Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England The Caroline Puritan Movement, c.1620–1643

Religion, and Puritanism in particular, was a crucially important influence in seventeenth-century England. This book attempts to trace the way in which Puritan clergymen saw themselves and the world in which they lived. It discusses the changes they wanted to make to the Church of England in terms of services and in terms of how they wanted to replace bishops. By looking at such matters through the networks of friendship and alliances made by the ministers, a new picture emerges of the role played by Puritans in the decades leading up to the English Civil War.

This book reconsiders the existence of an early Stuart Puritan movement, and examines the ways in which Puritan clergymen encouraged greater sociability with their like-minded colleagues, both in theory and in practice, to such an extent that they came to define themselves as 'a peculiar people', a community distinct from their less faithful rivals. Their voluntary communal rituals encouraged a view of the world divided between 'us' and 'them'. This provides a context for a renewed examination of the thinking behind debates on ceremonial nonconformity and reactions to the Laudian changes of the 1630s. From this a new perspective is developed on arguments about emigration and church government, arguments that proved crucial to Parliamentarian unity during the English Civil War.

Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Society, Clerical Conference and the Church of England: 1. Clerical education and the household seminary; 2. Profitable conferences and the settlement of godly ministers; 3. Fasting and prayer; 4. Clerical associations and the Church of England; Part II. The Godly Ministry: Piety and Practice: 5. The image of a godly minister; 6. Religiosity and sociability; Part III. 'These Uncomfortable Times': Conformity and the Godly Ministers 1628–38: 7. Thomas Hooker and the conformity debate; 8. Trajectories of response to Laudianism; 9. The ecclesiastical courts and the Essex visitation of 1631; 10. Juxon, Wren and the implementation of Laudianism; 11. The diocese of Peterborough: a see of conflict; 12. The metropolitical visitation of Essex and the strategies of evasion; Part IV. 'These Dangerous Times': The Puritan Diaspora 1631–42; 13. John Dury and the godly ministers; 14. Choices of suffering and flight; 15. The 'non-separating Congregationalists' and Massachusetts; 16. Thomas Hooker and the Amesians; 17. Alternative ecclesiologists to 1642; 18. Conclusion.

This book reconsiders the existence of an early Stuart Puritan movement, and examines the ways in which Puritan clergymen encouraged sociability with their like-minded colleagues, so that they came to define themselves as 'a peculiar people', a community distinct from their less faithful rivals.