the character of an antipuritan

The Character of an AntipuritanAuthor(s): Christopher HaighSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Fall, 2004), pp. 671-688Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20477040 .

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Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXV/3 (2004)

The Character of an Antipuritan Christopher Haigh

University of Oxford

This article considers antipuritans in Elizabethan and early Stuart England as they were portrayed in didactic texts, especially dialogues, and as they appear in court records. When godly Protestants were dubbed "puritan," they responded with the antipuritan, a caricature of their critics as dull-witted despisers of religion who excused their indifference by calling the zealous "puritans." The article then asks

whether antipuritans were only a useful polemical fiction, and finds real antipuritans in the records of diocesan courts, visitations, and the Star Chamber. Real antipuritans used the same accusations of hypocrisy, spiritual pride, censoriousness, and disobedi ence as the fictional antipuritans used in the dialogues. In texts and in parishes, the "puritans" and the "ignorant" called each other names, deployed contending stereo types, and offered rival versions of post-Reformation religion.What each had to say about the other offers insights into tensions within the Church of England.

"Is NOT THE MORE SINCERE PROFESSION OF RELIGION termed preciseness, puritanism,

hypocrisy, and suchlike? Doth not he that refraineth the common sins of the time

make himself a prey to the mouths of the ungodly?" So asked William Perkins, and

the answer was obvious. Godly writers often complained that the ordinary run of

worldlings, carnal men, and reprobates abused the truly religious as "puritans."

Those Perkins called "ignorant people," "the common people,""the common,

ignorant sort of people," "the multitude," "the ignorant multitude," "our common

sort of Protestants"; all found piety too much trouble, and they scorned the godly

who took Protestant religion seriously. "The practice of that religion which stands

by the law of God and the good laws of this land is nicknamed with terms of'pre

ciseness' and 'purity."' To be pious was a risky business: "Some say that if they

should frequent sermons they should be accounted precise and be mocked for

their labour."1

In recent years some historians of puritanism have been more interested in the

word than the thing. "Puritan" was a term of abuse, they say rightly, a polemical

weapon used to stigmatize dissatisfied evangelical Protestants.The puritan was a lit

erary and polemical construct: a figure of fun for Ben Johnson and Thomas Nash,

a seditious conspirator for Richard Bancroft and Richard Cosin. "The Puritanism,"

Patrick Collinson famously told us, "was in the eye of the beholder": we should

look at those who called others puritans and ask why they did so rather than look

at those who were called puritans and ask what was wrong with them.2 This

William Perkins, The Workes of that famous and worthy minister of Christ, in the university of Cambridge, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1608-31), 1:A2,709-10; 2:87,332,354,532,539.

2Patrick Collinson, "A Comment: Concerning the Name Puritan," Jo urnal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 483-88;idem,The Puritan Character:Polemics and Polarities in Early Seventeenth Century English

671



672 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXV/3 (2004)

approach reflected the influence of postmodernist literary theory and the fashion

for "representations": any search for reality seemed rather old-fashioned and unso

phisticated. It has been a useful exercise, and it has shifted our attention from the

little world of godly piety towards the social tensions that religion sometimes caused

and sometimes reflected.

This article begins with a similar investigation of antipuritans, as portrayed in

didactic godly texts and especially dialogues. For labeling was a two-way process.

When they were dubbed "puritan," godly Protestants responded with the antipuri

tan, a caricature of their critics: the down-market dim-witted despiser of religion,

who excused his indifference by calling the zealous "puritans." The article then

considers whether antipuritans were only a useful polemical fiction, and finds real

antipuritans exist in the records of diocesan courts and visitations. In the texts and

in the parishes, the "puritans" and the "ignorant" called each other names, deployed

contending stereotypes, and offered rival versions of post-Reformation religion.

What the godly had to say about antipuritans, and what antipuritans had to say

about the godly, offers insights into tensions within the Church of England. John

Whitgift argued with Thomas Cartwright, Thomas Nashe argued with Martin

Marprelate, and as we shall see, ordinary parishioners argued with each other.

* * *

The antipuritan hated godliness and the children of God: he was a man without

God. Atheos was a character in a fictional debate, A Brief Discourse of Certain Points

of the Religion which is among the common sort of Christians, which may be termed the

Country Divinity, published in 1581 by George Gifford, preacher at Maldon in

Essex. The dialogue is set on the road in Essex, and is between two travelers,

Atheos and Zelotes, who do not think well of each other. Zelotes did not like

Atheos's defense of his nonpreaching curate, who sorted out village quarrels in the

alehouse. "I perceive you are one of those curious and precise fellows which will

allow no recreation," replies Atheos. "What would you have men do? We shall do

nothing shortly.You would have them sit moping always at their books: I like not

that!" The godly were always poking their noses into other people's lives: "You

that are precise puritans do find fault where there is none, you condemn men for

every trifle."3

Culture (Los Angeles: Clark Library, 1989); idem, "Ecclesiastical Vitriol: Religious Satire in the 1590s

and the Invention of Puritanism," in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed.

John Guy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); idem, "Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair: The

Theatre Constructs Puritanism," in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1516

1649, ed. D. L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1995); Alexandra Walsham,'"A Glosse of Godlines': Philip Stubbes, Elizabethan Grub Street and the

Invention of Puritanism," in Belief and Practice in Reformation England, ed. Susan Wabuda and Caroline

Litzenberger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); Peter Lake, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and

Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2002), 579?620.

3George Gifford, A Briefe discourse of certaine points of the religion which is among the common sort of Christians, which may be termed the Countrie Divinitie (London, 1582), fols. 3r, 76r. On Gifford see Dewey D.Wallace, "George Gifford, Puritan Propaganda and Popular Religion in Elizabethan England,"



Haigh / The Character of an Antipuritan 673

The godly thought they were superior to other men, and they set themselves

apart. Atheos hated that. "There be a number go so far they cannot tell what they

will do: they will not do as their honest neighbours do, they would be wiser than

their betters; what should they meddle with God's words, it maketh them busy in

checking every man. It was never merry since men unlearned have meddled with

the Scriptures." "These men are full of the spirit," he said; "these are precise fellows,

these are holy saints, these think themselves God's fellows, these think themselves

better than other men." Atheos objected to such presumption: he would "hope to

be saved, what would you have more? I believe never a one of them all, when they

say they know they shall be saved. I think they make themselves gods." But the

godly were sinners too: "It were good that you puritans should consider yourselves

and become better subjects to the prince."

