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1572: John Field PART VI 1572: John Field Dr Patrick Collinson, a former research pupil of Sir John Neale, has drawn attention to John Field: in his massively comprehensive 1957 London Ph.D. thesis, 'The Puritan Classical Movement in the Reign of Elizabeth I'; his lively 1961 article on '] ohn Field and Elizabethan Puritanism' ( 1 ); and his 1967 'The Elizabethan Puritan Movement' (based on the unpublished thesis). What I have biographically to say can be no more than a summary of Collinson. Field, born about 1545, was a Londoner, who went to Christ Church, Oxford, in the early 1560s: 'the purtianism of Elizabethan Oxford has been persistently underestimated'. He was ordained by Grindal at Lambeth Palace in 1566; and became a preacher at the church of Holy Trinity, in the Minories, without Aldgate. The Minories church was a royal peculiar, exempt from the Bishop's juriSdiction, the ministers and preachers thereof being appointed and supported by the parishioners. Thomas Wilcox, curate of All Hallows, Honey Lane, also preached at the Minories. So, until his death in 1569, did Miles Coverdale, who was born one year after Cranmer, and may be considered the senior of English protestant thinkers - another link between Elizabethan puritanism and the early Reformation. Field then became curate of the nearby parish of St Giles, Cripplegate. Collinson emphasises the role of the 'godly laity' in London in the late 1560s, and the importance of the regularly paid puritan parish clergy: within a year after Elizabeth's accession some of these clergy were meeting in 'exercises' or 'conferences'; by 1566 they met every morning. The earliest puritan manzfesto, Robert Crowley's 'Brief Discourse against the 115 outward Apparel and mznzster£ng Garments of the pop£sh Church' (15661 was based on material collected from the London ministers (2} Then came the 1571 subscr£pt£on crisis, descr£bed by Field at the beg£nn£ng of 'View of popish Abuses'. Parl£ament ended on 29 May 1571. 'Immed£ately after', says Field, 'Min£sters of God's holy word and sacraments were called before' the eccles£astical commissioners. This was in fact a special examination of certain marked men: including Thomas Lever and john Field. They were asked to subscribe to three articles: concern£ng the Prayer Book, that 'all and every the contents therein be such as are not 'flepugnant to the word of God'; that the vestments and attire prescribed by law for the clergy were 'not wicked or against the word of God but tolerable, and be£ng commended for order and obedience sake are to be used'; and that the Thirty-nine Articles, or at least those of them concern£ng 'the true chr£stian faith and the doctrine of the sacraments', contain 'true and godly doctrine'. Those who refused, says Field, 'were unbrotherly and unchar£tably in treated, and from their office and places removed'. F£eld had proposed a qualzFed acceptance to Edwin Sandys, now Bishop of London; the godly would not wear the surpHce, but would not condemn those who did (a curiously Cranmerian idea). This was refused, and early in 1572 Field was suspended, and reduced, like the layman Robert Browne, to schoolteaching. 'I sigh and sob daily unto God that I may have a lawful entrance to teach the flock of Christ . ... And I await when the Lord will give me a place, a flock, a people to teach. I study for it and employ my whole travail unto it; and nothing is more grievous unto me than that, through the over-much tyrrany of those that should be encouragers, I am compelled instead to teach children, so that I cannot employ myself wholly unto that which I am bent most earnestly' (2). In March 1572, Field and Wilcox began work on their 'ioint manifesto', and later in the year the two works were published together, under the editorship of Field: the 'Admonition to Parliament' and the 'View of Popish Abuses': 'Two treatises ye have here ensuing without partiality or blind affection'. Wilcox's 'Admonition (4)' is confident in its cliquishness: 116 God 'hath, by us, revealed unto you at this present the sincerity and simplicity of his gospel'. However, 'they' 'slanderously charge poor men (whom they have made poor) with grievous faults, calling them puritans, worse than the donatists'. The imperative is clear: 'if God's word were precisely followed'; 'that nothing be done in this or any other thing, but that which you have the express warrant of God's word for'. It was a basic conviction of the purz"tan mind that 'it is not enough to take pains in taking away evil, but also to be occupied in placing good in the stead thereof'. Thus the debate is not merely about the 'abandoning all popish remnants both in ceremonies and regiment' but also about the 'placz"ng in God's church those things only which the Lord himself in his word commandeth '. 