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This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. ‘DOWN WITH IT, EVEN TO THE GROUND’: WILLIAM DOWSING’S RECEPTION OF THE ICONOCLASTIC RATIONALE TIMOTHY BRIDGES Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh, New College 2009 ii Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed by me, that the research it contains is my own, and that none of it has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Timothy A. Bridges iii CONTENTS DECLARATION ……………………………………………………………………. ii ACKNOWLEGEMENTS……………………………………………………………….. vi ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………….. vii CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING THE ICONOCLAST ……………. 1 I. A Visit to Linstead Parva …………………………….. 1 II. Historical Overview …………………………….. 2 III. Methods, Aims and Sources …………………………….. 5 PART ONE THE WORLD OF THE ICONOCLAST 2. WHO WAS WILLIAM DOWSING? ……………………………………… 31 I. William Dowsing as a ‘Puritan’ …………………………….. 31 II. William Dowsing as a Man of Suffolk ………………………….... 48 III. William Dowsing as a Soldier …………………………….. 57 IV. William Dowsing as an Iconoclast …………………………….. 62 V. Conclusion …………………………….. 67 3. PRELUDE TO A CAMPAIGN: A HISTORY OF ICONOCLASTIC THOUGHTS AND LAUDIAN DEEDS …………………………………… 68 I. The Scandal of the Image ……………………………. 68 II. Iconoclastic Thoughts in Reformed Orthodoxy ………………… 78 i. Martin Bucer and John Calvin …………………………….. 79 ii. John Knox’s contribution to iconoclastic thought …………….. 87 iii. Peter Ramus, William Perkins and the ‘puritan mind’ ………... 91 iv III. Laudian Deeds as Catalysts for Dowsing’s Campaign …………….101 i. Puritan opposition and the outbreak of civil war ……………….. 109 ii. The Long Parliament’s call to preserve ……………………....119 IV. Conclusion ……………………………………....121 PART TWO THE MIND OF THE ICONOCLAST 4. A THEOLOGY APPLIED: WILLIAM DOWSING’S ICONOCLASTIC CAMPAIGN…………………………………………….. 125 I. The Iconoclast and His Journal ……………………………... 125 II. Dowsing’s Marching Orders: Of Pentateuch and Parliament ……. 126 III. The Destruction Begins: 20 December 1643 …………………….135 IV. The Ad Hoc Disputation: Theologies Clash at Pembroke College, Cambridge …………………………………….139 V. The Campaign from a Theological Perspective: Patterns and Principles ………………………………………150 VI. Conclusion ………………………………………159 5. ‘MAY THE LORD GIVE YOU UNDERSTANDING’: DOWSING, THE READER………………………………………………….. 160 I. Dowsing and the Book ……………………………………… 160 II. Dowsing among His Peers: Reading Habits in Seventeenth Century England ……………………………………...163 III. Dowsing at Study ……………………………………….174 IV. Conclusion ……………………………………….192 v 6. PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED: WILLIAM DOWSING AND THE PARLIAMENTARY FAST SERMONS………………………… 194 I. The Sermons as Exercises in Contrast ………………………. 194 II. Thematic analysis of Dowsing’s collection ………………………. 201 i. Divine retribution or divine blessing ………………………. 202 ii. Military defeat or English security ………………………. 212 iii. Renewed persecution or the triumph of the godly ……………… 217 iv. Tainted worship or pure worship ………………………. 223 III. Conclusion ………………………. 236 7. CONLCUSION: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ICONOCLAST………………………………………………………..239 APPENDIX ONE: Dowsing’s Parliamentary Sermon Reading (1641-1644) Before and During His Iconoclastic Campaign………………………………...246 APPENDIX TWO: Images of Dowsing’s Annotations…………………………252 APPENDIX THREE: Images of an Eighteenth Century Transcript of Dowsing’s Journal (1704)……………………………… 257 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………… 259 vi Acknowledgements The process of writing a thesis makes a student aware of his shortcomings and his dependence upon good friends and colleagues. I would first like to acknowledge of all of my teachers, mentors, friends and family members who challenged and shaped me in my formative years. I owe a great debt of gratitude to various libraries. I thank David Wykes of the Dr. Williams’s Library for his kind help with books from William Dowsing’s library. I am thankful to John Blatchly, archivist for the Ipswich School, who graciously provided unrestricted access to Dowsing’s collection of parliamentary fast sermons. I am also grateful to Nicholas Smith of the Cambridge University Library for his assistance in transcribing Dowsing’s annotations in Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man. The staff of the Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich) assisted me with resources and provided comfortable working