Puritan Lecturers and Anglican Clergymen during the Early Years of the English Civil Wars

Abstract

During the early years of the Civil Wars in England, from February 1642 to July 1643, Puritan parishioners in conjunction with the parliament in London set up approximately 150 divines as weekly preachers, or lecturers, in the city and the provinces. This was an exceptional activity surrounding lectureships including the high number of lecturer appointments made over the relatively brief space of time, especially considering the urgent necessity of making preparations for the looming war and fighting it as well. By examining a range of sources, this article seeks to demonstrate that the Puritan MPs and peers, in cooperation with their supporters from across the country, tactically employed the institutional device of weekly preaching, or lectureships, to neutralize the influence of Anglican clergymen perceived as royalists dissatisfied with the parliamentarian cause, and to bolster Puritan and pro-parliamentarian preaching during the critical years of 1642–1643. If successfully employed, the device of weekly lectureships would have significantly widened the base of support for the parliament during this crucial period when people began to take sides, prepared for war, and fought its first battles. Such a program of lectureships, no doubt, contributed to the increasing polarization of the religious and political climate of the country. More broadly, this study seeks to add to our understanding of an early phase of the conflict that eventually embroiled the entire British Isles in a decade of gruesome internecine warfare.

1. Introduction

From early 1642 to the summer of the following year, approximately 150 divines were set up as weekly preachers, or lecturers, in parish pulpits in London and the provinces by the parliament generally upon petitions presented from local Puritan parishioners (Shaw 1900, vol. 2, Appendix ii b).1 The first appointee was Thomas Wilson as the weekly preacher of Maidstone, Kent on 12 February 1642, and on average five ministers were examined and approved by the parliament each month until 11 July 1643 on which day Michael Porter received the nod for the lectureship at St Mary’s, Dover (Chung 2016, p. 167).2 Prior to this relatively intensive phase of appointments, the House of Commons placed a few men as preachers in and near London in September and October of 1641 and passed resolutions several months earlier to encourage preaching in the deans and chapters of cathedrals as well as in parochial churches (Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 2 1640–1643 1802, pp. 174, 206). Yet the official journals of the parliament are generally silent as to any positive outcome of those earlier measures and do not indicate any sort of consistent program of lectureship countenanced by the parliament prior to 1642. After the summer of 1643, the frequency of appointments of weekly preachers was scarcely matched for the remainder of the decade (Firth and Rait 1911, vol. 1, pp. 669–74). Thus, the eighteen months or so from early 1642 to July 1643 represent a rather exceptional span of time when it comes to Puritan activity surrounding weekly preaching during the Civil Wars.

The broader background to the lectureship scheme of 1642–1643 is not difficult to locate: the commitment of the Puritans to preaching ministry. In its order of 8 September 1641, “for the Establishing of Preaching Lecturers” in England and Wales, the Commons gave pride of place to preaching because it declared “the mind and message of God” regarding the “duty, and salvation” of people. The order went on to explain that this “Reformation” of preaching was “necessary” because the “Bishops sought to overthrow the lecturers” and prohibited “Congregations to hear such Orthodox Ministers preach unto them” (An Order Made by the House of Commons for the Establishing of Preaching Lecturers 1641).3 Thus as William Shaw observed, the “object of such a device [of lectureship] was simply to remedy ‘the great scarcity of preaching minister’” (Shaw 1900, vol. 2, pp. 82–83; Chung 2016, p. 167). However, the vision of the Puritans for a countrywide ministry staffed by “Orthodox” divines does not seem to account fully for the lectureship scheme of 1642–1643. As mentioned, a lackluster performance characterized the MPs and peers with respect to their approval of lecturers prior to 1642. It would be reasonable to expect a level of diligence in this area during the same time if the commitment to godly preaching had been the sole rationale behind the lectureships. It may perhaps be argued that the fluctuating demands of parliamentary business explain the faltering appointments of weekly preachers in 1641 and the conspicuous picking up of pace from February 1642. Yet making preparations for a looming war from early 1642 would have kept the parliamentarians as much, if not more occupied as dealing with the Scots army or the news of Irish rebellion over the course of the previous year. In this light, it is necessary to consider the more immediate contexts to the lectureship program if we are to understand the rationale behind it and the extent of its implementation.

After the failed seizure of five members of the Commons and one of the House of Lords on 4 January 1642 and the subsequent departure of Charles I from London, the country saw a heightened war of words between the king and the parliament. As the parliament’s relationship with the king took a decided turn for the worse, gradual preparations were made for what seemed an inevitable armed conflict.4 In this process, the parliament no doubt realized the importance of taking their message to the public to win the battle for the minds and loyalties of the people. The move also constituted an indispensable component of magnifying the justness of its cause and ultimately of enhancing its military capabilities.5 The steady and relatively frequent appointment of weekly preachers from 1642 should be placed in this context. This, as we shall see, helps us to recognize that the somewhat unique phase of setting up preachers in 1642–1643 was intended to realize a clearly defined, twofold policy in London and the provinces. One, the policy negatively entailed the parliament’s efforts to neutralize the opinions of, as well as the influence exercised by, incumbent clergymen who were perceived to be Anglicans or royalists disaffected from its religious and constitutional program by compelling them to share their pulpits with Puritan lecturers. The other was that the policy positively was intended to provide the lecturers with a platform to air their views freely, no doubt, to the benefit of the parliamentarian enterprise (Chung 2016, p. 167). After July 1643, the same policy was more or less well-served by official sequestrations of Anglicans or royalist clergymen and their replacement with ministers supportive of the parliament (McCall 2013, 2015).

