Laudianism - Laudianism in Practice

Laudianism in Practice

In practice, this led to a polarization within English Protestantism, to the extent that the movements of Laudianism and Puritanism could no longer be described under this all-encompassing banner. Predestination had been the unifying feature of the Reformed Church and, although more radical groups might have been rejected, there was still a sense of brotherhood among the various sects. Archbishop Laud disagreed with the views of his predecessors, such as John Whitgift, that Puritans were aberrant brethren, erring but deserving some level of leniency, but believed instead that the Protestant non-conformists presented a direct threat to the establishment and that there was more common ground between his own, true position and that of the pre-Reformed Roman Catholic Church.

The 1633 edition of the standard Latin-English Dictionary, dedicated to William Laud, contained for the first time the word Praedestinatiani, who were defined as "a kind of heretic that held fatal predestination of every particular matter person or action, and that all things come to passe, and fell out necessarily; especially touching the salvation and damnation of particular men".

Following the royal marriage negotiations with Spain, James I faced an upsurge in hostility from the pulpit and the press. Although the King tried to quiet such opposition through proclamations, the confinement of offenders and a set of Directions to Preachers in 1622, opposition came from senior figures within the established Church, such as several royal chaplains, Dean Sutcliffe of Exeter, Archdeacon Hakewill of Surrey and George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury. From this it can be seen that Laudianism signaled a stark break with previous practices and perceptions within the Elizabethan and early Stuart Church. Indeed, James reacted to this episode by moving his support to anti-Calvinist churchmen such as Lancelot Andrewes at Winchester, Montaigne at London and at last elevating Laud to the episcopate, thus radically shifting the power-base in favour of the emerging movement.

Charles I took these personnel changes even further when Laud was promised the archbishopric of Canterbury and effectively became the religious spokesman for the regime. As bishop of London, he had been controlling the printing presses since 1628 and prohibiting discussion of predestination. The York primacy had been filled with a succession of Laudians since the death of Calvinist Matthews in 1628 and from 1632 it was occupied by Neile, the one-time mentor of William Laud. In 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was made Chancellor of Cambridge University and all predestinarian teaching was subsequently banned. This was supported by a royal proclamation which effectively outlawed Calvinism on a national level.

There was also a break with the previous practices of the early Stuart Church on a visual level. Upon his translation to the bishopric of Durham in 1617, Richard Neile had the communion table transformed into an altar at the east end of the cathedral and supported Laud (then under his patronage) in a similar action at Gloucester.

In the 1630s, Laud declared that "the altar is the greatest place of God's residence upon earth, greater than the pulpit for there 'tis Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body; but in the other it is at most but Hoc est verbum meum, This is my word." In November 1633, by act of Privy Council King Charles I established the precedent that all parochial churches should follow the by then general cathedral practice of placing communion tables altar-wise at the east end of chancels. This was highly significant. One of the main points of the Reformation had been the replacement of the Catholic notion of salvation through the practice of rites such as communion, baptism and confession. The visual emphasis that this placed on the act of communion directly contradicted the Calvinist doctrine of salvation through faith alone, the knowledge of which was communicated through preaching, although the practice was similar to the contemporary Lutheran use of intact medieval altars and pieces of art. Similarly, a few years later, Bishops Overall and Andrewes could be seen advocating the practice of confession before receiving Holy Communion. Confession, like good works, implied that man had the chance to improve his chances of obtaining salvation and, again, was irreconcilable with the past fifty years and more of Calvinist, predestinarian teaching.