The vision glorious: Laudians and the Royal Supremacy

There is much to welcome in Francis Young's recent post 'Exploring the political complexity of Laudianism'.  It takes Laudianism seriously, recognises that it was not a monolithic movement, and concludes that it "certainly cannot be equated with the Oxford Movement or Anglo-Catholicism (the greatest misappropriation of all, which would require a separate exploration)".  I do think, however, that questions should be asked in two areas.  The second concerns Anglican political theology in the 18th century and I will explore this in a post tomorrow. 

Today's post addresses the suggestion that Laudianism contained "a germ of ecclesio-political radicalism that saw the church as independent of the state".  Almost immediately we can suggest that this risks another "misappropriation", this time by the Non-Jurors, a misappropriation no less ahistorical than that proposed by the Tractarians.  Peter Heylyn is invoked as a rather surprising example of such "ecclesio-political radicalism", with particular focus on his Ecclesia Vindicata; or, the Church of England Justified (1657).  Heylyn's work is presented as an overture to the Cromwellian regime, with not insignificant results for the author:

Peter Heylyn’s dallying with the Cromwellian regime does not seem to have been forgotten, since although Heylyn was restored to his benefices and, as Sub-Dean of Windsor, he presented the sceptre to Charles II at his coronation, Heylyn received no further preferment after the Restoration.

Omitted from this description is the fact that Heylyn was partially blind by the time of the Restoration and that he died in 1662.  Any suggestion that he was prepared to collude with the Cromwellian order is difficult to reconcile with the wording of his memorial in Westminster Abbey:

he shewed himself a strict asserter of the church and monarchy, no less in their afflicted than flourishing estate.

More significantly, Heylyn's earlier works also suggest that he was an exponent of the very 'Carolinism' that stood apart from the alleged "ecclesio-political radicalism" to be seen amongst advanced Laudianism.  As Young notes, 'Carolinism' is the term used by Julian Davies to describe the policies implemented by Laud.  This also reflects Kevin Sharpe's interpretation in The Personal Rule of Charles I: "the history of the church in the 1630s was written around the king's own preferences and concerns".  Similarly, John McCafferty has described Charles's vision for the Irish and Scottish churches as "centred on a royal, not Canterburian, supremacy".

Heylyn's works point to him as an enthusiastic supporter of this vision.  In Antidotum Lincolniense (a 1637 polemical engagement in the 'altar controversy'), Heylyn chastised his Puritan opponent for challenging "most ignorantly and most derogatorily ... his Majesties right of just prerogative" in matters ecclesiastical, limiting the monarch's power:

you draw a ring about him with your willow scepter, as if you meant to conjure him into a circle, and so keepe him there.

"Supreme power in Ecclesiasticis", Heylyn insists, "is invested in the King":

regall decisions in this kind, are like the ruled cases ... in the Common Law.

All this sits rather uneasily beside Young's assertion that "Heylyn is, in fact, the perfect example of a Laudian so advanced in his views on the supremacy of the church that he was noncommittal in his attitude towards monarchy". Rather than somehow being a proponent of "ecclesio-political radicalism", asserting the rights of the Church over and against the Crown, we have good reason to understand Heylyn as illustrative of the much more common-place, conventional Laudian support for and allegiance to the Royal Supremacy as doctrine, not a mere "contingent marriage of bedfellows".

Jeremy Taylor's doctrinal exposition, in Ductor dubitantium, of the Crown's ecclesiastical power highlights the extent to which it is misleading to suggest that Laudians viewed the Royal Supremacy as a helpful contingent, pragmatic arrangement rather than a doctrinal recognition of God-given order:

God hath given to Princes a supreme power for the ordering of religion in order to the common-wealth, without which it had not had sufficient power to preserve it self; but he hath not given to Ecclesiastics a power over Princes in matter of government in order to spiritual things.

While it is right that kings seek the counsel of bishops regarding the peace and order of the Church, this does not require a king to accept such counsel:

So that when it is said that Princes are to govern their Churches by the consent and advice of their Bishops, it is meant not de jure stricto, but de bono & laudabili.

What is more, in this understanding of the Royal Supremacy the ecclesia Anglicana stands against the clericalist pretensions of Rome and Geneva:

This I observe now in opposition to those bold pretences of the Court of Rome, and of the Presbytery, that esteem Princes bound to execute their decrees, and account them but great ministers and servants of their sentences ... the supreme judgment and the last resort is to the Prince, not to his Clercs.

We might then suggest that the use of the term 'Laudian' to describe an ecclesio-political stance which advocated the Church's supremacy over or independence from the magistrate is deeply inaccurate.  The Royal Supremacy and the Crown's ecclesiastical power were not optional extras for Laudianism, they were integral to it.  As Iain M. MacKenzie stated in his excellent God's Order and Natural Law: The Works of the Laudian Divines (2002):

In the Laudian view, the place and standing of the monarch, in the ordering of Christ, through the enabling of the Spirit, in the decree of the Father, is to uphold and order that oikonomia of God, the only sure foundation of man and states.  That is to say, these divines saw monarchy as bound inseparably to Common Law and Natural Law, as their advocate and defender.

Inevitably, the assertion that the Royal Supremacy was integral to Laudianism raises questions for those of us who identify with Laudianism in a secular age.  It is not an invitation to either reactionary fantasies or ecclesiastical historical re-enactment.  The historic Laudian vision of the Royal Supremacy was an expression of what John Hughes described as "Anglicanism as Integral Humanism", "a sense of all creation being in God and God being in all creation, through Christ".  The Royal Supremacy was one of those "concrete material practices" which embodied this vision of all things "flowing from and to him, who is the Alpha and Omega of all things".  In a different political, cultural, and social context, a contemporary Laudianism will seek other practices to give expression to such an integral humanism.

This also highlights the rather different theology to which contemporary expressions of suggested "ecclesio-political radicalism" may give rise.  Invoking 17th and 18th century Anglican examples of advocates of the Church's independence from the Crown, culminating in the Non-Juror tradition, often tends to reflect the sectarian marginalisation that characterised the Non-Jurors.  Portraying such outcomes as a bold counter-cultural witness to give inspiration to 21st century Anglicans is, unfortunately, to encourage those contemporary theologies which actively welcome sectarian marginalisation and cultural irrelevance, a stance which runs counter to the historic piety, practices, and sensibility of Anglicanism as non-dualist "Integral Humanism". 

Rather than being an out-dated, irrelevant, reactionary stance, to be disregarded in favour of those who pursued a sectarian ecclesial identity, the Laudian understanding of the Royal Supremacy sets before us the vision glorious of the Church's proclamation, of God gathering "together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth".