Spiritual Treason and the Politics of Intercession: Presbyterians, Laudians and the Church of England

Abstract

English Presbyterians believed they belonged to a universal ecclesiastical society. They identified with a global visible church which stretched back through history and expanded during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries across Europe, Britain, and the Atlantic. But, at the same time, the Presbyterians were at pains to prove the compatibility of the Reformed tradition with the Church of England. Even after their official suppression by the crown in the late sixteenth century, they continued to compete with bishops in making claims to the English Protestant tradition.