It was the preachers who had caused most of the trouble, said Atheos. "I know

towns myself which are even divided, one part against another, since they had a

preacher, which were not so before," and "whereas before they loved together, now

there is dissension sown among them."The preachers were "busy controllers," who

tried to regulate people's lives, and they preached divisive and dangerous doctrines.

They "be over hot and severe and preach damnation to the people. Likewise they

meddle with such matters as they need not, as election and reprobation: what

should such matters be spoken of among the people, they make men worse.""But

they would drive men to despair, and bring them out of belief with the fear of dam

nation."4 Thus proclaimed Atheos, antipuritan. And he had friends.

Among them was John Bate's Autophilus, another "atheist" dialogue character.

He mocked the Christian who had changed his ways: "Well, Philoxenus, I perceive

you are become a feather of a left wing. I knew when it was not so with you, how beit this gear will take no colour." His main grievances were against moralizing preaching and social control: "there is nothing but the law, damnation, damnation"

and "no good friendship, no sports, no pastime, no not so much as upon the Sun

day." Like Atheos, he complained that the godly thought that they were God's cho

sen:"Do they think that none should be saved but such as read Scriptures and hear

sermons?" "I have the Bible in my house, and a few prayers, and now and then I

have a little crush for recreation's sake." The godly took religion too seriously, got things out of proportion, and marked themselves off from "honest men." But God

would save Autophilus: "No, no, God is merciful, favourable, and full of compas

sion; at what time soever a sinner doth repent him from the groundwork of his

heart, he will receive him, his mercy is over all his works."5

Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978): 27-49. Atheos and others are considered briefly in F. Luttmer, "Per

secutors, Tempters and Vassals of the Dev?:The Unregenerate in Puritan Practical Divinity," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51 (2000): 37-43.

4Gifford, Briefe Discourse, fols. 2r, 17v, 20r, 24v, 27r, 46r, 75r, 83r.

5John Bate, The Portraiture of Hypocrisie, lively and pithilie pictured in her colours (London, 1589), 8, 12,13,34,36,96,177.




The friends of Atheos also included Asunetus ("an ignorant man") and Antil

egon ("a caviller"), two characters in The Plain-Man's Pathway to Heaven: Wherein

every man may clearly see whether he shall be saved or damned. Setforth dialogue-wise,for

the better understanding of the people, written in 1601 by Arthur Dent, minister at

South Shoebury in Essex. Antilegon and Asunetus debated with Theologus ("a

divine") and Philagathus ("an honest man"), sitting under an oak tree on a fine May

afternoon.The dialogue between Theologus and Philagathus is a catechetical divin

ity lesson, with Philagathus asking basic questions and Theologus giving lengthy

answers: Asunetus intervenes with the common man's objections, and Antilegon

with worldly wisdom and dislike of puritans. Like Gifford's Atheos, Antilegon and

Asunetus condemned the presumption and hypocrisy of the godly and objected to

predestinarian teaching. For Antilegon, the godly "be but a company of hypocrites

and precise fools." He complained to Philagathus, "You seem to be one of those

scripture-men" and "you do plainly show yourself to be one of those folk of God,

which know their seats in heaven." The godly had their holy pretensions, but in

truth were like other men: "Well, for all this, I cannot see but these preachers and

professors, these learned men and precise fellows, are even as eager of the world and

as covetous as any other."6

They agreed with Atheos that predestination brought spiritual pride and social

division. "I think the preaching and publishing of this doctrine of predestination

hath done much hurt, and it hath been good it had never been known to the people

but utterly concealed. For some it driveth to despair and other it makes more secure

and careless," said Antilegon. Asunetus thought so too: "Methinks you go beyond

your learning in this, that you condemn good neighbours and good townsmen."

The doctrine of assurance was sheer arrogance: "I will never believe that any man

can certainly know in this world whether he shall be saved or damned, but all men

must hope well and be of a good belief." Asunetus had a simple, Pelagian view of

salvation: "If a man say his Lord's Prayer, his Ten Commandments and his Belief,

and keep them, and say nobody harm nor do nobody harm and do as he would be

done to, have a good faith Godward and be a man of God's belief, no doubt he shall

be saved without all this running to sermons and prattling of the Scripture." That

was enough religion for Asunetus, and surely it was enough for God. Theologus

shook his head gloomily: "For now religion is hated, true godliness despised, zeal

abhorred, sincerity scoffed at, uprightness loathed, preachers condemned, profes

sors disdained, and almost all good men had in derision."7

Arthur Dent's book was a best seller, going through more than forty editions

between 1601 and 1641; in 1616 Thomas Turvell produced a rip-off version with

almost the same title: The Poor Man's Path-way to Heaven, wherein each one may clearly

see whether he be in the state of salvation or damnation. Setforth dialogue-wisefor the easy

6Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven (London, 1601), 26, 105, 302.The names have

Greek derivations: Antilegon, an opponent of the law; Asunetus, a witness fool; Ph?agathus, a lover of

truth.

7Dent, Plaine Mans Path-way (1601 ed.), 19,27, 263, 320; (1631 ed.), 129.



Haigh / ne Character of an Antipuritan 675

understanding of the simple.Turvell's characters were Timothy ("a professor"),Ananias

("an atheist"), and Aquila ("a civilian"). Timothy, like Bate's Philoxenus, was a

reformed sinner, so the "wicked worldlings" called him "a puritan knave, a dissem

bler," and asked, "What, are hypocrites, dissemblers, and puritan knaves become

now thy brethren?" Ananias defends dancing and Sunday games, and attacks

preachers: "It was never merry since there was so much preaching, and so many

controllers." The godly were "dissembling puritan knaves, for I know of none

worse than some of you be."When Timothy accuses Ananias of despising the godly

for their religion, he replies angrily, "We do not hate them for their virtues, if they

have any; we hate them because they are dissemblers, and speak well and do clean

contrary."They were presumptuous, but "We do believe in God as well as the best

of you all, and we have as good an heart and do mean as well as any of you, and we

do that we do with a good intent," and "I hope we shall be saved by Christ's death,

as well as the best puritan of you all."8

Atheos, Autophilus, Antilegon, Asunetus, and Ananias-all the bad guys begin

with A. The five characters were much the same: the later ones were built upon

Atheos, and fleshed out from the works of Perkins.These were functional characters

in practical divinity, serving their turn in the dialogue form.The intellectual fashion

for the dialogue had passed by about 1620, but the antipuritan appeared elsewhere,

