William Tyler
The English Reformation and its Export
William Tyler - The English Reformation and its Export
[Host] All right, William, whenever you’re ready. You can go ahead.
Thank you very much indeed. And welcome, everyone, to this talk. There was a site glitch in the system, a gremlin got in. I’m talking about the English Reformation and how that was exported to the English colonies in, what it became, the United States. And the Reformation is like one of those events which is a tear down history, one side and the other side. It’s one of those huge events in history. And I, my last three talks have looked at the coming of the English, at Magna Carta and at the Peasants’ Revolt, and we looked at the significance of that to all English speaking peoples and this event of the Reformation is even more significant, and especially significant in the history of the New England colonies, particularly Massachusetts and Connecticut, but therefore into the hid entire history of the United States. So let me begin by saying the Reformation of the 16th century in Europe began as an internal attempt to reform the universal, as it was then in Western Europe, the Universal Catholic Church, the reformers had many criticisms of the Catholic Church, from the banality of its priests to the challenge of religious doctrine, such as the transubstantiation doctrine.
Transubstantiation is the Catholic belief that in the mass, the bread and wine become the actual body of Christ. But the key issue, or at least the issue that ushered in not just internal criticism of the church, but a full break with it, that is Protestantism a protest against the Catholic Church, was the selling of what they called indulgences and let me read you what Jacob Field has written about indulgences. He writes, “No question was more central to Christians "than how to get to heaven, thus avoiding hell. "The Catholic Church held that the only route to salvation "was through its priesthood "and the sacraments they administered. "Before ascending to heaven, "most souls would have to spend some time in purgatory "where their sins would be purged.”
It’s a.
“Time there could run "to centuries, "but it was possible for this to be reduced "through good works, prayers, and cash to the church.” Time and he writes on, “The living could purchase indulgences, "which gave themselves or another individual reduced time in purgatory.” Now a friend of mine who was doing research in the English county of Essex came across a will in which he left a large sum of money to the church is for pay to keep his relatives out of purgatory, and he names them all, my brother John and his wife Sally, and their children, and my own children and their children and my mother and my and he lists hoards of them, but he doesn’t list his wife, which my friend found very interesting indeed. She could languish in purgatory forever. It is to our way of thinking, an odd idea and it was an odd idea to the Protestant Reformers, but not only an odd idea, they really didn’t approve of the mass collection of money, which was particularly bad in Germany and why Luther himself preached against it. “The most notorious seller of indulgence,” says Field, “was the German friar Johann Tetzel.”
“In 1516 to 1517, he travelled through Germany "selling certificates of indulgence. "His activities stirred the eye "of a monk who taught theology "at the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther.” And thus, the Reformation began. Because most historians marked the date that it began as the 31st of October, 1517. That was the day when Martin Luther nailed to the door of the chapel of the castle in Wittenberg, where he was an academic, 95 theses. In other words, 95 reasons to criticise Rome and the Catholic Church. Field goes on to say about Luther this, “Luther developed three main beliefs "that put him at odds with the church. "First of all, that people were saved by faith alone.” In other words, you didn’t have to . You didn’t have to do good works during your life to go to heaven, you just went to heaven by faith. Actually, it’s all a bit of a nonsense, because to prove you were saved, you did good works. It was the only way to show people you had been saved by doing good work. So oddly enough, the Catholic and the Protestant theology came together.
“The second thing Luther preached "against was that the "Bible” was the sole authority, “not the church, "and that only God provided salvation and not the church.” Luther went further, and then two years later he said that, “Neither the pope, nor the church councils were infallible.” Luther said that, “Lay people and clergy should have a direct relationship with God.” That is the essence of Protestantism. That the individual has a relationship with God, not via the priest and the church. It’s an individual faith. That was, it’s the individualism of Protestantism which has led people to link the arrival of Protestantism with the arrival of capitalism. Now, that thesis is largely discredited today, but for a long time held sway and it is true that Protestants viewed work and life as good, that they viewed hard work as desirable in itself, proving that you were saved, and if you made good money from it, then you donated it. This brings Protestantism very close to Judaism, and not close to Catholicism. “To achieve this, Luther called for the use "of local languages rather than Latin,” and that was a big change. He’s arguing that the “Bible” should be in the vernacular language, in our case, in English and not in Latin. Now, what was the good of producing a book in Latin, even after printing came in? Because you couldn’t read Latin, but there was a chance. Well, more people anyhow were able to read the English “Bible” than they were the Latin and if one person could read the English “Bible” in a household, they read it to the other people in the household.
So having the “Bible” in the vernacular was very important, particularly if your relationship was directly with God and not via priests. So it’s interesting to ponder for a moment, I at least, I think it’s interesting to ponder, would there have been a Reformation without the invention of printing? Would there have been a Reformation without the invention of printing? Now, of course, there’s no clear answer to that, except one can say that printing was a great enabler of the Reformation, both in religious terms by providing not just the translation of the “Bible,” but religious tracks, religious pamphlets and then, linked with religion politics, producing in England in the 1620s, ‘30s, and '40s are political tracks. And as you had to, if you were Protestant, you were expected to read the “Bible,” then you had to learn to read and that and of course, you might learn to read the “Bible,” but you’d soon learn to read other things as well. They say in early 16th century England that the purchase of books and pornography went right up once people could read. But I’ll tell you a more serious story, a long time ago now in the 1970s, I was in charge of adult education in the English county of Warwickshire and was, amongst other things, responsible for adult literacy campaigns and I was phoned up one day by a lady from an Afro-Caribbean church who said to me, could we, they have classes in literacy? And we said, “Well, of course, you can.”
