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Religious protest and urban authority: the case of Henry Sherfield, iconoclast, 1633

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Paul Slack
Paul Slack*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

The trial of Henry Sherfield, the puritan recorder of Salisbury, before Star Chamber in February 1633 was one of the most famous in that court’s last years; and his offence, ‘unlawfully, riotously and prophanely’ smashing the window in St Edmund’s church which contained pictures of the Creation, is one of the best-known cases of puritan religious protest in the years preceding the Civil War. But the background to the trial, and in particular the local tensions which lay behind it, have never been thoroughly explored. Yet Sherfield’s case, like the contemporary churchales controversy in Somerset, provides an example of that important amalgam of local and national issues which shaped the English Revolution. It also illuminates the social and political conditions which moulded Puritanism in an urban setting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 9: Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest , 1972 , pp. 295 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1972

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References

page no 295 note 1 There is a good summary of the trial in Gardiner, [S. R.], [History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War] (London 1883-4) VII pp 254-8Google Scholar. The trial proceedings were printed in The Proceedings in the Star Chamber against Henry Sherfield Esq. (London 1717), and in various collections of state trials, including [Emlyn, S., A Complete Collection of]State Trials (3 ed London 1742) 1 pp 399–418 Google Scholar, which is the account referred to here. Sherfield’s case was one of those brought against Laud at his own trial: The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, XI (new series) Addenda 1514-1714 (London 1962) pp 402, 419, 458; Prynne, W., Canterburies Doome (London 1646) pp 102-3, 491. 494-5.Google Scholar

page no 295 note 2 See Barnes, T. G., ‘ County Politics and a Puritan Cause Célèbre: Somerset Churchales, 1633 ‘, TRHS 5th Series IX (1959) pp 103-22.Google Scholar

page no 295 note 3 Swayne, [H.J. F.,] Churchwardens’ Accounts [of S. Edmund and S. Thomas, Sarum 1443- 1702] (Salisbury 1896) p 190 Google Scholar. The churchwardens of the parish of St Thomas had removed a similar window with the approval of the subdean in 1583: ibid p 294. On the St Edmund’s window itself, probably fifteenth century in date, see Rushforth, G. M., Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford 1936) p 151 Google Scholar. (I am grateful to Dr P. A. Newton for this reference.)

page no 296 note 1 State Trials pp 399-400, 404, 405.

page no 296 note 2 State Trials pp 399-418 passim.

page no 296 note 3 PRO MS SP 16/55/64; Gardiner VII p 49; Willson, D. H., The Privy Councillors in the House of Commons 1604-1629 (Minneapolis 1940) p 188 Google Scholar; House of Commons Journals 1 pp 858,921,927; The Manuscripts of the House of Lords XI p 206; DNB under Sherfield

page no 297 note 1 VCH Wiltshire VI pp 151-2; Churchwardens’ Accounts pp 173, 212. On select vestries, see Hill, C., Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London 1964) p 435 Google Scholar.

page no 297 note 2 State Trials pp 414, 408-9.

page no 297 note 3 State Trials pp 414, 409, 411; Gardiner VII pp 320, 361.

page no 297 note 4 S[alisbury] C[orporation] M[uniments], N101, letter to Heath of ? Jan 1627/8, letter of 30 Dec 1631; Add. 1, document 15Q; Tin Box 9, document 16. I am indebted to the Town Clerk of Salisbury for permission to consult and to quote from the archives in his care.

page no 298 note 1 Benson, R. and Hatcher, H., Old and New Sarum or Salisbury (London 1843) p 377 Google Scholar; Salisbury Diocesan Archives, Papers on disputes between the bishop and the town, document 15; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1637 pp 1, 4, 78, 1638-9 pp 122-3; PRO PC 2/46 pp 246-7, PC 2/47 p 404. For similar disputes in other cities, see Claire, Cross, ‘Achieving the Millennium: the Church in York during the Commonwealth’ in SCH IV (1967) p 128 Google Scholar; Hill, C., Economic Problems of the Church (Oxford 1956) p 9 Google Scholar; MacCaffrey, W. T., Exeter 1540-1640 (Cambridge, Mass. 1958) pp 218-20Google Scholar; and for the earlier history of this dispute in Salisbury: Street, F., ‘The Relations of the Bishops and Citizens of Salisbury (New Sarum) between 1225 and 1612’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, XXXIX (Devizes 1916) pp 319-61.Google Scholar

page no 298 note 2 SCM N101, letter of 30 December 1631; Tin Box 4, document 19; Salisbury Diocesan Archives, Papers on disputes between the bishop and the town, document 16.

page no 298 note 3 Gardiner, VII p 137; Robertson, D. H., Sarum Close (London 1938) pp 177-85Google Scholar.

page no 298 note 4 SCM, letter of 30 November 1629 in a bundle of ‘Law Papers in Chancery on the Charters’.

page no 298 note 5 It was Dr Lynne, the chancellor, who informed the Privy Council of Sherfield’s offence and he was prominent in finding witnesses against him: Acts of the Privy Council 1630-1 p 204; State Trials p 403. On Sherfield’s submission, compare the various proposals and drafts in PRO SP 16/232/56, 233/88, 89, 236/33, 75.

page no 299 note 1 Further elaboration on the statements made in this and the following paragraph and full references may be found in my chapter, ‘Poverty and Politics in Salisbury 1597- 1666 in Crisis and Order in English Towns, ed Peter, Clark and Paul, Slack (London 1972)Google Scholar.

page no 299 note 2 Acts of the Privy Council 1630-1 p 204; State Trials p 404. The account in State Trials gives the name ‘John Joye’; it is clear from the MS notes on the trial in PRO SP 16/211/ 20, however, that this is a misreading of’John Ivye’.

page no 299 note 3 PRO SP 16/183/58.

page no 299 note 4 PRO SP 16/527/4. John Ivie described the poor relief scheme and the opposition it encountered in his tract. A Declaration (London 1661).

page no 300 note 1 PRO SP 16/183/58; SCM Council Ledger C fol 299r; House of Lords Journals, vn p 485.

page no 300 note 2 Ivie, A Declaration p 19.

page no 300 note 3 PRO SP 16/183/58. The following paragraphs are based on these depositions.

page no 300 note 4 PRO SP 16/540/93. The JPs abo had recusants and separatists presented before them, as the town clerk pointed out in Sherfield’s defence: State Trials p 404; for actual cases, see SCM S162, 12 July 1630, 5 December 1631, 9 May 1632 (accounts of monthly meetings of overseers of the poor before the justices).

page no 300 note 5 On puritan opposition to wearing the veil and to the whole ceremony of churching, see Keith, Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1971) pp 38, 60–1 Google Scholar.

page no 301 note 1 Churchwardens’ Accounts p 186 Ivie, A Declaration p 22.

page no 301 note 2 SCM Tin Box 4, document 19.

page no 302 note 1 State Triais pp 415, 407; PRO SP 16/232/107; State Trials p 403.

page no 302 note 2 State Trials p 404.