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Edward Gee and the Matter of Authority
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
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Edward Gee, rector at Eccleston, near Chorley in Lancashire, from 1643 until 1660, was born in 1612 or 1613, at Banbury (Oxon.). During the years following the reorganisation of the Church in Lancashire along Presbyterian lines in 1646, he achieved recognition as a leading member of the clergy in that county. In 1650 he was said to possess the parsonage-house and glebe at Eccleston, with tithes and a water cornmill. Although he had agreed with the parliamentary cause in the Civil War, he opposed the more revolutionary changes carried out in 1648 and 1649, years in which the House of Commons was purged by the army, king Charles I executed, and the monarchy and the House of Lords abolished. The decision of the new republican Commonwealth regime to exact a promise of allegiance, known as the Engagement (first, in 1649 from a number of important Englishmen, and then in 1650 from all adult males in England) provoked a major pamphlet debate. This Engagement Controversy was the occasion of a lengdiy and detailed exchange of opinions and interpretations concerning the whole problem of how the subject should in conscience behave with respect to a drastic change of government, or, as many would have it, a usurpation of civil authority.
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References
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page 116 note 2 Ibid., Preface, Section 6.
page 116 note 3 Ibid., 20–21.
page 117 note 1 Ibid., 22–23.
page 117 note 2 A Vindication of the Oath of Allegiance (1650), 37.
page 117 note 3 Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex (1644), 5 and 14.
page 117 note 4 Philip Hunton, A Treatise of Monarchie (1643), 4.
page 117 note 5 Henry Ferne, The Resolving of Conscience (1642), 14.
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page 119 note 1 Divine Right and Originall, 41–43, 57–59, 112–113, Exercitation 62–63.
page 119 note 2 Treatise of Prayer, 438 and 452; Divine Right and Originall, 84–85, 88; Exercitation, 62–63.
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page 122 note 1 Nedham (ed. Knachel), 41.
page 122 note 2 Plea, 11.
page 122 note 3 Exercitation, 20–21.
page 122 note 4 Nedham (ed. Knachel), 30; Exercitation Answered, 17; Dury, Objections, 15–16 and 21.
page 123 note 1 Nedham (ed. Knachel), 15–29 and 38.
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page 125 note 1 Ibid., 160.
page 125 note 2 Ibid., 160–161.
page 125 note 3 Sir Robert Filmer, ‘The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy’ in Laslett (ed.), Patriarcha, 288.
page 125 note 4 Divine Right and Originall, 185–186.
page 125 note 5 Ibid., 172, and 185–186.
page 125 note 6 Ibid., 186.
page 126 note 1 Ibid., 186–187.
page 126 note 2 Parkinson (ed.), Martindale, 98–100.
page 126 note 3 John Dury, A Second Parcel of Objections against the taking of the Engagement Answered (1650), 82.
page 126 note 4 Ibid., 87.
page 127 note 1 Ibid., 89 and 93.
page 127 note 2 Halley, Lancashire, 187.
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