ABSTRACT
This chapter takes as its subject a pair of verse libels composed against the officials of the church courts in Northampton and the knights and justices of the peace of Northamptonshire at the start of the seventeenth century. It traces the vigorous pursuit of those who read and circulated the libels by John Lambe, who made it his life-long ambition to rid the diocese of Peterborough of puritanism. Exploring the content and context of the libels, especially their circulation and readership, it aims to throw some light on the religious culture of early seventeenth-century Northampton and to develop some of the ideas in Bill Sheils’s The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough.1 How much ‘getting along’ there was in Northampton at this time is questionable – Lambe and his associates waged war on the puritan clergy and laity of Northampton – but the friction of religious styles and cultures certainly provides plenty of material to work with.
