The Puritan Death-bed, c.1560–c.l660

Abstract

‘But the end is the crown of the whole work, and the last act (if any) carrieth away the applause.’ Thus Charles Fitz-Geffrey, preacher and poet, adapted a Senecan aphorism and incorporated it into the sermon which he delivered in 1620 at the funeral of Lady Rous, mother of his ‘most honoured friend’, John Pym.¹ The notion that dying was the most important part of a person’s life performance had a long history. It was in this supreme test that his or her true character revealed itself. As another preacher, George Ferebe, wrote in 1614, ‘the end of a man perfectly trieth a man’.² The English puritans inherited these ideas, and they help to explain the prominence of death-beds in puritan biographical literature. Yet their practical application often gave rise to problems. How should one interpret the seemingly ‘good’ death of someone who had led a bad life? What was one to make of the deaths pf ‘good’ people whose dying ‘performance’ was marred by the effects of a terminal illness, or cut short by the suddenness of their end? Puritans, along with other Christians, argued that behaviour in face of death must be read as part of the whole life’s record. ‘If the end be well, then all is well, true’ Fitz-Geffrey continued, ‘but this is most certain, that life shall end well, that is well led.’ The ‘last act’ nevertheless bulked especially large in accounts of puritan lives. This was largely because the puritan way of dying assigned the individual’s inner faith a particularly important role, and all but eliminated the supportive framework of liturgy and sacrament.