Early seventeenth-century English reform movement
Laudianism
was an early seventeenth-century reform movement within the
Church of England
, promulgated by
Archbishop
William Laud
and his supporters. It rejected the
predestination
upheld by the previously dominant
Calvinism
in favour of free will, and hence the possibility of salvation for all men. Laudianism had a significant impact on the Anglican
high church
movement and its emphasis on liturgical ceremony and clerical hierarchy. Laudianism was the culmination of the move towards
Arminianism in the Church of England
, but was neither purely theological in nature, nor restricted to the English church.
Theology
[
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]
The
Elizabethan Settlement
of 1559, which set the tone for English religious policy until the rise of Laudianism, was theologically a mixture of Catholic doctrine,
Calvinism
and some minor elements from
Lutheranism
, without officially adhering to any one of them. Although the doctrine of predestination was to be handled with care at a parish level in order to offset despair and the ensuing disobedience, the seventeenth of the
Thirty-Nine Articles
sets out a doctrine of predestination to life as one of the founding principles of the English Church but omits reference to
reprobation
. Unlike
Calvin
's and
Beza
's own doctrine on predestination, which is
supra-lapsarian
,
double
and
unconditional
, the more usual opinion among the Reformed was sub- or
infra-lapsarian
which viewed God's predestination as acting on human beings considered as those already created and fallen, so that reprobation was judicial. The essence of Laudianism in a theological sense was a belief in God's grace and
universal atonement
and the free will of all men to obtain salvation. Thus, various Reformed theories of predestination were rejected, and predestination was based on God's foresight of who would believe (
conditional election
). In addition, Laud's insistence on uniformity in ritual aroused great opposition from the
Puritans
.
Laudianism in practice
[
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]
In practice, this led to a polarization within English
Protestantism
, to the extent that the movements of Laudianism and
Puritanism
could no longer be described under this all-encompassing banner.
[
citation needed
]
Predestination
had been a unifying feature of the Reformed Church and, although more radical groups might have been rejected, there was still a sense of brotherhood among the adherents of supra- and infra- approaches. Archbishop Laud disagreed with the views of his predecessors, such as
John Whitgift
, that Puritans were aberrant brethren, erring but deserving some level of leniency; instead he believed that the Protestant non-conformists presented a direct threat to the establishment and that there was more common ground between his own, true position and that of the pre-Reformed
Roman Catholic
Church.
The 1633 edition of the standard Latin-English Dictionary, dedicated to
William Laud
, contained for the first time the word
Praedestinatiani
, who were defined as "a kind of heretic that held fatal predestination of every particular matter person or action, and that all things come to passe, and fell out necessarily; especially touching the salvation and damnation of particular men".
Following the royal marriage negotiations with Spain,
James I
faced an upsurge in hostility from the
pulpit
and the press. Although the King tried to quiet such opposition through proclamations, the confinement of offenders and a set of Directions to Preachers in 1622, opposition came from senior figures within the established Church, such as several royal chaplains, Dean
Sutcliffe
of Exeter, Archdeacon
Hakewill
of Surrey and
George Abbot
, Archbishop of Canterbury.
From this it can be seen that Laudianism signalled a stark break with previous practices and perceptions within the
Elizabethan
and early
Stuart
Church. Indeed, James reacted to this episode by moving his support to anti-Calvinist churchmen such as
Lancelot Andrewes
at
Winchester dioceses
and
Montaigne
at
London dioceses
, and at last elevating Laud to the
episcopate
, thus radically shifting the power-base in favour of the emerging movement.
Charles I
took these personnel changes even further when Laud was promised the
archbishopric of Canterbury
and effectively became the religious spokesman for the regime. As bishop of London, he had been controlling the printing presses since 1628 and prohibiting discussion of predestination. The
York primacy
had been filled with a succession of Laudians since the death of Calvinist
Matthews
in 1628 and from 1632 it was occupied by
Neile
, the one-time mentor of William Laud. In 1628, the
Duke of Buckingham
was made Chancellor of
Cambridge University
and all predestinarian teaching was subsequently banned. This was supported by a royal proclamation which effectively outlawed
Calvinism
on a national level.