notably in the works of Robert Bolton, minister at Broughton in

Northamptonshire. He sketched out antipuritans in Some General Directions for a

Comfortable Walking with God. Any converts to godliness got abuse "from their old

companions, who cry out 'They are turning puritans!"' Bolton complained, "There

is scarce a religious professor, especially of resolution and spirit, but some men of

the world will charge him with surliness and pride." "You see those fellows, which

make such a show of forwardness and purity, what they are: none so covetous, so

uncharitable, none so unmerciful and cruel in their dealings as they," cried the

antipuritans. They thought the godly had no sense of proportion, and took things

too seriously: "I pray you, why are you so hot? What needs all this? What needs so

much ado, when a reasonable thing will serve the turn?" Such fanatics were capable

of any lunacy: "These forward professors will all turn fantastical, Familists,

Anabaptists, Arians, anything!-You see now what these professors are ... they are

even all alike!"9

By contrast, the antipuritans were straightforward, reasonable people: "We, say

they, are plain-dealing men and appear as we are; we are flesh and blood and must

have our pleasures, and therefore refresh ourselves at many merry and jovial

meetings.We swear sometimes, and drink and game, and, to tell you true, do a great

deal worse, but without hypocrisy." They knew they were sinners, but they were

8Thomas Turvell, The Poor Mans Path-way to Heaven (London, 1616), 9-10,16-17, 20-21, 58, 61, 76. Timothy, St. Paul's companion, was martyred for opposing the festivities of Diana; Ananias (in Acts

5:1-7) refused to share his property with other early Christians, and was accused by St. Peter of lying to

God.

9Robert Bolton, Some General Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God, delivered in the lecture at

Kettering in Northamptonshire (London, 1625), 24,288, 303,349,350.




Christians too. Like Autophilus and Asunetus, they knew that God would see them

through: "We thank God, we have a good faith to Godwards.We have believed in

Christ ever since we may remember.We hope God will be merciful, though we be

not scripture-men, nor so far forward as others, or such followers of sermons etc.,

yet we look to be saved as well as the best of them all, etc. We doubt not but that

we shall go to heaven."10

In his Instructions for a Right Comforting Afflicted Consciences, Bolton stressed the

worldlings' hatred of the godly. If a sinner reformed, "In a word, to turn Christian,

Oh! Then he is an arrant puritan, a precisian, an humorist, an hypocrite, and all that

naught is." "He was a good fellow, will they say, but he is now quite gone; a proper

man and of good parts, but his puritanism hath marred all." It was worse still for a

religious woman: "This it is now, to be so bookish, to follow preachers so much, to

be more holy than their neighbours, never to be done in serving of God.... Her so

much reading the Scriptures, and such pouring over precise books ... hath made

her stark mad:'The puritan is now besides herselfl"' Bolton protested against "all

those nicknames of puritan, precisian, hypocrite, humourist, factionist, etc., with

which lewd tongues are wont to load the saints of God." He knew what the good

Christian faced: "art thou therefore slanderously traduced with slanderous, odious

nick-names of puritan, precisian, hypocrite, humourist, dissembler, etc., because of

standing up for religion?"11

The A-team of bad guys and Bolton's "good fellows" formed a representative

antipuritan type: blunt, worldly wise, hail-fellow-well-met, the men to be found at

the alehouse or bowling, especially on Sundays. They had lots of time for their

neighbors, some time for God, not much time for formal religion, and none at all

for puritans. To these antipuritans, the godly were presumptuous and pretentious;

they were hypocrites, disobedient and singular; they were censorious, unrealistic

killjoys, and regulators.The godly thought themselves better than everyone else, but

they weren't; they were arrogant, sinful, disruptive, and divisive.

Of course, Atheos, Autophilus, Antilegon, Asunetus, and Ananias were polem

ical patsies, straw men to be knocked down by Zelotes, Philoxenus,Theologus, and

Timothy. They trot out simple arguments against religious zeal and Calvinist doc

trine, and are demolished. The dialogues begin as disputations and end as cate

chisms. Zelotes says that Atheos is no better than a papist, and by their sins he and

his kind provoke God's wrath against England.Asunetus is converted byTheologus's

description of the last judgment and the torments of hell: "I feel great terror in my

conscience, I am afraid I shall be damned." Asunetus now sees himself for what he

is, and fears for his soul: "For I have lived in sin and ignorance all the days of my

life, being utterly void of all religion and true knowledge of God."Theologus com

forts him with the mercy of God through Christ. Ananias and Aquila are persuaded

by Timothy that they must seek true faith: "I and my neighbour will take our leave

10Bolton, Some General Directions, 298, 352.

^Robert Bolton, Instructions for a Right Comforting Afflicted Consciences (London, 1631), 61, 200,

334,341.




of you for this time, praising God for the comfort you have ministered unto us."12

In the end, the "plain man" (and Turvell's copycat "poor man") finds his "pathway

to heaven." It was all very edifying, and it sold well.

These plain men were constructed to serve their dramatic purpose: examples

of ignorance and indifference, the artificial opposites of the godly, created to make

theological points. Atheos is an unreformed has-been, still nostalgic for the old

days: "I will follow our forefathers." Autophilus is a rich man ("my bags be well

bumbasted, and my barns well filled with corn"), and he criticizes preachers

because they cry against covetousness. Ignorant Asunetus is the antitype ofTheolo

gus, the scholarly minister; carping Antilegon is the inverse of Philagathus, who was

searching after truth. Timothy is a reformed sinner, but Ananias is a fiddler by trade,

who profits from sabbath-breaking ("I thought you were a fiddler or an alehouse

keeper," said Timothy).13 In the dialogues, the ungodly are foils for the godly. Our

authors were trying to show that ungodly attitudes were held by ungodly men, by

simple fools who knew no better and would not learn, but Christians, proper

Christians, should know better, must know better, must be better.

Gifford, Dent, and Bolton were subtle and sophisticated writers, though Bate

and Turvell were not: Gifford at least had considerable literary skill and imagination.

His Atheos asks pertinent questions, and his accusations against puritans are sharp:

the godly need ready answers to the criticisms Atheos makes, and Zelotes provides

them, though Atheos is not persuaded. Atheos also brings a warning: the godly

might fall into presumption and censoriousness, and Atheos might be proved right.

