224 research outputs found
Cannons and constitutions
No full textThis chapter examines how the introduction of new ecclesiastical Canons in 1640 touched off a debate among writers who made a direct link between religion and liberty.
Defining the Jacobean Church: The politics of religious controversy, 1603-1625
No full text© Charles W. A. Prior 2005 and Cambridge University Press, 2009. Proposing a new model for understanding religious debates in the churches of England and Scotland between 1603 and 1625, Charles Prior sets aside 'narrow' analyses of conflict over predestination, This book's theme is ecclesiology--the nature of the church, its rites and governance, and its relationship to the early Stuart political world. Drawing on a substantial number of polemical works, from sermons to books of several hundred pages, it argues that rival interpretations of scripture, pagan and civil history and the sources central to the Christian historical tradition lay at the heart of disputes between proponents of contrasting ecclesiological visions
England’s Wars of Religion: A Reassessment
No full textIn 1983 John Morrill concluded a lecture before the Royal Historical Society in London with the observation that the English civil war was ‘the last of the wars of religion’. 1 is was profoundly suggestive, given the fact that religion had shaped political action and debate since the English Reformation, and that it remained a dominant feature of the ideological conict that generated war among the British kingdoms. While many historians took pains to avoid erecting billboards along a high road to civil war, it is nevertheless the case that the reign of Charles I (1625-49) witnessed a sudden upsurge in the politicization of religion. 2 is culminated in the ‘Bishop’s Wars’ (1639-40), a conict which stemmed from the attempt by the English to bring the ercely independent (and Presbyterian) Scottish Kirk into line with the magisterial episcopacy of the established church. Defeated by the Army of the Covenant, Charles I was forced to summon a parliament to secure funds to continue the Scottish campaign, but aer 11 years of the ‘personal rule’ members of parliament were in no mood to grant supply to a king making war on fellow Protestants
A Confusion of Tongues: Britain's Wars of Reformation, 1625-1642
No full textA Confusion of Tongues examines the complex interaction of religion, history, and law in the period before the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It questions interpretations of that conflict that emphasise either the purely doctrinal roots of religious tension, or the processes by which the law gained primacy over the Church, in what amounted to a secular revolution. Instead, religion took its place among a range of constitutional issues that undermined the authority of Charles I in both England and Scotland. The book offers a careful reconstruction of a number of printed debates on the nature of the relationship of church and realm; the introduction of altars into the Church of England; the Scottish National Covenant; and on the legal consequences of the assertion of clerical power in a system of ecclesiastical courts. It reveals that these debates were concerned with the ambiguities of the relationship of civil and ecclesiastical power that were contained in the statutes that carved out the Church 'by law established'. Instead of being clearly separated as part of an 'Erastian' Reformation, religion and law were bound together in complex ways, and debates on the relationship of church and realm emerged as a vital conduit of political and constitutional thought. The book offers a synthetic and nuanced portrait of the politics of religion, and recovers the texture of contemporary debate at a vital point in early modern British history
Ecclesiology and political thought in England, 1580-c. 1630
No full textThis article examines the ways in which debates on ecclesiology in the Church of England served as a venue for the examination of political precept. It argues in particular that polemical sources - whether sermons, pamphlets, or longer works - reveal that discussion of conformity, the nature of the church, and its doctrine and discipline led to a broader examination of law, sovereignty, parliament, and the political costs of religious discord. Underlying the dispute was a fundamental tension over civil and sacred authority, and the relationship between politics - the realm of human custom and history - and doctrine - the realm of the divine and immemorial. The article offers a number of revisions to current discussions of the history of political thought, while pointing to the importance of religious discourse for our understanding of the political tensions that existed in the years prior to the English civil war.</p
Hebraism and the problem of church and state in England, 1642–1660
Get PDFThis essay examines the use of Hebrew sources in debates on church and state in civil war England. It fits within a developing historiography that seeks to uncover the deeper texture of early modern political discourse, and also poses questions about the prevalence of statist and secular understandings of public power in the context of the English civil war. Its specific focus is on debates on church government in the 1640s, studies of the Hebrew commonwealth in the 1650s, and the use of Hebraism by Hobbes and Harrington as an antidote to clericalism
England's Wars of Religion, Revisited
No full textThe causes and nature of the civil wars that gripped the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century remain one of the most studied yet least understood historical conundrums. Religion, politics, economics and affairs local, national and international, all collided to fuel a conflict that has posed difficult questions both for contemporaries and later historians. Were the events of the 1640s and 50s the first stirrings of modern political consciousness, or, as John Morrill suggested, wars of religion? This collection revisits the debate with a series of essays which explore the implications of John Morrill's suggestion that the English Civil War should be regarded as a war of religion. This process of reflection constitutes the central theme, and the collection as a whole seeks to address the shortcomings of what have come to be the dominant interpretations of the civil wars, especially those that see them as secular phenomena, waged in order to destroy monarchy and religion at a stroke. Instead, a number of chapters present a portrait of political thought that is defined by a closer integration of secular and religious law and addresses problems arising from the clash of confessional and political loyalties. In so doing the volume underlines the extent to which the dispute over the constitution took place within a political culture comprised of many elements of fundamental agreement, and this perspective offers a richer and more nuanced readings of some of the period's central figures, and draws firmer links between the crisis at the centre and its manifestation in the localities.</p
England's Wars of Religion, Revisited
No full textThe causes and nature of the civil wars that gripped the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century remain one of the most studied yet least understood historical conundrums. Religion, politics, economics and affairs local, national and international, all collided to fuel a conflict that has posed difficult questions both for contemporaries and later historians. Were the events of the 1640s and 50s the first stirrings of modern political consciousness, or, as John Morrill suggested, wars of religion? This collection revisits the debate with a series of essays which explore the implications of John Morrill's suggestion that the English Civil War should be regarded as a war of religion. This process of reflection constitutes the central theme, and the collection as a whole seeks to address the shortcomings of what have come to be the dominant interpretations of the civil wars, especially those that see them as secular phenomena, waged in order to destroy monarchy and religion at a stroke. Instead, a number of chapters present a portrait of political thought that is defined by a closer integration of secular and religious law and addresses problems arising from the clash of confessional and political loyalties. In so doing the volume underlines the extent to which the dispute over the constitution took place within a political culture comprised of many elements of fundamental agreement, and this perspective offers a richer and more nuanced readings of some of the period's central figures, and draws firmer links between the crisis at the centre and its manifestation in the localities.</p
Religion, Political Thought and the English Civil War
No full textReligion has always been central to explanations of the political and ideological causes and course of the English civil war. Where historians once privileged aspects of the conflict that associated it with a broader narrative about the historic development of religious toleration and parliamentary democracy, the 1980s witnessed a shift whereby it was more firmly contained within local and European contexts. More recently, there has been an effort to place the civil war within another broad context, yet one that traces its roots in the Reformation rather than its legacies in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, a question remains as to what the English Reformation meant for the relationship of civil and ecclesiastical power: in many ways this was the key issue that shaped the politics of religion in the English civil war. This essay suggests that we understand the politics of religion more effectively by situating the conflict within the wider contexts opened up by Atlantic and imperial history
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