The Puritans were a varied group of religious reformers who emerged within the Church of England during the middle of the sixteenth century. They shared a common Calvinist theology and common criticisms of the Anglican Church and English society and government. Their numbers and influence grew steadily, culminating in the English Civil War of the 1640s and the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Puritanism went into eclipse in England, largely because the movement was identified with the upheaval and radicalism of the Civil War and Cromwell’s tyrannical government, a virtual military dictatorship. Show But it persisted for much longer as a vital force in those parts of British North America colonized by two groups of Puritans who gradually cut their ties to the Church of England and formed separate denominations. One group, the Congregationalists, settled Plymouth in the 1620s and then Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the 1630s. Another group, the Presbyterians, who quickly came to dominate the religious life of Scotland and later migrated in large numbers to northern Ireland, also settled many communities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. Increase Mather, “That excesse in wickedness doth bring untimely Death.”Puritans in both Britain and British North America sought to cleanse the culture of what they regarded as corrupt, sinful practices. They believed that the civil government should strictly enforce public morality by prohibiting vices like drunkenness, gambling, ostentatious dress, swearing, and Sabbath-breaking. They also wished to purge churches of every vestige of Roman Catholic ritual and practice—the ruling hierarchies of bishops and cardinals, the elaborate ceremonies in which the clergy wore ornate vestments and repeated prayers from a prescribed liturgy. Accordingly, New England’s Congregational churches were self-governing bodies, answerable to no higher authority; mid-Atlantic Presbyterian churches enjoyed somewhat less autonomy because a hierarchy of “presbyteries” and “synods” made up of leading laymen and clergymen set policy for individual congregations. But both Congregationalist and Presbyterian worship services were simple, even austere, and dominated by long, learned sermons in which their clergy expounded passages from the Bible. Perhaps most important, membership in both churches was limited to the “visibly godly,” meaning those men and women who lead sober and upright lives. New England Congregationalists adopted even stricter standards for admission to their churches—the requirement that each person applying for membership testify publicly to his or her experience of “conversion.” (Many Presbyterians also regarded conversion as central to being a Christian, but they did not restrict their membership to those who could profess such an experience.) Guiding Student Discussion Puritan catechism in The New-England Primer, 1646 “I was conceived in Sin & You might tell them about the Puritan belief in predestination, which provides the wider context for understanding conversion. This doctrine was first elaborated by John Calvin and then adopted by Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and a variety of other religious groups. Calvin held that human beings were innately sinful—utterly depraved by inheriting the original sin of Adam and Eve, the biblical parents of the human race. Elizabeth Clarke Freake and Baby Mary, “a profound sense of inner But Calvin also taught that God, in his infinite mercy, would spare a small number of “elect” individuals from the fate of eternal hellfire that all mankind, owing to their corrupt natures, justly deserved. That elect group of “saints” would be blessed, at some point in their lives, by a profound sense of inner assurance that they possessed God’s “saving grace.” This dawning of hope was the experience of conversion, which might come upon individuals suddenly or gradually, in their earliest youth or even in the moments before death. It is important to emphasize to students that, in the Calvinist scheme, God decided who would be saved or damned before the beginning of history—and that this decision would not be affected by how human beings behaved during their lives. The God of Calvin (and the Puritans) did not give “extra credit"—nor, indeed, any credit—for the good works that men and women performed during their lives. Once you have gotten this far, some students will be wondering (aloud, with any luck) why any sane person would accept the doctrine of predestination. The gist of their objections will be, to echo some of my own students, that predestination “is, like, TOTALLY unfair.” Some may observe that the Puritans’ God was a distinctly undemocratic sort of deity, an unfeeling tyrant rather than a loving parent. Many more may notice that the Puritans’ God offered no incentive for upright moral behavior: this deity had decided who will be saved or damned before the beginning of human history, and no good actions on the part of men and women could change that divine decree and alter their preordained fates. (The brighter kids may also point out that Calvinist theology denied human beings any free will.) That being the case, lots of students will ask you why the Puritans didn’t sink into despair—or decide to wallow in the world’s pleasures, to enjoy the moment, since they could do nothing to affect their eternity in the afterlife. Title page (detail) of