Bate was making the usual zealot's point, that true religion is hard and easy religion

is false, an excuse for sin. Dent was discrediting critics of predestination by associ

ating them with Asunetus, "who indeed is a very ignorant man in God's matters,"

and with Antilegon, "a notable atheist and caviller against all goodness." Dent was

neutralizing the accusation of puritanism by putting it in the vocabulary of the god

less: who but an Antilegon could call a good Protestant a puritan? And Bolton was

trying to make the nervous godly feel brave, distinctive, and able to resist tempta

tion and assault. It was, after all, the mark of true Christians that they should suffer

for their faith: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you." 14

So perhaps these antipuritans never existed: perhaps they were only useful fig

ments of the godly imagination, hermeneutic fictions in the struggle for godliness.

Needless to say, Gifford, Bate, Dent, Turvell, and Bolton did not write objective

anthropological descriptions, they wrote to teach the godly what to believe and

how to defend it.They produced patterns of how to live and how not to live.Their

antipuritans were a ploy to discredit antipuritanism. Perhaps they can be ignored.

Perhaps there was no Atheos. But, as Patrick Collinson remarks, just because there

was a puritan construct it does not follow that there were no real puritans. Just

12Dent, Plaine Mans Path-way, 407, 408;TurveU, Poor Mans Path-way, 208, 210-11, 212, 267; Peter

Burke, "The Renaissance Dialogue," Renaissance Studies 3 (1989): 3-4.

13Gifford, Briefe Discourse, fol. 5; Bate, Portraiture of Hypocrisie, 5, 58;TurveU, Poor Mans Path-way,10. 14Dent, Plaine Mans Path-way, 2; Matt. 5:11




because there was an antipuritan stereotype it does not mean there were no anti

puritans. So what was it like in the real world? How did actual parishioners react

to godly preachers and godly neighbors? Hostility towards godly ministers often

gets into the records of the church courts, usually as complaints against their refusal

to conform to Prayer Book rubrics: such presentments may be evidence of"puri

tanism," but they are also evidence of antipuritanism, showing hostility to the godly,

their ways, and their beliefs. So what did real antipuritans have to say for them

selves? What did they say about the godly? And what does it tell us about them?

* * *

George Gifford tells us that Atheos came from the parish of"G[reat] B[addow]," near Chelmsford in Essex, and this was no literary accident. The actual vicar there

was a known opponent of the godly, and Christopher Ampleforth was probably

the original for Atheos's popular curate, the nonpreaching "Sir Robert." In 1575

Ampleforth got three godly preachers arrested for eating meat during Lent, and

the informer,William Lowberrie, came around for a laugh that Ampleforth had so

successfully troubled "his enemies." When a preaching exercise was to be held at

Great Baddow atWhitsun,Ampleforth disappeared with the key to the church (or,

in another version, refused to hand it over): Dr. Masham was furious that he and

the other preachers could not get into the church, and by the time they did the

congregation had gone. "'Marry, quod the same Mr Ampleforth, 'it made no mat

ter, there was but a couple-a prating knaves a-prating,' meaning them that prophe sied aforesaid." A few months later, Gifford himself was called before the

archdeacon of Essex's court because "he at a prophesy did will the people to do as

some ministers teach and not as they do," and he was ordered to declare in

Mountnessing church that he had not meant to discredit local clergy.15 Gifford did

not invent the world of Atheos and Sir Robert, it was there at Great Baddow. His

book had a real local context, and Atheos articulated real attitudes towards the

godly clergy.

In 1582 the churchwardens of Sherborne, Dorset, reported their divisive vicar,

David Dee, at visitation. He had excluded some parishioners as unfit for commu

nion and he neglected the poor of the parish. Dee had omitted parts of the Prayer

Book service, "in place of which he useth his preachings, far from the edifying of

the congregation"; his sermon style was personal preaching, highlighting the indi

vidual sins that had been reported in confidence to him, "to the offence of many."

Dee was a nuisance. In 1586 the wardens of Upton Skidmore, Wiltshire, com

plained about Thomas Hickman, their rector. He too was selective: he "will chris

ten no child, but such as please him, will church no woman but such as please him,

nor serve the holy communion but to such as please himself." "Many of his parish

ioners" had been excluded from communion for three years, and the rest were

made to receive it standing. Hickman had forbidden the people to kneel or bow in

15Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, D/AE/A8, fol. 205v;A9, fols. 13v-14r.



Haigh / ne Character of an Antipuritan 679

services, as the Prayer Book prescribed, saying "it is plain idolatry." And there were

secular grievances too: he kept his sheep in the churchyard, chased after as much

tithe as he could get, "and is so envious and brabbling that the said parishioners are

weary of him."16

William Hieron, rector of Hemingby, Lincolnshire, also provoked antipuritan

complaint. In 1595 some of his parishioners reported that he would not use the

cross in baptism and refused communion to those who knelt to receive it. He too

used personal preaching: "he doth so rage and rail against some particular parish

ioners against whom he hath some private grudge, that he disturbeth the whole

peace of the congregation." Worse, he was thoroughly tactless. In sermons, "he

likeneth his parishioners to the thieves in gaol, saying that divers of them sit before

him with worse consciences than such as are going to hanging this assize," and he

"divideth his auditory thus, having one or two that he thinketh assent his novelties

he pointeth unto them,'I speak to you regenerate,' and turning his body, counte

nance, and hand to the rest of the parishioners he sayeth 'I speak to you also."' He

was a critic of his fellow clergy, too, claiming "there is not above three or four

besides himself that are godly zealous ministers in the county of Lincoln."17Anti

puritans wanted social cohesion, neighborliness, conformity, and a quiet life: they

did not want to be troubled.

In 1598 there was a series of five complaints against George Bowden, preacher

at Mapperton in Wiltshire, formal presentments by churchwardens and sidesmen,

and a petition witnessed by five men and three women, "with others." Bowden did

not observe saints' days or follow Prayer Book rubrics, nor did he wear the surplice,

which he called "the badge of superstition."Worse, to the parishioners, he preached

justification by faith alone and predestination: "he doth say that the best works we

do is sin and abomination and filthiness before God. Moreover, he doth say that a

little child when that he is born be pointed to be damned or saved."The protesters

described Bowden and their schoolmaster as disruptive and disloyal "puritans," who

needed to be silenced, "for they go about to steal away the hearts of the people by

their stained reforms, and also to deprive our queen of her due obedience, back

biting their superiors and condemning their brethren, disquieting the church and

abusing the office of godly preaching." The people of Mapperton (or he who

drafted the protest) knew just what they were doing by deliberately associating the

unpopular Bowden with the subversive presbyterians against whom their own

ecclesiastical superior, John Bridges, dean of Salisbury, had written at such length.

