon on confession from a young fellow of Queens’ called Anthony Sparrow. Sparrow was a rising star. Born in 1612, he had matriculated into the university at just thirteen and was made fellow of his college at twentyone. Ecclesiastical preferments were just beginning to drop into his lap when the Civil War and the Solemn League and Covenant made promotion impossible. He devoted some enforced leisure to the publication of a spirited defence of the banned Book of Common Prayer. In 1662 his loyalty to the Church of England was finally rewarded and he became President of Queens’, then Bishop of Exeter, and later Bishop of Norwich. In 1637, though, all his early promise was poured into a discussion of the confession of sins. This was, he urged, the only way to secure God’s forgiveness.59 If confession be real, he argued, we must own our

55 56 57

Todd, ‘ “All One with Tom Thumb” ’, p.574. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.56. Todd’s article is a brilliant reconstruction of the case against Normanton, fuller than what is attempted here. She has clearly identified a significant and familiar fault line dividing the heads of house (although in constructing an Arminian alliance that includes men like Smith or Comber she perhaps slightly over-eggs the pudding). She also points out that popery is a key issue and notes that Samuel Ward feared popish opinion. It is perhaps this popery, rather than the argument about justification by faith that she pursues, that is the real issue. Todd , ‘ “All One with Tom Thumb”‘, pp.575, 576, 578. 58 BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.56. 59 A. Sparrow, Confession of Sins... (London 1704), p.3.

‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   175



sins and not lay the blame on Nature, the Devil or God. Sin properly understood was a human affair, Man may sin, or not if he will. Those Natural lusts and Passions which are unavoidable, and those sudden Motions which cannot be prevented, are not imputed to us, God doth not charge us with them.60 It is man, then, who has power over sin. No doubt conscious that he was now on very dangerous ground, Sparrow made a nod in the direction of orthodoxy by admitting that we cannot avoid sin without God’s grace. Immediately, though, he qualified this apparent concession to advocates of predestination and determinism: And if Man hath not this Grace of God, the want is not in God who freely offers, and invites us to it, but in our selves who wilfully refuse it, and put it from us.61 So, to receive grace the sinner must confess, fully and with real grief. Such a confession would necessarily bear fruit in good works, and so Sparrow argued, genuine confession embraces a commitment to such works. Having come thus far Sparrow was not going to duck the practical issues of how confession should be made. God, of course, is the confessor, but he has delegated that power to priests.62 This was provocative and Sparrow knew it. He ran for cover behind an impressive list of authorities. He then launched into a final peroration: confess as the Church directs us, confess to God, confess also to the Priest, if not in private in the ear, since that is out of use (male aboletur, saith a devout Bishop, ’tis almost quite lost, the more the pity) yet however, confess as the church appoints, publicly before the Congregation.63 This was too much for even the irenic Comber to bear, and as Vice-Chancellor he demanded a copy of the sermon. Edward Martin meanwhile made an inevitable attempt to disrupt proceedings.64 Martin’s first efforts were frustrated, but he had other cards to play. A week later there was no sign of Sparrow and the case rested. On 31 July, however, he was back and at last he had a copy of the sermon for the court; indeed, he had had it printed and licensed by one of the archbishop’s chaplains. Prynne records that Sparrow, ‘returned in triumph to Cambridge to the great grief and discouragement of the Protestant, but extraordinary encouragement of the Popish party there’.65 Sparrow, of course, was acquitted. No one was going to dare to condemn a sermon licensed by Laud’s chaplain at a time when the heads feared that Laud himself was about to conduct a visitation of the university. Indeed, at least one of Sparrow’s opponents had to eat humble pie:

60 61 62 63 64 65

Sparrow, Confession, p.6. Sparrow, Confession, p.8. Sparrow, Confession, p.15. Sparrow, Confession, p.18. CUL CUA VC CT I.57, fol.60r. Prynne, Canterburies doome, p.189.

176   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Dr. Holdsworth acknowledgeth and saith that those Words which he spoke concerning Mr. Sparrow’s sermon were not spoken or uttered by him animo accusandi, but only in discourse between Mr. Doctor Martin and himself.66 Sparrow’s triumph was a testament to his powerful friends; another preacher was not so fortunate. A day after Sparrow’s sermon an Oxford man, Sylvester Adams, who had been incorporated at Peterhouse in 1632, also preached in Great St Mary’s and took up the same theme. Adams had been tutor to Richard Montagu’s son and must have felt comfortable in that household.67 His sermon on John 20:23, ‘Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them’, was even more provocative than Sparrow’s. Adams was blunt, urging the necessity of making confession to a priest.68 He knew he was taking a risk and defended the practice by its antiquity. That particular confession to a priest, of all sins commited after baptism, so far as our memory reaches, is necessary to salvation. That this is the doctrine not only of the schoolmen, but of the fathers, and almost all antiquity. that such confession is necessary, not only necessitate praecepti, but also necessitate medii: so that by the ordinary revealed means appointed by Christ, there can be no salvation without it.69 Like Sparrow, Adams urged that all sins should be confessed, for God would not pardon anything hidden from the priest. Confession to a priest (usually called ‘auricular confession’), he claimed, was ‘no less necessary to salvation than the sacrament of baptism’. Recognising that many would find the fact that Roman Catholics used confession reason enough to reject it, he employed an argument that was by now becoming familiar: ‘This were a puritanical novation-nicety. I never heard anything but a foolish cock that ever refused a gem, though in a dunghill.’70 Slinging mud (or in this case dung) at his opponents, Adams was arguing that the Church of England had a right to take all that was best from its Catholic past. Comber proceeded slowly, but his successor as Vice-Chancellor, Ralph Brownrigg, was clearly determined to force Adams to recant.71 Describing the whole affair, in a letter to the Dean of Chichester, Cosin revealed that Brownrigg revived the dormant prosecution and that he and Richard Love, the Master of Corpus, set about collecting the most offensive passages out of the sermon. The real objection to Adams’ sermon, it seems, was that it sounded ‘popish’. Adams protested that he willingly subscribed to the doctrine of the Church of England. He was prepared to be conciliatory. In a written declaration of his beliefs, in which he carefully distanced himself from Rome, he even said that he accepted 66 67

68 69 70 71

CUL CUA VC CT I.57, fol.62r. Macauley, ‘Richard Montague’, pp.405–6, Macauley mistakenly believes that Adams was expelled from Cambridge. On this sermon and the investigation that followed, see also E.J. Carlson, ‘Confession and absolution in Caroline Cambridge: The 1637 Crisis in Context’, Studies in Church History 40 (2004), pp.180–93. J. Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (London 1852), pp.120–2. Collier, Ecclesiastical History, p.120. Collier, Ecclesiastical History, p.121. TNA SP 16/385/68, fol.137r–v.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   177 The words of the Homily, where it saith ‘It is against Christian liberty that any man should be bound in confession to the numbering of his sins, as it hath been used heretofore in the time of ignorance and blindness’.72

This was not enough. Brownrigg and his allies were hungry for any victory. On 18 December, at a meeting of the court, attended by every head except Beale and Paske, Adams refused to submit voluntarily to the form of recantation drawn up by Brownrigg. By now Adams must have understood both the procedures of the court and the balance of power among the heads and he had clearly decided to force the issue. Brownrigg had to put to the vote the question of whether or not recantation should be enforced. Some accounts of the affair suggest that the heads divided into three groups, one for, another against recantation, and a third favouring delay.73 The truth of the matter is preserved in an extraordinary entry in Registrary Tabor’s rough copy of the proceedings. A line divides the page in two, and the opposing heads appear in two columns with a brief note of their arguments. Ward, Bainbrigg, Batchcroft, Love and Holdsworth joined the Vice-Chancellor’s demand for recantation. Collins, Smyth, Comber, Cosin, Laney, Martin, Sterne and Eden all resisted. Adams was safe and even enjoyed the benefits of notoriety, as his patron, Montagu rewarded him with a new parish appointment.74 Brownrigg was not gracious in defeat; on 2 March 1638 he actually managed to reverse the previous decision.75 He added Paske to the votes he already had, and only Cosin, Laney, Collins, Beale and Sterne were present to object. The statutes, however, were clear and demanded that the Vice-Chancellor needed ‘the assent of the majority of the Heads of Colleges’. So, Brownrigg’s victory was a hollow one. Ultimately, even he had to admit defeat.76 The sermons of Sparrow and Adams provide further evidence of the collapse of any real sense of religious community in Cambridge. Theological discussion was now very wide-ranging, a point that Tyacke acknowledges.77 One of the really significant facts about the affair, however, is that Sparrow had dealt at some length with concupiscence, grace and free will, questions at the heart of the real Armininan controversy, and yet not one of the heads challenged him on these issues. Sparrow’s demand that when we confess we should lay the blame not on nature but on ourselves was highly controversial. He believed that Christians could not regard their failures as inevitable, as they have the capacity to resist sin. In short, Sparrow, like the Arminians, argued that we are not crippled by concupiscence (the incentive to sin) and can, with a bit of self-discipline, free ourselves from sin and become wholly regenerate. It may not sound a very radical idea, but it certainly startled those who heard him. Article Nine and John Calvin both taught that concupiscence ‘hath of itself the nature of sin’.78 No one, therefore, can be free from sin. All of us are inclined to sin and, in the eyes 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

TNA SP 16/385/68, fol.137v. For example Cooper, Annals, III, p.287. Macauley, ‘Richard Montague’, p.406. CUA VC CT I.57, fol.104’B’; TNA SP 16/385, fols.140r–141r. J. Heywood, Collection of Statutes for the University and Colleges (London 1840), Appendix p.29. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.222. Calvin, Institutes, II 1.8, pp.250–2 (a view rejected at Trent).

178   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 of the godly, that makes all of us guilty. Sparrow had said something shocking and controversial. Yet, despite the obvious weaknesses of his argument and the clear offence against the Articles and the King’s Declaration the arguments in court turned not on concupiscence, but on auricular confession. Why Brownrigg and the others refused to accept this challenge is unclear. They may have felt that this was a battle that had been fought and lost, they may have been more confident of securing a judgement on the question of confession. In any event, it is clear the argument had moved on, and that Arminianism was no longer the issue it had been. So the heads plunged into a complicated discussion of auricular confession. The practice had the sanction of The Book of Common Prayer in the First Exhortation at the communion service and in the rubrics for The Visitation of the Sick. It had also found favour with men like Ussher and Lewis Bayly.79 Yet there remained a general suspicion of anything that savoured of catholic practice. Thus, the Book of Homilies observed that auricular confession lacked ‘the warrant of God’s word’.80 In the confusion it was possible for Sparrow’s sermon to be given a licence for publication. Adams, meanwhile, had trespassed beyond the contested ground by arguing that confession was ‘necessary’. This was generally considered to be a catholic teaching, and even someone like Francis White would not go so far.81 Brownrigg, drafting the recantation that Adams never made, picked his way through these difficulties by quoting the Second Part of the Sermon on Repentance, from the Homilies, almost verbatim.82 Brownrigg’s attempt at an uncontroversial formula was, however, swiftly rejected. Some of the heads had very different ideas about auricular confession from those put forward by the Vice-Chancellor and the Homilies. All of them now plunged into an argument about the meaning of the Homilies and about the interpretation of the rubrics in The Book of Common Prayer. This was an argument about the basic beliefs and teaching of the Church of England. It was conducted by debating the meaning of its primary texts. Those who took part knew very well what was at stake. They were arguing about the identity of their church. Voting for, or against, Adams, they made repeated references to their convictions about the Church of England. So, Cosin argued that, although the Thirty-Nine Articles condemned points of popery, they did not condemn the view that special confession was necessary. Indeed, he objected to the wording of the recantation on the grounds that it stated that auricular confession had no warrant from the Word of God and ‘crosseth or is contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England’.83 Cosin was cautious. He thought that the point was a disputed one and that the church, in its wisdom, had not determined it either way. He had, however, put his finger on the real difficulty. The Homilies and The Book of Common Prayer approached auricular 79 80

Quoted in Staley, Hierurgia Anglicana, pp.41–2, 47. ‘The Second Part of the Sermon of Repentance’, in The Two Books of Homilies, ed. J. Griffiths (Oxford 1859), p.540. 81 Anglicanism, ed. P.E. More and F.L. Cross (London 1962), pp.514–15; see also C.N. Gray, Confession as Taught by the Church of England (Manchester 1873), pp.5ff. 82 CUL CUA VC CT I.57, fol.104B. 83 TNA SP 16/385, fols.139v–140v.; VC CT I.56, fol.172. Carlson’s suggestion that Cosin was uneasy about the ‘necessity’ of confession is not borne out here: Carlson ‘Confession and Absolution’, p.190.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   179

confession very differently. Richard Sterne, struggling with the tension between these two documents, suggested that the Homilies merely condemned the abuse of confession. Edward Martin characteristically rushed in where others feared to tread and declared baldly that the Homilies were not the standard of doctrine. The three heads who voted with them would almost certainly not have agreed with this kind of extravagance. Collins and Comber simply asked for more time to consider the matter. Smyth thought no recantation necessary, but wanted Adams to renounce popish abuses. In reply, Love declared that the Homilies were indeed the standard of doctrine and was sure that Adams had preached popery. Batchcroft mustered other authorities to the cause and suggested that Adams contradicted doctrine defined and defended by Bishop Jewel and other protestant divines. Bainbrigg, conscious that auricular confession was rarely used, argued, rather weakly, that he would ‘marvel much’ if the doctrine of the Church of England differed from its practice. Ward, more brutally, found Adams’ sermon ‘scandalous and popish’. This was a bitter argument and one that could apparently admit of no solution. Edward Martin, and others, now regarded the court room as a place for tactical engagements in a long war. As the proceedings against Adams gathered momentum he attempted to def lect the heads’ attention. He reminded the court that Thomas Riley had yet to give satisfaction for his first offence, and added a further accusation. Riley, it seems, had risen to the challenge thrown down by Sparrow and Adams: in his ordinary course at St Mary’s he did state the chief and principle of the controversies of predestination* contrary to his Majesty’s declaration, and did then and there likewise interpret a public Article of the Church of England to his private sense and opinion concerning Concupiscence in the ingenerate expressly likewise against his Sacred Majesty’s Declaration. * In these words or to this effect: non ideo eliguntur, quia justi, sed idea justi quia eliguntur [it is not that they will be elected, because they are justified, but they are justified because they will be elected].84 The outcome of Martin’s ‘spoiling’ prosecution is not clear, but, as Riley remained a fellow of Trinity until 1644, it seems it did not achieve a great deal. Again and again the differences and divisions were paraded. Sermons on the holiness of churches, ceremonies and the importance of altars lengthened the already long list of controversial subjects.85 Arguments about Arminianism and predestination were now part of much a wider contest. Even so, they never went away. In 1640, John Pullen, one of the more senior fellows of Magdalene, certainly sounded Arminian when he suggested that humans might, with grace, achieve a pure and uncorrupted will, and also that it might be possible to fall from grace. Six months earlier, Brian Walton of Peterhouse, editor of the Polyglot Bible, argued that the points at issue between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants 84

VC CT I.56, fol.235r; Tyacke has already observed the way an interest in ceremony in general and altars in particular became increasingly significant in this period: Anti-Calvinists, pp.199–209. 85 BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.63.

180   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 were not fundamental to the faith and had not been decided by any Council. John Cosin, meanwhile, was never very far from trouble. In a sermon he had apparently ‘distinguished the Socinian Antichrist and the Puritan Antichrist’: this he said was ‘Hydra, Locusts ascending out of the bottomless pit, the very forme of the beast hellhounds.’ In the same sermon he had declared that ‘Catholic faith was saving faith’.86 The topics discussed, and the temper in which they were discussed, speak of deep divisions within the religious life of the university. The heads divided – the Schools Inevitably, the arguments were continued in academic exercises. In 1633, the year before Tourney preached on justification by works and Flathers replied to him, Eleazer Duncon of Pembroke took his DD. Duncon was an ally of Tourney’s, and together they had pressed the prosecution of Nathaniel Bernard. Fulfilling the exercise as he took his degree, Duncon defended two theses: ‘Good works are efficaciously necessary to salvation’ and ‘Active penance is necessary to the remission of grave sins’.87 The discussion that followed was almost certainly a vigorous one. During it Duncon argued that ‘a regenerate man’ could do not just one, or two, genuinely good works but a thousand, all untainted by sin.88 In a letter to Lord Goring, Lionel Gatford revealed that Duncon had also argued that concupiscence was not sin, that good works were the cause of our salvation, and that Romans 7, in which St Paul describes how he can do no good thing, is a description of his unregenerate state. Duncon was sure that we can rise above our sinful natures and he was sure that St Paul agreed with him.89 Elsewhere, for good measure, Duncon asserted that ‘adoration towards the altar is legal, pious and praiseworthy’. Similarly, John Howorth of Magdalene debated issues that had been contentious since the 1590s. His party piece was a discussion of the proposition that ‘concupiscence in the regenerate is not sin’ and so, like others before him, he clearly believed that we are capable of works untainted by sin. There were also arguments about the powers of the regenerate, the possibility of falling from grace and the goodness of a God who consigns his creatures to eternal misery.90 The Arminianism of a few titles, however, is less striking than the breadth of the contemporary debate represented in the titles of other theses. A Pembroke man, named Neville, argued that faith which justifies will necessarily include hope and charity. He also indulged an interest in the sacraments, which was becoming more popular, and discussed the issue of eucharistic sacrifice.91 Other scholars chose to assert that the efficacy of baptism did not depend on election, or that the power of the keys extended to the remission of sins.92 Not all these titles actually got as far as the Commencement House, but they remain indicative 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.63. BL Harleian MS 7038, p.99; 7019, fol.63. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.63. TNA SP 16/235/21, fol.35. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.66. BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.66, 67. CUL Add. MS 3320F, fols.317–19, 238–41; BL Harleian MS 7038, pp.97, 101.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   181

of a state of theological ferment. Something close to catholic practice and to the theological assumptions on which it was founded was increasingly evident in the pulpit and the schools. There were new concerns like works and sacraments, and a new devotional style expressed in a lively interest in things like altars and bowing. More significantly, there was a gradual attempt to shift the foundations. The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Homilies were subject to debate, and there was growing interest in the authority of tradition as distinct from the authority of scripture. Critics of the new divinity voiced their displeasure and the Schools also witnessed attacks on relics and images. In 1632 Dr Gibbert maintained that ‘Scripture alone is the Rule of Faith’ and ‘The remnants of sin remain in the reborn even after baptism’.93 The belief that scripture was the rule of faith would not have been considered contentious twenty years earlier, but even this basic protestant conviction was now challenged. Some six months after Gibbert’s disputation, John Pocklington raised this same issue of the centrality of scripture in a letter to Sidney Sussex, the college from which he took his first degree before he found a more comfortable home at Pembroke.94 Pocklington maliciously suggested that Sidney might allow him to endow a lectureship in ecclesiastical history. He then proceeded to make a great show of his irenical intent: ‘I conceave that the reading of Controversies hath tyred, and it may be deceaved others as well as my self.’ It was a reasonable point, but in truth, Pocklington remained as combative as ever. While he proclaimed the importance of scripture in terms that would have had the fellows of Sidney nodding their evangelical heads, his claims for church history would have been received less sympathetically, and his conclusions would have been considered outrageous. Pocklington was arguing, as he had always argued, that the church needed to know its tradition: ‘such consent of Antiquity (I may add) is the best exposition of Scripture’. This was a considered assault on the prejudices of Ward and his colleagues. Pocklington suggested that the College should appoint the lecturer, but insisted that they must not choose ‘a judge and critic’ of the Fathers. Instead, he wanted a man who would know himself, ‘a Minister and officer to call his Masters into the Consistorie to take there suffrages carefully. …’ The point was obvious. Ward was being told not just what to think, but how to vote. The real sting, however, was in the tail. Pocklington set out, in a paper appended to the letter, a list of subjects suitable for the proposed lecture. The list was a long one and included the use of music in worship, the name ‘altar’, genuf lection, the sign of the cross, pluralism, prayer for the dead, the real presence, images, freedom of the will, the merit of good works, Purgatory, and Antichrist. Both Pocklington and the master and fellows of Sidney knew what a lecturer would find if he looked up such subjects in the Fathers and schoolmen. He would find the ancient teaching of the Catholic Church. The lecture was never endowed. Cambridge had changed, but Ward still stood firm and he had the principle to look a gift horse in the mouth.

93 94

BL Harleian MS 7038, p.99. Sidney Sussex Archive Box 1/1, dated 18 February 1632.

