History of the Anglican Church CV

Charles I at his trial

To pick up on the English Civil War and its impact on the development of Anglicanism, after only a few years following his accession to the throne in 1625, Charles was losing popular support.  Archbishop Laud’s High Church liturgical reforms went too far for many who had accustomed themselves to Calvinist austerity in worship and resented the innovations.  (There are always those who resist and resent liturgical development, even when it is to improve the theological footing of the Liturgy.)   His wars were costly and his failure to win them a national embarrassment.  His dependence upon his favorites for council and his opposition to Parliament left the people feeling unheard and unrepresented.  Charles also had a program to drain “The Fens”—the marshy swamplands in eastern England.  The program would enrich his friends who were investing in it with hopes of converting the swamps to good rich farmland, but disrupt the lives of the locals who for centuries had made their living fishing and wildfowling.  The King and Parliament were in a political tug of war with the Commons reflecting the mood of the ordinary people, especially the merchant class of the South and South East (including London) and the King representing the views of the landed aristocracy. 

By the beginning of 1642 as Parliament became more assertive in their resistance to the King’s policies, and the King felt himself losing control, Charles appeared at the House of Commons with 400 soldiers to arrest five members of the House whom he perceived to be the leaders of the opposition to his policies.  Charles was angry about the execution of Lord Wentworth, his Lord Deputy for Ireland and fearful about the fate of his Archbishop of Canterbury, Laud, whom Parliament had imprisoned.  Wentworth had only carried out the King’s requirements to raise funds in order to avoid having to convoke Parliament to impose new taxes and Charles was in sympathy with Laud’s ceremonial approach to worship.  The King’s failure to arrest the opposition left him fearful of his safety and the safety of his family and fled London.  The rumors—quite probably true—were that that the Queen, Henrietta Marie, had persuaded Charles to arrest the Parliamentarians.  It was a disaster.  The five members of the House had been pre-warned and fled before the King arrived.  The King’s coming into the House and intimidating it with his 400 guards was seen to be a gross violation of Parliamentary right and no monarch has since been permitted to enter the House of Commons. 

After staying briefly first at Hampton Court and then Windsor, Charles sent his family to safety in France and proceeded to the North of England where he hoped to find support among the more traditional nobility and gentry.  Meanwhile the country polarized with some cities and towns declaring support for the King and others for Parliament.  This put King and Parliament at war with each other—civil war.  Painting the picture with somewhat of a broad brush, the King controlled Wales, the West, the Midlands and the North. Parliament held the allegiance of London, the South, the East and the Navy.  Charles established his capital at Oxford. 

It is beyond the point of this blog to go through the Civil War battle by battle, suffice it to say that as the war raged back and forth over the next five years, the King lost more and more and Parliament was more and more victorious.  After being besieged in Oxford, Charles fled and sought refuge with the Scots army at that time in the Midlands.  The Scots, firm in their Presbyterian belief and angry with the King for his attempts to force Anglicanism on them, betrayed Charles and sold him to the Parliamentary forces in January 1647. 

As England devolved from monarchy and episcopacy into what became political tyranny and religious chaos, the Church of England not only split along the High Church/Puritan fault line, it shattered into numerous religious sects.  With the execution of Charles in 1649, England was declared to be a “Commonwealth” with a Republican form of government.  With the abolishment of bishops in 1646 the Church officially became a Presbyterian Church.  The 39 articles—the key statement of Anglican doctrine—was replaced by the Westminster Confession; the Book of Common Prayer by the Directory for Public Worship adopted from the Church of Scotland.  I say “Presbyterian” because its ecclesial polity was Presbyterian (as different from Episcopalian—that is governed by bishops.)  As opposed to Episcopal government—government by a bishop with his officials such as Archdeacons and Deans, in the Presbyterian system local churches are governed by a body of elders (presbyters).  Churches were no longer gathered in a diocese under a bishop but governed by an assembly of presbyters known as the presbytery or classis.   I want to be careful to nuance this correctly but when I say the Church of England was Presbyterian, I am not correlating it to modern Presbyterianism, but simply to say that it adopted the Presbyterian form of organization typical of most Churches in the Reformed (as opposed to Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical [aka Lutheran]) traditions.  In fact both today’s English Presbyterians and Congregationalists would find in the time of the Commonwealth not their origins (they date back as movements within the Church of England to the late 16^th century opposition to the Prayer Book and to Bishops) but certainly their coming of age.  The Church of England during the Commonwealth (or as it is sometimes called the Interregnum)  was a Reformed Church that was home to groups that would later distinguish themselves from one another as “Presbyterian” or “Congregational.”  And indeed, in 1972 the majority of Congregational Churches in England united with the Presbyterian Church of England to form the United Reformed Church. 