"Mr Dean hath spoken and written against the puritans before this time, but now

your peculiars are full, and none worse than in our own parish by Mr Bowden and

a schoolmaster that Mr Bowden hath gotten into our parish."18

16Wiltshire RO,Trowbridge, D5/28/5/95; Dl/43/6, fol. 15. 1 Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, Court Papers 58/1/5, fol. 1.

18Wiltshire RO, D5/28/7/2, 26, 28, 29,100; John Bridges,^ Defence of the Government Established

in the Church ofEnglande (London, 1587).




The churchwardens of Beercrocombe in Somerset produced a long charge

sheet against their rector in 1636, by which time there was much more to be non

conformist about. Bartholomew Salford did not wear a surplice or bow at the name

ofJesus or read the Nicene Creed at matins, and he skipped other bits of the Prayer

Book service. He read out the Book of Sports as commanded, but then declared

that "whatever the king is pleased to have done, yet the King of Heaven command

eth us to keep the Sabbath." But his sermons provided the main grievance: he had

preached against drunkards by name, and went on for two or three hours on Sunday

afternoons, "until near five of the clock, that they have not time to do their neces

sary works." 19

Of course, presentments at visitation were responses to official enquiries, and

churchwardens used the concerns of their ordinaries to strike at unpopular minis

ters. Perhaps Thomas Hickman of Upton Skidmore was a parish nuisance less

because of his nonconformity and more because of his sheep, which left dung in

the church porch, so that parishioners walked it into the church "which is a great

smell and doth much grudge the parishioners' conscience."20 But visitation articles

offered wardens a wide range of charges that could be made against ministers, and

we should be attentive to the issues they chose to pursue again and again. Many

churchwardens (and the parishioners they represented) disliked nonconformity, dis

ruption, divisiveness, and predestinarian teaching-and the fourth was not an

offense at all.

Antipuritan parishioners sought revenge on ministers by reporting them to the

church courts, and by mocking them. On 1 December 1605 AnneVincent of Cas

tleton in Dorset dressed up as a minister "in derision, with a surplice on her back

and a pair of spectacles on her nose." She strode through the village with a book in

her hands crying "I cannot endure this papistical book!" as if she were a puritan

condemning the Book of Common Prayer. She was thought to be mocking the

godly vicar of Haydon. In 1616 a woman of St. Katherine Cree parish in London

made fun of the godly preacher Stephen Denison. After one of his sermons, Mrs.

Rose went up into the pulpit and parodied his energetic preaching style; she hec

tored her lhttle congregation of five or six women, denounced sin, and waved her

arms about just as Denison did.21

It was John Lee's campaign of preaching, catechizing, and moral reform at

Wylye in Wiltshire that caused dissent in 1623-24. Thomas Kent, churchwarden,

warned Lee that his long sermons kept servants from their work, though other

parishioners thought an hour was acceptable. Lee took religion just too seriously

for Kent, who protested against the cost of communions: "Mr Lee would make a

poor parish of it if there should be a communion so oft as he would have it."When

Lee complained that few came to his catechism classes, Kent told him "that they

19Somerset Record Office,Taunton, D/D/Ca.313, fols. 41v-42r.

20W?tshire RO, Dl/43/6, fol. 15v.

21W?tshire RO, D5/28/10/30, 62; Peter Lake, The Boxmaker's Revenge: "Orthodoxy," "Heterodoxy," and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 56.




came well enough and stayed long enough there, for (said he) they must go home

to look to their cattle." Kent's daughter Susan also disliked the catechizing: "for, said

she, when once he (meaning the said Mr. Lee) takes his green book in hand we

shall have such a deal of bibble babble that I am weary to hear it, and I can then sit

down in my seat and take a good nap." Lee's catechizing did at least mean time for

a doze, but he had made himself a nuisance, trying to stop dancing on Sunday after

noons:"he speaks against us for our dancing, but now my father is come over and

if he speak against it my father will maintain it, for the king doth allow of it." Susan

Kent was Atheos in skirts. She had had enough of the troublesome Mr. Lee, "the

great devil": "we had a good parson here before but now we have a puritan, but,

said she, a plague or a pox on him that ever he did come hither, and I wish we had

kept our old parson for he did never dislike with them at any time." She looked to

the future: "these proud puritans are up at the top now, but I hope they will have a

time to come as fast down as ever they came up."22 Parishioners ranted against troublesome ministers, and they railed against godly

laypeople too, in just the terms Gifford and Dent and Bolton described. At Dan

bury in Essex in 1578 Gabriel Hone declared "there were no Protestants but

pratlingstants, that do use to tell lies." Elizabeth Heckford of Elmstead, Essex,

agreed in 1591: "a shame take all professors, for they are all dissemblers and liars." In 1599 William Farrington of Chipping Ongar was "a railer of our minister and

most of the inhabitants who profess religion, calling them all heretics, hypocrites,

such as he hath ever and in every place detested, clowns, etc."AtWincanton, Som

erset, in 1615 the churchwardens were "precisian, puritan rogues," and "the devil

should have them." The diarist John Manningham was a careful notetaker at ser

mons, but he also recorded jibes against "puritans": "a curious corrector of things indifferent,""such a one as loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbour with all his heart," "such hypocrites are those professors," "what dissembling hypocrites these puritans be."23

At Dorchester (Dorset) inI606, three antipuritan libels circulated in the town, and were learned and recited. They were "To all sturdy puritan knaves,""You puri tans all, wheresoever you dwell," and "The counterfeit company and pack of puri tans"-verses against hypocrisy, presumption, nonconformity, predestination, and the doctrine that Christ died only for the elect. The "execrable company of puri tans" were hypocrites, sinners beneath their feigned holiness:

For no-one's so simple that on you do look

But knoweth that you live contrary to your book.

22Wiltshire RO, Dl/39/2/11, fols. 36r-40r, 41v-42v.

23Essex RO, D/AE/A10, fol. 64v;W H. Hue, A Series of Precedents and Proceedings (London, 1847), 221-22; F G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts (Chelmsford: Essex County Council, 1973), 215; Somerset RO, D/D/Ca.191 (unfoliated), 6 October 1615; The Diary of John Man

ningham, ed. R. P. Sorlien (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1976), 29, 77, 163, 218.

Hypocrisy was the standard theme of literary attacks on "puritans": see W P. Holden, Antipuritan Satire, 1512-1642 (New HavemYale University Press, 1954); Lake, Antichrist's Lewd Hat, 524-30, 540-50, 569.




