The Great Ejection followed the Act of Uniformity 1662 in England. Several thousand Puritan ministers were forced out of their positions in the Church of England following the Restoration of Charles II. It was a consequence (not necessarily an intended one) of the Savoy Conference of 1661. [1]
The Act of Uniformity prescribed that any minister who refused to conform to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer by St Bartholomew's Day (24 August) 1662 should be ejected from the Church of England. This date became known as "Black Bartholomew's Day" among Dissenters, a reference to the fact that it occurred on the same day as the 1572 St Bartholomew's Day massacre of French Protestants. Oliver Heywood estimated the number of ministers ejected at 2,500. [2] This included James Ashurst, Richard Baxter, Edmund Calamy the Elder, Simeon Ashe, Thomas Case, John Flavel, William Jenkyn, Joseph Caryl, Benjamin Needler, Thomas Brooks, Thomas Manton, William Sclater, Thomas Doolittle, and Thomas Watson. Biographical details of ejected ministers were later collected by the historian Edmund Calamy, grandson of Calamy the elder.
Although there had already been ministers outside the established church, the Great Ejection created an abiding concept of Nonconformity. Strict religious tests of the Clarendon Code and other Penal Laws left a substantial section of English society excluded from public affairs and university degrees for a century and a half.
The bicentennial in 1862 led to a sharp debate, with the Nonconformist agenda being questioned, and the account in Calamy being reviewed. [4]
Iain Murray argues that the issue was deeper than "phrases in the Book of Common Prayer and forms of church order," but regarded the "nature of true Christianity". [5]
The Memorial Hall on Albert Square, Manchester and the Congregational Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London, were built to commemorate the bicentennial of the Great Ejection.
The Bishop of Liverpool, J. C. Ryle (1816–1900), referred to the Ejection as an "injury to the cause of true religion in England which will probably never be repaired". [6]
A Service of Reconciliation was held at Westminster Abbey on 7 February 2012 to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Ejection. Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, preached at the service which was attended by clergy and laity of the Church of England and the United Reformed Church. [7]
Isaac Ambrose was an English Puritan divine. He graduated with a BA. from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 1624. He obtained the curacy of St Edmund’s Church, Castleton, Derbyshire, in 1627. He was one of king's four preachers in Lancashire in 1631. He was twice imprisoned by commissioners of array. He worked for the establishment of Presbyterianism; successively at Leeds, Preston, and Garstang, whence he was ejected for nonconformity in 1662. He also published religious works.
The Act of Uniformity 1662 is an Act of the Parliament of England. It prescribed the form of public prayers, administration of sacraments, and other rites of the Established Church of England, according to the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Adherence to this was required in order to hold any office in government or the church, although the new version of the Book of Common Prayer prescribed by the Act was so new that most people had never even seen a copy. The Act also required that the Book of Common Prayer "be truly and exactly Translated into the British or Welsh Tongue". It also explicitly required episcopal ordination for all ministers, i.e. deacons, priests and bishops, which had to be reintroduced since the Puritans had abolished many features of the Church during the Civil War. The act did not explicitly encompass the Isle of Man.
Edmund Calamy was an English Presbyterian church leader and divine. Known as "the elder", he was the first of four generations of nonconformist ministers bearing the same name.
The Savoy Conference of 1661 was a significant liturgical discussion that took place, after the Restoration of Charles II, in an attempt to effect a reconciliation within the Church of England.
Edmund Calamy was an English Nonconformist churchman and historian.
James Janeway (1636–1674) was a Puritan minister and author who, after John Bunyan, had the widest and longest popularity as the author of works read by English-speaking children.
Francis Tallents (1619–1708) was a non-conforming English Presbyterian clergyman.
Thomas Hall (1610–1665) was an English clergyman and ejected minister.
Presbyterianism in England is practised by followers of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism who practise the Presbyterian form of church government. Dating in England as a movement from 1588, it is distinct from Continental and Scottish forms of Presbyterianism. The Unitarian historian Alexander Gordon (1841–1931) stated that, whereas in Scotland, church government is based on a meeting of delegates, in England the individual congregation is the primary body of government. This was the practice in Gordon's day, however, most of the sixteenth and seventeenth century English theoreticians of Presbyterianism, such as Thomas Cartwright, John Paget, the Westminster Assembly of Divines and the London Provincial Assembly, envisaged a Presbyterian system composed of congregations, classes and synods. Historically Presbyterians in England were subsumed into the United Reformed Church in 1972. In more recent years the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales and the International Presbyterian Church have seen modest growth in England.
From 1649 to 1660, Puritans in the Commonwealth of England were allied to the state power held by the military regime, headed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell until he died in 1658. They broke into numerous sects, of which the Presbyterian group comprised most of the clergy, but was deficient in political power since Cromwell's sympathies were with the Independents. During this period, the term "Puritan" becomes largely moot, therefore, in British terms, though the situation in New England was very different. After the English Restoration, the Savoy Conference and Uniformity Act 1662 and Great Ejection drove most of the Puritan ministers from the Church of England, and the outlines of the Puritan movement changed over a few decades into the collections of Presbyterian and Congregational churches, operating as they could as Dissenters under changing regimes.
John Quick was an English nonconformist divine.
Matthew Mead or Meade was an English Independent minister.
The Church of St John the Baptist, Bromsgrove is a Grade I listed parish church in the Church of England in Bromsgrove.
Nathaniel Mather was an Independent minister.
Samuel Mather (1626–1671) was an Independent minister. Born in England, he went with his family while still young to New England. He returned to England under the Commonwealth, went to Scotland after a period at Oxford, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. After 1662 he was a nonconformist minister in Ireland.
John Collins was an English Independent minister.
Joseph Bennet (1629–1707) was a nonconformist minister in the southern English country of Sussex. He acquired a reputation as a powerful preacher.
Robert Pierson was rector of St Mary's, Oldswinford, Worcestershire.
Thomas Calvert (1606–1679) was an English Nonconformist divine in Derbyshire and York.
Ichabod Chaunc(e)y, (1635–1691) was an English physician and nonconformist divine. He was an army chaplain at Dunkirk before 1660, beneficed in Bristol, ejected from his living for nonconformity in 1662, and practised medicine at Bristol from 1662 to 1684. He was banished from England for nonconformity and other offences in 1684, and returned to Bristol in 1686.