© 2010 Rachel N. Schnepper ALL RIGHTS RESERVED JONAS CAST UP AT LONDON: THE EXPERIENCE OF NEW WORLD CHURCHES IN REVOLUTIONARY ENGLAND By RACHEL N. SCHNEPPER A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Dr. Alastair Bellany and approved by _________________________________________ _________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2010 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Jonas Cast Up at London: The Experience of New World Churches in Revolutionary England By RACHEL N. SCHNEPPER Dissertation Director: Alastair Bellany My dissertation, “Jonas Cast Up at London: The Experience of New World Churches in Revolutionary England,” offers a completely new way of approaching the history of religious struggle and debate during the English Revolution--blending the history of religious polemic and identity-formation with the history of the book and of print culture, and, for the first time, placing these epochal struggles over church government and religious freedom within a dynamic Atlantic context. With over one hundred printed books and pamphlets as my research base, my project uncovers the hitherto under-explored importance of English Atlantic colonial churches on the fiery debates over further reformation of the Church of England, and reveals a bustling world of preachers, polemicists and printers who refashioned the experiences of religious life in the Americas for English readers eager to recreate their own church according to what they took to be God’s will. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While this dissertation bears my name, an entire village participated in its creation. From that dark day in September 2006 when Alastair Bellany and Christopher L. Brown work-shopped with me the germ of its conception to the last days when I thought it would never be done, they have been with me every step of the way. Alastair has read draft after draft, and at every instance provided necessary and thought-provoking advice and suggestions, and is consequently responsible for forcing me, often against my will, to become a better researcher and writer. Chris was incredibly generous in his support, not only assuring me that I was capable of this task, but simultaneously pushing me to clarify my organization and conceptualization. This dissertation would not exist without them. The flaws that remain are entirely my own, but I know there would be many more without them. Among those I must also thank are Phyllis Mack and Paul Clemens. Both provided welcome support and guidance throughout the research and writing of my dissertation, as well as invaluable insight in other matters. I was fortunate that an early draft of Chapter Three was read with a careful eye by my fellow seminarians at the Folger Institute in the Spring of 2009. David Hall has continued to supply thoughtful suggestions, and I am especially grateful that he still responds to my emails and in such a timely fashion. In England, Jason Peacey was kind enough to guide me in the world of doing history in his country. Ann Hughes’ work has been an inspiration to my own research, and I benefited tremendously from her examples of scholarship. iii Special thanks to those grants, organizations and peoples that made it possible for me to carry out this project: the Graduate School at Rutgers University, the North American Conference on British Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Without the support of these institutions I never would have had the wherewithal to conduct research and the time to write about it. I am also grateful to the support of the staff at the British Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Institute for Historical Research in London, the Guildhall Library, the Dr. Williams’ Library, and the Essex, Kent, and Northampton Public Record Offices. My village had to good fortune to be erected around the graduate community of the History Department at Rutgers University. I am proud to count Dawn Ruskai and Tim Alves as my friends. I could always count on the support and stimulation of Kris Alexanderson, Kristen Block, Lesley Doig, Cat Howey, and Amy Tims. A number of friends have been particularly invaluable sources of support the last few years. Darcie Fontaine has been a partner in the times of plenty and the times of famine, but most importantly, she brought the Mitfords. Laurie Marhoefer did everything before me and graciously then told me how to do it. Esha Saad not only listened to me talk about Puritans for the past four years, but she also paid attention and took a sincere interest, a rarity in my world that I treasure. Azfar Adil is still my friend, despite it all and me. Thank you. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents: my mother, because she made me, and my father, who is waiting for the movie version to come out. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………..ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………....................iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………...v Introduction………………………………………………………................1 Chapter One “Deliverance From Everlasting Misery”: The Beginnings of Revolution and the Promise of the New England Way……………………………………………………40 Chapter Two The Example of the New England Way: A Case Study…………………………….………………………………….84 Chapter Three “Pretenders to Chastity, Reformation, and Christian Liberty”: Attacks on the New England Way………………………………………………………………..122 Chapter Four The Colonists Write Back: Atlantic Responses…………………………………………………………..181 v Chapter Five “The Common-weale cannot without a spiritual rape force the consciences of all to one Worship”: The Fight for Libery of Conscience…………………………………………233 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….300 Appendix A…………………………………………………………………304 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...314 Cirriculum Vita……………………………………………………………...335 vi 1 INTRODUCTION A year after his return from Rhode Island to London in 1645, the preacher Samuel Gorton published a scathing attack on the churches in New England entitled Simplicities Defence Against Seven-Headed Piety . Having stepped too far beyond the boundaries of Massachusetts’ orthodoxy with his preaching at Plymouth, Gorton had been banished to Rhode Island in 1638. As a victim of New England’s intolerance, Gorton must have felt perfectly justified when in Simplicities Defence he accused the leaders of New England of being “a company of grosse and dissembling hypocrites” who “bath themselves in blood and feed themselves fat, by devouring the good name, estates, and lives of their brethren.” 1 The magistrates of New England did not stand idly by while this dissatisfied return migrant hurled vindictive epithet after vindictive epithet at them. Instead, they commissioned Edward Winslow, a former governor of Plymouth and an agent for Massachusetts in England at the time, to craft a defense. What followed a few months later was his rebuttal, Hypocrisie Unmasked , in which Winslow called Gorton a “gross disturber of the Civil peace and quiet of that government [of Plymouth], in an open factious and seditious manner.”2 Gorton responded in kind, refuting Winslow’s arguments with a book entitled Incorruptible Key 3 in 1647. While Winslow did not respond directly to Gorton’s second attack, he did respond with New England’s 1 Samuel Gorton, Simplicities Defence Against Seven-Headed Piety (London, 1646), pgs.25, 2. 2 Edward Winslow, Hypocrisie Unmasked (London, 1646), unmarked page. 3 Wing G1306. 2 Salamander 4 (1647) to another virulent anti-New England pamphlet, New-England’s Jonas Cast Up at London ,5 which had been published earlier in 1647 by John Child. Gorton, Winslow, and Child were not the only New Englanders who returned to Old England in the 1640s and 1650s. Susan Hardman Moore estimates that during the 1640s and 1650s a minimum of 1,500 settlers returned to England. 6 Additionally, these three men were not the only return migrants who, upon their return to Old England, published pamphlets during the English Revolution attacking or defending the colonial system of church-government and its secular allies. In fact, they were part of a large group of remigrated settlers who believed there was much Old England could learn from the churches in the Atlantic colonies both as models of what would be acceptable and as examples of what to avoid. In the Congregational model of church-government, or the New England Way, full church membership (and its privileges) was reserved only for proven saints. Membership in a particular church was extended only after individuals had made a confession of faith demonstrating their own godliness. Neither birth nor residence in a parish automatically admitted one as a member of the church. Furthermore, each individual church acknowledged no higher authority. Each church was independent from every other church, and it was not beholden to conform to the dictates and decrees of higher ecclesiastical bodies such as synods. The New England Way’s church-government represented a fundamentally different vision of and execution 4 Wing W3038. 5 Wing C3851. 6 Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers & the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 55 3 of ecclesiology from the Church of England, reform of which was one of the battle cries at the outbreak of civil war. 7 The New England Way