Author: John Oakley

Orders of the day, Volume 31, Issue 2, March/April 1999

There seems to be a lack of written information which directly addresses the fate of the parish priest during the English Civil War. In the established church there were differing types of ministry. In one sense people acknowledged in the Creed ‘one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’, yet at the same time there was a strong Protestant influence which regarded any suggestion of Catholicism with suspicion. As Christopher Hill points out, “many of the Calvinistic religious radicals of the earlier Tudor period, and their ideals, had been absorbed into the established Church”. There are difficulties with this because the Church of England continued the traditional link with the Apostles who placed their hands on the heads of followers of Christ. This was passed on through the Roman Catholic Church, and after the Reformation, through the bishops of the Church of England. Similarly, the Book of Common Prayer has been likened to a direct translation in English of the Latin Catholic Mass.

This caused both conflict and confusion in the years leading up to the first Civil War because there was a great fear of the political dominance of the two great Catholic powers in Europe, Spain and France. Laud was by all accounts a Calvinist; his actions however created enemies who accused him of popery. Many communities, especially those with prospering merchants like the commissioners at Great Yarmouth, had begun to appoint their own ministers, yet he actively sent his bishops on visitations to root out ministers who were not of the ‘college’ (that is to say High Anglican, and politically correct in their interpretation of the Holy Scriptures). Written accounts of these visits still exist, and people who have experienced any audit or inspection where there has been a change in management ethos will have some empathy with the poor incumbent vicar. Laud also advocated ceremonies and vestments in religious services which may have gained him the approval of a Queen and Court openly sympathetic to the Catholic faith, but there was a move in the country towards Presbyterianism and religious tolerance which ran contrary to his actions.

Laud as Archbishop was also in control of the censorship process. This meant that the priest in the parish pulpit was the focus of news and foreign affairs. Until 1641, and again after 1660, the publication of home news was a legal offence, and imported foreign publications were subject to episcopal censorship. There was a ban on newsheets printed in Holland, but this was never effectively enforced. With the spread of literacy, and the ‘revolutionary’ nature of the newly-translated English Bible, there was strong consideration that the parish priest, or someone in his office, was the rightful steward of stability in the community, and even Cromwell was to comment wistfully that he wished he had had Laud’s organisation when he became Lord Protector.

On the local scale, if you look in many parish records at the time of the Civil Wars and during the Commonwealth, there is often a break in the continuity of the living. Sometimes two names are mentioned in plurality. Often the old priest returns, or the newer person continues in office. Some churches do however have a complete break until the Restoration with no apparent incumbent, and this can be evidenced by the deterioration in the registers. This is witnessed by the lack of entries and/or the variable quality of the script. Occasionally Parliament has appointed an administrator during the Interregnum who writes complete and thorough entries in a very neat hand. There was still a job to be done, and it seems to have been given to educated men by either arrangement or a new system of appointment.

I would like to see some more detailed research on the issue. It is a subject close to my interest, as I live in the parish of St Nicholas Hurst where Laud often preached, and close to Bray, about whose vicar a famous song exists. There is a comic play on his shifting loyalties which underlies real social concerns at the time. I also have an account of the conflicting loyalties of Windsor, a “Royal Castle in a Rebel Town”. There may of course be members who have access to the most recent academic studies. I would like to take the story beyond the cliche of Leveller ‘Presbyterians’ in the Puritan ranks, fighting Quakers, and closet Papists serving a butterfly existence in the Royalist Army, as I know from my own reading that there is a far more complex pattern of worship and loyalty prevalent in the period. For example both Sir Edmund Verney and Marmaduke Rawdon were said to be ‘Puritans’, yet they faithfully served the Royalist cause, while Cromwell after the execution of Charles was making diplomatic treaties with Catholic states.

• The Century Of Revolution -1603-1714: Christopher Hill, Van Nostrand Reinhold ISBN 0 442 30678 4
• The English Civil War - A Military History of the Three Civil Wars 1642-1651: Brigadier Peter Young & Richard Holmes, Eyre Methuen Ltd. ISBN 0 413 31560 6
• The Pilgrims Progress: John Bunyan, Ed. Roger Sharrock, Penguin Classics ISBN 0 413 31560 6
• Beef, Bacon and Bag Pudding - Old Berkshire in the Civil War: David Disbury, Timescape Publishing
• Royal Castle Rebel Town: Raymond South, Barracuda Books ISBN 0 86023131 3

And a good deal more, as the Vicar shifts his loyalties during the next four reigns ...