Abstract
In 1640–1 Parliament was deluged with petitions critical of the clergy which went well beyond condemnation of Arminianism. It was claimed ‘our bishops have so long played the governors, as they have forgotten how to play the priests’. Clergymen were accused of ‘preaching divine authority and absolute power in kings’ and also, paradoxically, of ‘spoiling both the king and Parliament of their power’. Bishops were seen as ‘labouring to overthrow or diminish the power of Parliament’, whilst also encouraging their ministers ‘to despise the temporal magistracy, the nobles, and gentry of the land, to abuse the subjects and live contentiously with their neighbours’. Apparently, ‘the pride, the avarice, the ambition, and oppression, by our ill ruling clergy, is epidemical, it hath infected them all’.1
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Bibliography
Ian Green and Rosemary O’Day have made the subject of the role of parish clergy their own. Green’s ‘The persecution of “scandalous” and “malignant” parish clergy during the English Civil War’, EHR, 94 (1979) is important for teasing out why so many clergy were unpopular by the 1640s; his ‘“Reformed Pastors” and Bon Cures: The Changing Role of the Parish Clergy in Early Modern Europe’ is to be found in the excellent collection The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, eds W. J. Sheils and D. Wood, Studies in Church History, 26 (Oxford, 1989) and provides both a European context and an antidote to some of the more extravagant claims of O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558’1642 (Leicester, 1979). For a comprehensive account of the ideal ministry against which to judge events related in my article see P. Collinson,’ shepherds, Sheepdogs, and Hirelings: The Pastoral Ministry in Post-Reformation England’, also in The Ministry: Clerical and Lay.
Valuable works on the problems of the clergy by the 1640s include: J. Morrill, ‘The attack on the Church of England in the Long Parliament, 1640’1642’, in D. Beales and G. Best (eds), History, Society and the Churches (1985); J. Morrill, ‘The Religious Context of the English Civil War’, TRHS, 5th series, 34 (1984); J. Sharpe,’ scandalous and Malignant Priests in Essex: the Impact of Grassroots Puritanism’, in C. Jones, M. Newitt and S. Roberts (eds), Politics and People in Revolutionary England, (Oxford, 1986).
Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956) and Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (1964) justifiably stand as classic works on economic and social issues relating to the Church of England. For important new work on the matter of tithes see W. J. Sheils, ‘“The Right of the Church”; The Clergy, Tithe, and the Courts at York, 1540–1640’, in W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), The Church and Wealth, Studies in Church History, 24 (Oxford, 1987). For the work of Laud and his associates see F. Heal, ‘Archbishop Laud revisited: Leases and Estate Management at Canterbury and Winchester before the Civil War’, in R. O’Day and F. Heal (eds), Princes and Paupers in the English Church 1500–1800, (Leicester, 1981).
The character and significance of ‘anticlericalism’ is hotly disputed; contrast C. Haigh, ‘Anticlericalism and the English Reformation’, History, 68 (1983) with M. Schwarz,’ some Thoughts on the Development of a Lay Religious Consciousness in Pre-Civil War England’, in G. Cuming and D. Baker (eds), Popular Belief and Practice, Studies in Church History, 8 (Cambridge, 1972).
Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979) remains vital to understanding debates about religion in Parliaments; E. R. Foster, The House of Lords, 1603–1649 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983) provides context, while E. Cope, ‘The Bishops and Parliamentary Politics in Early Stuart England’, Parliamentary History, 9 (1990), and K. Fincham in Prelate as Pastor provide badly needed specific material in print on the work of the bishops in the House of Lords.
The more mundane matters of local government are well covered by J. H. Gleason, The Justices of the Peace in England 1558–1640 (1969) now complemented by Anthony Fletcher’s excellent Reform in the Provinces. The Government of Stuart England (1986). For a list of essential sources see T. Barnes and A. Hassell Smith, ‘Justices of the Peace from 1558 to 1688 — a Revised List of Sources’, BIHR, 32 (1959). To place such works in context see good examples of local studies such as T. G. Barnes, Somerset 1625–1640 (Oxford, 1961) and A. Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660, (1975).
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© 1993 Andrew Foster
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Foster, A. (1993). The Clerical Estate Revitalised. 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_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22771-6_7
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