Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T23:48:36.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘Digging and Dunging’: Some Aspects of Lay Influence in the Church in Northern Towns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

D. J. Lamburn*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Get access

Extract

In 1630 Robert Jenison, then a lecturer at Newcastle, wrote a treatise on the second part of the first verse of Psalm 127: ‘Except the lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’ Drawing on the experience of his work in the city since 1614, he specifically addressed the respective roles of magistrates and ministers in creating a godly town. He chose to dedicate his tract to the Lord Mayor of London. But The cities safetie or a Fruitful Treatise (and useful for these dangerous times) had an application to the civic leaders of all towns and cities, for he called upon them to ‘promise and afford your best pains, and do your utmost endeavours, with heart tongue and hand, to seek the good, and procure the welfare of God’s church: to dig about it, and to dung it, and so to do whatsoever duty is contained under these phrases’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jenison, Robert, The cities safetie or a Fruitful Treatise (and useful for these dangerous times): a treatise on Psalm 127.1 (London, 1630)Google Scholar, preface dedicatorie. All spellings and punctuation have been modernized. For further details on Jenison, see Howell, R., ‘The career of Dr. Robert Jenison, a seventeenth century Puritan in Newcastle’, in idem, Puritans and Radicals in North England: Essays on the English Revolution (London, 1984), pp. 112–27Google Scholar; Howell, R., ‘Puritanism in Newcastle before the summoning of the Long Parliament’, Archaeologia Aeliana, ser. 4, 41 (1963), pp. 135–55.Google Scholar

2 Lamburn, D. J., ‘The influence of the laity in appointments of clergy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century’, in Cross, C., ed., Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York, 1996), pp. 111–13.Google Scholar

3 Jenison, The cities safetie, pp. 6-9.

4 MacCulloch, D., The Later Reformation in England 1547-1603 (Basingstoke, 1990), pp. 158, 171–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marchant, R. A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560-1642 (London, 1960).Google Scholar

5 LP, 13, pt 2, no. 953.

6 Collinson, P., The Birthpangs of Protestant England (Basingstoke, 1988), p. 40Google Scholar; Cross, C., Urban Magistrates and Ministers: Religion in Hull and Leeds from the Reformation to the Civil War, Borthwick Paper, 67 (York, 1985), pp. 1, 26Google Scholar; Murray, K. D., ‘Puritanism and civic life in York, Newcastle, Hull, Beverley and Leeds’ (Durham D.Phil. thesis, 1990), ch. 2Google Scholar; Richardson, R. C., Puritanism in North-west England (Manchester, 1972), pp. 138–44.Google Scholar

7 Collinson, , Birthpangs , p. 41; idem, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), pp. 170–1.Google Scholar

8 Collinson, P., Archbishop Grindal, 1519-1583 (London, 1979), pp. 201–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 King, John, Lectures upon Jonas, delivered at Yorke 1594 (London, 1618), p. 86.Google Scholar

10 Kingston upon Hull Record Office [hereafter KHRO], BRB2, fols 117r, 283r, 304r, 325r.

11 Spufford, M., ‘Puritanism and Social Control?’ in Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J., eds, Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 4157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Cross, C., Church and People, 1450-1660 (London, 1976).Google Scholar

13 See, e.g., P. Collinson, Religion of Protestants, chs 2-4; Foster, A., ‘The clerical estate revitalised’, in Fincham, K., ed., The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642 (Basingstoke, 1993), pp. 139–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar; Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars (Yale, 1992).Google Scholar

14 Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), p. 250.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 250, 326; Pettegree, A., ‘The clergy and the Reformation: from “devilish priesthood” to new professional elite’, in idem, ed., The Reformation of the Parishes (Manchester, 1993), pp. 121Google Scholar; B. Kumin, ‘Parish Finance and the early Tudor clergy’, in ibid., pp. 43-62; idem, The Shaping of a Community (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 260-4; Foster, A., ‘Churchwardens’ accounts of early modern England and Wales: some problems to note, but much to be gained’, in French, K. L., Gibbs, G. G., and Kumin, B., eds, The Parish in English Life 1400-1600 (Manchester, 1997), pp. 7493.Google Scholar

16 KHRO, BRB2, fols 65r-71r, 112r, 326r KHRO L.25.MSS.

17 BI, CP.G 1334, 2456: Beverley, Humberside Record Office [hereafter HRO] BC/II/6/26, 34; ibid., BC/II/3, fol. 35r; ibid., BC/II/7/3 foi. 4r; BI, V.1595-6, fol. 119v.

18 Jenison, The cities safetie, pp. 41-2.

19 King, Jonas, pp. 87, 90.

20 Seaver, P., The Puritan Lectureships: the Politics of Religious Dissent (Stanford, 1970), ch. 3Google Scholar; Morgan, I., The Godly Preachers of the Elizabethan Church (London, 1965), pp. 61–4Google Scholar; Owen, H. G., ‘Lectures and lectureships in Tudor London’, Church Quarterly Review, 162 (1961), pp. 6376Google Scholar; Lamburn, ‘Influence of the laity’, pp. 107-10.