And she went on to explain that she wanted her people to be able to read the “Bible” for themselves. So we said, as we always said to groups that phoned up, “What sort of reading material would you like us to use?” And she said, “The Gospel of St. John.” And it felt as though I’d stepped right back to the 16th century with this black group in uneaten of churchgoers in a black church who asked to learn to read, and we used, in teaching them, “The book of St John.” And, of course, they were extraordinarily good students. They were very keen to learn. So that was very, very, very 16th century. But let’s leave Luther, another important European continental reformers, like the Frenchman John Calvin in Switzerland, and return to England. In England, like across Europe, there had been four runners of the Reformation, a usually Catholic clergy who were critical of their own church. And in England in the 14th century, there was a movement called Lollardism, which was led by an Oxford academic called John Wycliffe and he had an enormous number of followers, and the priests who followed him preached, like John Ball last week when we talked about the Peasants’ Revolt, in any hedgerow or marketplace they could find. And Wycliffe made some translations from the New Testament the of the Christian “Bible” into English. He was sacked by political pressure being placed upon the University of Oxford, and he was sacked in a very interesting year.
He was sacked in 1381, the year of the Peasants’ Revolt, because many impositions of power blame the Lollards for giving the intellectual basis to the Peasants’ Revolt. You remember from last week, John Ball saying, “When Adam delved and Eve span, "who was then the gentleman?” Which I described as Christian socialists of the 14th century. Incidentally, a Lollard came as a, he was used as a word of abuse, because they mumbled. And the French speaking elite said, “Well, what are they saying? They’re saying "La, la, la,”. They’re Lollards.“ They’re mumblers, in other words. Wycliffe himself was fortunate to have friends in high places, none less than John of Gaunt, the most powerful man in the kingdom, and thus he was able to die in his own bed, unlike a number of his followers who were burnt at the stake for heresy. Now I want to note two things from the Lollard movement of the 14th century. One, Oxford University fought shy of getting involved later in the 16th century with Protestantism, because they had suffered grievously at the hand of government retribution over Wycliffe and the Lollards and thus, it was Cambridge that took up the torch of Protestantism in the 16th century. The other important point to note about Lollardism is in the eyes of the elite, it linked religion and politics, and the Peasants’ Revolt was the example they had before them. So as I said, those are two things. And the torch was passed from Oxford to Cambridge, and Cambridge academics in the 16th century, early first part of the 16th century, met, very English, in a pub called the White Horse, and they became known as the White Horse Circle.
These were early Protestants in the University of Cambridge. And in England as a whole, religion and politics were to become totally entwined in the next century, in the 17th century. Religion, politics, this is England, what else do you expect? Religion, politics, and hatred of Europeans or if you want to put it in nice language, a healthy dose of euro separatism. This is not much different than Brexit if you like. And I’m going to read from James Hawes’s "Shortest History of England,” in which he writes this, “On the 2nd of February, 1529, "King Henry VIII was leading "the traditional candle mass procession at Westminster, "when an incendiary pamphlet entitled, "A Supplication for the Beggars,” “was thrown and scattered at the procession. "Packed with made-up statistics and wild accusations, "the pamphlet offered a conspiracy theory "calculated to appeal to commoners and king alike. "What was the cause of the ancient oppression "of the English people? "Why was the country in such dire economic straits? "Who was stopping Henry from solving his dynastic problems? "It was Rome! "If only the foreign rule of Rome was broken, "there would not only be a financial dividend "for all the English and a grand renewal of national vigour, "it would also mean total power for Boris,” no sorry, “for Henry.” But it is exactly the same argument as Boris Johnson and Brexit.
“Why have we got problems? "It’s because of these nasty foreigners, "particularly the French. "So all we have to do is get rid of them.” They wanted to get rid of the pope in Rome. Johnson wanted to get rid of Eurocrats in Brussels. It’s a long, long line of argument in English society. And it was an Oxford man, strangely enough, not a Cambridge man, a man from my own college of Hertford, then known as Magdalen Hall, a man called William Tyndale, who also came from a part of England where I was born in Bristol. William Tyndale was living in the Netherlands in exile and he translated parts of the “Bible” into English. And he wrote in 1528, the year before this trouble, he’d writ to Henry this, and it’s quite an extraordinary message that this man sent. He said, “The king is, in this world, without law "and may at his lust do right or wrong, "and shall give accounts, but to God only.” The king is only answerable to God. The king is not answerable parliament. The king is importantly not answerable to Rome. And that was an argument which is going to carry weight with Henry. Henry needed a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, they’d nearly celebrated their silver wedding. There it wasn’t a short marriage. They had only one living child, and that, unfortunately, unfortunately in the 16th century dynastic terms, was a daughter Mary. It looked as though Catherine would not conceive again. Moreover, Henry was head over heels in lust for Anne Boleyn. Cardinal Wolsey had failed to become pope, despite English money lining the pockets of Italian cardinals.
He failed to become pope and he’d failed to get the Vatican to agree to Henry’s divorce. Then enters a sidekick of Wolsey’s, a younger man, who thought, “I could rise to real power "if I could solve the problem of the divorce,” and his name was Thomas Cromwell. And Hawes writes of Thomas Cromwell the following, “Wolsey’s erstwhile sidekick, Thomas Cromwell, "dusted off 14th-century laws called praemunire "and made the breathtaking claim "that the entire English clergy were traitors "because the Papacy was a foreign power. "A circle of radicalization developed "with power hungry men in London doing things unthinkable "a mere a few years before. "The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, "pronounced Henry’s marriage the Catherine of Aragon "null and void. "And in the Act of Parliament, "it was declared England is an Empire, "and so have it been accepted in the world, "governed by one Supreme Head and King.” “We’re not part of any European nonsense, were not even part of the Catholic Church. "We are an empire on our own.” “In 1514, an Act of Supremacy was made law. "England was now completely sovereign, "like no other major nation in Europe.” Henry is not only head of the country, he’s head of the country’s church.
