Editorial 1662 and All That

ECCLESIOLOGY

Ecclesiology 9 (2013) 157–160 brill.com/ecso

Editorial

1662 and All That

The first two articles in this issue of Ecclesiology (those by the Revd Canon Professor David M. Thompson and the Revd Canon Professor Paul Fiddes: both being Nonconformist ministers with honorary canonries in Church of England cathedrals, Ely and Oxford respectively) tackle issues arising from the turbulent events of mid-seventeenth century Britain, the aftermath of the English Civil War of the 1640s. They examine the reception and legacy of those events, especially of the Great Ejection of 1662, and the ecumenical fall-out from them. Earlier versions of these articles were given as papers at the conference ‘The Great Ejection: Historical and Ecumenical Perspectives’, which I helped to organise at the University of Exeter, England, in August 2012. The conference was sponsored by the Department of Theology, University of Exeter, and Churches Together in England and was subsidised by the St Luke’s College Foundation. Historians still argue over the relative importance of the constitutional, religious, and social factors in the Civil War. What is clear is that the Parliament summoned in 1640 to provide finance for King Charles I’s policy in Scotland was originally united in rejecting what it regarded as the King’s unconstitutional actions in the eleven years since Parliament had last met, the years of the King’s ‘Personal Rule’. However, when those who thought that the process of Reformation, leading to the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, was incomplete and were offended at that, tried to press for further reforms on the model of Calvin’s and Beza’s Geneva, that original parlia- mentary unity evaporated. With Scottish assistance, the Puritans (who were at this time within the Church of England) pressed their demands and a civil war followed. The Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-49), which was appointed by Parliament, produced a new Confession of Faith (which was never adopted by Parliament) and a Directory of Worship (which was not a liturgy) to replace the Prayer Book. The Christian calendar disappeared

158 P. Avis / Ecclesiology 9 (2013) 157–160 with its feasts and fasts. Episcopacy was abolished and the bishops went abroad or lay low. Cathedral foundations were dissolved. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (who had antagonised the Puritans by his high church measures), and later the King, Charles I, fell to the executioner’s axe. Large numbers of traditional Anglican clergy suffered deprivation and hardship, and ministers of Presbyterian and Independent views took their places in the parish churches, cathedrals, and universities. However, the Independents and the Presbyterians were not a united front and had their own ways of worship and church government. For example, Exeter Cathedral was divided into two by a brick wall at the chancel arch (where the Golden Gates are now): Presbyterians worshipped in the Choir, while Independents worshipped in the nave (so the Presbyterians had seats and perhaps heating, while the Independents, though probably more numer- ous, had to stand and in winter shiver). Many ordinary people were bewildered by what was happening and missed the festivals of the Christian year, especially Christmas and Easter. ‘Merry England’ was not so any more, if it ever really existed. The exiled Charles II’s promise of liberty to tender consciences in the Declaration of Breda encouraged Parliament to invite him to return, and the monarchy was restored in 1660. But the new Parliament elected in that year was less willing to compromise; and after the failure of churchmen to agree at the Savoy Conference, the Act of Uniformity was approved in 1662. The Prayer Book and with it episcopal ordination and jurisdiction, was re-imposed in what became its definitive form. (So for Anglicans, 1662 is a date that is commemorated with thanksgiving for the restoration of the Anglican liturgy, the Christian calendar and episcopal polity.) Anglican churchmen, who had been ejected from their parishes and college fellowships and who had lived in exile abroad or in obscurity at home, were in no mood for compromise. Charles I was commemorated liturgically as a martyr every 30th of January (and still is by some). Those ministers who, on theological grounds, could not accept the requirements of the Act of Uniformity were forced to leave and many hundreds did so, including some who had been episcopally ordained, such as Richard Baxter, who could have stayed. Many clergy suffered hardship in what became known as The Great Ejection (in the Nonconformist tradition this is sometimes known as the Great Ejectment). The Church of England suffered too, by the loss of approximately one fifth of its clergy, many of them ministers of the highest calibre, while the ejected ministers (some of whom later conformed) increasingly threw their lot in with those