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Even with a full-blown episcopacy it was very difficult simply to impose the Laudian programme, however. Lay influence was entrenched in the institutions of the church. For example, the crown and its bishops did not have secure control over parochial appointments. The right to present men to parochial appointments, ‘livings’, was often attached to a piece of land, and that land was often in the hands of laymen. Although whoever was presented had to be licensed by a bishop, the bishop and the crown did not control the patronage of the church. Nor could the ecclesiastical authorities easily prevent the development of parallel forms of religious practice. Attendance at parish church was enforced, but it was not straightforward to prevent other, supplementary, gatherings. Moreover, a shortage of preaching in the early years of the Reformation had encouraged private benefactors, especially corporations, to establish lectureships – paid preaching posts not attached to a parish. In the mid-1620s the Feoffes for Impropriations had been established to purchase alienated church revenues and use them to fund preaching: a laudable project, but one which threatened Laudian discipline over the teaching of the church. It was closed down, but the provision of preaching outside the parish church was difficult to abolish; not least, of course, because it was often blameless and helpful to the cause of reformation as the ecclesiastical hierarchy understood it.106

Ecclesiastical authorities were dependent on local people to volunteer information about local practice and for the imposition of sanctions. The church courts, responsible for enforcing observance of the rites of the established church, also depended on participation. Business could be brought before them by individuals – instance business, akin to civil actions in the secular courts – or by churchwardens – office business, akin to the criminal law. Churchwardens, like constables, took account of local opinion in the discharge of their office. In either case, it was difficult for ecclesiastical authorities simply to implement or enforce policies. The inquisitorial power that they did possess lay in the visitation – the power to demand answers to specific questions. But there was no easy way to check the accuracy of the replies and so once again the ecclesiastical authorities were to a significant degree in the hands of their inferiors. Finally, some ecclesiastical policies demanded action from secular officeholders: for example, in fining recusants (those not attending church). Local officeholders often appear to have responded to local preferences in interpreting their obligations, favouring the maintenance of good local relations over the national imperative of religious unity.107 In other words lay influence in the church intersected with local self-government in ways that limited the practical power of the head of the church.

All this did not mean that local practice was automatically at odds with official policy, but it did mean that the propagation of the faith, and even the nature of the faith that was propagated, was coloured by local lay preferences. Administrative patterns allowed for distinctive local responses to official policy on how to submit with one’s fingers crossed, as it were. Thus, even if at a certain time on a certain day everyone in England could be made to bow to the altar, this uniformity of practice might still have concealed a great variety of belief: what bowing meant, if anything, could not be, as it were, divined. Lay influence within the church made the promotion of reformation dependent on a degree of voluntarism, and that voluntarism produced plurality.

As with secular matters, consent in the localities was usually informed. Protestant worship, like local administration, served as an education. Parishioners were expected in church each Sunday, on pain of a fine imposed by the government, not the ecclesiastical authorities. Those who came heard a powerful message about Christian submission, but also