So something off Rome. “We’re an empire, we do our own thing here.” But Henry never became a Protestant. He was simply a lapsed Catholic. He was Catholic in his beliefs, he was Catholic in his practises, except he did not accept the Pope as head of the church, because he was head of the church because England was an empire, and the Pope in the Vatican was a foreign power. But all these upheavals allowed the Protestants in England to emerge from the shadows and deep divisions in English society emerged. The north was more conservative than the south. In the north, there was a Catholic counterrevolution in the form of what’s called the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Henry pacified them by saying, “Look, look, I promise we will all remain Catholic.” And then, he executed hundreds of their leaders on the grounds of the pilgrimage was treason, carrot and stick. Henry wasn’t, I suppose, over concerned by the niceties of theology. And as he desperately needed money and we had broken with Rome, he turned on the monasteries in 1536. The monasteries were roughly owned 25% of all the land in England and were very rich. And Henry accused them, using a Protestant accusation, that they were all up to no good financially, sexually, you name it. Probably, well, we know largely, hugely untrue, but what does it matter when governments say that? And so we get to the dissolution of the monasteries, simply the closure of the monasteries. And Henry played his cards well, he paid off the monks and nuns with pensions.
Many of them, the nuns became nurses, the monks became teachers, and schools were established and with their pension, they were now doing very well because they had new income out of their new jobs and a pension from their old, very few resisted. And Henry then had all the property in his hands and he sold them off to the highest bidder, thus creating a pot of gold for himself to go to war with the French. It didn’t last long. The Protestants were cock-a-hoop. They thought the monasteries had gone. This is the beginning of a new world. Henry was pleased because he’d got the money and the Catholics were appalled that he was attacking the Catholic Church. But gradually Henry realised that he’d set a devouring beast loose in Protestantism that might turn on him. And, in 1539, he introduced what is called the Six Articles. In this act, all Catholic rights, services, beliefs were reinforced, but the pope was denounced and Henry was head of the church. Now this meant that Protestants couldn’t accept it, because the rites of the church, R-I-T-E-S, were Catholic. And Catholics couldn’t accept it, because the pope are being jettisoned and so Henry could attack both Protestants and Catholics alike as traitors. It’s the beginning of the end of, I suppose there’s another talk really, the end of Henry’s grasp of sanity. He died in 1547 and the Protestants were now fully in control and under the young Edward II, returned to full-blooded Protestantism.
But Henry died, but sorry, Edward died young in 1553 from TB and his eldest sister Mary took the throne and she restored Catholicism. We’re yo-yoing from one extreme to the other. This is much more than yo-yoing between conservative neighbour or Democrat and Republican, this is massive cultural change. I love the stories of when Mary came back in and she insisted that Catholic robes of the priests and Catholic books should be restored. One parish church in the county of Suffolk in England wrote back to the church authorities said, “We’re terribly sorry, "but we don’t have any of the cloaks left. "We sold them off, in well in a church faith, to be honest.” Base and women had bought them and cut them up and made dresses. So they had to go out and buy some, they weren’t pleased. Some, of course, had simply put everything in a box and locked it. Now they just unlocked it and went back. What did ordinary people think? Difficult to say, we don’t really know. But I guess most people shrugged their shoulders and got on with it. It was only when Elizabeth became queen in 1558 did the tumour begin to die down and a solution be found. I am a huge fan of Elizabeth I. She was a very, very clever political animal. She was Protestant by upbringing and conviction. She was extraordinarily well educated, but she was also a conservative traditionalist in many ways.
And in 1559, 1 year after her accession, a second Act of Supremacy was passed. And this is the one that governs the queen’s position vis-a-vis the Church of England today. And it goes like this, this is a book by the American historian, Alan Axelrod. I love Alan Axelrod’s book. This is called, “Elizabeth I CEO,” chief executive officer. And it’s a brilliant book on how Elizabeth I, you can learn, if you’re a CEO, from studying the life of Elizabeth. And he said, “In 1559, Parliament passed "the Act to Supremacy, "which definitively did away with Catholicism "as the state religion "and made Elizabeth Supreme Governor "of the Anglican Church.” Now that’s the title Elizabeth II carries, Supreme Governor of the Anglican Church. “Gradually, Elizabeth enforced uniformity "of religious worship across England "by establishing which prayer book you could use "in order to stabilise the state religion "and thereby the state itself.” So Anglicanism, the Church of England, and the political state of England became one and at the time of the Armada in 1588, it is England, Protestant, Anglican, England, with Elizabeth as head of the church and Elizabeth as head of state. That defies all that Rome can throw at England via Phillip II of Spain. It’s what is deep in English DNA, particularly in regards to the consulate. It is this exceptionalism that both the British, or the English and American share.
An English exceptionalism is, well, if what based solely in the Armada is heavily based in the Armada. Four years after this supreme, the Act of Supremacy, Elizabeth’s government passed what today would be called a mission statement. A mission statement for the Church of England, the Anglican Church in 39 articles, 39 clauses and they’re included in the Church of England “Book of Common Prayer.” Again, emphasising the link between religion and politics. And the 39 articles are, if you’re not English, you could describe as absolutely, typically English as been totally meaningless, but beautifully written, because it says the church is Catholic but reformed. But you can’t be Catholic and reformed. You are either Catholic or reformed. Only in England could you be Catholic but reformed. And whoever thought of that phrase, and I don’t know who it was, whoever thought that of that phrase, it might have been Thomas Cranmer, really excelled himself. Catholic but reformed. Can you imagine the queen saying, “Well, how are we describing our church?” “Well, your majesty, Catholic but reformed.” “Oh, splendid, but it doesn’t mean anything.” “Precisely, your majesty, "it can mean whatever we choose it to mean,” very English. But towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, from the 1590s onwards, some Protestants began to see the Church of England as too Catholic and not reformed enough and things came to the boil in the reign of Charles I.
