The reign of Elizabeth I of England, from 1558 to 1603, saw the start of the Puritan movement in England, its clash with the authorities of the Church of England, and its temporarily effective suppression as a political movement in the 1590s by judicial means. This led to the further alienation of Anglicans and Puritans from one another in the 17th century during the reigns of King James and King Charles I, that eventually brought about the English Civil War, the brief rule of the Puritan Lord Protector of England Oliver Cromwell, the English Commonwealth, and as a result the political, religious, and civil liberty that is celebrated today in all English speaking countries.
The English Puritan movement in the reign of Elizabeth and beyond sought to further the work of reforming the Church of England, eradicate the influence of
The English Reformation began in the 1530s when Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church and the authority of the pope. During Henry's reign, Protestants remained a minority of the English population, and Henry alternated between favoring his Protestant advisers and his traditional ones who wanted to maintain Catholic belief and practices.[1]
Protestants were also divided among themselves. By the 1540s,
black gowns. The Reformed replaced the elaborate liturgy of the medieval church with simple services of prayer and preaching. Unlike the Reformed, the Lutherans believed in the objective, real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, and they were not opposed to religious imagery and vestments. Many English Protestants were convinced that the Reformed churches were more faithful to biblical Christianity.[2]
In 1553, Edward VI died, and his Catholic half-sister assumed the throne as Mary I of England. Mary sought to end the English Reformation and restore the Church of England to full communion with the Church of Rome. Around a thousand English Protestants, known as the Marian exiles, left the country for religious reasons.[5] Unwelcome in German Lutheran territories, the exiles established English Protestant congregations in Rhineland towns such as Wesel, Frankfurt and Strasbourg, and the Swiss cities of Zurich, Basel, and Geneva. During the exile, English Protestants were exposed to ideas and practices of thoroughly Calvinist churches, such as in Reformation Geneva, and many would seek to implement those ideas in England after Mary's death.[6]
In 1558, Queen Mary died, and her half-sister, Elizabeth became Queen of England. Elizabeth had been raised as a Protestant in the household of Catherine Parr. During the first year of Elizabeth's reign many of the Marian exiles returned to England. A compromise religious position was established in 1559. It attempted to make England Protestant without totally alienating the portion of the population that had supported Catholicism under Mary. The religious settlement was consolidated in 1563. An interim position of 11 articles of faith operated for a few years.[7]
The Church of England under Elizabeth was broadly Reformed in nature: Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, had been the executor of Martin Bucer's will, and his replacement Edmund Grindal had carried the coffin at Bucer's funeral. While the Elizabethan settlement proved generally acceptable, there remained minorities who were dissatisfied with the state of the Church of England. The cry for "further reform" in the 1560s was the basis of what is now known as the Puritan Movement.
The Puritans were not content with the Anglican settlement and the established church. They believed that the English church and state should be further reformed by the Word of God and the faithful preaching of the Gospel, as in the continental reformed churches. They were opposed to the rule of bishops, to the required use of the Book of Common Prayer, and many of the rituals of the Anglican establishment, which they believed were obstacles to true religion and godliness. They believed the majority of the common people were kept in bondage to forms and rituals, and as a result to false religion and spiritual ignorance.
The Puritans moreover wanted all the sins, rituals, and superstitions that "smacked of Roman Catholic idolatry" thoroughly abolished from the realm and from the churches, including; the mass, the surplice, kneeling at the Lord's Supper, vestments, graven images, profane and sexually immoral stage plays, and the widespread profanation of the Sabbath. The Puritans promoted a thorough doctrinal reformation that was Calvinistic, as well as a thorough reformation of the English church and society based on Scripture and not human tradition.
The Puritan movement in Elizabethan England was strengthened by the fact that many of Queen Elizabeth's top political advisers and court officials had close ties with Puritan leaders and were partial to Puritan views of theology, politics, and the reformation of the English church and society. They especially wanted to curb the power of the Anglican bishops and root out any influence of the Roman Catholic church. Such men in Elizabeth's court of advisers included William Cecil, Chief Adviser to the Queen, Secretary of State, and Lord High Treasurer; Francis Walsingham, the Principal Secretary to the Queen and Spymaster of the English Crown; Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a very close personal friend and one time suitor to the queen. It is evident that Elizabeth, though a committed Anglican, relied heavily on Puritan leaders for the support of the crown as well as her own personal and state counsel.
The chief poet of the Elizabethan era, Edmund Spenser, was a promoter of Puritan views. He is best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the reign of Elizabeth I. In fact the Red Cross Knight, the chief hero of the poem, is designed to be the very image and model of Puritan virtue, and Una his betrothed a figure of the church purified from sin and idolatry.