You carry your Bible God's word to expound,

And yet in all knavery you daily abound.

For envy, hatred and malice great store

In no creatures living I think is more.

As daily by experience amongst us we find,

To mischief and hatred none more inclined.

Yea, covetousness, lechery and lying for gain

Amongst you puritans is not counted vain.

"These counterfeit brethren elected" were presumptuous and censorious, thinking

themselves better than their neighbors:

Others there are I know very well

Which for pureness of life they say they excel.

Yea saints of heaven already chosen to be,

To judge the good and evil of every degree.

But pride comes before a fall:

You puritans count yourselves the greatest men of all,

But I trust in God ere long to see all of you to fall.

They were disobedient nonconformists and killjoys, rebels against the king:

For what our king commands, that they do deny,

Yea praying, kneeling and standing all these they deft,

All honest recreations and merriments they blame,

And are these not puritans, speak truly for shame.

Antipuritans, however, were loyal patriots:

O God prosper long our noble king and send him long to reign,

And not to trust the puritans nor yet the king of Spain.

And "puritans" were identified as those who believed that God had predestined

everyone, and that Christ had died only for the elect:

Who wickedly do hold and so do profess

That God is the author of all sinfulness.

Who likewise affirm that, whatsoever chance,

Christ is surely theirs and he will them advance.

At Dorchester we see the standard antipuritan themes, expressed in doggerel

verse.24

Richard Lovell of Glastonbury protested in 1617 that he had been named as

the father of her bastard child by Anne Hammond, "a filthy whore." He had

24PRO, London, STAC 8/94/17, nos. 12, 13, 20, 22. The local background to these libels is dis

cussed by David Underdown, Fire from Heaven (London: Fontana, 1993), 27-36.




successfully purged himself before the court, "and yet through oppression of the

damned sect of puritans I am enforced to keep the child until I can find the father":

the "damned sect" was presumably the officers of the parish, but Lovell apparently

thought anyone imposing unreasonable orders was a puritan. Francis Norris of

Handsworth in Staffordshire was clear on what a puritan was. One midsummer

Sunday afternoon in 1629,Thomas Lee and George Richards were on their way to

church. As they passed Norris's alehouse, he called out, "'God's wounds,' or some

suchlike oath"; "How now, Thomas Lee, art thou turned puritan?" When asked

what a puritan was, Norris (according to Richards) replied,"they were such as went

a-gadding to sermons as they did, and that they were knaves and thieves and no bet

ter." Norris himself admitted saying, "he is a puritan that follows or hawks or hunts

to other churches than his own parish church, and carryeth a book under his arm

and the devil in his bosom, and inventeth how to do his neighbour an ill turn," the

usual antipuritan accusations of zealotry, hypocrisy, and malice.25 There was Anti

legon, keeping a pub in Handsworth.

Puritans were those whose sins were as great as anyone's, but who concealed

them by ostentatious religiosity. At Rye in Sussex in 1632 someone composed a

libel described as "some verses of the purer sort": it accused Michael Smith and

Martha Ormonton of adultery, and was sung to tune of the popular ballad "Tom o'

Bedlam." It began "There is a report of a crime committed between some of the

holy brotherhood"; the refrain was "Wench, lie still; wench, lie still"; and the song

ended "None did suspect that they were the elect, up the hill they came tripping,

with nimble bodies bending, and upon her he nimbly skipped, and when he had

instructed her he said 'Yonder cometh a sinner"' (her husband). Then the church

bell rang, and off they rushed to a sermon. In the 1630s, Richard Baxter's father

had a hard time in Shropshire: he was called "puritan" because he read the Bible,

and those who went off to hear sermons were "made the derision of the vulgar

rabble under the odious name of 'puritan"' -though that comes from Baxter's

autobiography, and may be another polemical fiction.26

Sometimes antipuritanism was more than mere verbal abuse. In the town of

Maldon, Essex, there were conflicts between 1584 and 1595. On one side were the

godly followers of George Gifford, creator of Atheos, on the other a "multitude of

papists, heretics, and other enemies to God and her royal majesty"; the main issues

were plays and alehouses. It was much the same in Rochdale, Lancashire, at the

same time, split between allies of the godly vicar Richard Midgeley and a group led

by the local alehousekeepers, who objected to Midgeley's long sermons, his Sunday

afternoon catechism classes, and his attempts to close alehouses on Sundays. There

were famous troubles at Banbury in 1588-89. There the godly party, led by the

vicar Thomas Bracebridge and the nonconforming gentleman Anthony Cope,

sought to suppress Whitsun ales, maypoles, and morris dancing, against an opposi

25W?tshire RO, D5/28/18/26; Lichfield Record Office, B/C/1629, Handsworth, fols. 4r, 7v-8r.

^Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, ed. S. R. Gardiner (Camden

Society, 1886), 149-50; The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. N. H. Keeble (London: Dent,1974), 4,6.




tion led by John Danvers, who demanded the complete Prayer Book services in

church, as well as maypoles. There were street demonstrations and counterdemon

strations, and the Privy Council had to intervene to restore order.27 Of course,

there could be other social tensions besides religion, and those who wanted decent

behavior in their town or village were not necessarily puritans28-but that is the

point. They were often called puritans, and the word was a weapon in community

conflicts. It was a weapon deployed by Richard Lovell of Glastonbury, Susan Kent

ofWyley, and Francis Norris of Handsworth, as well as by Atheos and the rest.

* * *

So it seems that Atheos and his friends did exist, and were not merely polemical

inventions. There were real people who branded the godly as puritans and con

demned them in exactly the terms our dialogue authors described: as zealots, hyp

ocrites, killjoys, men and women convinced of their own superiority and sure of

their own salvation. They complained that their "puritan" ministers were noncon

formists, and they objected to the teaching of predestination and to excessive

moral strictures. They used just the same abusive terms, employed just the same

puritan stereotypes, as their literary patterns. Doubtless, their attitudes had been

informed by the stereotypes, and Norris's definition of a puritan (who "carryeth a

book under his arm and the devil in his bosom, and inventeth how to do his

neighbour an ill turn") echoes Manningham's proverbial "such a one as loves God

with all his soul, but hates his neighbour with all his heart." But it should not be

thought that the writers created antipuritans and people grew into the roles. The

complaint that the rabble traduced the godly as puritans was already well estab

lished when George Gifford made Atheos.29

There were many kinds of antipuritanism, of course. Well known is the anti

puritanism that historians often call "conformism"-the antipuritanism ofWhitgift

and Bancroft and Hooker; the antipuritanism that some historians call "Arminian

ism"-the anti-Calvinism of Montagu and Wren, which widened the puritan cat

egory to include conformist Calvinists; and the antipuritanism of London's hack

polemicists and playwrights.30 And there was also an antipuritanism of the street