182   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 The heads divided – the University Press The changing style of Cambridge theology can also be observed in the publications of the Press. Once, its publications were either uncontroversial fare or solidly Calvinist divinity. Now it posthumously published Robert Shelford’s Five Pious and Learned Discourses, allegedly printed on the authority of William Beale.95 This book was a startling indication of how far the debate about English protestant practice had changed. It began with a discussion of proper behaviour in God’s house and quickly directed attention to the altar, ‘the principle part of God’s house’.96 Shelford favoured ornament and decoration, and made no secret of his bias: One beauty hath beat out another; the beauty of preaching (which is beauty too) hath preached away the beauty of holiness. … Alas that the daughters should drive away the mothers.97 He urged reverence: he wanted the congregation to stand for the creed and gospel, to kneel to receive communion, and to keep the feasts of the church, use hymns and approve vestments.98 Shelford’s faith did not turn on the divine decrees. He argued that, while our hope of salvation does depend on God’s promises, no promise is without attendant conditions and no one can be secure in the promise: if men might be saved by such a faith, or by faith only; then prayer to God might sleep, care of standing might stand by, and good life, which is the nearest bond of our conjunction with God might be forborn, which God forbid.99 The second Discourse discussed charity and suggested that it was to be preferred above faith, hope and knowledge. Shelford knew that the idea that it is knowledge that saves us is an ancient heresy, and he hinted, with very little subtlety, that this is precisely where Puritanism leads: The like pride hath now a days puffed up our Puritans, that being but very ignorant people, yet they will not be content to be accounted men of any mean knowledge, or be satisfied with any settled estate, but they will run from church to church, from preacher to preacher, and from one opinion to another, until they have lost and confounded themselves.100 This was part of a sustained attack on puritan preaching. Shelford dismissed the idea that there was a critical lack of preachers. He listed ten ‘preachers’ who could satisfy any need, among which he included the sacraments, the conscience, a good life and the liturgy.101 This treatise closed with a reference to Eleazer Duncon’s celebrated thesis that ‘good works are efficaciously necessary to salvation’. The third and fourth Discourses dealt with familiar ‘Arminian’ topics: concupiscence, 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

H. Burton, For God, and the King (London 1636), p.123. R. Shelford, Five Pious and Learned Discourses (Cambridge 1635), p.2; on Shelford’s book, see the thorough analysis in Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.53–6. Shelford, Five Discourses, p.12. Shelford, Five Discourses, pp.17, 22–3, 25, 28, 32, 33. Shelford, Five Discourses, p.38. Shelford, Five Discourses, p.59. Shelford, Five Discourses, pp.62–8.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   183

free will and the nature of the divine will. Shelford was sure that our wills are not captive to sin and that we are free to fulfil the law of God. The book closed though with a chapter, ‘Showing the Antichrist to be not yet come’, that owed little to Dutch thought. Ussher described the book as ‘rotten stuff ’, and others shared his sense of outrage.102 Critics could find causes of offence nearly too numerous to mention. Shelford’s position was a distinctive one; he bridged the arguments and the generations. He had been born in 1563 and had been a student at Peterhouse in the 1580s when Andrew Perne was Master.103 He had produced a synthesis of the ideas now disturbing protestant opinion in Cambridge and elsewhere. Old Arminianism was unquestionably a part of his outlook, but so too was the love of reverence usually associated with Laud, and the interest in holiness and good works suggestive of the increasingly catholic preoccupations of Cambridge divinity. The Press also published much that was not at all controversial. There were a number of editions of classical authors, several Bibles, and a steady stream of almanacs and textbooks. George Herbert’s The Temple proved popular and went through five editions in six years.104 More provocative was Anthony Cade’s Sermon Necessary for These Times. Published in 1636, it included an appendix on ceremonies, which defended the surplice and kneeling communion, and described the sign of the cross at baptism as ‘profitable’ and ‘necessary’.105 Cade, coincidentally, was a contemporary of Shelford’s, matriculating at Caius in 1581. He later served as tutor and chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham. His Sermon revealed that he been marked by long experience. He still used language popular at the time of the subscription crisis after the Hampton Court Conference. He was attentive to the difficulties of the opponents of ceremonies and careful to establish that a particular church had the authority ‘to ordain, change and abolish ceremonies or rites of the church ordained only by men’s authority’. His was a cautious ceremonialism, conscious of its temptations and peculiarities and careful to argue the need for good order. The debate, though, had moved on, others were assertive and more ambitious. Shelford, for example, was willing to suggest that ‘Devotion is the soul of prayer’.106 Even so, enthusiasts for ceremony did not have it all their own way, for these years also saw numerous editions of the works of Davenant and six more editions of Winterton’s translation of Gerhard. At every turn the breadth and variety of belief in Cambridge was openly displayed. The beauty of holiness and ‘Common Disorders’ The interest in ceremony and ritual was not only expressed on the printed page. Some people wanted change and wanted it quickly. A report prepared for Archbishop Laud, in 1636, revealed what sort of change was being planned. Authorship of the report, which is entitled Common Disorders in the University, is usually ascribed 102 103

R. Parr, The Life of … James Ussher (London 1686), pp.477–8. His career is a puzzle. Venn Alumni, IV, has him die in 1627; Tyacke notes his will is dated 1638: Anti-Calvinists, p.53. 104 Roberts, Cambridge University Press, pp.161ff. 105 A. Cade, A Sermon Necessary for These Times (Cambridge 1636), Appendix, pp.20–9. 106 Shelford, Five Discourses, p.42.

184   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 to either Cosin or Sterne. This is a controversial document, which may well have set out to exaggerate, and is not necessarily a reliable to guide to the religious life of the university. Still, even if it overstates the case, it shows us what was happening and what was considered contentious. It opens with general observations on absence from public prayer, failure to wear academic dress and abuse of fasting days. It then turns to consider the situation in particular churches and colleges, and its criticisms are legion. It describes Great St Mary’s as a playhouse and a lumber-room. It describes a lack of reverence in the congregation, and notes the neglect of the bidding prayer. Instead whereof we have such private fancies & several prayers of every Man’s own making (and sometimes sudden conceiving too) vented among us that besides the absurditie of the language directed to God himself our young Schollers are thereby taught to prefer the private Spirit before the publick and their own invented and unaproved Prayers before all the liturgie of the Church.107 The report records that public prayers were performed without due reverence at Trinity, King’s, Caius, Corpus, Trinity Hall, Clare, Magdalene, Emmanuel, St Catharine’s and Sidney. The most common complaints concern failures to use the prayer book correctly or that ‘they sing nothing’, but there are many more. At Trinity it was observed that tutors preferred to pray in private with their pupils than attend chapel, the private Prayers are longer and louder by far at night then they are at Chappell in the evening. Some fellows are there who scarce see the inside of the Chapell thrice in a year. That is perhaps not surprising; apparently the chapel choir was dreadful. Services in the chapel were also obviously unruly; boys sat both behind and in front of the communion table; when it was time to pray some sat and some knelt; some turned west for the creed and few bowed at the name of Jesus. The Litany was neglected; they had abandoned the recitation of the creed after the gospel, and often replaced the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis with a rhyming psalm. A similar situation was observed at King’s, where, some of the Quiremen cannot sing & are diverse of them very negligent. The Choristers are neere one half of them mutes, when they list they come to service with Surplices & when they list they come without them.108 At Caius the service was often performed by men not in orders, and on weekdays they failed to wear a surplice. The Holy Sacrament when it is administered is brought down from the Table to every Fellow and Scholler remaining in his own Seate, where the Priest strides and crowdes over some of them with the Sacred Elements in his hands not without irreverence and trouble.

107 108

Cooper, Annals, III, pp.281–3 prints a transcript from the Baker Manuscripts. Cooper, Annals, III, p.282.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   185 Mr Cooke, when he was Fellow there (as he says he is still so) once tooke upon him to consecrate, & instead of the wordes ‘This is my Body,’ used aloud ‘This is my Bread’.

Corpus, Sidney and Emmanuel were alleged to have unconsecrated chapels, and Emmanuel was also said to follow its own lectionary. Only at St John’s, Queens’, Peterhouse, Pembroke and Jesus did they ‘endeavour for order’, and even here it was possible still to find fault. Interestingly, the report observed that at both Trinity and Christ’s there were now serious attempts at reform. Change had clearly begun and carpenters and painters had been swarming into some of the college chapels. The Conclusion Book at Trinity contains a relevant entry for 15 June 1636. ‘Agreed by the Mr. and seniors, to set our Communion Table in our Chappell, at the upper end, and the ground to be raysed and all the Chappell be adorned accordingly.’ 109 The Senior Bursar’s Accounts for 1637 show that the college then spent the huge sum of £369–9–8 on the chapel. Gilded friezes and painted hangings had been installed and money had also been spent on fine damask.110 At Christ’s, meanwhile, money was expended on an organ.111 Peterhouse built a brand-new chapel between 1628 and 1632. Having spent a good deal on the building, stained glass, vestments, and an organ all the immediate funds were exhausted. A list was then prepared of desiderata for the interior, which included a marble frontispiece for the altar, a silk pallium, more painted glass, an ornamental organ case and the painting of the walls.112 Subsequently, angels were added to the roof and money was also spent on plate, altar cloths, cushions, hangings, Latin service books and a Jerome Bible.113 At Caius the chapel was extended for the simple reason that it was now too small, but the opportunity was not wasted. Cosin was not so busy at Peterhouse that he could not attend to the needs of his old college, and he paid for a new altar. ‘Cherubins heads’ were added to the ceiling at the upper end of the chapel and either completed or prompted a scheme that filled the whole roof with a choir of angels.114 At King’s, Samuel Collins had helped to fund the purchase of a bason, candlesticks, service books and ‘a purple velvet Communion Cloth with silk and gold fringes’ in 1629. Four years later a screen across the east end was completed.115 Expensive work was also undertaken at Queens’; and at Jesus the 1630s saw the addition of a new organ, a new f loor at the east end, hang-

109 110 111 112

113 114 115

Trinity College Archive, The Master’s Old Conclusion Book, p.149. Trinity College Archive, Senior Bursar’s Accounts 1637–59, fol.13r. Christ’s College Archive, Bursar’s Audit Book, Michs. 1636–Annunc. 1637, quoted in Willis and Clark, Architectural History, II, p.207. John G. Hoffman, ‘The Puritan Revolution and the “Beauty of Holiness” at Cambridge’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society LXXII (1982–3), pp.94–105. Hoffman describes the work on Peterhouse and points out Cosin’s particular interest in music: pp.98–9; see also DNB; Willis and Clark, Architectural History, I, pp. 42–3. Tim Rawle describes the Chapel as ‘one of the finest buildings of its date’: Cambridge Architecture (London 1985), p.88. I am indebted to Dr Porter, who pointed out that The Railway Traveller’s Walk Through Guide to Cambridge (Cambridge 1880) called it ‘unpleasing and debased’. Willis and Clark, Architectural History, I, pp.46–7; Peterhouse Account Rolls 1633–1634, 1634– 1635. Willis and Clark, Architectural History, I, pp.193–4; Brooke, Caius, p.122. Willis and Clark, Architectural History, I, pp.523–4.

186   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 ings, new altar furniture and Latin service books.116 Most striking of all, however, William Beale’s determination to beautif y St John’s with a fresh altar, hangings, a painted roof and a good deal of new woodwork cost a staggering £435–7–6. The finished effect was clearly impressive, though the attention it attracted was not always welcome.117 The report to Laud concentrated largely on the choir offices, but it is clear from all this work in the college chapels that there was a growing interest in, and reverence for, the eucharist. The money spent on candlesticks, basons, cushions, altar cloths, and on raising the level of the sanctuary f loor is a powerful testimony to the emphasis now placed on the communion service. In a few colleges, however, there was no enthusiasm for the new devotion. An inventory taken for the Chapel at Sidney Sussex in 1639 begins with old priorities: ‘A Bible of the last translation’. There had been few changes over the years, and it was noted that the ‘table’ was only provided with ‘an old carpet for it, bought ann. 1605, cost 8s. 4d.’118 A similar inventory for Emmanuel Chapel, taken in 1629, reveals that it too maintained its historic, protestant purity: Two great Bibles & a new bible bought 1630 One Bible of the Geneva translation Two Communion Bookes in Fol. One Communion booke in 4o Two deskes to reade upon A Communion Table foure Casements Nine glasse windowes A locke, key & haspe on the Chappell dore Wainscote seating round about the Chappell.119 Archbishop Laud’s Visitation The report on ceremonial, with its eagerness for reform and its hostility to the purer forms of protestant worship, would have been very unwelcome to some members of the university. The intention behind it would have been more unwelcome still. The report was prepared for Archbishop Laud. It was written to order, to give him information he could use. Laud had announced that, against all precedent, he intended to conduct a formal visitation of the university. He had declared this highly controversial intention in a letter addressed to the Vice-Chancellor on 12 May 1635.120 Oxford and Cambridge had always claimed exemption from such interference and jealously guarded their ancient privileges. Once it knew what Laud intended the university fought tooth and nail to defend its privileges. Its 116 117 118 119 120

Willis and Clark, Architectural History, II, p. 39; Queens’ College Book 6, fol.47; Willis and Clark, Architectural History, II, p.142; Jesus College Audit Book 1599–1643, p.797. Willis and Clark, Architectural History, II, p.293–4; Prynne, Canterburies doome, p. 74; BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.74. Sidney Sussex Archive, Master’s Inventories, fols.1–2. Emmanuel Archive Bur B.1, Bursar’s Book, p.219. W. Laud, Works, ed. W. Scott and J. Bliss, 5 vols. (Oxford 1847–60), V, pp.575–6.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   187

efforts, however, were compromised by the activities of William Beale. Publicly, Beale sided with the other heads and was critical of the Archbishop. He has been praised as a consequence for his loyalty to his university.121 As Dr Twigg has shown, however, Beale’s loyalty was more apparent than real. Covertly, the Master of St John’s urged Laud to ignore the resistance and seek royal authority to conduct his visitation of the university.122 It seems that others either secretly hoped for a visitation or were reluctant to oppose Laud. Martin, Sterne and Eden all apparently failed to defend university privilege.123 Despite this handicap the university managed to present its case for exemption from visitation in December. It did little good. The matter was eventually argued out before the Privy Council on 21 June 1636 and the King found in favour of Laud. Ironically, having fought so hard to win his new powers, Laud was too preoccupied to use them.124 In 1638, however, Matthew Wren, newly made Bishop of Ely, made good the deficiency by rapidly beginning a diocesan visitation of the town churches under his jurisdiction. He took a keen interest in the arrangement of chancels, and ordered that at St Clement’s the altar be moved to the east end. St Andrew’s was told to construct a communion rail; St Giles and St Bene’t’s had to build steps below the altar. The seating arrangements at Great St Mary’s, which had so disturbed the authors of Common Disorders, were also to be altered. Learning that the altar in the University Church was moved into the body of the church for the great feasts and that some made their communion in their seats, Wren ordered that in future all were to make their communion at the altar.125 Those who sought to evade the tide of ceremony and ornament sweeping through the college chapels were left with no hiding place. Antagonism and division The belligerence, suspicion and ill feeling that divided the university were now a serious problem. They beset every issue and made the business of government increasingly difficult. In 1633, the contest for the vacant mastership of St John’s should have been a matter for the college and patrons at Court. However, with the junior fellows urging the candidature of Richard Holdsworth, the ‘sound preacher’, it all became much more complicated. It was really a two-horse race between Holdsworth and Robert Lane, the President of St John’s. Lane was favoured by only a minority of the fellows, but had the decided advantage of a letter from the King authorising his election. The opportunity for another factional test of strength was obvious. Holdsworth’s friends got their chance when the King ordered an inquiry. A report urging Holdsworth’s claims over those of Lane was sent, its signatories being Love, Ward, Smyth, Bainbrigg, Sibbes, Batchcroft, Sancroft

121 122 123

Baker, St John, I, p.216. Twigg, ‘The University of Cambridge’, pp.16–17; CUL CUA CUR 78.41a. Gray, Queens’, p.156; A. Gray and F. Brittain, A History of Jesus College (London 1979), pp.72–3; see also Tabor’s letter to Lucas, TNA 16/343/6, fol.10. 124 For an account of the affair, see Laud, Works, V, pp.555–80; Tabor’s notes in CUL CUA CUR 78, no. 29ff.; Wilkins, Concilia, IV, p.525. 125 W.M. Palmer, Episcopal Visitation Returns for Cambridge (Cambridge 1930), pp.31ff.

188   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 and Comber. Edward Martin and William Beale meanwhile protested that the case was far from proved.126 Charles attempted to settle the affair by imposing another master on St John’s, translating William Beale from the poorer pastures of Jesus College. The ill will, however, was slow to subside. In October 1634 Henry Smyth of Magdalene heard a rumour that John Bastwick was on the point of sending copies of his latest book to him, and to Collins, Ward and Sancroft. Smyth was less than enthusiastic. Bastwick had already been summoned before the High Commission to answer for the work in question, Flagellum Pontificis & Episcoporum Latialialum. What particularly concerned Smyth was that a few heads had been specially selected, and he feared that this had been done ‘to cast an odium, or at least a suspicion and jealousy of our opinions herein’. He wrote rapidly to Sancroft: I pray you heartily employ your best friends forthwith to sift out the carriages of this matter and to fish out of Mr. Bastwick, why he singled out us more than others, and upon what ground or advice, and by whose direction, and whether some of Dr. Lane’s friends, or Dr. Holdsworth’s enemies had not some secret finger or Infusion or direction herein.127 In 1634, then, at least one head was anxious. Smyth knew that divisions among the heads were common knowledge and feared the consequences of his associations. Not surprisingly, an election to fill a vacancy on the Caput Senatus in 1636 proved just one more opportunity to pick at this same wound. Two men fought for the place. Laney secured the votes of Collins and Sterne, but it was Batchcroft who was elected, thanks to the votes of Smyth, Bainbrigg, Brownrigg and Sancroft.128 As the evidence of a deep division within the university mounts up, and as it becomes clearer that religious practice and belief were often contested between two groups who knew their respective identities well, it is important to exercise a little caution. Within each hostile faction there remained significant differences of opinion, differences that were to become clearer in the 1640s when the issues changed. The Adams case revealed that while Cosin and his friends fought off a prosecution they remained divided over whether or not any offence had been committed. Holdsworth’s activities as an archdeacon and Brownrigg’s later work as a bishop both revealed another dimension to the issues at stake.129 Both men took their responsibilities seriously and in the wider church insisted on a conformity they had not required in their respective colleges. All the heads knew the importance of maintaining discipline. So, just occasionally, their commitment to the proper exercise of authority could displace all their other prejudices. In July 1634 William Strong, a young fellow of St Catharine’s, was brought before the Vice-Chancellor. Strong was later to win notoriety as an Independent preacher and had the dubious distinction of being disinterred from Westminster Abbey at the Restoration. It seems he also showed early promise. It was alleged against him that he had said that Laud had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, 126 127 128 129

CUL MS Mm.1.38, pp.95, 101–2, 104–5. CUL MS Mm.1.45, p.126. CUL MS Add.22, fols.91, 92. See Lloyd, Memoires, pp.404–10.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   189

that soon ‘never a bishop should be seen in England’, and that since the death of Bishop Mawe ‘Hell was the fuller for one’.130 He was dealt with severely, forced to retract and suspended from his fellowship. It has been suggested that Strong’s downfall is a measure of the advance of ‘Laudianism’.131 Now, while it is undeniably true that Laud’s friends in Cambridge were in the ascendant in 1634 they were not responsible for what happened to Strong. The truth was that few in authority could stomach such views and it was the distinctly un-Laudian Richard Love who presided over the prosecution. ‘Great animosity’ and ‘obscure speculations’: the case of Joseph Mede However boorish and belligerent they were, these were able and intelligent men and all had some independence of mind. The attempt to classif y them is valid and worthwhile, but it is as well to be aware of the dangers. The case of Joseph Mede might serve as a useful example. Mede was a fellow of Christ’s, a man chief ly celebrated for the Clavis Apocalyptica first published in 1627. In the rather adulatory Life, prefixed to his collected works, Mede is described as a hater of controversy. It is even alleged that he stayed away from the Commencement in 1634, ‘for fear of being taken to be of a Side’.132 Mede’s biographer claims that Mede was a man of peace because he consistently refused to join in the argument over Arminianism.133 There is some truth in this claim. Mede struggled to avoid alluding to the controversy in his published works and avoided making a firm commitment to either side. That does not mean, however, that he did not have firm views. It is recorded that, ‘If ... his spirit was stirred within him, it was when he observed some to contend with an unmeasurable confidence and bitter zeal for that black Doctrine of Absolute Reprobation.’134 In truth Mede’s views were complex. We know that he was unhappy with Lucy’s Arminianism in 1622 and opposed the Duke of Buckingham’s candidacy for the chancellorship. In his Clavis Apocalyptica he identified the pope as Antichrist. He did that at a time when some of his contemporaries were reassessing their opinion of the pope. He knew he was out of step and tried to justif y an independence that cost him preferment. 135 Mede was probably an infralapsarian, hostile to both extremes of the debate on predestination, but very definitely suspicious of anything that appeared to be tainted with opinion condemned at Dort. This was a common enough point of view and might have allowed Mede to avoid the controversies for which he claimed he have no stomach. The ‘black doctrine of Predestination’ and the identity of Antichrist, however, were not the only contested issues by the 1630s. Turning to what he was prepared to discuss, it soon becomes evident that Mede did have a voice in the controversies of his day. 130 131 132 133 134 135

CUL CUA VC CT I.53, fol.196. Twigg, ‘The University of Cambridge’, p11. J. Mede, Works, ed. J. Worthington (London 1664), I, pp.xxxiif., xxxv. Mede, Works, I, p.xxxiv. Mede, Works, I, p.xxxiv. Mede, Works, II, p.1054; on Antichrist, J. Mede, The Key to the Revelation (London 1643), II, pp.64–5.

