Arminianism in the Localities: Peterborough Diocese, 1603–1642

Abstract

Religion is once more regarded by historians as a direct cause of the Civil War. It is the Arminians and their leader, William Laud, who are now portrayed as the revolutionary element, not the puritans. By means of the support of their royal sponsor, Charles I, this clique of theological innovators was able to stage an ecclesiastical coup after 1625, the success of which outlawed Calvinist theology, the previous orthodoxy, and paved the way for a wholesale reorientation of the liturgy and ecclesiology of the Church of England in the 1630s. This ‘revolution’ provoked a conservative, puritan backlash in the 1640s which resulted in the disestablishment of the Church altogether. The impression received from such accounts is that the religious causes of the Civil War can be traced back only as far as the beginning of Charles I’s reign. In contrast, James I’s reign is portrayed as a period of consensus on Calvinist predestinarian theology and of relative ecclesiastical peace, largely free of the controversies which were to occur in his son’s reign. The outbreak of these disputes is explained solely in terms of Charles’s political decision to support Arminianism. The prehistory of Arminianism remains rather obscure, which might lead to the conclusion that Arminian views appeared from nowhere in the 1620s after being previously held only by one or two bishops and university dons.¹