ABSTRACT
The seventeenth century in England gives us the story of the rise, eclipse, and resurrection of Anglicanism. This fluctuation was very largely due to the close association of the Church and Crown under the Stuarts. The members of that dynasty were often essentially foreigners with Roman Catholic queens, and their disasters were largely due to that double fact, together with a certain infatuated and obstinate temperament that seemed characteristic and ineradicable. The Church accepted their theory of divine right, which logically included legitimism, absolutism, and passive obedience, and identified the seat of authority in the Church with the throne itself. The Stuarts on their side saw in the Church the mainstay of their rule. ‘No bishop, no king’, seemed an obvious truism. James, indeed, when he came from Scotland in 1603, was welcomed both by Presbyterians and by recusants. The former thought him one of themselves, but they did not know that his early upbringing had taught him to hate Presbyterianism, which, he said, ‘agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil!’ On his way south he was presented with the Millenary Petition, so called because it was exaggeratedly supposed to represent the views of a thousand clergy. It asked for the abolition of certain ‘abuses’ in public worship, such as the use of the ring in marriage and the sign of the cross at baptism, the wearing of the surplice, and the rite of confirmation. It also proposed a conference, which was promised for the next year. On the other hand the recusants thought that in view of his upbringing and experience they would be likely to win more toleration from James than they had from the authoress of the settlement. Perhaps the King would have found that course agreeable had it not been for the fact that his hand was forced by the occurrence, first of the Main Plot, as the result of which Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh were imprisoned, and the Bye Plot, after which the priest William Watson was executed. Consequently he was compelled, in spite of himself, to issue a Proclamation ordering all Jesuits and seminarists to quit the kingdom.