In his speech to the Commons in early 1643, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd displayed an appreciation of the value of lectureships when he observed that “the execution of our Lawe [for] the plantinge of a prechinge ministry throughout the kingdome will be a means to suppresse them [papists]” (Thomson 1986, p. 226).6 Rudyerd made this comment in response to John Pym’s recommendation for a “nationall association” between England and Scotland to counter the threat of the “popishe ptie [party],” and this “papist” threat was also understood in the broader sense of royalist-Laudian aggression against the parliament. In his recollection of the Civil War years, John Nalson complained that the parliament, with its September 1641 order for weekly preaching, “set up a Spiritual Milita of these lecturers” who were “all the Parliaments or rather the Presbyterian Factions Creatures, and were therefore ready in all Places … to Extol their Actions, and applaud their Intentions.” Nalson continued his acerbic remark, noting that the same lecturers preached to the people “the Principles of disloyalty … the pretended Liberty of the Subject, and the Glorious Reformation that was coming” and that their “Pulpit Harangues to People, were Repeated Ecchoes of the Votes, Orders, Remonstrances and Declarations of Westminster” (Nalson 1683, vol. 2, pp. 477–78).7 Although addressing the same theme of Puritan preaching, the two men not unexpectedly arrived at conclusions that were poles apart. The parliamentarian statesman, Rudyerd saw much in preaching by Puritan divines which would help clamp down on ‘popery’ and its varied offshoots, but the Anglican clergyman Nalson saw their activities as at best doing the parliament’s bidding and at worst provoking “Tragedies of Murder, Rapine, Sacrilege and Rebellion” (Nalson 1683, vol. 2, p. 478). Yet at the same time, what we find in these sharply conflicting reports is a common ground of recognition that preaching by the Puritan divines was an effective means of realizing the purposes for which they were patronized by the parliament and their parishioners.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, to find that in the critical span of approximately eight months preceding the commencement of the war and the succeeding months when many began to take sides and became increasingly entrenched in their loyalties, the Puritan MPs, peers, and parishioners sought to secure the pulpits to widen their base of support and to enlist men and women to their cause, as they believed that these were a locus of opinion-making in early modern England (Thomson 1986, p. 226).8 It is noteworthy in this respect that the lectureship scheme was implemented in a more or less systematic fashion over a comparatively brief period of time. This religio-political dimension of weekly preaching in early modern England has been well appreciated by historians but somewhat surprisingly, due consideration, it seems, has not been given to the above lectureship program.9 Based on a range of sources including petitions, diaries, printed sermons, and the official journals of the parliament, this article will explore how the parliament and its supporters tactically and extensively employed the device of lectureship to further the Puritan cause in the critical years of 1642–1643. And it seems that such a focused study promises to pay dividends, not least because, as mentioned, the lectureship program of these two years has yet to be examined on its own merit.

2. Background to the Lectureships

A précis of the background to and the overall procedure involved in setting up weekly preachers during the early sixteen-forties will paint a clear picture of the program of weekly preaching examined here and why it was thought to be necessary. Prior to 1642, the parliament gathered a great deal of information on ‘scandalous’ and ‘malignant’ clergymen. Shaw counted approximately eight hundred petitions that were examined by the Committee for Scandalous Ministers in only the first several months of the Long Parliament’s existence. The first one hundred of the cases reported from this committee to the Commons were printed in November 1643 as, The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests (White 1643).10 In some cases, the same committee acted upon the information found in the petitions by depriving the incumbents whose conduct it found unacceptable (Shaw 1900, vol. 2, pp. 175–82). Still, until the later 1642, this enterprise was more of a stop-and-go affair most likely because the parliament was reluctant to assail property rights. With the fighting in full swing and with Puritan ministers from royalist areas flocking to London, the parliament seemed to have been eased of their scruples about such legal niceties. They began systematically to sequestrate royalist clergymen and to replace them with those sympathetic to their cause from December 1642.11 This indicates that prior to that date, the parliament and its supporters had to find other means, besides official sequestrations of unsatisfactory incumbents, to secure regular Reformed, Puritan sermons in the localities. For this, they resorted to the tried and tested device of parish lectureship, one that also kept them out of the legal knot tied up with ecclesiastical patronage and property rights.

In September 1641, the Commons, on a motion by Oliver Cromwell, issued the order for lectureships mentioned earlier. The order granted parishioners the initiative of procuring weekly preachers, making it “lawfull for the parishioners to set up such Lecturers” and appears to have waived the cumbersome process of obtaining prior approval by the parliament (An Order Made by the House of Commons for the Establishing of Preaching Lecturers 1641, pp. 4–5). The MPs probably felt the necessity of this course of action when they saw the decidedly poor performance of the committee they had created earlier on 12 December 1640 for a similar purpose of ensuring frequent sermons (Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 2 1640–1643 1802, vol. 2, p. 54).12 It was also probably a face-saving measure for the MPs, which was made the more obvious as they could not make the necessary financial arrangement for the preachers. They turned this responsibility over to the local people as well.13

Hence by autumn of 1641, the ball was in the parishioners’ court, and they made the most of it, at least from February 1642 onwards. The parliamentary journals show that the Houses received petitions from the parishioners for approval of their nomination, which would be followed almost invariably by the consent of MPs or peers.14 The fact that the parishioners sought parliamentary authorization even when this was not required suggests that they may have wanted to pre-empt any possible objections of the incumbent. If this were so, they proved prescient as some incumbents, like William Edwards of Pennard, Glamorgan employed obstructionist tactics against the lecturer; Ambrose Mostyn was prevented from using the pulpit of the parish church (Snow and Young 1987, p. 368).15 Additionally, as the Appendix A shows, one of the more frequent charges brought against the incumbents was their opposition to the institution of lecturers in their parish churches.16 Once the petitions were delivered into the Houses,17 the members were ready to devote immediate attention and a reasonable amount of time to them. For instance, Simonds D’Ewes recorded in his diary that when “Sir Edward Partridge moved that the inhabitants of Maidstone … might be authorized to appoint a lecturer … one Mr. Thomas Wilson,” “[a]fter some debate, it was ordered according to his desire” (Coates et al. 1982, p. 355).18 On 25 June 1642, D’Ewes again wrote, “Mr. Hampden after prayers delivered in a petition from the town of Berkhamstead in the county of Hertford to set up a lecture there, which was after a little dispute yielded unto by the house and ordered accordingly” (Snow and Young 1992, p. 133).

Sometimes, the deliberations took a winding turn and occupied a substantial portion of the parliament’s time. The case of John Sedgwicke, a lecturer appointed on 25 October 1641, took two days to sort out (Coates 1942, pp. 35, 36, 38, 39), while Sir Thomas Peyton’s single entry remark in his diary on 18 February 1642 offered a rather fitting summary of the day’s activity: “This day spent in hearing petitions from parishes desiring the establishment of such persons to be lecturers as they had made choice of, etc.” (Coates et al. 1982, p. 415). Even when such extended deliberations were absent, fairly consistent entries in the MPs’ diaries indicating, at minimum, the recommendation of a candidate and the Commons’ appropriate response suggest a measure of interest on the matter. Moreover, the Commons’ refusal to create a separate committee, which was the usual manner of dealing with similar tasks, is an indication that the matter carried weight with the MPs.19 This interest was sustained at least into mid-1642, after which time, as the country inched closer to war, the MPs’ attention was diverted to the necessary preparations.20 While the precise nature of the discussions surrounding the candidates is difficult to tell except for a small number of cases, it seems not unreasonable to assume that part of those discussions had to do with the religious stance of the nominees and incumbents as well as their political sympathies. What is particularly interesting in relation to this procedural context is that it took well over five months before the effects of the order for lectureship of 8 September 1641 kicked in and the parishioners started to send up their petitions with any kind of regularity. Only one divine, John Sedgwick, was appointed as a lecturer after the order was issued and before February 1642. Prior to the order, the Commons Journal recorded the approval of William Greenhill and Jeremiah Burroughs on 6 September 1641 as lecturers in Stepney, Middlesex, and of one or more unidentified ministers to Farnham, Surrey five days earlier (Shaw 1900, vol. 2, Appendix ii b). Why was that the case? Obviously, we need to factor in the time gap between the issuing of the order from Westminster and its reception in the localities. Presumably, this may have taken anywhere between several weeks to over a month. Still, it fails to account adequately for the pronounced delay of local response.

Perhaps one way to make sense of it may be to conceive of a reverse process, wherein the parliament from the center are giving the lead rather than their local constituents, who would then respond with a presentation of a formal request, the petition, for their choice of a preacher. To support this interpretation, we note that the parliament had already hit upon the idea of gathering information about scandalous ministers in December 1640 (Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 2 1640–1643 1802, p. 49). As mentioned, when the battle lines subsequently began to be drawn after Charles’ departure from London in January 1642, the parliament must have seen the need to win the loyalties of local parishioners by curtailing the influence of ‘malignant’ clerics on whom they had been keeping a relatively close tab (Shaw 1900, vol. 2, pp. 175–82, 295–300).

One important means of achieving this goal for the MPs and peers was to get their own men into those clerics’ pulpits. They could have done this by encouraging their supporters to procure both the preachers and the means of providing for them. Hence the petitions as recorded in the journals are perhaps more correctly seen as a response to the initiatives of the MPs and peers.21 This helps explain the relative lull in the activity surrounding the lectureship scheme between September 1641 and January 1642 and why it was subsequently put in high gear. It also goes some way to explaining the amazing level of accuracy with which clergymen of questionable views had been targeted. The exigencies of war, or more precisely the premonitions surrounding it, can thus be seen as the immediate cause behind the frequency with which Puritan preachers found their way into parish churches from February 1642. After the summer of 1643, this determination to retain control of the pulpits was well served by sequestrations of royalist clergymen which by and large came to replace the lectureship program (McCall 2013, 2015).

In the context of early modern England, this partial “politicization” of lectureships is not surprising.22 Preachers during this time exhibited a tendency to mix civil and spiritual issues in the topography of their sermons. As Paul Seaver has shown, this practice in English Protestantism can be traced back to its early days. For instance, Archbishop Grindal, before his sermon, consulted Secretary Cecil about “any matter which you wish to be uttered there [Paul’s Cross] for the present state” (Seaver 1970, p. 58). Homilies delivered at the Cross throw up a particularly good illustration of this mixture, since the government saw it as an ideal venue to air issues of national significance as a way of harnessing public opinion. In 1586, Archbishop Sandys denounced Anthony Babington and his collaborators by comparing their conspiracy with Absalom’s revolt.23 The preacher in 1591 urged his audience to reaffirm their support of the war against Spain (Seaver 1970, p. 58).

Perhaps more than any other group, the Puritans appreciated the practical benefits of this kind of preaching. In the late sixteen-twenties, the feoffees for impropriation were directing their efforts in towns represented in the Commons, and what particularly annoyed the Attorney General William Noy about this was that many of those towns had Puritan preachers who, supported by the feoffees, worked against the Crown at a moment when its relationship with the parliament was at its nadir (Calder 1948; Hill 1986, pp. 96–97). The Puritan preachers willingly performed a similar task in the spring election of 1640, when the seats in the parliament were at stake (Seaver 1970, pp. 67–68). This symbiotic relationship seems to have strengthened during the Civil Wars. The Puritan MPs and peers readily identified with the preachers’ vision for radical ecclesiastical reform, and the latter in turn acted as their spokesmen. The fast sermons delivered before the Houses over the course of the wars probably offer the most obvious example of this fairly cohesive patron and client relationship (Wilson 1969; Trevor-Roper 1965, pp. 85–138; Baskerville 1993). In a letter to his wife, Charles himself appreciated this religio-political significance of sermons: “if the pulpits teach not obedience … the king will have but small comfort of the militia” (Bruce 1856, p. 79).

In 1642–1643, when the debates about the events unfolding at Westminster began to be absorbed into hardening categories and as people took sides for military conflict, the Puritan MPs and peers needed to undertake damage-control, curtailing the effects of hostile preaching and other forms of royalist campaigning whilst maximizing their own resources. It was hence a step in the right direction when they took care to appoint or approve lecturers who were not only vocal supporters of the revolutionary aspirations of the parliament but who would also be placed in parishes where the local incumbents were deemed royalists and Anglican sympathizers. If successful, the efforts of such lecturers would have significantly widened the base of support for the parliament during the crucial period of 1642 and 1643 when people began to take sides, prepared for war, and fought in its first battles. In what follows, a detailed examination will be made of the perceived problematic views and activities of the incumbents, which in turn sheds light on the reasons why the parliament and its supporters saw a need to procure a counterweight to them in the localities.

