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John Paget of Amsterdam: Champion of English Presbyterianism-in-Exile
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
John Paget (c. 1574–1638), head pastor of the English Reformed Church of Amsterdam from 1607–1637, helped to shape the future of Presbyterianism. Exiled from England for nonconformity, Paget embraced the cosmopolitanism and religious toleration of his new city, studying Hebrew and Arabic in a multicultural circle of scholars. When the plague struck Amsterdam, he preached sermons on death and visited members in infected homes. When it came to Protestant English exiles, his own tolerance ran short. His strict interpretation of Presbyterian governance met with challenges from Separatists and Puritans advocating for independent congregations (Thomas Hooker and John Davenport), and some of his own congregants who wished for more democracy in church matters. The controversy in Holland, especially via polemical publications, influenced England and America. His last years of ministry were marred by a group known as “The Complainants,” who attempted to unseat him. He relied on his relationship with the Dutch Reformed Church and the city magistrates to maintain his own position and turn away opponents. While his contentiousness dampened his influence and diminished his reputation, nevertheless, Paget was a key agent in the survival of Presbyterianism when it could not flourish in early 17th-century England.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History
Footnotes
†
Keith L. Sprunger drafted this manuscript shortly before he died in 2022. His daughter Mary S. Sprunger completed the article. Based on reviewer suggestions, she made substantial revisions while seeking to retain his voice.
References
1 The window was the project of the Holland Pilgrim Fathers Commission of Leiden in 1920 and was paid for by Edward Bok, a wealthy American of Dutch descent. On the church exterior is the American-sponsored bronze tablet honoring the Separatists (who have been folded into Congregational church history), given by the Chicago Congregational Club in 1909. Stadsarchief Amsterdam (hereafter SAA), Particular Archive (hereafter PA) 318, English Reformed Church Archive (hereafter ERCA), inventory no. 134 “The Pilgrim Fathers,” and inv. no. 135, “The Pilgrim Window.”
2 The caption of a Begijnhof photo on Wikimedia Commons reads, “English Reformed Church—From here the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World,” accessed 24 Dec. 2024, at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amsterdam_-_Begijnhof_-_View_WSW_along_Engelse_Kerk_-_English_Reformed_Church_-_From_here_the_Pilgrim_Fathers_set_sail_for_the_New_World.jpg.
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6 Carter argued this position in “John Paget and the English Reformed Church of Amsterdam,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 70 (1957): 358.
7 Carter, English Reformed Church, 53. Handbury, Benjamin, Historical Monuments of the Independents, or Congregationalists (London, 1830), 1:324 Google Scholar. The latter two descriptions of Paget (“violent antipathies” and “Presbyterian watchdog”) come from Stearns, Raymond P., The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter 1598–1660 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1954), 54 Google Scholar and Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands (Chicago: The American Society of Church History, 1940), 16. Carter, who gave a positive view of Paget, observed that the criticism came mainly from Congregational-minded historians.
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12 The Paget family did have some friendly connections with Scotland, through visits and letters with David Calderwood of Edinburgh. Thomas Paget, John’s brother, visited Edinburgh after being suspended from ministry in 1631. Examples of these Scottish connections are found in John Paget’s letters to David Calderwood of Edinburgh in 1636–1637 regarding printing books: Paget noted that Thomas Paget, his brother, had visited (or found refuge) at the home of Calderwood, apparently after Thomas was removed from preaching in England in 1631. The Paget letters to Calderwood also state that John and Thomas were brothers, Wodrow MS, folio XLII, fols. 253, 254, National Library of Scotland.
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16 A Primer of Christian Religion, or a Forme of Catechising (London: John Harison for Thomas Man, 1601).
17 Hall, History of Nantwich, 295. Briget’s first marriage was to George Thrushe. He died in 1601, buried in November; Briget married John Paget three months later, 8 Feb. 1602.
18 Kate Aughterson, “Paget [née Masterson], Briget,” ODNB, 2004; Ha, English Presbyterianism, 175.
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21 Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death.
22 Thomas Paget was removed from his church in 1631, but the date when he crossed over to Holland is uncertain. By Nov. of 1639 the Amsterdam church reported his being at Dort. It is likely he spent some time after 1631 in Edinburgh with David Calderwood during his suspension, History of Nantwich, 296; and Earwaker, East Chester, 1:390-91.
