The Glory of the ‘Third Time’: John Eaton as Contra-Puritan

Abstract

As Elizabeth's reign neared its end, the futility of Puritan efforts to restructure the Church of England finally became apparent. By the early 1590s, with a strong conservative shift in the ecclesiastical leadership, the death of powerful patrons and friends at court, and the decisive defeat of the Presbyterian movement, the effect upon Puritan fortunes was devastating. What conservative churchmen did not suspect, however, was that even as they savoured victory, a creative rechannelling of the quest for further reformation was underway. In some quarters, frustration over the failure to gain power had led in different directions, to more radical moves like separatism or the Martin Marprelate project; but non-separating Puritans, few of whom had tied their fortunes to dogmatic Presbyterianism or were prepared to abandon the national Church, improvised a quieter response. If the Church was unreformable, they would reach the citizenry at personal and local levels with a ‘more spiritual and interior religion’. Thus the paradox that ‘the miscarriage of the further reformation coincided with the birth of the great age of Puritan religious experience’: coincided, that is, with the rise of a new, introspective, pietist phase of Puritan initiative.