3. Puritan Lecturers and Anglican Incumbents

A total of 101 parishes are recorded in parliamentary journals to have seen a lecturer or lecturers placed alongside the incumbent clergymen from February 1642 to July 1643.24 Of the total number of incumbents who occupied those livings, the names of eighty-two can be identified.25 This is shown in

Table 1. Sequestration of Incumbents.

1642–1643
Number of parishes where lectureship was set up	101
Number of cases where incumbent or incumbents can be identified	82
Number of sequestered incumbents	58

. The journals also mention their particular office, whether a rector, vicar, or curate.26 Probably the most significant fact about those who were forced to share their pulpits with weekly preachers is how their fate was sealed in large measure by the lecturer scheme: over seventy percent of them are known for certain to have been sequestered subsequently by the parliament and a significant number in the first several years of the Civil War. Not infrequently, the sequestrations were made to the same lecturers who had jointly occupied their pulpits. For some of the sequestrations, we have information only of the parish livings and not the incumbents. Although such cases are not counted here, they nonetheless signal that the unidentified incumbents were removed from their office. For others, what we find is that a pluralist incumbent would be sequestered from a living other than where a lectureship had been set up. His sequestration from the living where the pulpit was shared with the lecturer may have been likely, but no extant information survives to furnish a definite answer. The somewhat numerous instances of sequestration upon the death or resignation of the incumbent are also not counted here, although the three sequestrations upon desertion have been tallied for they imply a high probability of royalism. It is also worth noting relative to this is that many sequestered incumbents suffered other forms of retribution for their perceived failings such as commitment to the fleet and confinement, and a similar fate awaited many who had escaped sequestration. What remains relevant to the present study is the consistent pattern of the activity of the parliament and parishioners surrounding the lectureships. They intruded lecturers upon incumbents whose standing with the parliament in 1642–1643 was considered precarious at best and from December 1642, used the opportunity afforded by the circumstances of war to discard them altogether by way of official sequestration.

Of the eighty-two identifiable incumbents mentioned above, the nature of the charges, formal and informal, brought against forty-eight is known. This is shown in

Table 2. Charges against Incumbents.

1642–1643
Number of cases where the charges against the incumbent are known	46
Number of charges for theological irregularity	3
Number of charges for political irregularity	13
Number of charges for theological and political irregularity	6
Number of charges for behavior alone or in conjunction with religious and/or political irregularity	24

. Based on the detailed information collected by John Walker (Walker 1714) and revised by A. G. Matthews (Matthews 1988), we can divide the charges into three broad categories: theological, political, and ethical. The most oft-repeated complaint in the first of the categories was the incumbents’ countenance of “popish” ceremonies; their Arminian views and claims of jure divino Episcopacy also proved problematic for the parliament. In the second category, the allegation of a refusal to subscribe to the Solemn League and Covenant, in addition to the general charge of anti-parliamentarianism was frequently leveled against those incumbents who were viewed as having taken up the cudgels for the king. Of course, the rejection of the Covenant was also a religious act, since it entailed, among others, rejecting further alterations to the Elizabethan church. What is also important to note is that if a clergyman were charged, for instance, with a doctrinal offense, the likelihood that he was politically out of alignment with the parliament was naturally high, and vice versa. The ethical improprieties most often complained of were pluralism and drunkenness, with a variety of others including “opposition to lecturer” bringing down the wrath of the parliament.

Not infrequently, an incumbent would be the focus of more than one of these articles of an indictment. Even in cases where only a single accusation was made, it does not necessarily follow that it was the only reason for which the parishioners lodged their complaint. Furthermore, those accused of the various charges will often be tarred with the same brush of being “scandalous” or “delinquent.” That one should not posit too rigid a dividing line between the varied categories of charges is also made clear by the wording employed in the petitions. Ian Green’s study of the treatment of the royalist clerics over the course of the Civil Wars is informative here. He demonstrates how those in the localities who launched a formal complaint against an incumbent of the parish church, would usually follow the lead given by their social superiors when framing their accusation. It was usually formulaic in nature, repeating a similar set of charges, which indicates a generally well-established pattern into which varied complaints were fitted (Green 1979, pp. 518–21).

An examination of the thirteen surviving petitions for lecturers for the years 1641 to 1643, now preserved in the House of Lords Record Office, reveals that a range of charges was placed at the incumbents’ door. Nearly all contain specific complaints of either their hostility to weekly sermons or lack of preaching in general. Many of them go further and bring more serious allegations against their minister. The congregation at St Giles Cripplegate claimed in their petition that the curate, Timothy Hutton, was “scandalous” and that “one ffletcher a Scandalous Minister … upon y^e 14th instant locked both the pet^rs and m^r Sedgwick out of the Church …” (Main Papers: Includes “The Incident” 1641). Another clergyman, John Taylor was similarly labeled, when the parishioners of Hemel Hempstead said he was “scandalous” and “unworthy to hold any benefice” (Main Papers 1642a). He ended up having to share his pulpit with Philip Goodwyn and George Kendall, the latter of whom was staunchly Puritan.27 If “scandalous” can be seen as a term of reference inclusive of a range of irregularities, both theological and political, the petitioners of Leighton, Bedfordshire denounced their incumbent specifically for his theological aberrations: “Christofer Slater [is] a promoter of the late superstitious Inovacons …” (Main Papers 1642b).28 For this, Slater had to grant the Puritan minister, Samuel Fisher the right to use the pulpit on a weekly basis.29 In most of the petitions, the apparent faults of the incumbents were accentuated by a clever juxtaposition with the perceived virtues of the lecturers, such as orthodox beliefs, godly life, and faithful ministry.

