Laud’s Aspirations & Puritan Convictions

This is the sixth of a series of articles describing formative movements and ideas in the history of the church. These were the crises of thought and conviction which brought us to where we are.

On 10th January 1645 William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was executed for treason by order of the Long Parliament. The trial of the Archbishop, like that of the King some four years later in 1649, has been universally interpreted by historians as a mock trial. Thus Hugh Trevor Roper, in his biography of Laud, felt it unnecessary to deal in detail with the legal process, 'for his whole life was objected against him'. It has become a matter of debate whether the Archbishop or Charles I was the prime instigator of the religious changes which took place after Laud's election to Canterbury in 1633, but in essence Laud was guilty of following the lead of his royal master. Together King and prelate had promoted high church or Arminian policies, which were strenuously opposed by the dissenting, puritan wing of the English Church, as well as by more moderate individuals afraid of rapprochement with Rome. On the scaffold Laud thus defended himself against the charge, amongst others, of 'bringing in of popery', which had been levelled against him by parliament.

To understand the tremendous fears that this accusation aroused, we must remember that since the Henrician Reformation Englishmen and women had been subjected to a century of anti-papal and anti-Roman catholic polemic. This had been produced by the crown, the Church, schools, and politicians. At the heart of this anti-catholic rhetoric lay historical events, which had helped to define England as an emergent Protestant state, and which had taken on a semi-mythical importance. They included the harrowing stories of the three hundred or so early Protestants burnt as heretics in the reign of Mary Tudor and enshrined in John Foxe's famous Book of Martyrs. There was also the repulsion of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. We must remember that in Charles I's reign these events loomed large in recent memory and that the diocese of Canterbury had witnessed one of the highest levels of persecution during Mary's reign, with nearly fifty of the martyrs coming from East Kent. In the early 17th century many people were still handing down oral histories about their relatives named in Foxe's book, while prayers of thanksgiving for deliverance from the Armada and the Gunpowder Plot were offered annually in many churches. In the winter of 1640-1 rumours about catholic agitators were circulating freely in London and the provinces, and the accusation that the King was unwittingly in the grip of a catholic plot was repeated in all of the major public statements made by the House of Commons in these months. Charles I's marriage to the French catholic Princess, Henrietta Maria in 1625; the recent welcome given to the papal ambassador at the English court and the promotion of Arminian church policies, all provided further evidence that the King was in the grips of a catholic intrigue.

As Archbishop, Laud had overseen the implementation of many of the Church policies which had given rise to fears about a Catholic resurgence. Chief amongst them was the so-called 'altar policy' of the 1630s. Since the reign of Edward VI altars on communion tables had gradually replaced stone altars in the majority of parish churches. As Archbishop, Laud presided over the new policy of railing in the communion table or 'altar' as the east end of parish and cathedral churches. There were a range of reasons why parishioners might oppose this policy, which was a clear break with reformed practice. The new altars and rails of the 1630s were for example costly and the burden of payment fell on the parishioners. This was also an extra task for the churchwardens, who were responsible for supervising the railing and for raising the payments for materials and labour. The puritans, however, saw the altar policy as more than simply a matter of decorum. They saw it as a return to the traditions of the pre-Reformation Church and it inspired fears amongst the puritans, and even those of a more moderate frame of mind, that the King was considering reconciliation with the Church of Rome. Differing concepts of the nature of the Eucharist were involved. In 1551 Rome had formally endorsed transubstantiation and the mass as the Most Holy Sacrifice – hence the altar. The reformers regarded the communion as a commemoration of the Lord's supper and thus around a table. This very real fear of reconciliation with Rome, which should not be underestimated, and such complaints about railed altars were directed in 1640-1 to Parliament from some of the parishioners in Boughton under Blean, Capel, Chatham, Dartford, East Peckham, Horsmonden, Maidstone, Minster in Thanet, Molash, Monkton, Rolvenden, Stourmouth, Sturry, Tonbridge, Woodchurch, and Yalding.

These fears were reinforced in Kent by Laud's continuous attempts in the 1630s to disperse the independent congregations of the stranger communities, the French and Dutch Protestants, in Canterbury, Maidstone, and Sandwich in order to bring them into conformity with the practices of the English Church. At the trial Laud was accused of suppressing these congregations in order to create discord between the English Church and the continental reformed churches to the Papists' 'the advantage of the overthrow, and extirpation of both'. In his scaffold speech Laud defended his actions as Archbishop from the sense of popery and claimed that he had aimed to maintain 'uniformity in the external service of God according to the doctrine and discipline of the Church'. Uniformity was the basis of the Elizabethan Church Settlement and was perceived by the Crown as the basis for religious and political stability in the realm. Since 1559, and earlier, those who refused to conform to the officially defined faith of the land faced prosecution in the church or secular courts. Eighty years later Charles I presided over a state in which there was little room for political or religious toleration. The execution of Laud went ahead after the first large-scale Parliamentarian victory at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644. The next month, August, saw a levy of £800 on the county of Kent to pay for the Parliamentarian forces who occupied the county.

1644, when the King's military defeat began to look a real possibility. The evidence used to convict the Archbishop was certainly biased, but we should not simply gloss over it. Indeed, the various charges against him dramatically illustrate the intense hostility which had built up against the Crown and Church in Charles's reign and which led, ultimately, to a political and religious revolution in England in the 1640s.

