Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
SpringerLink
Log in

Puritans and Iconoclasm, 1560–1660

  • Chapter
The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700

Part of the book series: Themes in Focus ((TIF))

Abstract

What do the following have in common: a surplice, a maypole, a depiction of God the Father, a churchyard cross, bowing at the name of Jesus, and the man’s words to the woman in the marriage service? The question would have been no parlour game to the men and women who are the topic of this chapter. It could almost have formed part of one of the coundess catechisms and books of spiritual edification that were daily meat and drink to the godly — those whose days began and ended with private prayer and meditation. The answer was a matter of eternal verities, affecting the highest of all concerns in this life: how to serve God in spirit and in truth. Divine law as laid down in Scripture, above all in the Ten Commandments, prohibited false worship, everything that represented or smacked of idols, and the idol-service of banned or banished images. Objects and forms of behaviour that contravened the Decalogue prohibitions against serving other gods or worshipping images, must be done away. A cross on a church steeple, as much as a husband telling his wife ‘I thee worship’, both came to seem, to the purest of the purifiers, contraventions of that law.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes and References

  1. Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, III, vi; cf. V, v, for the ‘good Banbury vapours’ of Busy’s outburst against stage-players; Works of Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford, P. and E. Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925–52), VI, pp. 84–5, 133.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy (Alcuin Club Collections, XIV–XVI, 1910), III, pp. 8, 16 (my italics); cf. II, p. 126;

    Google Scholar 

  3. M. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, I (Oxford, 1988), pp. 298–300.

    Google Scholar 

  4. The Political Works of James I, ed. C. H. McIlwain (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1918), p. 125, from ‘A Premonition to all Most Mightie Monarches, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendome’. James makes clear the important distinction between crucifix and plain cross, with not even ‘resemblance or representation of eyes or ears’.

    Google Scholar 

  5. C. L. Kingsford, ‘Essex House, formerly Leicester House and Exeter Inn’, Archaeologia, LXXIII (1923), 46; Statutes of the Realm, IV, ii, p. 1082 (3 Jac. I, c. 5; xv);

    Google Scholar 

  6. R. Parker, A Scholasticall Discourse (1607), pp. 7, 10, 11.

    Google Scholar 

  7. On Parker and his ambiguous position between orthodoxy and dissent see the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), and P. Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), p. 531.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Exod. 33: 20; Deut. 4:12; J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. F. L. Battles, 2 vols (1961), I, p. 112, cf. pp. 99–103 (Bk I, ch. xi, 1–3 and 12);

    Google Scholar 

  9. W. Perkins, A Warning against the Idolatrie of the last times (Cambridge, 1601), pp. 21–2, 24–5; Political Works of James I, p. 125.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Certain Sermons or Homilies (Oxford, 1844), pp. 196, 199, 239; Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, pp. 322–3.

    Google Scholar 

  11. P. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal 1519–1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church (1979), pp. 190, 198–9, 201, 203;

    Google Scholar 

  12. The Life of Adam Martindale, written by himself, ed. R. Parkinson (Chetham Society, IV, 1845), pp. 156–8;

    Google Scholar 

  13. R. C. Richardson, Puritanism in North-West England: A Regional Study of the Diocese of Chester to 1642 (Manchester, 1972), p. 158;

    Google Scholar 

  14. Jeremy Goring, Godly Exercises or the Devil’s Dance? Puritanism and Popular Culture in pre-Civil War England (1983).

    Google Scholar 

  15. W. Harrison, The Description of England, ed. G. Edelen (Ithaca, NY, 1968), pp. 35–6.

    Google Scholar 

  16. [A. Gilby], A Pleasaunt Dialogue (Middelburg? 1581), sigs. Dlr, L7r, M2v–3r; The Seconde Parte of a Register, ed. A. Peel, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1915), I, pp. 74–5; The Reformation of Religion by Josiah (1590?), sig B2V. .

    Google Scholar 

  17. Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. J. Bruce (Parker Society, Gambridge, 1853), pp. 234, 236, 238;

    Google Scholar 

  18. H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 110, 114.

    Google Scholar 

  19. W. Hinde, A Faithfull Remonstrance of… John Bruen (1641), pp. 18, 28, 47, 128–9;

    Google Scholar 

  20. G. Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 3 vols (1882), II, p. 314.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hinde, Remonstance, p. 78–9. On William Hinde, c. 1569–1629, see DNB. Bunbury, where he was perpetual curate from 1603 until his death, is only a few hours’ ride from Tarvin and Bruen Stapleford, and Hinde was a personal friend of Bruen’s and at his deathbed.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Hinde, Remonstrance, pp. 79–80.

    Google Scholar 

  23. BL Harl. MS 2151, ff. 37r–38r, at 37v; Ormerod, County Palatine, II, pp. 306–14. What seems to have been a simple wall monument, with a ‘table of arms’, was erected for John Bruen (d. Jan. 1625) on the south side of Tarvin church.

