William Walwyn 49 Before the Levellers: Some Considerations… 53 the Power of Love 62 a Still and Soft Voice… 84 1647-1649; the End of the Levellers 104
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INTERJECTIONS OF SILENCE: THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF RADICAL PROTESTANT WRITING 1642-1660 by PETER RICHARD PICK A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Humanities School of English The University of Birmingham August 2000 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. DEDICATION To my Father, who understands all this so much better than I. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Post-Graduate Team and English Department at The University of Birmingham; Mary-Jo Clogg, Librarian at Woodbrooke Quaker Studies Centre; Malcolm Coulthard; and especially Tony Davies for his good humour and encouragement. This research was funded partly by the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the British Academy, and partly by Birmingham University. CONTENTS SECTION PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 WILLIAM WALWYN 49 BEFORE THE LEVELLERS: SOME CONSIDERATIONS… 53 THE POWER OF LOVE 62 A STILL AND SOFT VOICE… 84 1647-1649; THE END OF THE LEVELLERS 104 ABIEZER COPPE 108 SOME SWEET SIPS OF SOME SPIRITUAL WINE 110 A FIERY FLYING ROLL 166 RETRACTION AND RETRENCHMENT 168 DIVINE FIRE-WORKS 195 COPPE CONCLUSION 216 1650-1656 225 JAMES NAYLER 227 RANTERS & QUAKERS 238 QUAKER POETICS 241 A DISCOVERIE OF FAITH 260 NAYLER VERSUS BAXTER 284 CONCLUSION 342 BIBLIOGRAPHY I-XXI ILLUSTRATION Woodcut from Divine Fire-Works, Abiezer Coppe, (1657) (facing page) 195 ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES C.R.W. : A Collection Of Ranter Writings From The 17th Century, (ed.) NIGEL SMITH, Junction Books, London, (1983). D.N.B. : Dictionary of National Biography, (19 Vols), Oxford, (1921-1922). GREAVES & ZALLER : Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, (eds) Richard L. Greaves and Robert Zaller, (3 Vols), Harvester Press, Brighton, (1982). HOPTON : Abiezer Coppe, Selected Writings, (ed.) ANDREW HOPTON, Aporia Press, London, (1987). TAFT : The Writings Of William Walwyn, (ed.) JACK R. McMICHAEL and BARBARA TAFT, University of Georgia Press, Athens, (1989). F.F.R. : A Fiery Flying Roll, Abiezer Coppe, London, (January 4th , 1650). D.F.W. : Divine Fire-Works, Abiezer Coppe, London, (Jan 20th, 1657) ‘It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.’ Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Fearful Sphere of Pascal’ in Labyrinths, (trans.) A. Kerrigan, Penguin, Harmondsworth, (1970). ‘Heresies run on like leaden pipes under ground. They run on still, though we do not see them, in a commonwealth where they are restrained. Where liberty is, they will discover themselves, and come to punishment.’ Walter Strickland M.P. in Robert Burton’s Diary (1:88) INTRODUCTION The English Civil Wars and the subsequent ‘interregnum’ or ‘commonwealth’ period have been the focus of much historical study, and recent debate has revealed a two-fold interpretative disjunction, between (roughly) the Marxist synthesis of Christopher Hill, Brian Manning, and A.L. Morton, and ‘revisionist’ and on the whole more localised studies by John Morrill, David Underdown and Conrad Russell1. Nicholas Tyacke has done extensive work on the political and theological history of the Church, particularly in the pre-Civil War period, and is featured in Conrad Russell’s collection The Origins of the English Civil War (1973)2. Patrick Collinson has also written in magisterial style on the history of the Church and Puritanism. His essay ‘Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism as forms of Popular Culture’ is included in The Culture of English Puritanism, (ed. Durston and Eales, 1996)3. The repressive conformity required of the people by militant 1 John Morrill, (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War: 1642-1649, Macmillan, London, (1982); John Morrill, Cheshire 1630-1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution, Oxford, (1974); John Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces: Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War, George Allen and Unwin, London, (1976)/Longman, London, (1980); John Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces: the People of England and the Tragedies of War 1630-1648, Longman, London, (1999). David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660, Oxford University Press, Oxford, (1985); David Underdown, Fire from Heaven: Life in an English town in the Seventeenth Century, Harper Collins, London, (1992). Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660, Oxford University Press, Oxford, (1971); Conrad Russell, (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War, Macmillan, London, (1973). Conrad Russell, Unrevolutionary England, Hambledon Press, London, (1990). 2 Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590-1640, Clarendon Press, Oxford, (1987); Nicholas Tyacke, (ed.), England’s Long Reformation 1500-1800, U.C.L. Press, London, (1988). Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution’ (in) C. Russell, (ed.), Origins of the English Civil War, MacMillan, London, (1973), pp.119-143. 3 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, Cape, London, (1967); Patrick Collinson, Godly People: essays on English Protestants and Puritans, Hambledon, London, (1982); Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants, Clarendon Press, Oxford, (1982); Patrick Collinson, English Puritanism, The Historical Association, London, (1983); Calvinist Puritanism is examined in David Underdown’s Fire from Heaven (1992), which concentrates its considerable insight on Dorchester4. One other highly localised study I have found particularly useful is John Breay’s Light in the Dales (1996), which traces both pre-Quaker and Quaker agitation in the contexts of religion and of land tenure5. William Lamont’s Godly Rule (1969) is a valuable study of Puritan attitudes - and pretentions - to governance6. The widely-held belief that the seventeenth century represents a transitional period from feudalism to early Capitalism, promulgated by such theorists as Marx, Weber and Tawney, has been challenged by Alan Macfarlane in The Origins of English Individualism, (1978)7. The Marx/Weber/Tawney thesis (in brief and sketchy form) is that increased individualism, and thus Capitalistic competition, were fostered by Calvinist theology in an uncertain economic environment, leading to hitherto unknown social mobility in a market economy. Weber can be credited with the origin of the familiar phrase the ‘Protestant work ethic’. This thesis is advanced primarily in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930)8. Macfarlane contends that there is little substantive difference in the economic situation over a period of 500 years, that a ‘developed market and mobility of labour’ already existed, ‘land was treated as a commodity and full private ownership was established, there was very considerable geographical and social mobility...and rational accounting and the profit motive were widespread’ (p.195). Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religion and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 4 David Underdown, Fire From Heaven: Life in an English town in the Seventeenth Century, Harper Collins, London, (1992). 5 John Breay, Light in the Dales: Studies in Religious Dissent and Land Tenure, The Canterbury Press, Norwich, (1996). 6 William Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603-1660, Macmillan, London, (1969). 7 R.H.Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Murray, London, (1926). Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism, Blackwell, Oxford, (1978). 8 First published (in German) in 1905. His The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism was published in 1906 and revised 1919-1920. Information from Max Weber, Selections in Translation, (ed.) W.G. Runciman, (trans. E. Matthews), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978. Runciman notes ‘It would perhaps be more plausible to argue that a necessary condition of the emergence of industrial capitalism was an altogether more general ideological change in the direction of the application of 2 My own interest is not primarily in economic history, however, and Macfarlane’s thesis remains contentious. If a middle position can be sought between Weber and Macfarlane it lies perhaps in seeing Calvinism as neither cause nor effect of economic transformation and the rise of individualism but rather as a source of explanation for the conditions of life which answered to psychological need at the time of its adoption. In such a view it is implicated as both cause and effect, a discursive mode which interacts with and is found suitable for an historical position. Many historians, including Don Wolfe and John Morrill, have concerned themselves with the tradition of ‘Puritanism’ within (and beyond) the Church of England9. The Culture of English Puritanism (1996), edited by Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales, is a good collection of recent research in the field, focusing on it as a social phenomenon, and showing it in opposition to a more ritualistic Anglo- Catholicism, or ‘Anglicanism’10.