In 1629, he sought to rule without parliament with his Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, and French to boot, very unpopular in England, and more importantly with the right wing, politically and religiously, Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. And Laud and Charles pushed the church to the right in religion, in theology, if you like, and also to the right in politics. Charles claiming that he was king by divine right. God had appointed him, and therefore he was only answerable to God and certainly not to those nasty middle-class lawyers in Parliament. The same argument that Tyndale had made to Henry VII. But Charles’s England wasn’t Henry’s England. And when he was forced to recall Parliament because he needed funds to fight, oh yes, to fight another war, Parliament said, “Hang on. "We’re not giving you any funds "until you answer the following questions "which have arisen during your rule "of 11 years without calling us.” The 11 years of personal rule. The 11 years of monarchical dictatorship. Incensed, Charles closed Parliament down with a coup d'etat, civil war ensued, which was both religious and political. Charles is to lose his head. England is to become a republic. But before the war, back in the 1620s and 1630s, many ordinary English men and women led by their clergy said, “Hang on a moment, "we can’t stand this any longer. "We feel both religiously and politically persecuted.” And as people who are religiously and politically persecuted today seek to immigrate from where they are, leading to massive immigration problems that we know about across the world, the English who felt so hard done by, had an option right before their very eyes, but a very difficult, a very daring action had to be taken.
And that was to sail across the Atlantic to New England and in New England, they could choose to worship as they wish, and they could even choose to govern themselves as they wish, and no king could interfere. When I think of those people that went in those tiny ships, and I don’t know how many of you have stood on Rick because of those ship, ships like Mayflower and the like, if you’ve stood on board those ships, how tiny they were. How I wouldn’t really, I’ve just been for a short holiday break to the Isle of Wight, 45 minutes across the Solent from Portsmouth. I wouldn’t want to do that journey in something like the Mayflower, let alone cross the Atlantic. And yet they did, why? Well, they would’ve said because they were driven to it for religious and political reasons. And their clergy would’ve said, “Because God is is leading us across the Atlantic.” It was an extraordinary, it was an extraordinary leap of faith let alone of anything else. And so they leave. And most settlers in the 13 colonies, that eventually in the 1770s become the United States, were Protestants. There were many Protestant churches. And Roger Williams, one of the most important of the early clergy that arrived in America in 1630, was an early proponent of the separation of church and state, unlike England. And that’s why today England has a unity of church and state. We have a national church and America does not. It’s at the very beginning that differences between the two nations politically emerge.
Okay, we know we all came, Americans and British from the same stock, from the same attitudes. I’ve talked about that with Magna Carta. But the changes between us begin early. And one of the most important was the distinction between state and church. That there would not be an established church in America, but that the English who arrived were free. So I arrived with a group of followers and I set up a church. Or, I joined another church which already exists and for some reason or other I fall out with the leadership of that church, maybe I don’t approve of the way they preach, maybe I don’t approve of whatever, and so we have splitting. Now this splitting of Protestant churches isn’t just an American thing, it happened here in England as well, and we get myriad churches splitting off. It’s one of the characteristics of Protestantism. But in England, the Church of England being the state church, remained the powerful one. It controlled the parishes. It controlled so many things, which, of course, in America was very different. The most interesting and arguably one of the most important divisions within churches came with the founding of the colony of Rhode Island. And that involved this exceptional man, now I did his exceptional, Roger Williams. Williams was born in 1603, he’s not quite 30, he’s 27, so we assume his wife is something like 25. Williams and his wife left England on the 1st of December, 1630.
Think of a date, 1st of December, they’re going to cross the Atlantic? And they left from my home city of Bristol onboard a ship called the Lyon. Now, in Bristol today, you can go onboard, Cabo ship a rebuild of the McKee, and you can sail around the harbour, pay your pound and you, round you go. The idea that a ship of that size, and the Lyon was not much bigger, would set out on the 1st of December. They’ve got to go down the Avon, down the Seventh to Land’s End. And then my goodness me and into the unknown, Williams and his wife arrived. He’s a clergyman, arrived in the region of Boston, but he fell out with the church authorities there because he didn’t think they had separated themselves far enough from the Church of England. And he was thorn in their side and he was banished from Massachusetts after he’d been prosecuted and convicted of sedition and heresy. So political and religious charges together, sedition against the government of Massachusetts and heresy against the beliefs of Massachusetts. And he wasn’t alone he had supporters and his supporters moved to Rhode Island and founded a new town of Providence, which Williams described was to be a haven for quote, “The distressed of conscience.” And it soon attracted exactly those people that could not stomach the authority of the new leaders in New England in exactly the same way as they couldn’t stomach the authority of the old leaders in Old England. And so revolutionary was Rhode Island, that Massachusetts and Connecticut really began to be rather anxious about Rhode Island. And in 1643 they formed a military alliance against Road Island to put an end to what they called heretic settlements, which they considered their word “An infection.” But Roger Williams undaunted took ship back to England and he arrived in London in the middle of the Civil War and London was in the hands of the Puritans of the Parliament.