    Google Scholar 

  24. BL Harl. MS 6607, ‘A Godly Profitable Collection of Divers Sentences out of Holy Scripture’, ff. 24r, 25v, 40r.

    Google Scholar 

  25. John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, ed. J. E. Booty (Ithaca, NY, 1963), p. 115;

    Google Scholar 

  26. M. Aston, Faith and Fire (1993), pp. 296–7 (‘commandeth’ a misprint for ‘commendeth’); Homilies, p. 165 on Deut. 7:5.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Edward Peacock (ed.), English Church Furniture, Ornaments and Decorations, at the Period of the Reformation (1866), p. 142n; Richardson, Puritanism, pp. 122–3.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Rites of Durham, ed. J. T. Fowler (Surtees Society, CVII, 1903), p. 28;

    Google Scholar 

  29. P. D. A. Harvey, ‘Where was Banbury Cross?’ Oxoniensia, XXXI (1966), 83–106, at 101–6.

    Google Scholar 

  30. H. Peacham, The Art of Drawing (1606), pp. 63–5;

    Google Scholar 

  31. Peacham, The Gentlemans Exercise (1612), pp. 11–12.

    Google Scholar 

  32. W. Perkins, A Reformed Catholike (Cambridge, 1598), p. 172; Perkins, Warning against Idolatrie, pp. 106–7.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, ed. Kenneth Fincham (Church of England Rec. Soc, Woodbridge, 1994), I, pp. 37, 39, 45, 48, 50, 105, 110, 114, 194; cf. 113, 161, and on Montagu, p. xviii; Articles of Enquiry and Direction for the Diocese of Norwich (Cambridge, 1638), Tit. 2.14.

    Google Scholar 

  34. BL Harl. MS 6607, f. 15v.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Political Works of James I, p. 124; BL Harl. MS 159, f. 136r–v (my punctuation). On this source see Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1982), p. xx;

    Google Scholar 

  36. K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I’, Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985), 170.

    Google Scholar 

  37. W. Prynne, Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge (1633), p. 865, marginal note.

    Google Scholar 

  38. G. I. Soden, Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, 1583–1656 (1953), pp. 236–42 (cited at 239); Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1650, p. 261 (31 July 1650, orders for demolition of royal statues at St Paul’s and the Royal Exchange, London).

    Google Scholar 

  39. M. Archer, ‘English Painted Glass in the Seventeenth Century: The early work of Abraham van Linge’, Apollo, CI (Jan. 1975), 26–31;

    Google Scholar 

  40. T. G. Jackson. The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford (Oxford, 1897), pp. 61, 63, 127–8.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Paul Slack, ‘The Public Conscience of Henry Sherfield’, in J. Morrill, P. Slack and D. Woolf (eds), Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993), pp. 151–71;

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  42. Paul Slack, ‘Religious protest and urban authority: the case of Henry Sherfield, iconoclast, 1633’, in Studies in Church History, vol. 9 (1972), 295–302;

    Google Scholar 

  43. Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. W. Cobbett and T. B. Howell, 33 vols (London, 1809–26), III, cols 519, 521, 537, 543, 550, 554;

    Google Scholar 

  44. Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund and S. Thomas, Sarum, ed. H.J. F. Swayne (Salisbury, 1896), p. 294; Rites of Durham, pp. 76–7; Visitation Articles, ed. Frere and Kennedy, III, p. 323, cf. p. 104.

    Google Scholar 

  45. State Trials, III, col. 522; Churchwardens’ Accounts, Sarum, p. 190.

    Google Scholar 

  46. State Trials, III, cols 525, 539, 543, 545, 546–7.

    Google Scholar 

  47. State Trials, III, cols 541, 547.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 47, 54, 78.

    Google Scholar 

  49. BL MS Harl. 165, ff. 21v, 22v.

    Google Scholar 

  50. BL MS Harl. 165, ff. 21r–23r; [W. Prynne], A New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny (London, 1641), pp. 91–109, 218–26; W. Prynne, The Antipathie of the English Lordly Prelacie (1641), I, p. 223, II, pp. 290–1. On Sions Plea and Leighton’s case see Stephen Foster, Notes from the Caroline Underground (Hamden, CT, 1978), pp. 30–9.

