ABSTRACT
Few people in history can have been less well equipped to win popular support than the puritan clergy of Elizabethan and early Stuart England. George Gifford described the army of Satan, composed of “all whoremaisters, drunkards, dicers, railers, swearers and such like”, which constantly assailed the followers of Christ. Patrick Collinson has argued that English historians need to investigate the role of puritanism as a form of popular culture. The chapter argues that popular support for the parliament arose from the capacity of radical Protestantism to “mutate” into different forms, which met the needs of people not otherwise attracted to the message of zealous pastors. It examines the extent of antipuritan feeling in the early Stuart period, and suggests that the nature of this hostility prevented it from translating into positive support for the royalist cause in 1642. The chapter considers the implications of Protestant “mutations”.