23 Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 184–186, 438–439. About Thomas Paget at Dort, see ERCA inv. no. 3, “Consistory Register III,” 12 Nov. 1639, hereafter CR.
24 John, Thomas, and Robert all wrote in favor of Presbyterianism and against the hierarchical Episcopal system. A selection of their views is found in Paget, John, A Defence of Church-Government, Exercised in Presbyteriall, Classicall, and Synodal Assemblies; According to the Practise of the Reformed Churches… (London: H.A. for Thomas Underhill, 1641)Google Scholar. The main body of the book is prefaced by Thomas Paget, “Humble Advice to Parliament” and Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Christian Reader.”
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26 Hansen, Gary Neal, “Sixteenth-Century Origins,” in The Oxford Handbook of Presbyterianism, 9 Google Scholar.
27 Parker, Charles H., Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572-1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 111 Google Scholar.
28 Ha, English Presbyterianism, 144–177.
29 Carter, English Reformed Church, 17–24; Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 45.
30 Israel, Jonathan, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 309 Google Scholar, discusses the way Dutch cities absorbed immigrants successfully, mostly referring to jobs and housing.
31 Janssen, Geert H., “Migration,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age, ed. Helmers, Helmer J. and Janssen, Geert H. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 49–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Israel, Dutch Republic, 307–318, 328; Howell, James, Epistolae Ho-Elianae. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren, 2nd ed. (London, 1650), I, 11 Google Scholar.
33 The notion of a Golden Age has recently been critiqued for its origins in colonial cruelty, exploitation and slave trading. For recent summaries of the Dutch economic rise, see Danielle van den Heuvel, “A Market Economy,” in Helmers and Janssen, Dutch Golden Age, 149–65; and Onnekink, David and Rommelse, Gijs, The Dutch in the Early Modern World: A History of a Global Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 22–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 An excellent overview of religious toleration in the Low Countries is Christine Kooi, Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 133–139, 170–178.
35 Sprunger, Keith and Sprunger, Mary, “The Church in the Bakehouse: John Smyth’s English Anabaptist Congregation at Amsterdam, 1609–1660,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 85 no. 2 (2011): 229–233 Google Scholar and 234–244. The Pagets owned two houses on the Carter, Runstraat., English Reformed Church, 25 Google Scholar, n. 30.
36 Waite, Gary K. in Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531–1660 (n.l.: Pandora Press, 2023), 192–194 Google Scholar, has recently shown that “Anabaptist” was a pejorative term often used inaccurately in English religious writing, connoting exaggeration and untruths. More analysis of Paget’s use of the term could be an avenue of further study; however, since he overlapped with John Smyth’s and Thomas Helwys’s time in Amsterdam, and there were indeed meetings of English Doopsgezinden and what would later be viewed as Baptists in the city, Paget no doubt had these actual groups in mind when he used this term.
37 Paget used the label “English Orthodoxicall Church” in ERCA, inv. nos. 85 and 86, “Alphabetical Membership Registers.”
38 CR I, 5 Feb. 1607.
39 For more details on the English classis and Paget’s opposition to it, as well as his relationship with the Dutch classis, see Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 94–95, 289–294, 299.
40 Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death.
41 Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Christian Reader.” Briget Paget gave similar fulsome praise: see Briget’s dedication to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia in Meditations of Death.
42 The church records provide some information about the numbers of English people. By 1623 the English Reformed Church membership was 450; in addition, Paget estimated that in 1618 there were also 300–400 active Separatists in the city. Some were not members of any church, a situation typical of the Dutch setting. Carter, English Reformed Church, 116; and Paget, Arrow, “To the Christian Reader.” On the Anglican church, see Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 406–407.
43 Carter, English Reformed Church, 116–117; Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 93–95.
44 Paget, Defence, 105.
45 CR III, 29 Dec. 1632.
46 Brereton, William, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: Chetham Society, 1844), 52 Google Scholar; John Morrill, “Brereton, Sir William, First Baronet (1604–1661),” ODNB, 2004.
