The Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, which set the tone for English religious policy until the rise of Laudianism, was theologically a mixture of Lutheranism, some pre-council of Trent Catholic doctrines, and some minor elements from Calvinism. The doctrine of predestination was to be handled with care at a parish level in order to offset despair and the ensuing disobedience. The seventeenth of the Thirty-Nine Articles sets out a doctrine of predestination to life, in Christ, as one of the founding principles of the English Church and omits reference to reprobation. “Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise as they be generally set forth in holy Scripture; and in our doings that will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared to us in the word of God.” The word generally is in the Latin generaliter, which means not usually, but universally[4][5][6], and Article 31 says "Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual"[7]
Building on this, Laudianism is based in the universality and objectivity of God's grace through the Sacraments, the universal atonement and the free will of all men to obtain salvation in Christ's Church through the Sacraments as means of grace thus, various Reformed theories of predestination were rejected, and predestination was based on God's promise to the Church as the Ark of Salvation in Ecclesiastical Election.
This is significant since one of the main points of Calvinism is the replacement of the teaching that salvation necessarily came from the Church through the Sacraments, but rather came through the individual, and Unconditional election of God, which could not be forfeited.
However, Roman Catholic practices condemned in the 39 Articles, such as the Intercession of saints, Eucharistic adoration, Icon Veneration, and prayers for the dead, were rejected, as were the Roman doctrines concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass.[9] Rather, at the Offertory, the people’s alms are received, and the bread and wine, the Church’s oblations, are set upon the holy table and offered to God with thanksgiving. This constitutes the Church’s “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” together with the self-offering of the faithful (“ourselves, our souls and bodies”), not a propitiatory “sacrifice of the Mass” in which Christ is offered anew; rather, it is a thankful memorial and participation in the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice of Christ once for all upon the Cross.[10][11][12] Laudianism was just as opposed to the "Papists" as the Puritans.[9]
Scripture is the highest and final authority, but scripture also included the Deuterocanon, which in the Books of Homilies, are called Holy Scripture and the Word of God. Article VI's teaching was understood in the positive sense as teaching that the books are not to be used to establish any doctrine contrary to the protocanonical books, rather than the negative sense of not being used at all to establish doctrine.[13] The bare reading of Scripture was exalted over the sermon.[14][15]
The Sacraments are emphasized as means of Grace open to all who confess their sins and truly repent[16][17], and Baptism and Communion were raised over the preaching of sermons.[18][19] Personal holiness and the necessity of good works, without any merit, for final salvation are emphasized and taught[20], and the Daily Office was encouraged[21][22], with Holy Communion, or at the least Ante-Communion, on all Sundays and Holy Days as the Rubrics required.[23][24]
Subjective means of determining one's state with God or one's vocation were rejected in favor of objective means, and emotionalism and other forms of Enthusiasm were not to be trusted.[25][26]
The political theology of Laudianism was the Divine right of kings and that power flows from God down to the King, not from the people up to the King[27]. Laud himself asserted the jure divino standing of bishops.[28][29] Those who followed it were called Cavaliers and it later became the Tory movement. [30][31]
Practice & Ceremony
The "Beauty of Holiness" in aesthetics was emphasized against the low church practice of the Calvinists.[32][33] The services were later referred to as high and dry.[34][note 1]
Images were allowed for instruction, decoration, and commemoration, so long as they were not venerated or worshiped.[35][36][37][38]
The ceremony is plain but reverent: incense is burned, yet there is no censing;[note 2][39] the people bow at the Holy Name of Jesus, and likewise at the altar and at the “Glory be.”[40][41][42] The Creed is said while facing east.[43] The celebration of Holy Communion is celebrated at the north end of the holy table,[44] with two candles upon the altar and a cross or crucifix set centrally.[45][46][47] The sign of the cross is used both large, for blessings and absolution, and small, at the Gospel.[48][49]
Vesture is the cassock with white surplice; over this, the priest wears the black tippet with the academical hood proper to his degree or office. At the Holy Communion, over this, the cope is worn.[50][51]
Laudianism & Puritan Calvinism
Unconditional election was the unifying feature of the Continental Reformed Churches, and the Puritans of all types. The rejection and suppression of this view of election led to deep friction within the Church of England between the Anglican and Puritan parties.
In addition, Archbishop Laud disagreed with the views of his predecessors, such as John Whitgift, that the Puritan Calvinists were aberrant brethren, erring but deserving some level of leniency; instead he believed that the Puritan non-conformists presented a direct threat to the establishment and that there was more common ground between Anglicanism and Lutheranism or even that of the pre-ReformedRoman 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". [52]
After the Anglican Archbishop William Laud made a statute in 1636 instructing all clergy to wear short hair, many Puritans rebelled to show their contempt for his authority and began to grow their hair even longer their portraits)[53]
These conflicts exacerbated the deep polarization within the Church of England, to the extent that Anglicans and Puritans could no longer be united in one church, which ultimaty led to the Great Ejection. [7]
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.[54] Indeed, James reacted to this episode by moving his support to anti-Calvinist churchmen such as Lancelot Andrewes at Winchester dioceses and Montaigne at London dioceses, 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. 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 Calvinism 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 the dioceses of Gloucester.[55]
In the 1630s, Laud declared that "the altar is the greatest place of God's residence upon earth, greater than the pulpit for there it is 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."[55] 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.
The visual emphasis that this placed on the Real Presence and the Eucharist aligned with Lutheran practice and deemphasized the Calvinist practice of having the pulpit at the centre, which emphasized preaching. Copes were worn as vestments over the surplice and tippet.
Laud was concerned with conformity in the Church and the Puritans who did not follow the services as written in the Liturgy found in the Book of Common Prayer were labeled Nonconformists.
Laudianism and the English Civil War
The 1630s saw deepening polarization of religious opinion influenced by reactions to tracts, sermons and lobbying. The religious changes Laud and King Charles tried to implement in Scotland culminating with the Prayer Book of 1637 which was produced under Laud for Scotland led to the formation of the Puritan Covenanters and the start of the Bishops' Wars
After the 1640s, King Charles and any of the Cavaliers who supported him, found themselves under attack from the Roundheads. More books were published by Puritans attacking the Divine right of Kings, the most well known of which is Lex, Rex. Furthermore attacks on the episcopacy increased as both issues were linked, because in the 17th century 'true religion' and 'good government' were seen as mutually dependent. In general, Laudian Royalists supported a Church of England governed by bishops, appointed by, and answerable to, the king, while most Parliamentarians were Puritans and believed he was answerable to the leaders of the church, appointed by their congregations, or to the congregations themselves.[56]
One reason was that bishops held a variety of non-religious roles which impacted all levels of society; they acted as state censors, who were able to ban sermons and writings, while ordinary people could be tried by church courts for crimes including blasphemy, heresy, fornication and other 'sins of the flesh', as well as matrimonial or inheritance disputes. [57] As members of the House of Lords, bishops often blocked legislation opposed by the Crown; their ousting from Parliament by the Clergy Act 1640 was a major step on the road to war, since it meant Charles could no longer prevent passage of legislation that he opposed.[58]
Their removal temporarily ended censorship, and especially in London led to an explosion in the printing of pamphlets, books and sermons, many advocating radical religious and political ideas, like doing away with Bishops in favor of a Congregationalist or Presbyterian form of Church Polity.[59]
The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiasticall were passed by the 1640 Convocation and they included as Canon VI, a pledge to uphold episcopacy and the current Anglican hierarchy.[60]
During the First English Civil War Priests and bishops who had gathered in Convocation to draft the canons of 1640, within months, were unable to enforce them.[61] By December 1640 thirteen bishops had been impeached, with another dozen having followed them by December 1641.[62] Within eight weeks of the opening of Parliament, the Houses were calling not for the restoration of the Anglican church, but the abolition of the entire ecclesiastical order and its reconstruction in a Puritan mold.[63]
The re-establishment of the Anglican Church, would not occur until the Restoration in 1660 when William Juxon, who gave King Charles I his last rites, was made Archbishop of Canterbury.
↑ "High and Dry". Episcopal Church Glossary. The Episcopal Church. Retrieved 2025-09-01. — “High and dry” is a later descriptive label for non-ritualist High Churchmanship.
↑ Tomline, George (1843). "Article XVII. Of Predestination and Election". In Stebbing, Henry (ed.). Elements of Christian Theology. Vol.2 (14thed.). London: C. & J. Rivington. Retrieved 2025-09-01.
↑ "Original 1662 BCP rubrics (Holy Communion)". BCP Resources (Project Canterbury). Retrieved 2025-09-01. …the Priest shall then place upon the Table so much Bread and Wine as he shall think sufficient.
↑ Daubney, William (1873). The Use of the Apocrypha in the Christian Church (1sted.). Cambridge University Press. p.63-94.
↑ Hooker, Richard (1888). "Book V, ch. xxii, §4". In Keble, John (ed.). Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity(PDF). Vol.2 (7thed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 2025-09-01.
↑ Hooker, Richard (1888). "Book V, ch. xxii, §10". In Keble, John (ed.). Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity(PDF). Vol.2 (7thed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 2025-09-01.
↑ Hooker, Richard (1888). "Book V". In Keble, John (ed.). Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Vol.2 (7thed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
↑ "Hooker, Laws, Book V, ch. xxii, §10". Retrieved 2025-09-01. As for our sermons, be they never so sound and perfect, his word they are not as the readings of the Scripture are.
↑ Lake, Peter (2023). "16, "The Altar and Visible Succession"". On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics during the Personal Rule of Charles I. Cambridge University Press.
↑ Lake, Peter (2023). "31, "Effort without Merit, Reward without Desert"". On Laudianism. Cambridge University Press.
↑ "Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical (1604)". Retrieved 2025-09-01. The Common Prayer shall be said or sung… upon such days as are appointed…; …upon Wednesdays and Fridays weekly… the Minister… shall say the Litany…
↑ "The Lord's Supper or Holy Communion (1662)". Church of England. Retrieved 2025-09-01. Upon the Sundays and other Holy-days (if there be no Communion) shall be said all that is appointed at the Communion, until the end of the general Prayer…
↑ Lake, Peter (1993). "The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s". In Fincham, Kenneth (ed.). The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642. Palgrave Macmillan. pp.161–185. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-22771-6_8. Retrieved 2025-09-01.
↑ "Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical (1604), Canon LXXXII". British History Online. Retrieved 2025-09-01. "The Ten Commandments be set upon the east end of every Church and Chapel where the people may best see and read the same; and other chosen sentences of Holy Scripture be written upon the walls…"
↑ Fincham, Kenneth; Nicholas Tyacke (2007). "The Beauty of Holiness, 1625–1640". Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2025-09-01. Notes Laudian beautification of churches, including furnishings, stained glass and monuments, within a non-idolatrous framework.
↑ Hutton, Ronald (2003). The Royalist War Effort 1642–1646. Routledge. ISBN978-0-4153-0540-2.
↑ Wedgwood, C.V. (1958). The King's War, 1641–1647 (1983ed.). Penguin Classics. ISBN978-0-1400-6991-4.{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Hunt, John (2010) [1870]. Religious Thought in England, from the Reformation to the End of Last Century; A Contribution to the History of Theology. Vol.2. General Books LLC. p.5. ISBN978-1-150-98096-1.
Marsh, Bethany (2020). "A War of Words; politics, propaganda and censorship during the Civil Wars". History Today. 70 (B).
Tyacke, Nicholas (1990). "Arminianism during the Personal Rule and after'". Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590-1640. Oxford Historical Monographs.
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