And he managed to obtain from a leading parliamentarian, a Sir Henry Vain, a charter for a colony of Rhode Island. And then that’s one in the eye for Massachusetts and Connecticut. In fact, Massachusetts had their own Agents, I don’t mean spy’s Agents with a capital A who represented Massachusetts interest in England and they tried to stop Williams getting this certificate, but Williams got it and he went back and Rhode Island continued as it continues today. But it’s a really good illustration of how the Reformation was acting out in England and then in America, the Protestant belief in the right of the individual says, “I’m not putting up with you William, "I’m going to go find a church on my own. "I don’t like the way you dress. "I don’t like what you say, "I don’t like your preaching, I don’t like whatever.” And they go, and not only do they go and set up a church, but they set up a way of governing themselves. Now breaking away and forming a new government is not the story of Massachusetts and Rhode Island breaking away, but the story of Massachusetts and Connecticut breaking away. And here’s another Englishman a hero of mine. Thomas Hooker, Hooker had been educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge had taken holy orders in the church in England and had been appointed to near where I lived in Essex before I moved to the south coast. He was appointed curet we would say to the parish church at Chelmsford. The church was the Church of St. Mary. And today it’s Chelmsford cathedral, but then it was simply the parish church. But he was not just curet. The word they used in the 16th century was lecturer. So although there was a vicar in the parish, and this is a man called Michaelson. Hooker lectured, he it, preached we will say, but he didn’t preach in the church. Michaelson preached in the church, he preached, he was really, I suppose we will call it today, an outreach worker. He preached in the market square, he preached outside the church and he preached on Sundays and so riveting was he as a preacher that it was said at the time he cleared even the pubs on a Sunday morning ‘cause they wanted to hear him preach.
Well of course the authorities, William Lord at Canterbury, the church authorities hear of him and his banish from preaching loses his job and he goes to a little village outside of Chelmsford called Little Bato and sets up a school and that house than which is now a private house, very nice one, he’s still there. I’ve been there, it’s in a lovely place. But that didn’t satisfy, didn’t satisfy Hooker and eventually he lead, left for Rotterdam to the exiled English community in the Netherlands and he considered taking up a position at the English church in Amsterdam. But in the end, having come back to England, sorted out his affairs, he returned to the Netherlands and immigrated to Massachusetts on board the Massachusetts Bay Colonies ship the Griffith. He arrived in Boston and settled in Boston, but he brought a lot of people with him and they were known as Mr. Hooker’s Company and he established a church in Boston for those who were his followers in Essex. The court of Massachusetts finally allowed residents of Massachusetts to split off and find and found new communities that they wanted to spread out and one of the first communities to go was Thomas Hooker’s community and they went and they founded the colony of Connecticut and in Connecticut, Hooker became political as well as a religious leader. He established a general court representing the three towns of Connecticut, Weathersfield, which is named after a village near Chelmsford, Windsor and Hartford. And by the end of 1638, they asked Hooker to write a constitution for what they call the government of the Commonwealth and he wrote what became known as the Fundamental Laws of Connecticut and he gave a sermon in church before he set about the task and his sermon declared, the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.
The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people. The fundamental orders of Connecticut are hugely important. They are to form the basis of the American constitution. They’re the first written laws in the modern world and they’re English. It’s one of the things England has given the world written by an Englishman in an English colony and yet they are American too and gave rise to the American constitution. It’s such an important moment. He died at the age of 61 from fever, but this is what he wrote in clause one of the fundamental laws of Connecticut. “It is ordered, sentenced, "and decreed that there shall be yearly "two general assemblies of courts. "The first on the second Thursday in April the other, "the second Thursday in September following. "The first shall be called this court of election, "wherein shall be yearly chosen from time to time, "too many magistrates and other public officers "as shall be found requisite "where of one to be chosen governor for the year ensuing "and until another be chosen "and no other magistrate to be chosen for more than one year "provided always there be six chosen besides the governor, "which being chosen and sworn according to an oaths recorded "for that purpose shall have power to administer justice "according to the laws here established and for want thereof "according to the rule of the word of God, "which choice shall be made by all that are emitted Freeman "and have taken the oath of fidelity "and do cohabit within this jurisdiction "having been admitted inhabitants "by the major part of the town where they live "or the major part of such as shall then be present.” It’s beautiful. It’s Shakespeare’s English, it’s the English of the authorised version of the “Bible”. It’s the English of “The Book of Common Prayer”. It’s this superb English of the 17th century, beautiful and clear, crystal clear written not in England, written in Connecticut and it makes the hair on the back of my head rise up to think of Thomas Hooker, quill in hand writing these things down.
It’s a short document as all constitutions should be and it’s nothing like any French constitution post the revolution of 1789 and subsequent European. This is an Anglo Europe, Anglo American document. That’s how Churchill would describe it. And today, the fundamental orders with some additions are still included as quote “A declaration of rights.” Quote, “In the first article "of the current Connecticut constitution.” It exists today . The link established between Protestant and democracy was well in, well and truly established by Hooker, but not here in England, but in America. In England, after the Puritan revolution of the 1650s failed and the king comes back in the 1660 , we finally begin a march towards modern democracy with William III in 1688 and the Bill of Rights and our view of democracy is not so different from the American view of democracy. We have no written constitution. But as I’ve tried to explain in the talk about Magna Carta, the core beliefs are the same however they are expressed. And of course we kept a king, but a king who’s there on the severance of parliament . We got rid of the king remember in 1936, in about 24 hours we could get rid of the monarchy. In 24 hours were we to choose to do so, it only requires a vote in parliament. Now, if I’d given this lecture, and I have given it variations of this lecture in the past, say five years ago, even two years ago, I would’ve ended like this. And I leave you ladies and gentlemen with that quote from Thomas Hooker, “The foundations of authority "is based upon the consent of the people.”
