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The Dilemma of the Establishment Puritan: the Cambridge Heads and the case of Francis Johnson and Cuthbert Bainbrigg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Peter Lake
Peter Lake
Affiliation:
Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge
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Extract

This paper is concerned widi the puritan in office. It sets out to deal with an incident that took place in the university of Cambridge in 1589, and, in analysing that incident, to examine the tensions and ambiguities inherent in the position of the puritan divine (and here I mean both presbyterians and ‘fellow-travellers’) involved in the traditional administrative and jurisdictional hierarchies of the university. At first sight the affair in question appears to be little more than another clash between two young dons, with precisian proclivities, and the university authorities. Its significance for the study of establishment or moderate puritanism lies in the fact that by 1589 those university authorities included in their ranks men like Laurence Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel, William Whitaker, newly installed as Master of St John's and Roger Goad, Provost of Kings, all of whom were noted for their puritan sympathies. It was in 1589, of course, that Whitgift's final attack on the classis movement really got under way. Here, then, we have the interesting spectacle of erstwhile puritans (one of whom, Chaderton, was an avowed presbyterian) being called upon, in their capacity as university administrators, to support, or at least not to oppose or obstruct, a new hardline anti-precisian policy which was totally at variance with their own principles and sympathies.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 23 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 The fullest account of this affair is contained in Dr. Porter's, H. C. book Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, Cambridge 1958, 157–63Google Scholar. The present paper does not differ factually from Dr. Porter's account, but merely attempts a shift of emphasis by viewing the affair from the perspective of the moderate puritan position. Transcripts of many of the documents pertaining to this dispute have been printed in Heywood, J. and Wright, T. (eds.), Cambridge University Transactions during the Puritan Controversies, London 1840Google Scholar, i. 548–558.

2 C.U.R. Guard Book. 6 (1). Johnson's sermon no. 8; Bainbrigg's no. 9.

3 Ibid., no. 9.

4 Ibid., no. 8.

5 Ibid., no. 23. Letter of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to the Vice-Chancellor.

6 B.L. Lansdowne MS. 61, no. 8.

7 C.U.R. Guard Book 6(1), no. 4. Second protestation, 13 March 1588.

8 Ibid., Johnson's and Bainbrigg's second protestation, 13 March 1588.

9 B. L. Lansdowne MS. 61 no. 12, dated 12 June 1589.

10 Ibid., 61, no. 12.

11 For Johnson's and Bainbrigg's appeal to Burghley see B. L. Lansdowne MS. 61, no. 10, May 1589. For the Heads' appeal to Burghley for an unequivocal denunciation of Johnson's and Bainbrigg's intransigence see ibid., no. 6.

12 Ibid.

13 For Burghley's initial approval of the Head's action see C.U.L. Baker MS. Mn 1/41 p. 373: Burghley to the Vice-Chancellor, March 1589. For his later change of attitude see B. L. Lansdowne MS. 61, no. 8.

14 B. L. Lansdowne MS 61, no. 6 (April 1589); no. 8 (May 1589); and no. 9 (May 1589).

15 C.U.R. Guard Book, 6(1), no. 16.

16 Ibid. no. 15 decision taken by Nevile, Still, Copcot, Byng, Legge and Lancelot Andrewes. See also no. 19.

17 For a translation of clause 45 of the statutes of 1570, see J. Heywood and T. Wright, op. cit., i. 37. For a discussion of the significance of this statute see H. C. Porter, op. cit., 163f.

18 C.U.R. Guard Book, 6(1), no. 19.

19 Ibid., no. 7 for Johnson's retraction.

20 Ibid., no. 10 lor Bainbrigg's retraction.

21 Ibid., no. 14.

22 See Lansdowne MS. 61, no. 15 for Johnson's account of his imprisonment in a letter to Burghley of 22 December 1589.

23 B. L. LansdowneMS. 62, no. 42; Preston to Burghley, 6 February 1590.

24 C.U.R. Guard Book, 6(1), no. 15.

25 B. L. Lansdowne MS. 61, no. 16.

26 Ibid., 61, no. 6.

27 Ibid., 71, no. 61: six fellows of St. John's College to Burghley, 14 December 1595.

28 Ibid., 62, no. 42: Preston to Burghley, 6 February 1590.

29 Ibid., 62, no. 41: Whitaker to Burghley, 3 February 1590.

30 For Whitaker's uncompromising Calvanism during the disputes of 1595 as well as his puritan connexions, see H. C. Porter, op. cit. 344f.

31 See ‘A Fruitful Sermon …’ (on the presbyterian proof text Romans xii), London 1584.Google Scholar

32 Both Whitaker and Chaderton, by virtue of their position in the.university and, in Whitaker's case, his anti-papal polemical activities, enjoyed national reputations amongst the godly.

35 For the dissensions that beset the presbyterian movement at the end of the 1580s see Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, 385Google Scholarf.

34 B. L. Lansdowne MS. 61, no. 15.

35 For Johnson's later separatist career, see White, B. R., The English Separatist Tradition, Oxford 1971, 91–115Google Scholar. For the date of his ‘conversion’ to separatism see ibid., 94.

36 Ibid., 94.

37 , J. and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge 1922Google Scholar, Part 1, i. 68.