• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1110 0

Rule in Essex and an opponent of the Puritan networks protected by the Earl of Warwick. It told of the need to protect the Prayer Book in the light of local disorders. The detail and the way in which the stories were redrafted suggest that, although the petition was addressed to the King, the audience for the petition was as much opinion in the county. It highlighted not only how the Protestation had been used as a pretext for religious disorder, but also how attempts to restore order had been obstructed by the Grand Jury. Close analysis of who was on the Grand Jury suggests that it had indeed been captured by the local godly. Actual desecrations of the Prayer Book and disruptions of the observance of the liturgy bear testimony to local support for the view (stated in the first Root and Branch petition) that the Prayer Book was ‘a plain device to usher in the mass’.101 In Essex, as elsewhere, there was a developing battle between rival fears of popery and religious anarchy – emblematically expressed in attachment to the Protestation or the Prayer Book.102

The anti-sectarian pamphlets of September point to a further change in the means by which political debate was being conducted. A consequence of the abolition of High Commission and Star Chamber in July was not only to further reduce the effective influence of church discipline, but also to end controls on printing. George Thomason, the London bookseller, had been collecting pamphlets since early 1640. Prior to the meeting of the Long Parliament he had collected seventeen, over nine months. Between November 1640 and May 1641, the month of the attainder of Strafford, he had amassed a further 116. From May onwards he was collecting around sixty per month, and in September amassed eighty. There was more to come, but the rising political temperature, the collapse of effective censorship and the increasing willingness to resort to print were transforming the market for print.103 Parliamentary declarations and speeches were printed, partly it seems to satisfy the country that MPs were active on their behalf. The open expression of religious and political differences now spilt onto the streets, not only in the form of crowd actions and the circulation of partisan statements. In Cornwall the promotion of the Prayer Book petition was linked explicitly to ill-affected pamphlets, ‘which fly abroad in such swarms as are able to cloud the pure air of truth and present a dark ignorance to those who have not the two wings of justice and knowledge to fly above them’.104

This growth of publicity was troubling for a monarch who felt, probably correctly, that the security of the monarchy lay ultimately in the deference of his subjects. Charles’s refined sense of his regality emphasized respect for the King, and entailed an extensive, perhaps jealous, view of the arcana imperii. He was not alone in feeling uneasy about the growing publicity afforded to fundamental political and religious controversy. By late 1641 religious and political anxieties were finding regular expression in print: this was no longer a matter simply of parliamentary politics and the politics of the day were reported in an increasingly luxuriant print culture.

In debate and in practice it was proving difficult to foster a positive alliance around the promotion of the true religion or to maintain a negative alliance on the basis of a ragbag of grievances such as those expressed in the opening months of the parliament. As reformers took advantage of their position of strength not only to dismantle Laudian innovation but also to mark out the new boundaries of the true church, fundamental questions were publicly raised but not resolved. Polemically this gave great prominence to anti-popery; practically it centred on matters of church decoration and ritual practice. Here, though, was a potential problem of order – the thought that groups of individual Christians could take it upon themselves to mark out these new boundaries could bring little comfort to many people. The resonances of this pressure for reform on the streets