conditions. The staff of the New College Library offered professional and courteous service during many hours of study. I would like to thank the School of Divinity for providing two research bursaries which made it possible for me to visit crucial primary sources in Ipswich and in London. Susan Hardman Moore has been a supervisor of rare quality. Her guidance has been an immeasurable catalyst for growth. Her counsel helped me to correct, and to avoid, many mistakes. The remaining faults in this thesis are mine alone. This experience would not have been possible without supportive family and friends in the United States. My parents, Cecil and Teresa Bridges, have always made the Fifth Commandment (Reformed) a joy to obey. My in-laws, Bo and Debbie Brown, have shown constant support and understanding – even when I took their daughter and grandchild to Scotland. I am also thankful to the Buker, Salvatore, Shiver, Snow and Collins families for their regular financial support. My children, Delaney, Greyson and Owen, endured many gentle reminders that their father needed to ‘do his homework’. I thank them for their patience and love during those times. I am now ready to play. I met my wife, Krisy, when we were both twelve years old. She did not know then that I would stay in ‘school’ until my early thirties. Thankfully, she can now refer to her husband as a former student. Her words of encouragement have been a treasure during this endeavour. ‘He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favour from the Lord’ (Proverbs 18:22). vii Abstract Caricatured as the Arch Vandal, William Dowsing (bap. 1596-1668) was a farmer and a soldier who entered into history as a radical figure in the English Civil War between Charles I and the Long Parliament. The Earl of Manchester commissioned Dowsing to tear down ‘pictures and superstitious images’ in the name of God and a parliamentary ordinance of 1643. The commission grew out of a series of puritan reform measures which aimed to overthrow the ‘popish innovations’ implemented in part by Archbishop William Laud in the 1630s. Dowsing’s iconoclastic campaign resulted in controversial visitations to churches, colleges and chapels throughout Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in 1643-44. This thesis engages with previous scholarship on William Dowsing and makes a distinct contribution by constructing a series of dialectics that framed the rationale for his iconoclasm. Much of the research on William Dowsing is predominately historical, cultural, or political because scholars have typically considered Reformed iconoclasm ‘from above’ as a phenomenon that occurred during times of religious upheaval. This project offers a historical/theological treatment of Dowsing and his civil war iconoclasm. The objective is to penetrate the puritan movement and to explore iconoclastic thought ‘from within’. The thesis accomplishes this goal through indirect and direct methods. The indirect approach involves an examination of Dowsing’s ‘puritan’ culture in Suffolk (Chapter Two) and attitudes relative to images within Reformed Orthodoxy in England in the mid-seventeenth century (Chapter Three). Several key primary sources sustain the more direct approach. Trevor Cooper’s recent edition of Dowsing’s journal, in which Dowsing recorded events from his campaign, paved the way for a new assessment of iconoclastic thought. This thesis examines the journal for its theological implications (Chapter Four) rather than attempting to restate the narrative of Dowsing’s itinerary. While the journal is crucial to a proper understanding of Dowsing’s rationale, the most direct category of evidence emerges from a study of Dowsing’s habits of reading and annotation (Chapter Five). Dowsing heavily annotated his six-volume collection of sermons preached to the Long Parliament between 1640-46. This study delineates the competing realities perceived by puritan preachers in the 1640s, as picked up by William Dowsing’s annotations (Chapter Six). In many ways, the preachers believed that iconoclasm played a tactical role in the overall strategy to secure a favorable outcome for the ‘godly’. Their sermons envisaged idealized religious conditions juxtaposed with the threat of divine retribution viii for idolatry in England. The iconoclast’s annotations show that the preachers’ doctrines echoed beyond the House of Commons to resonate within the houses of common people like Dowsing. This research
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