^{page 74 note 1} Commons Journals, iv. 517–18.

^{page 74 note 2} Shaw, W. A., A History of the English Church, 1640–60, London 1900, I. 7, 316.Google Scholar The situation was puzzling, however, to an intelligent contemporary: Sirrahnio (i.e. John Harris), The Royal Quarrell, London 1647Google Scholar. He believed that in 1641 there was a strong party for a ‘Reall’ reformation (either Presbyterian or Independent), which was reinforced after the taking up of arms against the king by a group of renegade royalists. He says of them: ‘those that have remained have been forced to shroud themselves under the masks of Presbyterates, though Royall not Reall ones’ (op. cit., 5). They plotted with other hypocrites to engineer the downfall of the ‘Reall’ group, which, he could clearly see, had been accomplished by 1647: ‘now we plainely see that Reall Presbyterian and Reall Independent party overawed by the Royal Presbyter, and Royall Independent’ (ibid., 6). Figgis, J. N., ‘Erastus and Erastianism’ in Journal of Theological Studies, II (1900), 66–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, stresses the need for care in the use of this term, which has two distinct connotations: the claim of the secular power to control belief (for which he would substitute the term ‘Byzantinism’), and the views of Erastus on the question of the disciplinary powers used by the clergy in excommunication. For Erastus, Figgis says: ‘the main object was not to magnify the civil power, but to oppose the discipline’ (73): it is in this, and not in the Hobbesian sense, that the term is used in this article as a description of English Puritanism. For to W. A. Shaw (op. cit.) the most distinctive feature of seventeenth-century English Puritanism is its repudiation of the clericalist claims of Scottish Puritanism. In this sense Shaw claims that Richard Baxter ‘represented the constant element of Puritanism as opposed to the mere accident of the Presbyterianism of 1643–7’ (7) and says of the theocratic expressions used by English Puritans in 1646 that ‘nothing could be more antagonistic … to the whole tradition of English constitutional and ecclesiastical history’ (316). This antagonism—obscured in the first violence of anti-Laudianism, and later by political needs—is treated as the explanation of developments in 1646.

^{page 75 note 1} The thesis of a compelled surrender is not borne out by: (1) our knowledge of Vane's conduct of the negotiations with the Scots (see Haller, William, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution, New York 1955, 109 ff.Google Scholar, on the limited nature of the ‘surrender’); (2) the pressure for an assembly of divines in England (a constant theme in the sermons before parliament, for which see below); (3) its lack of conformity to Scottish models (see Baillie, Robert, Letters and Journals… ed. Laing, D., Edinburgh 1841, II. 186). The thesis of an unconscious absorption is equally unsatisfactory: the fear of a Scottish theocracy is vividly expressed in parliament in the stinging phrase of a Digby and in the cautious warnings of a Rudyerd, while, among the many pamphlets of 1641 in the Thomason Collection in the British Museum which carefully explain the workings of the Scottish system, note especially E.171; E.203/5; E.204/1; E. 158/16; E.172/15; E.199/13 and 17; E.180/14 and E.161/2 and 3.Google Scholar

^{page 75 note 2} Kirby, E. W., ‘Sermons before the Commons, 1640–2’, American Historical Review, XLIV (1938–1939), 528–48. There is a very useful collection of these sermons in Dr. Williams's Library, arranged by Mr. Jones and Dr. Carruthers, which has been used in the present study. There is an incomplete list of the previous sermons appended to Case's sermon of 26 October 1642.Google Scholar

^{page 75 note 3} ibid., 546.

^{page 75 note 4} William Bridge, Babylon's Downfall, London 1641; Cornelius Burges, The First Sermon … November 17th, 1640, London 1641.

