SOCIETY AND PURITANISM IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY ENGLAND

What was a Puritan? Christopher Hill's magisterial book on Puritanism in the decades leading up to the Civil War is a highly readable work of impressive scholarship. Originally Puritanism seems to have been a term of abuse directed at critics of the established church of England. The author notes that it was applied to Sir Walter Raleigh, Inigo Jones, King James and even the Catholic courtiers of Queen Henrietta Maria. Later the word came to be applied to those who pushed for reform from within the church. Strict sabbath-keeping and opposition to popery came to be its defining features, though as with any political movement there were innumerable variations. A contemporary commentator, Henry Parker, defined four different areas in which Puritan beliefs operated: church policy, theological belief, relations with the king and state, and personal and private morality. Later the word came to mean a kill-joy, but in the early years the meaning was much more precise. Politically Puritans were men of property, not anarchists, and in the church courts they started to demand more rigorous discipline on the suppression of blasphemy and loose living. In the religious sphere, preaching was the dominant mode of Puritanism, driven by the need to make congregations understand the basics of religious belief following centuries of Catholicism in which the mass was performed in Latin. Popular preachers began to have their own cult following and anxieties were expressed that they were creating congregations with little contact with the established church. This was particularly the case with the tradition of itinerant Lecturers, freelance clergy who had been ordained but who were not attached to a church or subject to the authority of a bishop, and often had private patrons. As the movement fragmented, private household prayers also came under scrutiny as possibly promoting unorthodox doctrine, creating a culture of suspicion. 452pp, paperback, footnotes.