Reading, the godly, and self-writing in England, circa 1580-1720

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 46, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 796-825

  Cambers, Andrew ^a  

^a LANCASTER UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949292584     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/520261     Document Type: Article

References (168)

1. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (1930; repr., London, 1992), 104, 105, 124
2. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Ormond Seavey (Oxford, 1993). The recent disbinding of the manuscript, illustrated in the exhibition The Art of Virtue: Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, shown at the Huntington Library, 17 December 2005-26 March 2006, most clearly demonstrated the composite nature of this work
3. John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford, 1991)
4. Michael Mascuch, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591-1791 (Cambridge, 1997)
5. Both authors provide subtler associations than Weber, and Mascuch's arguments are heavily qualified, but they nevertheless adhere to the paradigm. For an older literature, see also David Leverenz, The Language of Puritan Feeling (New Brunswick, NJ, 1980)
6. Paul Delany, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1969)
7. Dean Ebner, Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England (The Hague, 1971)
8. Owen C. Watkins, The Puritan Experience: Studies in Spiritual Autobiography (New York, 1972)
9. Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination, 78, 135
10. William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), 38, 98
11. Patrick Collinson, "'A Magazine of Religious Patterns': An Erasmian Topic Transposed in English Protestantism," in his Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983), 499-525
12. Margo Todd, "Puritan Self-Fashioning: The Diary of Samuel Ward," Journal of British Studies 31, no. 3 (July 1992): 236-64
13. Tom Webster, "Writing to Redundancy: Approaches to Spiritual Journals and Early Modern Spirituality," Historical Journal 39, no. 1 (March 1996): 33-56
14. for a related discussion of commonplace books, see Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982), 116-68
15. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (London, 1980)
16. The notable exception is Elizabeth Clarke, "Elizabeth Jekyll's Spiritual Diary: Private Manuscript or Political Document?" in English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700, vol. 9, Writings by Early Modern Women, ed. Peter Beal and Margaret J. M. Ezell (London, 2000), 218-37
17. For some of these models, see Webster, "Writing to Redundancy," 44-47
18. For self-examination as preparation for confession in the context of the Jesuit mission, see John Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), 268-69
19. Richard Rogers, Seven Treatises, Containing such Direction as is Gathered out of the Holie Scriptures, Leading and Guiding to True Happines, both in this Life, and in the Life to Conte (London, 1603)
20. John Brinsley, The True Watch, and Rule of Life; or, A Direction for the Examination of our Spirituall Estate, and for the Guiding of the Whole Course of our Life (London, 1606)
21. Henry Scudder, The Christians Daily Walke in Holy Securitie and Peace (London, 1627)
22. For other examples, see Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000), 305-71
23. John Beadle, The Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian. Presented in Some Meditations upon Numb. 33. 2. (London, 1656), started out as a sermon
24. Wallington recorded hearing Hugh Peter's sermon in his diary; Nehemiah Wallington, "The Growth of a Christian," British Library (hereafter BL) Add MS 40883, fol. 98v
25. Brinsley, The True Watch, 22
26. For the best survey of the shifting approaches to Puritanism, see Peter Lake, The Boxmaker's Revenge: "Orthodoxy," "Heterodoxy" and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester, 2001), 11-16
27. The approach is encapsulated in Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1964)
28. Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967)
29. and The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559-1625 (Oxford, 1982)
30. Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987)
31. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church