47 Aughterson, “Paget, Briget.”
48 CR III, 12 Nov. 1639.
49 Edwards’s confession of his Presbyterian-Reformed faith (17 and 27 Dec. 1647) and his last will and testament (3 Feb. 1648) are in Appendix II of Carter, English Reformed Church. 201, 202. He declared, “I die in the faith of the Reformed Churches” and against “the sects and errors.”
50 ERCA, inv. no. 81, “Baptism Register, 1607–1625,” fol. 1.
51 Carter, English Reformed Church, 157-160. According to Herman Roodenburg, Onder censuur: De kerklijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578–1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1990), 335–336, restrictions on sabbath activities were minimal and applied at first only to small-scale selling of wares. Civic laws were added in 1624 to restrict trade and work, and dancing and going to taverns, among other activities, were banned until after noon on Sundays. For an example of Mennonite discipline, which included censure of bearing arms and oath-swearing but not Sabbatarianism, see Sprunger, , “Mennonites and Sectarian Poor Relief in Golden-Age Amsterdam,” in Safley, Thomas Max, ed., The Reformation of Chrity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief (Boston: Brill, 2003), 150–151 Google Scholar.
52 Articles XI, XII, Synod of North Holland, 1618, copied into the CR I, 16 Oct. 1619. See Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 377–381; and Carter, English Reformed Church, 174–177.
53 CR III, 5 Feb. 1686.
54 CR II, 30 Nov. 1622; and CR III, 24 Feb. 1635.
55 On “exercizing of gifts,” see, for example, Thomas Hooker’s preaching at the English Reformed Church in June 1631, CR III, 13.
56 Opinion of William Best, quoted in Paget, Answer, 103.
57 Meditations of Death (Dort: Henry Ash, 1639), 7. Dutch versions appeared in 1641 and 1661.
58 Meditations of Death, 154, 174, 207, 210–212.
59 SAA, PA 5075, Notarial Archive Amsterdam, inv. no. 719, notary Pieter Carelsz, 19 April 1625, p. 132.
60 Ronald Rommes has shown that plague continued to kill even between notable plague years; see Fig. 1 in “Plague in Northwestern Europe: The Dutch Experience, 1350–1670,” Popolazione e storia 16 no. 2 (2015): 51, 55–57, https://popolazioneestoria.it/article/viewFile/705/674. In Utrecht, for example, plague led to excess mortality from 1623 to 1625 but then continued until 1632, before the next major onslaught in 1635.
61 Meditations of Death, 21–25.
62 McNeill, William H., Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor Books, 1976), 179 Google Scholar.
63 Noordegraaf, Leo and De gave Gods, Gerrit Valk. De pest in Holland vanaf de late middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1996)Google Scholar, bijlage 3; and Israel, Dutch Republic, 624; Rommes, “Plague in Northwestern Europe,” 61.
64 Paget described some of his plague experiences in his Answer to the Unjust Complaints, 4, 95–97.
65 Carter, English Reformed Church, 115–116.
66 Answer to the Unjust Complaints, 96–97; Carter, English Reformed Church, 94–95. Rulice (Johannes Rulitius) was German but English-speaking, and selected by the consistory partly because he could also speak Dutch; he served the English church from 1636 to 1639, when he was transferred to the German Reformed church in Amsterdam.
67 Paget, Answer, 96–97; Carter, English Reformed Church, 39.
68 John Paget died before finishing his book; his nephew, Robert Paget finished the editing and published Meditations of Death in the name of his uncle. See “The Publisher to the Reader.” The 1641 edition was published at Dort by Michael Feeremans and printed by Hendrick van Esch; for the 1661 edition also at Dort, Nicolaes Geerlingh was the publisher, and Nicolaes de Vries was the printer. The translator into Dutch was E.D.I.S (Josua Sand). For information on this and other books of piety, see the work of F. W. Huisman and the online source, Pietas Online.
69 Paget to David Alderwood, June 16, 1636, Wodrow MS, folio XLII.; fol. 254; and Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death.
70 Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death.
71 Paget, Robert, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death; and van den Berg, J., Joden en Christenen in Nederland gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1969), 38 Google Scholar.
