The contours of Conformity, 1662-1832

One of the most interesting recent developments in Anglican historiography has been a series of studies demonstrating the vitality of the Reformed tradition in the post-1660 Church of England. The works of Stephen Hampton have, of course, initiated this. His Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (2008) pointed to "the consistency and resilience of the Reformed tradition within the Church of England into the Hanoverian age". In Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England (2021), Hampton sought to show the continuity of the post-1660 Reformed tradition with that of the pre-1640s. 

Jake Griesel in Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity: John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart Church (2022) followed on from Hampton's Anti-Arminians, showing Edwards as an embodiment of the vitality and influence of the post-1660 Reformed tradition. In contrast to the dynamism of the Reformed, Samuel Fornecker in Bisschop's Bench: Contours of Arminian Conformity in the Church of England, c.1674-1742 (2022) suggests that "there are good reasons to doubt that 'Arminian conformity' ever constituted a collective identity in terms quite as straightforward as those of Stephen Hampton's 'Reformed conformity'". 

Taken together, these studies offer an attractive interpretation which, I think, importantly restates the presence of a Reformed tradition in the Restoration Church of England.  That said, I do, however, have serious reservations.  I am unconvinced that the 'Reformed Conformists' were as distinctive and coherent as Hampton proposes, both before 1642 and after 1660. Fornecker's conclusion that "the Church of England's 'Calvinist consensus'" extended significantly after 1660 I find entirely unpersuasive. The diversities Fornecker rightly sees within Arminian conformity were also very evident in Reformed conformity. 

My most significant reservation, however, concerns the doctrinal focus of this new interpretation.  To put it in what are rather simplistic terms, I think the emphasis is placed on the wrong words: Reformed conformity, Arminian conformity. Of more significance and influence is the other word, conformity. It was conformity which defined the post-1660 Church of England and fundamentally shaped that Church over the 'long 18th century'. Whether such conformity was Reformed or Arminian was very much a secondary issue, as the High Church Samuel Horsley declared in 1800 charge:

I know not what hinders but that the highest Supralapsarian Calvinist may be as good a churchman as an Arminian; and if the Church of England in her moderation opens her arms to both, neither can with a very good grace desire that the other should be excluded.

Reflecting an understanding of the Articles that echoed Burnet, Horsley considered the Articles as embracing both Calvinist and Arminian, for the "Articles explicitly assert nothing but what is believed both by Arminians and by Calvinists". It was not specific doctrine or a theological school which defined conformity but, as Horsley would say in an 1806 charge, acceptance of the discipline of the Church:

there is nothing to hinder the Arminian and the highest Supralapsarian Calvinist from walking together in the Church of England and Ireland as friends and brothers, if they both approve the discipline of the Church, and both are willing to submit to it.

Horsley was speaking as the long era of unity and accord in the 18th century church drew to a close. That era commenced, however, with the same understanding of conformity founded in "the discipline of the Church".  In their 1662 Articles of Visitation, bishops Gauden of Worcester and Morley of Winchester provided an account of conformity which Horsley would, nearly a century and a half later, echo. 

Both Gauden and Morley were what an older generation of historians called 'moderate Calvinists' (a term which, as Hampton shows, is less than helpful). They had been anti-Laudians. According to Hampton, "Morley's Reformed theological sympathies are well documented", while Gauden, equally Reformed in his theological opinions, was closely identified with an Ussher-like 'reduced' episcopacy. 

Both appointed to the episcopate at the Restoration, their Articles of Visitation demonstrate how conformity was defined by discipline and practice, not requiring from ministers any doctrinal commitments beyond subscription to the Articles:

Gauden: Did he within two moneths after his Induction publickly read in the Church, upon some Lords-day or other Holy-day, in the time of Divine Service, the 39. Articles of Religion established in the Church of England? Did he then and there publickly declare his assent thereunto?

Morley: Did he within two months after his Induction, publickly in the Church, upon some Sunday or Holy-day, in the time of Divine Service, read the 39 Articles of the Church of England, established by Authority, and there publickly declare his assent thereunto?