^{page 75 note 5} Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals …, ii. 220–1. Too much should not be made of Baillie's derogatory references to English preachers: at his sourest he could only perceive their distance from Scottish radicalism and minimised the achievement of English Puritanism (ibid., ii. 117); at his sanest, he could see that a slavish imitation of the Scottish form of government was not their goal (ibid., i. 287). His belief that there was a chance of theocracy in England, at least until the Erastian revival of June 1644 (ibid., ii. 198–9), deserves more serious consideration than is given to it by Shaw (op. cit., i. 101).

^{page 76 note 1} Bridge, op. cit., 15.

^{page 76 note 2} Cornelius Burges, Another Sermon … November 5th, 1641, London 1642, 60.

^{page 76 note 3} Stephen Marshall, A Sermon … November 17, 1640, London 1641, 47.

^{page 76 note 4} George Carleton, Jurisdiction, Regall, Episcopall, Papall, London 1610, 44: ‘For the preservation of true doctrine in the Church, the Bishops are the great watchmen…. If Princes withstand them in these things, they have warrant not to obey Princes.’

^{page 76 note 5} Marshall, op. cit., 47.

^{page 77 note 1} Thomas Case, The Second Sermon …, London 1641, 36; Thomas Goodwin, Zerubabels Encouragement…, London 1642, 52; Robert Harris, A Sermon…, London 1642, 50.

^{page 77 note 2} Thomas Case, The First Sermon …, London 1641, 27: ‘…consider if God should leave King and Parliament to themselves but one day, they may doe that which may undoe us and our Posteritie for ever.’.

^{page 77 note 3} Sir Edward Dering (Collection of Speeches …, London 1641, 3) describes the reaction to his proposal for a primitive episcopacy in June 1641: ‘Art thou for us or for our adversaries? So said one of the usual blacke walkers in Westminster Hall. Another of our Parliament-pressing Ministers, after I had delivered my sense upon Episcopacy in the House came to me and told me plainely, that my conscience was not so good as in the beginning of the Parliament’. A marginal note gives the initials ‘T. C.’ for this minister: almost certainly Case. Such clerical pressure—with which Professor Neale has made us so familiar for Elizabethan times—ought not to be ignored in an estimation of the strength of theocratic views at this time.

^{page 77 note 4} Edmund Calamy, Gods Free Mercy to England, London 1641, 12; Stephen Marshall, A Peace-Offering to God, London 1641, 37; Stephen Marshall, A Sermon … November 17, 1640, London 1641, 48.

^{page 77 note 5} E.g. Henry Burton, Englands Bondage and Hope of Deliverance, London 1641 and Thomas Wilson, Davids Zeale for Zion, London 1641, contain a clearer expression of Independent and Presbyterian sympathies respectively than one would gather from Mrs. Kirby's article.

^{page 78 note 1} Kirby, op. cit., 537.

^{page 78 note 2} Joseph Symonds, A Sermon …, London 1641 [no pagination]: ‘Much should bee said concerning the order and government of this house, but time faileth’.

^{page 78 note 3} Nathaniel Holmes, The New World, or the New Reformed Church, London 1641, 9; a marginal reference is given to the morning sermon ‘Out of 1 Chron. 28, 10. By Mr. Symonds’.

^{page 78 note 4} E.g. Stephen Marshall, Reformation and Desolation, London 1642, 42: ‘And how will this stand with the doctrine preached in the forenoone …’.

^{page 78 note 5} Holmes, op. cit., 44.

^{page 78 note 6} Kirby, op. cit., 529 accuses Gauden of inconsistency in 1659 in blaming the Civil War preachers for the violence of their sermons.

^{page 79 note 1} Cornelius Burges, The First Sermon … November 17, 1640, London 1641, 35.

^{page 79 note 2} Idem. Equally important, they were undermining men's faith that the Assembly did represent God's will. Jeremiah Burroughs, Sions Joy, London 1641, pointed out that while reckless speed had brought about Laud's fall, the moral for parliament was not that it should proceed cautiously. The difference between the two cases lay in God's support of the one: ‘But though mans suddennesse often proves their ruine, yet what God does suddenly, is done strongly and surely; Created things that are properly Gods, are alwaies sudden….’ For other examples of the importance attached to speed, see Samuel Fairclough, The Troublers Troubled…, London 1641, 37–8; Thomas Case, The Second Sermon, London 1641, 29–32, 56; Nathaniel Holmes, The New World or the New Reformed Church, London 1641, 29.