32. For Puritanism as a destabilizing force, see George Bernard, "The Church of England, c. 1529-c. 1642," History 75, no. 244 (June 1990): 183-206
33. Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT, 1993). For positions relating to a Calvinist consensus, see n. 16 above
34. See Kenneth Finchara, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford, 1990)
35. Peter Lake, "Defining Puritanism - Again?" in Puritanism: Trans-Atlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis Bremer (Boston, 1993), 3-29
36. and "Moving the Goal Posts? Modified Subscription and the Construction of Conformity in the Early Stuart Church," in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, ed. Peter Lake and Michael Questier (Woodbridge, 2000), 179-205
37. Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, c. 1620-1643 (Cambridge, 1997)
38. Nicholas Tyacke, The Fortunes of English Puritanism, 1603-1640 (London, 1990)
39. Patrick Collinson, "Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism as Forms of Popular Religious Culture," in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700, ed. Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (Basingstoke, 1996), 32-57
40. Peter Lake and David Como, "'Orthodoxy' and Its Discontents: Dispute Settlement and the Production of 'Consensus' in the London (Puritan) 'Underground,'" Journal of British Studies 39, no. 1 (January 2000): 34-70
41. David Como and Peter Lake, "Puritans, Antinomians, and Laudians in Caroline London: The Strange Case of Peter Shaw and Its Contexts," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 50, no. 4 (October 1999): 684-715
42. Ian Atherton and David Como, "The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England," English Historical Review 120, no. 489 (December 2005): 1215-50
43. Lake, The Boxmaker's Revenge
44. Peter Lake, with Michael Questier, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven, CT, 2002)
45. David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, CA, 2004)
46. For the historiography of reading and potential intersections with the historiography of the Puritan family, see Andrew Cambers, "Print, Manuscript, and Godly Cultures in the North of England, c. 1600-1650" (DPhil thesis, University of York, 2003), intro. and chap. 1. For the importance of the circulation of manuscripts in regulating internal disputes among the godly, see Lake and Como, "'Orthodoxy' and Its Discontents," 34-70
47. Sheila Ottway, "They Only Lived Twice: Public and Private Selfhood in the Autobiographies of Anne, Lady Halkett and Colonel Joseph Bampfield," and Ramona Wray, "[Re]Constructing the Past: The Diametric Lives of Mary Rich," both in Betraying Our Selves: Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern English Texts, ed. Henk Dragstra, Sheila Ottway, and Helen Wilcox (Basingstoke, 2000), 136-47 and 148-65, respectively
48. Ramona Wray, "Recovering the Reading of Renaissance Englishwomen: Deployments of Autobiography," Critical Survey 12, no. 2 (2000): 33-48
49. Clarke, "Elizabeth Jekyll's Spiritual Diary." Other examples include Margaret J. M. Ezell, "The Posthumous Publication of Women's Manuscripts and the History of Authorship," in Women's Writing and the Circulation of Ideas: Manuscript Publication in England, 1550-1800, ed. George L. Justice and Nathan Tinker (Cambridge, 2002), 121-36
50. See esp. Sheila Ottway, "Autobiography," in A Companion to Early Modern Women's Writing, ed. Anita Pacheco (Oxford, 2002), 231-47
51. Since the mid-1990s, most scholars, including Patrick Collinson and Peter Lake, have used the terms "Puritan" and "godly" in this way and with much more freedom than had previously been the case. This freedom is itself a product of treating Puritanism as religious culture. For recent examples, see Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford, 2003), xvi-xviii
52. and Lake, Antichrist's Lewd Hat
53. For some of the ways in which the works of early Stuart Puritans influenced later Stuart religious identities and for the shared styles of evangelical piety across the seventeenth century, see Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe, "Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity in Late Stuart England," Historical Journal 47, no. 4 (December 2004): 875-96
54. For a sophisticated summary, see Ottway, "Autobiography."
55. See Richard Parkinson, ed., The Autobiography of Henry Newcome (hereafter Newcome, Autobiography), Chetham Society, o.s., 26-27 (1852)