This was, fundamentally, the position upheld by the opponents of the Lambeth Articles and, later, of the Westminster Confession: the Articles sufficed. As Buckeridge, Howson, and Laud had stated in their 1625 letter to Buckingham, defending Montagu, the Articles of the Church of England were characterised by "moderation", not "busy with every particular school-point", in order to "be able to preserve unity amongst Christians". It was on the basis of this understanding of the Articles of Religion that Burnet would state:

once almost broken to pieces, while we disputed concerning these matters; but now we are much happier; for tho we know one anothers Opinions, we live not only united in the same Worship, but in great Friendship and Love with those of other Persuasions.

When the Articles of Visitation addressed the ornaments and furnishings of the parish church, it was also clear that harsh divisions of the 1630s were put aside:

Gauden: Is there in your Church or Chappel an handsome Font of Stone, standing in a convenient place, with a good cover to it, for the Administration of Baptisme? Is there also a decent Communion-Table, with a fair Carpet of Silk or fine Cloth, also a fine linnen covering to be used at the holy Administration of the Lords Supper?

Morley: Is there a Font of stone, with a good Cover thereunto, standing in a convenient place towards the lower part of your Church for the Administration of Baptism? And is there in your Chancel a decent Communion Table, for the Administration of the Lords Supper; with a Carpet of Silk, Stuff, or fine Woollen cloath, and another Covering of white and pure Linnen to spread thereupon? 

Crucially, while requiring conformity to the provisions of the 1604 Canons (reverent covering of a decent Holy Table), these articles did not prohibit or hinder the installation of rails and the altar-wise placing of the Holy Table, which in many - although certainly not all - parishes had been enthusiastically embraced at the Restoration.  As Fincham and Tyacke note of Morley:

The reasonably full faculty, visitation, and office records of Winchester diocese in his time suggest that Morley usually left the placing and railing of the communion table to the discretion of parish officials.

Entirely absent from the visitation articles of both Gauden and Morley was the confrontational approach of the anti-Laudian Williams of Lincoln in his 1641 visitation, at the height of the 'altar wars':

And whether is the same Table placed in such convenient sort within the Chancell or Church, as that the Minister may be best heard in his prayer and administration, and that the greatest number may communicate ... or hath it been removed to the East end, and placed Altar-wise, and by whom, and whose authority hath it been so placed?

The 'altar wars', in other words, were over, with the Laudian practice of railed altars becoming the norm (without controversy) in the decades following 1660.

Nor should we overlook the requirement of a stone font, prohibiting the pre-1640 practice by the 'godly', of using basons in place of the font. What is more, Morley indicated that the font should be traditionally placed "towards the lower part of your Church", echoing Laud's 1635 visitation articles: "a font of stone, set up in the ancient usual place". The contrast with the Westminster Directory was stark and instructive: "and not in the places where fonts, in the time of Popery, were unfitly and superstitiously placed".

On the matter of the surplice, ministers were required to wear it, contrary to the refusal to do by some clergy in the Jacobean and Caroline church, and the abuse of the surplice in the iconoclastic disorders of the early 1640s:

Gauden: Have you a fair Surplice and other Ornaments, according to his degree, for your Minister to use in his Publick Administrations, onely for outward decency, order, and distinction?

Morley: Have you a comely large Surplice for the Minister to wear at all times of his Publick Ministration in the Church provided, and to be duely washed at the Charge of the Parish? ... Doth your Minister at the Reading or Celebrating any Divine Office in your Church or Chappel, wear the Surplice, together with such other Scholastical Habit as is suitable to his Degree?

Gauden's note that the surplice was for "outward decency, order, and distinction" would have been heartily endorsed by Laudians and was rooted in Hooker's defence of the vestment, while Morley employed the same phrase as did Laud in his 1635 visitation, "a comely large surplice". Reading prayers or administering the Sacraments without the surplice was now banished from the Church of England: the conformity Laud had sought on this matter was achieved. Or has Hampton has described it, here was Reformed Conformist "commitment to the neo-Laudian liturgical agenda of the later Stuart Church".

This was also the case with regards to the use of the Book of Common Prayer:

Gauden: Doth your Minister in the Morning and Evening Service, and in the Administration of the Holy Sacraments, and in performing of other publick Religious Offices appointed by the Church of England, use the respective Forms in the Book of Common Prayer, together with those Rites and Ceremonies which are enjoyned in this Church, and declared to be not any necessary parts of Divine Worship, but onely things of Decency, Order, and Edification, tending to the Peace and Uniformity of the Church?

