Gilbert Sheldon and the Settlement of Anglican Orthodoxy Heather D
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2010 "Beat the drum ecclesiastic": Gilbert Sheldon and the settlement of Anglican orthodoxy Heather D. Thornton Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Thornton, Heather D., ""Beat the drum ecclesiastic": Gilbert Sheldon and the settlement of Anglican orthodoxy" (2010). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4088. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4088 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. “BEAT THE DRUM ECCLESIASTIC”: GILBERT SHELDON AND THE SETTLEMENT OF ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History By Heather D. Thornton B.A., Louisiana State University, 1999 M. Div., Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2005 December 2010 For my parents. To my dad, who has no idea of what I actually do. To my mom, “yes, my paper is finished now.” ii Acknowledgements Writing a dissertation is never an easy task and I owe a great many thanks to a great many people. My advisor, Dr. Victor Stater, read everything at least twice and offered great criticism and advice when I wanted to give up entirely. Dr. Nicholas Tyacke and Dr. Kenneth Fincham gave me early feed back at the Institute of Historical Research and encouraged me in the worthiness of Sheldon as a topic. Dr. Steven Gunn and the other participants of the Early Modern Britain Seminar at the University of Oxford welcomed my participation in Michaelmas 2007 and Hilary 2008. I offer great thanks to the excellent librarians in the Duke Humphrey‟s Library at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. As well as to the very helpful staff and cheap tea room at Lambeth Palace Library, London. The British Library staff was also prompt and courteous in answering questions and finding materials. For my friends, who have remained such as I lost myself in the past—you know who you are thanks for pulling me back to the present. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………iii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2: CHANGING TIMES, THE 1620S AND 1630S…………………….18 CHAPTER 3: UNIVERSITY MAN, THE 1640S…………………………………..38 CHAPTER 4: THE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE, THE 1650S……………………..65 CHAPTER 5: MONARCHY AND CHURCH TRIUMPHANT, 1660-1662………92 CHAPTER 6: CHURCH IN CRISIS, EXTERNAL 1663-1677…………………….119 CHAPTER 7: CHURCH IN CRISIS, INTERNAL 1663-1677……………………..152 CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION………………………………………………………183 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………...199 APPENDIX: 17TH CENTURY BISHOPS AND RESTIORATION DEANS, A PARTIAL LIST……………………………….…………………………………..213 VITA…………………………………………………………………………………218 iv Abstract The subject of this dissertation is Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury 1663-1677. This project give an overview of his life and the pivotal points in history where his actions and activities impacted the survival of the remnant of the church during the interregnum as well as settling it at the Restoration. This project seeks to reconstruct his role in the settlement of a definite Anglican identity during his tenure as archbishop and his legacy in handling the turbulent political and religious climate of late 17th century England. v Chapter 1: Introduction The Restoration of the monarchy and church in the late seventeenth century remains of interest to scholars of the period. The re-establishment of the clerical and political establishment after decades of unrest and civil strife fascinates both professional and amateur scholars. This project is an introduction and re-evaluation of one man who impacted the settlement of the church and left his mark on the world in which he lived. Gilbert Sheldon was the Restoration Bishop of London 1660-1663 raised to Archbishop of Canterbury in 1663 and in that position he presided over one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the Church of England until his death in November 1677. He enabled the church to come back into its own against very long odds as an episcopally based institution. Sheldon appears in historical records of the proceeding centuries as either a great villain or a great saint depending largely upon the political and religious viewpoint of the author. These impressions, however, do not leave a modern scholar or student with an accurate representation of the man and his life. Sheldon was first and foremost a loyal and devoted servant of the Church of England and the monarch of the turbulent three kingdoms of the British Isles. The aim of this larger project is to shed some light upon Sheldon and place him in a less biased framework than his Whiggish detractors and Tory hagiographers have done in past centuries. My own interest in the erstwhile archbishop developed in the reading and preparation for my MA thesis on late seventeenth-century dissent. Sheldon appeared in the secondary resources usually quoted from his correspondence with definite ideas of what should be done to enforce religious uniformity. His personality and appearance intrigued me. It was then discovered very little had been written about the archbishop which was all the more surprising considering the number of contemporary clerical figures who have multiple volumes devoted to their life and 1 times. One only needs to search for John Tillotson or Richard Baxter to discover this. Historical scholarship, like much in this world, has fashionable and unfashionable subjects of inquiry and study. Sheldon‟s views have long been out of fashion in historical study in favor of the more moderate voices within the Church of England and the great number of voices outside the Church after the religious upheavals of the seventeenth century. The shadows cast by nineteenth century historical giants are slow to recede even with the light of new generations of researchers and students. Therefore, the aim of this work is to restore some balance and perhaps offer a few opinions and perceptions about a man of whom the early twentieth century rector Thomas Archer Turner of Ickford said was, “as one whom the world at large had forgotten to commemorate.”1 Sheldon was a man of many labels. He was a Laudian, who publicly disagreed with the then Archbishop and Chancellor of Oxford. He was an Arminian, who often disagreed with Arminian theologians and recognized the problems they caused his church. He was Warden of All Souls College, who stood up for the University‟s rights over the Parliamentary Visitation of 1648 and lost his position for doing so. He was a loyal friend, even for those on opposite sides of the political spectrum from himself. He was a devoted royal servant, advising two kings on personal, religious, and political issues. He was supposedly irreligious, yet devoted in making prayers, concerned for the catechizing of both the young and old, and in extending charity to all who asked as part of a Christian‟s duty. He was a generous benefactor, giving money to causes as distinct as university buildings and for the augmentation of poor livings as well as charity for those in great need due to personal loss. He was a politician, who stated his mind even though it meant falling out of favor and he resisted compromising his views out of political pragmatism. 1Thomas Turner. Gilbertus Sheldon. 1903. Bucks Pamphlets # 8 1867-1905, 8 43 (11), 3. Turner‟s work is the eleventh pamphlet in this collection and this quote is from the third page of Turner‟s work on Sheldon. 2 He was erudite and a man of letters; though not well published like his contemporaries, leading some to question his scholarship. To the aforementioned could be added: Persecutor, Royalist, Master, Dean, Uncle, and so on. Sheldon in many ways was and remains a man hard to categorize because his actions and the labels adhered to him do not always coalesce well. In my view, he was all of the above and more, changed and tempered in the conflict of the mid- seventeenth century. Sheldon never forgot the impact of “a world turned upside down” to borrow Christopher Hill‟s phrase, and the lessons learned in the Civil War and Interregnum shaped his viewpoint in both religious and political spheres. His contemporaries have set the tone for much of what has been written or assumed about the archbishop, though in fact they often had little to say. Gilbert Burnet‟s A History of my own time, written to explain and perhaps justify the events of the last decade of the seventeenth century, cast a very long shadow. The Bishop of Salisbury‟s remarks about the late archbishop were less than complimentary. Burnet wrote of the man: Sheldon was esteemed a learned man before the wars: but he was then engaged so deep in the politics, that scarce any prints of what he had been remained. He was a very dexterous man in business, had a great quickness of appreciation, and a very true judgment. He was a generous and charitable man. He had a great pleasantness of conversation, perhaps too great. He had an art of treating all that came to him in the most obliging manner: but few depended much on his professions of friendship. He seemed not to have a deep sense of religion, if any at all: and spoke of it most commonly as of an engine of government, and a matter of policy.2 The greatest ring of untruth in these words is Burnet‟s disregard for the Archbishop‟s professions of friendship.