Laudianism and The English Civil War
The 1630s saw a polarization of religious opinion influenced by reactions to tracts, sermons and lobbying; the revolutionary events in Scotland; the Thirty Years War; and the level of ecclesiastical corruption revealed by the Houses of Parliament's inquiries. Similarly, in relation to the attacks on government officials, apart from those directed towards the great men of the state, the harrying of Laudian churchmen was positively gleeful.
After 1640, the Laudians and Arminians who had previously enjoyed the favour of the Episcopal hierarchy, found themselves under attack from both the Parliament and the press. The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiasticall were passed by the 1640 Convocation, unusually remaining in session after the Short Parliament was dissolved. They included as canon VI what became notorious as the "et cetera oath", a pledge to uphold episcopacy and the current Anglican hierarchy.
Priests and bishops who had gathered in Convocation to draft the canons of 1640 made high claims for the ceremonies and rites of the Established Church but, within months, were unable to enforce them. By December 1640 thirteen bishops had been impeached, with another dozen having followed them by December 1641. Within eight weeks of the opening of Parliament, the Houses were calling not for the restoration of the pre-Laudian church, along Elizabethan or Jacobean lines, but the abolition of the entire ecclesiastical order and its reconstruction in a Puritan mould. The removal of ecclesiastical judges and the abolition of the High Commission meant that the Established Church was unprotected on a parish level. Prayer books and surplices were torn up; communion tables were relocated and altar rails were burned. The reestablishment of the Anglican Church, in its Laudian version, would not occur until the Restoration in 1660.
Read more about this topic: Laudianism
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, english, civil and/or war:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied, if only for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)