Laudianism - Laudianism and The English Civil War

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.