Five Parishes in Late Medieval and Tudor London by Gibbs Gary G.;

Author:Gibbs, Gary G.; [Gibbs, Gary G.;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429026232
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Further evidence of devotion

In analyzing the spiritual transformation of the parish, another salient point must be considered: the parishioners were never monolithic in their beliefs. Beyond the diverse pieties established thus far, there were others in the neighborhood. The Coleman Street area served as a home for Lollards, and a small group of them met in Bird Alley at the home of a tailor early in the reign of Henry VIII.76 Furthermore, parishioner Henry Walton’s will, probated in London’s Consistory Court on 13 December 1539, has been cited as manifesting a Lutheran dedicatory formula, the first for London.77 Several parishioners agitated for further reform of the Church in the Elizabethan era.78 In the 1620s, parishioner John Etherington was accused of being a Familiarist.79 Yet the parish continued to operate in the legally expected fashion throughout the Tudor era. As has been noted, Sir Richard Kettell served as vicar without interruption from 1530 until 1562, but Tudor-era clerics could weather such storms.80

At first glance it might seem that little of this parish’s history foreshadows Christopher Hill’s judgment of Saint Stephen as being the most radical puritan parish in the early Stuart era except that it all did; parishioners exercised a busy, fervent parish religion in a community filled with many people who lived in insecure social situations. And, of course, the theological transformation must be analyzed against the basic social continuity. The organization of the parish, especially the changes between 1580 and 1590, witnessed the creation of a semi-Presbyterian parish structure that operated within the larger episcopal system. This structure mattered. As Murray Tolmie wrote, “Of all London parishes, St Stephen Coleman Street was the best qualified to undertake the experiment of an explicit parochial congregationalism.”81 Parishioners demanded an “emphasis on consent and consultation,” which would lessen, but not eradicate, the power of bishop and archbishop over the local church.82 For Saint Stephen Coleman Street, the successful move toward a more autonomous parish that controlled its own benefice can be documented. By the 1580s, the parish had established a lectureship, staffed by William Welles, who also preached at Christ Church Newgate, and he (and the parish) made a qualified subscription to Whitgift’s Visitations Articles of 1583–84, accepting royal supremacy, but not the Thirty-Nine Articles, and qualifying their use of the prayer book.83 No sermons survive, but Welles had a license to preach his own sermons.

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