27W?Ham Hunt, "Hie Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 99-100, 146, 153-54; Christopher Haigh, "Puritan Evangelism

in the Reign of EHzabeth I," English Historical Review 92 (1977): 57; Alfred Beesley,77ie History ofBanbury

(London, 1841), 242-44,615-16; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1581-90, 586,601,602,605. 28David Lamburn, "PoHtics and ReHgion in Early Modern Beverley," in The Reformation in English

Towns, ed. Patrick ColHnson and John Craig (Basingstoke: MacmiUan, 1998); J. S. Craig, "The 'godly' and the 'froward': Protestant Polemics in the Town ofThetford, 1560-1590," Norfolk Archaeology 41

(1992): 279-93.

29John Stockwood, A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross on Barthelemew day (1578), 55, 70?71; idem, A very fruiteful Sermon preached at Pauls Crosse the tenth of May last (1579), fols. 6, 68v; Bartimeus Andreas

(Andrewes), Certaine verie worthie, godly and profitable sermons, upon the fifth chapiter of the Songs of Solomon

(1583), 91-92, 111, 122,185-86. 30Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterian and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to

Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988); Nicholas Tyzcke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminian

ism, c. 1590-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); and see the references in n. 2 above.




and the alehouse, expressed in passing insults, determined mockery, and regular

accusations of hypocrisy and presumption. Of course, these parish antipuritans are

only isolated occasional examples: are there enough of them to suggest that hostility

to the godly was widespread, that there were lots of antipuritans in English parishes?

What can historians make of a clutch of anecdotes, which cannot be treated statis

tically and which may not be representative?

I want to make five points. (1) I am not suggesting we play a speculative num

bers game, and try to guess whether the godly or the less godly were the majority:

I am simply suggesting that some of the less godly were hostile to the godly, and

were a large enough presence to constitute a real problem for them. (2) Perhaps, as

Martin Marprelate mocked, there wasn't much of a market for Dean Bridges's

brand of ponderous antipuritanism, but there was a ready market for Nashe and

Jonson. (3) There is much criticism in court records of godly clergy, usually for non

conformity and uncharitable conduct: zeal was not illegal, but if parishioners could

find a legal excuse to strike at a disruptive minister, they very often did. (4) It was

more difficult to frame accusations against godly laypeople, unless they too were

nonconformists: assurance of election and Bible reading were not against the law:

but there were plenty of complaints to the courts against the ungodly who had

abused the godly. (5) The literary stereotypes and the court cases seem to reinforce

each other: the court cases show the literary figures were not inventions, and the

literary figures suggest that critics were even more common than the court record

shows. Atheos and Asunetus and Ananias worked as propaganda tools because

everyone knew them: they could be recognized in every parish and there was at

least one in every alehouse. In 1629 Robert Bolton noted that ordinary carnal

Christians "are excellently laid out in their colours, and to the life, by that reverend

man of God Master Dent, in his Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven" 31-that's how they

really were.

Antipuritans existed, then; but who were they, and what made them antipuri

tan? Godly authors and preachers presented antipuritans as the dregs of society, as

cup companions," the alehouse haunters who spent their time "in swearing, gam

ing, drinking, surfeiting, revelling and railing on the ministers of the word and such

as profess religion." Sometimes it was so. John Simons of Castleton in Dorset went

to church drunk in 1628, "and there called some of the parishioners rogues, some

drunkards, some puritans": one was either an obvious sinner or a puritan-binary

opposition indeed. Francis Norris, who asked "art thou turned puritan?" was an

alehousekeeper who was cross that potential customers went to sermons instead.

Perhaps, as William Perkins suggested, the antipuritans just did not care enough

about religion. Thomas Rigglesworth of Padbury, Buckinghamshire, said in 1635

"if he came to church but once a month it is enough, and it is puritanism to press

31Robert Bolton,7?w Sermons preached at Northampton (London, 1634), 85.




the needfulness of evening prayer": go to church too often, and you are a puritan.32

Perhaps antipuritans really were men without God.

But not all antipuritans were irreligious, not all of them hated sermons, and

not all of them were bumpkins. Richard Stonley was a teller in the Exchequer, a

parishioner of St. Botolph Aldersgate, and an assiduous sermongoer and notetaker.

He bought religious books hot off the press: Marbeck's Commonplaces and Whit

taker's Latin answer to Campion in 1581, as well as Robinson's translation of a har

mony of the psalms and Arthur Dent's sermon on repentance in 1582. He took

religion seriously, but he hated nonconformity and presbyterianism. Stonley's non

conformist minister had been suspended, and on St. James's Day 1581 Stonley

noted in his diary,"This day for lack of service at our parish church by our obstinate

curate, I read the service at home to my family." He listed with horror ministers'

errors and deviations, and checked them against the Prayer Book. In 1593 he

bought Bancroft's Survey of the Pretended Holy Discipline and-surely this is a

clincher-Bilson's huge Perpetual Government of Christ's Church. After services on

Sundays in 1581, Stonley read through his Bible, though by 1597 he had relaxed;

he now "passed the day sometime with the bowlers and at my books." But by then

he was in prison for alleged peculation in the Exchequer, and perhaps he had

become godless; but he was reading the Lamentations ofJeremiah. Stonley was an

antipuritan, though the "puritanism" he was against was disobedience and subver

sion, not the godly religiosity mocked by Francis Norris and Antilegon. On 13

October 1581 Stonley bought "a little book called The Country Divinity per George Gifford": if he read the dialogue, I would like to think he sided with Atheos.33

For Atheos himself was no atheist; he simply had a God different from that of

Zelotes. For Atheos and his like, God was merciful and had sent his son to save all

humankind. There was fury among some in Dorchester in 1606 when John White

preached that Christ died only for the elect:

O wretch and silly man, if white be thy skin,

Yet black and defiled is thy soul, which within

No mortal man but the devil did devise

To cut and curtail Christ's passion in this wise.

For Christ our redeemer without all exception

For all mankind suffered his passion.

And when of his goodness he died on the tree

His blood then extended to every degree.

