Abstract
Sometime in 1630 Richard Johnson, a layman of the parish of St Laurence in Reading, left in his will £15 to buy ‘a silver flagon and two bread plates of silver’ to be used at the communion. ‘And more I give unto them a fair pulpit cloth of silk and a fair cushion… and more I give unto them forty shillings in money towards the making of a wood fence for the communion table’.1 Johnson can no doubt be added to the list of ‘Arminians’ who crept out of the ecclesiastical woodwork after 1625, for in that year, we are led to understand, the accession of Charles I destroyed a previously harmonious ‘Calvinist’ consensus in the English Church. By that revolution, it is claimed, the teaching of predestination was ‘outlawed’ and an alternative, sacramentally-centred, theology of grace enforced, the outward sign of which was the remodelling of church interiors by railing off altars at the east end. The enforcement of this policy, and the doctrinal novelty that lay behind it, are held to be crucial in explaining the English Civil War.2
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Bibliography
The view of Church history which I have ventured to criticise is most accessible in C. Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (1973), especially in the introduction and in N. Tyacke’s chapter, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution’. Modifications and extensions of their approach may be found in Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), and N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987). For my earlier criticisms, see ‘The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered’ in P and P, 101 (1983) and Tyacke and White, ‘Debate: The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered’ ibid., 115 (1987). See also my Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1992).
Readers who find themselves in sympathy with the approach taken in this chapter, and who would like to know more about the Elizabethan background, will enjoy H. C. Porter, ‘Hooker, the Tudor Constitution, and the Via Media’ in Studies in Richard Hooker, essays preliminary to an edition of his Works (1972) ed. W. Speed Hill. A good general introduction to Hooker is still F. Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker’s Treatise (1907). For a broader perspective, see also G. W. Bernard, ‘The Church of England c. 1529–c. 1642’ History, 75 (1990).
On the Hampton Court Conference, M. H. Curtis, ‘The Hampton Court Conference and its aftermath’, History, 46 (1961) should be weighed against F. Shriver, ‘Hampton Court Revisited: James I and the Puritans’ JEH, 33 (1982).
On James I generally, K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James V JBS, 24 (1985), argue that James pursued a via media by attempting to isolate both puritan and Roman Catholic extremists through concessions to moderates. James I’s Premonition to All the Most Mighty Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendom (1609) is printed in C. H. Mcllwain (ed.), The Political Works of James I (Cambridge, Mass., 1918).
On the Synod of Dort, the account in Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, ch. 4, should be contrasted with J. Piatt, ‘Eirenical Anglicans at the Synod of Dort’ in D. Baker (ed.), Studies in Church History, Subsidia 2: Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent c.1500–c.1700 (Oxford, 1979).
On Laud, W. H. Hutton, William Laud (1895) includes perspectives ignored in H. R. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud (2nd edn, 1962). Also valuable is C. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church from Archibishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956). For more recent assessments see H. R. Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (1987), and K. Sharpe, ‘Archbishop Laud and the University of Oxford’ in H. Lloyd Jones, V. Pearl and B. Worden (eds), History and Imagination (1987).
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© 1993 Peter White
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White, P. (1993). The via media in the early Stuart Church. In: Fincham, K. (eds) The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22771-6_10
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