^{page 79 note 3} ibid., 54. Cf. Joseph Symonds, A Sermon, London 1641 [no pagination]: ‘Hitherto the work hath been done by the halfes. Our forefathers intended that which is reserved for you’. Similarly, Edmund Calamy (Gods Free Mercy to England, London 1641, 46) pleads: ‘…bring us back not onely to our first Reformation in King Edwards dayes, but to reform the Reformation it self’.

^{page 79 note 4} ibid., 72–3.

^{page 80 note 1} Haller, William, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution, New York 1955, 21: ‘the preachers, as we have seen, were taken up with preaching’.Google Scholar

^{page 80 note 2} Stephen Marshall, A Sermon … November 17, 1640, London 1641, 44.

^{page 80 note 3} Stephen Marshall, Reformation and Desolation, London 1642, 52. For examples of clerical pressure for a synod, see Cornelius Burges, Another Sermon … November 5, 1641, London 1642, 63; Holmes, op. cit., 50; Calamy, op. cit., 47.

^{page 80 note 4} Thomas Fuller, Reformation Sure and Stedfast: Or, A Seasonable Sermon for the Present Times, London 1641: a suggestive title.

^{page 81 note 1} John Gauden, The Love of Truth and Peace…, London 1641, 14, 24, 31, 32, 35. Cf. Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England, London 1938, IV. 369–72, for an appreciation of Davenant's importance to the cause of moderate Anglicanism.Google Scholar

^{page 81 note 2} Baillie, op. cit., ii. 220–1. This point is important: Shaw tried to argue that theocratic views were a late development in English Puritanism, arising from Scottish influence. E.g. Shaw, op. cit., 2: ‘as the breach widened, so did the bounds of their principles’, and, on the same page, he refers to an ‘accentuation of feeling’; on p. 142 he claims that a Presbyterian party ‘sprang up’ in the clergy in 1643.

^{page 81 note 3} Thomas Hill, The Season for Englands Selfe-Reflection, London 1644, 34; Herbert Palmer, The Glasse of Gods Providence, London 1644, 52.

^{page 81 note 4} Palmer, op. cit., 51: ‘Doe not in any wise hearken to the suggestions of any that would say, That there is no Discipline or Government of the Church to be found in the Word’; Hill, op. cit., 33–4: ‘Opinions of most dangerous consequence begin now to spring among us … such who would have nothing jure divino, nothing stands by divine right in, Church affaires, but resolve all wholly into State power and civill policy…’.

^{page 82 note 1} For Nicholas's plan, see Jordan, op. cit., iii. 27; for Ussher, see Shaw, op. cit., i. 70–3; for diverse views on Williams's committee see Lathbury, Thomas, A History of the Convocation of the Church of England, London 1853, 261Google Scholar and Fuller, Thomas, The Church History of Britain …, Oxford 1845, VI. 191.Google Scholar

^{page 82 note 2} For typical expressions of scepticism, see Robert Baillie, The Unlawfulnesse and Danger of Limited Episcopacie…, London, 1641, 32, 43; Alexander Henderson, The Unlawfulnes and Danger of Limited Prelacie …, London 1641, 15; John Milton, Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence …, London 1642, 2.

^{page 82 note 3} Jordan, op. cit., ii. 146 and iii. 30.

^{page 82 note 4} Joseph Hall, An Humble Remonstrance …, London 1640, 4.

^{page 82 note 5} This is argued more fully in his Episcopacy by Divine Right…, London 1640.

^{page 83 note 1} Joseph Hall, An Humble Remonstrance …, London 1640, 26. Laud similarly refused to be bound by the teachings of Jewel: William Laud, Works, ed. Scott and Bliss, iv. 226: ‘And I may upon good reason depart from their judgment in some particulars, and yet not differ from the Church of England.’