But I can’t do that. I can’t do it and I won’t do it. There’s got to be a new ending or if you prefer an alternative ending to that, although I will come back to that quotation. Puritans were often hypocritical and were accused of being so by their contemporaries and are accused of being so today. I was brought up in an evangelical Christian public school in England and hypocrisy seemed to me and seems to me now even more strongly to be a characteristic of puritanism and if you want to think of American Puritan hypocrisy or Puritan bureaucracy, full stop. You can do no better than reading what I think is an absolutely brilliant 19th century novel by the American novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the “Scarlet Letter” about adultery. Now, I won’t say any more about the book in case someone hasn’t read it or seen a film or a TV show and comes to it afresh. But if you haven’t read the book and only seen it on TV or film, please read, it will explain everything about the Puritans who arrived in New England. And if you aren’t American, it will explain everything about Puritans, evangelicals, wherever you find them. It is an extraordinary book and it’s one of those that I would take on a desert island with me. So let’s begin with hypocrisy talking about female suffrage. Puritans never gave women the vote for all the statement of Hooker. Why not? Well, Puritans thought basically that women were evil after all it was Eve that picked the apple in the garden of Eden and they based their male dominated society upon the theology of Eve. And the first women to get a vote in a democracy were neither English nor American, but New Zealanders in 1897. Now if you are American, if you are American, tell me why that’s wrong. Just have a think.
Write it on a piece of paper. It’s wrong if you are American because Wyoming territory before it became a state, gave women the vote as early as 1869. I find that quite interesting really, if you had said which state in America gave women the vote first, I don’t meet many people who didn’t know the answer would say Wyoming, but it was. But America didn’t have universal suffrage, in the female suffrage until 1920, only two years after Britain in 1918 and both largely as a result of women’s activities during the first World War. France didn’t give women the vote until 1944 and Portugal didn’t give women the vote until 1974. But there’s another group of people that weren’t given the vote that the early settlers were concerned about, which were the indigenous people except Robert Williams, who spoke out about the way that indigenous people were being treated and wrote about it. And Roger Williams said this “Boast not proud English.” I.e. an America “Boast not proud English "of thy birth of blood, "by brother Indian is by birth as good "of one blood God made and thee an all "as wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.” One of the reasons Massachusetts didn’t want him and he founds Rhode Island and he was exceptional and unusual, but it gives the lie to the fact that everybody in this woke world we live in, everyone is either there or there, but Williams isn’t. He doesn’t fit the picture at the start of the colony of Massachusetts, they enslaved indigenous people whom they captured in war, but they found them difficult to handle and so by the end of the 17th century, they’ve given up and they’re importing black African slaves. In 1641, Massachusetts passed its body of liberties. “There shall never be any bond slavery villain or captivity "amongst us unless it be lawful, captive, taken in war "and such strangers as willingly sell themselves "or are sold to us "and these shall have all the liberties "and Christian usages, "which the law of God established in Israel "concerning such persons do it morally require "this exempts none from servitude "who shall be judged there too by authority.” Slavery is made legal in Rhode Island in 1652 a decade after that, Williams restricted the time that an individual black slave could be a slave.
He was treated like an indentured servant and not like a slave from Massachusetts and slavery was not passed down to the children in Rhode Island. But when Providence founded by Williams expanded, they changed the law 20 odd years later and Rhode Island became like every other American colony and subsequently American state with slavery. But Williams had shown there was another way. So don’t just think everything was always the same, it wasn’t. And that brings me finally to the current debate around Black Lives Matter, which has been transferred from America to Britain as our recent cause written about Britain about Yorkshire County Cricket Club has illustrated. In America of course there is an addition to the black life movement, the New York Times 1619 project, which has caused so much division, argument, dissension. 1619 being the first year that black African slaves reach America. This is led to much American soul searching around the story of America’s the land of the free and the traditional story, the early English colonies, and then the subsequent rebellion against Britain. Today, this has been described as white American history as opposed to black American history. The story of black slavery followed by black oppression. As a historian on the outside, I could well argue and say, of course, both stories contain a truth, a partial truth perhaps. And 21st century America will need to find a way for blending the two truths to arrive at a national story acceptable to all and that is a task less difficult, but nevertheless a task that England or Britain also has to follow by looking at school curricular and so on. Of course our slavery in England ended in 1772 when the Lord Chief Justice made this extraordinary comment. This is law Chief Justice Mansfield. “The air of England has long been too pure for a slave "and every man is free who breathes it. As soon as an American slave’s foot touch the soil of England he was free. But it doesn’t mean to say that in the England of the 21st century, there aren’t those who want to oust descendants of families who were involved in the slave trade or who own slaves and of course the many social problems that we’ve had in Britain post 1945 with large influxes of black immigrants particularly from the Caribbean.
So I am going to end as I would’ve ended 10, five, two years ago and say if this wasn’t true when the words were said, "We should, wherever we live, whichever country we live in, "we should desperately try and follow the words "that Thomas Hooker said so long ago in his sermon. "It should be the battle cry today "as all of us seek to make liberal democracy work "in the 21st century.” Hooker, said “The foundational authority "is based upon the consent of the people. "And in 2021, all of us should add for clarification, "people mean all the people, not just white men, "not just a privileged cast, "but everybody regardless of gender, regardless of religion, "regardless of ethnicity. "The foundation of authority "is based upon the consent of the people and as we redefine "and seek to make liberal democracy relevant in our world, "I shall take that as my standard to follow.” And thanks Thomas Hooker, the lecturer from Chelmsford who became the father of the American Constitution.
