ABSTRACT
Of all the possible candidates for “popular religion” in the 1640s and 1650s, Presbyterianism has been seen by recent historians as the most improbable, while the two specific subjects of this chapter, Thomas Edwards and Thomas Hall, are usually placed amongst the most unattractive of the Presbyterians, intemperate, intolerant and authoritarian. Presbyterianism’s appeal, insofar as it existed, is confined to the socially respectable who looked to rigorous parochial discipline as a hedge against immorality and lower-class subversion in tumultuous times. It was thus unpopular in both of the senses historians usually use, attracting little numerical support, and gaining followers only from ambitious, university educated clergy and sections amongst landed and urban elites. In this chapter I wish to question the prevailing scepticism about the possibility of popular Presbyterianism. It would be absurd to argue that zealous Presbyterianism was a majority or even a widely supported position, but I will demonstrate that the polemical strategies of men such as Edwards and Hall reveal a dynamic relationship with a broad range of the population. Both Hall and Edwards were “extreme”, or “high” Presbyterians anxious for a national church organized through classes and synods with coercive powers. But my arguments apply also to the broader groupings of orthodox Puritan clergy, more loosely termed “Presbyterian”—those who were more open-minded on details of church government, but supported a national church, Calvinist in doctrine, with an effective well-maintained preaching ministry and a rigorous disciplinary structure. As Eamon Duffy argues
in his chapter, the reforming efforts of such men in the 1640s and 1650s offered the best hopes for a thorough reformation of the English church.
