"Published by authority": the Laudian defence of the Homilies

The Homilies were intended to provide churchgoers with teaching about what the Church of England stood for and why it had embraced the Reformation.

So says Gerald Bray on the website of the conservative evangelical Church Society.  From a rather different perspective, Eamon Duffy agrees.  The Edwardine and Elizabethan Homilies were a part of "the attack on traditional religion, "a relentless torrent" of Protestant "polemic".

All this, of course, is standard stuff.  The Homilies are obviously thoroughly Protestant and Reformed. They were also thoroughly Conformist, in content and form.  In content, they reflected the Conformist vision of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana defined by the parish church, common prayer, and Royal Supremacy. In form, they sustained Conformist practice, enabling the humble parson and the lowly curate, when not licensed to preach, to yet fulfil their calling to "preach the Word of God" through the reading of the Homilies.

The Homilies, then, gave expression to what we might call Prayer Book Protestantism.

This explains the Puritan hostility towards the Homilies.  The 1572 An Admonition to Parliament condemned them as "too homely", itself a rather appropriate description of the Conformist ethos.  The Admonition also highlighted the use of the Apocrypha in the Homilies, something to which Thomas Cartwright also drew attention when he urged "Neither the homilies nor the Apocrypha are at all to be read in the Church". 

Against this Hooker presented the reading of these "plain and popular instructions" (LEP V.22.14) as another form of the 'readings' (alongside Scripture and Common Prayer) which nurtured and formed the parish.  Whereas the Admonition wanted preaching that would "decide controversies" - stoking division and controversy in church and commonwealth - Hooker celebrated the 'homely' nature of the Homilies as a means of teaching parishioners:

concerning matter of belief and conversation [which] seek to lay before them the duties which they owe unto God and man (V.22.20).

Which brings us to Laudian support for the Homilies and the significance of such support.  Laudian bishops consistently enforced the requirement that each parish owned the Book of Homilies and that clergy not licensed to preach should read from the Homilies in place of a sermon.  Laud himself, in his 1635 Visitation Articles, makes clear the normal, routine use of the Homilies in the life of the parish:

doth [the minister] or his curate upon every Sunday, when there is no sermon, read an homily, or some part thereof, according as he ought to do? ... during the time of Divine Service or sermon, or reading the homilies in the forenoon or afternoon, upon those days.

In 1628, bishop of Chichester and Laudian controversialist Richard Montagu asked in his primary Visitation: 

Whether have you in your Church, the whole Bible of the largest volume, and last Translation, the Book of common Prayer: the two Books of Homilies?

Doth your Minister upon every Sunday when there is no sermon, read an Homily, or some part thereof?

The robustly Laudian Wren similarly required possession and use of the Homilies in his 1636 Visitation of the Diocese of Norwich:

Have you in your Church or Chapel, the whole Bible in the largest Volume, of the last translation, the Book of Common Prayer, the two books of Homilies, and Bishop Jewel's Apology, all well and fairly bound?

And if [your minister] be not a licensed Preacher, doth he take upon him in his own Cure, or elsewhere, to expound any Scripture or matter of Doctrine, or doth he keep himself only to the reading of Homilies published by authority ... And doth he or his Curate upon every Sunday when there is no Sermon, read some one of the Homilies prescribed by authority.

The 1634 Canons of the Church of Ireland - a Laudian project, contributing to a reform of the Church of Ireland embodying what John McCafferty has described as one of "the most radical aspects of the Laudian vision" - also required use of the Homilies:

And upon every Sunday, when there shall not be a Sermon preached in his Cure, [the incumbent] or his Curate shall read one of the Homilies prescribed by Authority.

After the Restoration and the Laudian triumph with the 1662 Act of Uniformity, the same insistence on the place of the Homilies continues.  Cosin, in his 1662 Visitation Articles, required possession of the Book of Homilies and their use in the absence of a licence to preach:

Have you likewise a book of the Sermons, or Homilies, that were set forth in the time of King Edward VI., and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, together with the works of Bishop Jewell in defence of the Church of England, which King James commanded to be had in all Churches ... And, if there be no such sermon preached, doth he, his substitute, or Curate, read one of the Sermons or Homilies appointed by public authority for such several times and occasions? 

Jeremy Taylor, in his 1661 Visitation of Down and Connor, placed "the Homilies of the Church" amongst the texts required to nurture and foster a vibrant Conformity:

Every Minister ought to be well skill'd and studied in saying his Office, in the Rubricks, the Canons, the Articles, and the Homilies of the Church, that he may do his duty readily, discreetly, gravely, and by the publick measures of the Laws.

What does this explicit support for the Homilies mean for our understanding of Laudianism?  

To begin with, it clearly exposes the notion - still found in serious commentary - that the Laudians sought to 'undo the Reformation' as undiluted nonsense.  Leave aside the Laudian defence of standard Reformation teaching in dialogue with Roman apologists.  Leave aside the Laudian insistence on subscription to the Articles, a definitively Reformed confession of Faith.  Leave aside the Laudian commitment to the Royal Supremacy - a cornerstone of the Reformation of the Church - against the papal supremacy.  When we come to the Homilies, with their uncompromisingly Protestant doctrinal commitments, the Laudian insistence on their place and use with the life of the Church should leave us in no doubt of Laudianism's Reformed and Protestant identity.

It also points to Laudianism not as an innovation but, rather, as a continuation of the Conformist defence of the Elizabethan Settlement.  The Homilies reflected the Settlement, with their combination of doctrinal Protestantism and Conformist piety.   We might even say that considering their use by parsons and curates not licensed to preach, the manner in which (to quote the Elizabethan Injunctions) they had a focus on "charity, the knot of all Christian society" and avoided "all vain and contentious disputations in matters of religion", and (as Hooker indicated) the understanding of formation through public 'reading' which they shared with the Book of Common Prayer, the Homilies particularly embodied the Elizabethan Settlement.  In their defence of the Homilies the Laudian bishops were defending a key expression of the Settlement.

This defence of the Homilies becomes, then, an important indicator of the meaning and identity of Laudianism.  To set Laudianism against the Elizabethan Settlement and against the Protestant nature of the Church is to entirely ignore how Laudians maintained the Homilies, a key Protestant text, as an integral and authoritative aspect of Conformity. 

(The first illustration is from @yunghic1, based on the title page of the Puritan polemic A Decade of Grievances, published in 1641.  The second is the title page of an edition of the Book of Homilies published by royal authority in 1683, during the High Church dominance of the post-Restoration, pre-Revolution Church of England.)