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

Youngkwon Chung

doi:10.3390/rel12010044

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.

Highlights

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
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. 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
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

Summary

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). 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). 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). After July 1643, the same policy was more or less wellserved 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. 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 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 ready in all Places . 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

Background to the Lectureships

Puritan Lecturers and Anglican Incumbents

Views of Lecturers and Incumbents

Conclusions

February 1647