In respect to the more expressly political failings, the petitions mentioned above do not contain any direct references to the incumbents’ disaffection to the parliament. Almost all were content to direct attention to doctrine and conduct. This is understandable to an extent since most of them predate the outbreak of the war, during which time clergymen could fudge the issue by refusing to be candid about where their loyalty lay. Moreover, the organizers of the petitions may have hesitated to express such considerations in a document intended solely for the spiritual needs of their church, even if they had a bone to pick with the incumbents on a political score. Perhaps the petition from the parishioners of St Andrews Holborne provides an illustration of this, as it made no criticism of their minister, John Hacket, who was known for his commitment to Reformed theology (Main Papers: Undated Items 1642). Yet there was probably more to this than meets the eye, as Walker records that only five months later, Hacket was imprisoned for refusing to contribute to the parliament. Accusations of abetting the king with money and refusing the Covenant soon followed. After having a lecturer intruded upon him, Hacket was eventually sequestered from his living in October 1643.30 In the volatile situation of post-1642, the parliament, not surprisingly, refused to hold out an olive branch to those ostensibly set on supporting the king, even for the divine-like Hacket whose doctrinal standing with the Puritans remained uncontroversial (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004).31 At other times, the parishioners seem to have couched their complaints about a minister’s political stance in a more general language including the ubiquitous label “scandalous.” This was probably the case with the aforementioned Taylor, who was branded by disgruntled petitioners as “scandalous” in their petition dated 6 June 1642 (Main Papers 1642a). He would be sequestered nine months later for, among other reasons, malignity against parliament.32 As Green explains, the term malignant “in its original sense of speaking or acting against parliament was a not infrequent charge against the clergy, but as soon as the fighting broke out it became much more common” (Green 1979, pp. 512–13).

A closer look at Walker Revised and additional sources brings to light other interesting instances of the incumbents’ ostensible religious, political, or ethical failings, or varying combinations of them. Although a divine esteemed by the Puritans as a “severe Calvinist,” John Reading saw the assignment of a lecturer to his parish of St Mary’s, Dover. Like Hacket discussed above, Reading eventually suffered imprisonment and sequestration meted out by the parliament on account of his active royalism (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004).33 Savoy, London presents a noteworthy example. There, three prominent clergymen, Walter Balcanquhall, Daniel Featley, and Thomas Fuller, occupied the offices of a master, rector, and lecturer, respectively. Even with Fuller serving as a lecturer, Savoy was a place deemed necessary or at least recommendable to have another lecturer assigned to it. As it turned out, all three were found to exhibit royalist sympathies, with the added charge of ceremonialism for Balcanquhall. The first two were sequestered not long after the war broke out, and Fuller probably would have met the same fate had he not of his own volition deserted to the royalist camp at Oxford in 1643 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004).34 A longer list of allegations was drawn up against Thomas Vaughan, a minister in Chatham, Kent. He was said to have observed ceremonies, preached infrequently, found to be drunk, and most conspicuously, called members of the parliament “a company of logger-headed fellows.”35 Vicar of a parish church in Feversham, Kent, John Jeffrys was similarly charged with all three categories of shortcomings: preaching in favor of royal absolutism, defending jure divino of Episcopacy, and absenting himself from his place of ministry.36 It is not surprising then that even though the charges brought against these men generally do not seem to have been fully investigated by the parliament, their beliefs and activities raised enough suspicions especially in the highly polarized climate of 1642 and 1643 to have preachers enjoying the endorsement of Puritan parishioners placed alongside them in their parish pulpits.

Table 3. Religious and Political Outlook of Lecturers.

1642–1643
Number of lecturers placed in parishes in London and provinces	150
Number of cases with information on lecturer	70
Number of lecturers with Puritan sympathies prior to 1642	36
Number of lecturers with Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Antinomian, or Quaker sympathies	49
Number of lecturers with parliamentarian sympathies	40
Number of lecturers ejected from their livings in 1660 or 1662	43

shows the religious and political sympathies of such preachers about whom information can be gathered from extant sources. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those men were Puritans. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that something similar can be said of most of the remaining lecturers for whom no or scanty information has survived, if only because it is highly improbable that the parliament would have assigned a pulpit to a minister indifferent to its vision of an ideal commonwealth. To elaborate on the categorization of the Table, the preachers were specified as “Puritan” if they were known to have displayed such sympathies prior to their appointment as lecturers.37 Additionally, the preachers were designated as “Presbyterian,” “Congregationalist,” “Baptist,” “Antinomian,” or “Quaker” if they subscribed to such views during the wars or for a few, during the sixteen-fifties. It may also be noted in this regard that a few of the preachers shifted positions as the decades wore on, for instance, Samuel Fisher went from being Presbyterian to a Baptist and then to a Quaker and John Simpson from an Antinomian to a Fifth Monarchist. Additionally, for clarity, the category for political sympathies has been separately added when there was direct evidence for them, even though the religious preference of the preachers would have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to direct their loyalties elsewhere than the parliament. In this light, it should be remarked that the Table offers an impressionistic, rather than a precise, classification of the religious outlook of the lecturers. Still, the overall impression gained from it is that the preachers were in tune with the parliamentarian program. Another not unimportant factor to consider is that the vast majority of the lecturers who remained alive until the Restoration years were ejected from their livings either in 1660 or 1662. Ironically, many of their replacements were the clergymen who had been sequestered from their livings by the parliament during the previous decades.

It is possible to identify several reasons for the relatively successful placement of sympathetic preachers in the pulpits of incumbents considered as disaffected to the parliament. First, as mentioned, the parliament engaged in an extensive effort at garnering information about “malignant” and “scandalous” clergymen in the initial years of the sixteen-forties. Moreover, the parliament tapped popular religious consciousness among the Puritans in London and the provinces by carefully managing the device of ecclesiastical patronage, which was significantly helped by the seriousness with which both groups took alienation from the parliamentarian cause. Their close cooperation cannot be underestimated either. The extent to which the lectureship scheme was successful in keeping a fairly tight rein on clergymen of dubious standing is more difficult to gauge, however. This is due primarily to the paucity of the available source material. Yet the value of preaching as partly embodied in the lectureship for the Puritan and parliamentarian cause was perhaps not better appreciated than in the bitter diatribe penned in retrospect by Thomas Hobbes: “Had it not been much better that those seditious ministers, which were not perhaps 1000, had been all killed before they had preached? It had been, I confess, a great massacre, but the killing of 100,000 [during the Civil Wars] is a greater” (Seaver 1970, p. 70). As a hostile witness, Hobbes may have exaggerated, but the thrust of his statement still cannot be gainsaid.