72 van Dalen, Dorrit, “Johannes Theunisz and ’Abd al-’Azīz: A Friendship in Arabic Studies in Amsterdam, 1609–1610,” Lias, 43 no. 1 (2016):166–168 Google Scholar. The inscription was in Arabic.
73 Kooi, “Religious Tolerance,” in Helmers and Janssen, Dutch Golden Age, 220-1. Kaplan, Benjamin J. has examined this in Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard’s Belknap Press, 2007), 237–265 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
74 For more on Paget’s intellectual activities in Amsterdam, see Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower: English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands 1600–1640 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), chap. 3; Paget, Arrow, 339.
75 Waite, Gary K., Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse: From Religious Enemies to Allies and Friends (London: Routledge, 2019), 117–118 Google Scholar; Kooi, “Religious Tolerance,” 211–212, 226–232.
76 On Ainsworth’s skill in Hebrew, see Katchen, Aaron L., Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1984), 35 Google Scholar; and Wijnman, W. F., “De Beoefening der wetenschappen te Amsterdam voor de oprichting van het Athenaeum in 1632,” in Zeven eeuwen Amsterdam, ed. d’Ailly, A. E. (Amsterdam: s.a.), 2:437–443 Google Scholar. His commentaries on the five books of Moses appeared as five individual volumes, 1616–1619, printed by Giles Thorp, a fellow Separatist member, and then in a combined edition in 1627.
77 The reference to the Brownist church as only a vergadering is found in the minutes of the Dutch Reformed consistory: SAA, PA 376, Archief van de Hervormde Gemeente; Kerkenraad, inv. no. 3, fols. 53, 10 and 17 Feb. 1600 (hereafter Acta Kerkeraad).
78 Paget, Arrow, 159–160.
79 Waite, Jews and Muslims, 119; Evenhuis, R. B., Ook dat was Amsterdam (Amsterdam: W. Ten Have, 1967), 2:167–178 Google Scholar; Nadler, Steven, Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 17–18 Google Scholar.
80 Paget, Arrow, 106, 138.
81 Paget, Arrow, 339.
82 On the relationship between the Amsterdam government and the Reformed Church see Parker, Reformation of Community, 171–174.
83 Kooi, Reformation in the Low Countries, 170; Evenhuis, 2:167.
84 Paget, Defence, 29.
85 Paget, Answer, 86.
86 Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, 1:205.
87 Thomas Paget, “Humble Advertisement,” Defence.
88 Paget, Defence, 63.
89 The claim that Defence was the most thorough book on Presbyterianism came from Robert Paget in his preface to the book, “The Publisher to the Christian Reader.” A more recent and less biased assessment, while not including the book among the top list of books to influence English Presbyterianism in the 1640s, nevertheless named it as an “influential posthumous treatise for Presbyterian church government.” Vernon, Elliot, “Presbyterians in the English Revolution,” in The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, vol. 1: The Post-Reformation Era, c. 1559-c. 1689, ed. by Coffey, John (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 55–56 Google Scholar.
90 Thomas Paget’s anti-episcopal preface, “Humble Advertisement to the High Court of Parliament,” fol. 3, pronounced “woe.” Robert Paget’s preface is “The Publisher to the Christian Reader.” Robert also added material at several points to finish out the incomplete parts. For more on printing and Laud, see Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, 22.
91 Thomas Paget, still in Amsterdam at this point, spoke into a political and religious debate in his home county of Cheshire, advocating for Presbyterianism as a middle ground between the opposing options of episcopacy and Congregationalism. Urwick, William, et al, Historical Sketches of nonconformity in the County Palatine of Chester by Various Ministers and Laymen in the County (London: Kent & Co., 1864), xvi Google Scholar; Winship, Michael P., “Straining the Bonds of Puritanism: English Presbyterians and the Massachusetts Congregationalists Debate Ecclesiology, 1636–1640,” in Puritans and Catholics in the Trans-Atlantic World 1600–1800, ed. Gribben, Crawford and Spurlock, Scott (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 105 Google Scholar.
92 Paget, Answer, 52; Davenport reported that Paget “has been heard to say” that he was weak in Dutch, An Apologeticall Reply to a Booke Called An Answer To the Unjust Complaint of W. B. (Rotterdam: Isaack van Waesberghe, 1636), 92.
