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Thomas Fuller as Royalist Country Parson During the Interregnum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Although Thomas Fuller, the church historian, spent the first year of the civil war in London, where he articulated from the pulpit a political point of view consonant with that of the parliamentary peace party, there can be little doubt that his allegiance was with the king in that struggle. In the late summer of 1643 Fuller left London for the royalist capital at Oxford and before the end of the year entered the service of Lord Hopton as a chaplain in the royal army. During the latter stages of the civil war he resided in Exeter, where he served as chaplain to the infant princess Henrietta Anne, and where he enjoyed close relations with members of the court circle there. Fuller left the royalist community in Exeter only when the city itself surrendered in 1646, two months before the fall of Oxford. Because of these activities and because of a series of plainspoken books and pamphlets during the years of religious and political conflict, Fuller was widely known as an adherent of the royalist cause, albeit never as militant or as uncritical a partisan as many others in the king’s camp.
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References
1 Fuller’s political opinions, which revolved about the need for negotiations between the king and parliament, were expressed in print in A Fast Sermon Preached on Innocents Day (London 1642), A Sermon Preached at the Collegiat Church of S. Peter in Westminster, on the 27. of March, Being the Day of His Majesties Inauguration (London 1643), A Sermon of Reformation, Preached at the Church of the Savoy Last Fast Day, July 27, 1643 (London 1643), and in A Petition of the Citie of Westminster, and the Parishes of Saint Clement Danes, and Saint Martin in the Fields (London 1643), which bore Fuller’s name. See also [The] Life of [that Reverend Divine, and Learned Historian, Dr] Thomas, Fuller (London 1661) p 16 Google Scholar, where Fuller’s sermons at the Savoy chapel are described as ‘exhortations to peace’. For the activities and views of the parliamentary peace party in the opening months of the war, see Hexter, J. H., The Reign of King pym (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1941) pp 3-98Google Scholar.
2 Fuller, , Truth Maintained, or Positions Delivered in a Sermon at the Savoy, Since Traduced for Dangerous, Now Asserted for Sound and Safe (Oxford 1643)Google Scholar; Epistle to Master John Saltmarsh; Life of Thomas Fuller, pp 24-5, 33; Fuller, , Good Thoughts in Bad Times (Exeter 1645)Google Scholar, dedication to Lady Dalkeith, head of the princess’s household.
3 See [Claire], Cross, ‘The Church in England, 1646-60’, The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646-60, ed Aylmer, G.E (London 1972) pp 99-120Google Scholar, and Church and People, [1410-1660: The Triumph of the Laity in the English Church] (Hassocks, Sussex 1976), pp 199-221; and Paul, [Robert S.], The Lord Protector: [Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell] (London 1955) pp 251-95, 324-33Google Scholar. For a vivid picture of the religious groups which sprang up outside the framework of the national church in the Cromwellian era, see Association Records of the Particular Baptists of England, Wales and Ireland to 1660, ed White, B.R, 3 pts (London 1971-4)Google Scholar.
4 A True Copy of the Articles [Agreed on at the Surrender of Exeter; Examined, Perused, ana Signed by His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax, with a Punctuall Relation of the Setlement and Condition of That City by His Excellency] (London 1646) pp 6, 9.
5 A True Copy of the Articles pp 12-13.
6 Fuller, , [The] Church History of Britain: [From the Birth of Jesus Christ untill the Year M.DC.XLVIII] (London 1655) bk 11 pp 206-7Google Scholar.
7 PRO MS S.P. 23/G.85/1022, request for composition by Thomas Fuller, received 1 June 1646. According to the Exeter articles composition was not to exceed two years’ value of a man’s real estate, plus a proportion of his personal property. No record seems to remain, however, of Fuller’s real and personal property or of the sum levied against him by the committee.
8 [The] Minute Books [of the Dorset Standing Committee, 23rd Sept., 1646 to 8th May, 1650, ed Mayo, Charles H.] (Exeter 1902) pp xxxvi, 23Google Scholar.
