ABSTRACT
In 1604 Bradshaw could already daim, perhaps with a view to warning off Scottish presbyterian intruders, that this manifesto embodied ‘the main opinions of the rigidest sort called puritans.’ Puritan religion was working its own quiet and often unobserved revolution which would in time effect changes in English society quite as profound as those ever dreamed of by the presbyterians. Some puritans wrote and behaved as if they believed that grace was granted as the reward of obedience. Puritan casuistry was no more a new invention than puritan gospel preaching; witness the ‘comfortable’ letters written by Knox, Dering and Wilcox, especially to their female correspondents. The impression of some authorities that there were no more puritan conferences after about 1590 may well rest on the evidence of the Dedham minutes which end abruptly at midsummer 1589.
