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A Road to Revolution: The Continuity of Puritanism, 1559–1642

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The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700

Part of the book series: Themes in Focus ((TIF))

Abstract

The royalist cleric Peter Heylyn in his Aerius Redivivus of 1670 described English presbyterianism, which he also termed puritanism, as part of an international Calvinist faction dedicated to raising rebellions against monarchical and episcopal government. Heylyn identified various phases in the history of English puritanism, describing the 1570s and 1580s as decades of expansion, followed by decline in the 1590s due to the deaths of prominent lay patrons and the successful efforts of the privy council in imprisoning and executing leading puritan agitators. At the accession of James I the puritans were, according to Heylyn, ‘brought so low’ that they might have been permanently suppressed, if the king had not been so taken with the pleasures of court life in England. His failure to act allowed puritanism to survive and eventually to overthrow royal power in the Civil War.1

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Notes and References

  1. P. Heylyn, Aërius Redivivus: or the History of the Presbyterians (1670). I am grateful to Sheila Hingley and Sarah Gray of Canterbury Cathedral Library and to Charlotte Hodgson and Michael Stansfield of Canterbury Cathedral Archives for their unflagging responses to my various requests for information. I would like to thank Christopher Durston for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper, Peter Lake for a number of helpful discussions on the general issues it contains and Richard Eales for his comments during the final stages of writing.

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  1. Jacqueline Eales
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Christopher Durston Jacqueline Eales

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© 1996 Jacqueline Eales

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Eales, J. (1996). A Road to Revolution: The Continuity of Puritanism, 1559–1642. In: Durston, C., Eales, J. (eds) The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24437-9_7

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