We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
A tradition existed, and perpetuated itself, amongst the relatively humble Congregationalists of Cambridgeshire that Francis Holcroft, their evangelist, was working on old-established foundations when he gathered in his church in the 1650s and 1660s. Calamy said that he ‘fell in with the Old Brownists’. Robert Browne, the arch-separatist, spent nine years evangelising in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, after taking his degree in 1572-3 and spending a little while in the model puritan household of Richard Greenham, rector of Dry Drayton in Cambridgeshire, before leaving for the continent in 1581. The Brownists were not the only separatists who might have existed in the diocese of Ely in the late sixteenth century; the Family of Love is known to have taken firm root there, and a portion of the Letter Book of bishop Cox of Ely, is taken up with the examination of nearly seventy of its adherents in October, 1580.
page no 223 note 1 Calamy Revised, ed Matthews, A. G. (London 1934) p 272 Google Scholar.
page no 223 note 2 Alumni Cantabrigienses, ed Venn, J., 1 (Cambridge 1922) p 237 Google Scholar.
page no 223 note 3 G[onville and] C[aius College] MS 53/30, fols 126v-29r, particularly, fols 72V-3r.
page no 224 note 1 All my general statements on bishop Cox are drawn from Mrs Heal’s unpublished Cambridge PhD thesis ‘The Bishops of Ely and their Diocese during the Reformation Period: Ca. 1515-1600’. I am extremely grateful to Mrs Heal for allowing me to use her work, and quote her, in this generous way.
page no 224 note 2 Dated by Frere to 1571. Frere, W. H., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the period of the Reformation, 111 (London 1910) pp 296-302Google Scholar. See particularly articles 4, 5,18, 20, 24, 30,33.
page no 225 note 1 I have based this conclusion on detailed analyses of C[ambridge] U[niversity] L[ibrary] E[ly] D[iocesan] R[ecords], B/2/4 (Cox’s second visitation, 1564); B/2/6 (Office Court Book 1567-8); D/2/8 (Office Court Book 1568-70); D/2/10 (Office Court Book 1576-9 and Visitation, 1579).
page no 225 note 2 CUL EDR B/2/9. Noticed and briefly commented on by Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London 1967) p 40.
page no 225 note 3 GC MS 53/30, fol 73r.
page no 225 note 4 CUL EDR D/2/10 fols 150 ff.
page no 225 note 5 John, Strype, The Life and Acts of M. Parker (London 1711) pp 472-3Google Scholar.
page no 225 note 6 CUL EDR D/2/10 fols 176-7.
page no 226 note 1 CUL EDR B/2/52.
page no 226 note 2 Welsby, [P. A.], Lancelot Andrewes [1555-1626] (London 1964, first published 1958) pp 47-8Google Scholar.
page no 226 note 3 DNB, XXI (1937-8) p 1009.
page no 226 note 4 CUL EDR B/2/50 fols 1-22. This document is in fact a list of the names of the wardens and questmen for the diocese in 1637 and 1638, produced for the metropolitical visitation of 1638, but B/2/51, a similar Hst for the episcopal visitation of 1638-9, seems to contain only the names of the ‘new’ wardens and questmen of 1638 in B/2/50, together with some additional ‘assistants’, who were often the wardens or questmen of 1637. I have therefore taken B/2/50, to cover the lay officials of both 1637 and 1638 in my analysis.
page no 226 note 5 Palmer, W. M. discusses this document, London, British Museum MS Egerton 1048, and prints the articles complained of against Wren in his Episcopal Visitation Returns for Cambridgeshire (London 1930) pp 72-5Google Scholar.
page no 227 note 1 PRO MSS E.179/83/411; E.179/83/407; E.179/83/408.
page no 227 note 2 Chapter 1 of ‘Articles to be Inquired of Within the Diocese of Ely’, ed Palmer, W. M., Documents relating to Cambridgeshire Villages (London 1926) p 44 Google Scholar.
page no 228 note 1 Kingston, A., East Anglia and the Great Civil War (London 1902) p 21 Google Scholar.
page no 228 note 2 Dorothy M., Owen ‘Episcopal Visitation Books’, History, XLIX (1964) p 186 Google Scholar. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mrs Owen, the Ely Diocesan Archivist, for much general help and time spent assisting me, although the opinions expressed here in no way necessarily coincide with hers.
page no 228 note 3 This is a very rough estimate, based on a comparison between petitioners, and numbers of householders in the same areas in the hearth-tax. It cannot be pushed far, both because it ignores any growth of population there may have been between the 1630s and 1660S, and because some householders in the 1660s were women, who were naturally ineligible for lay office. Moreover, the number of office holders for any parish was relatively static, while some Cambridgeshire villages were over four times the size of others. It also ignores the shocking state of the petition. Even if as many as a third of the ‘petitioners’ names are missing, however, petitioners would only have made up a fifth of householders.
page no 229 note 1 As a further test of visitation records, I have covered the three visitations made in the time of Lancelot Andrewes, who held Ely from 1609 to 1618. Andrewes was Wren’s patron, and when he moved from Ely to Winchester, formulated anti-puritan articles for his new diocese (Welsby, Lancelot Andrewes, pp 13-18). He is scarcely likely to have favoured any puritans or separatists in Ely. But the visitations of 1610-11 (EDR B/2/31 fols 56-106) 1615-16 (EDR B/2/33) and one described as of 1617 (EDR B/2/37, in which most of the actual proceedings date from 1619) are as inconclusive as those of Cox or Wren. There are odd hints, which would possibly be confirmatory, if there was firm supporting evidence. But there are no clear indications, any more than there were, with one exception, in 1639, that any of the Cambridgeshire villages was a nursery of active puritanism, even though other evidence suggests that it certainly existed. Puritanism, separation and heresy simply do not appear as issues which can be detected in the visitations, except by the gift of hindsight, although some excommunicant people were, no doubt, classifiable as puritans, separatists and heretics.