4. Views of Lecturers and Incumbents

What views did the ‘seditious ministers’ or lecturers share in their places of appointment? Concomitantly, what opinions did the incumbents convey to their parishioners? An examination of a selection of writings by both groups of divines, especially those printed during the late sixteen-thirties and early sixteen-forties will help answer these questions. The answers, in turn, shed further light on the rationale for the lectureship program in the months leading up to the war and for some duration of time following it and on why the incumbents often put up resistance against intrusions on their pulpits (Shaw 1900, vol. 2, p. 184). It needs to be noted briefly here that whilst lacking a claim to be representative of the opinions of all the lecturers and incumbents considered in this study, the writings perhaps justifiably can be seen to provide a flavor of what the two opposing clusters of men believed and shared with those inhabiting their circle of influence. Moreover, although not all the writings examined here are homilies, what remains pertinent is that they contain ideas that were most likely circulated from the pulpits and in various other formal and informal settings in the parishes. In what follows, we will direct attention primarily to their views on ecclesiastical polity and worship as well as on political authority, because these constituted the most exigent issues of the years 1642 to 1643.38

We will begin with an exploration of the pamphlets issued by the incumbent clergymen, for this will enhance our appreciation of why a counterweight in the form of weekly preachers was thought to be necessary. A well-educated rector of Woodchurch, Kent, Edward Boughen was committed to defending Episcopacy and brought himself in line with the Laudian program during the sixteen-thirties (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004). In an April 1637 sermon, Boughen highlighted the need for a greater level of “decencie” and “order” in the life of the church. He then exhorted his audience to “a cheerfull performance of those duties” conducive to orderly ecclesiastical ministry, having recognized that they “are more strictly exacted now then heretofore.” He went on to legitimate such alterations by an appeal to “the Lawes of both State and Church” and to the more practical demands arising from membership in a “Nationall Church” (Boughen 1637, pp. 3, 5). These general observations became more specific when Boughen enjoined that ‘we must be sometimes kneeling, sometimes standing, otherwhiles bowing, when and as we are commanded’ and justified the imposition of corresponding “penalties” for noncompliance (Boughen 1637, pp. 6, 7, 14, 25). This stance, especially on liturgy, constituted an unmistakable endorsement of the changes introduced by Laud after his promotion to the archbishopric of Canterbury. In his tract responding to an ordinance of 1644 for ministerial ordination, Boughen continued to display his attachment to Episcopacy, taking issue with the legislation’s criticism of bishops (Boughen 1645, pp. 6–30). At the same time, Boughen was keen to draw attention to the more fundamental issue of the process of how the ordinance was formulated. He thus called into question the right of the parliament to convene a synod of divines to advise them on the issue and to enact laws which impinged upon the church without the king’s “summons,” “assent,” and “commission.” Boughen also reaffirmed the lofty standing of the clerical estate when he asserted that ecclesiastical rules such as for worship and ordination were to be “Ordered by Divines, indeed, by Bishops assembled in a Synode, or free Councell,” and considered the Westminster Assembly of Divines to lack such freedom because of its heavy dependence on the parliament (Boughen 1645, pp. 1–6).

More well-known and more actively pro-Laudian than Boughen was Peter Heylyn, rector of New Alresford, Hampshire (Milton 2007). During the sixteen-thirties, Heylyn was diligent in seeking out opposition to Laudian religious policies. The removal of John Williams from the deanery at Westminster and the exile of William Prynne, among others, can be credited in large measure to Heylyn’s activism on behalf of his patron, Archbishop Laud (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004). The roots of such assiduousness can perhaps be traced to Heylyn’s own views on liturgy, which no doubt struck a chord with other sympathizers of the Laudian agenda. A prolific writer, Heylyn came out with a pamphlet in 1636 entitled, A Coale from the Altar to defend Laud’s altar policy. Heylyn asserted that “there is alleged no Canon, Ordinance, or Doctrine, which if examined rightly, doe declare against” the substitution of the name communion table with an altar and its placement at the east end of the church. Rather, he declared, “there is much that may be said in defence” of such an alteration (Heylyn 1636, p. 14). In the following year, he published Antidotum Lincolniense, an extended tract again for the purpose of placing Laudian “innovations” in a positive light (Heylyn 1637). In 1642, the Laudian polemicist wrote a history of Episcopacy, a work of apologetics defending the claims of superiority of the office of bishops over other ministers with his own meticulous reconstruction of the system of ecclesiastical governance in the early church (Heylyn 1642). Unsurprisingly, Heylyn also shared common ground with Laud on the political front. During the early years of the war, Heylyn worked as the first editor of the newsbook, Mercurius Aulicus which proved to be an important medium of royalist propaganda (Raymond 1996, pp. 148–52; also see Rivett 2013). In the 1643 Rebells Catechisme, Heylyn denounced the Commons for seeking “to destroy” the “Person” of “His Majesty” so that “they may keep his power still amongst themselves” and refused to justify even a “defensive” war against a “tyrant” ruler (Heylyn 1643, pp. 4, 11, 12). Written the same year but published fifteen years later, The Stumbling Block of Disobedience and Rebellion leveled criticism at John Calvin’s ideas of resistance against a prince as based primarily on the faulty appropriation of Roman and Greek history and inaccurate understanding of contemporary political structures. With this line of argumentation, Heylyn cast doubt on the parliament’s grounds for taking up arms against the king and exercising sovereign powers including those for making laws (Heylyn 1658).

