Part 4: The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of the Puritans
As early as the 1540’s English Puritans gained prominence in the church and Parliament seeking further reform. Their movement was a dissenting and driving force throughout the reformation, especially during the reign of Elizabeth when Marian exiles returning to England sought more draconian change. Anti-Catholic sentiment was extremely high after the Marian persecutions. Puritans demanded further reform within the newly restored independent Church of England but met resistance as Elizabeth attempted to maintain peace between Protestants and Catholics with the Settlement Acts of 1558.
Puritans held powerful positions in the church and Parliament. They used these positions to move against Catholics and push the State Church further away from Roman influence, closer to their purist desires. They would meet an unexpected foe, their new Protestant queen.
Elizabeth’s desire to reconcile the differences between sects meant the worst of the bloodletting was over, but not entirely as dissent and conflict remained in all reformed churches in Western Europe, and there are always those pesky pagans and heathens to torture for noncompliance.
The Act of Supremacy restored the queen as head of the church. Pope Pius V ruled Elizabeth a false queen and heretic, he released all Catholics from her allegiance. England was again Protestant but Catholic influence remained in Parliament and the church. The country was deeply divided. Torn between Pope and Queen nearly all Catholic bishops lost their positions in the church, replaced by men loyal to the queen and the restored church. Puritans delighted in these events, but not for long.
The Act of Uniformity attempted to create standards within the Queen’s Church that would satisfy Protestants without alienating Catholics. It was required of all subjects to attend Anglican Sunday service under the Book of Common Prayer. Some continuity with Catholic custom remained, like liturgical vestments and communion, and the Book of Prayer was revised to remove content offensive to Catholics, but this was not enough to appease Papists and it gave Puritans reason to complain. Neither believed the Book of Common Prayer spoke for them. Purists felt it contained too much popery, the Papists not enough.
Catholics far from the reach of Elizabeth were less likely to conform. Noblemen in the north loyal to the Pope rebelled in an attempt to depose the queen in favor of Mary Queen of Scots. They were defeated. The leaders fled England forfeiting ancestral land. Some were captured and executed, including Mary. In the end Elizabeth’s long reign would outlast Catholic resistance, but throughout her four decades years on the throne Puritans would divide her church seeking a more pure practice of Christianity, free of compromise. This dissent turned moderate Protestants against the radical purists.
The most hardcore of the dissenters were separatists; they believed the Church of England to be as corrupt as the Roman Church and sought to leave the queen’s church to start their own.
If western Christianity were a river and its course determined by a timeline, the water would flow uninterrupted for centuries. A major split would occur during the time of Martin Luther and Henry VIII. Catholicism would follow one branch and Protestantism the other. The Catholic branch would flow in a solitary steady stream, but immediately downstream from the reformation confluence the Protestant branch waters would get rough, that branch would split again and again into many smaller streams.
If there’s one constant in religious history, besides bloodshed, it would be conflict over biblical interpretation and disputes over doctrine and practice. There was continuous nitpicking throughout the reformation. No matter how far reform goes there’s always a faction displeased with the current state of the church, willing to go their own way. Once the powerful iron shackles of Rome were shed it was easier to free oneself from les dominant churches, not without consequence, but doable.
Nations where reform was strong: Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and England, more conflict and change would follow. New branches of Christianity were born from these splits.
The Anglicans and Lutherans divided with Rome. From there Calvinism (Presbyterian) split from the Lutheran church in Germany, Anabaptist from Swiss Congregationalism, and Unitarians split from Calvinism. Baptists, the Amish and Mennonites are schisms in the Anabaptist movement. Episcopalians left the Church of England after the American Revolution, and Methodists split from Anglicans. It’s a dizzying family tree filled with intolerance, persecution and brutality, often over petty grievance.
States still dominated by the Vatican, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal would have one master, the Pope and his puppet monarch underbosses. They remained on the Catholic branch of the river. They maintained control of the masses with zero tolerance and brutal inquisition.
No branch of Christianity is without bloody water, some were oppressors, some oppressed, and several served as both. They all allegedly follow the teachings of Christ but the history of religious men would suggest otherwise.
During the reign of Elizabeth Puritan leaders, including John Foxe, attempted to reconcile their differences with the Church of England in its hybrid form through religious and political channels. Intellectual writings such as the Admonition to the Parliament (1572) challenged the Episcopal Polity (hierarchy) in the church and other practices they felt were popery of another color. They failed to convince political leaders but they did manage to outrage the Archbishop of Canterbury whose job it was to maintain the queen’s church and adopt her agenda of compromise. After a vigorous debate, Puritan authors were jailed, some fled England. This would be the tone for the late decades of the 16th century, dissent and protest, prison or exile.