190   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 He was an enthusiast for the new reverence and was committed to preaching up the importance of the eucharist. In a sermon on St Matthias’ Day 1636, in Great St Mary’s, he seized his opportunity. He argued that a church was specially set aside for worship and that God was specially present there. Discussing what form reverence should take in such a shrine, this apparently moderate man, vigorously defended bowing: it is a disease almost proper to our time (for our forefathers were mostly sick of the other extreme) so far to slight and disesteem (that I may not say disdain) the worship of God by the body, as to think it, may be omitted and neglected even in Time and Place convenient.136 Only eighteen months earlier Hausted had been prosecuted for making the same point with more humour. This sermon and two other works Mede published before his death in 1638 stressed the importance of church buildings for Christian worship and defended the use of the term ‘altar’.137 There was little evidence here of his famous reluctance to take a side. Mede was no Arminian and clearly no Calvinist, but at least some of what he had to say had a distinctly partisan air. He remains difficult to place, and his relationship with John Cosin offers a glimpse of the problem. In 1628, Cosin’s activities in Durham had been the subject of an outraged and violent attack by Peter Smart, a prebendary of the cathedral. Smart had complained bitterly about the ceremonies newly brought to Durham. Cosin was treated to some particularly pointed language: Our young Apollo repaireth the quire, and sets it out gaily with strange Babylonish ornaments; the hallowed Priests dance about the altar, making pretty sport, and f yne pastime, with trippings, and turnings, and crossings and crouchings …138 Smart’s intemperance backfired, for in the ensuing arguments it was Smart who was in the greater difficulty.139 Cosin weathered the storm fairly comfortably, but word of his activities in Durham clearly reached Cambridge. Writing to Stuteville in March 1628, Mede related, Mr Cosins was so blind at evensong on Candlemas day that he could not see to read prayers in the Minster with less than 340 candles ... A great part if not the most of the evil in our church at this present is supposed to proceed from him and those he wholly ruleth, as my Lord of Durham who admireth him.140 Here Mede, who himself urged reverence in church, pokes fun at Cosin, the champion of ‘the beauty of holiness’. There is a twist to this story. A letter from Cosin, which is not included in the well-known collection of his correspondence, reveals that the two men later learnt to get on better. Dated 9 November 1637, this letter shows that Mede had sufficient confidence in Cosin’s judgement to 136 137 138 139 140

Mede, Works, I, p.444. Mede, Works, I, pp.405–31, 486–99. Peter Smart, A Sermon … July 7 1628 (Edinburgh 1628), p.24. ‘Life’, in Cosin, Works, I, pp.xiv, xv, xxiiff. CUL MS Mm.1.43, p.388.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   191

submit a discourse he had written on the Antiquity of Christian Churches for his criticism. Cosin obliged with detailed, but friendly analysis.141 We need to try to pick our way through this curious relationship. Mede’s ambivalence about Cosin can be explained. Although he favoured dignity in worship, defended bowing and wanted to call the holy table an ‘altar’, Mede was a convinced protestant. He belonged to a community in which the pope was acknowledged to be Antichrist and in which the decisions taken at Dort had damned Arminianism for ever. Cosin was a protestant too. As an exile, in later life, he was put under extreme pressure to convert to catholicism, pressure to which his son succumbed, but he did not. Cosin did not doubt that he belonged to the reformed church. Mede, though, was not so sure of him. He saw ‘popery’ in John Cosin. Mede was convinced that Roman Catholics belonged to an apostate church and that their worship was a horrid parody of the worship of Christ.142 Cosin also disagreed with Roman Catholic opinion, but he was less critical and less fearful. A few years and a few hundred yards separated the two men in Cambridge (Mede was older by a decade). About much they could agree and there was obviously some respect and sympathy between them. They could even agree that one of the great protestant shibboleths needed careful interpretation. Mede believed that holiness and obedience were not merely signs of grace, they were actually ‘required’ in justification.143 Yet in one fundamental assumption they were poles apart. Mede’s protestantism was of a type that set itself over and against Rome. Cosin, on the other hand, could see both good and bad in Rome, which for him and for his friends was no longer the old enemy. Mede’s views were idiosyncratic and remind us of the weakness of terms like ‘Calvinist’, ‘Arminian’ or ‘Laudian’. His distinctive opinions elude definition and baff led even contemporaries. One of his greatest admirers, and certainly the most effusive, was William Twisse. Twisse, an Oxford graduate who had become a parish priest in Newbury, had a reputation for godliness, which would ultimately win him a place in the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He corresponded with Mede for some years about apocalyptic speculation before he discovered the nature of his friend’s views on reverence. Their letters brief ly assumed a somewhat suspicious tone. Mede knew that his ideas would not appeal to Twisse and trod anxiously and carefully: ‘you see hereby what a mungrell I am. I know not how you will like it, I know how full of prejudice in these things most of our Divines are.’144 Twisse was not impressed, and argued passionately about the holiness of ‘altar’ before he let the matter drop with the rather grudging observation ‘I am confident you are no Arminian’.145 Twisse, like others, clearly used the term ‘Arminian’ as disparaging shorthand for lovers of ceremony. But he was perhaps too anxious to acquit his idol. Two years later, when he made his pilgrimage to Cambridge to sit at Mede’s feet, he was bitterly disappointed. Writing after the event Twisse allowed his anger and distress to show. 141 142 143 144

‘A new Cosin Letter’, ed. A.I. Doyle, Durham Philobiblon, I, Parts 9–10 (March 1954), pp.64–5. Mede, Works, II, pp.767ff. Mede, Works, I, pp.402, 147–9. Mede, Works, II, p.1005, and see the excellent discussion of this material in T. Webster, Godly Clerg y in Early Stuart England (Cambridge 1997), pp.175–9. 145 Mede, Works, II, p.1021.

192   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 But I would intreate you to spare me in the point of Cerermonies; in some particulars whereof you told me once in a letter you were no Practitioner; but now I fear by that which I find you are a promoter of them.146 The moment of truth dawned at prayers in the Master’s Lodge. you bade me stand up at Gloria Patri, and it was in such a note too, that you had the mastery of me I know not how. I profess I little looked for such Entertainment at your hands. Twisse was convinced, that for all the much-vaunted moderation, Mede belonged to a side, and that it was the wrong one. Twisse made the point bluntly; he had no desire to spare Mede any distress. Reverting to the apocalyptic imagery that they both held dear, he told Mede that the time of the slaughtering of the witnesses had arrived, ‘And if it be so, how sorry should I be to observe that you should have an hand in slaughtering of them? as merely by promoting such courses’. The reference to the slaughtering of witnesses, a scene from the Book of Revelation, which was widely interpreted as a prophecy of the final bloody confrontation with Rome, reveals the true nature of Twisse’s concern. It was not Arminianism, but popery he feared. The differences of opinion that separated one divine from another could be subtle and complex. Yet it was clear to contemporaries where the significant differences lay. Mede and Twisse could have reached agreement about the theology of election, but there were other issues now and they were every bit as important and every bit as divisive. ‘That the established doctrine of our church should be distasted’ The theological disputes of the 1630s were vigorous and various. The Church of England was no longer conducting an argument within a tradition, debating a point of doctrine and discussing how the relevant parts of scripture or the Church Fathers should be interpreted. This was now a debate about the tradition. Members of the church could no longer agree what sort of church it was, what the Homilies meant, what the Articles taught. A new Christian history willing to accommodate, and even borrow from, the Roman past was now competing with older assumptions that had regarded the Catholic Church as the incarnation of evil. As Mede found out, it became impossible to skirt round the contested ground. All religious expression became a test of loyalty and commitment. With so few principles that could command common consent it became virtually impossible to secure a show of unity. The King’s Declaration succeeded only in silencing those who wished to reaffirm the old certainties about election and assurance. People who thought themselves the true representatives of English protestantism were unable to call their opponents to account. Not only that, they were unable even to discuss their own religious experience in language they had taken years to learn. They were reduced to watching in almost impotent horror as theologians scattered to the horizons of orthodoxy. Davenant had to come to terms with the changed situation quickly. Preaching at Court in Lent 1630, he made reference to election and found himself facing 146

Mede, Works, II, p.1037.



‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   193

charges pressed by Harsnett before the Privy Council.147 Davenant argued that he had not transgressed against the King’s Declaration because he had done no more than preach ‘the received Doctrine of our Church established in the 17 article’, and I never understood that his Majesty had forbid a handling of any doctrine comprised in the Articles of our church, but only raising of new questions, or adding of new sense thereunto, which I had not done, nor ever should do.148 He argued, as he argued all his life, that the doctrine he preached was the agreed teaching of the English church. If his own account of the affair is to be believed, he had done no more than make a mild and passing reference to the gift of eternal life, a free gift called ‘election’, ‘not procured or premerited, by any special acts depending on the free will of men’.149 He found, however, that the intention of the King’s Declaration was not to prevent theological innovation in the discussion of this difficult problem, but actually to prevent discussion altogether. The hearing before the Privy Council broke up with the matter unresolved. The following day, however, anxious not to leave London under a cloud of royal displeasure, Davenant arranged to kiss hands. The King told him then, that he would not have this high point meddled withal or debated, either the one way or the other, because it was too high for the people’s understanding; and other points, which concern reformation and newness of life, were more needful and profitable.150 Davenant’s response was the required and inevitable promise of obedience. In a letter to Ward, however, he could speak more plainly: As for my court-business, though it grieved me that the established doctrine of our church should be distasted, yet it grieved me the less, because the truth of what I delivered was acknowledged, even by those which thought fit to have me questioned for the delivery of it.151 Although he took comfort in what was in fact a rather lukewarm show of support, Davenant recognised that theological assumptions he took for granted were now far from secure. His perception was echoed by Ward, who glumly recorded his dismay that established doctrine ‘should thus be questioned’.152 When, two years later, Davenant was thinking of publishing his determination on the thesis Gratia Justificationis non amittitur [‘the grace of justification will not be lost’] he found it necessary to seek Ward’s advice. I see no reason of any exception against it the doctrine being the received & common opinion of our Church and the Question itself being chosen and appointed by all the Heads. … Yet if you think the Newfangled

147 148 149 150 151 152

Fuller, Davenant, pp.307–14; Fuller, Church History, III, pp.365–8. Fuller, Davenant, p.312. Fuller, Davenant, p.314. Fuller, Davenant, p.313. Fuller, Davenant, p.312. Ussher, Works, XV, p.500.

194   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 humour of these times will not brook it without opposition. I had rather had it omitted than any stirr raised.153 The ‘Newfangled humour’ had the upper hand and Davenant knew it. He may, however, still have been unaware how much things had changed. His letters, like those of Ward and Bedell, continued to refer back to the questions that had so concerned them and the whole church at the time of the Synod of Dort. Discussion of such matters clearly continued, but Davenant was now up against something much more complex than an argument about election and reprobation. Effectively prohibited by the King’s Declaration from alleging Arminianism in his opponents, Davenant found that he and his friends could no longer pose as the mouthpiece of orthodoxy and call others to account. Freed from the requirement to attend to lengthy discussions of foreknowledge or assurance, his opponents were able to pursue their real interests, and ‘Arminianism’ rapidly ceased to be the decisive issue. Davenant had identified something novel and unwelcome in the church. He was clear that what was being said and done was ‘Newfangled’. Some of his contemporaries, however, would have argued that it was Davenant that was at fault and that his opinions were an attempt to bring into the Church of England opinions that were foreign and objectionable. Cambridge witnessed a protracted and wide ranging assault on the English Reformation settlement. The discussion of justification by works, ceremonies, auricular confession, eucharistic presence and the efficacy of baptism represented a conscious appeal to catholic tradition that was utterly alien to Arminius and went far beyond anything ever envisaged in the accounts of via media and Anglican ‘balance’ that were once the staple fare of English religious history. Thomas Fuller, in his History of the university, describes one contemporary who recognised the changes for what they were, and in a sermon suggested that, as at the Olympian games HE was counted the conqueror who could drive his chariot wheels nearest the mark, yet so as not to hinder his running, or stick thereon, … so he who in his sermons could preach near popery, and yet no popery, ‘there was your man.’154 A few years later, a recent graduate of Emmanuel, destined to be master of the college, but then merely working for his MA, observed the same phenomenon. Writing to Arthur Bownest, the young Sancroft repeated some Cambridge gossip. There is an unhappy libel lately born of a Tavern that reeles up and down from one to another … it is an abuse of all the colleges in giving them some new additions e.g. the conventicle of Catharine Hall, the family of Bennett (: of Love). the assembly of Emmanuel. the Society of Jesus. the Synod of Sidney. the Conclave of Peterhouse. the countie house of Magdalene. the Regent house of Kings. the Congregation of Queens (be when the fellows meet they use to send a sizar to call a congregation, that is the term they use) the bawdy court of Trinity of hall, the body 153 154

Bodl Tanner MS 71, fol.153; see also BL Harleian MS 7038, p.88. Fuller, Cambridge, pp.231–2.

‘Near Popery, and yet no Popery’   195



of Clare hall (for it always wants a head) the Dean & chapter of Trinity College. the rest I know not.155 This may be little more than a Cambridge joke, but there is a substance to it that speaks of a staggering theological diversity that could no longer be contained within conventional understandings of the Church of England. The allegation was that some colleges had acquired a sectarian character and others, like Jesus and Peterhouse, looked more Roman than English. Cambridge was a deeply divided community. Its religious life embraced a variety of practice that repeated and ill-tempered litigation signally failed to regulate. Still responsible for the theological training of a large proportion of the newly ordained, still producing prelates from among its senior members and still considered an arbiter of orthodoxy by those outside it, Cambridge carelessly bestowed its disagreements on the wider church.

155

Bodl Tanner MS 67, fol.191.

Chapter Seven

‘WHO CHANGED RELIGION INTO REBELLION?’

Who changed Religion into Rebellion, and changed the Apostolicall Chaire into a Deske for Blasphemy … ’Tis quickly answered, Those they were, who endeavouring to share three Crownes, and put them in their owne pockets have transformed this free Kingdome into a large Gaole. Parliament For the duration of the Personal Rule, Cambridge was free from the unwelcome attentions of a suspicious Parliament and the consequent threat of impeachment. Wren, Cosin, Beale and their friends had never had it so good. Able to muster an effective majority in the Consistory Court room they enjoyed the benefits of power. Their confidence was high and they brought the beauty of holiness into their college chapels with a paintbrush dipped in gilt. For eleven years their opponents could only lick their wounds and complain. When Parliament did finally meet, however, the critics of this new divinity gathered the evidence of just what had been done in Cambridge. They made a long list. So, the 1640s began with careful measurements of the progress that ‘Arminianism and Popery’ had made in the university. When the errors and abuses had been catalogued and charted and all the evidence was in, then battle was joined. The Short Parliament, of April 1640, was the herald of the coming crisis. Both Pym and Rous urged that Parliament address the matter of religion, and in particular to attend to the ‘innovations to prepare us to Poperie’. Their anxieties were numerous and wide-ranging, but it soon became clear that events at Cambridge were a cause of particular concern. Spurred on by the tireless Peter Smart, the attack on John Cosin was resumed and warrants were issued to bring him before the House of Commons. On 29 April it was agreed that the proposed conference with the House of Lords designed to discuss grievances would include an examination of the liturgical changes in churches and ‘University chapels’. Two days later the Commons heard about a sermon preached by William Beale  

Querela Cantabrigiensis (Oxford? 1647), p.26. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp.236–7; Cosin (perhaps with more than a little self-interest) was active in campaigning for university candidates in the elections for both the Short and Long Parliaments: Rex, University Representation, p.147.  CJ, II, p.16.

196



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   197

in 1635. Beale had apparently suggested that: ‘the King might make laws without Parliament, and that the Parliament served the King as a man served an ape, gave him a bit and a knock’. The dissolution of Parliament on 5 May ought to have brought Cosin and Beale some relief. Beale, however, discovered that an anonymous opponent, whom he was anxious to identif y, was prosecuting him through the High Commission. Then, a new Parliament met, on 2 November 1640, and inevitably rapidly returned to a now familiar agenda. It was a mark of Parliament’s renewed interest in Oxford and Cambridge that the old sub­committee, appointed to consider ‘the abuses of the universities’, was considered to be increasingly important and became a Committee from the House just before Christmas 1640. Meanwhile, the grievances against Cosin had been aired once more and were referred to another committee while the case against Beale was taken up again in August 1641. Mr Nicholls, Mr Norwich and the case against John Cosin On 7 November 1640 Cosin was made Dean of Peterborough. His friend, Richard Montagu, could have told him that preferment offered no protection from the critics. Three days later Peter Smart petitioned the House of Commons with a series of allegations about Cosin. Smart, like Cosin, had been a prebendary of Durham in the 1620s. In 1628 he had preached an extraordinary sermon denouncing recent liturgical innovation in the cathedral and singling out Cosin, ‘our young Apollo’, for particular censure. Following the sermon Smart was suspended. Now he returned with enthusiasm to the scene of Cosin’s crimes. Drawing on material Smart gave to them, the Commons committee prepared twenty-one articles of impeachment against the Master of Peterhouse. It was alleged that Cosin had made the communion table into an altar, had adorned it, and celebrated the eucharist at it facing east. It was also alleged, among other things, that he had indulged in ‘extraordinary bowing’, replaced customary psalms with anthems, restored images, used extravagant numbers of candles and preached against the reformers. To add fuel to this fire the Commons could also draw on Cosin’s infamous Collection of Private Devotions, published in 1627. The Private Devotions was an office book intended to give the Protestant women attending the Queen something to set against the breviaries of their Catholic counterparts. It had been savagely denounced as ‘popish’, in 1628, by both Prynne and Henry Burton.10 These, though, were slightly tired criticisms; by November 1640 there were further charges to be added. It was alleged by a man named Norton, who had a son at Cambridge, that, ‘certain fellows of Peterhouse endeavoured to seduce him to Popery; pretending that Dr. Cosens would make him a Fellow of       10

Cooper, Annals, V, p.405; CJ, II, p.18. Cooper, Annals, V, pp.405–8. Cosin attempted to head off this prosecution in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court: CUL CUA VC CT I.59, fol. 259v. CJ, II, p.55. Cooper, Annals, III, p.306; CJ, II, p.35; Mullinger, University, III, p.219; Cooper, Annals, V, pp.410– 11. Smart, Sermon, p.24 Cosin, Works, I, pp.xxiii-xxvii. John Cosin, A Collection of Private Devotions, ed. P.G. Stanwood (Oxford 1967), p.xxxvi.

198   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Peterhouse, if he would come thither’.11 Rumours about the extravagant and elaborate devotional life of the college had also reached Parliament. The House heard read the somewhat prissy rules that Cosin had drawn up to govern behaviour in the chapel. If they needed more evidence, it was here.12 Beset by nearly hysterical suspicions of creeping popery, Parliament took Norton’s allegations more seriously than they deserved. The story that lay behind them is told fully only in the university court books, and it sounds more than faintly ludicrous. On 8 January 1640 Cosin, then serving as Vice-Chancellor, presided over an examination in the Consistory Court.13 Before him was the consequence of a drunken celebration of the new year in a Cambridge pub. John Norton, a member of St Catharine’s, who had recently graduated as a Bachelor of Arts, testified that Richard Nicholls, a fellow of Peterhouse, had spent the entire night of 1 January at The Mitre. Recollections of this spectacular night out were not surprisingly hazy; at least one of the party could subsequently remember virtually nothing of what had been said. It was alleged, however, that Nicholls had been in bullish mood, urging popery on anyone who would listen. Specifically, it was suggested that Nicholls had talked about another fellow of Peterhouse called Richard Lea. Lea was evidently in disgrace, and Nicholls suggested that he should: goe out of the land to some place beyond the seas, and there perform and work out his pennance by living a life of a Regular (which this examinate apprehended to be a Monastick life) and the sayd Mr. Nicholls further sayd that if Mr. Lea would goe hee would direct him whither to goe. Warming to his theme, Nicholls urged a priest who was also present in The Mitre to avoid marriage, sayeng thus, or to this effect, that it were better for a Priest to committ adultery or fornication than to marry, and that hee thought a Priest was damned if he marryed and sought a woman. Later, Nicholls defended the doctrine of purgatory. In his cups he clearly formed a deep attachment to Norton. He tried to persuade him to leave St Catharine’s and to come to Peterhouse, where Nicholls promised to furnish him with a chamber and books. Norton was then asked, how he would like a place in Summersett house at London, whereunto this examinate answered that Papists lived in Somersett house, with whome he had no desire to live … then Mr Nicholls sayd Papists there are no such men, and demanded what the definition of papists was. The party broke up soon afterwards, but within moments of getting on to the street Nicholls had a better idea and persuaded them back into The Mitre to join another group. There, Nicholls suggested submission to the pope. Finding himself in more aggressive company he was forced to accept that he did not recognise the pope’s supremacy, merely that he was a great bishop and prince. 11 12 13

CJ, II, p.35. Cooper, Annals, III, p.306. CUL CUA VC CT I.57, fols.206r.–212v.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   199

Nicholls had been spectacularly careless. His boozy scandal-mongering was bad enough, but the real error of judgement was that of a don getting drunk with a student. Norton, suddenly the centre of attention, could not believe his luck; poker-faced, he repeated all that he had heard. Under questioning, and given time to ref lect in the Tolbooth, Nicholls clearly realised that he was in serious trouble. Initially he had denied most of the charges. He accepted only that he might have said something about the marriage of priests, ‘according to the opinion of the papists’, and qualified what he was reported to have said about the pope. He claimed that he had merely objected when one of the company described the pope as ‘Antichrist’. Nicholls replied: that we ought not to accompt him to be Antichrist for our Church hath recieved many good things from him for which wee were to respect him, and for those ills hee hath brought upon himselfe hee might thanke the Devell for it. Later, unable to escape the implacable Norton, Nicholls accepted that all the allegations against him might be true and offered to apologise and to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. He was subsequently to fulfil this promise in the Regent House and was restored to his place in the university. There is absolutely no evidence here that it was Cosin who attempted to seduce the young Norton into popery. Cosin, indeed, supervised the prosecution and, at least in its early stages, he rubbed Nicholls’ nose in his crimes. There is, however, ample testimony here to the startlingly Roman Catholic sympathies of a fellow of Peterhouse. Drunk and careless, Nicholls had neither the ability, nor the inclination, to pick his way carefully between protestant definitions. Sober, his views on the pope as Antichrist were shocking enough; drunk he could not even be claimed as a protestant with an interest in the catholic past. He was perhaps fortunate to escape more serious punishment. Clemency certainly did little good: Nicholls soon resigned his fellowship and trained for the catholic priesthood.14 Within months Cosin was in the embarrassing position of having to investigate allegations against another of his fellows in the court room. On 16 August 1640 William Norwich preached at Great St Mary’s on the parable of the pharisee and the publican. Norwich had come up to Trinity in 1622 and then moved to Peterhouse, in 1634, to take up a fellowship there. In 1636 he proceeded BD and two years later became Vicar of Cherry Hinton, just to the south of Cambridge. Later he was to become Rector of Stathern in Leicestershire, a living from which he was subsequently sequestered as a ‘malignant’.15 Just over a fortnight after Norwich had preached in the University Church, the court was presented with a closely argued set of objections exhibited by Robert Creswell.16 Ten years younger than Norwich, Creswell had also gone to Trinity. A scholar from Westminster School, he had made rapid progress, getting a fellowship at his own college in 1637. In 1644 he was ejected during the Parliamentary Visitation, presumably because he refused the Covenant. Later he must have conformed to the new regime for 14 15

Cooper, Annals, III, p.255. Venn, Alumni, III, p.270; A.G. Matthews, Walker Revised: being a revision of John Walker’s Sufferings of the clerg y during the Grand Rebellion, 1642–60 (Oxford 1988), p.241. 16 CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10.

