LAURENCE CHADERTON: AN EARLY PURITAN VISION FOR CHURCH AND SCHOOL
Joel R. Beeke
Laurence Chaderton (ca. 1536–1640) was the spiritual patriarch of the Puritan movement that emanated from Cambridge University and ush- ered in renewal to the church in Britain, the Continent, and the New World. Combining rigorous academic discipline, a fifty-plus-year career in teaching and educational administration, warm spirituality, and endear- ing love, he influenced a rising generation of both ministers and magis- trates. Yet he remains a largely unknown figure, standing in the backdrop of the very leaders he mentored. While the published works of Chaderton are few,1 some very significant unpublished notes remain,2 as well as a small but meaty body of secondary literature on his life.3
1 Laurence Chaderton, An Excellent and Godly Sermon…Preached at Paul’s Cross the XXVI Daye of October, An. 1578 [hereafter Excellent] (London: Barker, [1578]); A Fruitfull Sermon, Vpon the 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. & 8. verses of the 12. Chapiter of the Epistle of S. Paul to the Romanes [hereafter Fruitfull] (London: Walde-graue, 1584); De justificatione coram Deo et fidei perseverantia non intercisa, published in a bundle of treatises by Matthew Hutton, et al., ed. Anthony Thysius under the title, Brevis et dilucida explicatio…de electione, praedestinatione ac reprobatione (Harderwijk, 1613). The authorship of the anonymous Fruitfull Sermon will be discussed below. Many thanks to Paul Smalley for his research assistance on this article. 2 For example, there are Chaderton’s papers in Pembroke College Library, Cambridge, MSS LC.II.2.164, and Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2550. There are also his handwritten mar- ginal notes in a number of extant books. 3 William Dillingham, Vita Laurentii Chadertoni…Una Cum Vita Jacobi Usserii (London, 1700); ET: William Dillingham, Laurence Chaderton (First Master of Emmanuel), trans. and ed. E.S. Shuckburgh (Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes, 1884); John G. Mager, “The Life of Laurence Chaderton, Puritan, 1536–1640” (MA thesis, Washington University, 1949); H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: CUP, 1958), 235– 242; Everett H. Emerson, English Puritanism from John Hooper to John Milton (Durham: Duke, 1968), 102–108; Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 151–152; Rebecca S. Rolph, “Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the Puritan Movements of Old and New England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1979), 23–31, 42–140; Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), 25–54, 116–168, 243–261; Arnold Hunt, “Laurence Chaderton and the Hampton Court Conference,” in Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson from His Students, ed. Wabuda and Litzenberger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 207–228; Sarah Bendall, Christopher Brooke, and Patrick Collinson, A History of Emmanuel College, Cambridge [hereafter, Bendall, Emmanuel] (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), 30–42, 177–186. Rolph, Lake, and Hunt are espe- cially valuable for quotations of Chaderton’s unpublished notes.
This essay will first summarize Chaderton’s life; second, examine Chaderton’s work at Cambridge; and third, explore his view of church offices as expressed in his Fruitfull Sermon on Romans 8:3–8 (1584).
The Life of Laurence Chaderton
Laurence Chaderton was probably born in 1536, in Oldham, near Man chester. His father was of an ancient and honored lineage with consider- able wealth, and was devoted to the pre-Reformation faith.4 It was only in 1534 that the Act of Supremacy declared the English monarch to be the church’s head instead of the pope. During Chaderton’s childhood, he saw Edward VI reign briefly as a reforming king and Queen Mary drive many Protestants into exile. Initially a poor student more interested in hunting and hawking, Laurence’s interest in reading revived under a skillful tutor. He entered Christ’s College in 1562, four years after Elizabeth was crowned Queen. He engaged in archery and wrestled against Richard Bancroft (1544–1610), saving him from harm during a violent “town and gown” brawl, which won him a valuable ally for later days when Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury. Chaderton also came into the sphere of influence of the developing Puritan movement. In the 1560s, men such as Thomas Cartwright and Edward Dering taught in Cambridge, while future Puritan pastors like Richard Greenham, Richard Rogers, and Walter Travers studied alongside of Chaderton. Queen Elizabeth was consolidating her hold on the church by insisting on uniformity of practice among the clergy, enforced by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury.5 Chaderton was thrust into this bubbling pot of controversy as a young undergraduate. Through study and struggle of soul, Chaderton became convinced of the Reformed faith. His father, dismayed by the change, sought to move him from the university to the Inns of Court to study law, with a promise of £30 a year. When he declined the offer, he was sent a shilling, a wallet, and the advice to beg for a living.6 But Chaderton perse- vered in his newfound faith, graduating BA in 1567, becoming a fellow of
4 Various sources identify his father as Thomas Chaderton or Edmund Chaderton. For “Thomas” see Dillingham, Chaderton, 28; Emerson, English Puritanism, 102. For “Edmund” see F.R. Raines in Dillingham, Chaderton, 31; Bendall, Emmanuel, 31. 5 Emerson, English Puritanism, 8–15. 6 Dillingham, Chaderton, 4.