^{page 83 note 2} This was acknowledged by Hall himself: A Letter Lately Sent by a Reverend Bishop…, London 1642, 2: ‘You tell me in what faire termes I stood not long since with the world…. But can you tell me how I lost it?’ He also seems to know the answer: ‘If my offence be in my pen, which hath (as it could) undertaken the defence of that Apostolicall Institution … I cannot deprecate a truth’ (6).

^{page 83 note 3} See the Laudian bishop Mountague's reaction to Hall's licensing of a book in 1624: The Correspondence of John Cosin (Surtees Society, lii. 32): ‘Before God it will never be well till we have our Inquisition. Jos. Hall to commend thus! Were it rei mei juris he should lose all promotions he hath for it, as he that hath licensed it.’ Cf. this with his position in 1644: William Prynne, Canterburies Doome …, London 1644, 530: ‘…For his advancement of Bishop Hall … if true, it was rather to corrupt and draw him over to his party … and how that worthy Prelate hath desperately declined since …’.

^{page 83 note 4} Through failure to understand the phenomenon of High Church Calvinism the radicals entertained exaggerated hopes for the constitutional sympathies of men such as Hall, Morton and Ussher on the basis of their doctrinal views.

^{page 84 note 1} (Anon.), An Anti-Remonstrance …, London 1640, 3, 4, 7.

^{page 84 note 2} Dering, op. cit., 125.

^{page 84 note 3} Henry Ferne, Episcopacy and Presbytery Considered, London 1647, 19.

^{page 84 note 4} Lord Falkland, A Discourse of Infallibility, London 1660: his speech of 27 May 1641.

^{page 84 note 5} E.g. William Barlow, An Answere to a Catholike Englishman, London 1609, 370: ‘But Religion turned into Statisme, will soone proove Atheisme’. Note the Puritan reply: (Anon), Mr. Downames Sermon … Answered and Refuted …, London 1609, 4: ‘They have contrarie to the judgement of all protestant writers upon this place … fancied to themselves another sort of Bishops’.

^{page 84 note 6} John Hales, A Tract Concerning Schisme and Schismatiques, London 1642, 13.

^{page 85 note 1} Article 25 of the Root and Branch Petition (quoted in Gardiner, S. R., Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–60, Oxford 1906, 142).Google Scholar

^{page 85 note 2} Laud noted at his trial that the phrase in the ninth additional article against him, which stressed the antipathy of the 1640 Canons to the Royal Prerogative, was quietly dropped subsequently because, he thought, of such an incompatibility (William Laud, Works …, ed. Scott and Bliss, iii. 156–7).

^{page 85 note 3} Notably William Prynne, A Breviate of the Prelates Intollerable Usurpations upon the Kings Prerogative …, London 1637, and John Bastwick, Letany …, London 1637, etc.

^{page 85 note 4} The best discussion of constitutional theories at this period is contained in Judson, Margaret, The Crisis of the Constitution …, New Brunswick 1949.Google Scholar

^{page 85 note 5} Smectymnuus, An Answer to a Booke Entitled, an Humble Remonstrance …, London 1641, 63.

^{page 85 note 6} The First and Large Petition …, London 1641, 1.

^{page 86 note 1} Henderson, op. cit., 1.

^{page 86 note 2} Henry Burton, The Protestation Protested, London 1641 [no pagination].

^{page 86 note 3} Henderson, op. cit., 8.

^{page 86 note 4} Robert Baillie, The Unlawfulnesse and Danger of Limited Episcopacie …, London 1641. 35.

^{page 86 note 5} Hill, op. cit., 27: ‘…why should any bee offended with delayes and difficulties in the present work of Reformation?…Great works as well as great bodies move but slowly’.

^{page 86 note 6} Palmer, op. cit., 35.

^{page 86 note 7} Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals …, ii. 176–7.