Amongst those who testified against the archbishop at his trial were two puritan clerics from Kent, Thomas Wilson of Maidstone, and Richard Culmer of Minster in Thanet. Their involvement emphasises the ways in which religious tensions between puritans and the Church authorities had been gathering in the parishes throughout Charles I's reign. Both Wilson and Culmer had a very specific charge to make. They complained that in the mid-1630s they had been suspended from the exercise of their ministry by the Archbishop for not reading the King's Declaration concerning lawful Sports on the sabbath, more popularly known as the Book of Sports, to their congregations. This alone was not enough to substantiate a charge of treason, but it was part of a wider attempt to portray Laud as a religious persecutor and as a supporter of a 'popish conspiracy' against the Church and state. In 1633 all parish clergy had been required to read the Book of Sports from their pulpits or face disciplinary action. Puritan clerics objected to the Book, because it encouraged what they saw as frivolous pursuits after Sunday services. These included dancing, archery, leaping, and vaulting. The Declaration also endorsed May games, with their attendant maypoles and Whitsun ales. In Kent three other clerics, besides Wilson and Culmer, were also suspended for not reading the Book, John Player of Kennington, Thomas Hierom of Herne Hill, and Lawrence Snelling of Paul's Cray. Puritan clerics such as these preferred a quiet and sober sabbath observance, which included a second sermon in the afternoon and the catechising of the youth in the parish. It was not the case that puritans objected to all dancing and other pastimes, the central issue was whether such sports were appropriate to the sabbath or not.

The suspension of the five Kent ministers for refusing to read the Book was not just a personal grievance, it emphasised the fact that a deep religious and cultural division was widening in Charles's reign. The puritan agenda in the 1640s was not only concerned with long-term goals of promoting a plainer liturgy, cutting down on church decoration and abolishing the powers of the Church hierarchy. These issues were closely related to, and mirrored by, political arguments about the extent and nature of royal power. The nature of this division can be further appreciated by a consideration of the clerical careers of Wilson and Culmer, the best documented of the suspended Kent clergy. By 1640 both Wilson and Culmer had become convinced that the Church needed radical reform. In particular like other puritans, they wanted to see the abolition of episcopacy and its replacement with a presbyterian system without bishops. These changes were introduced by Parliament in 1646 after Charles I's defeat in the First Civil War, but in Kent a presbyterian system was never fully operational, perhaps because of the strong survival of support for the established Church in Kent, but also because of the strength of the independent sects there, especially in the Weald and towns in East Kent, including Dover, Sandwich and Deal. Even the parliamentarian Directory of Public Worship introduced in 1645 to replace the Book of Common Prayer was not fully embraced in the rest of Kent.

Wilson and Culmer were fairly close in age and both had served as ministers since the 1620s, but they were very different in character. Wilson was to gain a formidable reputation as a sober, moderate puritan cleric, and as a unifying force in the town of Maidstone, while Richard Culmer had the reputation of an interfering hothead and a promoter of division, which has survived to the present day. Culmer is also famous as the man who attacked the images in Canterbury Cathedral in 1643, when amongst other things he personally smashed a stained glass window depicting Thomas Becket. To ensure that this act did not go unattributed, Culmer at once published a justly notorious book about his activities 'Cathedrall Newes from Canterbury' (London 1644). Culmer was acting officially in response to a parliamentary ordinance, but the tensions that his actions caused in the cathedral precincts were reflected by the fact that the parliamentarian mayor of Canterbury, John Lade, provided a guard of soldiers to protect the iconoclasts. William Cooke, a Canterbury cordwainer, was one of those who resisted the destruction in the cathedral and at the Restoration he petitioned the Dean and Chapter for compensation for the 'most violent blowes' dealt to him by Culmer and 'his company', which had subsequently prevented him from following his trade. Cooke described himself as a 'most loyall subject' both to 'the late King' and to Charles I.

The reformation of church buildings had been a central element of the puritan agenda since the Elizabethan Settlement and was justified by reference to the second commandment. At the Reformation the removal of church images and stained glass had been promoted by the Crown, but the iconoclasm of the 1640s was entirely different in that it was aimed at a royal regime which had seemingly condoned the reintroduction of altars and a variety of church imagery in the 1630s. Image-breaking in the civil war period was not therefore solely a religious phenomenon, it was also a powerful challenge to the political power of the King.

Charles of course was not a tyrant, neither was he the helpless pawn of a Catholic Plot. Nor was William Laud a traitor and a papal agent. Both men died because they symbolised the old regime, a regime which could not accommodate opposition or toleration. Their deaths opened the way to the abolition of episcopacy in 1646 and the monarchy in 1649. Yet the puritan revolutionaries, who overthrew these institutions, were not themselves advocates of toleration. The republican regimes of the 1650s outlawed both Catholicism and Anglicanism and tried to curb the spread of new religious sects such as the Quakers. At the Restoration Charles II reimposed Uniformity on the nation and the puritans once again found themselves arraigned before the courts. It was not until the passage of the Toleration Act of 1689 that the dissenting churches were given a legal guarantee of freedom of worship. It was a far-sighted measure that could not have seemed possible to the participants in the religious disputes of the 1630s and 1640s.

Dr. Jacqueline Eales
Reader in History Canterbury Christ Church University College.
Dr. Eales is author of Community and Disunity in Kent: Four Lectures on Kent and the English Civil Wars, 1640-1649 (Keith Dickson Books, 2001). Available at £5.99, including post and packaging, from Keith Dickson Books, Unit 9, The Shipyard, Upper Brents, Faversham, Kent ME13 7DZ.

1. H. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 (London, 1940).
2. J. Buteal, A Relation of the Troubles of the Three Foreign Churches in Kent (London 1645).
3. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCC Petitions 232.