'Either must we have a right ministry of God, and a right government of His church, according to the scrzptures set up (both of which we lack) or else there can be no true relz"gion.' So Wt"lcox sets out 'a true platform of a church reformed': the reader is to look at it, and consider 'the great unlikeness betwixt it and this our English church'. 'The outward marks whereby a true christian church is known are: preaching of the word purely, ministering of the sacraments sincerely, and ecclesi'astical discipline, which consisteth in admonition and correction of faults severely.' We must have in mind the 'primitive church' _ 'in the old church', 'in the old time'. Then, 'every pastor had his flock, and every flock hz"s shepherd'; there were preachers, not 'bare readers'; and the clergy were elected 'by the common consent of the whole church'. Look at 'the best reformed churches throughout Chrzstendom ': 'Is a reforma­ tion good for France? and can it be evil for England? Is discipline meet for Scotland? And is it unprofitable for this realm? Surely God hath set these examples before your eyes to encourage you to go forward to a thorough and speedy reformation. You may not do as heretofore you have done, patch or piece, nay rather go backward, and never labour or contend to perfection. But altogether remove whole anti­ Christ, both head, body and branch, and perfectly plant that purity of the word, that simplicity of the sacraments, and severity of discipline, which Christ hath commanded and commended to His church.' Thus, in England, 'the whole regiment of the church' should be committed to 'ministers, 117 seniors and deacons'; there must be 'equality of ministers'; and 'in every congregation a lawful and godly seignory '. The clerics in the Church of England are not 'proved, elected, called or ordained' according to God's word. The church still contains too many 'popish mass-mongers, men for all seasons' (5). The 'Admonition' develops into an attack on archbishops, bishops and the whole hierarchy of ecclesiastical dignitaries.: 'that proud generation whose kingdom must down, hold they never so hard, because their tyrannous lordship cannot stand with Christ's kingdom', their authority being 'forbidden by Christ'. All this put into effect, Christ will be 'more sincerely and purely, according to his revealed will, served than hereto­ fore he hath been, or yet at this present is'. 'Christ being restored into his kingdom to rule in the same by the sceptre of his word.' Field's 'View of Popish Abuses' repeats many of Wilcox's points. Vestments 'can no authority by the word of God, with any pretence of order and obedience, command them, nor make them in any wise tolerable; but, by circumstances, they are wicked and against the word of God'. (Exactly the same as John Hooper in 1550.) Prayer in the Church of England was a matter of formality, 'not of any prick of conscience, or piercing of the heart'. Prayer should 'touch the heart'; in the primitive church 'ministers were not tied to any form of prayers invented by man, but as the spirit moved them, so they poured forth hearty supplications to the Lord'. (We remember that Calvin's ultimate defence of his exposi­ tion of election and reprobation was that he felt it in his heart to be true.) The short section on the Thirty-nine Articles is often ignored. Field objected to pray£ng 'that all men may be saved', and said that the Articles need 'a godly interpretation in a point or two, which are either too sparely or too darkly set down'. Cartwright's 'Second Admonition', later in 1572, complained of the phrase in Article XVI, 'after we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given'. This seemed to go against the Calvinist interpretation of Christian 'securitas': it 'speaketh very dangerously of falling from grace, which is to be reformed, because it too much inclineth to their error' - the error of Augustine's British adversary Pelagius, by whose ideas, according to Cartwright, 118 many bishops had been seduced (they were also unsound on Eucharistic theology) (6). At about this time, Field and Wilcox were drawing up a 'Confession of Faz"th ', which runs to eighteen pages as printed in 1593 (7). Election and reprobation come in on page four, and not, as in the Thirty­ nine Articles, halfway through (in fact the Articles never speczfically mention reprobation). Field begins his 'View' with an attack on the imperfections of the Prayer Book. There are fourteen points here. Then (points 15-17) he condemns the prelates and their jurisdic­ tion, and the covetousness which dominates ecclesiastical patronage (shades of Colet's 1512 sermon in St Paul's).
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