200   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 by 1650 he was Vicar of Ruislip.17 He was a clever, wily and dangerous opponent. The articles that he drew up against Norwich’s sermon were littered with references to the Homilies, the Articles and the Canons. Creswell set out to show that Norwich was a Romaniser and carefully marshalled the agreed doctrine of the English church. So, for example, dealing with Norwich’s claim that the fact that the publican beat his breast must mean that we should perform penitential acts, Creswell pointed out that this was contrary to the Homily of Repentance and the Thirty-First Article. Norwich, apparently, had argued that penitential acts are necessary because we are required to make satisfaction to God by aff licting ourselves: ‘not for the sin, yet for the temporal punishment due to the sin’.18 The preacher had also suggested that while we have certainly been redeemed from sin, Christ’s blood took away the wound alone, the scar being removed by penance. He had defended auricular confession, which, Creswell reminded the court, was contrary to the Homily of Repentance. He had also f louted the teaching of both the Homily of Salvation and St Paul by arguing (in terms made familiar by Duncon and Tourney), ‘It is not meer faith but works also do justif y us for here you see that the publican was justified by his acting.’ Norwich favoured a busy piety full of works and actions. He defended ceremonies. He thought the sign of the cross and the lifting up of eyes and hands were practices sanctioned by the primitive church and might now be considered ‘things indifferent’. Creswell was not persuaded. He pointed out that the declaration Of Ceremonies prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer made it clear that ancient ceremonies of godly intent had ‘turned to vanity and superstition’. A very serious point was at issue here. Norwich was playing fast and loose with an old argument. Once there had been some agreement about ‘things indifferent’, it was acknowledged that they were just that, and there was no particular benefit attached to them. This was the point of views of adiaphorists. ‘Things indifferent’ were done just for decency’s sake. Norwich would have none of that and set about shifting the ground. He used the phrase ‘things indifferent’ to imply that some actions were acceptable and uncontroversial. So, suddenly, reverential acts were not done just to keep things tidy, they were now ‘edif ying’ and had positive value, but because they were ‘things indifferent’ he claimed no one could consider them offensive. So, he could attack those who refused to make a reverence on entering and leaving church. Those who scorned ceremonial worshipped, he argued, would never find acceptance before God. Again, Creswell pointed out that the Canons demanded tolerance between those who did and did not use the rite. One particular passage in the sermon helps to explain why Creswell found the sermon so offensive. Paraphrasing the pharisee of the parable, who was grateful that he was not as other men, Norwich produced a parody of someone with protestant scruples: I goe not up to the stepps or Raile. I am no idolater that kneel when I receive. I stand not as they doe at Creeds and Gospells. I rise not with

17 18

Venn, Alumni, I, p.418; Matthews, Walker Revised, p.41. CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   201 the rest at Psalmes, Hymnes or Gloria Patris. I bowe not for that same 18th Can[on]. I adore not for this 7th of the last edition.19

Creswell, with his articles littered with references to the Homilies, Articles and Canons, had worked hard to prove that Norwich was at odds with the Church of England. Norwich, for his part, was just as clear that his religion was orthodox and that there were other members of the church who did not belong. The pharisee of the sermon was, for Norwich, a typical puritan who would not conform. In court, it seems, he was delighted to back up his claims that penance, auricular confession, good works and ceremonies were all acceptable for English protestants. He produced a reply to Creswell’s articles that was every bit as detailed and discursive. So, Norwich repeated his assertion that the work of Christ on the cross has not freed us from the need for acts of repentance and penance. He claimed the support of the Homilies of Repentance, Fasting and The Fear of Death, as well as Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons on repentance and fasting and Francis White’s Replie to Jesuit Fisher’s Answere. The argument was a complex one. God cannot simply overlook human sinfulness. God is just and his justice demands satisfaction. That satisfaction, of course, was provided, once and for all, by Christ. The only remaining difficulty is to find a vocabulary in which we can express the way we receive this satisfaction and make it our own. This is the difficulty about works, which separated protestants from catholics at the Reformation. Protestants usually argued that good works are possible only after the moment when God accepts us. As Article Twelve puts it, they ‘are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification’. Good works, then, are not part of the process of satisfaction, they are its consequence. Catholics generally suggested that good works are made possible by grace and begin before our reconciliation with God. There are significantly different accounts of salvation here. Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries held that salvation takes place when sinners are simply credited with the redemption Christ won for us. If this is true, then we can be justified in the work of a moment. Catholics, who had a more elaborate language to describe the process, tended to tease their opponents for failing to accept that God can co-operate with us and do great things as he gradually restores us to grace. Fisher, the Jesuit, had goaded the Church of England in this way, declaring that protestants will not accept Christ’s redemption was powerful enough ‘to raise the Good Works of God’s children to a due proportion to the reward’.20 Francis White had risen to that challenge, and it was his argument that Norwich tried to reproduce. The problem for both White and Norwich was that they were well aware that Article Thirteen was against them. It stated baldly: Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus

19

CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10. This passage appears in Norwich’s reply to the articles exhibited against him: the ‘Personal Answer of William Norwich’; it includes a series of asides, directed at Creswell, which are not reproduced here. 20 F. White, A Replie to Jesuit Fisher’s Answere (London 1624), p.169.

202   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School authors say) deserve grace of congruity. The Article, pulling no punches, went on to say that these good works are actually sinful in nature. The idea of a ‘grace of congruity’, which the Article condemned, was a contemporary Catholic doctrine favoured by some Jesuits. To perform any good work we depend on grace. The argument was that God, foreseeing all possible circumstances, bestows the grace to perform acceptable works in a way that he sees will be effective. This is ‘congruous’ grace, grace that will achieve its end in that particular context, but in another context might not. The Articles of Religion prohibited members of the Church of England from believing that we have the grace (congruous or otherwise) to perform any good work that might have a place in satisfaction. White, wrestling with this problem, first of all made it clear (as indeed any catholic would have done) that eternal life is received through grace, not through our merit. Good works, therefore, lack the dignity of the reward we receive. This allowed him to argue that there is such a thing as a ‘grace of condignity’: a grace that is equal to redemption, but that this grace is Christ’s alone. Thus far he had given offence to no one. Having made these appropriate protestant noises he then attempted to recover the idea of a grace of congruity, a grace given to us to perform good works that were part of the process of satisfaction, but which did not merit or deserve that satisfaction: no man in this life (how pure and perfect soever) can merit celestial glory by Condignity, but that, if he merit, the same is only by Congruity, or impetration... when God Almightie bestoweth on his children an incomparable weight of glory, for a small and imperfect service, and for that which is due unto himselfe in right, by many other titles this reward is not a wages of debt, neither is God obliged in justice to bestow it, but it is a reward of Grace ...21 Elsewhere, returning to this problem, White made it clear that this satisfaction of ‘Congruity and Impetration’ was a satisfaction that God chose to accept out of his abundant generosity, not because it matched the dignity of the reward it was given.22 This was closely argued and careful theology, but it was undeniably at odds with Article Thirteen. Still, White had been Bishop of Ely and was only recently dead. It is small wonder that Norwich thought that it was legitimate to reproduce White’s arguments in his sermon. Yet, Norwich was either a less cautious theologian, or less of a protestant, than White. His sermon, which followed White closely, was insufficiently attentive to the offence it could give. White’s recognition that we are rewarded with an ‘incomparable weight of glory, for a small and imperfect service’ lost something in the retelling. Norwich put it like this: There is a satisfaction of Condignity or equal Compensation, and there is a satisfaction of Congruity or Impetration and Deprecation. The first of this was made by Christ alone. The latter (according to the auncient fathers) is performed by penitent persons in their Contrition, Humiliation, Confession and other penitentiall acts. … Not satisfaction perfect 21 22

White, A Replie, p.513. White, A Replie, pp.510–69.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   203 (for that alone is Christ’s) not a satisfaction of Compensation or meritt, but an Interpretative satisfaction grounded upon the favour and Acceptance of God to be performed by true penitents.23

The problem here is that works of congruity are becoming something required of the penitent person. Norwich made something of a show of stressing that it is Christ who makes the ‘perfect satisfaction’, but it did not alter the fact that he was arguing that righteousness comes from works. Creswell knew it and claimed that Norwich had said far too much. He also alleged that Norwich had said that Christ’s blood takes away only the wound that sin inf licts. The remaining scar, apparently, we remove by penance. Norwich denied that he had been so outspoken. He knew that we are not supposed to suggest that Christ can only forgive sins with our help. He claimed that what he actually said was, ‘when the pardon’s past and the guilt away, yet some scars or Footsteps of it will remain, which Aff liction temporal must expiate and eat out’.24 In fact, this was quite bad enough. White, arguing the same point, had been more careful. He had suggested that penitence ‘may’ help us; Norwich said it ‘must’. The forgiven sinner suffers still and the suffering that remains: may by prayer of Faith, exercise of Vertue, Humiliation and Mortification, be either removed, or else mitigated, and converted to the increase of grace and glory in those which with penitence and holiness endure the same in this life. He remained convinced, however, that good works could not merit release of any ‘Temporall Mulct’.25 Norwich was redefining the faith and he was playing fast and loose with the authorities. Craftily, he claimed that Richard Field agreed with him. Field’s protestant credentials were well established. He had been present at the Hampton Court Conference as, an admittedly silent, representative of the puritan cause and his great work, Of The Church, was steeped in antagonism to Rome. Norwich argued that he too had argued that acts of ‘repentant mortification’ might be called ‘satisfaction’.26 In fact, Field wrote about satisfaction only reluctantly. He knew that the Fathers used the word, and struggled to define it ‘to an other purpose than the Romanists doe’. So, he allowed that we might perform acts that help us to recognise the depths of our own sinfulness. Norwich, who thought such acts were actually required of us, was wilfully misunderstanding him. Creswell cannot have been the only one who baulked at such conclusions. Turning to the second of Creswell’s articles, Norwich plunged into the discussion of auricular confession. No doubt conscious that sensitivities on this subject were still raw, he was now more circumspect. He pointed out that in keeping with the invitation to communion and the Canons of 1604, he had merely encouraged people to use what was available. It was not his intention to require a scrupulous numbering of sins. If Norwich was aware of difficulties in dealing with auricular confession, he became distinctly anxious about Creswell’s third article on justifica23 24 25 26

CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10. CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10. White, A Replie, p.514. R. Field, Of The Church, five bookes (Oxford 1635), III, p.100.

204   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 tion and good works. He repeatedly denied Creswell’s allegations and struggled to clarif y his own position. To do this he distinguished a first and second justification. The first justification is God’s business, not ours. We have no habitual righteousness that God will recognise, he is the only source of justification and that justification is bestowed through faith. No problem thus far – this was orthodox protestant opinion – but Norwich could not leave well alone. There is also, he suggested, a ‘justification declarative’. This is the sort of justification that a judge pronounces, a sentence then has to be worked out. So, ‘justification declarative’ requires a response of good works. Now Norwich was trying to have his cake and eat it. He suggested that in the parable of the pharisee and the publican God first accepted the publican, but only pronounced that he was justified after he had beaten his breast. The publican had had to perform a congruous work. As in his treatment of satisfaction, Norwich signally failed to explore the significance of what he was saying. He was happy to say that external acts, like beating the breast, are not the ‘originall’ cause of justification, but he failed to make it clear whether he thought they were a necessary part of justification. What he did do was to urge the dangers of accepting a salvation that hinges on ‘meer faith’. That, he suggests, would be Gnosticism. Here he referred to Andrewes’ sermon, Of the Worshipping of Imaginations, in which Andrewes denounces the Gnostics who: held that all other things besides ‘faith’ were indifferent, ‘repentance and all; and that so a man knew and embraced certain dictates and positions they would deliver him; live how he list, he could not choose but be saved... Such is the imagination in our day of Carnall Gospellers that, so he forget not his creed, he cannot miscarry. These be the Gnostics of our age.27 Norwich was quoting Andrewes outrageously out of context. Andrewes’ sermon was, in fact, an attack on the consequences of the doctrine of assurance. It hardly served Norwich’s purpose. Andrewes objected to the idea that, given the very distinctive faith of assurance, the salvation of an individual was certain, ‘live how he list’. He did not anticipate Norwich in assuming that faith in general must be coupled to works to make justification real. It was in the discussion of ceremonies raised by Creswell’s fourth article that the assumptions separating the two men were most focused. Creswell used the declaration On Ceremonies and the Thirtieth Canon to argue that ceremonies were tainted by their Roman past and survived only because they tended to good order. History had found ceremonies wanting and little could be claimed for them. Norwich, on the other hand, thought that history gave ceremonies dignity and argued that the Church of England looked back and used the ‘Apostolic Church’ for a model. He knew that some ceremonies had been abandoned or found wanting, but he thought that the jury was still out. So, he argued, a previous decision to omit a particular rite ‘does not presently condemn it’. In short, it was time, he said, to think again. ‘Wherefore it shold seem scarce a mild or candid spirit that cryes downe all for Romish Innovators that in prayer that hold up ther hands or knock ther breasts.’28 Casting Norwich in the role of 27 28

Andrewes, Works, V, p.588; CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10. CUL CUA CUR 18.6.10.

‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   205



troublemaker, Creswell reminded the court that the recent Canons had called for tolerance over ceremonial differences. Norwich neatly turned the tables. Far from being intolerant himself, Norwich claimed, he did not despise the pharisee of his sermon. He rebuked him for despising others. Once more the Consistory Court witnessed a debate about the teaching of the Church of England. The complexity of the arguments can too easily obscure what was happening. Norwich was pleading for a new, positive attitude to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. He was rewriting the theology of ceremonies and justification and he was pushing even controversial writers like White further than they would wish to go. The case became, inevitably, a test of strength between the heads. On 15 September a copy of the sermon was demanded. Not surprisingly, the demand came from Brownrigg and Love, apparently with the support of Bainbridge and Batchcroft. Just as predictably, Beale, Martin and Sterne leapt to the defence of this controversial preacher. They claimed that Norwich had already produced the relevant passages of his sermon in his answer to the charges and that the court had no authority to demand more. Cosin made full use of the office of vice-chancellor and simply refused to call for a copy of the sermon until Creswell had procured witnesses to his allegations. Then, blatantly anticipating the judgment of the court, he further informed Creswell that he was inclined to agree with Beale and his friends.29 At the next meeting on 23 September a different group gathered. This time Cosin was attended by Collins, Love, Eden, Ward, Bainbrigg, Brownrigg and Holdsworth. Outnumbered, Cosin could do nothing to prevent a formal demand for a copy of the sermon. Creswell gratefully agreed to leave the rest to the heads. 30 A week later, at a meeting in the Regent House, Cosin was joined by Ward, Bainbrigg, Laney, Love, Brownrigg, Collins, Batchcroft, Martin and Sterne. Norwich produced a copy of the sermon and read it over. Collins, Laney, Martin and Sterne promptly declared themselves satisfied. Ward, Bainbridge, Brownrigg and Love wanted more time to study the sermon, and Batchcroft thought those wanting more time should have it. The cause was postponed until 3 October. Then Cosin got the majority he wanted. This meeting of the court was attended by the ViceChancellor, Ward, Bainbrigg, Love, Sterne, Batchcroft, Collins, Brownrigg, Laney, Martin and Eden. The greater part of the heads agreed to dismiss the case and absolve Norwich of blame.31 Their decision gave sanction to a theology that had been cavalier with the Homilies, Canons, Articles and opinions of a number of respected English authors. Norwich had reclaimed for the Church of England a theological language that the Articles forbade and that others had been cautious to either avoid entirely or to qualif y. He had f lagrantly contravened the King’s Declaration and he had shouldered the Church of England off the middle way and in the direction of the hills of Rome. His acquittal was inevitable, but it was scandalous nonetheless.

29 30 31

CUL CUA VC CT I.59, fols.217v.-218r. CUL CUA VC CT I.59, fol.218v. CUL CUA VC CT I.59, fol.219r.

206   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 The case against John Cosin: the Parliamentary Prosecution The Norwich case did not form part of the accusations laid against Cosin in Parliament late in 1640, though it was to haunt him later.32 Instead the articles of impeachment contained twenty-one charges drawn from Peter Smart’s all too familiar allegations. Only one of them related to Cambridge: That he counselled some young students of the university to be imitators and practisers of his superstitious ceremonies, who, to ingratiate themselves in his favour, did accordingly; and being afterwards reproved for the same, by some of their friends, confessed that Dr. Cosin first induced them to that practice and encouraged them therein.33 Cosin was sent for and put in the charge of the serjeant-at-arms. He rapidly petitioned Parliament, but his case moved slowly. He was bailed in January 1641, but also sequestered from all his benefices. The Commons finally sent the articles of impeachment up to the Lords on 16 March 1641. It is clear, from Rous’s speech to the Lords, that the crucial charge against Cosin was that of popery. Rous made great play with the threat from an Irish popish army and a further ‘Army of Priests’. He suggested that this latter sought to attack Parliament through the overthrow of property (a crime for which he held Manwaring and Beale peculiarly responsible). He also detected a desire for a treaty with Rome. Rous could see popery drawing close: the pope’s furniture, in the shape of altars, copes, pictures and images had preceded him, ‘And if we believe Dr. Cosin, the very substance of the Mass, a certain sign that the Pope was not afar off.’34 The metaphors were violent, of armies and a foreign invasion. Rous knew a crisis had come and urged the Lords to punish idolatry and repress priestly cruelty and popery that the reformed faith might be ‘righted and repaired’. Cosin denied the charges and the Lords was much less enthusiastic about the prosecution than the Commons had been. Dismissed on bail, Cosin was never recalled. The Commons meanwhile was also running into difficulties in pursuing Norton’s charges that Cosin had ‘enticed a young scholar to popery’. 35 This prosecution faltered because even an angry Commons would have been hard pressed to make Cosin responsible for Nicholl’s crimes. After leaving Cosin to cool his heels in prison for nearly two months, there was no choice but to acquit. The rather inconclusive prosecution did, however, help to clarif y why the Commons so disliked the Cambridge heads. Their crime was popery. Both in Cambridge and in the Commons, among the theologically competent and among the merely bigoted, there was agreement that the country at large, and the university in particular, was in the grip of popery. It was the fear of popery that prompted the prosecution of both Norwich and Nicholls. It was the fear of popery that prompted Pym to speak in the Short Parliament of a ‘plot’ to ‘reduce our land to the Pope’ and to list the ‘innovations to prepare us to Poperie’.36 It was the fear 32 33 34 35 36

BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.61–3. CJ, II, p.105. A brief account is given in the Life prefixed to Cosin, Works, I, pp.xiv–xvi. F. Rous, Mr. Rouse his Speech … (London 1641), p.4. J. Nalson, An Impartial Collection (London 1682), pp.789–92; Cosin, Works, I, pp.xv–xvi. Proceedings of the Short Parliament, ed. E.S. Cope and W.H. Coates, Camden 4th Series 19 (1977), pp.151, 217.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   207

of popery that prompted the Grand Remonstrance to complain of the ‘malicious designs of the Popish party’.37 While Cambridge jettisoned nearly all religious restraint, Laud was hardly an innocent bystander. If men like Crashaw and Beaumont, two fellows of Peterhouse with controversial views who subsequently converted to Catholicism, did make a journey to Rome that Laud had neither intended nor envisaged, it was not because they alone had confused Laudianism with popery. The confusion was there from the start, and in uncomfortable and dangerous times it became increasingly difficult to sustain the delicate theological distinctions that separated an appeal to catholic belief and practice from Catholicism itself. The case against Richard Holdsworth Cosin’s eventful vice-chancellorship ended late in 1640 as the attack on him in House of Commons gathered pace. He was succeeded by Richard Holdsworth, the Master of Emmanuel. In Westminster, Holdsworth was a much more acceptable figure. The appointment, however, did not protect the university from further interference. Parliament was taking an increasingly lively and rather less than benevolent interest in both Cambridge and Oxford. On 20 January 1641 the House of Commons resolved that Cambridge’s university statutes, which imposed subscription on ‘young scholars’ in accordance with the Canons of 1604, were ‘against the Law and Liberty of the Subject’ and must no longer be pressed. Three months later that resolution was extended to free all graduates and students from the requirement to subscribe.38 On 4 June the Committee for the Universities was revived. Three weeks later it was given power to investigate ‘abuses in religion and government in any of the colleges or halls of Oxford or Cambridge’.39 Then, on 28 June, the Commons declared that the universities were no longer subject to the injunction dealing with doing reverence to the communion table. 40 By now an act for regulating the universities was in preparation and was to receive its first reading on 3 August.41 The new Vice-Chancellor knew that suspicious eyes were on him and the university. An entry in the court books reveals that he recognised the need to do his job assiduously. On 10 February 1641 the Lords ordered that two of John Pocklington’s books, Sunday no Sabbath and Altare Christianum, should be publicly burnt by the common executioner, in London, Oxford and Cambridge. This was the same Pocklington who had achieved notoriety as a fellow of Pembroke and who had taunted Sidney Sussex with his plans for an orthodox Christian history. Sunday no Sabbath was a sermon originally preached before John Williams and a vigorous assault on those who would make preaching the only worship on Sundays and would allow no lawful sports on that day.42 Altare Christianum was published 37 38 39 40 41 42

Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, p.204. CJ, II, pp.70, 117. CJ, II, pp.167, 184; Cooper, Annals, III, p.313. CJ, II, p.191. CJ, II, p.167; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.313–14. John Pocklington, Sunday no Sabbath (London 1636); Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath (Cambridge 1988), pp.202–5; John Pocklington, Altare Christianum (London 1637).

