Jacqueline Rose's review (H-Albion) of Peter Lake's book 'On Laudianism'

 

Rose on Lake, 'On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics during the Personal Rule of Charles I'

Lake, Peter. On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics during the Personal Rule of Charles I. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. xx + 611 pp. $49.99 (cloth), ISBN 9781009306812.

Reviewed by Jacqueline Rose (University of St Andrews)
Published on H-Albion (November, 2024)
Commissioned by Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth (Red Deer Polytechnic)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60670

Laudianism has been as contentious historiographically as historically. Was its governing impulse theological or ecclesiological? What was the role of its eponymous archbishop? How novel was it? And what was its role in the fraught politics of the Personal Rule of Charles I? Since Nicolas Tyacke’s seminal article of 1973, the proposition that anti-Calvinism was the disruptive force in English religion has been a fundamental element of any analysis of Caroline politics and religion.[1] The 1630s witnessed attempts to change parish worship by turning communion tables “altarwise” and railing them off, a renewed drive for uniformity in the ceremonies used in parish worship, and a repositioning of the Church of England’s relationship to other Protestant churches and to the Catholic Church, culminating in the disastrous attempt to impose a new Scottish prayer book. While some have questioned the degree of disruption that Laudianism produced, others have suggested that the changes it introduced did not stem from a considered Arminian theology. The relative silence of William Laud himself during his archiepiscopal tenure has also led some to attribute policies directly to royal influence or, by contrast, to individual semi-maverick clergymen whose excessive enthusiasm for change was stoked by careerist motives.

Peter Lake’s work has been central to these debates. His latest book, On Laudianism, primarily analyzes printed works produced by “Laudians” (more on that term later) on a range of religious topics (prayer, preaching, ceremonies, the altar, the Sabbath, predestination), along with an account of the elements of Puritanism most deplored by the Laudians, before turning in the final section to differences within Laudianism. Laudianism is treated here as a religious stance with political consequences, stimulated by concerns about disorder in the contemporary Church of England and its worship. It was part of a battle over the right direction of travel for the post-Reformation Church of England.

To paraphrase Patrick Collinson, to speak of Laudianism is to speak of one-half of a stressful relationship. Laudianism’s existence was shaped by concern over Puritanism (about which Collinson was writing): the “defining other,” in Lake’s account (p. 255). The key facets of Puritan religious practice, orientated around preaching and experimental predestination, seemed to the Laudians to explain the neglect of due reverence in church, the lack of recognition of the spiritual value of public worship, and what they deemed to be the hypocritical arrogance of Puritan ministers confident in their own salvation, simultaneously devaluing those unable to keep up with the demands of the “godly” and yet dependent on lay patrons whose support they courted, necessitating a slide into populist positions and populist critique of the church (and the monarchy). Rectifying such mistakes required a recentering of religion on the sacrament, Christ’s presence in the church as a particularly holy place (especially in the chancel and at the altar, hence the altar policy), appropriate reverence (hence attention to conformity in gestures and kneeling), acknowledgment of divine mysteries about salvation (hence both reticence in discussing soteriology and a need to refute absolute predestination), and a steady chorus attacking the dangers of Puritan error.

Laudianism’s relationship to Puritanism explains a number of its ambiguities and paradoxes. One already mentioned is the parallel disclaiming of any desire to intrude on the arcana of God’s decisions about salvation, helpfully allowing the closing down of defenses of Calvinism, while necessarily having to take up Arminian positions when expressing a view on this. Arminianism did not, in Lake’s view, always come first: it was not necessary to propose this theological stance in order to take certain positions on worship (although the process of becoming Laudian could take place in this order), but Arminianism was sometimes the inescapable result of rejecting Puritanism’s rigid stance on predestination. Laud himself was reticent about his theology, cautious and elusive in his activities, and yet far from unaware of what was going on. It was characteristic that the work which, according to Lake, is the nearest proxy for a manifesto of the Laudian project was not written by Laud himself, nor even by Peter Heylin, but was instead Lancelot Andrewes’s XCVI Sermons, the publication of which in 1630 was a discreet Laudian enterprise.

Similarly, Laudianism was not a single or uniform position, as Lake is at pains to point out, especially given that the central chapters of his book focus on shared positions and leave discussion of divisions and differences to the final section. Instead, it was a tacit coalition of those irked by Puritan error. It could even align with or use some Calvinist conformists who wrote denunciations of particular elements of Puritanism, although these (like Robert Sanderson and Humphrey Sydenham) cannot be called Laudians themselves. At the other end of the spectrum, beyond those who endorsed specific elements of Laudianism, were men zealous to push it further: at court, at Cambridge, in the parishes. This partly explains how Laudianism got so far so fast and also how fragile it was in the face of attacks on it when Charles’s regime began to crumble.

Lake’s analysis of the rapid momentum Laudianism acquired in 1630s Cambridge (interestingly, not the university that Laud presided over) points to its ambiguous relationship with earlier phases of the English Reformation. Several Laudian positions slotted into or exploited the silences and ambivalences of the earlier stages of reformation: the lack of a clear statement on double predestination, the mixed messages about the communion table, the ability of multiple groups to claim adherence to the Elizabethan Church. As Lake shows, Laudians could take “minimalist” positions, defending their claims on the basis of adiaphorist accounts in tune with those of the Elizabethan or early Edwardian Church. Others could offer a more “maximalist” stance, citing early church practice or even claiming scriptural warrant (and sometimes blurring the two). Laudianism could therefore face toward tradition or innovation, sound old or sound new, slide—consciously or otherwise—between the two.

Ironically, Laudianism in this rendering becomes akin to a Collinsonian view of Puritanism. Its adherents wanted to ensure that the Church of England stayed on the “right” path and were anxious about the risk that other members of that body wanted to set, or had set, it on the “wrong” one. In wanting to save the church, they ended up becoming disruptive innovators. The embedding of Puritan practice—although, crucially, by no means a Puritan monopoly—in the parishes and among the laity meant that establishing Laudianism required a major change in religious practice, building on, yet going beyond, the wellspring of anti-Puritanism that was also widely present. Like Puritanism, Laudianism neither provided the straightforward correction back to early Reformation values that it claimed to represent nor constituted an odd and temporary aberration from an otherwise uncontested “mainstream” within the English church. Instead, its paradoxes—the way its adherents had common concerns but divergent emphases and justifications and its tense and problematic relationship with contemporary religious practice—represented one important phase in the Church of England’s recurring endeavors to settle its own identity after the Reformation.

Note

[1]. Nicolas Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell (London: Macmillan, 1973), 119-43.

Citation: Jacqueline Rose. Review of Lake, Peter. On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics during the Personal Rule of Charles I. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. November, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60670

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