There was also a break with the previous practices of the early
Stuart
Church on a visual level. Upon his translation to the
bishopric of Durham
in 1617,
Richard Neile
had the communion table transformed into an altar at the east end of the cathedral and supported Laud (then under his patronage) in a similar action at the
dioceses of Gloucester
.
In the 1630s, Laud declared that "the altar is the greatest place of God's residence upon earth, greater than the pulpit for there it is
Hoc est corpus meum
, This is my body; but in the other it is at most but
Hoc est verbum meum
, This is my word."
In November 1633, by act of
Privy Council
King Charles I established the precedent that all parochial churches should follow the by then general
cathedral
practice of placing communion tables altar-wise at the east end of
chancels
. This was highly significant. One of the main points of the
Reformation
had been the replacement of the
Catholic
teaching that salvation necessarily came from the Church through the sacraments of communion, baptism and confession. These rites were also maintained in the Protestant churches. The visual emphasis that this placed on the
Real Presence
and the
Eucharist
aligned with the
Lutheran
practice of maintaining intact medieval altars and pieces of art, though not with the Calvinist emphasis of having the pulpit at the centre, which emphasized the importance of communicating the Gospel through
preaching
. Similarly, a few years later, Bishops Overall and Andrewes could be seen advocating the practice of
confession
before receiving Holy Communion, a practice present in the Lutheran Churches, but not in Reformed Christianity.
Laudianism and the English Civil War
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]
The 1630s saw a polarization of religious opinion influenced by reactions to tracts, sermons and lobbying; the revolutionary events in Scotland; the
Thirty Years War
; and the level of ecclesiastical corruption revealed by the Houses of Parliament's inquiries. Similarly, in relation to the attacks on government officials, apart from those directed towards the great men of the state, the harrying of Laudian churchmen was positively gleeful.
After 1640, the Laudians and Arminians, who had previously enjoyed the favour of the
episcopal
hierarchy, found themselves under attack from both the
Parliament
and the press. The
Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiasticall
were passed by the 1640
Convocation
, unusually remaining in session after the
Short Parliament
was dissolved. They included as canon VI what became notorious as the "et cetera oath", a pledge to uphold episcopacy and the current Anglican hierarchy.
Priests and bishops who had gathered in Convocation to draft the canons of 1640 made high claims for the ceremonies and rites of the Established Church but, within months, were unable to enforce them.
By December 1640 thirteen bishops had been impeached, with another dozen having followed them by December 1641.
Within eight weeks of the opening of Parliament, the Houses were calling not for the restoration of the pre-Laudian church, along Elizabethan or Jacobean lines, but the abolition of the entire ecclesiastical order and its reconstruction in a
Puritan
mould.
The removal of ecclesiastical judges and the abolition of the High Commission meant that the Established Church was unprotected on a parish level. Prayer books and
surplices
were torn up; communion tables were relocated and
altar rails
were burned. The re-establishment of the Anglican Church, in its Laudian version, would not occur until
the Restoration
in 1660.
See also
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]
Further reading
[
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]
- Lake, Peter (2023).
On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics During the Personal Rule of Charles I
. Cambridge University Press.
References
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]
Citations
[
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]
Sources
[
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]
- Fincham, Kenneth; Lake, Peter (1993).
"The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I and Charles I"
. In Fincham, Kenneth (ed.).
The Early Stuart church
. Stanford University Press.
ISBN
0-8047-2196-3
.
- Tyacke, Nicholas (1994).
"Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-revolution"
. In Todd, Margo (ed.).
Reformation to revolution: politics and religion in early modern England
.
Routledge
.
ISBN
0-415-09691-X
.
- Trevor-Roper, Hugh
(1962).
Archbishop Laud
(2nd ed.). Archon.
ASIN
B0007G148O
.
- Cressy, David (2003). "Revolutionary England 1640-1642".
Past and Present
.
181
(181): 35?71.
doi
:
10.1093/past/181.1.35
.
JSTOR
3600785
.
- Morrill, John
(July 15, 2014).
The Nature of the English Revolution
. Routledge. pp. 73?74, 82.
ISBN
9781317895817
.
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