In convertendo captivitatem Sion: giving thanks for the deliverance of Laudian Ireland

Let not the churches lie waste and in ruinous heaps, to the diminution of religion, and the reproach of the nation, lest the nations abroad say, that the Britons are a kind of Christians that have no churches; for churches, and courts of judicature, and the public defences of an imperial city, are res sacræ; they are venerable in law, and honourable in religion. 

So said Jeremy Taylor in a sermon to the Restoration Parliament of Ireland.  It provides some insight into the devastation inflicted upon the Church of Ireland during two decades of conflict, first at the hands of the Confederates in their 1641 rebellion, then through the dismantling of the Church by law established through the actions of Parliament and persecution under the Protectorate.  As John McCafferty has stated, the Church of Ireland was the "bright hope of Laudianism in the 1630s", with its revised Canons, adoption of the Articles of Religion, and a renewed commitment to conformity.  This was torn asunder in the 1640s and 1650s.  

If a date was to be chosen to mark beginning of "the late unhappy confusions", 23rd October 1641 would come to mind.  This was the beginning of the Confederate Rebellion, which - in the words of Boulton's famous study The Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland (1958) - "overwhelmed" the Church of Ireland.  Appropriately, therefore, the date would become in 1666 the occasion for an "Anniversary Thanksgiving" for the "most marvellous deliverance" of "the whole Church and State of this Realm".

The sense of deliverance from and renewal after deluge is palpable in contemporary accounts of the restoration of the Church of Ireland.  Consider Taylor's sermon at the funeral of Bramhall in 1663:

In convertendo captivitatem Sion: When King David and all his servants returned to Jerusalem, this great person having trode in the wine-press was called to drink of the Wine, and as an honorary Reward of his great ſervices and abilities was chosen Primate of this National Church: In which time we are to look upon him, as the King and the Kings great Vicegerent did, as a person concerning whose abilities the World had too great testimony ever to make a doubt.

Taylor went on to compare Bramhall's ministry as primate in the restored Church of Ireland to the ministry of Saint Patrick:

There are great things spoken of his predecessor S. Patrick, that he founded seven hundred churches and religious convents, that he ordained 5000 priests, and, with his own hands, consecrated three hundred and fifty bishops. How true the story is I know not; but we were all witnesses that the late Primate, whose memory we now celebrate, did by an extraordinary contingency of Providence in one day consecrate two Archbishops and ten Bishops; and did benefit to almost all the Churches in Ireland, and was greatly instrumental to the re-endowments of the whole Clergy; and in the greateſt abilities and incomparable industry was inferior to none of his most glorious ancestors.

Similarly, the sermon at Taylor's own funeral in 1667 celebrated deliverance and restoration:

By this time the wheel of Providence brought about the Kings happy Restoration, and there began a new World, and the Spirit of God mov'd upon the face of the Waters, and out of a confused Chaos brought forth Beauty and Order, and all the Three Nations were inspir'd with a new life, and became drunk with an excess of Joy: among the rest, this Loyal Subject went over to congratulate the Prince and People's happiness, and bear a part in the Universal Triumph.

It was not long ere his Sacred Majesty began the settlement of the Church, and the great Doctor Jeremy Taylor was resolv'd upon, for the Bishoprick of Down and Conor; and not long after, Dromore was added to it; and it was but reasonable that the King and Church should consider their Champion, and reward the pains and sufferings he under-went in the defence of their Cause and Honour. With what care and faithfulness he discharg'd his Office, we are all his witnesses.

What is more, the distinctly Laudian character of the delivered and restored Church of Ireland is equally palpable.  In his funeral sermon for Bramhall, Taylor celebrated his role in securing the adoption of the Articles of Religion, displacing the 1615 Irish Articles:

he was careful, and he was prosperous in it, to reduce that divine and excellent service of our church to public and constant exercise, to unity and devotion; and to cause the articles of the church of England to be accepted as the rule of public confessions and persuasions here, that they and we might be ... of one heart and one lip, building up our hopes of heaven on a most holy faith; and taking away that Shibboleth which made this church lisp too undecently, or rather, in some little degree, to speak the speech of Ashdod, and not the language of Canaan; and the excellent and wise pains he took in this particular no man can dehonestate or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess, that the church of England is the best reformed church in the world.

Taylor's sermon at the mass consecration of Irish archbishops and bishops in January 1661 was a celebration of the restoration of episcopacy in Laudian of terms:

no wise or good man professing to be a Christian, that is, to believe the holy Catholick Church, can be content to quit the Apostolical Government; (that by which the whole Family of God was fed, and taught and rul'd,) and beget to himself new Fathers and new Apostles, who by wanting Succession from the Apostles of our Lord, have no Ecclesiastical and Derivative communion with the fountains of our Saviour ... Bishops are the Successors of the Apostles in this Stewardship; and that they did always rule the Family, was taught and acknowledged always, and every where, and by all men that were of the Church of God.

The implications of this account of episcopal order were explicitly stated by Taylor in advanced Laudian fashion:

As Bishops were the first Fathers of Churches, and gave them being: so they preserve them in being. For without Sacraments there is no Church; or it will be starv'd and die: and without Bishops there can be no Priests, and consequently no Sacraments.

Articles of Religion, episcopacy, and then - the third leg of the Laudian stool - liturgy. The sermon which opened the Irish Convocation of 1660 offered a typically Laudian defence of the Book of Common Prayer:

The mediate acts of the Spirit are no less the Spirits acts, than his miraculous ... Now thus he may pray by the Spirit, that prays by a Form ... This way is better for us ... Tis more orderly ... The first ages after the true gifts vanished were so pestered with the putative ones, that they were feign to reduce things to a common standard, rather than let every man measure according to his private bushel; from whence proceeded these cause of new prayers and Psalms that every day flies from the furnace of private brains, therefore the Church appoints that the same Prayers be made at Morning and Evening.

In his primary visitation of Down and Connor, Taylor restored the Laudian vision of Common Prayer:

Every Minister is oblig'd publickly or privately to read the Common Prayers every day in the week, at Morning and Evening; and in great Towns and populous places conveniently inhabited, it must be read in Churches, that the daily sacrifice of Prayer and Thanksgiving may never cease.

The "Anniversary Thanksgiving" of 23rd October, then, was a thanksgiving for the deliverance of Laudian Ireland and for the restoration of a Laudian national Church.  As such, it has an enduring relevance.  In the words of Boulton:

The Caroline tradition, little disturbed by the non-juring movement, was overwhelmed neither by ... Whiggish Latitudinarianism ... nor the Church Temporalities Act of 1833 ... nor by the Irish Church Act of 1869 ... nor by the subsequent revision of the Prayer Book and Canons.

Indeed, the 1870 Declaration of the Church of Ireland stands as an expression of a Laudian national Church, Catholic and Reformed, defined by Articles, Prayer Book, and Ordinal.  As such, 23rd October recalls a vision of Anglicanism which can continue to have contemporary meaning, coherence, and attraction, offering an alternative to the neo-Puritan rejection of basic Anglican practices and order, the theological emptiness of a latter-day Latitudinarianism, and - to quote Boulton - "that curious species of Churchmanship sometimes found outside Ireland which tends to take over the whole current Roman system except the Papal Infallibility and the Papal condemnation of Anglican orders".