Altars Restored Fincham, Kenneth; Tyacke, Nicholas
11/2007
eBook
Altars are powerful symbols, fraught with meaning, but during the early modern period they became a religious battleground. Attacked by reformers in the mid-16th century because of their allegedly ...idolatrous associations with the Catholic sacrifice of the mass, a hundred years later they served to divide Protestants due to their reintroduction by Archbishop Laud and his associates as part of a counter-reforming programme. Moreover, having subsequently been removed by the victorious puritans, they gradually came back after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This book explores these developments over a 150 year period, and recaptures the experience of the ordinary parishioner in this crucial period of religious change. Far from being the passive recipients of changes imposed from above, the laity is revealed as actively engaged from the early days of the Reformation, as zealous iconoclasts or their Catholic opponents — a division later translated into competing protestant views. This book integrates the worlds of theological debate, church politics and government, and parish practice and belief, which are often studied in isolation from one another. It draws on hitherto largely untapped sources, notably the surviving artefactual evidence comprising communion tables and rails, fonts, images in stained glass, paintings and plates, and examines the riches of local parish records — especially churchwardens' accounts.
A comparison of attempts by Archbishops William Temple and William Laud to shape values within a society, with a particular focus on Temple’s Christianity and Social Order.
This article aims to explain the failure of the English presbyterian programme to reform the church at the Restoration. Specifically, it analyses the period between March 1660, when the Long ...Parliament reaffirmed the Solemn League and Covenant, and May 1661, when the Cavalier Parliament ordered that document to be burned by the common hangman. This striking transformation is what we refer to as the 'presbyterian conundrum'. Focusing primarily on the 'presbyterians' and their opponents, the 'episcopalians', who were court politicians, MPs and London clergy, we argue that the weakness of the presbyterian cause was apparent even before the return of the king in May 1660. While the episcopalians possessed strong and determined leadership with a clear vision for the reconstruction of the church, the presbyterians lacked the same unity, both at home and with their co-religionists in Scotland. Even in the spring of 1660, many presbyterians had demonstrated, in their negotiations with Charles and his advisers, that they were prepared to accept both modified episcopacy and a revised Prayer Book as the basis for the religious settlement. The presbyterian position was further weakened by Charles's own clear preference for strong episcopal government, the Book of Common Prayer and a rich ceremonialism in worship. The unconditional restoration of the king cut the ground from beneath the presbyterians, and through the summer and autumn of 1660 they were left trying to negotiate on the basis of an agenda set by the episcopalians and the court. Their failed attempt to assert themselves by securing statutory status for the Worcester House declaration in November 1660 greatly offended the king, paving the way for the imposition of a narrow episcopalian settlement by the Cavalier Parliament.
This essay seeks to explain the least celebrated of Patrick Collinson’s books. It begins by looking at how it has seemed to be too much under the shadow of its predecessor, The Elizabethan Puritan ...Movement, and had a little imprudently been preceded by three essays that rather stole its thunder. Too many scholars have wrongly thought what was left was the husk rather than the kernel of Edmund Grindal. So they missed a masterly marriage of deep and informed study of diocesan records with a command of the treacherous currents of ecclesiastical politics in Whitehall and Lambeth. What is more, Collinson offers a long-sighted account of Grindal’s importance for the subsequent history of the Church of England down to the time of Sacheverell Affair (1709–10), and a brilliant analysis of his marginalia in books now in an Oxford Library. The essay suggests that Grindal is made too central and too representative of post-Reformation evangelical Protestantism, while at the same time the roles of John Jewel, Arthur Lake and others are overlooked, but it commends the book as one of the rare accounts of a public career in the Church in the later sixteenth century. The essay ends by looking at Collinson’s continuing passion for seeing the Reformation through the lens of individuals’ lives.
This essay seeks to explain the least celebrated of Patrick Collinson's books. It begins by looking at how it has seemed to be too much under the shadow of its predecessor, The Elizabethan Puritan ...Movement, and had a little imprudently been preceded by three essays that rather stole its thunder. Too many scholars have wrongly thought what was left was the husk rather than the kernel of Edmund Grindal. So they missed a masterly marriage of deep and informed study of diocesan records with a command of the treacherous currents of ecclesiastical politics in Whitehall and Lambeth. What is more, Collinson offers a long-sighted account of Grindal's importance for the subsequent history of the Church of England down to the time of Sacheverell Affair (170910), and a brilliant analysis of his marginalia in books now in an Oxford Library. The essay suggests that Grindal is made too central and too representative of post-Reformation evangelical Protestantism, while at the same time the roles of John Jewel, Arthur Lake and others are overlooked, but it commends the book as one of the rare accounts of a public career in the Church in the later sixteenth century. The essay ends by looking at Collinson's continuing passion for seeing the Reformation through the lens of individuals lives. (Author abstract)
PDF