    Google Scholar 

  51. [W. Prynne], Newes from Ipswich ([Edinburgh and ?London, 1636]), title and sigs. A3V–A4V; Prynne, Antipathie of the Prelacie, II, p. 291; R. V. H. Burne, ‘The History of Chester Cathedral’, Journal of the Chester and North Wales Archil, Archaeol, and Hist. Soc, XXXIX (1952), 82–5. According to Prynne ‘fear of questioning’ led Bridgeman to reinter the altar after the meeting of the Long Parliament. Some substance is lent to Prynne’s charge by John Ley, parson of Great Budworth, Cheshire, in A Letter (Against the erection of an Altar), addressed to the bishop of Chester in June 1635, and published at the end of the author’s Defensive Doubts (1641). According to the bishop’s reported reply (pp. 24–5) ‘the materials (whereof it [the altar] was made) were found ready for such a purpose’ when seats were removed from the upper end of the chancel to the west end of the cathedral. Bridgeman said that ‘hearing great offence was taken at it’ he had the altar taken down.

    Google Scholar 

  52. J. S. Morrill, Cheshire 1630–1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974), p.36; Lords Journal, 4, p. 225; BL Harl. MS 165, f. 23r (Matth. 18:17).

    Google Scholar 

  53. BL Add. MS 70002, ff. 206r, 213r; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, p. 47.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Exod. 32:20; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, p. 49.

    Google Scholar 

  55. William Hunt, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, MA, 1983), p. 288; Aston, Faith and Fire, p. 298.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Commons Journal II, p. 72; The Orders from the House of Commons (BL, E. 171 (8), p. 4); John Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (1993), pp. 73–4.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, ed. S. R. Gardiner (Oxford, 1951), pp. 197–8; 8 Sept. 1641 order (BL 669.f.3(14) ); Morrill, English Revolution, pp. 75–7; Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, I, pp. 75–6.

    Google Scholar 

  58. E. Dering, A Collection of Speeches… in matter of Religion (1642), pp. 3, 5–6, 50, 81, 84–6;

    Google Scholar 

  59. N. Tyacke, The Fortunes of English Puritanism, 1603–1640 (1989), p. 21.

    Google Scholar 

  60. T. P. S. Woods, Prelude to Civil War 1642: Mr. Justice Malet and the Kentish Petition (Salisbury, 1980), p. 142;

    Google Scholar 

  61. Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640–60 (Leicester, 1966), pp. 95–107.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. J. Sutherland (1973), p. 54; Morrill, Cheshire, p. 36;

    Google Scholar 

  63. J. Morrill, ‘Sir William Brereton and England’s Wars of Religion’, Journal of British Studies, XXIV (1985), 311–32; [B.Ryves], Mercurius Rusticus ([Oxford] 1646), pp.22–3; Christopher Woodforde, English Stained and Painted Glass (Oxford, 1954), pp. 45–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. BL Add MS 70003, ff. 158r–v, 161r, 162r (draft of Leominster letter); Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 32, 115–16.

    Google Scholar 

  65. J. Vicars, The Sinfuless and Unlawfulness, of having or making the Picture of Christs Humanity (1641), p. 38;

    Google Scholar 

  66. C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 3 vols (1911), I, pp. 265–6, 425–6.

    Google Scholar 

  67. J. Morrill, ‘William Dowsing, the Bureacratic Puritan’, in Morrill, Slack and Woolf (eds), Public Duty, pp. 173–203.

    Google Scholar 

  68. BL Add. MS 70005 (not foliated); Culmer receipt dated 14 June 1645; Richard Culmer, Cathedrall Newes from Canterbury (1644), pp. 2, 6; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, p. 183.

    Google Scholar 

  69. Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (1985), p. 151; Morrill, English Revolution, p. 76; The Petition of the Weamen of Middlesex (1641), sig. A2r; Commons Journal, II, p. 35.

    Google Scholar 

  70. H. Dixon, ‘Original Account of the Springett Family’, Gentleman’s Magazine, October, 1851, p. 372, cited Everitt, Community of Kent, p. 148.

    Google Scholar 

  71. The Inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods 1649–1651, ed. Oliver Millar, Walpole Society, 43 (1970–2), xi, xiii, n. 5;

    Google Scholar 

  72. Claude Phillips, The Picture Gallery of Charles 7(1896), p. 47; C. Thomas-Stanford, Sussex in the Great Civil War and the Interregnum 1642–1660 (1910), pp. 153–4, cited P. Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia (Reading, 1986), p. 28; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, p. 184. On executioners’ roles in the ritual punishment of idols see S. Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts (1993), pp. 90–1.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Inventories, ed. Millar, xxii, 205, 257–8, 299, 310, 315; W. L. F. Nuttall, ‘King Charles I’s Pictures and the Commonwealth Sale’, Apollo, LXXXII (Oct. 1965), 306; Dering, Collection of Speeches, p. 10.

    Google Scholar 

  74. G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (eds), A History of York Minster (Oxford, 1977), p. 315.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Margaret Aston
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Christopher Durston Jacqueline Eales

Copyright information

© 1996 Margaret Aston

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Aston, M. (1996). Puritans and Iconoclasm, 1560–1660. In: Durston, C., Eales, J. (eds) The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24437-9_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation