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William Stoughton developed the most complete and insightful version of classical republicanism that had yet appeared in England.
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William Stoughton developed the most complete and insightful version of classical republicanism that had yet appeared in England.
William Stoughton was the first student to matriculate to Christ Church, Oxford and then was elected to the Westminster School in 1561. He took his Bachelor of Arts in 1565, a Master of Arts in 1568, and supplicated for his Bachelor of Civil Law in November 1571. Moving to Leicestershire after receiving his Bachelor of Civil Law, he was probably a client of the Earl of Huntingdon. He probably knew Thomas Wood and Anthony Gilby, radical puritans who were friends of the Earl. "Stoughton operated as a radical puritan "mole" within the Court of Arches, using his position as lay commissary to protect his friends in the parish of Groby, a puritan hotbed and a peculiar jurisdiction of the Court of Arches, from scrutiny by more rigorous elements inside the court."
He sat in Parliament from 1584 to 1585 and took a role in leading religious agitation. His An abstract of certaine acts of parlement (1584) attacked episcopal pretensions, their civil functions and their seats in Parliament.
Stoughton also wrote An assertion for true and Christian church-policie (1604). After 40 years where the language of mixed government died out in political language and the thought of men, he revived the old Elizabethan debate and theory over the three estates.
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Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, was an English courtier and politician executed by Parliament after being captured fighting for the Royalists during the Second English Civil War. Younger brother of Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, a Puritan activist and commander of the Parliamentarian navy during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Henry was better known as an "extravagant, decorative, quarrelsome and highly successful courtier".
John Pym was a politician and administrator from London, generally seen as one of the founders of Parliamentary democracy in England. One of the Five Members whose attempted arrest in January 1642 sparked the First English Civil War, his use of procedure to outmanoeuvre opponents was unusual for the period and he was respected by contemporaries rather than admired. In 1895, the political historian Goldwin Smith described him as "the greatest member of Parliament that ever lived".
John Selden was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned men reputed in this land."
William Prynne, an English lawyer, voluble author, polemicist and political figure, was a prominent Puritan opponent of church policy under William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633–1645). His views were presbyterian, but he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for overall state control of religious matters.
Samuel Gorton (1593–1677) was an early settler and civic leader of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and President of the towns of Providence and Warwick. He had strong religious beliefs which differed from Puritan theology and was very outspoken, and he became the leader of a small sect known as Gortonians, Gortonists, or Gortonites. As a result, he was frequently in trouble with the civil and church authorities in the New England colonies.
William Stoughton was a New England Puritan magistrate and administrator in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was in charge of what have come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, first as the Chief Justice of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692, and then as the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693. In these trials he controversially accepted spectral evidence. Unlike some of the other magistrates, he never admitted to the possibility that his acceptance of such evidence was in error.
Theophilus Gale (1628–1678) was an English educationalist, nonconformist and theologian of dissent.
Knollys, Knolles or Knowles, the name of an English family descended from Sir Thomas Knollys, Lord Mayor of London, possibly a kinsman of the celebrated general Sir Robert Knolles. The next distinguished member of the family was Sir Francis Knollys or Knowles, English statesman, son of Sir Robert Knollys, or Knolles, a courtier in the service and favour of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Robert had also a younger son, Sir Henry, who took part in public life during the reign of Elizabeth I and who died in 1583. From the time of Sir Francis, the family were associated with Greys Court at Rotherfield Greys and Caversham Park, then in Oxfordshire, as well as the nearby town of Reading in Berkshire, where the family's private chapel could once be seen in the church of St Laurence. Lettice Knollys was pronounced the most prominent member of the family, from her birth in 1543 until her death in 1634
Sir Francis Knollys, KG of Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire was an English courtier in the service of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, and was a Member of Parliament for a number of constituencies.
David Lewis was a Welsh lawyer, judge, and the first Principal of Jesus College, Oxford.
Sir Francis Barrington, 1st Baronet of Barrington Hall, Essex was a Puritan activist and politician, who was MP for Essex from 1601 to 1604, then 1620 to 1628.
The reign of Elizabeth I of England, from 1558 to 1603, saw the start of the Puritan movement in England, its clash with the authorities of the Church of England, and its temporarily effective suppression as a political movement in the 1590s by judicial means. This led to the further alienation of Anglicans and Puritans from one another in the 17th century during the reign of King James (1603–1625) and the reign of King Charles I (1625–1649), that eventually brought about the English Civil War (1642–1651), the brief rule of the Puritan Lord Protector of England Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658), the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), and as a result the political, religious, and civil liberty that is celebrated today in all English speaking countries.
Under Charles I, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Catholic influence both at Court and within the Church.
John Udall (1560?–1592) was an English clergyman of Puritan views, closely associated with the publication of the Martin Marprelate tracts, and prosecuted for controversial works of a similar polemical nature. He has been called "one of the most fluent and learned of puritan controversialists".
Benjamin Valentine, was an English politician and Member of Parliament.
Sir Richard Lane, a.k.a. Edward Lane, was an English barrister who practised mostly in the Court of Exchequer. He acted as defence counsel to the Earl of Strafford when the Earl was impeached and attainted, and also represented Archbishop Williams and eleven other bishops who were imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1642.
Sir George Chudleigh, 1st Baronet, of Ashton, Devon, was an English landowner and politician, who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1601 and 1625. He had close family connections to a group of Devon Presbyterians, including Sir William Strode.
Sir Robert Gardiner was an English-born judge in Ireland who held the office of Lord Chief Justice of Ireland for eighteen years. In addition to his judicial duties he was a trusted political adviser to both Elizabeth I and James I. He sat in the English House of Commons in the short-lived Addled Parliament of 1614.
William Laud was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms; he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 and executed towards the end of the First English Civil War in January 1645.
Julines Herring (1582–1644/5) was a Puritan clergyman within the Church of England who served in Derbyshire and at Shrewsbury. Ejected from his positions for nonconformity, he became a minister serving the English-speaking community in the Netherlands. He was a staunch proponent of Presbyterianism and an opponent of separatism.