This Presbyterian/Congregationalist Church of England satisfied the Puritans who had long wanted to get rid of Bishops and the Prayer Book and Christmas and other “popish” traditions. Yes, Christmas was outlawed in England from 1647 until the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660—giving rise to the popular rhyme:

Now thanks to God for Charles return

Whose absence made old Christmas mourn

For then we scarcely did it know

Whether it Christmas were or no

But as I said, the Church did not split in two, it shattered.  The Puritan faction was not sufficiently radical for tens of thousands who found expression for their faith—or their psychosis—in dozens of far more radical groups ranging from the Anabaptists to the Diggers to the Fifth Monarchists to the Sabbatarians to the Quakers to the Ranters.  We will look at some of these groups in the future postings.  Suffice it to say that what had once been one Church with a lot of factional tension now became dozens of sects ranging from the respectable to the totally out of control.  While the Church of England had up to this time (quite unofficially) encompassed a wide variety of theological opinions and forms of worship, these various groups now broke apart into a wide variety of sects that, like Humpty Dumpty, never be put back together again.  Suffice it to say for the purposes of this blog, that the traditional Church of England, a National and Episcopal Church, ceased to exist.  It would be restored in 1660 along with the monarchy, but never again would it encompass the almost universal composite of the English people.   

Foundations of the Church of England CIV

Charles I

We haven’t finished with the Caroline Divines but as they span the better part of the 17^th century we are going to intersperse postings on them with what was going on politically and religiously to shape the Church of England.  To understand the next phase of development in the Church of England we need to take a look at the English Civil War and to understand the Civil War we need to keep a few things in mind.

1.     There was as yet no Great Britain.  There were the separate kingdoms of England (and Wales) and Scotland.  (There was also the Kingdom of Ireland, but as that is on a different island and as in this phase of the development is not germane to our story, let’s just put it aside for the moment.)  England and Scotland were separate kingdoms with separate parliaments and separate Churches, but James VI (of Scotland) & I (of England) was king of both Kingdoms.  He was succeeded upon his death by his son Charles who also ruled each kingdom. 

2.     The Scots did not have as strong a parliamentary tradition as did the English and the English grew fearful that under these Scots Kings, the monarchy would grow stronger at Parliament’s expense. 

3.     James and his son Charles were highly influenced by the theory of the “Divine Right of Kings” that they held their thrones from God and ruled by his authority regardless of the consent of the people or the parliaments of their kingdoms.

4.     In England the king could not levy taxes without the consent of Parliament.

5.     The Church of England had always been an Episcopal Church (governed by bishops) and had since the reign of Elizabeth been strongly Calvinist in its theology.  However there was a strong faction in the Church of England that wanted Presbyterian government (Boards of Clergy replacing bishops in setting policy) which was more typical of the Calvinist tradition.  The Church of Scotland, on the other hand, had been Presbyterian but James had gradually re-introduced bishops to it, over and against the preferences of most of its staunchly Presbyterian members.  By and large, Scotland was not happy with bishops. 

6.     During the reign of King James and especially after the accession of Charles, there developed a faction in the Church of England that theologically and liturgically began to move away from the Calvinism that characterized Anglicanism since Cranmer and particularly since the reign of Elizabeth.

7.     James reputed homosexuality and his attachment to a number of “favorites,” especially George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, caused significant scandal to the Puritan (Calvinist) faction of the Church of England.   Given James’ piety and general good nature, it pretty much only remained as grumbling during his reign, but when Charles ascended the throne and kept Buckingham as a chief advisor, the Puritan faction began to openly challenge royal policy. 

8.     Charles’ marriage to the openly Catholic Henrietta Marie, a French princess, angered the Puritan faction, not only because she was a Catholic but because of the persecution of French Calvinists by the Crown in France. 