208   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 in 1637 and licensed by one of Laud’s chaplains. It urged the antiquity of the term ‘altar’ and dealt with its use in the church fathers. Age had not mellowed Pocklington, for this work included a vigorous defence of tradition and apostolic succession. The opponents of such beliefs he dismissed in terms that reveal his own prejudices: Those that deprive us of the benefit of this Apostolical tradition, pluck one speciall staff out of our hands, whereby we stay ourselves from falling from the true Catholicke Church and beat all Heretics out of our Communion.43 Both books were considered offensive in Parliament, and the Sheriffs of London and vice-chancellors of the two universities were ordered, in March, to execute the judgment against them.44 The court books show that Holdsworth duly supervised the bonfire on 3 May. It is interesting to note that only Bainbrigg and Batchcroft chose to accompany him from the court room to the bonfire in the bull ring on Market Hill, though many others gathered to see the spectacle.45 Scholars should not applaud the burning of books, but it is unlikely that the stinging smoke that rose from Pocklington’s opinions particularly distressed the three heads. Within a matter of months Holdsworth rose to give the oration at the Commencement of 1641. In the audience were several members of the Commons, and they would have been in confident mood. Holdsworth was a man they trusted, a man they had believed to be their friend and possibly even their creature. Holdsworth must have left them gasping. His speech was a startling performance, an assault on the reform of the university. Although the Commencement was traditionally a celebration of university life, Holdsworth declared himself in no mood to rejoice. Instead he spoke of a great misfortune had befallen both church and university. In fact, he said little about the university, although he did allow himself to hope that Parliament might yet show some compassion towards Cambridge. He had much more to say about the church. He protested that he was horrified by the insults now thrown at the liturgy, the clergy and the whole episcopal order. Worse still, he was appalled that the Reformation should now be considered incomplete. He feared the end of true religion and indulged his despair in a piece of oratory that drew on one of the most desolate of the psalms. Come, fellow academicians, let us prepare the exequies! We will take our seats by the waters of the Cam, and weep when we remember thee, O Sion! We will hang our harps on the willows, and now at length bid a long farewell to learning.46 Holdsworth had a mission. He had read the signs of the times and knew that the reform of the church was inevitable. What he feared was a radical reform that would sweep away a structure and a practice that he cared for. Holdsworth’s protestant convictions did not extend to a hatred of bishops and, with Ussher

43 44 45 46

Pocklington, Altare Christianum, p.34. LJ, IV, p.161. CUL CUA VC CT I.58, fol.43. Mullinger, University, III, pp.215–19.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   209

and Brownrigg, he was urging a scheme for reduced episcopacy.47 His eloquence in this cause was variously received. Parliament was less than impressed and, on 23 July, referred the matter to the consideration of a committee. The King, on the other hand, was clearly delighted. Holdsworth was made a royal chaplain and offered the bishopric of Bristol, which he declined.48 Contemporaries must have wondered what drove Holdsworth to make this outburst and turn on his friends. After all, he had consistently proved himself hostile to the divinity of Cosin, Beale and Martin, and his college still provided the benchmark for protestant practice. The fact is that Holdsworth had given his life to the ministry of the church. His job at Emmanuel was to train men for that ministry, outside the college he was an archdeacon determined to ensure conformity and good practice. He might detest the near popery of some of his contemporaries, but he saw a much more sinister threat in parliamentary talk of the reform of what he held dear. In Holdsworth’s convictions we can truly see something distinctively English. He had no desire to see the Church of England accommodate itself to the discipline or beliefs of European protestantism. If there was anyone who truly believed in some sort of via media in Cambridge, in 1641, it was probably Richard Holdsworth. It was his Emmanuel, not Cosin’s Peterhouse, that may have come closest to embodying the truth that everyone claimed to represent. ‘Innovations in Religion and Abuses in Government’ Holdsworth’s rhetoric and Parliament’s somewhat grandiloquent claims must not mislead us. Dr Twigg has shown us that although the Commons intended, in principle, to reform the universities, their aims, in practice, were rather less substantial.49 Members of Parliament were generally prepared to content themselves with issuing a string of orders and, when they wanted some real excitement, they might launch a prosecution of a particular individual. Nonetheless, the Commons wanted more and better information, and accordingly the Committee on Abuses of the Universities had sent out warrants for witnesses.50 One such warrant had been sent to James Tabor, the Cambridge Registrary, commanding him to appear before the Committee on 12 May: to answere such questions as by the sayd Committee shal be demaunded of you and that you bring with you and deliver to the sayd Committee the Registry of the sayd University of Cambridge now in your Custody. Whereof ffaile you at your perill.51 Tabor duly appeared before the Committee clutching the papers that they were so eager to see. At last the Commons had the material it wanted 47 48 49

DNB. Cooper, Annals, III, p.314; DNB. John Twigg, The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625–1688 (Woodbridge 1990), p.55. 50 CJ, II, p.126. In March 1641 the Committee for Innovations in Religion had invited submissions from a lengthy list of divines including Ward, Brownrigg and Holdsworth: BL Harleian MS 6424, fol.49. 51 CUL CUA CUR 20.1; 6.21.

210   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 and could marshal the evidence that would condemn a university many already knew to be guilty. An attentive reading of Tabor’s records, by men thrilling with horror, revealed the awful truth about the advance of popery and prejudice. A document entitled ‘Innovations in Religion and Abuses in Government in the University of Cambridge’ was drawn up, using this material, perhaps during May and June 1641.52 There must have been a temptation to delve deep into the records, but the Committee resisted it. Members of the Committee knew that they were dealing with a new phenomenon and the report had no business to reach back beyond 1633. One exception was made, a special tribute to the peculiar disgust reserved for John Pocklington. Charges levelled at him in Pembroke, in 1616, were repeated: ‘he hath since been a great promoter of Innovations both in practice and in his writings therefore we thought fit to present them to this honourable Court’.53 ‘Innovations in Religion and Abuses in Government’ opens with evidence relating to ‘Scandalous sermons at St Mary’s uncensured’. Six sermons were worthy of special attention: those of Tourney, Hausted, Normanton, Adams, Sparrow and Norwich. In each case the offence and the fruitless proceedings that followed were carefully catalogued. A further and much longer list of sermons was described only in brief. Here, reference was made to William Beale for a very recent effort on the ‘Propriety of the subject’. Richard Sterne also earned a place for a sermon in which he had argued that ‘the work of a minister doth chief ly consist in reading of divine service, consecrating the Eucharist and in giving absolution’.54 Sterne’s idea of clerical duty was controversial; his list notably omits preaching. The Committee found fault everywhere and in every form. Two preachers were recorded as having discussed free will, one for a sermon about altars and another for preaching on the holiness of churches. Robert Mapletoft, related by marriage to the Ferrars of Little Gidding, also attracted the attention of the Committee for urging, ‘pomp of Churches & divine service, he is known to be a great frequenter of Gidding a place in Huntingdonshire which is reported of as a Nunnery’.55 The search for theological delinquents within Tabor’s books continued with a survey of controversial opinions. Some of these opinions had been expressed in academic exercises; others had only got as far as being proposed for discussion. Parliament apparently was contemplating prosecuting people merely for what they might have said if they had been given the chance. Parliament also knew its enemies and ensured that some well-known names figured in the list. Normanton was there, and the fellows of Pembroke also won the recognition their efforts had deserved. Tourney and Duncon were named, and so too was one of their colleagues, John Novell. Novell had been made fellow of Pembroke in 1627, the same year as Tourney, and seems to have been of a very similar mind. In 1635 he had offered to keep the act for his BD by defending the thesis ‘Faith which justifies includes hope and charity’. That was, of course, another way of saying that faith must include works, if it is to save us. Novell was eager for the fray and was 52

BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.52–93. On dating this document, see David Hoyle, ‘A Commons Investigation of Arminianism and Popery’, Historical Journal XXIX.2 (1986). 53 BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.64r. 54 BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.63r. 55 BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.63r.

‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   211



equally prepared to argue that the regenerate can be free from sin, that we can fall from grace, that we should speak of ‘altar’, ‘priest’ and ‘sacrifice’, and that the remission of sins will not always guarantee the remission of punishment.56 In the year after Novell had proceeded to his BD, John Allsop, a fellow of Christ’s, had taken his turn in the graduation exercises. He would have been all too familiar to the Commons’ investigators as chaplain to Archbishop Laud, and he too figured on their list. Allegedly, he had challenged received wisdom on predestination.57 More surprisingly, two fellows of Magdalene, a college not noted for liturgical innovation, were also named. John Howorth had argued that concupiscence in the regenerate was not a sin. John Pullen meanwhile had apparently tackled a wide range of controversial topics, including the idea that the eucharist was a sacrifice. The Committee had looked far and wide, but two of the offences that it noted had been committed recently. In 1640 Samuel Collins had apparently used a lecture in the Schools to defend the practice of bowing to the altar. Then, at the Commencement, in the same year, Clement Bretton had kept the act for his DD. Bretton was a fellow of Sidney, and the titles that he offered to the Vice-Chancellor and heads for his disputation revealed that, even in Sidney, there were those who stood loose to the theological assumptions of the godly. Bretton was interested in tradition not the Bible, holding that the regenerate might be free from mortal sin and considering episcopacy to be jure divino.58 In the event, it was the last of these theses that Bretton was to defend at the Commencement. Having completed its survey of determinations, disputations and questions, the report recorded that at least one champion of the true faith had stood firm, to vindicate the University. Dr Ward hath publicly told some of the answerers that they have departed from the doctrine of the Church of England, particularly Mr. Howorth, Mr Novell and Mr Pullen.59 Ward could be relied upon, but the Committee knew that others were not to be trusted at all. The report turned next to examine charges made against William Beale and John Cosin, particularly in relation to their actions when they served as vice-chancellor. It was noted that Beale had discharged Hausted after his notorious sermon and had even encouraged Normanton, making him a university preacher while still a deacon. He had also, with the agreement of Laney, Martin and Dr Winterton, licensed Shelford’s Discourses and ensured it was in print for the Commencement. The report added that Beale had been harsh with all his opponents, both in his college, and in the university at large. Beale and Cosin together were accused of preventing the use of a bidding prayer in Great St Mary’s. This was presumably a reference to a policy, rigorously enforced by Cosin, that prohibited preachers before the university from using any prayer ‘of their own devising’. Cosin was also held responsible for other liturgical innovations. He had had the altar that had already been erected in Great St Mary’s and then

56 57 58 59

BL BL BL BL

Harleian MS 7019, fol.66r. Harleian MS 7019, fol.66v. Harleian MS 7019, fol.67r.; BL Harleian MS 7038, p.103. Harleian MS 7019, fol.67r.

212   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 railed in by Laney and Beale, dressed in red and blue taffeta and furnished with books and cushions. More striking still, the church had a new screen: The Coronis of which on both sides is full of crosses cut through the wainscot, from the middle of which screen ascend a great hollow pile of wainscot, cast into the form of a Pyramis & capacious enough for the receiving of an Image. This is mounted to the topp of the Roof where it is enshrined with a shield which seems to hover over it.60 Students had now been banished from the chancel of the University Church, and with them had gone Bishop Jewel’s works, once kept there. After noting Cosin’s high-handedness and his failure to proceed against a Franciscan seller of beads and crucifixes, the report considered more general failings in the government of the university. The failure to condemn ‘Arminianism and Popery’ was once more deplored. Chapels ‘dressed up and ordered so ceremoniously’ Liturgical and ceremonial changes, like those that had occurred in the University Church, were highly visible signs of the time. Here was hard evidence of something that looked very like popery. The Commons Committee, charged with finding out just what had been done in Cambridge, had gone to a good deal of trouble to produce an account of the appearance and devotional life of the college chapels. They had set out seeking signs of degeneracy, and they had been amply rewarded. Peterhouse stands at the head of their list.61 Its eminence, apparently, was almost universally recognised, for it had: become the gaze of the University and a greate invitation to strangers. The pavement beneath the steps ascending the altar is of unpolished Marble but the steps and all above are polished Marbell upon wch none that officiates may tread … either a Turkey carpet is put down or they wear slippers. The ‘greate invitation’ issued at Peterhouse was apparently accepted with alacrity by some of the students of Emmanuel. Scholars from that college were worshipping in Peterhouse and adding to their education a knowledge of the importance of standing for the gospel, or bowing at the Gloria Patri. The altar, at Peterhouse, was dressed in partly coloured silks. It supported two large, gilt candlesticks, a ‘Bason’ and two richly bound books. Above the altar the decorations included a dove and cherubim; behind it were hangings painted with angels and the legend, In quod cupiunt Angeli. There was also a large crucifix in the east window, and ‘in many frames on both sides of the chapel are various pictures of the history of Christ.’ Crosses were worked into the woodwork of the stalls, the chapel door was adorned with an image of St Peter, and there was incense on solemn days. It was reported that the Lord’s Prayer, the creed and the confession were said or sung facing east. Rather less convincingly, it was alleged that the congregation also turned east for hymns and psalms. Second service was said at the altar ‘with diverse bowings 60 61

BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.69r. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.71r.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   213

and cringeings’. The Litany was sung by two ministers kneeling before the altar on Sundays and holy days, and a Latin rite was used even on ‘Common dayes’. Music was obviously used frequently in worship, and the Committee alleged that ‘the preferments of the Colledge are cast upon them according to theire skill and proficiency therein’. While the choir sang and surpliced figures f litted about in the sanctuary, the congregation was required to adopt an air of pious attentiveness. There was an enormous list of regulations forbidding, among other things, the wearing of gloves, sneezing, head scratching and yawning. Outside the chapel popery was just as much in evidence. Peterhouse students were required to read the third part of Aquinas’ Summa, ‘that betimes they may suck in the doctrine of the Papists’.62 The report also singled out two of the younger fellows who would both later establish a reputation as poets. Joseph Beaumont, then in his mid-twenties and a fellow since 1636, was alleged ‘to have bitterly inveighed against Calvin calling him “that Blasphemous mouth” ’. Beaumont was also accused of an elaborate devotion to St Peter and of defending the view that Peter did not sin again after his denial of Christ. Beaumont’s crimes, though, were perhaps less scandalous than those of Richard Crashaw. In 1639, on the feast of the Annunciation, Crashaw was alleged to have turned to a picture of the Virgin Mary and declared ‘Hanc adoramus colamus hanc’ [‘We adore this, we cherish this’]. It was noted that, at Little St Mary’s, he held a communion for every Sunday and holy day. In such a small parish it was thought this practice was akin to ‘popish private masses’. He had provided new plate for the church engraved with the words ‘this is my body indeed’, and ‘this is my blood indeed’. He was also accused of showing an exaggerated reverence for the sanctuary and the consecrated bread and wine, ‘All the remainder of wine after he had made his low incurvation he drinks off & picks up the crumbs which remain of the bread.’63 The account of the religious life of Peterhouse makes startling reading. To someone like Robert Some these scenes would have been unimaginable unless the Reformation had been reversed. The really startling fact about ‘Innovations in Religion and Abuses in Government’, however, is that the same story is repeated over and over again elsewhere. At St John’s it was alleged that before Beale’s arrival there had been little interest in ceremony or ornament and that, but for three steps and a table placed altarwise, the college chapel retained the ‘ancient decency of churches and chapels’. Beale soon changed all that. The altar was similarly dressed and furnished to that at Peterhouse, and had a frontal displaying Christ prepared for the sepulchre. A reredos, with a large crucifix set between the crosses of the two thieves, was adorned by angels and finished with gilt. The story of Christ’s life was displayed down both sides of the chapel, ‘painted in great draughts’, and at the east end there was an additional picture of St Michael and the dragon. The roof was a blue heaven ablaze with gilt stars and the words Jesus Christus Dominus Noster. Over the altar there was a sun with beams of light and a rich gilt dove. Two rooms, once occupied by scholars, were now side chapels replete with hangings and altars. The services, of course, were punctuated with a good deal of bowing and 62 63

BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.73r. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.73r.; see also CUL CUA VC CT II.36.47.

214   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 turning to the east. Beale had set up organs at the west end of the chapel and there was plenty of music to employ them. The Litany was sung, as at Peterhouse, and anthems had forced out the psalms. Emboldened by these changes, John Price, the President and ‘a man popishly affected and of scandalous life’, had developed an idiosyncratic bit of eucharistic devotion. At the phrase ‘therefore with angels...’ he turned to gaze at images of the angels. Informed of this apparent idolatry, Beale merely prohibited Price from presiding at the eucharist again. To add insult to injury, Beale had also allowed the college to become ‘more loose and tending to prophaness’, permitting excessive revels at Christmas.64 Beale and Cosin were, of course, known to be champions of the new devotion. The Commons Committee must have been if anything more distressed by what their investigations revealed elsewhere. Trinity College had ‘received a new dress’ some four years previously. The elevated sanctuary had a black and white marble f loor with rich hangings both on and behind the altar. The east end of the chapel was dominated by scenes from the life of Christ ‘drawn upon blue kersey’. Near the altar were four pictures embellished with gilt, showing, Christ, The Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and Elizabeth. Indeed, there was gilt everywhere. Reverences and music were as popular here as in neighbouring St John’s.65 At Queens’ the situation was similar, with more bowing, more music and more gilt, and the Committee noted, ‘The Chapel of the College and the observances of it have been much changed since Dr. Martin came in to be Master [i.e. President] there’.66 Martin was a strong character and was not universally admired. The college cook claimed that he had heard the President say, ‘he would rather see his son in a whore house than at the lecture’. The lecture in question was one given at Holy Trinity by the distinctly godly Christopher Goad. Eager to force conformity, Martin was apparently a bully, prone to addressing his fellows as ‘Rogue and Rascal’ and forcing them out of college if they would not submit. His own life, however, was far from being beyond reproach. He was reputed to be a great player of cards with a taste for late nights at the table. He permitted card games in Queens’ on Sundays at Christmas time, sanctioned bowls on summer Sundays and also allowed ‘a most prophane Comedy’.67 The tide of ornament had swept through other colleges too. There were elaborate altars and hangings at Jesus, Pembroke, King’s, Christ’s, Clare and Trinity Hall. At King’s there was a wooden canopy over the altar and red and blue taffeta hangings behind it. Jesus had a gold-embroidered cloth on its altar and hangings suspended from a gilt rail decorated with cherubim heads. Christ’s had pictures of angels and Clare had a tapestry crucifixion scene. Even at Caius the chapel had been extended and an elegant sanctuary prepared, but as the new ground was unconsecrated, the altar was left standing beneath the new steps. The report noted:

64 65 66 67

BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.74–5. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.77r. BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.78r. The play was Valetudinarian by William Johnson and poked fun at the Ipswich minister, Samuel Ward.

‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   215



Many of the fellows of this house are very ill affected too the Religion established in the Church of England, and great favourers of Popish doctrines and Ceremonies, some of them having crucifixes in their chambers and being suspected to use beads and crossings.68 Only St Catharine’s escaped the investigators without comment. At Corpus, Richard Love had imposed a style of worship that pleased Parliament. His senior fellow, however, was given to celebrating Love’s absences with liturgical extravagance. Similarly, at Emmanuel, Holdsworth kept his chapel free of decoration and no attempt had been made to set up the table as an altar, but two fellows had taken to bowing and, despite the Master’s prohibition, some students had followed suit. At Sidney, Samuel Ward was apparently also unable to prevent some bowing at communion, and one of the fellows urged a still greater reverence. Magdalene, meanwhile, had set its communion table altarwise.69 By the time this report was completed a few of the more anxious, or less committed, heads had learnt to read the writing on the wall. The tables were quite literally about to be turned upon the new devotion, and one or two colleges anticipated the change. The report noted that the Provost of King’s had already moved the college altar and placed it tablewise. He had also removed some of the altar furniture, and prohibited adoration towards the east. At Emmanuel at least one fellow rapidly changed his mind about bowing, and at Caius the altar was again positioned as a table.70 Writing to a friend early in 1641, the young Sancroft recorded some of the changes that were being made in Christ’s and Sidney Sussex: Dr. Bainbridge hath begun reformation in his Chapel, he hath devasted the altar of its ornaments and hath forbid bowing towards it as also standing up at the gloria patri and singing of service. They have wholly left standing up at the Doxology at Sidney.71 King or Parliament? The most immediate victim of the Commons’ researches was William Beale. He had been identified in the Short Parliament as an enemy of true religion. The compilers of ‘Innovations in Religion and Abuses in Government’ had been keen to learn more of him. He was blamed for all that had happened at St John’s and also held responsible for the liturgical innovations at Jesus, where he had been Master for under two years, between 1632 and 1634. More significantly, there was now some hard evidence about his preaching. His crimes were catalogued on 6 August when eleven articles were exhibited in Parliament against him.72 It was alleged that in two sermons at St Paul’s he had preached up papists and 68 69

BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.79; also fols.76, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85. BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.84, 82. The fact that Emmanuel students were taking themselves to Peterhouse and that there was bowing in the chapel bears out the point made by Patrick Collinson that Emmanuel had become increasingly various: Bendall et al., Emmanuel, pp.252–3; Brooke, in Morgan, History of the University, p.475. 70 BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.76, 82, 79. 71 Bodl Tanner MS 65, fol.273; BL Harleian MS 7019, fol.83r. 72 Printed in Cooper, Annals, V, pp.410–11.