Morley: Doth your Parson, Vicar, or Curate, in reading the daily Morning and Evening Service, Administration of the holy Sacraments, Celebration of Marriage, Churching of Women after Childbirth, Visitation of the Sick, Burial of the Dead, and pronouncing Gods Commination against impenitent Sinners, use the form and words prescribed in the Book of Common-Praier, without any addition, omission, or alteration of the same? And doth he use all such Rites and Ceremonies in all parts of Divine Service, as are appointed in the said Book?

Again, Gauden's emphasis that the ceremonies of the Prayer Book were for "Decency, Order, and Edification, tending to the Peace and Uniformity of the Church" would have been echoed by Laudians: as Laud had stated to the Star Chamber in 1637, "how fit it is there should bee order, and uniformity". Morley, moreover, in enunciating the various offices of the Prayer Book, makes clear that its use was required for all these offices. And note, too, his reference to "reading the daily Morning and Evening Service".

Finally, there was the requirement for episcopal ordination:

Gauden: Is your Minister Episcopally Ordained (Deacon or Priest) according to the Laws of the Realm of England, and the ancient practice of the Church universall, no lesse then of this National Church?

Morley: Is your Minister a Priest or Deacon, Episcopally Ordained, according to the Laws of the Church of England?

Morley's "according to the Laws of the Church of England" might seem rather cautious and modest but it was no less than the formula used by the Laudian Bramhall in Armagh: "as required by the Canons of the Ecclesiae Anglicanae". Similarly, the Laudian Cosin asked, "Is you Minister, Parson, or Vicar, a Deacon or a Priest, ordained by a Bishop according to the laws of the Church of England?" Gauden's wording was rather more fulsome but it was no pragmatic reflection of new political circumstances on his part. He wrote in 1643, challenging the Solemn League and Covenant:

if the Covenant were designed, as wilfully exclusive and totally abjuring of all Episcopal order and Government in this Church of England, it must needs run us upon a great rock not only of Novelty but of Schism, and dash us both in opinion and practice against the judgement and custom of the Catholick Church, in all places and ages (till of later years) from the Apostles days.

As Hampton states of the Reformed Conformists in reign of Charles I, they "shared a profound theological commitment to episcopacy", believing that episcopal ordination "provided a clearer demonstration of a minister's legitimacy than its rivals, because it exhibited the derivation of the minister's orders from the Apostles themselves". 

This aspect of the 1662 Settlement, therefore, was no Laudian innovation, for there was little difference between Laudians and Reformed Conformists on episcopal order. Rather, here was a unifying practice deeply rooted in the life of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana, reasserted after the confusions of the 1640s and 50s, providing a discipline central to conformity, to unity and accord over the 'long 18th century'.

The 1662 Articles of Visitation issued by Gauden and Morley reveal the contours of Conformity that would define the Church of England for the next century and a half. Here was a discipline uniting parsons who were Reformed Conformists, some of whom would have taken the Engagement and legally ministered throughout the 1650s; Laudians who had been sequestered and maintained robust ecclesiastical and political opposition to Cromwell's regime; and Latitude-men, sceptical of both Calvinist and Laudian claims. It was the discipline which, for over more than a century, was required of both Reformed and Arminian, and accepted by both, shaping parish and clerical life in such a way that it was more significant than the theological commitments, whether Reformed or Arminian, of the clergy.

We have reason to be grateful for the revisionist studies which have demonstrated the vitality of the Reformed tradition in the post-1660 Church of England. In many ways, the picture of theological diversity which has emerged from such studies confirms the suggestion that conformity should be the key prism through which to consider the Church of England during the 'long 18th century', the conformity which ensured that Reformed and Arminian, High Churchmen and Latitude-men, in their theological and political diversities, were united by the same ecclesiastical and liturgical order and discipline. 

(The first illustration is the frontspiece from the 1713 The Christian Sacrifice: A Treatise Shewing the Necessity, End, and Manner of Receiving the Holy Communion by Latitudinarian Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely, depicting a perfectly Laudian vision of a railed altar.  The final illustration is from Wheatly's commentary on the Prayer Book, standing in the Laudian tradition. Both demonstrate the conformity which defined and united the Church of England between 1662 and 1832.)