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13 For these associations see , Fuller, The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience (London 1647)Google Scholar, dedication dated at Boughton, home of Edward, second baron Montagu, a contemporary of Fuller’s at Sidney Sussex college, Cambridge, sig A4; Fuller, [A] Sermon of Assurance, [Fourteen Yeares Agoe Preached in Cambridge, Since in Other Places, Now by the Importunity of Friends Exposed to Publike View] (London 1647), Dedicatory Epistle to Danvers, sig A2-A3 Google Scholar; Fuller, , A Sermon of Contentment (London 1648)Google Scholar Dedicatory Epistle to Danvers, sig A3 v-A4; Fuller, , The History of the Worthies of England (London 1662) pp 229-30Google Scholar.
14 Fuller, , Andronicus, or, The Unfortunate Politician, Shewing, Sin Slowly Punished, Right Surely Rescued (London 1646), sig A3 Google Scholar. The plight of royalist clergy in this era is dis cussed in Paul Hardacre, H., The Royalists during the Puritan Revolution (The Hague 1956) esp pp 39–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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18 Sermons at Saint Clement’s and Saint Dunstan’s, East, are cited in John Spencer, KAINA KAI ΠΑΛΑΙΑ: Things New and Old, or, A Store-house of Similies, Sentences, Allegories, Apophthegms, Adagies, Apologues, Divine, Morali, Politicali (London 1658) pp 14, 29, 72, 128, 141, 143, 146, 148, 153, 230-1, 234-6, 256, 473, 603.
19 Gardiner, S. R., life of James Hay, first earl of Carlisle, DNB, >25, pp 265-725,+pp+265-7>Google Scholar; Whitelocke, Bulstrode, Memorials of the English Affairs from the Beginning of the Reign of Charles the First to the Happy Restoration of King Charles the Second, 4 vols (Oxford 1853) 1, pp 245, 430Google Scholar; Lloyd, [David], Memoires [of the Lives, Actions, Sufferings & Deaths of Those Noble, Reverend, and Excellent Personages] (London 1668) p 676 Google Scholar.
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21 BM Lansdowne MS 459, Register of churchlivings of seventeen counties, c1650, fols 116v-17; Chelmsford, Essex County Record Office MS D/DQt 122, copy of the will of the earl of Norwich; Fuller, , [The] History of Waltham-Abby [in Essex, Founded by King Harold] (London 1655), published with the Church History of Britain, p 20 Google Scholar.
22 Chelmsford, Essex County Record Office MS D/P75/5/1, Waltham Holy Cross, Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1624-70, fol 141v.
23 Chelmsford, Essex County Record Office MS D/P75/5/1. fols 141v. 147. 155v.
24 The evidence for the dislocation of royalist clergymen is given in detail in Walker, John, An Attempt towards Recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England, Heads of Colleges, Fellows, Scholars, &c. Who Were Sequester’d, Harrass’d, &c. in the Late Times of the Grand Rebellion (London 1714)Google Scholar and Matthews, [A. G.], Walker Revised: [Being a Revision of John Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion, 1642-60] (Oxford 1948)Google Scholar. See also Cross, Church and People, pp 203-4. If. as Matthews’s figures suggest, as much as one third of the parishes in England had an incumbent removed by sequestration in the period indicated, the problem of unemployed ministers must have been continuing and severe.
25 Life of Thomas Fuller p 44.
26 Harold, Smith, The Ecclesiastical History of Essex under the Long Parliament and Commonwealth (Colchester 1932) pp 234-5Google Scholar.
27 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS Cod 909, Survey of Church Lands Anno 1649, E, vol 8, pp 1-4, 67-8.
28 The dedications in Fuller’s A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof, with the History of the Old and New Testament Acted Thereon (London 1650) and Church History of Britain include many residents of Waltham. His The Infants Advocate; Of Circumcision on Jewish Children and Baptisme on Christian Children (London 1653), is dedicated ‘To the Right Worshipfull, Edward Palmer, Henry Wollaston, and Matthew Gilly, Esquires; John Vavasor, Francis Bointon, Gent, with all the rest of my Loving Parishioners in Waltham Holy-Cross’ (sig B1).
29 Fuller, History of Waltham-Abbey, p 6.
30 Fuller, , The Just Mans Funeral, Lately Delivered in a Sermon at Chelsey, before Several Persons of Honour and Worship (London 1649) p 23 Google Scholar.