216   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 denounced puritans. Furthermore, he was accused of preaching against popular liberty in Great St Mary’s and of declaring: it was a sinn of damnation not to bow at the name of Jesus, & his argument he produced out of the Scripture false quoted, & that the sin was the same, for not bowing with submissive reverence to the Communion Table … He was also reported to have enforced ritual observances in his college, to have expelled opponents, and to have misappropriated charitable giving to spend on images and candles. He was accused of offering preferment to those who shared ‘his Papisticall Superstition’ and of denying it to others. His name was coupled with that of Cosin and Laud in that, he was the sole encourager of Dr. Cosins in his vice-chancellorship, to tyrannize in that Jesuiticall, Popish, & Canterburian Religion, which doth manifestly appear, first, that by his speciall meanes, he was elected vicechancellor, then by his often frequenting & encouraging him, unto Tyrannicall usurpation, & publick promulgation, of that Romish ­Religion. The case against Beale got no further than that against Cosin, but once again Parliament had registered a portentous interest in Cambridge. There was anger and loathing in Westminster and a realisation that they were dealing not with a few isolated individuals, but with a close-knit group orchestrating religious change. Parliament was tightening its grip on Cambridge.73 On 9 September vicechancellors and heads at both Oxford and Cambridge were instructed to remove communion tables from the east end of churches and chapels, to take away altar rails and level chancels. Crucifixes, pictures of any member of the Trinity, all images of the Virgin Mary, tapers, candlesticks and basons were to be abolished. All bowing at the name of Jesus, or towards the table or the east end was also forbidden.74 Intimations of more changes to follow were included in the Grand Remonstrance presented to the King in December, And we intend likewise to reform and purge the Fountains of Learning, the two Universities, that the streams f lowing from thence may be clear and pure, and an honour and comfort to the whole Land.75 Having swept away subscription, the Commons was conscious that members of both universities might need to be reminded of their responsibilities to uphold true religion. In January 1642 a protestation previously required of the town corporation was pressed into service. Anyone taking the protestation had to promise, vow and protest, ‘to maintain and defend … the true reformed Protestant Religion, expressed in the Doctrine of the Church of England, against all Popery, and Popish Innovations’.76 Under sustained pressure from Parliament the university looked to the King for relief. When Charles returned from a trip to Scotland in November 1641 he received a book of congratulatory verses from Cambridge. The contributors 73 74 75 76

Cooper, Annals, III, pp.309–14; CJ, II, p.191. Cooper, Annals, III, p.316; CJ, II, pp.278, 279, 287. Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, p.238. Cooper Annals, III, pp.317, 311 n. 2.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   217

included Holdsworth, Ward, Brownrigg and Love; a measure perhaps of the extent to which Parliament had alarmed even those it might have counted as allies. In March 1642 Charles visited Cambridge, touring Trinity and St John’s. His arrival prompted a demonstration of loyal enthusiasm from members of the university, which was perhaps a little ill advised.77 A nervous William Beale clearly thought so and was not present to greet the King. Charles nonetheless treated him to a public declaration of sympathy, damning him with fervent praise. When the King entered the chapel in Trinity, he ‘seemed very well to approve all their ornaments’, which suggests that some were not as anxious as Beale and were still prepared to brazen out their hostility to Parliament.78 This would also explain why there was so much for the iconoclastic William Dowsing to do when he arrived in Cambridge, at Christmas, in 1643. ‘Sinne swells to the eye of grace’ Despite the atmosphere of anxiety a few were still driven by anger or alarm to court controversy and the public eye. In December 1641, Holdsworth was still vice-chancellor and was brief ly busy with a provocative sermon. Few details of the case survive, but it issued from articles exhibited before the court by Christopher Banckes of Peterhouse against John Ellis of St Catharine’s. Banckes and Ellis were contemporaries, who had first graduated in 1635 and 1634 respectively, and both proceeded to fellowships in their own colleges. There the similarities ended. Banckes was fashioned in the beauty of holiness at Peterhouse and would lose his place there in 1645; Ellis had grown up on purer, simpler fare at St Catharine’s and fortune was about to smile upon him. In 1641, apparently, Ellis had preached at Sturbridge Fair and, it was alleged, had not only given offence in his sermon, but had given earnest of his intentions by praying before he preached, ‘Parden us great Lord our superstition and Idolatry countenanced by authority.’79 Edward Martin, was present when the articles were exhibited against Ellis and couldn’t resist an opportunity to kick a man while he was down. The court recorded: this day did dr. Martyn allso make a complaynt against Mr Ellis for some ill and badd carriage and behaviour of his in their owne chapell, when they were at divine prayers, and would not kneell with them at theire divine prayers.80 Times had changed. Once, Martin and his friends could have made Ellis pay dearly for his few moments of protestant glory, now power and its perquisites were differently distributed. Perhaps conscious that the eyes of Parliament were upon him, or possibly simply convinced that there was no case to answer, Holdsworth let Ellis off with no more than a warning and admonition. In the months that followed Ellis grew in confidence. By December he was declaring that he would no longer use the sign of the cross in baptism and not looking to the Prayer Book for his authority: 77 78 79 80

The sheriff pointedly stayed away: Cressy, England on Edge, p.401. Cooper, Annals, III, p.322. CUL CUA VC CT I.58, fol.120v., also fols.115, 118. CUL CUA VC CT I.58, fol.115.

218   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Now of late many people have been so offended at the use of the said ceremony … I have forborne the use of it; and the rather because I found that by the judgement of the House of Commons published September the ninth it was thought unseasonable at this time to urge the severe execution of such laws.81 Ellis’ enthusiasm for the House of Commons was soon rewarded and by 1644 was preaching before Parliament. Banckes ultimately found his way into the Roman Catholic Church.82 A few months later, in March 1642, Richard Holdsworth himself preached. It was a university sermon on the occasion of the anniversary of the King’s accession. At the Commencement in the previous year Parliament had been dismayed by the oratory of the Vice-Chancellor they had once so much admired. If on that occasion Holdsworth had put his foot in his mouth, now he bit it off and swallowed it. The full f lavour of Holdsworth’s approach is well represented by the somewhat sycophantic dedication to the King that he added when the sermon was published: … we now see to our grief what a misery it is to have the royal inf luence intercepted as of late it hath been, and still is … religious hearts, through all these clouds can discern, and do with thankfulness acknowledge the saying of Solomon to be most true, In the light of the King’s countenance there is life …83 By 1642 all arguments were being swept up in the question of whether you were for, or against, the King. For men like Holdsworth this was, of course, as much a theological as a political question; indeed, he would not understand a distinction between the two. His sermon provided him with an opportunity to articulate the theological foundations of his allegiance to the Crown. Holdsworth’s text was Psalm 144:15. In itself that choice was significant: the Psalms would remind the congregation of Great St Mary’s of the psalmist, David, who was the model and type of kingship. Holdsworth laboured the point, making sure that a comparison was made with King Charles: it is manifest by many passages of his reigne and happy government, that the tendernesse of his love towards his people, if it doth not fully reach, yet it comes close up to the recessions of David.84 Warming to his theme, Holdsworth lauded the King’s virtues. His account of Charles’ reign might be found wanting by political historians, but one can only admire his ability to make the most of unpromising material: If we never had known it before, yet the onely time of this Parliament would teach us sufficiently how much we ow to the King’s clemencie. The laws and statutes which have been made this last yeare, are lasting and speaking monuments of these Royall recessions … it may be said, It 81 82

Quoted in Cressy, England on Edge, p.195. On Ellis: Cressy, England on Edge, p.195; Venn, Alumni, II, p.196; DNB. On Banckes: Venn, Alumni, V, p.79; Matthews, Walker Revised, p.39. 83 Richard Holdsworth, A sermon preached in St Maries (Cambridge 1642), sig.3v–4. 84 Holdsworth, A Sermon, pp.12–13.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   219 is not his onely hand which is in these laws: the proposall of them is from others, although the ratification be in him. Be it so: But the ratification is ten-fold to the proposall.85

Holdsworth was convinced that, under God, the King was the fount, the ‘first mover and originall under God’ of all human happiness.86 The problem was, of course, that there were a lot of other people who did not see it that way at all. Holdsworth needed to explain why that might be so. Ingeniously, he found a way to absolve both sides of blame. There had, he suggested, always been complaints that the times were evil. It was always the way of a few to be sensitive to sin, ‘especially with godly men, who are so good themselves, that it is no marvell, if they thought times a little evill to be extremely bad: as alwayes sinne swells to the eye of grace’.87 If Holdsworth was taking sides, he was doing so with a great deal of circumspection. He was saying that the crisis was exaggerated, that critics were saying what critics always say. Holdsworth knew that many people would have very specific expectations of the Master of Emmanuel, and struggled to disguise the disappointment he must give. He could not avoid discussion of religion, but he could choose his words carefully. His attack on factionalism and sectarianism neatly absolved him of the responsibility to make the choice that others were beginning to see as essential. These protestations of loyalty and affection were no doubt welcome to the King, but Charles needed more than this and moved north in search of more effective support. When Thomas Stephens preached in Great St Mary’s on 31 May 1642, this royal progress was being much discussed and provided the justification for a startling choice of text. Stephens, an MA of Jesus College, and now a schoolmaster in Bury St Edmund’s, preached on Judges 21:25: ‘In those days there was no King in Israel; every man did that which was right in their own eyes.’ It has been suggested that events were moving fast and that the mood in Cambridge was changing with them. So although it was only a matter of weeks since the optimistic Erastianism of Holdsworth’s sermon Stephens was forced to adopt a different tone.88 It is more likely, though, that Stephens was simply a more prejudiced and aggressive man than the Vice-Chancellor. His sermon would always have been more outspoken. Certainly the dramatic tone struck in his choice of text was easily sustained in all that followed. Stephens railed against all those who spurned the conventional authorities in favour of ‘some old wifes traditions’: They jostle out the most solemn, devout, essentiall, divine parts of our service of God: Blasphemous wretches! the very Canon of holy Scripture must wait for approbation in their corner Synodals, or else be no longer Canonicall.89

85 86 87 88 89

Holdsworth, A sermon, pp.14–15. Holdsworth, A sermon, p.17 Holdsworth, A sermon, pp.24–5. Mullinger, University, III, p.225. T. Stephens, Three Seasonable Sermons (Cambridge 1660), pp.14–15.

220   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Pouring scorn on the sectarians who dismissed all priesthhood as ‘popery’, he observed, the Vipers which have eaten through the bowels of the Church are our own off-springs: These creep into the Pulpit … where out of zealous ignorance they dare declaim against all Authority as Antichristian, all antiquity as heretical, all moral learning as in itself damnable.90 What had been in Holdsworth a disquiet over ‘corruptions’ gave place in Stephens to an almost prophetic assault on iconoclasm: There be Idols in the Temple: that’s watch-word enough for a Rioutous Assembly … (once inside the iconoclasts won’t stop at altar & rails – they attack vestry, library & poor man’s box). … Nay there is no place secure, there is an Idoll in the Desk: away with the book of Common-prayer, teare it to pieces: There is an Idoll in the Pulpit too, or rather the Priest of Idolls; hale him, pull him out, tear off the sacred vestments from his superstitious shoulders: The Ephod and the Teraphim will not suffice; the Surplice and the Hood: Cherubims and Seraphims must all away, nay the very stones of the pavement shall be torne up because men kneel upon them.91 Clearly alarmed by what he saw and what he predicted, Stephens urged those who heard him to turn to the King as the only possible solution. The King was the ‘precious ointment’ of the gospels, and as pretiously to be laid up by prayers for him, by hands with him, by purses to him, of all good subjects. The breath of our nostrills, the life of our liberties, the strength of our hopes, the pillar of our religion: his Commission is signed from Heaven.92 It was more than powerful prose. If the King was the ointment used in the twelfth chapter of St John’s gospel, then anyone opposing him must be the man who objected to the use of that ointment – Judas Iscariot. Cambridge divines had become sensitive to the challenge confronting the Crown and conscious of the theological significance of the King in their ecclesiology. It was a topic that had already been aired by Holdsworth and now was echoed again by Richard Watson in A Sermon Touching Schisme. Watson was an MA, a fellow of Caius and a master at the Perse School. He too feared for the future of both church and state, and warned that the end of monarchy and episcopacy was threatened.93 Leaping to the defence of the church, he described the pride, anger, impatience and inordinate zeal of its enemies. His sermon was a scholarly effort, littered with classical and patristic references. His primary aim was apparently to establish how theology must be studied, and his sermon an assault on anyone who did not share his ideas about authority. Having analysed the vices of schismatics and the virtues of the true Christians, Watson drew the sermon to a close:

90 91 92 93

Stephens, Three Seasonable Sermons, p.16. Stephens, Three Seasonable Sermons, p.18. Stephens, Three Seasonable Sermons, p.27. Richard Watson, A Sermon Touching Schisme … (Cambridge 1642), p.3.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   221 I will onely out of charity adde a triple rule for those either malitious or mistaken souls, against whom my whole discourse hath been intended... And that’s, in brief, first by Reason rightly weighed; secondly, by Scripture rightly interpreted; Thirdly, by the Constitutions and Canons of the church to that purpose rightly assembled.94

Although this was a scholarly discussion it should not be assumed that Watson inhabited an ivory tower high above the violent contest being fought out below. He was perhaps less vigorous than Stephens, but he could still deliver some effective blows. He scented schism: What else mean those whispers of some grand plotting. … What else those loud aspiring cries of Down with Episcopacy? Up with a Presbyteriall Superintendency? What lastly means that truly mounting LectureLanguage, and most irreligious Pulpit imposture, whereby too many, when they have once drawn the yielding hearts of weak people into those open and unfenced fortresses of their ears, there chain them to their own motions.95 Behind the posturing and polemic there was still a theological point to be made. The divines who posed as king’s champions believed that obedience and allegiance were required by God; they also believed in a national church. More significantly, perhaps, they could not tolerate anything that divided that church. Of course, it is a moot point who it was who was really responsible for dividing the church, but for those who took the side of the ecclesiastical establishment in 1642 there was no question as to who to blame. Holdsworth, Stephens and Watson had developed this argument in Cambridge and another contemporary, Mark Frank, took it to London. Frank, who was the same age as Watson, was a fellow of Pembroke. Like Watson, he would be driven out of Cambridge by an unforgiving Parliament and, like Watson, he would survive to see better days. After the Restoration Watson became a prebendary of Salisbury, while Frank was made master of his college. In 1641 he had proceeded BD and, fulfilling the requirements for his degree, he preached at Paul’s Cross in June 1642. His text came from Jeremiah and was a summons to obedience and to faithfulness.96 Frank looked around him for obedience and faithfulness, and found none. The world apparently had grown too good, or too perverse, or too tender to serve God reverently. Frank was deadly serious, but had a lightness of touch that Stephens would never learn. Recalling that God had once talked to Moses ‘as man doth with his friend’, he suggested that in a church that would not bare the head or bend the knee the tables had been turned, and ‘Man now talks with God as man doth with his friend’.97 In this topsy-turvy world obedience needed to be restored and Frank was sure that, while no one was 94 95 96

Watson, A Sermon, p.34. Watson, A Sermon, p.34. Jeremiah 35:18,19: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his precepts and done according unto all that he hath commanded you: Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rehab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.’ Mark Frank, Sermons (Oxford 1849), pp.413ff. 97 Frank, Sermons, p.418.

222   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 infallible, the judgements of a king or his bishops were much to be preferred to the ‘simple fancies’ of their critics.98 In fact, those who rejected bishops did so only in order to embrace something far less acceptable, while you refuse to submit your judgements where you are bound, you captivate your reason to them who have lost their own; and are therefore angry that you should have any.99 Frank urged anyone who would listen to accept that proper authority was essential to the survival of the church. Convinced that church and nation were closely related and that division was intolerable and destructive, he attacked those who had attacked the church. He also had a particular axe to grind, an interest in reverence that was shared by Stephens and dozens more who had had a Cambridge education in the early seventeenth century: May not I as lawfully serve my God in a reverent posture, as thou in a saucy and irreverent garb? Is it superstition in me to stand, because thou sittest or leanest not thy elbow? Is it idolatry in me to kneel because thou wilt not foul thy clothes or vex thy knees? Strange must it needs be, that sitting leaning, lolling, must be law and canon, where no set behaviour is expressed.100 Not surprisingly, the King was well pleased with Frank’s preaching and ordered that the sermon should be published. Parliament, of course, was less enthusiastic, and the Commons voted Frank a delinquent and required that he should appear before them or lose his place in the university. He was ultimately ejected from Cambridge in the Visitation of 1644.101 The beginnings of Civil War Frank’s sermon was preached on 4 June. By the 29th the situation had deteriorated still further. Charles wrote to the university from York, ‘out of a due regard to our safety and dignity and to the peace of our Kingdome, to desire the assistance of our Good Subjects, for our necessary defence’.102 This was his first request for financial aid. A month later he asked the colleges to send their silver to him.103 With Parliament keeping a watch upon the roads this was always going to be a perilous undertaking. To get the plate north, luck and good judgement were essential, but more important still the operation would have to have been done under cover. Cambridge, however, cannot keep a secret. Magdalene had jumped the gun and despatched its plate even before it had been asked for. This consignment was captured for Parliament, and so too was a much bigger collection of silver belonging to several colleges. In the end, just three colleges managed to get some of their silver to Charles. For John’s, Queens’ and Jesus abiding loyalty to the Crown and years of experience in duplicity paid an uncertain dividend as 98 99 100 101 102 103

Frank, Sermons, p.421. Frank, Sermons, p.423. Frank, Sermons, p.431. Cooper, Annals, III, p.325; Twigg, University of Cambridge, pp.62–3. Cooper, Annals, III, p.325. Cooper, Annals, III, pp.327–8.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   223

they robbed themselves of their own family silver.104 The most immediate consequence was the arrest of Edward Martin, William Beale and Richard Sterne at the end of August. In the company of Matthew Wren, who was arrested in Ely, they were taken to London, paraded through the city and then incarcerated in the Tower.105 The whole episode marks the beginning of a quite distinct phase in the history of the university when the presence of parliamentary forces dictated the pace of academic and religious change. Obeying parliamentary orders the town had already begun to take up arms, and there were attempts to teach people how to use them. Cromwell had impounded weapons gathered by members of the university and Parliament made sure no more military supplies reached the university. Following the largely abortive attempt to get silver to Charles I, Parliament put Cromwell in command of the Trained Bands with wide-ranging powers against those who disturbed the peace. He was also ordered to disarm ‘Popish Recusants, and all other dangerous and ill-affected persons’. By September Cromwell had seized control of the magazine in Cambridge Castle, and Cambridge was well on the way to becoming a garrison town.106 As the crisis escalated the pressure of parliamentary business grew and there were some important military matters to decide. In December 1642 the ordinance that would create the Eastern Association was passed, although a good deal of work had to be done in the succeeding months to turn the principle into a reality.107 Among these concerns Parliament still found time to attend to the details of imposing the long awaited reformation in the university. In February 1643 it ordered that the university statute that required graduates and students to wear surplices ought not to be imposed. Against the legal powers and military might at Parliament’s disposal Cambridge could do little but protest. Fearing a royalist attack, Cromwell had mustered nearly 30,000 troops, although the garrison he kept in Cambridge itself was a fairly small one.108 For the brave and the brash, however, the press and pulpit might still be used to good effect. Late in 1642 Richard Holdsworth was still grimly hanging on as vice-chancellor and licensed Henry Ferne’s The Resolving of Conscience for publication. Ferne had arrived in Cambridge back in 1620, as a pensioner at Trinity. He had stayed to become a fellow of the college and in 1641 had added a DD to his other dignities. He must have had high hopes of preferment. In 1642, however, his impassioned loyalty to the Crown was suddenly unfashionable and the Interregnum was to make him wait for his reward. It was 1660 before Charles II finally named him as Bishop of Chester. Ferne’s book dealt with the question of whether or not it could ever be legitimate to take up arms against the King. Presumably, as a royal chaplain, he did not struggle long with his own conscience before he decided that it was not. Like Watson before him, Ferne raised the question of 104 105 106 107 108

Varley, Civil War, pp.72–85; Twigg, ‘The University of Cambridge’, pp.49–58 and University of Cambridge, pp.70ff. Twigg, University of Cambridge, p.77. Twigg, University of Cambridge, pp.67f.; Cooper, Annals, III, pp.326–8, 331, Mullinger, University, III, pp.235ff. Twigg, University of Cambridge, p.67. Cooper, Annals, III, p.337; Twigg, University of Cambridge, p.79.

224   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 where proper authority lay, and he too suggested, in terms guaranteed to give offence, that popular assumptions about obedience were ill-informed: under pretence of keeping out Popery, you are led in this way of resistance by the like steps that brought Popery in. For examine your hearts and try if the name of Parliament (which is of honourable esteem with all) be not raised to the like excess of credit with you as the name of the Church is with Papists.109 Ferne went on to call Parliament’s hostility to the King ‘Damnable’.110 His enthusiasm was rewarded by a summons to appear before the Commons in the company of Holdsworth, who had issued the licence, and Daniel who had printed the book. Ferne, at last learning some good sense, f led to Oxford.111 The divisions and differences of opinion that aff licted Cambridge were now of a different order and nature from the weary and angry debates of the 1630s. The contestants and rules of engagement had changed. Tension in the town and university expressed itself in series of incidents involving students and townspeople, soldiers and dons.112 By 4 March 1643 the House of Lords thought it necessary to provide some protection for the university against plunder and interruption.113 Nothing, however, could halt the relentless process of fortification and most the bridges over the Cam were pulled down. Cambridge was wary of outsiders. Inside the town members of the university were viewed with suspicion and even loathing. Men like Ferne, eager to express their hostility to the new regime, took an enormous risk. Some were prevented from speaking altogether. As the Easter Term of 1643 was about to begin, the Lady Margaret Preacher, William Power of Christ’s, went to Great St Mary’s to preach his ad clerum. The famous story is recounted in the Querela Cantabrigiensis: [He] was furiously pursued over the market place by a confused number of soldiers, who in a barbarous uncivill manner cryed out, A Pope, A Pope, and vowed high revenge if he offered to goe into the Pulpit.114 The idea of a Latin sermon proved difficult to defend. So too did familiar services of the prayer book now discredited by their evil associations and eventually to be replaced with the Westminster Directory. Soon after Power’s abortive attempt to preach an angry mob attacked the books of Common Prayer in the University Church.115 The university was now in deep disarray. In May, Holdsworth was imprisoned, ultimately joining the other three heads already in the Tower.116 University exercises were suspended and many colleges granted extended leave to their fellows. There was a dramatic drop in the number of matriculations and few existing

109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

Henry Ferne, The Resolving of Conscience … (Cambridge 1642), sig.¶ 2. Ferne, The Resolving of Conscience, title page. Mullinger, University, III, p.261. Twigg, University of Cambridge, pp.68–9, 79–80. Cooper, Annals, III, p.339. Cooper, Annals, III, pp.342, 343; Querela, pp.10, 11. Cooper, Annals, III, p.343; for similar incidents elsewhere, Cressy, England on Edge, pp.194–9. Cooper, Annals, III, p.347.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   225

students stayed to take their degrees.117 In Magdalene, where the accounts were signed annually by the Master and the resident fellows (usually six or more), the collapse of the common life is easy to see. In 1644 only one fellow wrote his name beneath that of the Master; in 1643 there were no accounts at all.118 In June the university petitioned Parliament, describing: how our Schools daily grow desolate, mourning the absence of their Professors and their wonted Auditors; how, in our Colleges, our Numbers grow thin, and our Revenues short... how, frighted by the Neighbour Noise of War, our Students either quit their Gowns, or abandon their Studies.119 Parliament took the complaint seriously and discussed it at a conference of both houses. Sympathetic as they were, however, they were not prepared to offer Cambridge any assistance that might be of advantage to those ‘who have expressed their ill Affections’. The conference resolved only to pry further into the university’s affairs.120 Old loyalties were revised. In the summer of 1643 Lionel Gatford, once a fellow of Jesus and now the Rector of Dennington in Suffolk, was back in Cambridge to preach in Great St Mary’s. Ten years earlier Gatford had incensed Benjamin Laney with a sermon that was almost certainly a call to further reformation. The passing years, though, had changed him and Gatford had new concerns. Changed, but not mellowed, he still had the same talent for causing trouble. His sermon was subsequently issued as a pamphlet entitled An Exhortation to Peace. It dealt with the dilemma that had already been examined by Ferne: is there a right of resistance against the King? Gatford urged the necessity of peace and made a strong attack on preachers who support war. He was eager to apportion blame and stated his intention to show who ‘have been the prime disturbers of the Peace’.121 Tempers had been running high for some time and Gatford’s tone was more subdued than most, but his own loyalties were quite clear: he was committed to the cause of ‘the sacred Person of our most gracious Sovereign’.122 In another work he stated his position more boldly: ‘it would make us tremble to resist the King, knowing that to resist his power is to resist the power and ordinance of God’.123 In first preaching and then seeking to publish views like these, Gatford was pushing his luck. While he was in Cambridge to see the work through the press his sins caught up with him. In the Preface to the Exhortation to peace he offered his own account of what followed: on Jan. 26 in the night. Master Crumwell, a member of the House of Commons, seized upon the Copy of that Tractate … and the same night with his troops he apprehended my person quietly reposed at Jesus College.124 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124

Brooke, in Morgan, History of the University, pp.464–5. Magdalene Archive B/421, 1575–1695, pp.92ff. Cooper, Annals, III, p.347. Cooper, Annals, III, pp.348–9. Lionel Gatford, An exhortation to peace … (London 1643), sig. A1v. Gatford, Exhortation to peace, p.17. Gatford, An Harmonie of the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches (Cambridge 1643), p.60. Gatford, Exhortation to peace, sigs. A1v–A2.