The pot came quickly to a boil in the reign of Charles.  He became king in 1625 and by 1628 the English Parliament was determined to limit his power with the “petition of right.”  Charles needed Parliament to grant him new taxes to support English participation in the Thirty-Years War.  This was an essentially Catholic-Protestant War and England was to come in on the Protestant side, but Parliament used the King’s need to wring from him agreement that

1.     the King would not levy taxes without parliamentary consent

2.     soldiers would not be billeted in private homes without the owners’ consent

3.     martial law would not be imposed to quell political unrest

4.     Englishmen would not be arbitrarily imprisoned for dissent from royal policy

Charles had no choice but to agree to the petition, but he determined not to call Parliament again and for eleven years ruled without it.   Tensions mounted.  We mentioned Archbishop Laud and his revival of a certain amount of ceremonial in the Church of England and this did not sit well with the Puritan faction.  Laud and other High Churchmen also renounced the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination in favor of Free Will.  Laud also enforced the laws on Church attendance, fining or imprisoning those Puritans who refused to attend the Prayer Book liturgy.  Those who criticized the Archbishop and his leadership of the Church, were dragged before Church courts which had the right to various punishments such as lashings or cutting off of an ear.   Laud’s unpopularity with the Puritan faction—which was also the Parliamentary faction—only increased the unpopularity with King Charles.

When Charles and Laud tried to force a new Prayer Book on the Church of Scotland—a very “High Church” Book (for the day) rebellion broke out in Scotland with the so-called “Bishops’ Wars”  (There were actually two, on in 1637 and the other in 1640.)  Charles ended up being trounced by the Scots and he needed money to pay the war debts.  This led to the calling of Parliament in April 1640.  Parliament, once assembled, was not about to limit itself to voting the needed revenues for the King, but began to debate their grievances against the King.  Charles dissolved Parliament after only three weeks.  This was the “Short Parliament.” 

Charles turned to Ireland for revenues where his viceroy, Lord Wentworth, was able to raise funds by persuading the Irish Catholic Lords to vote the King funds in return for greater religious liberty for Catholics.  Trust me, this only enraged the Puritan faction all the more.  Emboldened by the new monies, Charles could not stop himself from poking the hornet’s nest and once again invaded his Scots Kingdom to assert his authority.  Once again he got trounced.  To keep the Scots from invading England he had to pay the Scots army £ 850 a day.  He also had to fund his English army to defend England against these Scots.  In other words, he was paying to support both sides in a war.  Desperately short of funds, he had no choice but to call Parliament again in November 1640.  This Parliament had cojones.  It arrested Laud in 1640. It would have him executed in 1645.  It convicted Wentworth (the fellow who raised the money for Charles in Ireland) of treason and executed him in 1641.  It passed a Law that the King could not dissolve Parliament without its consent.  It passed another Law that Parliament had to meet at least every three years.  It declared that the King’s advisors were subject to Parliamentary review.  It abolished the Courts of High Commission and Star Chamber—two of the Courts subject directly to the King.  In 1646 this parliament—known as the “Long Parliament”—abolished episcopacy making the Church of England Presbyterian in government.    To be cont.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church CIII

Archbishop Laud

Well, enough for now about Cardinal Burke and his proclivity for dressing up like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.  Let’s get back to the Church of England and the Caroline Divines. There is a character there of some confused personality as well.  Actually there are several, but we will deal with one today.  

William Laud came from a merchant family in Reading and was born on October 7, 1573.  His origins were strictly bourgeois but high-bourgeois with his maternal uncle being Lord Mayor of London when Laud was 18.  William Laud was sent to Oxford where he took the Bachelors, Master’s, and Doctorate in Divinity.  He was ordained a priest at 28.  He never married; like many a churchman before and since he was discrete about his homosexuality and could make celibacy look like an option for holiness rather than a cover for psychological struggles.    

He began his career in his college of Saint John’s at Oxford where he was elected president in 1611.  With the patronage of Richard Neile who was Clerk of the Closet to James I Laud was named Dean of Gloucester in 1616.  (The Clerk of the Closet is the chief advisor to the King on matters of ecclesiastical appointments.)  At Gloucester Laud began introducing liturgical reforms that moved away from the Puritan/Calvinist austerity towards practices which would become known as “High Church.”  James was not fond of Laud—the King was quite Calvinist in his preferences for worship.  Moreover, Laud’s lack of genteel family background went against James’ favor of aristocracy.  Nevertheless, Neile was persistent in his pushing Laud for advancement and in 1621 managed to obtain for him the somewhat obscure Bishopric of Saint David’s in Wales. 