93 Paget, Defence, 29–30, 44–49.
94 Paget, Arrow, preface.
95 Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, chap. 3; Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, 84–101.
96 Critical comment by Robert Paget, in Defence, 241.
97 Kooi, Reformation in the Low Countries, 162; Carter, The English Reformed Church, 82.
98 Ainsworth, quoted in Paget, Arrow, 4v.
99 From Paget’s notes in the Baptism Register, ERCA, inv. no. 81, 1607–1625.
100 See, for example, the action of the Dutch Reformed Church of Amsterdam, in Acta Kerkeraad, III, fols. 53, 10 and 17 Feb. 1600.
101 CR, I, 14 Oct. 1615; II, 18 Aug. 1621.
102 Carter, English Reformed Church, 59.
103 On the English Synod, see Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, chap. 11.
104 Robert Paget, “Publisher to the Christian Reader,” and John Paget, Defence, 29–30; John Paget, Answer, preface and p. 72.
105 In 1607, at the founding of the church, congregational votes were taken. They elected three elders and three deacons “by the most voyces of the whole congregations,” but this practice does not seem to have been continued. CR I, 12 May 1607. The same six officers served for at least five years. According to Carter, 28, the procedure was not “regularized” until 1632.
106 Paget, Answer, 19–20; CR II, 7 Feb. 1624.
107 CR II, 5 Oct. 1622; 28 Feb., 12 June, 3 July 1624; III, 23 Aug. 1628.
108 The records of this case were spread over many meetings of the consistory register. See especially CR II, 6 Feb. and 7 Feb. 1625 and 4 Mar. 1626; also SAA, PA 379, Archief van de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk; Classis Amsterdam, inv. no. 3, fol. 66v, 67r, 68r, 23 Mar. and 6 April 1626 (hereafter Acta Classis). For more on the Webster case, see Sprunger, “English Puritan Women of Amsterdam at Worship and Work 1600–1640,” in Gericht Verleden: Kerkhistorische opstellen aangeboden aan prof. dr. W. Nijenhuis…, ed. Chr. G. F. de Jong and J. Van Sluis (Leiden: J.J. Groen en Zoon, 1991), 87–89.
109 CR III, 25 June 1633.
110 Ha, English Presbyterianism, chap. 7: “Popular Presbyterianism,” and p. 186.
111 Paget, Answer, preface and p. 24.
112 Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death.
113 Paget, Answer, 69–70.
114 Paget, Answer, 105. Paget’s time of troubles of the 1630s is discussed in several books. From Paget’s side, by Robert Paget in his “Publisher to the Reader” (Meditations of Death, 1639) and by Paget himself in Answer to the Unjust Complaints (1635), especially 102–106. The Complainants gave their side in William Best, The Churches Plea for Her Right (London, 1635), and John Davenport, A Ivst Complaint against an Vnivst Doer (s.n., 1634) and Apologeticall Reply.
115 The “classis ackt” (Oct. 6, 1631) against Hooker is recorded in the church consistory record, CR III, 13 Oct. 1631; and Paget, Answer, 23–24. For Paget’s 20 Questions, CR III, 5 Nov. 1631, fols. 13–18; also Carter, English Reformed Church, 189–200; and Stearns, Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands, 105-113. For more on the Hooker controversy, see Sprunger, “The Dutch Career of Thomas Hooker,” New England Quarterly 46 (March 1973): 17–44 and Carter, English Reformed Church, 78–79, 191. Ha called Hooker a “proto-Congregationalist,” English Presbyterianism, 111. Much later (1702), Cotton Mather quoted Hooker as rejecting the Brownists in his response to Paget, Robbins, Thoms, ed., Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford: Silas Andrus & Son, 1853–1855), 1: 339 Google Scholar.
116 Paget, Answer, 36–39, 54–57, for his controversy with Davenport. For Paget’s earlier efforts against Ames and Forbes, see 27–28. See also Carter, English Reformed Church, 76–83 and Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 102–120. For a more recent study of Davenport at Amsterdam, Bremer, Francis J., Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), chap. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Dutch Reformed Church, an inclusive baptizing and marriage policy was a compromise struck with the States of Holland as religious and secular authorities vied for power, Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 86, 419–420.
