Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America by Michael P. Winship

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America by Michael P. Winship Neal T. Dugre (bio) Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America michael p. winship Yale University Press, 2018 368 pp. In Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America, historian Michael P. Winship distills a lifetime of learning into a brisk and accessible introduction to the puritan movement. The book chronicles puritanism from its roots in the 1540s through its afterlife in the 1690s, a story unfolded in four parts, successive periods of reform distinguished by puritans' evolving struggles with each other, the Church of England, and their monarchs. While major events and personalities in this story will be familiar to specialists, Winship's feat is making a bewildering mess of political, theological, and social change intelligible to the novice without flattening his subjects (or losing any reader's interest). Key to his success are the "exemplary episodes, individuals, and experiences" that breathe life into the stony puritans of popular lore and stitch a disparate array of people, places, and ideas into a coherent whole (4). Readers seeking an entry point to the thicket of puritanism need look no further. Although the term puritan did not emerge until the 1560s, Winship locates puritanism's origins two decades earlier in the first years of English Protestantism. Part I examines these halting beginnings in nine decades dominated by two connected struggles: defining who "puritans" were and deciding "how to respond when your monarch or other authorities make a demand of you that you believe violates the laws of England and/or God" (4–5). What did Perceval Wiburn mean when he labeled puritans as the "hotter sort of Protestants" in 1581? John Hooper, whose story anchors the first chapter, offers some important clues. A Catholic monk turned nonconformist Protestant, Hooper [End Page 863] rose to prominence as a preacher during the reign of Edward VI. Edward, a more earnest Protestant than his father, offered Hooper the bishopric of Gloucester in 1550. Hooper reluctantly accepted on the condition that he would not have to wear the bishops' vestments, relics of Catholicism, during his consecration. The Privy Council granted this exception but reversed course under pressure from other bishops who argued that wearing vestments was not an individual matter of conscience, but a matter of civil law. Only an act of Parliament, they insisted, could eliminate them from the church. Hooper objected, but prison time and the threat of execution blunted his resolve. He soon took up his bishopric wearing the detested robe and hat. Winship encourages us not to dismiss Hooper as a loser in this fight, the first volley in the puritan quest to clean out the church's closets. The clothes did not define the man. Rather, Hooper "went on to embody the puritan ideal of a reforming bishop" so effectively that he was burned for heresy in 1555 under the Catholic Queen Mary (16). A hot Protestant, indeed. This proto-puritan's struggle to reform from within the church, moreover, exemplified what Winship calls the "toing and froing" that became a regular feature of puritan approaches to conflict (108). Following Hooper's execution, puritanism's definition as a "popular" movement (a negative descriptor meaning it appealed to ordinary people) ensured ongoing conflict with the Crown (41). The stain of "popularity" derived from Presbyterianism, a system in which a church's governing body was not appointed by bishops but "chosen with the consent of male congregants" (18). Under Elizabeth I, opponents of Presbyterianism began to characterize this form of church government as inherently antimonarchical, despite puritan claims to the contrary. These political undertones explain why Elizabeth and her successors resisted puritanism. Equally important for Winship, they helped expand puritanism by pushing some of its adherents outside England. Puritanism's geographic spread, whether to Geneva or Bermuda or Massachusetts, normally stemmed from conflict and begot more conflict. Yet Winship also captures the productive effect puritans honing their beliefs and institutions outside of England had for the movement as a whole. The innovations different locations enabled expanded and refined puritanism even as they destroyed it. Part II—which consumes more than onethird...