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Peterborough Ordinations 1612–1630 and Early Nonconformity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Extract

The clergy who with a good conscience were unable to conform to the requirements of the Act of Uniformity of 1662 have been the subject of much attention—too much, Professor Dugmore may think. But among them is a group not yet examined, consisting of those who were not affected by one major requirement of the Act: they were already episcopally ordained. ‘At least 420 of the ministers’, i.e. not far short of a quarter of the 1,760 known to have been deprived of their livings, ‘were in full episcopal orders before the Civil War’. Richard Baxter figures among them, and it might be expected that the group as a whole would be like Baxter in being only ‘moderate’ Nonconformists, not opposed to episcopacy in principle; but this was not the case. Their number comprised men of many shades of opinion and practice, including some who had gone so far as to renounce their episcopal ordination for ordination of another kind.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Calamy Revised, ed. Matthews, A. G., Oxford 1934, lxiGoogle Scholar. This work is the basic source for the first part of this paper. Dates of ordination by Bishop Dove are given in Northampton-shire and Rutland Clergy from 1500, ed. Longden, H. I., Northampton 1938-1943Google Scholar.

2 Baxter's ordination certificate as deacon is extant; that he was also ordained priest seems probable: cf. my Richard Baxter, London 1965, 18Google Scholar.

3 Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Sylvester, M., London 1969, I. iiGoogle Scholar. §420, p. 430; much of it repeated (‘the old Strain’ altered to ‘the old Stamp’ and ‘to be’ omitted) in Edmund Calamy's opening entry in Account of the…Ejected, London 1713, i. 1Google Scholar. ‘He was so much for going on to preach, that his Motto in his Funeral Ring was, I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. I yet keep my Ring, and can shew it you’: Baxter, R., Second True Defence of the Meer Nonconformists, London 1681, 53Google Scholar. Cambridge University Library possesses a copy of the works of Albertus Magnus, Lyons 1651, 21 vols., given by Ashe in 1654.

4 Fairfax and the ‘Sabbatarian’ divine, Theophilus Brabourne, married sisters.

5 Acts and Monuments, ed. Pratt, J., 4th edn., London n.d., vii. 374Google Scholar, viii. 598 (Rose Nottingham of Ipswich).

6 Loc. cit. Few of the ejected ministers who had been ordained by Dove were at Trinity or Christ's, the other two colleges named by Matthews.

7 In 1392, 1399 and 1400 the mayor of Northampton was a Lollard.

8 Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, 129, 345.Google Scholar

9 The school also received a bequest from Nathaniel Whiting, who in 1662 was ejected from its mastership as well as the living.

10 The name Latimer was also given to one of his sons by a brother of Burrough's wife, Joshua Crosse, who in 1660 was removed from a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford.

11 Ford, Simon, ‘Hovxia. Xpιπτιαοαμ, or A Christian's Acquiescence…a sermon, preached…at the interment of…Lady Elizabeth Langham, London 1665, 126–7Google Scholar. Since the writers of the elegies in the last fifty pages of this piece include the clergy ejected from the Northamptonshire livings of Creaton, Little Houghton and Overstone, together with Burroughs's successor at Cottesbrook, the T.B. among them may be identified with Burroughs. For Sir John Langham, M.P. for London in 1654 and for Southwark in 1660, see Lacey, D. R., Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England 1661-1689, New Brunswick, N.J., 1969, 417Google Scholar, n. 1; his son Sir James, High Sheriff for Northamptonshire in 1664-5 and 1671-2, supported Baxter's congregation in Oxenden Street, London.

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13 As of ‘Stockingham'; the identification provides an earlier date for his being beneficed at Stokenham than that given by Matthews.

14 They include Nathaniel Ranew, vicar of Felsted 164.8-62, who appears as ‘M. Wrenew’ under ‘West Havingfleld’, i.e. his previous living West Hanningfield; and Abraham Calvey, rector of Rayleigh 1644-62, whose copy of Flavel, John, πυευατολολια, London 1698Google Scholar, later in the possession of Joshua Wilson (Davids, T. W., Annals of Evangelical Nonconformity in…Essex, London 1863, 447, n.°)Google Scholar, is now in the New College, London, collection in Dr Williams's Library.

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20 Goodwin was not formally ejected from this post: recedebat, as he had done earlier from his living in Cambridge.

21 Culmer, like Ashe and Weld, is numbered by Calamy among the ejected, despite his death in March 1662.

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24 Tuke was in fact a member of three different Separatist churches before his ordination by Dove as deacon in 1623 and as priest in 1628: Marchant, R. A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560-1641, London 1960, 314Google Scholar.

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27 Op. cit., 180-1, 274-6.

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31 To the three named above is to be added John Shawe, lecturer at Holy Trinity and master of the Charterhouse, Hull.

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