^{page 87 note 1} The Scottish Dove … (Number 56), 8–15 December 1644: ‘It were more Honourable to themselves (that are Divines) that have nothing but contentions to follow, to imploy themselves in the Northern parts, to reduce and convert those souls to God … there is want of good preachers’.

^{page 87 note 2} Obadiah Sedgwick, An Arke Against a Deluge, London 1644; Richard Vines, The Posture of David's Spirit…, London 1644, 15.

^{page 87 note 3} Wilson, op. cit., 14; Palmer, op. cit., 60.

^{page 87 note 4} The failure of historians to recognise this possibility is partly caused by an exaggerated belief in the Erastianism of English Puritanism, and partly by an over-simplified approach to Erastianism itself. Dr. Jordan has criticised the first assumption (op. cit., iii. 268–9) but has, to some extent, encouraged the second. Although he recognises that ‘Erastianism was a sword which could be wielded to cut both ways’ (ii. 457)—that the magistrate's power could be sought for repression no less than for tolerance—his main theme leads him to far greater emphasis on the amoral laymen who advanced the cause of tolerance than on those persons who valued Erastianism as a positive means to a reformation of morals. Thus Dr. Jordan treats the Erastians as part of one group, ‘The Laymen and the Moderates’ (op. cit., ii. 315–491), of whom such as Bacon, Cotton and Selden are most representative. This classification excludes Thomas Coleman, to contemporaries the most important Erastian of them all.

^{page 87 note 5} The present writer is engaged in a study of Prynne's thought, which is later briefly considered, but he believes that this interpretation holds good for others besides Prynne: D'Ewes, Bastwick, Hussey, Fiennes, Parker, Hardy and Coleman are figures who would repay an investigation along similar lines.

^{page 87 note 6} William Prynne, Twelve Considerable Serious Questions…, London 1644: this is the opening of fresh ecclesiastical controversies after a silence of three years. Cf. Baillie, op. cit., ii. 315: ‘Mr. Prin and the Erastian lawyers are now our remora’ (5 September 1645).

^{page 87 note 7} John Goodwin, Certaine Briefe Observations …, London 1644, 3: ‘…if no prescript forme in the Worde, why not Episcopacie as well as Presbyterie ? Why such crying down of Bishops as Anti-Christian, for how can that be more Antichristian than any other, seeing there is no certain government in the Word ? Episcopacie regulated and moderated …is more consonant and agreeable to a Monarchical government than Presbytery’; Henry Robinson, The Falsehood of Mr. William Pryn's Truth Triumphing…, London 1645, 7: ‘Did you not intend that Presbyters should succeed Bishops? or did you thinke them to be less lordly than the Reverend Fathers from whom they spring?’.

^{page 88 note 1} Prynne, The Unbishoping of Timothy and Titus …, London 1636, reprinted 1660, 31.

^{page 88 note 2} E.g. B. M. Stowe MS. 184 fol. 28^v: Abbott points out to Dering the importance of apologetics, rather than preaching, and the service rendered in that field by Anglicans.

^{page 88 note 3} Philip Hunton, A Treatise of Monarchie, London 1643, 75.

^{page 88 note 4} Wilson, op. cit., 14.

^{page 88 note 5} Prynne argues this position in two pamphlets: Four Serious Questions …, London 1645, and A Vindication of Four Serious Questions …, London 1645.

^{page 89 note 1} Prynne, A Vindication of Four Serious Questions…, London 1645, 45: ‘Is it not (I Pray you) a Soul-murthering tyranny for any Ministers or Officers of Christ without an expresse divine Commission from him, to keepe back any who externally professe his name, and are not utterly cut off from the society of the faithfull and all other ordinances, from this most effcctuall lively meanes of their conversion, comfort or salvation’. For the extent to which the Laudian neglect of preaching concerned him in 1641 see The Antipathie of the English Lordly Prelacie…, London 1641.

^{page 89 note 2} ibid., 57.