Atheos's God was realistic and did not have high expectations of those he had

created: "I trust God will not require more at my hands than I am able for to do; I

am as he made me, if he had made me able for to do better, I should do more."

32Perkins, Workes, 2:311; Wiltshire RO, D5/28/29/39; Lichfield RO, B/C/1629, Handsworth, fol. 4r; Buckinghamshire Record Office, Aylesbury, D/A/V/3, fol. 86r.

33Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC,V.a.459, fols. lOv, 18r, 19r, 21r, 25r, 30r, 62v;

V.a.460, fol. 43r;V.a.461, fols. 7r, 39r.




Zelotes's God was fiercer, and demanded saving faith, assurance of salvation, and

constant striving for perfection by sermongoing, Bible-reading, examining of con

science, and avoidance of the occasions of sin. Atheos's God was gentle, satisfied

with charity and churchgoing. "If a man labour all the week truly and honestly, and

upon the sabbath day come to the church and make his prayers, shall we say God

regarded not his prayer because he doth not understand what he prayeth? His intent

is good, he doth his good will, he hath a wife and children to provide for, he must

follow the world and let preaching go or else he shall beg, and so long as he doth

hurt no man but deal uprightly, I think God doth require no more at his hands.

Such as have nought else to do, let them seek for knowledge."34

For George Gifford, as for Arthur Dent, Robert Bolton, and many others,

Atheos's religion was no religion at all: it was an excuse for idleness, a cover for

carelessness. "When they use to say, as they think in defence of themselves, 'we be

without skill, we have no knowledge, we be poor honest men, we have no learn

ing,' it is as much to say 'we have no faith, we have no virtue, we have no godli

ness."' Gifford thought that a majority of the English were like his Atheos. "There

are the most in number who, having popery taken from them and not taught thor

oughly and sufficiently in the gospel, do stand as men indifferent; so that they may

quietly enjoy the world, they care not what religion come."35 There was something

in this, but it was harsh, for antipuritans did have religious preferences. In the real

world antipuritans complained about overregulation, predestinarian teaching, and

liturgical nonconformity. Parish conflicts over church rituals were common, especially concerning the

sacraments. In Gloucestershire and Norfolk in the 1570s, in the dioceses of Lichfield

and Salisbury in the 1580s, in Hampshire and Wiltshire in the 1590s, and in Hamp

shire again in 1607, the issue was communion bread, with many parishioners

demanding communion wafers (prescribed in the queen's injunctions) instead of

ordinary bread (prescribed by the Prayer Book). In some Northamptonshire par

ishes, nonconforming ministers refused communion to those who knelt, as the

Prayer Book demanded, but some parishioners would receive only if they could

kneel. In Lancashire at the end of Elizabeth's reign, the question was the cross in bap

tism: some ministers refused the sign as popish, and many parishioners took their

babies off to be christened elsewhere in the proper manner. This refusal of unsatis

factory sacraments is significant: they were to be done properly, or not at all.36

So antipuritans wanted a different sort of religion, and they wanted a different

sort of pastor. Atheos had thought his Essex curate, "Sir Robert," was "the best

34PRO, STAC 8/94/17, nos. 13,22; Gifford, Briefe Discourse, fols. 32r, 72r.

35George Gifford, Foure Sermons upon the seven chiefe virtues orprincipall effectes of faith, and the doctrine

of election (London, 1582), sig. C5; Gifford, Briefe Discourse, dedicatory epistle.

36Christopher Haigh,'"A matter of much contention in the realm': Parish Controversies over

Communion Bread in Post-Reformation England," History 88 (2003): 393-404; idem, "The Taming of

the Reformation: Preachers, Pastors, and Parishioners in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England," History 85 (2000): 584-85; David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor

and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).




priest in this country," "a very good fellow," who sorted out parish quarrels: "if there

be any that do not agree, he will seek for to make them friends, for he will get them

to play a game or two at bowls or cards, and to drink together at the alehouse." In

real life, some parishioners complained that such a minister was a dumb dog and an

alehouse haunter, a disgrace to his cloth. But others cried against divisive and con

tentious ministers, those who caused trouble in their parishes and set neighbor

against neighbor, such as David Dee of Sherborne,William Herne of Hemmingby,

and George Bowden of Mapperton. At Mapperton in 1598 the parishioners asked

for the removal of Bowden and the village schoolmaster, and the appointment of a

new minister, "such a man as may settle and frame together that which these hath

dispersed, for now we live a most tormentable and miserable and ungodly life, and

it will never be amended so long as these continue in that place, for before these

came to dwell amongst us we lived in love and in charity with one another, but

now we live as ungodly men." And, they concluded, "A good pastor will guide his

flock charitably, but a careless shepherd will annoy them mightily."37 This is the

authentic voice of Atheos, in rural Wiltshire, crying out for social harmony and

gentle pastoral care.

In real life, as in fiction, the antipuritan was the puritan in reverse. Men and

women were called "puritans" if they were Protestant zealots, if they had a hard and

demanding God, if they lived an intense religious life, if they identified old rituals

as idolatry, and if they set themselves above mere worldlings. Antipuritans, those

who called the godly "puritans," were their opposites.The antipuritans thought that

God was a kindly old man who knew his children were frail.They thought that reli

gion should be kept in its place and not allowed to interfere with bowling, dancing,

or watching the cattle.They hated the pope, but did not think that baptizing a child

with a cross was popery. And they believed in community: in the social customs

that reinforced tolerance and cooperation; in the role of the pastor in defusing vil

lage quarrels and promoting "good fellowship." Doubtless they had idealized the

past, but they hated dispute and prized neighborliness. Perhaps, when a world is

torn by zealotry, it was not a bad set of values.

Behind the polemical texts (and not very far behind them) was a reality: par

ishes where the godly reviled the godless and antipuritans raged at "puritans." Gif

ford, Dent, and the rest knew there were antipuritans, they struggled with

antipuritans, and their books reflected their experience. Atheos and Antilegon were

not only polemical weapons, they were urgent warnings, reminders of what the

godly faced in their daily lives; the books in which they appeared were short courses

on how the godly were to cope with adversity and adversaries. The plain man's

pathway to heaven was not easy, and he was surrounded by enemies, in both texts

and contexts. We cannot say with certainty that the godly were a beleaguered

minority, but we can be sure that they were beleaguered. Asunetus, Ananias, and

the rest were out there, and they had to be faced.

37Gifford, Briefe Discourse, fols. lv-2r; Wiltshire RO, D5/28/7/20.



the character of an antipuritan

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