117 Paget, Answer, 83.
118 Stephen Brachlow noted the significance of nonconformist exiles like Hooker in the Netherlands: “Carried into practice in Holland, the theoretical literature of Elizabethan and Jacobean radicals thus spawned a small but vigorous experiment in congregational autonomy during the 1620s and 1630s,” providing “yet another avenue of practical experience for the emergence of Independency and the Congregational Way in Old and New England of the 1640s.” The Communion of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 213.
119 Paget, Answer, 105.
120 Paget was greatly offended by the book; its very title, he complained, is “Brownisticall.” Paget, Answer, see the preface and 82–83, 92–94. For more on Best, see Carter, English Reformed Church, 30, 122.
121 The Complainants gave more of their side in William Best, The Churches Plea for Her Right (London, 1635), and John Davenport, A Just Complaint (1634), 20–21, and Apologeticall Reply (1636). From Paget came Answer to the Unjust Complaints (1635) and Defence of Church Government (1641) published posthumously.
122 Davenport, Just Complaint, 17 (mislabeled as p. 19); Paget, Answer, 102.
123 CR III, 30 Jan.1636 (on Thomas Adams); ERCA, inv. no. 27, Thomas Adams letter to the consistory, 30 Jan. 1636; Davenport, Just Complaint, 20–21; Paget, Answer, 102–105.
124 Paget, Answer, 21, 92.
125 CR III, 30 Jan. and 6 Feb. 1636. Samuel Eaton, after being removed from his church in Cheshire, went to the Netherlands, c. 1635, then on to New England where he served with John Davenport at New Haven. Later he returned to England to serve several Congregational churches; see Nuttall, Geoffrey F., Visible Saints (Oxford: Basil Blackwood, 1957), 31 Google Scholar.
126 Paget, Answer, 58, 112–114.
127 Paget, Answer, 131.
128 CR I, 4 Feb. 1607, fol. 1.
129 CR III, under date 5 Nov. 1631, 19.
130 The classis repeatedly backed Paget against the church. See Acta Classis IV, 9r, 9v, 10r, 6 Oct. 1631; 11v, 13 Oct. 1631; 19r, 5 April 1632; the pro-Paget classis “ackt” against Hooker was copied into the English CR III, 19; Carter, English Reformed Church, 76–87.
131 The English church entered a long report of its view of congregation and classis actions, CR III, 5 Nov. 1631, 12–22. The classis “depriveth the church of its dew power.” See also Acta Classis, IV, 11v, 13 Oct. 1631. The phrase “muyl binding” is not found in the Oxford English Dictionary but based on context it seems to refer to a muzzling or silencing.
132 Stearns, Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands, 68. Winship discusses Paget’s collaboration, calling it part of his “uphill battle to minimize the Congregationalist infection of Holland,” “Straining the Bonds,” 107.
133 Davenport, A Just Complaint, 13; State Papers (hereafter SP) 84, vol. 147, fols. 205–206; vol. 148, fol. 177, Public Records Office, London; Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 114–115.
134 CR III, 21.
135 Carter, English Reformed Church, chap. 5, “The Begynhof Church and the English Congregational Synod in the Netherlands,” and Stearns, Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands, 30, 43, 60–61 and Hugh Peter, 54–55, 89.
136 Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 164–167.
137 Paget saw the “counsell and advice” position as greatly inadequate. See Paget Answer, 84 and Defence, part 2, 30.
138 “The Grievances and Complaints of the Burthened and Oppressed Members of the English Church in Amsterdam. Anno 1634. The 18 of October,” (statement by William Best and the Complainants), included in Davenport, Just Complaint, 21.
139 While in the Netherlands, Hooker wrote to John Cotton, still in England: Mather, Magnalia, 1:339-40; Williams, George et al, Thomas Hooker: Writings in England and Holland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 297 Google Scholar.
140 On Puritanism and the increasing concern for membership purity (especially among Congregationalists) based on high standards of “godliness” and piety, see Brachlow, Communion of Saints, chap. 3, “Church Membership and Saving Faith,” 114–156; and Nuttall, Visible Saints, chap. 4.