31 Fuller, , Strange Justice (London 1656)Google Scholar, part of a collection of Fuller’» sermons entitled The Best Name on Earth, Together with Severall Other Sermons Lately Preached at S. Brides, and in Other Places (London 1657) p 43.
32 [‘Extracts from the Papers of Thomas Woodcock (Ob. 1695)’, ed Smith, G. C.]Moore, The Camden Miscellany 11 (1907) p 80 Google Scholar.
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34 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 998, certificates of the commissioners for approbation of public preachers (1657) p 203.
35 Lloyd, Memoires, p 128.
36 See Fuller’s Perfection and Peace, Delivered in a Sermon Preached in the Chappel of the Right Worshipful Sir Robert Cook at Dyrdans (London 1653) sig A2, and Church History of Britain, bk 2, p 142; bk 9, pp 47-50.
37 See the lives of George Berkeley (1601-58) and of his son George (1628-98) by James McMullen Rigg in the DNB, 4, pp 346-8. Fuller’s own Good Thoughts in Bad Times, Consisting of Personall Meditations, Scripture Observations, Historicall Applications, Mixt Contemplations (Exeter 1645) and Good Thoughts in Worse Times, Consisting of Personall Meditations, Scripture Observations, Meditations on the Times, Meditations on All Kinds of Prayers, Occasionall Meditations (London 1647) were among the most popular books he wrote.
38 Fuller, , The Appeal of Iniured Innocence, unto the Religious, Learned and Ingenuous Reader in a Controversie betwixt the Animadvertor Dr Peter Heylyn and the Author Thomas Fuller (London 1659)Google Scholar, dedication to Lord Berkeley, sig A2. For a description of the church see Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England; Middlesex (Harmondsworth 1951) pp 38-9Google Scholar.
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40 The Works of the Late Reverend and Learned John Howe, M.A., Sometime Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon., ed Edmund Calamy, , 2 vols (London 1724), ‘The Life ot Mr John Howe’, 1, p 7 Google Scholar. See also the life of Howe by Alexander Gordon in the DNB, 28, pp 85-8.
41 Moore Smith p 70. That the question asked Fuller was commonly asked by the commissioners is suggested by Paul, The Lord Protector, pp 324-5.
42 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 998, p 203.
43 Matthews, Calamy Revised, pp 35-6, 104-5, 215. 519; Groshart, A. B. on William, Bates, DNB, 3, pp 399–400 Google Scholar; Bailey, J. E. on Thomas, Case, DNB, 9, pp 264-7Google Scholar; Thompson, Cooper on John, Wells, DNB, 60, pp 229-30Google Scholar; Wilson, John F., Pulpit in Parliament: Puritanism during the English Civil Wars, 1640-8 (Princeton 1969) pp 47, 77, 113Google Scholar.
44 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 998, p 203.
45 Pearce, Sion College, pp 1-38, 110-26; Fuller, Church History of Britain, To the Reader. sig a4.
46 Life of Thomas Fuller p 81.
47 Firth and Rait I, pp 582-3.
48 Pulpit Sparks [or Choice Forms of Prayer, by Several Reverend and Godly Divines, Used by Them, Both before and after Sermon, ed Thomas, Reeve] (London 1659)Google Scholar– copy in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
49 Ibid pp 156-71.
50 Ibid pp 169-71.
51 Firth and Rait 1, pp 583-607. See also Davies, Horton, The Worship of the English Puritans (Westminster 1948) pp 127-33Google Scholar.
52 Firth and Rait 1, pp 585-96.
53 Fuller, , Ioseph’s Party-Coloured Coat (London 1640) pp 58-9Google ScholarPubMed.
54 Fuller, , A Triple Reconciler, Stating the Controversies, Whether Ministers Have an Exclusive Power of Communicants from the Sacrament; Any Persons Unordained May Lawfully Preach; The Lords Prayer Ought Not To Be Used by All Christians (London 1654) pp 34-6Google Scholar.
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56 Compare Matthews, Walker Revised, pp v, xiii, xvii; Cross, Church and People, pp 203-6. See also Green, I. M., The Re-establishment of the Church of England, 1660-3 (Oxford 1978) pp 9, 177, 235Google Scholar, and passim, where the close relations between moderate anglicans and presbyterians at the time of the restoration are stressed.