Francis Rous and "scabby or itchy children": The problem of toleration in 1645

Huntington Library Quarterly

Volumn 67, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 401-422

  McGee, J Sears ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950335320     PISSN: 00187895     EISSN: 1544399X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/hlq.2004.67.3.401     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. British Library, Harley MS. 164, fols. 194v, 200v. The first discussion of this issue had occurred in the Commons on 10 February, at which time it had been referred to a committee for consideration. See J. R. De Witt, Jus Divinum (Kampen, The Netherlands, 1969), 180.
2. For a brief but thoughtful and wide ranging overview of the problem of toleration, see John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558-1689 (Harlow, Essex, 2000).
3. The Primitive Practise, 2d impression (London, 1645, 1, 48);
4. see my article, "Sir Simonds D'Ewes and 'the Poitovin Cholick': Persecution, Toleration, and the Mind of a Puritan, " Canadian Journal of History 38 (December 2003): 481-91. In his preface D'Ewes explained that he wrote the treatise in 1637 but, knowing that the authorities would not permit its publication then, intended it only "for private use."
5. The Ancient Bounds (London, 1645), 11; page references are given henceforward in the text.
6. W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols. (London, 1932-40), 4:27-28.
7. Charles R. Gillett's Catalogue of the McAlpin Collection (New York, 1927-30) attributes the work to Rous because an earlier McAlpin librarian, the Rev. Dr. C. A. Briggs, a student of the Westminster Assembly, thought Rous wrote it. The STC lists it under Rous's name, probably because of Gillett or Jordan or both.
8. "Authorship of The Ancient Bounds, " Church History 22 (1953): 192-96. I am most grateful to Jason Peacey of the History of Parliament Trust for alerting me to the existence of this article and for fruitful discussions about the authorship of The Ancient Bounds.
9. A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (London, 1938), 27. For the excerpts, see pp. 247-65.
10. Francis Rous, Thule, or Vertues Historie, Publications of the Spenser Society, no. 23 (Manchester, 1878), iv.
11. C. M. Dent characterized Magdalen and Broadgate as "halls of definite protestant sympathy" in the Elizabethan period and noted that George Summaster, principal of Broadgates from 1575 to 1619, was "enlarging the hall and seems to have encouraged the admission of students of advanced protestant tendencies"; Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford, 1983), 86n, 78.
12. Rous was one of the executors of Pym's will. See Conrad Russell, Unrevolutionary England (London, 1990), 206.
13. In his treatise Catholick Charity, Rous says that Sir Thomas Overbury had traveled with him in France. According to the DNB, Overbury (b. 1581, and so a near contemporary) traveled to the Netherlands in 1609, and Overbury's father was a bencher and a Middle Templer. See Rous, Treatises and Meditations (London, 1657), 355.
14. History of the Rebellion, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1849), 5:311 [XIV:18].
15. David Underdown, Pride's Purge (Oxford 1971), 263. Underdown was interested in Rous's role (through his Lawfulness of Obeying) in presaging "practical Hobbesian arguments for conformity."
16. Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), 127.
17. George Yule, The Independents in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1958), 10.
18. Idem, Puritans in Politics: The Religious Legislation of the Long Parliament (Appleford, Oxfordshire 1981), 141.
19. William A. Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1640-1660 (London, 1900), 1:265.
20. J. Hexter, The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), 198n.
21. Wallace Notestein, ed., The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (New Haven, Conn., 1942), 21.
22. David Laing, ed., Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie (Edinburgh, 1841-47), 2:120, 197, 332, and 3:97.
23. The Lawfullnesse of Obeying (London, 1649), 12-13.
24. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford, 86n.
25. Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, Calif., 1979), 56.
26. Rous, as reprinted in Treatises and Meditations, 18; see also 113ff, 161, 430.
27. J. R. Pitman, ed., The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot (London, 1824), vol. 12
28. The Journal of the Proceedings of the Assembly of Divines from January 1, 1643, to December 31, 1644, 192, 199, 206, 245.
29. See also Paul, Assembly of the Lord, 376ff.
30. Meditations of Instruction (London, 1616), 67-68.
31. Treatises and Meditations, sig. Gggg4r.
32. The Arte of Happiness (London, 1619), 416, 422.
33. Diseases of the Time (London, 1622), 45-46; cf. 218, 281.
34. The Onely Remedy (London, 1627), 328-30.
35. Meditations of Instruction, 53-57.
36. Diseases of the Time, 476-77.
37. Catholick Charity, in Treatises and Meditations, 427; cf. 431ff.
38. The Balme of Love (London, 1648), 8, 10.
39. Stationers' Register, 1:67.
40. J. C. Spalding, who wrote the entry on Sprigge in R. L. Greaves and R. Zaller, eds., Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals, seems unaware of Lewalski's article.
41. Anglia Rediviva (London, 1647), 324.
42. Bartlett, Ichnographia, or A Model of the Primitive Congregational Way (London, 1647), 126, 22.
43. Some Flashes of Lightnings of the Sonne of Man (London, 1648). Sedgwick spent some time as a chaplain to the troops of Sir William Constable, so it is possible that Sprigge met him in the Parliamentary army. According to Spalding, Sprigge was also a New Model chaplain (but he does not appear in Anne Laurence's list).
44. Refreshing Drops, and Scorching Vials (London, 1653), sig. A3v.
45. The Judgement Set, and The Bookes Opened (London, 1654), sig. A2r. Webster, a surgeon and chaplain in the New Model Army, admired Paracelsus and van Helmont and was a fierce critic of school and university learning.
46. Henry Halhead, Inclosure Thrown Open (London, 1650), sig. A2r.
47. Sprigge, Certain weighty Considerations Humbly tendered and submited to the Consideration of such the Members of the High Court of Justice for Tryal of the King ... (London, 1648), sigs. B2r-B4r.
48. A Testimony (London, 1649), sig. A2v.
49. "Authorship of The Ancient Bounds, " 195.
50. For Sprigge's statement on 14 December 1648, see Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism and Liberty, 145.
51. A Testimony, 123-24, 142, 152.