Elizabeth remained adamant; it was her wish that these rules be enforced.
The battle of the vestments became heated; the universities, the bishops, and the court all engaged in the controversy. Preachers were prohibited from preaching because they refused to wear the square cap, the gown, the tippet, or the linen surplice.
In March, 1566, the clergy of London were compelled to decide whether they would wear the enforced garb. Of 110 ministers, 37 refused, thereby leaving many of the parishes vacant; and the laity who disliked worshiping in the presence of what they termed “idolatrous gear” assembled
themselves in private houses, in woods, and in secret chambers, where they could praise God without offending their consciences.
To the vestment question was now added the one concerning the entire hierarchical system of the church, whose form of government was patterned after that of Roman Catholicism.
Into this turbulence stepped the leader of the Puritan movement, Thomas Cartwright of Cambridge, “a man of genius and one who would have been prominent in any age,” “an eloquent preacher and a rising theological scholar,” “the first one to introduce extemporary prayer into the service.”
In 1569 he was assigned the Lady Margaret chair of divinity at Cambridge.
In the course of fulfilling his duties, while he attained his doctor of divinity degree, he preached against the popish form of church government existing in England, including the title and office of archbishop, archdeacon, and lord bishop.
He averted that bishops should preach, deacons should look after the poor, and only ministers who knew how to preach should be selected to govern their own churches; that it was the right of the churches, rather than of the state or of the bishops, to elect their own pastors; and that only what the Scriptures taught should be sanctioned in a church.
Furthermore, all parts of the Scripture, he maintained, were equally entitled to reverence; hence there was no point to kneeling at some words and standing at others, a practice followed by the Church of England. The Lord’s Supper, he stated, might be celebrated either kneeling or standing.
And other evidences that the church had not yet expelled all papal customs from her veins were: the making of the sign of the cross at
baptism, keeping saints’ days, forbidding marriage at certain times of the year, the use of “with my body I thee worship” in the marriage service, observance of Lent, and fasting on Friday. The presbyterian system, which he advocated, was ordained of God, he said; whereas prelacy was contrary to Scriptures.
Such opinions, spoken from the university pulpit, created a tremendous stir. Dr. John Whitgift, then master of Trinity and later the archbishop of Canterbury, of whom it has been said, “No ecclesiastic since Wolsey had departed so far from Puritan simplicity of life,” assumed the role of representative for the opposition. Although William Cecil (Baron
Burghley), Elizabeth’s chancellor, defended Cartwright by saying that the professor was merely comparing the ministers of apostolic times with that of England, Whitgift lost no time in reporting Cartwright’s lecture to the chancellor of the university. He succeeded in getting Cartwright dismissed from his professorship in December, 1570; from his fellowship in
September, 1571; and then from the university.
Cartwright was born in Hertfordshire in 1535. As a lad, probably fifteen years old, he came to Cambridge. He was granted a scholarship at St.
John’s College, where the doctrines of the Reformation received great emphasis.
When Mary came to the throne, Cartwright, along with others, left the university to avoid joining the Catholic Church, only to return when Elizabeth became the reigning monarch. He attained the master of arts degree at Trinity, and in 1562 he was appointed the junior dean and major fellow at St. John’s College.
It was about this time that Cartwright’s fame as an eloquent speaker and a thorough scholar gained momentum. One biographer called him a “pure Latinist, accurate Grecian, exact Hebraist.” Another biographer called him
“the head and most learned of that sect of dissenters then called Puritans.”
As one of those selected to debate on theology in Elizabeth’s presence when she visited Cambridge in 1564, he is said to have drawn such a crowd that the windows of St. Mary’s Cathedral were removed to permit those outside to hear him.
Perhaps weary of incessant controversy over church polity, he went to Ireland in 1565 to become chaplain of the archbishop of Armagh. Upon his return to England he received the appointment as Lady Margaret professor at Cambridge, and from then on he began to take a definite position against the organization of the Church of England.
When he found himself expelled from the university because of his views, he journeyed to the Continent, where he visited Beza, who at that time had already succeeded to Calvin’s command over Geneva.
But for his approval of the ideas expressed in the First Admonition to Parliament he might have been made professor of Hebrew at Cambridge when he came back in 1572 at his friend’s request. This admonition had been written by John Field and Thomas Wilcox as an appeal from the Puritans to Parliament, rather than to the queen. They had given up all hopes of winning her to their cause.
Of Parliament, the Puritans had asked:
“Your wisdoms have to remove advowsons, patronages,
impropriations and bishops’ authority and bring to the old and true election which was accustomed to be made by the congregation.
Remove homilies, articles, injunctions, and that prescript order of service made out of the mass book; take away the lordship, the loitering, the pomp, the idleness and livings of bishops, but yet employ them to such ends as they were in the old church appointed for.” — John Brown, The English Puritans, page 59.
This pamphlet was circulated throughout the realm and went through four editions. It created a great sensation. The authors were imprisoned, and Dr. Whitgift was selected to make the reply to the Puritan request. His argument, learned and scholarly, expressed the view that it was
unnecessary to maintain the same form of church government as did the apostles, and, furthermore, it was illogical to suppose it sin to retain a ritual or church policy simply because it prevailed in the Catholic Church.
