Reformed identity and conformity in England, 1559–1714 (Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain)

This volume is the first collection of essays to focus specifically on how Reformed theology and ecclesiology related to one of the most consequential issues between the Elizabethan Settlement (1559) and the Hanoverian Succession (1714), namely conformity to the Church of England. This volume enriches scholarly understandings of how Reformed identity was understood in the Tudor and Stuart periods, and how it influenced both clerical and lay attitudes towards the English Church’s government, liturgy and doctrine. In a reflection of how established religion pervaded all aspects of civic life in the early modern world and was sharply contested within both ecclesiastical and political spheres, this volume includes chapters that focus variously on the ecclesio-political, liturgical, and doctrinal aspects of conformity. Front matter 1 Contents 7 Notes on contributors 9 Acknowledgements 11 List of abbreviations 12 Introduction 15 Part I: Ecclesio-political and liturgical contests 33 Contests, contexts, and the boundaries of conformity in early modern England 35 Protestant jurisdictionalism and the nature of Elizabethan puritan nonconformity 58 Cathedrals, the Reformed, and the Elizabethan Church* 85 Sir Francis Hastings, Jacobean nonconformity, and the House of Commons, 1604–10 111 Zachary Crofton, the Restoration Church of England, and the dilemmas of partial conformity, 1662–651 131 Part II: Reformed conformist theology and ecclesiology 153 Justifying faith and faith as a virtue in the theology of Richard Hooker 155 The best religion? The revived ambitions of the Reformed conformist establishment, 1637–40 171 The Reformed conformist tradition, 1640–62 193 Edward Reynolds and the making of a presbyterian bishop 213 The Reformed theology of Thomas Hobbes: the Answer to Archbishop Bramhall 236 Reformed orthodoxy as conformity in the post-Restoration Church of England 259 Afterword 277 Index 285