Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–1800 General Editors: Crawford Gribben, Queen’s University Belfast, UK Scott Spurlock, University of Glasgow, UK Editorial Board: John Coffey, Leicester University Jeff Jue, Westminster Theological Seminary Susan Hardman Moore, University of Edinburgh John Morrill, University of Cambridge David Mullan, Cape Breton University Richard Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary Jane Ohlmeyer, Trinity College Dublin Margo Todd, University of Pennsylvania Arthur Williamson, University of California, Sacramento Building upon the recent recovery of interest in religion in the early modern trans-Atlantic world, this series offers fresh, lively and interdisciplinary perspec- tives on the broad view of its subject. Books in the series will work strategically and systematically to address major but under-studied or overly simplified themes in the religious and cultural history of the early modern trans-Atlantic. Titles include: Benjamin Bankhurst ULSTER PRESBYTERIANS AND THE SCOTS IRISH DIASPORA, 1750–1764 Francis J. Bremer LAY EMPOWERMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM Forthcoming titles include: Crawford Gribben and Scott Spurlock (editors) PURITANISM IN THE TRANS-ATLANTIC WORLD 1600–1800 Mark Sweetnam MISSION AND EMPIRE IN THE EARLY MODERN PUBLIC SPHERE Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800 Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-037-31152-8 hardcover (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism Francis J. Bremer Professor Emeritus, Millersville University, USA © Francis J. Bremer 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-35288-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-67497-8 ISBN 978-1-137-35289-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-35289-7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bremer, Francis J. Lay empowerment and the development of Puritanism / Francis J. Bremer, Professor Emeritus, Millersville University, USA. pages cm. — (Christianities in the trans-atlantic world, 1500–1800) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Puritans. 2. Laity. I. Title. BX9323.B26 2015 285.909032—dc23 2015001200 For all my family and the memories of Francis and Marie Bremer and Alice Woodlock This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments viii Introduction 1 1 The Experience and Meaning of God’s Caress 5 2 Thinking of the Laity in the English Reformation 10 3 Lay Puritans in Stuart England 27 4 Gatherings of the Saints in England and the Netherlands 49 5 Shaping the New England Way 69 6 The Free Grace Controversy and Redefining the Role of Lay Believers 87 7 The Role of the Laity in England’s Puritan Revolution 105 8 Varieties of Lay Enthusiasm in New England and England 127 9 Responding to the Challenges of Diversity, 1640–60 144 10 Clergy and Laity in the Later Seventeenth Century 157 Epilogue: Looking Backwards, and Ahead 177 Notes 182 Bibliography 216 Index 233 vii Acknowledgments I first began to reflect on the topic of this book while a Long Room Fel- low at Trinity College, Dublin in the spring of 2012. I wish to thank Crawford Gribben for encouraging me to apply for that fellowship, and the Long Room staff for making my stay comfortable and produc- tive. I would also like to thank Crawford and his students for valuable conversations during my tenure. During the course of research and writing I have benefited, as always, from the community of puritan scholars in England and America who are friends as well as scholars and who have shaped my understand- ing of the field over the years. But in particular I would like to single out L. Baird Tipson, Jr. and Joel Halcomb, both of whom read the entire manuscript and provided numerous helpful suggestions. After the book was essentially finished I benefitted from the suggestions of Margo Todd and the students in her graduate seminar at the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania who were kind enough to read the manuscript and discuss it with me. This is the first study I have undertaken since my retirement from Millersville University. I thank the university for having granted me emeritus status and the ability to draw upon the library resources in get- ting access to numerous works cited here. And I would like to thank my family, which has always been the rock on which my life is grounded. viii Introduction Diarmaid MacCulloch has written that religious institutions “create their own silences, by exclusions and by shared assumptions, which ...silences are often at the expense of many of the people who could be thought of as actually constituting the Church.”1 My goal in the pages that follow is to examine one such silence—the substantial omission of the role played by countless named and unnamed men and women in the story of the shaping of puritanism. The earliest histories of puritanism were written by clergymen and highlighted the impor- tance of the clergy. William Hubbard, whose General History of New England was commissioned by the Massachusetts General Court in the 1670s, stated that “In the beginning of times was occasioned much dis- advantage to the government of the church by making it too popular.”2 Clerical authors such as Cotton Mather in New England and Samuel Clarke in England were themselves invested in the importance of the ministry and not unsurprisingly downplayed the role of the laity in the churches and focused on the role of prominent clergy in their accounts. Later writers, many writing from an institutional perspective, fol- lowed their lead, though not all exclusion of the laity was the result of institutional bias. The fact that the vast proportion of surviving puri- tan writings were composed by ministers reinforced this perspective. I myself titled one of my books Shaping New Englands: Puritan Clergy- men in Seventeenth Century England and New England.3 Even those who, like Darrett Rutman, paused to wonder to what extent the message from the pulpit was imbibed by those in the pews took it for granted that the message was shaped by the clergy.4 The laymen and laywomen who entered the story were typically those described by the clergy of their time and by later historians as radicals—the Anne Hutchinsons and Mary Dyers, the Levellers and the Quakers.5 Even Christopher Hill, who 1 2 Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism was more sympathetic than most to the role of ordinary Englishmen and wrote extensively on how some puritans sought to turn the world upside down, devoted his attention to those generally perceived as radical.6 There were, of course, some exceptions. When I was begin- ning my professional career Stephen Foster was kind enough to send me a copy of a paper that Patrick Collinson had delivered at a 1966 con- ference of the Past & Present Society. That paper, “The Godly: Aspects of Popular Protestantism,” focused on the role of the laity in early puritanism—even their role in pushing clergy further towards reform than the ministers were prepared to go.7 There are of course hints of what was not being written about if one pays sufficient attention to those voices. The fact that arguably the most important sermon in seventeenth-century New England history was preached by a layman—John Winthrop’s “Christian Charity”—suggests an important lay role in shaping the thought and practice of that soci- ety. The religious life of the Plymouth colony was directed for many years by William Brewster, a lay elder. One of the most vigorous debates over religion as well as governance in Civil War England was conducted by soldiers at Putney and Whitehall. Many of the stories I tell and points I seek to make may be individually familiar to those who have immersed themselves in the scholarship of the puritan movement, though the overall pattern and significance is not. In revisiting the history of puritanism from its English origins through its development in the Atlantic world of the seventeenth century, I have also been influenced by another essay that I had read long ago.