Under Charles I, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Catholic influence both at Court and (as they saw it) within the Church.
After the First English Civil War political power was held by various factions of Puritans. The trials and executions of William Laud and then King Charles were decisive moves shaping British history. While in the short term Puritan power was consolidated by the Parliamentary armed forces and Oliver Cromwell, in the same years, the argument for theocracy failed to convince enough of the various groupings, and there was no Puritan religious settlement to match Cromwell's gradual assumption of dictatorial powers. The distinctive formulation of Reformed theology in the Westminster Assembly would prove to be its lasting legacy.
In New England, immigration of what were Puritan family groups and congregations was at its peak for the middle years of King Charles's reign.
Synod of Dort to the death of Archbishop Abbot (1618–1633)
The 1630s conflict between Puritans and traditional Episcopalians over Laudianism in the Church of England was preceded by similar arguments in the 1620s concerning Arminianism. Its rejection of some of the key tenets of Calvinism, notably the Calvinist view of Predestination, made it particularly objectionable to Puritans, who viewed it as crypto-Catholic. This theological debate was sharpened by the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618 and recommencement of the Eighty Years' War between the Dutch Republic and Spain in 1621, leading many to see it as part of a general attack on Protestantism.
As a Calvinist, James I of England generally backed his co-religionists in the debate between Calvinists and Arminians. He sent a strong delegation to the 1618–1619 Synod of Dort held in the Dutch Republic, and supported their condemnation of Arminianism as heretical, although he moderated his views when attempting to achieve a Spanish match for his son Charles, Prince of Wales. The English were less precise than their Dutch counterparts in their interpretation of "Arminianism", which allowed James some flexibility.
James died in 1625 and was succeeded by Charles, who was distrustful of the Puritans, seeing their views on church government and foreign policy as driven by political calculation, while also constituting a direct challenge to his own exercise of his divinely granted authority as Supreme Head of the Church of England. While King Charles had no particular interest in theological questions, he preferred the emphasis of William Laud and the Caroline divines on order, decorum, uniformity, and High Church Anglicanism. While his father had supported the Calvinist rulings of the Synod of Dort, Charles forbade Anglican sermons defending predestination altogether, and where James had been lenient towards clergy who omitted parts of the Book of Common Prayer, Charles urged the bishops to enforce compliance and to suspend Vicars who refused.
Besides George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Charles's closest political advisor was William Laud, the Bishop of St David's, whom Charles translated to the better position of Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1626. Under Laud's influence, Charles shifted the royal ecclesiastical policy markedly.
Conflict between Charles I and Puritans, 1625–1629
In 1625, shortly before the opening of the new parliament, Charles was married by proxy to Princess Henrietta Maria of France, the Catholic daughter of King Henri IV. In diplomatic terms this implied alliance with France in preparation for war against Spain, but Puritan MPs openly claimed that Charles was preparing to restrict the recusancy laws and even to grant Catholic Emancipation. The king had indeed agreed to do so in the secret marriage treaty he negotiated with his future brother in law, King Louis XIII.
George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1611, was in the mainstream of the English church, sympathetic with Scottish Protestants, anti-Catholic in a conventional Calvinist way, and theologically opposed to Arminianism. Under Elizabeth I he had associated with Puritan figures. The controversy over Richard Montagu's anti-Calvinist New Gagg was still ongoing when Parliament met in May 1625, and he was attacked in Parliament by the Puritan MP John Pym. When Montagu wrote a pamphlet asking for Royal protection entitled Appello Caesarem or "I Appeal to Caesar", a reference to Acts 25:10–12, Charles responded by making him a royal chaplain.
Parliament was reluctant to grant Charles revenue, since they feared that it might be used to support an army that would re-impose Catholicism on England. The 1625 Parliament broke the precedent of centuries and voted to allow Charles to collect Tonnage and Poundage only for one year. When Charles wanted to intervene in the Thirty Years' War by declaring war on Spain (the Anglo-Spanish War (1625)), Parliament granted him an insufficient sum of £140,000. The war with Spain went ahead (partially funded by tonnage and poundage collected by Charles after he was no longer authorized to do so). Buckingham was put in charge of the war effort, but failed.
The York House conference of 1626 saw battle lines start to be drawn. Opponents cast doubt on the political loyalties of the Puritans, equating their beliefs with resistance theory. In their preaching, Arminians began to take a royalist line. Abbot was deprived of effective power in 1627, in a quarrel with the king over Robert Sibthorpe, one such royalist cleric. Richard Montagu was made Bishop of Chichester in 1628.