When compared to Heylyn or even Boughen, John Squire was more a run of the mill clergyman with only one publication to his credit. In his 1641 reply to a paper accusing him of promoting the “late innovations” of “Canterbury” in his parish in Shoreditch, London and of exhibiting sympathies for royal absolutism (Articles Exhibited in Parliament, against Master John Squire 1641; also see The Humble Petition of Some of the Inhabitants of the Parish of Leonard Shoreditch against John Squire 1642), Squire insisted that he was a moderate conformist and respectful of the subjects’ liberties. He denied that “he doth use any offensive ceremonies not established by Law” or that he “induce Pictures or Images … against the will, intent, or subscriptions of his Parishioners” (Squire 1641, p. 5). He also averred that “He never did bow himself; nor did He perswade any other to bow to the Communion table” (Squire 1641, p. 6). Moreover, he refuted the allegation that he supported royal absolutism at the expense of the rights of the subjects, claiming that he “did never think it” (Squire 1641, p. 7). It should be remarked relative to this that Squire’s reply is less clear on his political sympathies. From a few brief passages, he dropped hints of loyalty to both the king and parliament (Squire 1641, pp. 3–4). Nonetheless, his religious outlook probably made it easier for him to side with the king once the war broke out. At any rate, the generally mild tone of his response was designed to keep a certain distance from the widely unpopular Laudian and Caroline policies and seems credible to the extent that a sizeable number of his parishioners added their signatures to underwrite his Answer and that some details of the articles brought against him give the impression of embellishment (Squire 1641, pp. 10–12). In other passages of the reply, Squire refused to mince words about where his true commitment lay, straightforwardly remarking that he was “a true conformable Minister of the Church of England” and subscribed to the “book of common Prayers” (Squire 1641, pp. 3, 9). His ideal was the Elizabethan or Jacobean ecclesiastical settlement. Yet what was acceptable in 1641 was probably not so in the sharply polarized climate of early 1643, when he found himself sequestered from his living by the parliament. If his views had not changed by then, the removal owed itself most likely to his continued adherence to the same ecclesiastical views which it can be assumed were aired from his pulpit and which no longer commanded much sympathy at Westminster that came to be dominated by Puritan MPs and peers by the summer of 1642.

Alongside such men as Squire, Heylyn, Boughen, and other incumbents, the parliament instituted lectureships which were taken up by its supporters. Henry Burton provides a good example. Having endured severe treatment for open defiance against Laudian ecclesiastical policy, Burton became a celebrated figure along with such men as John Bastwick and William Prynne as symbols of triumphant godly martyrdom upon their restoration from exile in late 1640. He was appointed as a weekly preacher to his old parish church of St. Matthew Friday Street approximately two years later. Burton’s religious views have been relatively well-known both to his contemporaries and later historians, and we do not need to rehearse them again here (Hughes 1974).39 It suffices here to note that he was a prolific writer against Arminian and Laudian declensions away from the received Reformed doctrine and practice, which had enjoyed hegemony in the Church of England prior to the accession of Charles I. His For God and the King, for instance, called upon “all subjects for ever to detest all Innovations tending to reduce us to that Religion of Rome” (Burton 1636b, Epistle dedicatory). Although more reticent about his political views, Burton engaged in a somewhat extended discussion of the practical dimensions to the respective rights and duties of rulers and the governed in Apology of Appeale of 1636. What forms the immediate backdrop to the tract was Burton’s decidedly negative experience with the court of “Ecclesiastical Commissioners.” This, in turn, prompted him to affirm the concept of “life & liberty” of the subjects and their right to a fair “heareing” of the “Cause” prior to the imposition of legal sanctions as well as the “just and royall Prerogatives” in ecclesiastical matters and the monarch’s “Lawes, Declarations, Proclamations” (Burton 1636a, pp. 10, 13, 15–17). In this vein, Burton believed that these two facets of civil authority and people’s liberty were “so combined together that they must be altogether preserved intire” (Burton 1636a, p. 28). Burton did not veer much from these opinions on ecclesiastical and constitutional issues during the early sixteen-forties, for he remained opposed to any ideas and practices which sailed too close to the turbulent wind of popery or tyranny (Burton Burton 1641c; 1641b, pp. 1–5; 1641a, pp. 21–33).

Herbert Palmer was another influential Puritan minister who voiced his opposition to Laudian alterations to the fabric of the church and to the perceived subversion of “Lawes and Liberties.” Prior to his appointment as a lecturer to Hitchin, Hertfordshire in 1642, Palmer criticized bowing to the altar and did not take kindly to the Book of Sports issued in 1633 as well as to the ‘et cetera’ oath enjoined by the convocation of 1640. All these went against the grain of his Puritan outlook, which he had displayed from at least the sixteen-twenties (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004). A series of sermons preached and published by him in the sixteen-forties attest to his continued commitment to godly reform. In June 1643, Palmer reminded the Commons of issues requiring their undivided attention, “idolatrous Papists” foremost among them along with “prophanations” of the “Sabbath” and other contraventions of divine precepts (Palmer 1643, pp. 37–40). In the following year, Palmer preached to both Houses on the need for comprehensive reform to eradicate “Ignorance, Covetousnesse, and Prophaneness” and to fulfill the terms of the “Solemn Covenant” (Palmer 1644, pp. 34–35, 41–66).40 Palmer was also disillusioned by the Caroline regime on constitutional grounds. The minister saw the England of the sixteen-thirties as a place where the liberties of the people became increasingly tenuous. For him, England was “an oppressed, and endangered Nation,” Although Palmer conceded that “somewhat of Prerogative” belonged to “All Governours, specially Supreme,” he was quick to qualify this with the remark that it must be employed for the “good and not hurt” of the subjects. The minister then acquiesced to the necessity of an “open and publike resistance by armes” against “injuries” inflicted by the magistrates, but only as the “last Refuge under Heaven” (Scripture and Reason Pleaded for Defensive Armes 1643, p. 80).41 It was along this line that Palmer argued in favor of the parliament’s “defensive” military posture against the aggression of the king and his supporters from 1642. Thus, even though Palmer came to advocate the Presbyterian polity over the course of the sixteen-forties and hence stood opposed to Burton on ecclesiology, both saw eye to eye on the necessity of reforming the “Romish” and “absolutist” practices of the previous decade.