Puritans petitioned Parliament again in 1586 by circulating the Book of Disciple and opening a new public dialogue on Church doctrine. Again they failed. This book was followed by a series of writings called the Marprelate Tracts which took the vitriolic tone of damning the bishops of the church as Anti-Christs, the same defamatory language used against the Pope. More Puritans were imprisoned or sought exile as the government clamped down on religious dissent. Hey, at least the weren't urning them as heretics.
For purists there is no middle ground, compromise is failure. The hard line anti-Catholic Puritans would not relent. For many Anglicans, the Puritans were as bad as rebellious Catholics, extremists threatening the relative peace of the post Marian regime. As years passed many Puritans, plus their defenders and apologists in Parliament, retired or died. In this less tolerant culture they were replaced by men unsympathetic to the purist cause.
This was time of Shakespeare, life in England was hardy to the purists' liking. They preached against drinking, gambling, dancing, theater and of course sex outside of marriage, all popular pursuits of the average citizen. The purists were generally considered self righteous wankers.
The church and government took a harder turn against dissent. Catholics and Puritans were subjected to prejudice leading to legislation aimed directly at them. In 1593 the Religion Act and Popish Recusant Act were passed by Parliament. These laws gave those practicing religion outside the State Church an ultimatum, conform or denounce the realm. The latter would lead to forfeiture of all land and property. Failure to accept either fate would lead to arrest, trial and execution.
By the time of her death in 1603 Elizabeth had pretty much cowed dissenters and left England to her successor, James I, in a reasonably peaceful state. His commissioning of the King James Bible moved the King’s Church further from its Roman roots but was still not far enough to satisfy the purist movement which mostly operated underground after the suppressive acts of 1593.
Fearing retribution, Puritans resolved to seek personal purity, or godliness, as it was clear they could not change the church as a whole. They referred to themselves as ‘the Godly’, and segregated themselves socially from the less-pure-Puritans. They advocated a separatist policy while maintaining membership and practice with the State Church.
Finally, I’ve reached the point where my ramblings on religion and separation of church & state began.
This was the world Roger Williams was born to in London on December 21, 1603. The Queen was dead and King James had taken the throne several months prior. Puritans were persecuted and took to living their life of godliness in a solitary manner, in an isolated community within the larger church.
The William’s family was loyal practicing members of the King’s Church rather than purists. As a young man Roger apprenticed as a jurist under the famous judge and politician Sir Edmund Coke. His influence, and Roger’s academic standing, earned Williams an education at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Williams was fluent in six languages, six more than I
Williams was a member of the Church of England but while studying theology at Cambridge he followed a path towards Puritanism. He was a devoted man of God, loyal to his king, an intellectual theologian, but forfeited any future in the Anglican Church by associating with the Godly. During his college years the exodus of Pilgrims to the new world had begun. Puritans would soon follow.
While Williams attended university in 1625, King James passed and King Charles I succeed him. England joined most European nations engaged in the early decade of the Thirty Years War, a conflict rooted in Catholic versus Protestant rivalry and the interests of nations aligned with or against the Vatican. Believe me, I’m seriously oversimplifying the cause of the long and bloody war, but that’s as far as it relates to my tale.
The war helped create an environment where any threat against the state was treated as treason. King Charles was a controversial monarch. He cracked down on Puritans, married a Catholic, and had allies in the church who were viewed by purists as being too close to the Catholic Church. The soon-to-be Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, was Charles’ instrument. Laud was an ill tempered man with few friends and many enemies. He took a sinister view towards those who challenged his church or king. It was under this harsh rule that Puritans fled England for the new world.
Roger Williams saw the writing on the wall. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1628. The first waves of Englishmen to the new colony were largely Puritan. In 1630 the first ships of the Winthrop Fleet arrived. Roger Williams and his wife, Mary Barnard, would join the separatists in 1631. Over the next decade the Great Migration would bring thousands of persecuted pure Christian souls to Boston and Salem.
The Puritan exodus would halt in 1640 at the outbreak of the English Civil War, the result of which would be King Charles and his right hand man William Laud losing their heads. Parliamentarians had won the war against the crown and claimed the task of ruling the nation. Puritans would play a key role in this period passing laws banning drink, gambling, theater and other vices they deemed sinful. Having gained power in Parliament these was no longer a need for mass migration.
Williams would not find his new world Utopia f religious tolerance. The once persecuted became the oppressors, a common theme in religious history. Colonial Puritan leaders were all pure godly men without sin demanding strict adherence to their religious law. Like England, civil and religious authority were legally married. Dissent was not tolerated.
My heroes, free thinkers Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, would again flee in search of freedom.