226   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 Gatford was subsequently taken to London and held in custody. Like Holdsworth, he had been an opponent of the new devotion, yet still he found himself at odds with Parliament. The Commons investigation of 1640 had treated him as a martyr for the truth in ‘Innovations in Religion and Abuses in Government’. Now he was to suffer at their hands. He lost his living in Suffolk and argued again with Parliament in the process. The Tryers, responsible for assessing the clergy, asked him when he was converted and were told, ‘When the Puritans turned rebels’.125 Cromwell and the Earl of Manchester were now campaigning, with conspicuous success, to the north of Cambridge. The town, the university and the villages and fields round about knew they were at war. The disruption to university life was less than absolute, some rents were still collected, some students and some senior members stayed on, but the new climate was not kind. Samuel Ward, who had longed for so long to see reformation completed, could not stomach it when it came and remained disconsolate to the end. He was apparently imprisoned for a time, in St John’s, where royalist officers were also being held.126 He died on 7 September. Six days later the fellows of Sidney met to elect his successor. Herbert Thorndike of Trinity, a fine scholar and a committed episcopalian, seemed certain to get the job until: ‘a Band of Soldiers rusht in upon them, and forcibly carried away Mr Parsons, one of the Fellows who voted for Mr Thorndike’.127 This intervention concentrated the minds of the fellows, and Thorndike lost the election to Richard Minshull, a fellow of the college. The new Master was so weak-willed that neither Parliament in 1643, nor a new King in 1660, could find any offence in him.128 Ward’s death also left vacant the post of Lady Margaret Professor. Richard Holdsworth, then a prisoner in London, was elected. It was a fine act of defiance, but it was futile. Cambridge had goaded an impatient Parliament beyond endurance. Holdsworth was moved to the Tower and the threatened reformation of the university became an inevitable reality. William Dowsing Some attempt had been made to dismantle the trinkets of the new devotion.129 The churchwardens’ accounts for Great St Mary’s for 1641–2 reveal that £2–7–0 had been spent on taking down the altar rails and levelling the chancels.130 The accounts at Trinity for 1643 reveal payments ‘for whiting over the figures’ and ‘for taking down the organs and hangings’.131 At the end of August 1643 Parliament passed an ordinance requiring churches and chapels to demolish stone altars and altar rails, to level any chancel raised in the last twenty years, and to remove tapers, candlesticks, crosses, pictures, and superstitious inscriptions.132 125 126 127 128 129 130

Walker, Sufferings, II, p.255. Twigg, University of Cambridge, p.80. Cooper, Annals, III, p.357. On Minshull, see Edwards, Sidney Sussex, pp.144–8. BL Harleian MS 7019, fols.76, 83. Varley, Civil War, p.32; Patrick Collinson, ‘Reformation or Deformation: The Reformed Church and the University’, in Binns and Meadows, Great St Mary’s, p.44; Bushell, St Mary, p.78. 131 Trinity College Archives, Senior Bursar’s Accounts, 1637–1659, fol.59v.; see also Jesus College, Audit Book 1599–1643, p.1030. 132 Cooper, Annals, III, p.364.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   227

The period of grace to effect these changes expired on 1 December. Townspeople apparently took to having bonfires on market days, to burn ‘the Popish Idols of the university’.133 It is unlikely, though, that they had managed to get hold of much of value, and Parliament’s deadline was reached without really significant change in the chapels of the university. That was soon to change. In late December William Dowsing arrived in Cambridge, armed with axes and hammers, a commission from Manchester and an iconoclast’s zeal. His progress around Cambridge, accompanied by the sound of splintering wood and glass, broke down the beauty of holiness. Two extracts from his journal give a f lavour of his achievement: At Pembroke-Hall 1643, December 26. In the presence of these Fellowes Mr. Weeden, Mr. Mapthorpe, and Mr. Sterne, and Mr, Quarles, and Mr. Felton, we broak 10 Cherubims. We broake & pulled down 80 superstitious Pictures … At Queens’ Colledge, Dec. 26. We beat down about a 110 superstitious pictures besides cherubims & ingravins. And there none of the Fellows would put on their hats all the time they were in the chappell; and we digged up the steps for 3 howers and broake downe 10 or 12 apostles & saints pictures in their hall.134 At Corpus, Sidney and Emmanuel Dowsing found ‘nothing to be done’. Elsewhere he argued with fellows, levelled altar steps, pulled down statues and ripped cherubs from the roof. St Catharine’s, surprisingly, had statues of George and the Dragon and of St Catharine. Clare had cherubim, apostles and the fathers of the church in its windows, Christ’s had pictures and angels, and Jesus had saints and angels. All came tumbling down. King’s, with ‘one thousand superstitious pictures’, got off surprisingly lightly, even though Dowsing noted ‘steps to be taken’, and there is still speculation as to what happened there. 135 Dowsing, however, had certainly not exhausted his zeal. He went on to visit the churches of Cambridge too, finally ending his carnival of vandalism on 3 January 1644, in the Round Church. In a little over a week he had changed the face of Cambridge piety. The Earl of Manchester’s Visitation A yet more traumatic change was still to come. On 22 January 1644 Parliament passed an Ordinance ‘for Regulating the University of Cambridge, and for removing of Scandalous Ministers in the seven Associated Counties’. The Earl of Manchester was given the power to execute the ordinance and thus had authority 133 134

Cooper, Annals, III, p.339. Quoted in The Journal of William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia, ed. T. Cooper and R. Walker (Woodbridge 2001), pp.161, 165. Dowsing’s work is discussed in Varley, Civil War, pp.29–45, but the best account is provided by Cooper and Walker, which reprints the Journal with a commentary; see especially pp.47–55 and 56–66. Cooper suggests (p.162) that the ‘pictures’ referred to may have been textile hangings or prints. 135 Cooper and Walker, The Journal, pp.155–91.

228   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 to eject and sequester members of the university, clergy and schoolmasters. On 5 February both Houses recommended to him that he should take special care that the Solemn League and Covenant ‘be tendered and taken in the university’. 136 By 26 February Manchester and his two chaplains had arrived in Cambridge, and the first ejections of ‘delinquents’ followed on 13 March. Not surprisingly, this dubious distinction went to Beale, Martin, Sterne, Cosin and Laney. There were, essentially, two grounds for ejection: refusal to take the Covenant and renounce episcopacy was one; absenteeism was another. In fact, Manchester’s officers could dismiss anyone they did not like the look of and justif y it by hinting at ‘other misdemeanours’.137 Dr Twigg has shown how difficult it is to assess the scale of this ‘purge’, but points out that it amounted to something like half the total fellowship of the university.138 Two hundred and twelve men lost their place. On any evaluation the effects must have been startling. Only four of the old heads of house survived the Visitation: Bainbridge at Christ’s, Love at Corpus, Batchcroft at Caius and Eden at Trinity Hall. Two newly appointed men: Minshull at Sidney and Edward Rainbow at Magdalene, were also allowed to stay on. Other victims apart from Cosin, Beale, Martin, Sterne and Laney, included Paske, Collins, Comber and, rather more surprisingly, Brownrigg (in 1645, after an unashamedly royalist sermon). Ward would have also have been deprived of his place by Manchester’s Visitation had he not died, a prisoner in St John’s, in 1643. With these men went not just the fellows who had championed the divinity of the 1630s, but also all who would not take the Covenant. Nineteen fellows were ejected from Pembroke, including Mark Frank and Robert Mapletoft. Another nineteen went from Peterhouse, among them Crashaw and Beaumont. Thirtytwo were ejected from St John’s, and forty-five from Trinity (to which number should be added three conducts and a scholar). For years Cambridge had debated reformation and now reformation had arrived. The Solemn League and Covenant was steeped in protestant purity. The Covenant challenged members of the university to set an example of ‘a real reformation’.139 It was what they had been arguing about all along, and even brute force could not end their disagreements. ‘Who changed religion into rebellion?’ Beneath the confusion and the changing loyalties old concerns about the nature of theological authority and the true character of the English church remained. A sermon by John Pearson in 1643, dealing with a new controversy, reveals that even as the Civil War was beginning, these issues were still topical. Pearson’s immediate concern was the proposal to replace The Book of Common Prayer with the Westminster Directory. Although the Directory was new the arguments behind it were familiar. The compilers of the Directory set them out in their Preface. While The Book of Common Prayer was the creation of well-intentioned and godly reformers, it contained too many ceremonies, looked altogether too Roman Catholic and was directly responsible for creating 136 137 138 139

Cooper, Annals, III, pp.336, 369–70. Twigg, University of Cambridge, pp.91, 96 Twigg, University of Cambridge, pp.97–8. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, p.271.



‘Who Changed Religion into Rebellion?’   229 an idle and unedifying Ministery, which contented itself with set Formes made to their hands by others, without putting forth themselves to exercise the gift of prayer, with which our Lord Jesus Christ pleaseth to furnish all his Servants whom he calls to that office.140

The debate about set forms of prayer had troubled other generations than Pearson’s. Now the argument became urgent. Henry Ferne, who seemed at times to be looking for a ditch to die in, had defended set liturgies in the thesis for his DD in 1641.141 Even so, Pearson suggested that the attack on the prayer book as a whole was a novelty. He argued that everyone was familiar with the persecution of the church and its ministers, ‘But that they should take away our prayers too, the proper weapons of our church, this is beyond all precedent.’ Skilfully he drew on the impeccable protestant credentials of The Book of Common Prayer. ‘If nothing else, methinks Master Calvin’s approbation should keep it from an utter abolition; or it must be a thorough reformation indeed, that must reform Geneva from superstition.’142 Turning to consider the Westminster Assembly of Divines, which had issued the Directory, Pearson used the now commonplace argument that such newly constituted, or newly proclaimed, authority did not bear comparison with authoritative bodies of the past. With withering sarcasm, he contrasted the Assembly with the synods and councils of catholic history: They were chosen but by the clergy. These shall be elected by a representative body of a whole kingdom. Besides, they never had any yet out of America. we shall have some of Columbus’s discoveries, and of the spirit which moves upon the Pacific waters. Therefore, to conclude in a word, whosoever will not freely submit his judgement with all the obedience of faith to the determination of such a synod, he deserves no better than to be counted a member of the catholic church!143 Cambridge had changed beyond recognition. The theological and academic life of the university was in disarray, the religious life of its chapels and churches had been violently disrupted and its ornaments torn down. The dominant personalities of a generation had been dismissed and replaced by new faces and new prejudices. The need to choose for or against the King shouldered out other concerns, dissolved old loyalties, and formed fresh alliances. Yet, in another sense, things had not changed so very much. Pearson’s swipes at Calvin are a distant echo of Barrett’s sermon in 1595, and the hatred of popery articulated by soldiers chasing a preacher across the market place was but the most vigorous expression of an opinion that had had its champions in Cambridge for generations. The conclusion of Pearson’s sermon, urging the claims of a historic and catholic church over the new ordinances of Parliament and the Assembly of Divines, applied to the problems of 1643 a set of theological assumptions that would have been familiar to Richard Montagu and the Durham House Group twenty years before. The argument was now about King and Parliament, but behind it the old 140

‘The Preface’, A Directory for the publique worship of God throughout the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland (London 1646); see The Westminster Directory, ed. I. Breward (Bramcote 1980), p.9. 141 BL Harleian MS 7038, p.103. 142 John Pearson, The Minor Theological Works, ed E. Churton, 2 vols. (Oxford 1844), II, p.99. 143 Pearson, Minor Theological Works, II, pp.110–11.

230   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 problem was unresolved. The attempt to define the nature of the Church of England had not issued into any agreement. Still the debate went on about what was popery and what was not, about what the Church of England believed and about how it made up its mind. What was the authentic language of the church and where could it be heard? Still the argument went on about precisely who it was that had corrupted the real language of the Church of England and precipitated the awful crisis that hunted delinquency through Cambridge courts and chapels in 1643 and 1644: who thrust out the yes of this Kingdome? Who made Eloquence dumb, Phylosophie sottish, widdowed the Arts, and drove the Muses from their ancient habitation? Who pluckt the Reverend and Orthodox Professors out of their Chaires, and silenced them in prison or their graves? Who changed Religion into Rebellion, and changed the Apostolicall Chaire into a Deske for Blasphemy144 ‘Who changed Religion into Rebellion?’ For the author of the Querela Cantabrigiensis there could of course be no doubt. Standing at the end of a theological tradition that Cambridge had helped to shape, he had a distinctive historical perspective. Like Barrett and Baro, like Montagu and Cosin, like Sparrow and Shelford, Stephens, Pearson and dozens more, he claimed the authority of catholic tradition. He claimed the Reformation for his church, but reached back beyond it. He knew what the Church of England was and knew that his understanding of it was authentic and original. His opponents, observing a theological method that assumed a greater reverence for the catholic past than for all the protestant reformers, and which occasionally even dethroned scripture, recoiled in horror. They too knew what the Church of England was and knew it was very different. Both sides of the argument went to war against a church that they believed had not existed before. Both knew who it was who had turned religion into rebellion. The Querela was a voice crying in the wilderness. The battle it fought was already lost, and soon there really would be ‘no King in Israel’. The author of this self-righteous bit of special pleading was reduced to comforting himself with the thought that, though destitute and forlorn, he and his peers had, ‘one onely companion, which will make us rejoice in our utmost aff lictions, viz. A cleare conscience in a righteous cause. …’145 Unconsciously echoing the sentiments of Nathaniel Bernard ten years previously, the Querela was a record of what had been done in Cambridge and was now undone. By the time it was published the Cambridge described by the Commons Investigation of 1640 had gone. Without the report it produced and Registrary Tabor’s records we would now know little of what once had been. After furnishing the Commons with the damning evidence Tabor had returned to Cambridge and submitted a claim for his expenses to the Vice-Chancellor. Three-and-a-half weeks in London for both him and his servant and the cost of travel there and back amounted to £5–8–0–2.146 No doubt Holdsworth soon settled up with Tabor, and, in June 1641, both would have been blissfully unaware of how dearly the university yet had to pay. 144 145 146

Querela, p.26. Querela, p.26. CUL CUA CUR 20.1 6.22.

Appendix

Chancellors 1559 William Cecil, Lord Burghley 1598 Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex 1601 Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury 1612 Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton 1614 Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk 1626 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham 1628 Henry Rich, Earl of Holland 1648 Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester Vice-Chancellors Queens’ 1580 Andrew Perne 1581 William Fulke Pembroke 1582 John Bell Emmanuel 1583 Richard Howland St John’s 1584 Robert Norgate Corpus Christi 1585 Humphrey Tindall Queens’ 1586 John Copcot Corpus Christi 1587 Thomas Legge Caius 1588 Thomas Nevile Magdalene 1589 Thomas Preston Trinity Hall 1590 Robert Some Peterhouse 1591 Robert Some Peterhouse 1592 John Still Trinity (resigned) 1592 Thomas Legge Caius 1593 John Duport Jesus 1594 John Duport Jesus 1595 Roger Goad King’s 1596 John Jegon Corpus Christi 1597 John Jegon Corpus Christi 1598 John Jegon Corpus Christi 1599 Robert Some Peterhouse 1600 John Jegon Corpus Christi 1601 John Duport Jesus 1602 William Smith Clare 1603 John Cowell Trinity Hall 231

232   Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge 1590–1644 1604 John Cowell Trinity Hall 1605 Richard Clayton St John’s 1606 Samuel Harsnett Pembroke 1607 Roger Goad King’s 1608 Thomas Jegon Corpus Christi 1609 John Duport Jesus 1610 Fogge Newton King’s 1611 Barnabas Goche Magdalene 1612 Valentine Cary Christ’s 1613 Clement Corbet Trinity Hall 1614 Samuel Harsnett Pembroke 1615 Owen Gwyn St John’s 1616 John Hills St Catharine’s 1617 John Richardson Trinity 1618 William Branthwaite Caius 1618 John Gostlyn Caius 1619 Robert Scott Clare 1620 Samuel Ward Sidney Sussex 1621 Leonard Mawe Peterhouse 1622 Jerome Beale Pembroke 1623 Thomas Paske Clare 1624 John Mansell Queens’ 1625 John Gostlyn Caius (died in office) 1625 Henry Smyth Magdalene 1626 Henry Smyth Magdalene 1627 Thomas Bainbridge Christ’s 1628 Matthew Wren Peterhouse 1629 Henry Butts Corpus Christi 1630 Henry Butts Corpus Christi 1631 Henry Butts Corpus Christi 1631 Thomas Comber Trinity 1632 Benjamin Laney Pembroke 1633 Richard Love Corpus Christi 1634 William Beale St John’s 1635 Henry Smyth Magdalene 1636 Thomas Comber Trinity 1637 Ralph Brownrigg St Catharine’s 1638 Ralph Brownrigg St Catharine’s 1639 John Cosin Peterhouse Richard Holdsworth Emmanuel 1640 1641 Richard Holdsworth Emmanuel 1642 Richard Holdsworth Emmanuel 1643 Ralph Brownrigg St Catharine’s 1644 Ralph Brownrigg St Catharine’s 1645 Thomas Hill Trinity 1646 Thomas Hill Trinity

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Sources Cambridge University Archive

(i)  The records of the Vice-Chancellor’s Court Collect Admin 6.a ‘Buckle Book’ VC CT I.6 VC CT I.7 VC CT I.8 VC CT I.9 VC CT I.11 VC CT I.12 VC CT I.26 VC CT I.30 VC CT I.37 VC CT I.38 VC CT I.40 VC CT I.41 VC CT I.42 VC CT I.43 VC CT I.48 VC CT I.49 VC CT I.51

VC CT I.52 VC CT I.53 VC CT I.54 VC CT I.55 VC CT I.56 VC CT I.57 VC CT I.58 VC CT I.59 VC CT I.60 VC CT I.72 VC CT II.36 VC CT III.24 VC CT III.26 VC CT III.31 VC CT III.33

(ii)  Registry Guard Books CUR CUR CUR CUR CUR CUR CUR

4 5 6.1 8 18 20.1 27

CUR CUR CUR CUR CUR CUR CUR

(iii)  Vice-Chancellor’s Accounts VCV 4.8a Account of Dr Beale VCV 4.11 Account of Dr Cosin

(iv)  Royal Letters and Mandates Letter 9 Elizabeth I Letter 11a James I Letter 12 Charles I

233

28.1 39.2 78 84.2 88 91 93

234   Bibliography Cambridge University Library

(i)  Baker Mm. 1.35 Baker XXIV Mm. 1.36 Baker XXV Mm. 1.38 Baker XXVII Mm. 1.40 Baker XXIX Mm. 1.43 Baker XXXII Mm. 1.44 Baker XXXIII Mm. 1.45 Baker XXXIV Mm. 1.48 Baker XXXVII

Mm. 1.49 Baker XXXVIII Mm. 1.53 Baker XLI Mm. 2.22 Baker A Mm. 2.23 Baker B Mm. 2.24 Baker C Mm. 2.25 Baker D

(ii)  Other Manuscripts Ff. Gg. Gg. Mm. Mm. Mm.