While Bishop of Saint David’s Laud switched horses and linked his cart to George Villiers, 1^st Duke of Buckingham.  Buckingham was the “favourite” (read: “lover”) of King James.  (James a man of varied sexual preferences—he fathered seven children born live and two miscarriages, but there is little question of his having a string of male lovers throughout his life and Villiers was perhaps the most formidable of them.) 

When James died, Villiers managed to have great influence of his son, Charles, who succeeded to the throne.  Laud was named Dean of the Chapel Royal which made him a regular preacher to the King, but Charles—unlike his father—preferred more formal liturgy and was little interested in sermons.  A King with High Church sensitivities was a perfect opportunity for Laud to advance his agenda of moving the Church of England away from its Puritan identity and towards a more solid theological foundation.

When I say a “more solid theological foundation” I mean a theology and practice more in accord with the patristic tradition.  Laud is often presented as a closet Catholic but he was anything but that.  Laud looked not to the continental Catholics for reshaping the Church of England but to the Greek Orthodox with whom he established some early ecumenical contact.  Laud wanted to Reform the Church of England—and especially its Liturgy—based on a sound appreciation for the theology of the Church Fathers.  The end result made it more “Catholic” but the route was not through the Tridentine Reforms of Catholicism but through the tradition preserved in the Greek Church.

Meanwhile Laud had moved from Saint David’s to being Bishop of Bath and Wells (1626-28) and then in 1628 Bishop of London.  It was no secret that he would ascend the chair of Saint Augustine at Canterbury when it became vacant as it did in 1633.  Once Archbishop of Canterbury, Laud was quick to move to ensure that every parish church in England faithfully conformed to the Prayer Book Liturgy.  At the same time, he was working for a new edition of the Prayer Book—one that would undo Cranmer’s weird Order of Service in the 1552 Book (and which was retained in the 1559 Book) for a more patristic liturgy.  That liturgy would look far too Catholic for the Puritan faction and that would bring down the entire house of cards.

The die was cast in 1637 when Laud persuaded Charles to impose a Prayer Book on the Church of Scotland.  James had reintroduced Bishops to the Scots Church, taking away its Presbyterian character.  But the Prayer Book proposed for the Church of Scotland reflected Laud’s High Church theology and that was far too much for the Scots to bear. The Scots rose in rebellion—the so-called Bishops’ Wars—and in the end would trigger the English Civil War which would cost both Charles and Laud their heads.

There will be more about William Laud in future postings as we continue to Look at the Caroline Divines and the English Civil War, but he marks a turning point in the Church of England—a turning from the radical Protestantism of Cranmer’s era and the subsequent Puritan domination of the Church to a serious and scholarly approach to Church life that is rooted in a somewhat sophisticated approach to the ancient Christian tradition.  That split in Anglicanism grows wider and wider throughout Laud’s time and will eventually fracture the Church into the Anglican Church and the various other Churches that spring from it in varying degrees of radicalness.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVIX

Lancelot Andrewes

Elizabeth’s political savvy and personal charisma was able to hold the Church of England together during her reign.  Moreover, while the Puritan faction was not happy about bishops or the Prayer Book and its still somewhat Catholic Liturgy, both the Presbyterian (Puritan) and Episcopal (bishops) factions shared a strong Calvinist bent in their theology that kept the arguments more about discipline than doctrine.  The Puritans wanted to push for more Reform on the Geneva model of less structure in worship with more extempore prayer, “prophesying” (greater emphasis on the sermons), and a de-emphasis on the Holy Communion and other rites.  In fact, under the influence of Puritan clergy many congregations did not adhere closely to the Prayer Book and followed continental models for Reformed Worship.  While Elizabeth wanted liturgical uniformity according to the Prayer Book liturgy, her Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, actually favored the “prophesying” model hoping to increase the quality of preaching and the Queen herself pushed no harder than she dare lest she alienate the Puritan faction which controlled the House of Commons.  Religion was important to Elizabeth but not so important as to sacrifice her larger political agenda and she needed Puritan support for that.