the 1560 “Geneva Bible,” “Great are the troubles of the righteous; “FEARE YE NOT, STAND STIL, AND BEHOLDE To prod them into thinking along these lines, you might talk a bit about the sweeping changes (and uncertainties) overtaking the lives of most western Europeans in the early modern period (ca., 1400–1800). It was during this era that the beginnings of modern capitalism—both the growth of trade and the commercialization of agriculture—were yielding handsome profits for merchants and large landowners, but creating inflation and unemployment that produced unprecedented misery for many more people. The rich were getting richer, and the poor much poorer: growing numbers of unemployed people became vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals. To add to the sense of disruption and disarray, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century had ruptured the unity of late medieval Christendom, spawning bloody religious wars that led to lasting tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Finally, Europeans had “discovered” and begun colonizing what was to them an entirely new and strange world in the Americas. All of these momentous changes were profoundly unsettling to ordinary men and women, heightening their need for social order, intellectual and moral certainty, and spiritual consolation. The Bay Psalm Book, printed in Boston, 1640: the first book printed in the British colonies.For many, the doctrine of predestination answered these pressing inner needs. Its power to comfort and reassure troubled souls arose from its wider message that, beyond preordaining the eternal fates of men and women, God had a plan for all of human history—that every event in the lives of individuals and nations somehow tended toward an ultimate triumph of good over evil, order over disorder, Christ over Satan. In other words, Calvin (and his many followers among groups like the Puritans) saw human history as an unfolding cosmic drama in which every person had a predestined role to play. True, men and women had no free will, but they had the assurance that their existence—indeed, their every action—was MEANINGFUL and that their strivings and sufferings in the present would ultimately produce a future of perfect peace and security—a kind of heaven on earth. That confidence made people like the Puritans anything but passive or despairing. On the contrary, they were an extraordinarily energetic, activist lot, constantly striving to reshape both society and government to accord with what they believed to be the will of God as set forth in the Bible. Gravestone of Phebe Gorham, d. 1775, Henceforth my Soul in sweetest Union join Historians Debate John Eliot, ca. date (unknown artist). Thomas Smith, Self-Portrait, ca. 1680. Why why should I the World be minding Puritan church with pulpit, pews, and, Even so, both ordinary New Englanders—and their “betters,” including college-educated clergymen—also lived in what one historian has aptly called “worlds of wonder.” These “wonders” include the belief in witches, the power of Satan to assume visible form, and a variety of other preternatural phenomena that are still routinely chronicled today in supermarket tabloids—the foretelling power of dreams and portents, strange prodigies, “monstrous” births, and miraculous deliverances. To appreciate just how rich and bizarre this range of beliefs was, check out the chapter on “wonders” in David Hall, World of Wonders, Days of Judgment (New York, 1989). It’s a great way to enliven a dull hour—and a quick way to get some sense of the complexity of beliefs about the supernatural among early New Englanders of every rank and education. But these remarks don’t even begin to do full justice to the lively scholarship on New England Puritanism that has evolved over the last half of the twentieth century. If you want to know more about other topics, please read under Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Religion, Women, and the Family in Early America or Religion and the American Revolution. What was the result of the English Restoration?Restoration, Restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660. It marked the return of Charles II as king (1660–85) following the period of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. The bishops were restored to Parliament, which established a strict Anglican orthodoxy.
What happened in the Restoration of the monarchy?After 11 years of Republican rule the monarchy was restored in May 1660. Having executed Charles I in 1649, Parliament abolished the monarchy and formed a republic under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. The Republic barely outlived its leader, who died peacefully in his own bed in 1658.
What was the most immediate impact of the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660?With immediate effect the House of Lords was reinstated. The structure of the Church of England that had existed prior to the Commonwealth (the period in which Cromwell had ruled England as a republic) was restored, and so were the ministers who had been ousted from their livings.
What effect did the events of the Restoration period have on the British monarchy?What effect did the events of the Restoration Period have on the British monarchy? They weakened it. Which great disaster occurred during the Restoration Period? During the Restoration, what was the effect of the emergence of two old political rivalries?
|