5.25 1.29 4.13 4.24 4.57 6.54

Add. 22 Add. 23 Add. 44 (16) Add. 69 Add. 3320 F Add. 4021 F Add. 7583

(iii)  Queens’ College Archives held in the Cambridge University Library QC Book 5 Journale 1622–1649 College Archives

Christ’s College Bursar’s Audit Books

Corpus Christi College Register 1590–1698 College Order Book 1632–1708 Miscellaneous Documents c.1450–1694

Emmanuel College Bennet’s Register I Bur. B. 1 Bursar’s Book Bur. B. 2 Bursar’s Book

Gonville and Caius College Bursar’s Book 1609–34 Bursar’s Book 1634–61

Jesus College Audit Book 1599–1643 Register Book 1618–1689

Magdalene College B/411 B/412 B/421 B/422 C

The Old Book Royal Mandates 1575–1695 Register II Smyth’s Book

Pembroke College Socii Pembroch 1562–1710 Bursar’s Accounts Drake’ Book M1–12 Bundle of letters and documents

Peterhouse Account Roll 1590–1 Account Roll 1593–4 Account Roll 1594–5 Account Roll 1597–8 Account Roll 1633–4 Account Roll 1634–5

Queens’ College MS 502 (Edward Martin)

St John’s College C 5.1 College Orders/Admonitions D. 105 (including some royal letters) M 1.1 Letter Book S.B. 4.3 Rental

Sidney Sussex Master’s Inventories Box 1 (includes letters and mandates) College Accounts 1578–1719 The Samuel Ward Papers, packet F

Trinity College The Master’s Old Conclusion Book 1607–1615 Junior Bursar’s Accounts 1578–1615 Junior Bursar’s Accounts 1620–1660 Senior Bursar’s Accounts 1601–1621 Senior Bursar’s Accounts 1637–1659 MS B/14/9 The British Library

(i)  Harleian MSS Harley MS 6424 Harley MS 7019 Harley MS 7033 (Baker 6) Harley MS 7038 (Baker 11) Harley MS 7039 (Baker 12)

(ii)  Additional MSS Add. MS 4274 (letters of bishops) Add. MS 5960

(iii)  Other MSS Loan MS 29/50/Bundle 74

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Index

Abbot, George  121, 125 Adams, Sylvester  21, 176–9, 210 age of students  14, 18 Aldrich, Francis  103, 104 Allsop, John  211 Alvey, Henry  84 Ames, William  66, 101–2 Andrewes, Lancelot  39, 55, 56–9, 65, 80, 90, 120, 133, 139–40, 201, 204 assurance and perseverance  58–9 candle of the Lord  57 ceremonies  139–40 Moral Law Expounded  57–8 Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine  139–40 predestination  58 Andrewes, Roger  106, 134, 148 Anti-Calvinism  3, 40, 129–30 Antichrist  42, 43, 65, 142, 183, 199 Arminianism  3–5, 25, 102, 119–30, 140–1, 142–6, 147–8, 150, 151, 155–6, 158–60, 163, 169, 183, 191 Arminius, Jacobus  39, 115–19, 151 Assurance, doctrine of   32, 46, 59, 71–80, 99, 108, 111 Augustine, St  33, 34, 52, 81, 109 Bainbrigg, Cuthbert  60–1, 100, 163 Bainbrigg, Thomas  134, 148, 152, 155, 165, 171, 172, 174, 177, 179, 187, 188, 205, 208, 215, 228 Balcanquall, Walter  114, 124–5, 150 Banckes, Christopher  217–18 Bancroft, Richard  90, 93 Baptism  154 Barlow, William  65–6, 103 Baro, Peter  39, 46–9, 67, 80–2, 83–4, 85, 86, 126, 128, 163 atonement  80 foreknowledge  48 free will  48 Lambeth Articles  80–1 Summa trium de praedestinatione  81 Barrett, William  71–7, 83, 86, 126–8, 163 Barwell, Edmund  42, 54, 73, 90, 98–9 Bastingius, Jeremais  64

Bastwick, John  188 Batchcroft, Thomas  152, 166, 171, 172, 174, 177, 179, 205, 208, 228 Baynes, Paul  98 Beale, Jerome  106, 126, 134, 147, 150–2, 157 Beale, William  23, 24, 164, 173, 177, 182, 186, 187, 188, 196–7, 205, 210, 211–12, 215–17, 223, 228 ceremonies  216 royal power  197 Beaumont, Joseph  207, 213, 228 Bedell, University  22 Bedell, William  110–11 Beech, Thomas  105 Bellarmine, Robert  81, 170 Berkshire, Thomas Howard, Earl of, (Lord Andover)  147–8 Bernard, Nathaniel  22, 167–70 Beza, Theodore  29, 31, 51, 72, 76, 81, 99, 115 Boardman  64 Bondos-Greene, Stephen  101 Book of Common Prayer  5, 7, 36, 37, 61–2, 178, 200, 224, 228–9 Book of Homilies  5, 73, 159, 171, 177, 178–9, 181, 192, 200–1 Bourgchier, Sir Henry  123 Boyse, John  112 Branthwaite, William  102–3, 126 Bretton, Clement  211 Breward, Ian  30 Brook, Fulke Greville, Lord  133, 155 Brooke, Christopher  152 Brooke, Samuel  121, 153, 159 Broughton, Hugh  42 Browne, Nicholas  61 Brownrigg, Ralph  114–15, 132, 150, 154, 163, 165, 176, 177, 178, 188, 205, 228 Buchanan, George  134 Buckeridge, John  140 Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of 146–8, 163 Burghley, William Cecil, Lord  8, 19, 41, 42–3, 45, 49–50, 74, 79, 81

251

252   Index Butts, Henry  9, 152–3 Byng, Robert  132 Byng, Thomas  55, 56 Cade, Anthony  183 Calvin, John  26–32, 34, 37, 46, 49, 64, 71–2, 74, 81, 99, 177, 229 ‘Calvin against the Calvinists’  29–32 Institutes of the Christian Religion  28–31 knowledge of God  26–7 predestination  28–9 Calvinism, Calvinists  2–5, 25–40, 72, 77, 84–6, 115, 129–30, 147–8 Calvinist consensus  3, 128 Cam, River  9–10 Cambridge, City of   8–12 Cambridge and the ‘country’  12–13 Cambridge University, its importance 17–18 Canons (1604)  95–8, 138 Caput Senatus  19 Carleton, George  124, 134 Carrier, Benjamin  90 Cartwright, Thomas  37–8, 40, 42, 43, 50, 53, 54, 67 Cary, Valentine  100–1 Casaubon, Isaac  104, 120 Caius see Gonville and Caius Cecil, Robert, see Salisbury, Earl of Cecil, William see Burghley, Lord Ceremonies and ritual  60, 63, 64, 92, 95–7, 110–11, 132, 137–41, 143, 166, 167, 172, 181, 182, 183–6, 190–1, 197, 200, 204–5, 210, 211–15, 216, 226–7 Chaderton, Laurence  42, 45, 52–3, 54, 66, 67, 73, 82–3, 85, 93, 95, 96–7, 98, 157 Hampton Court Conference  93, 95 presbyterianism  52 Chadwick, Charles  61 Chancellor  19, 21 Charke, William  7–8, 61 Charles I, King  4, 24, 145, 155, 157, 165, 169, 187, 188, 209, 216–17, 218–19, 222–3 Charlton, Kenneth  17 Christ’s College  66, 100–2, 166, 185, 214, 215 church, militant, church triumphant  108–10 Church of England, identity of   5–6, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80–1, 86–7, 115, 127–30, 136–8, 143, 145–6, 159–60, 170, 192–5, 209, 230 Clare College  11, 12, 105, 152, 194–5, 214

Clayton, Richard  50, 59, 65, 73, 84 Coke, Edward  18 Collins, Samuel  106, 107, 139–40, 149, 164–5, 177, 179, 185, 188, 205, 210, 228 sermon on adiaphora  139 Collinson, Patrick  2, 28 Comber, Thomas  165, 175–7, 179, 188, 228 Commissary, University  21 Commencement  10, 15, 83, 90, 112–13, 154–5, 156, 171, 208, 211 Common Disorders in the University  183–6 Como, David  4 n.12 Concio ad clerum  15 Concupiscence  177–8, 179, 180, 182 Confession, auricular  174–9, 201, 203 Consistory court see University discipline Contra-Remonstrants  119 Copcot, John  55 Corbett, Clement  104 Corpus Christi College  12, 184–5, 194, 215, 227 Corro, Antonio  69 Cosin, John  135–9, 142–3, 163–4, 176, 177, 178–9, 180, 184, 190–1, 197–9, 205–7, 210–12, 228 Great St Mary’s  211–12 Peter Smart  190, 197, 206 popery  136 sermon at White’s consecration 136–8 sin  135 works  135–6 Costello, William  65–66 Cowell, John  89, 97 Crashaw, Richard  6, 207, 213, 228 Creswell, Robert  23, 199–205 Cressy, David  4 n.15, 6 n.22 Comwell, Oliver  225–6 Cudworth, Ralph  107 Curle, Walter  120 Curriculum  12–15 Davenant, John  90, 105–6, 107–10, 120, 124–6, 127–8, 134–5, 144, 149–50, 158, 159, 192–4 atonement  107, 125 church militant  109 court sermon  192–3 foreknowledge  108 Davies, Julian  4, 35–6 Degrees  14–15 Digby, Everard  49

Disputations. disputation theses  14, 65, 90, 101, 112, 152, 154–5, 164, 171, 180–1, 210–11 Donne, John  35, 40, 129 Dorislaus, Isaac  155 Dort, Synod of   124–6 Downham, George  85 Dowsing, William  217, 226–7 ‘Dumb dogs’  62, 63 Duncon, Eleazer  157, 168, 180, 182, 210 Duport, John  54, 73 Durham House Group  135, 136, 140–1, 149, 153, 171 Eden, Thomas  152, 155, 164–5, 177, 187, 205, 228 Edwards, Thomas  156, 163 Election see predestination Eliot, Sir John  162 Elizabeth I, Queen  24, 79–80, 82, 90 Ellis, John  217–18 Emmanuel College  12, 16, 52–3, 66, 95, 96–7, 185, 186, 194, 215, 227 Evelyn, John  9 Ex officio mero  22 Experimental predestination, experimental Calvinism  3, 34 Fall, the  47–8, 57–8 Featley, Daniel  142, 143–4 Fellow-Commoner  13 Felton, Nicholas  106, 114, 150 Ferne, Henry  223–4, 229 Field, Richard  203 Fincham, Kenneth  3 Flathers, Wiliam  171 Frank, Mark  221–2, 228 Free will  118 Fulke, William  45, 53, 59, 67 Fuller, Thomas  25, 36, 194 Garnans  154 Garters, suicide by  9 Gatford, Lionel  170, 225–6 Geneva  28, 42, 49 Gerhard, Johann  158, 183 Gibbert  181 Goad, Christopher  214 Goad, Roger  41, 54, 67, 73, 80, 82–3, 90 Goad, Thomas  120, 124, 126, 142 Goche (Gooch), Barnabas  90 God, decrees of, 32, 39, 47–8, 79, 117–18 and evil  80

Index   253 foreknowledge of   48, 67–8, 72, 81, 117–18, 121 grace of   27–40, 57–8 will of   67–9, 80–1 Golden Chain  31–32 Gonville and Caius College  13, 56, 66, 102–3, 152, 184–5, 214–15 Gostlin, John  102, 106, 126, 148 Gray, Hugh  62–3, 163 Great St Mary’s  8, 184, 187 sermons in  7, 20, 50, 61, 62, 71–2, 80, 91, 98–99, 101, 167–8, 170–1, 172, 173, 174–5, 176, 179, 190, 199, 210, 216, 218, 219 Grotius, Hugo  104, 120, 121, 135 Gwynne, Owen  105, 148 Hall, Joseph  124 Hampton Court Conference  92–95 Harrison, James  112 Harrison, William  8 Harsnett, Samuel  67–9, 72, 90, 98, 114, 193 Hausted, Peter  20–3, 172–4, 210 Heads of House  19–20, 21, 23, 24, 55, 64 and elections  89–90, 100–1, 102–6, 187–8 and faction  71, 84–6, 152, 155, 158, 164, 167, 188 Hemmingius, Hemmingsen, Niels  81, 86 Henchman, Humphrey  132 Herbert, George  6, 38–9, 40, 183 Herrick, Robert  13 Heton, Martin  98 Heylyn, Peter  126–8 Hickman, Henry  127–8 Hieron, Samuel  111–12 High Steward  21 Higham, Florence  139 Hills, John  103, 107 Hobson, Thomas  10 Holdsworth, Richard  165–6, 176, 187–8, 205, 207–9, 217–20, 224 Commencement oration  208–9 sermon 1642  218–19 Holy Sepulchre, the Round Church  227 Holy Trinity Church  103, 157, 214 Homilies, see Book of Homilies Hooker, Richard  35, 40, 67, 140 Hooper, John  40 Hound, Edmund  55, 56 Howorth, John  180, 210 Infralapsarianism  47–8, 67, 79, 80–1, 108, 125

254   Index Innovations in Religion  209–15 James I, King  24, 92–6, 100–1, 120, 121–5, 129, 131–4 Jeffray, John  157 Jegon, John  24, 54–5, 73, 82–3 Jegon, Thomas  90 Jesus College  185–6, 194, 214, 222–3 Jewel, John  35, 40, 179 Johnson, Francis  60–1, 66, 67, 163 Judas Iscariot  48, 220 Justification see works, good Kendall, R.T.  34 Kercher, Robert  112–13 King’s College  105, 184–5, 194, 214, 215 Knewstubb, John  93 Knight, John  134 Knox, Eleazer  50, 62 Knyvett, Thomas  13 Lake, Arthur  131 Lake, Peter  3, 43, 51, 55, 72, 77 Lake, Sir Thomas  96 Lambeth Articles  33, 77–82, 85, 94–5, 149 Lane, Robert  187 Laney, Benjamin  20, 164, 168, 170, 171, 173, 177, 188, 205, 228 Latimer, Hugh  40 Laud, William  3, 4, 5, 155, 163, 164, 186–7, 188 Laudianism  3–5, 26, 189 Legge, Thomas  55, 56, 102 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of   53 Leiden  115, 119 Limited Atonement  34, 51–2, 65, 68–9, 107, 117, 125, 154 Little Gidding  210 Love, Richard  20, 22, 23, 24, 166, 170–3, 176–7, 187, 189, 205, 215, 228 Lucy, William  13, 155–6 Luther, Lutheranism  26, 40, 63, 85–6 Magdalene College  11, 12, 19, 147, 194, 222, 225 Maltby, Judith  4 n.17 Manchester, Edward Montagu, Earl of   226, 227–8 Mansell, John  134, 148, 152 Mapletoft, Robert  210, 228 Martin, Edward  20, 22, 164, 170, 171, 172–3, 175, 177, 179, 187, 205, 214, 217, 223, 228 Mawe, Leonard  106, 147–8, 152, 189

Mede, Joseph  9, 147–8, 156, 158, 189–92 Melanchthon, Philip  30–1, 81, 104, 128, 157 Loci Communes  30–1 Meriton, George  105 Millen, John  61 Millenary Petition  92 Milton, Anthony  5, 109, 141 Minshull, Richard  228 Montaigne, George  105, 147 Montagu, James  60, 83, 84, 103 Montagu, Richard  141–5, 160–1 Morgan, Victor  12, 20, 104, 147 Mullinger, James Bass  148 Music  64, 167, 185, 213, 214 Naylor, Joseph  163 Neile, Richard  115, 135, 154, 157 Neville, (Clement?)  180 Neville, Thomas  12, 17, 55, 56 Newcome  133 Newton, Fogge  105 Nicholls, Richard  198–9 Non-Regents  18 Non-residence  61, 91 Normanton, John  173, 210 Norton, John  197–9 Norwich, William  23, 199–205, 210 Novell, John  210–11 Nowell, Alexander  44–5 Origen  26 Overall, John  82–4, 86, 93–5, 112–13, 127–8, 135 Hampton Court Conference  93–5 perseverance  82–3, 94–5 Owen, David  132 Palmer, John  59–60 Paraeus, David  134 Parliament  161–3, 196–8, 206–11, 215–18, 223, 225, 227–8 Parliamentary Visitation  222, 227–8 Paske, Thomas  147–8, 152, 157, 165, 177, 228 Pearson, John  228–9 Pemberton, William  100 Pembroke College  53, 114–15, 168, 214, 227, 228 Penance  180, 200–1, 203 Pensioner  13 Perkins, William  25, 29, 30, 31–2, 33, 34, 46, 51, 63–5, 67–8, 99, 117, 127–8 Golden Chaine  64 Perne, Andrew  9, 50

Perseverance  33, 46, 58–9, 78, 79, 82–3, 93–5 Peter, St.  48 Peterhouse  50–1, 103, 185, 194, 197–8, 212–13, 228 Plague  9–10 Playfere, Thomas  82 Pocklington, John  1–2, 113–15, 150, 181, 207, 210 Altare Christianum  207–8 Sunday no Sabbath  207–8 Popery, papists  49, 66, 86, 102, 114, 136, 163, 173, 198–9, 206 Porter, Harry  77 Power, Wiliam  224 Preachers and preaching  60–1, 62, 63, 74, 88, 91, 131, 137, 139, 146, 168, 210 Predestination  3–6, 28–40, 45–6, 47–9, 57, 65–6, 67–70, 71–83, 96, 107–10, 116–26, 135–6, 146, 154, 169–70, 192–4 Preferment  24–25 Presbyterianism  37, 49, 50–1, 60, 61, 67 Preston, John  105, 110, 133–4, 144, 148, 153, 157 Preston, Thomas  54, 73 Price, John  214 Proctors  19, 22 Projecte  21 Prynne, William  40, 115, 126–8, 145, 158, 159–60, 175 Pullen, John  179, 210 Puritanism  3–4, 25–40, 150, 182 Moderate Puritanism  3, 51, 53, 55, 72 Pym, John  162, 196 Quarles, Edward  154–5 Queens’ College  13, 105–6, 133, 185, 194, 214, 222–3, 227 Querela Cantabrigiensis  224, 230 Rainbow, Edward  228 Reformation, attitudes to  61–2, 66–67, 208 Reformed orthodoxy  32, 33, 34, 38, 59 Regents  14, 18, 19 Registrary  20, 21 Remonstrants  119–20, 124 Remonstrance  119 Reynolds, John  93 Richardson, John  67, 103–4, 106, 120, 123, 128, 132 Riley, Thomas  174, 179 Robson, Simon  82

Index   255 Rogers, Thomas  76–7 Romans, the Epistle to  116, 122–3 Rome, attitudes to  4, 35, 41–3, 44, 63, 65, 73, 107, 136–8, 141–3, 167–8, 171, 176, 205 Rous, Francis  196, 206 Rudd, John  63, 66, 86, 163 Rudyerd, Benjamin 162 Rush, Nicholas  98–100, 163 Sacraments  59, 61, 180, 197 St Andrew’s Church  98, 156, 187 St Bene’t’s Church  187 St Botolph’s Church  133 St Catharine’s College  82, 103, 194, 215 St Clement’s Church  187 St Giles’ Church  187 St John’s College  11, 12, 49–50, 185, 186, 187–8, 213–14, 222–3, 228 Salisbury, Robert Cecil, Earl of (Viscount Cranborne)  17, 20, 85, 96, 97, 100, 102 Sancroft, William (d.1637)  20, 153, 154, 171, 172, 187, 188 Sancroft William (1617–1693)  194, 215 Scot, Robert  105 Senate  19 Sharpe, Kevin  4 Sheffield, Samson  62 Shelford, Robert  182–3 Sibbes, Richard  103, 106, 112, 113, 120, 148, 153, 165, 171, 187 Sidney Sussex College  1, 11, 12, 16, 66, 103, 104, 181, 185, 186, 194, 215, 227 Simpson, Edward  121–23, 154 Sin, doctrines of   27, 34, 135, 175 Sizar  13 Smart, Peter  190, 197 Smith, William  89, 105, 106 Smyth, Henry  147–8, 153, 154–5, 165, 174, 187, 188 Socinianism  123 Some, Robert  41, 42–3, 50–2, 53, 55, 73, 74–5, 83, 84, 85, 90, 103 atonement  51–2 presbyterianism  50–1 Sparrow, Anthony  174–6 Spurr, John  29, 38 Stephens, Thomas  219–20 Sterne, Richard  164, 177, 184, 187, 188, 205, 210, 223, 228 Still, John  54 Strong, William  188–9 Student numbers  10, 12 Sturbridge Fair  10

256   Index Subscription  67, 96, 97, 98, 110–11, 113, 216 Suffolk, Theophilus Howard, Earl of   148 Suffolk, Thomas Howard, Earl of   18 Supralapsarianism  47–8, 65, 79, 80–1 Surplice, use of   95, 96–7, 111 Sydall, William  112 Tabor, James  209, 230 Taylor, Thomas  23, 91–2 Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion  73, 74, 93, 151, 159, 162, 171, 177–8, 181, 201–2 Thomson, Richard  119, 145 Three Articles  96, 113 Tourney, John  168, 170–1, 210 Travers, Elias  13 Trevelyan, G.M.  54 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, Lord Dacre  164 Trinity College  11, 12, 147, 184–5, 195, 214, 228 Trinity Hall  104–5, 194, 214 Turner, Thomas  106, 112 Tutors  12–13 Twigg, John  166, 187, 209, 228 Twisse, William  191–2 Tyacke, Nicholas  2–3, 28, 36, 76, 77, 106, 142, 151, 169, 177 Tyndall, Humphrey  55, 73, 90, 105 University Church see Great St Mary’s University discipline  20–3 University government  14–15, 18–23, 25 University Press  25, 64–5, 85, 111, 157–8, 182–3 University privilege  11–12 University statutes  18 Ussher, James  149, 183

Vice-Chancellor  19 Vindiciae contra Tyrannos  134 Vorstius, Conrad  120, 123 Walsall, Samuel  106, 148 Walton, Brian  179 Ward, Samuel  24, 39, 66, 88–9, 97, 98, 104, 110, 124–8, 134, 149–51, 154–5, 159, 163, 165, 171, 172, 177, 179, 187, 193, 205, 211 atonement  125–6 perseverance  149 Synod of Dort  124–6 Watson, George  91 Watson, Richard  220–1 Webster, Tom  4 n.12 Welles, Thomas  126 Whitaker, William  39, 41–2, 43, 44–7, 49–50, 53, 55, 64, 65, 67, 72–3, 84, 85, 127–8 predestination  45–6, 72 presbyterianism  46, 49 White, Francis  129, 136, 201–3 White, Peter  40, 77 Whitgift, John  37, 39, 40, 43, 45, 51, 61, 69, 73–84, 88 Willet, Andrew  64, 66, 111, 158 Winterton, Ralph  158 Works, good  142, 171, 180, 182, 200–5, 210 Wren, Matthew  20, 24, 114–15, 140, 147–8, 150–2, 155, 158, 161, 170, 187, 223 Yates, John  111, 120–1, 142 York House Conference  144 Young, John  131 Zanchius, Hieronymus  72, 81, 157