21 Kreider, A., English Chantries: the Road to Dissolution (London, 1979), esp. chs 1-3.Google Scholar

22 W. Page, ed., The Certificates of the Commissioners Appointed to Survey the Chantries, Guilds, Hospitals, etc., in the County of York [hereafter YCC], pts I and 2, SS, 91, 92 (1894-5), r, pp. 61, 175; 2, pp. 299, 273-5. For discussions of some of the shortcomings of the YCC see Kreider, English Chantries, pp. 5-37; Rosenthal, J. T., ‘The Yorkshire chantry certificates of 1546: an analysis’, NH, 9 (1974), pp. 2647Google Scholar; and Kitching, C. J., ‘The chantries of the East Riding of Yorkshire at the Dissolution in 1548’, YAJ, 44 (1972), pp. 178–85.Google Scholar

23 See, e.g., YCC, 2, pp. 273-7, 295-300, 309-16, 338-47, 520-3.

24 Dickens, A. G., Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509-58 (Oxford, 1959), p. 247Google Scholar; Hey, D. G., ‘The pattern of Nonconformity in South Yorkshire, 1660-1851’, NH, 8 (1973). pp. 86–7Google Scholar. See also Everitt, A., The Pattern of Rural Dissent: the Nineteenth Century, Department of English Local History Occasional Papers, ser. 2, 4 (Leicester, 1972)Google Scholar. The continuity of dissenting traditions is questioned in Crockett, A. and Snell, K. D. M., ‘From the 1676 Compton Census to the 1851 Census of Religious Worship: religious continuity or discontinuity?Rural History, 8 (1997), pp. 5590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Dickens, A. G., ‘A municipal dissolution of chantries at York, 1936’, YAJ, 36 (1944-7), pp. 164–73Google Scholar; YCC, 1, pp. 140-2, 2, pp. 517-18; Wenham, L. P., ‘The chantries, guilds, obits and lights of Richmond, Yorkshire’, YAJ, 38 (1952-5), pp. 96111, 185214, 310–22.Google Scholar

26 YCC, 2, pp. 542-3; HRO BC/II/6/20-2, 24; K. J. Allison, ed., VCH, Yorkshire: East Riding, 6, pp. 76-80; HRO BC/I/74; Lamburn, D. J., ‘Politics and religion in sixteenth-century Beverley’ (York D.Phil, dissertation, 1991), ch. 4.Google Scholar

27 KHRO, BRB 2, fol. 25V; Cross, Magistrates and Ministers, pp. 14-16.

28 PRO E 301/103/14 and E 301/102 m.6; Kreider, English Chantries, p. 51.

29 Crashaw, W., ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’, to second treatise of Perkins, W., Of the Calling of the Minuterie (London, 1606)Google Scholar; Marshall, P., The Face of the Pastoral Ministry in the East Riding, ‘525-1595, Borthwick Paper, 88 (1995), pp. 1416.Google Scholar

30 Pullein, Thomas, Jeremiah’s teares. A sermon preached in York minster Trinity Sunday 1604 (London, 1608), sigs C, D2, F2.Google Scholar

31 Bunney, Edmund, The Whole Summe of Christian Religion… (London, 1576), pp. 61, 63.Google Scholar

32 Collinson, P., ‘Shepherds, sheepdogs, and hirelings: the pastoral ministry in post-Reformation England’, in Shells, W. J. and Wood, Diana, eds, The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, SCH, 26 (1989), pp. 189–90.Google Scholar

33 Favour, John, Antiquitte Triumphing over Noveltie (London, 1619)Google Scholar, preface To the Readers’, not signed or paginated.

34 Pullein, Jeremiah’s teares, sig. D3.

35 Jenison, The cities safetie, pp. 83, 109-10.

36 Wallis, P. J., William Crashawe, the Sheffield Puritan, Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, 8, pts 2-5 (1960-3)Google Scholar. See also Lamburn, D. J., ‘Petty Babylons, godly prophets, petty pastors and little churches: the work of healing Babel’, SCH, 26 (1989), pp. 237–48.Google Scholar

37 See, e.g., Crashaw, W., The Parable of Poyson in Five Sermons of Spiritual Poyson (London, 1618), pp. 7, 33–7, 81–4.Google Scholar

38 Crashaw, W., A Sermon Preached at the Cross, 14 February 1607 (London, 1609), pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

39 Pullein, Jeremiah’s teares, sig. C.

40 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, pp. 167-71; Jenison, The cities safetie, pp. 127-59.

41 King, Jonas, p. 96.

42 Seaver, Puritan Lectureships, pp. 108-9; Howell, Robert Jenison’, pp. 112-27.

43 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 29.

44 See Wallis, William Crashawe.

45 Collinson, Religion of Protestants, pp. 178-82.

46 Lamburn, ‘Petty Babylons’, pp. 241-8.

47 MacCulloch, D. and Blatchly, J., ‘Tastoral provision in the parishes of Tudor Ipswich’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 22 (1991), pp. 473–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 King, Jonas, pp. 92, 96.