Orthodox Puritans and Dissenting Bishops: The Reformation of the English Episcopate, ca. 1580–1610

Abstract

The reformed English Church retained its bishops and its episcopal hierarchy. Yet contemporary evidence reveals perceptions of English bishops as being withholders of Protestant reform and punishers and persecutors of those churchmen who actively advocated further reform of the Church of England. In a challenge to these impressions, this article surveys the writings of Sir John Harington and Josias Nichols, the first a layman and the second a deprived minister and both interpreters of the reformed English episcopate. An interrogation of their texts shows that both writers identified dissent which emanated from within the reformed episcopate of the Church of England; Nichols in particular asserted his loyalty to the Church of England at the same time that he had dissented from it, using the names and precedents of reformed bishops to argue away accusations of dissent. In examining the responses of Harington and Nichols to the episcopate, this article accounts for the exercise of episcopal authority which was explicitly reformed and Protestant, a point revealed by Harington’s emphasis on the episcopal responsibility for enacting religious reform and Nichols’s account of bishops who sheltered dissenters and encouraged reform of the church.