The pax ecclesiastica  of Elizabeth’s reign actually masked a growing schism that remained beneath the surface as long as she was on the throne, but which began to bubble up when James VI of Scotland became James I of England.  The Puritans had hopes for their Scots king as James had been raised by Presbyterians and the Scots Church was, at the time of his accession, mostly Presbyterian in its makeup.  (At the time that James inherited the English Throne, there were   two bishops in Scotland, appointees of the Scots Parliament and without diocesan jurisdiction.  The post was primarily honorary as the Scots Parliament recognized the Presbyterian organization of the Kirk (Church) in 1592. )  But those optimistic Puritans did not know James.  He was an ardent proponent of Episcopal Church polity and by his death in 1625 had reestablished a full bench of diocesan bishops in Scotland.  James’ theme was “no bishop, no king” and he realized that the elimination of episcopacy was just a tad too democratic for his crown to rest secure.

The heroes of the faith under Elizabeth were those ministers who had fled the England of “Bloody Mary” for the Reformed Churches of Geneva, Zurich, and Strasbourg and then, upon Elizabeth becoming Queen and reestablishing Protestantism, returned to England.   Their time abroad had confirmed them in Reformed Church Polity (which was Presbyterian) and Calvinist doctrine.  The “High Church” party in the Church of England, the group which favored bishops and held more Catholic views of the sacraments, remained very much in the shadows while Elizabeth was on the throne, despite the Queen’s own support of episcopacy and her liking for a certain amount of ritual in her chapel.  Under James, however, there was a marked movement away from Calvinist theology by some of the bishops, notably Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester and later Bishop of Winchester as well as Dean of the Chapel Royal.  Andrewes defended the doctrine of the Real Presence (though he rejected Transubstantiation) claiming that after the bread is consecrated (his word) it is no longer bread in a natural sense.   He used terms such as “sacrifice” and “altar” in referring to the Holy Communion and to the table on which it was celebrated.  His private chapel was fitted out with silver candlesticks, a censer, and five copes among other High Church paraphernalia.   Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft (1604-1610) was another bishop who tried to move the Church of England away from its Calvinist foundation.  Bancroft’s successor, George Abbot was Calvinist in his soteriology (theology of salvation) but held a strong Catholic understanding of the Apostolic Succession and the priesthood, though he was a mortal enemy of William Laud who would later be Archbishop of Canterbury and bring down both the episcopacy and the crown with his High Churchmanship.    George Montaigne who under James held successively the Sees of Lincoln, London, Durham, and York rejected Calvinist Soteriology and insisted on conformity to the Prayer Book in worship.  Thomas Dove, (bishop of   Peterborough)  and John Overall (bishop first of Coventry and Lichfield and later of Norwich)   were staunch opponents of Calvinist doctrine.  Thomas Ravis, bishop of London, (1607-1609) rigidly opposed the Puritan faction.  On the other hand, his predecessor Richard Vaughn, James’ bishop of London (1604-1607) had been a staunch Calvinist, but found himself in a theological minority on the episcopal bench. 

The Puritan party began to realize that the bishops were a threat to the Calvinist faith and Protestant legacy for which Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer and the other Marian Martyrs had shed their blood.  There were in fact two distinct Churches in England—the Episcopal Church of England with its bishops and Arminian doctrine and increasingly Catholicized Liturgy and the Puritan Church of England with its non-conforming clergy and Calvinist doctrine and non-Liturgical worship.  They would somehow hold together during the reign of King James, but his son, Charles I, would inherit a religious tinderbox along with the Crown and when it blew—as indeed it would—the consequences would be disastrous for Crown and Miter alike. 

Ok—a little glossary of terms here to help the reader become familiar with something they might get on Jeopardy some day. 

Arminianism, Arminians,  Arminian.  The Arminians  (named after Dutch Theologian Jacobus Arminius) were adherents of a theological position antithetical to Calvinism in as that they denied the double pre-destination taught by Calvin.  Double predestination is that God has foreordained those who will be saved to salvation and those who will be damned for damnation.  Calvin’s position does not ascribe free will to the individual as his or her ultimate fate has been pre-determined by God.  Grace is given only for the elect; Christ died only for the elect.  The Armenians taught that Christ died for all and that grace sufficient for salvation is offered to all though the freedom of the will permits some to accept saving grace and others to reject it. 

Non-conformist, non-conforming clergy.  The non-conformists were those of the Puritan party who refused to “conform” to the Prayer Book and its liturgy but rather practiced the more free-style worship of the Reformed or Presbyterian Churches.  This term will be important in the Church of England until the end of the 17^th century when the non-conformists will withdraw from the Anglican Church to form their own religious bodies.  During the period of the English Civil War and subsequent Parliamentary “Protectorate” of the Cromwells, the non-Conformists will have the ascendency in the Church of England.