The delicate balance and conflict between Anglicanism and Puritanism could be readily seen in one of the primary architects of the Anglican settlement, John Jewel. Jewel can be seen in many ways as both Anglican and Puritan, much like William Perkins at the end of the Elizabethan era. Jewel's Apology of the Church of England and his Book of Homilies are both quintessential to Anglicanism; and yet his "Essay on Holy Scripture" is in many ways Puritan.
Fundamental to the rise of English Puritanism in the Elizabethan era was the influence of four highly influential reformers: John Calvin, Henry Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Theodore Beza, who were all in frequent communication with the crown and the Reformed leaders in England. While Calvin and Bullinger praised Queen Elizabeth for the work of reformation in England and the Anglican establishment, and encouraging patience from the Puritans, Beza was more firm in his support of the Puritan movement. During the 1560s and 1570s, the works of Calvin were the most widely disseminated publications in England, while the works of Beza, Bullinger, and Vermigli also enjoyed popularity.
The Puritan movement was advanced by the work and ministry of John Knox and the Scottish Reformation that took place at the same time. Knox spent five years in England (1549–1554) assisting the English reformation in the time of Edward VI, fled to Geneva and spent several years with Calvin (1554–1559), and then returned to Scotland to spearhead the reformation of his home country from 1560 until his death in 1572. Knox's influence on the Puritan movement in England was significant. The British pastor and Puritan scholar Martyn Lloyd-Jones suggests that Knox could be called the first Puritan.
Archiepiscopate of Matthew Parker, 1559–1575
Convocation of 1562/3
The Convocation of 1563 opened on 15 January 1562/3 with a sermon by William Day; he was one of leaders, prominent with Alexander Nowell (who had preached the day before at the opening of Parliament) and Thomas Sampson, of the reformers.[8][9][10] The convocation approved the Thirty-nine Articles as a confessional statement for the Church of England. The bishops proposed further reforms of canon law and the liturgy. These included the elimination of vestments, the elimination of kneeling at communion, the elimination of the sign of the cross in baptism, and altering the forms of music used in church. During this convocation, the bishops formulated the so-called Alphabet bills, which they unsuccessfully introduced in the next two parliaments.[11] Some of the clergy introduced these reforms in their congregations on their own initiative in the following years. For example, at Cambridge, William Fulke convinced his students not to wear their surplices and to hiss at students who did. As a result, Archbishop Parker published a set of Advertisements, requiring uniformity in clerical dress.[citation needed]
The Puritan faction objected loudly and appealed to the continental reformers to support their cause. Many of the continental reformers felt that the Puritans were just making trouble – for example, in a letter to Bishop Grindal, Bullinger accused the Puritans of displaying "a contentious spirit under the name of conscience". Grindal proceeded to publish the letter without Bullinger's permission. Beza was more supportive of the Puritan position, though he did not intervene too loudly because he feared angering the queen and he wanted the queen to intervene in France on behalf of the Huguenots. In response to clergymen refusing to wear their vestments, 37 ministers were suspended. In response, in 1569 some ministers began holding their own services, the first example of Puritan separatism.
Admonition to the Parliament (1572) and demand for Presbyterianism
Throughout the 1560s, England's return to Protestantism remained tentative, and large numbers of the people were committed to and sought a return to Catholicism. Three related events around 1570 ultimately led to the reinforcement of Protestantism in England. First, in the Rising of the North, the northern earls revolted, demanding a return to Catholicism. Second, after the execution of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, Pope Pius V issued the bullRegnans in Excelsis, absolving Catholics of their duty of allegiance to Elizabeth. Third, the Ridolfi plot sought to replace Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots.
In response to this Catholic rebelliousness, the English government took several measures to shore up the Protestantism of the regime: all clergymen were required to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles; all laity were required to take communion according to the rite of the Book of Common Prayer in their home parish at least once per year; and it became a treasonable offence to say that the queen was a heretic or a schismatic.
In this pro-Protestant, anti-Catholic environment, the Puritan faction sought to push further reforms on the Church of England. John Foxe and Thomas Norton presented a reform proposal initially drawn up under Edward VI to Parliament. Elizabeth quickly dismissed this proposal, however, insisting on adherence to the 1559 religious settlement. Meanwhile at Cambridge, professor Thomas Cartwright, a long-time opponent of vestments, offered a series of lectures in 1570 on the Book of Acts in which he called for the abolition of episcopacy and the creation of a presbyterian system of church governance in England.
Puritans were further dismayed when they learned that the bishops had decided to merge the vestiarian controversy into the requirement that clergy subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles: at the time they swore their allegiance to the Thirty-nine Articles, the bishops also required all clergymen to swear that the use of the Book of Common Prayer and the wearing of vestments are not contrary to Scripture. Many of the Puritan clergymen were incensed at this requirement. A bill authorizing the bishops to permit deviations from the Book of Common Prayer in cases where the book required something contrary to a clergyman's conscience was presented and defeated at the next parliament.