Thanks very much for listening. I’m sure there’s lots of questions. Shall roll, scroll down the questions?
Q&A and Comments:
Q: “Do I read any of Paul Little books?”
A: I’m sorry, I don’t. I don’t really,
Q: “Please speak to Luther’s antisemitism.”
A: No, it’s all partner. I wasn’t going to talk about that 'cause it takes me away from the point I’m making. Of course the Protestants are just as antisemitic as the Catholics were, we and that’s another story for another day.
This is an interesting comment. Who made this comment, John, “As I understand it, before the "Bible” “was translated to in, "into English, the church focused more "on history from Tanner, "the replacement theology. "Once there were translations into English available, "the supremacy of the Catholic Church "was increasing challenge who protested. "But it wasn’t until say the 17th century "people began to focus on the gospel of salvation "leading to revivals and social reforms.”
Yes, I think the answer to you, John, is yes that’s absolutely true.
Yes, as I, “Many of these questions "were raised a century before this.” Oops, come on. “Many of these questions were raised a century or more "before in Bohemia where John Huss was preaching "against indulgences. "He also preached in Czech and modified the language "many Hussites could read including women.”
Exactly, as I said, this wasn’t only a movement of the Lollards in England, this was a movement across Europe and it’s interesting Hussisim and Hussites are very interesting. Their influence on England was negligible, but but that’s an important point. It’s another example. We have to remember this is, I think John, I’d give somebody else a chance.
Q: David, “Do we have any ideas what Islam’s leaders "thought of England breaking with Rome?”
A: Nothing, I shouldn’t of think at all. Well, except now and that’s not true. That’s a glib answer In Elizabeth reign when we faced the might of Catholic Europe and Spain at the Armada, it was seriously considered that we should approach the salt arm in Constantinople to attack Spain from the rear on the basis of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. It didn’t come to anything and I don’t think they would’ve bothered at all, they would. No, I don’t think that would’ve registered.
“It can mean never what we want to, "somebody who says John again, "sounds slightly for declaration.” Well, what did I say? The English always produced stuff like this. Yes somebody’s mentioned who says somebody who says. Somebody’s it’s written in Hebrew, so I don’t know who they are, but they mentioned the book, which is an extremely good book in my opinion.
Martin Goodman’s book “Rome and Jerusalem” which is about second, the third century after Constantine adopted Christianity. That’s a really good book “Rome and Jerusalem”.
Q: Yes, Arlene writes, “Isn’t it ironic that Massachusetts colony, "which left England for religious reasons "were so intolerant to those who were not like them?”
A: Well, the answer is human nature is human nature. And no, nothing that doesn’t surprise me in the least. The other example thinking about Massachusetts is Salem, they took beliefs about witchcraft with them and there were prosecutions for witchcraft in New England later than in England itself, where we had become more than a little sceptical about the reasons for witchcraft and if you know the story of Salem, you know it’s not to do with religious belief. Well, religious beliefs are used to get hold of the people whom they describe as witches.
Q: Can I explain the difference between high and low church in England?
A: Very simply, high church is nearer to Catholicism. Low church is nearer to the nonconformist Puritan churches. It’s the whole sweep of the church of England. They say in the Church of England you can believe anything or nothing if you want to. Now, I mean we have had archbishops who don’t believe in God.
Q: “Can you say more about capitalism "was or wasn’t linked to ?” “I was told to read R.H Tawney "Religion and the rise of capitalism” “in school regret having not done so.”
A: Yeah, I’m afraid Tawny’s, they ought to be out of date. Why, because of the capitalism in Spain and Portugal, both Catholic countries, the capitalism that came out of the gold and silver from the new world and it’s more difficult to explain it. You can explain it in a number of ways, but it isn’t as simplistic as Tawny tried to say.
Oh, the book I take onto a desert Island, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter”, a 19th century American novel, “The Scarlet Letter”, “The Scarlet Letter” was A for adultery and somebody has answered your question, so you’ve got it there as well.
Ray, “Feminist and Puritans, "I recall Milton talking Adam and Eve, "he for God only, and she forgotten in him.”
Yeah, well, Milton’s an a good example of the Puritan.
Oh, thank you very much, who’s that? Dennis, Dennis, thank you so much. What I you remember in adult education, the lecturer learns as much often as the students. It’s not the same thing.
“Wyoming’s official nickname is the equality state.” I didn’t know that.
Q: “Any comments on the work of EJ Hobbs Born?”
A: No, you can read Hobbs Born as long as you remember he’s a Marxist, if you remember that it doesn’t, yeah. His writing’s good. Some are Hobbs Born’s writings I’m quite keen on, but you need to remember that.
Q: “Why is only England blame for saving, "no one mentions, blames the Spanish and Portuguese.”
A: No, but they do blame the French. I was in Nantes not so long ago, which was the centre of the French slave trade and there’s a lot of apologist stuff around big paintings and also public paintings and things. Is Spain, well, yeah. Well it’s because we’re linked. It’s because we’re linked in England to American slavery, that’s the point. And it’s the horror of the slavery of the southern states that we are linked to that means it comes home.
Oh, Trudy, thank you so much. I’m going to address Luther’s antisemitism tomorrow. I thought you were, but I didn’t like to say so. In case you hadn’t.
Yeah well that, Shirley, what an interesting comment. “John Marks Cromwell’s army "introduced the goosestep with rigid legs. "The American army marches with straight legs "while the British army flex theirs.” God I’d have to think about that. That is interesting. Oh, it’s the Archbishop Edinburgh who’s still alive. Who wrote a book which indicates he didn’t believe in God.