To this the Puritans replied with a Second Admonition, this time with Cartwright as the author. In it he set forth methods by which the changes called for in the First Admonition should be effected. These included a properly paid clergy, so that every parish might be supplied with a
pastor; the equalization in rights and fumctions of all ministers; and the institution of conventions for the edification — both spiritually and doctrinally — and the discipline of the ministry.
He also suggested the establishment of synods to which problems too difficult for local solution could be referred. Above the provincial synod should be a national one, and a general synod should be over all. In addition he recommended the formation of a local consistory, a church board as it were, to enable every congregation to have jurisdiction over church discipline, even excommunication if need be, and over the relief of the poor, and in general to assume the obligation of looking after the welfare of the local church.
These admonitions were directly opposed to Elizabeth’s position as head of the church, as the one who frocked and unfrocked the clergy; and, naturally, her temper was aroused. She rebuked the bishops for their negligence in not imprisoning these men. Whitgift and Cartwright exchanged one more round of written argument, and then Cartwright, to avoid arrest, went back to the Continent.
Other Puritans now lent their pens to the strife. Walter Travers, an associate of Cartwright’s, wrote Ecclesiastica Disciplina, the most important treatise printed on the Puritan side. As a reply to it from the Anglican point of view, Richard Hooker brought forth his work, The Laws of Ecclesiasticat Polity, “a finely tempered work,” and a classic in English literature.
Upon Cartwright’s arrival on the Continent, he visited Heidelberg, and subsequently he became pastor of the church at Antwerp, and later of Middelburg in Zeeland. In 1575 he assisted the Huguenots, who had fled to the Channel Islands after the Paris massacre in 1572, in bringing
uniformity into their church organization. He also exerted a guiding hand at the Synod of Guernsey the following year, and at Jersey in 1577. Puritan representatives from England were present at both places. In 1577
Cartwright married a sister of John Stubbe. About this time he was offered the chair of theology at St. Andrews, which he refused.
Because the lowlands did not agree with his health, he made a plea to the queen to permit him to return to England. This she denied; but
nonetheless, he returned in 1585 to London. Here he was imprisoned, but Elizabeth released him because the bishop of London had acted before getting her consent. In 1590 the earl of Leicester procured the appointment of the master of the hospital in Warwich for him, and gave him a life annuity of 50 pounds.
In 1583 Elizabeth charged Whitgift, who had become the archbishop of Canterbury, to enforce the Act of Uniformity and thereby to restore in the church the discipline which she said the Puritans had destroyed.
Then ensued in England a tightening of church regulations by the crown, to the exclusion of all parliamentary proceedings that might be contrary, so as to cause Hume the historian to declare, “So absolute indeed was the
authority of the Crown that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone; and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution.”
A system of “metropolitan visitation” was carried out to see that the rules made by Whitgift and aimed against the Puritans were enforced. In
December, 1583, Whitgift established the court of high commission, whereby a man was made to tell what he knew of himself or anyone else.
This oath, called ex officio, could be administered to anyone without a charge accompanying it.
The commons, somewhat at variance with the queen, persisted in
considering bills bringing about changes in ecclesiastical laws. These efforts she stamped out vigorously.
The Puritans, having lost hopes of getting any help from the queen, began to set up their own organization, a “presbytery in episcopacy.” At no time did Cartwright wish to break with the church. Along with their private assemblies and their attempts at establishing church synods, they resorted to another means of propaganda, namely, pamphleteering.
The many hundreds of Nonconformist ministers who had been driven underground and denied the right of preaching began to send forth tracts and brochures, some with satire and bitter invective laying bare the evils of the Church of England.
Whitgift retaliated by gagging the press; no printing establishment could operate except under strict censorship. Undaunted, the press, too, went underground, and a greater flow of pamphlets ensued.
Foremost among the Puritan scribes was John Lidall, who died in prison for his defiance of the church. His Diotrephes, the forerunner of the famous Martin Marprelate series, made conversation everywhere.
Attack after attack upon the church followed in quick succession. When one press was seized, another in a distant place rolled off copies of another diatribe. Ridicule, banter, and satire, mingled with some sound theology, were the means Martin (a pen name) used to expose the abuses of the church. So well were these harangues written that, as one writer puts it, “Martin now sits among the classics.”
But the crown was determined to extirpate this heresy. Since Cartwright was under suspicion as having a part in the pamphleteering, the long arm of the law took him from his hospital at Warwick and in 1570 put him in Fleet prison in London. Here he, with his companions, including Lidall, remained for two years because of their refusal to take the oath ex officio.
But since he was a man of great influence he was finally released under bond to appear before the high commission when summoned, and under promise that he would conduct himself quietly and peaceably. Some of his companions ultimately yielded and revealed the names of others, a few remained in prison for many years before release came, and some were executed.
Thus ended the Puritan attempt at establishing a church organization within the Church of England. But as every child who has ever heard of Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims knows, it did not end their labors to obtain the right to worship according to the pristine pattern, freed from all frippery of Catholicism.
Cartwright returned to the Island of Guernsey and remained there from 1595 to 1598. He died at his home in Warwick in 1603, where he spent his last years regarded “as a patriarch by many.”