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Another Side of “Thorough”: John Cosin and Administration, Discipline, and Finance in the Church of England, 1624–1644
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
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The policy of “Thorough,” the effort at greater efficiency in church and state during the reign of Charles I, is usually regarded as a leading cause of the dissatisfaction that led to civil war. Lawrence Stone has described its objective as “a deferential, strictly hierarchical, socially stable, paternalist absolutism based on a close union of Church and Crown.” To G. E. Aylmer, the king's principal ministers, archbishop Laud and the earl of Strafford, were trying to achieve “more efficient government, and more effective central authority.” Both scholars agree that the methods used to accomplish these goals were of questionable legality. Aylmer credits the two leading protagonists of “Thorough” with good intentions, “cleaner as well as more efficient and absolute government”; but Stone points to the exasperating effect of the policy by noting that “Every aspect of economic life suffered from the feverish interference of bureaucracy whose sole objective seemed to be the extortion of money by the imposition of petty and irritating regulations.” Though these scholars discuss “Thorough” only in terms of its secular aspect, Christopher Hill has devoted considerable space to its ecclesiastical adherents, or to the possible impact that “Thorough” might have had at particular levels of the church bureaucracy.
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