A number of lesser luminaries of the Puritan clerical constellation who were also set up as weekly preachers during the early sixteen-forties took a similar stance on ecclesiastical and constitutional issues as Burton and Palmer. In his sermon to the Commons in February 1643, Walter Bridges delineated the boundary of royal authority. For him, the “King must command not onely according to Gods, but Mans Law also” and the “Strength” of a person is the “Law, against which, if the government command it does … wrong.” Moreover, Bridges believed that the “Law is the common surety betweene the King and the Subject, that is to say, it bindes me to pay the King Tribute, etc., and binds the King that I shall enjoy my protection.” If the king and government opted to throw off these legal restraints, then the people had the right to “resist” them (Bridges 1643, Preface). Another lecturer, Joseph Boden employed apocalyptic language to address some of the religious issues which he believed required close attention by the Puritans. At the outset of his sermon to the county committee of Kent, Boden indignantly noted that it “will not suffice that we come out of Babylon, and be safe, but we must also drive Babylon out of the world, both in name, and being, that others be not endangered, or defiled.” The preacher then defined “Babylon” as “Rome in her state Papall, and Antichristian Apostasie,” mired in “Idolatry,” “Superstition,” and “error.” Boden was also highly critical of how “most mens religion, hath been bound up in a Booke of Common Prayer, begun and ended with a morning and evening service, as they call it, as for the Doctrines and Principles of Religion they know them not.” The liturgy represented not just a sort of slippery slope down toward papist superstition, but those acclimatized to it were actually “allied” with the “Papists” (Boden 1644, pp. 2, 25). For Boden and Bridges as much as for Palmer and Burton, many aspects of Caroline policies of the sixteen-thirties required radical surgery.

5. Conclusions

The relatively intensive and exceptional phase of setting up weekly preachers from early 1642 to the summer of 1643, as I hoped to have shown, had a fairly well-defined purpose to it. Foremost, it entailed the parliament’s intention to neutralize the opinions and influence of incumbent clergymen who were regarded as royalists or Anglican sympathizers or at best fence-sitters by having them share their pulpits with Puritan preachers. More positively, the lectureships no doubt provided a venue from which such preachers could encourage the parishioners onto greater levels of commitment to the parliamentarian and Puritan cause or dissuade others from backing the royalist and Anglican camp. Although the extent of success of such preachers’ efforts is difficult to gauge with any level of certainty, they, as shown, not only extended a vote of confidence to the parliament’s religious and constitutional enterprise from their pulpits but also issued tracts for the same purpose of mobilizing support for the parliamentarian cause while casting the ideological foundations of the royalist enterprise in a dubious light (Braddick 2008, pp. 175–94). The ministers included not merely influential and widely recognized figures such as Burton, Palmer, and Stephen Marshall but also the more undistinguished divines lacking any claim to national prominences such as Boden, Bridges, and George Green. Yet unsurprisingly, they were generally cut from the same godly cloth subscribing to Reformed theology and to a political ideology at variance with Charles’ “absolutist” tendencies.

To develop the argument along this line may seem to suggest that the primary rationale of the lectureships created in 1642 and 1643 was narrowly political, to assist the parliament to gain the intellectual high ground to win the minds and loyalties of the people. Yet as indicated earlier, what one finds is that the order for the lectureships was issued in September 1641, a date that preceded that fatal divide between the king and the parliament in January 1642 and the subsequent slide into war.42 It, therefore, is more accurate to see the raison d’être of the lectureships as religious, to shore up Reformed preaching across the country for which the parliament could boast a strong track record over the course of the revolutionary decade (An Order Made by the House of Commons for the Establishing of Preaching Lecturers 1641; Knappen 1933, p. 100; Calder 1948, pp. 765–67; Shaw 1900, vol. 2, pp. 175–286). We have, nevertheless, also observed the peculiar phenomenon of the lectureship program running into the ground almost immediately after the issuing of the order and resuming with a measure of regularity from early 1642. Hence, it appears necessary to view the demands placed on the parliament for preparing a war and fighting it as constituting the motor which steadily turned the wheels of that program.

Thus set in motion, the lectureship program placed weekly preachers in parishes across the country. As we have seen, approximately 150 preachers found their way to 101 parishes in London and the provinces from early 1642 to the summer of 1643. Additionally, it appears not unlikely that there were more such preachers whose appointments have not been recorded in the journals of the parliament, since the parishioners were not required to obtain the prior authorization of the Houses to institute a lectureship. Without intending at all to engage in the larger debates over “ecology of allegiance” during the Civil Wars (Underdown 1985; Morrill 1993, pp. 224–41), this study finds that the parishes where lectureships had been set up were distributed across a substantial number of counties, twenty-seven in total.43 Some of the counties became parliamentarian territory as the war progressed, while others became royalist. Still, a few ended up as a disputed territory (Halle 2001, p. 131; Scott 2004, p. xv). London also saw a sizeable number of preachers offered the opportunity for weekly deliverance of sermons. It should be noted relative to this that when we consider that there were roughly 8900 parishes in England during this time, the number of parishes and lecturers examined here are not substantial, at least in numerical terms (Spurr 1991, p. 6). As discussed, however, the pattern of their appointment has allowed us to gain an appreciation of a key rationale behind the lectureships of 1642–1643 as well as of their anticipated benefits accruing to the parliamentarian camp. Such a pattern moreover has indicated a close interaction of the center with the locality and the parliament with the public for, as we have seen, there was a sort of meeting of minds wherein the parliament and the local Puritan parishioners looked upon weekly sermons as an important vehicle of advancing their agenda. Preparing for and fighting a war in the England of the early sixteen-forties required mobilizing men who were able to preach and strategically placing them in parish pulpits as much as mustering men who were able to fight and tactically deploying them on the battlefields.