Responding to Lake's 'On Laudianism': the Laudians and 'The Admonition to the Parliament' were both wrong?
On the one hand, we are informed that the Laudian view of cathedrals as the ideal of their ceremonial agenda "has been refuted":
the claim that something like the Laudian style had been preserved in the cathedrals since the reformation was entirely untrue (p.136).
This rather explicit statement, however, sits rather uneasily - to say the least - alongside an account from James' reign, provided only a few pages later:
a cognate story from the start of James' reign about the French ambassador's 'viewing of our church orders, first at the cathedral at Canterbury and then at his majesty's chapel royal at court', which sight caused him to remark 'that if the reformed churches in France had kept the same order as we have done, he was assured there would have been, in that country, many thousands more protestants than now there are' (p.144f).
Which is it? The story of the French ambassador's reaction indicates a recognition that Elizabethan and Jacobean cathedrals were indeed much closer to the Laudian ideal: in the choral tradition maintained by Elizabeth, the requirement by Parker's Advertisements of 1566 that cathedral clergy vest in copes, and the Prayer Book's direction that the Holy Communion should be celebrated "every Sonday at the leaste".
This also raises considerable doubt over Lake's view that the Laudian invocation of cathedrals merely reflected the fact that cathedral worship "had recently been remade by the Laudians themselves" (p.136). By contrast, Diarmaid MacCulloch - not known for his Laudian sympathies - tells a very different story about Elizabethan cathedrals:
The cathedrals and the Chapel Royal fostered an attitude to the sacred which strayed far from the normal Protestant emphasis on communal praise by the people and the Word of God interpreted by the minister from the pulpit. English cathedrals preserved a sense that regular prayer and the contemplation of the divine through beauty constituted an equally valid road to divinity.
That is because it had much to do with the practice of Westminster Abbey ... The outlook was embodied in the conservative, ceremonialist and anti-Puritan outlooks of the dean, Gabriel Goodman [dean 1566-1601], and the celebrated antiquary and headmaster of Westminster School, William Camden.
A "scholarly concentration on anti-Calvinism among Cambridge dons such as Andrewes or John Overall has tended to obscure" the influence of the Westminster Movement, an influence immediately evident in two names:
One of the boys who grew up in the sympathetic Westminster parish of St Margaret was Richard Neile, future Archbishop of Canterbury and patron of another Archbishop, William Laud.
Having therefore failed to recognise the antecedents of Laudianism in the Westminster Movement, Lake also oddly fails to recognise how conventional were Laudian attitudes to ceremonies. For example, a 1637 sermon by the Laudian Edward Boughen, addressing the typically Laudian concern on the need for "outward reverence", is quoted as an example of supposed innovation:
When the whole congregation shall appear in the presence of God as one man, decently kneeling, rising, standing, bowing, praising, praying together ... like men of one mind and religion in the house of God (p.142).
Even a passing knowledge of BCP 1559 would immediately recognise that this is merely a description of Prayer Book rubrics and the very purpose of common prayer. The General Confession at Morning Prayer, for example, is preceded by the rubric "To be said of the whole congregation after the minister, kneeling". The prayers following the Creed are likewise to be said "all devoutly kneeling". "The ministers, clerks, and people" are also directed to say the Lord's Prayer "with a loud voice".
Standing for the Creed, which the Foulke Robartes in a 1639 sermon described as a means "to signify and express hereby our resolution and readiness to stand and persevere to the end in this faith which we do profess", is offered as an example of something "explicitly and peculiarly Laudian" (pp.146, 148). Oddly omitted from discussion of Robartes' point is the 1559 rubric, "Then shall be said the Creed by the minister and the people standing".
Supposedly going "even further", Giles Widdowes' 1630 sermon referred to bowing at the name of Jesus "as an acknowledgement of 'the Lord Jesus Christ' as 'king of heaven and earth, of the triumphant and the militant church'". Rather than a Laudian extravagance, as Lake implies, Widdowes was merely repeating the view of the Canons of 1604:
when in time of Divine Service the Lord Jesus shall be mentioned, due and lowly Reverence shall be done by all Persons present, as it hath been accustomed; testifying by these outward Ceremonies and Gestures, their inward Humility, Christian Resolution, and due Acknowledgment that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and eternal Son of God, is the only Saviour of the World.
To emphasise just how customary this was, we might also note that the practice custom had been upheld by the Elizabethan Injunctions:
whensoever the name of Jesus shall be in any lesson, sermon, or otherwise in the church pronounced, that due reverence be made of all persons young and old, with lowliness of courtesy and uncovering of heads of the menkind, as thereunto does necessarily belong, and heretofore has been accustomed.
While oddly failing to mention that Widdowes' defence of the use of "the sign of the cross" explicitly refers to Baptism - the sermon states, "hence it is that little Children baptized after the forme of baptisme are signed with the signe of the crosse" - Lake quotes the sermon to explain what the meaning of "the sign of the cross was, for Widdowes" (emphasis added):
in token that we will not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ Crucified and manfully to fight under his banner etc. (p.148).
No, this was not the meaning of the sign of the Cross merely "for Widdowes". Lake is apparently unaware that Widdowes is simply quoting from the Book of Common Prayer baptismal rite:
We receive this Childe into the congregacion of Christes flocke, and do sygne him with the signe of the crosse, in token that hereafter he shal not be ashamed to confesse the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sinne, the worlde, and the devyll, and to continue Christes faithful souldiour and servaunt unto his lives ende. Amen.
What is more, the practice was also required by Canon XXX:
a lawful outward Ceremony and honourable Badge, whereby the Infant is dedicated to the Service of him that died upon the Cross, as by the words used in the Book of Common Prayer it may appear.
Lake, in other words, entirely misses that Laudian teaching on ceremonies was profoundly rooted in the Book of Common Prayer and the Canons. The Laudian apologia and rational for ceremonial conformity was no innovation but, rather, a call which was grounded in the Elizabethan Settlement. That others within the Church of England disagreed with the Laudian ceremonial understanding goes without saying: what this emphatically does not mean, however, is that merely because the Laudian understanding was contested, it was necessarily an innovation.
What is more, the Laudian understanding had a significant antecedent in the Westminster Movement, a sensibility which surely demands more scholarly attention and study. As MacCulloch notes, "In the period before 1600, that term [i.e. Westminster Movement] would make much more sense than using anachronistic labels like 'Arminian' or 'Laudian'". Alongside this, it is also quite clear that the Elizabethan vision for cathedrals - found in at least some cathedrals - and the Chapel Royal did provide a model for Laudianism.
This, after all, is precisely what the 1572 Admonition to the Parliament protested against:
As for organes and curious singing, thoughe they be proper to Popyshe dennes, I meane to Cathedrall churches, yet some others also must haue them. The Queenes chappell, and these churches, (whych shoulde be spectacles of christian reformation) are rather paternes and presidents to the people, of all superstitions.
"Popish dennes" say the authors of the Admonition about cathedrals in 1572: but Lake, of course, has determined that "this has been refuted".
As for liturgy and ceremonies, the Admonition provided a description which makes Lake's view of Laudian 'innovation' appear ridiculous:
Holydayes ascribed to saincts, prescript seruices for them, kneeling at communion, wafer cakes for theyr breade when they minister it, surplesse and coape to do it in.
Perhaps someone should attempt to communicate with the authors and supporters of the Admonition to assure them that Peter Lake has discovered they had nothing at all to worry about; he is sure that the Church of England of 1572 was nothing like what they stated at the time.
(The second picture is of the monument to Gabriel Goodman, in Westminster Abbey.)
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