Q: “Why did more, not more Catholics become Protestants?”
A: Well, I mean, in England, almost all Catholics became Protestant. If you are saying in continental Europe, it’s because there was a counter reformation where the Catholic Church reformed itself, not necessarily in theology, but in sort of venality terms and most people are peasants in continental Europe and most people go along with it. You could argue that the Netherlands and England, which were the most, early Protestant countries, and this brings us back to Tawney, were Protestant because they were middle class and they could read and think and educated for themselves. Whereas in a lot of Europe, the bulk of the peasant class couldn’t, as they couldn’t hear, and they just simply accepted what they were told. The distinction, if you want that, well this is the basis of all revolutions. If you want to be successful at a revolution, it’s no good having the working class. You’ve got to have a middle class leadership and the rest follow. It’s the middle class that attack the upper class and that’s the important and both the Netherlands and England had this entrepreneurial middle class and I suppose that’s an answer in itself.
Have I got any more questions or have I come to the end? Let me see where I’ve got to. I think that brings me to the end of what people have put on. Oh, hang on though.
“The US still has not ratified equal rights amendment, "perhaps this Puritan hypocrisy explains it.”
Well, Hazel, you’re obviously American. I leave you to answer that. No,
Q: “Should history be rewritten "or rather left intact and explained?”
A: No, history is always rewritten. It’s rewritten for two reasons. One, because more information becomes available. So in English history, in my lifetime, we know a great deal about Saxon England that we didn’t know before because of DNA. We know that most of us don’t carry Saxon blood as our predominant D, in our DNA, but Celtic blood and we know that the conquest was not bloody, but was a peaceful conquest. The other reason that history is rewritten is that every generation seeks to understand it in the context of themselves, this is why the issue of black and white America is so strong, because it’s an issue that’s raised largely by black Americans and liberal white Americans saying, “We can’t go on teaching what we’ve done "because there’s another part of the story. "So we’re refining the story,” and I suppose historians would argue that each generation seeks to refine it, but they also seek to interpret it in the light of them, their own experiences. So history isn’t something, a fact is a fact, but I can say black slaves arrived in American 1619, now you can’t argue with that it’s a fact. If you argue with that, well, I’m sorry you’re wrong. What you can then say is what effect did that have? And once you start asking questions like that, it gets into a matter of interpretation. One of the joys of history is none of you have to agree with the teacher. Now, if I was teaching chemistry, you all have to believe everything I say. If I’m teaching history, I sometimes think because I’m teaching history, none of you believe what I say. Now you don’t have to, you can work it out for yourselves and I’m sure there’s lots of Americans listening tonight who will say, “No, you don’t understand. "You are not American. "You don’t understand what the issues are. "These are the issues.” But I’m dead certain if you said that some other American would say, “No, you are wrong.” And that’s the nature of history. It’s a matter of debate.
Yes, Mary Lamb was a Catholic dominated colony. Yes, Rhode Island also became a haven for Jewish people. Now, you know, if you didn’t know before, why? It’s because it has this history. History is important because it often tells you about the present of why things happen. And you talk about Jewish religion, of course when you compare Judaism and Christianity, the story is often it is paralleled is probably the right word to use and you can think of parallels and if you think about Judaism and Protestantism, the links are very strong indeed.
Oh, thanks and thanks Thelma Luis for putting nice comment in that, that’s, I’m only too pleased to do it. It’s these are questions I’ve thought about and argued about for a long time. So I’m very pleased for the opportunity given me to talk particularly to people who aren’t just British. Remember what I always say, you do not have to agree. You can come to your own decisions. But I suppose if there’s one lesson from today that is important, the lesson from today is we know wherever you live, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Britain, America, the Western Europe, liberal democracy is challenged. We all know that our own democracies, whichever country you live in, is not perfect by far. It is not perfect. It is arguably not fit for the 21st century in any of our countries.
We’ve gone off track or however you want to describe it and we need to get on track. Because the alternative to democracy is authoritarianism of one form or another. Putin, China, where Middle East, wherever you look. So we’ve got to think about how we make liberal democracy work, how we make young people involved enough to go out and vote and not merely to demonstrate on the streets and this is going to be very important in terms of the environment as an issue and I think in most of our countries, if not all of our countries, the politicians have been letting us down over issues like environment. We’ve got to think of how our democracies are going to function in the 21st century with new technologies and politicians are left stranded when people take to Facebook and Twitter and somehow we’ve got to find an answer. But as I said, it’s Thomas Hooker, that I will hitch my waggon to that we’ve got to believe in the individual and then the individual within the community. All people, all of us, Thomas Hooker, would be appalled at the fact that people didn’t vote. I mean, he would be absolutely shocked because that was a fundamental, okay, it was only men that were allowed to vote. Yeah, we, I know that, but he would’ve been shocked that people weren’t voting. I had an aunt who was very pro suffragette, an elderly aunt, a great aunt and I drummed it into my daughter. I didn’t care who she voted for or what she voted, but vote she must just to think of my elderly aunt who had done so much to make sure that people like my daughter had the opportunity to vote and when I find, it’s young women who say, “Oh, I can’t be bothered, all politicians the same, "I don’t want to vote.” And I think for goodness sake, for goodness sake vote. I’m going to stop, I’m preaching. I’ll come out of the Puritan pulpit and say, I think we’ve probably come to an end tonight.
Thank you, William, that was another riveting, riveting webinar. We will see everyone back at two for Dr. Helen Fries webinar. For everyone else have a good afternoon and good evening, wherever you are. Take care.
Bye, bye-Bye. Bye-bye.