Charles I and the People of England by David Cressy

Author:David Cressy [Cressy, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780198708292
Google: AlVLBgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0198708297
Published: 2015-06-15T03:15:53+00:00

Ceremonialism and its Discontents

Caroline apologists described the Church of England as ‘the envy and admiration of Christendom’.75 Of all churches, wrote the Arminian controversialist Richard Montague, it was the one most true and pleasing to God, eschewing both the ‘popery’ that entailed ‘tyranny’ and the ‘puritanism’ that led to ‘anarchy’.76 Soundly governed and devoutly attended, according to the ceremonialist John Cosin, the Church of England steered ‘the middle way’ between ‘the superstitiousness and gross errors of the papist’, and ‘the profane and wild madness of the anabaptist’.77 The moderate puritan John Brinsley agreed that England possessed a church ‘where Christ is plainly and powerfully preached, published, offered, applied in the word and sacraments’, balanced between the superstitious adornments of Rome and the bareness of ultra-reformed congregations.78 Mainstream religious leaders upheld the order and beauty of English worship, but rising tension revealed a religious culture that was scarred and damaged. Irregularities of worship and infringements of discipline were distasteful to a monarch who prized comeliness and decorum in church and state. Caroline episcopal authorities sought conformity and compliance, but parishes generally policed themselves until someone pried or complained. The most common report of churchwardens was omnia bene—all well—until puritans pushed the limits or hard-liners came looking for trouble. Diversity prevailed within a tightening framework of uniformity.

Authoritarian clerics demanded strict adherence to the Book of Common Prayer. They were hostile to ministers who ignored or altered the prescribed words or rubrics, or substituted readings that challenged establishment orthodoxy. To the bishops and their backers, the informality that had crept into parish practice was slovenliness that needed correction or nonconformity that warranted punishment. Though James I at Hampton Court had declared himself for ‘one doctrine and one discipline, one religion in substance and in ceremony’, enforcement had generally been slack. The Jacobean church had privileged ‘peace’ above ‘contentiousness’, and authorities often winked at concessions to convenience and custom.79

After 1625 the new king oversaw a tilt in religious policy, an alteration of style and tone, as Arminians and ceremonialists extended their authority. English religious culture began to change, especially in the 1630s, as bishops Laud, Neile, Wren, and others conducted energetic visitations. Neither the geography nor the chronology of this change was clear or consistent, since dioceses moved at varying paces, and archdeaconry officials could outmatch or lag behind their bishops. Parishes too could be slow to cooperate, but place after place experienced a new liturgical fastidiousness, backed by disciplinary rigidity.80 The changes were most apparent, and therefore most controversial, in the policing of gesture, the churching of women, and the apparatus for the celebration of Holy Communion. The renewed ceremonial emphasis, which critics perceived as innovation, or even reversal of the Reformation, was accompanied by large investments in church fabric and ornament in pursuit of ‘the beauty of holiness’. It remains a matter of conjecture whether these alterations drew waverers away from Roman Catholicism more than they impelled critics towards puritanism.81

As church inspectors demanded ‘fit’ coverings, ‘fair’ carpets, ‘handsome’ communion rails, and ‘comely’ liturgical equipment, parishes acquired furnishings and fittings not seen since the Reformation.

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