141 A short explanation of the Nadere Reformatie is in Parker, “Reformed Protestantism,” in Helmers and Janssen, Dutch Golden Age, 197. A comment by the church elders noted Paget’s unkind actions, CR III, 10 Nov. 1631.
142 Psalm131:2.
143 Matthew Nethenus, “Praefatio Introductoria,” in vol. I of Ames, Opera Omnia (5 vols. Amsterdam: Johannes Jansson, 1658–1661). There is an English version of Nethenus in William Ames, Douglas Horton, trans. (Harvard Divinity School Library, 1965), 20. No copies of this sermon have been found; Nethenus wrote that it was long remembered but did not give us the details of the date and place. The early 1630s, during the Hooker dispute, is the likely setting (before 1633, the year Ames died). See Sprunger, “The Dutch Career of Thomas Hooker,” 34.
144 Carter, “John Paget and the English Reformed Church,” 357.
145 Comments from James Crisp, Humphrey Denman, and Daniel Burr, CR III, 20 Jan. 1638. On Herring’s official approval, see Carter, English Reformed Church, 85.
146 Paget to David Calderwood, 23 April 1637, Wodrow MS, folio XLII, fol. 253.
147 He received a promise of his emeritus allowance in February 1637 and retired soon after. See CR III, fol. 72; Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death; and Carter, English Reformed Church, 25.
148 Briget Paget lived at least until 1647, when she sold two properties in Amsterdam, Carter, English Reformed Church, 25.
149 Robert Paget, “The Publisher to the Reader,” Meditations of Death.
150 Davenport, Amzi Benedict, A Supplement to the History and Genealogy of the Davenport Family, in England and America, from A.D. 1086 to 1850 (Stamford, Conn.: Wm. W. Gillespie, 1876), 366 Google Scholar.
151 SP 16, vol. 252, no. 55.
152 Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem, 127, 136.
153 Davenport letter, July 1635, Letters, 56; Mather, Magnalia, I, 324, 339 (lives of John Davenport, Thomas Hooker); Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem, 136.
154 Ha, English Presbyterianism, 2–3; Watts, The Dissenters, 60.
155 Vernon, Elliot, London Presbyterians and the British Revolutions, 1638–1664 (Manchester University Press, 2021), ch. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
156 Bolam et al, The English Presbyterians, 34.
157 Paul, Robert S., The Assembly of the Lord: Politics and Religion in the Westminster Assembly and the Grand Debate (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1985), 111–116 Google Scholar.
158 Gargraena, Ann Hughes and the Struggle for the English Reformation (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 35 Google Scholar, 44, 416.
159 Watt, The Dissenters, 60.
160 Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici (London, 1647), 236, 240; Hall, The Puritans, 273.
161 This is the position of Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England, 311, who does not see Paget as much of a figure of English church history.
162 Vernon, London Presbyterians, 40–41.
163 Winship, “Straining the Bonds,” 90.
164 An important work arguing that Dutch exiles made a strong imprint on the development of Reformed Protestantism in the Netherlands upon their return is Pettegree, Andrew, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Challenges to this view include Spohnholz, Jess and Mirjam G. K. van Veen, “The Disputed Origins of Dutch Calvinism: Religious Refugees in the Historiography of the Dutch Reformation,” Church History 86 (2017): 398–426 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other recent studies that highlight the diversity and complexity of exile churches, their influence on home communities and their relationship with authorities in the host locality include Gorter, Peter, Gereformeerde migranten: De religieuze identiteit van Nederlandse gereformeerde migrantengemeenten in de rijkssteden Frankfurt am Main, Aken en Keulen (1555-1600) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2021)Google Scholar and Muylaert, Silke, Shaping the Stranger Churches: Migrants in England and the Troubles in the Netherlands, 1547–1585 (Leiden: Brill, 2020)Google Scholar.
165 Sponholz, Jesse and Waite, Gary K., eds., Exile and Religious Identity, 1500–1800 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), 3Google Scholar.
166 CR IV, 10 April 1701.
167 CR IV, 10 Oct., 15 Oct., and 29 Oct. 1701; see also Acta Kerkeraad, XVII, p. 191, 20 April 1702; p. 192, 27 April 1702; and p. 202, 13 July 1702.