The Anglo-French War (1627–1629) was also a military failure. Parliament called for Buckingham's replacement, but Charles stuck by him. Parliament went on to pass the Petition of Right, a declaration of Parliament's rights. Charles accepted the Petition, though this did not lead to a change in his behaviour.
The King's personal rule
In August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated by a disillusioned soldier, John Felton. Public reaction angered Charles. When Parliament resumed in January 1629, Charles was met with outrage over the case of John Rolle, an MP who had been prosecuted for failing to pay Tonnage and Poundage. John Finch, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was held down in the Speaker's Chair in order to allow the House to pass a resolution condemning the king.
Charles determined to rule without calling a parliament, thus initiating the period known as his Personal Rule (1629–1640). This period saw the ascendancy of Laudianism in England.
Laudianism
The central ideal of Laudianism (the common name for the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Charles and Laud) was the "beauty of holiness" (a reference to Psalm 29:2). This emphasized a love of ceremony and harmonious liturgy. Many of the churches in England had fallen into disrepair in the wake of the English Reformation: Laudianism called for making churches beautiful. Churches were ordered to make repairs and to enforce greater respect for the church building.
A policy particularly odious to the Puritans was the installation of altar rails in churches, which Puritans associated with the Catholic position on Transubstantiation and the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament: in Catholic practice, altar rails served to demarcate the space where Christ became incarnate in the host, with only priests, acolytes, and altar boys allowed inside the rail. The Puritans also alleged that the practice of receiving communion while kneeling at the altar rail resembled Eucharistic adoration. The Laudians insisted on kneeling at communion and receiving at the rail, while continuing to use the Book of Common Prayer and rejecting Catholicism.
Puritans also objected to the Laudian insistence on calling members of the Anglican clergy "priests". In their minds, the word "priest" meant "someone who offers a sacrifice", and was therefore related in their minds to Catholic teaching on the Eucharist as a sacrifice. After the Reformation, the term "minister" (meaning "one who serves") was generally adopted by Puritans to describe their clergy; Puritans argued in favor of its use, or else for simply transliterating the Koine Greek word presbyter used in the New Testament, without translation.
The Puritans were also dismayed when the Laudians revived the custom of keeping Lent, which had fallen into disfavor in England after the Reformation. The Puritans preferred fast days specifically called by the church or the government in response to the problems of the day, rather than on days chosen by the ecclesiastical calendar.
The foundation of Puritan New England, 1630–1642
Some Puritans began considering founding their own colony where they could worship in a fully reformed church, far from King Charles and the bishops. This was a quite distinct view of the church from that held by the Separatists of Plymouth Colony. John Winthrop, a lawyer who had practiced in the Court of Wards, began to explore the idea of creating a Puritan colony in New England. The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony had proved that such a colony was viable.
In 1627, the existing Dorchester Company for New England colonial expansion went bankrupt, but was succeeded by the New England Company (the membership of the Dorchester and New England Companies overlapped). Throughout 1628 and 1629, Puritans in Winthrop's social circle discussed the possibility of moving to New England. The New England Company sought clearer title to the New England land of the proposed settlement than was provided by the Sheffield Patent, and in March 1629 succeeded in obtaining from King Charles a royal charter changing the name of the company to the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England and granting them the land to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The royal charter establishing the Massachusetts Bay Company had not specified where the company's annual meeting should be held; this raised the possibility that the governor of the company could move to the new colony and serve as governor of the colony, while the general court of the company could be transformed into the colony's legislative assembly. John Winthrop participated in these discussions and in March 1629, signed the Cambridge Agreement, by which the non-emigrating shareholders of the company agreed to turn over control of the company to the emigrating shareholders. As Winthrop was the wealthiest of the emigrating shareholders, the company decided to make him governor, and entrusted him with the company charter.
Winthrop sailed for New England in 1630 along with 700 colonists on board eleven ships known collectively as the Winthrop Fleet. Winthrop himself sailed on board the Arbella. During the crossing, he preached a sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity", in which he called on his fellow settlers to make their new colony a City upon a Hill, meaning that they would be a model to all the nations of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like. The context in 1630 was that the Thirty Years' War was going badly for the Protestants, and Catholicism was being restored in lands previously reformed – e.g. by the 1629 Edict of Restitution.
Emigration was officially restricted to conforming churchmen in December 1634 by the Privy Council.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1633–1643