56. Thomas Heywood, ed., The Diary of the Rev Henry Newcome, from September 30, 1661, to September 29, 1663, Chetham Society, o.s., 18 (1849) (hereafter Newcome, Diary)
57. John Chorlton, The Glorious Reward of Faithful Ministers Declared and Improved. In a Sermon upon the Occasion of the Funeral of that Excellent Minister of Jesus Christ Henry Newcome, A. M. Late Pastor of a Congregation at Manchester in Lancashire (London, 1696)
58. "Diary of Edmund Harrold," MS A.2.137, Chetham's Library, Manchester (hereafter CL); Oliver Heywood's autobiography is BL Add MS 45964 and is printed in Jospeh Horsfall Turner, ed., The Rev. Oliver Heywood, H.A. 1630-1702: His Autobiography, Diaries, Anecdote and Event Books, 4 vols. (Brighouse, 1882-85), 1:133-222 (hereafter Heywood, Diaries)
59. Charles Jackson, ed., The Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton (hereafter Thornton, Autobiography), Surtees Society, 62 (1875)
60. "Diary of Edmund Harrold," MS A.2.137, CL
61. Alan Macfarlane, ed., The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683 (London, 1976), 161 (hereafter Macfarlane, Diary)
62. "Diary of Anne Dawson," BL Add MS 71626
63. a classic example is Matthew Henry, An Account of the Life and Death of Mr Philip Henry (London, 1712), which Matthew Henry wrote with the aid of his father's diaries
64. See Macfarlane, Diary, xvii
65. For the incident, see "Autobiography, or Abstract of Diary, of Henry Newcome," MS A.3.123, CL, lxxvi (contemporary pagination)
66. Todd, "Puritan Self Fashioning."
67. Thornton, Autobiography
68. for a recent discussion of Thornton's manuscripts, see Raymond A. Anselment, "Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Sources of Alice Thornton's Life," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 45, no. 1 (February 2005): 135-55
69. Tom Webster and Kenneth Shipps, eds., The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634-1638 (Woodbridge, 2004), 1 (hereafter Webster, Diary)
70. Webster, Diary, 1-4
71. Richard Parkinson, ed., The Life of Adam Martindale (hereafter Parkinson, Martindale), Chetham Society, o.s., 4 (1855), 1 ff
72. Examples of this include Henry Newcome, Grace Mildmay, and the author of "The Secret Travell," MS A.7.64, CL
73. for Mildmay, see Retha M. Warnicke, "Lady Mildmay's Journal: A Study in Autobiography and Meditation in Reformation England," Sixteenth-Century Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 55
74. "The Secret Travell," MS A.7.64, fol. 1r, CL
75. Nehemiah Wallington, "Letters on Religious Topics," Sloane MS 922, fols. 2r, 2v-5v, BL
76. "A Memoriall of Gods Judgments upon Sabbath Breakers, Drunkerds and Other Vile Livers," Sloane MS 1457, fol. 3r, BL
77. and "A Record of the Mercies of God: or, A Thankefull Remembrance," MS 204, Guildhall Library, London (hereafter GL), unpaginated leaves before text
78. "A Narrative; or, An Historicall Account of the Most Materiall Passages in the Life of John Rastrick," MS HM 6131, fol. 1v, Henry E. Huntington Library (hereafter HEHL). References to the manuscript are by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. See also The Life of John Rastrick, 1650-1727, ed. Andrew Cambers (Cambridge, forthcoming)
79. J. B. Williams, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs Sarah Savage (London, 1819), 236
80. Clarke's autobiography was appended to his collections of lives after his death. See Samuel Clarke, Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Later Age (London, 1683)
81. "A Narrative; or, An Historical Account of the Most Materiall Passages in the Life of John Rastrick," MS HM 6131, fol. 23r, HEHL
82. Heywood, Diaries, 1:300-303; 3:214-85 for his covenant book
83. Marshall Mason Knappen, ed., Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward (Chicago, 1933), 58, 54
84. Wallington, "A Record of the Mercies of God," MS 204, GL, 117, 45 (contemporary pagination)
85. Wallington, "The Growth of a Christian," BL Add MS 40883, fols. 88r, 73r
86. Webster, Diary, 18, 6
87. Webster, Diary, 13, 15, and 123-43
88. Newcome, Autobiograplry, 135. The incident took place before his extant diary begins
89. See ODNB, s.v. "Eyre, Adam."
90. Thornton, Autobiography, 135, 133
91. Heywood, Diaries, 1:202, 362
92. Wailington, "The Growth of a Christian," BL Add MS 40883, fols. 8v, 25v
93. and "A Record of the Mercies of God: or, A Thankefull Rememberance," MS 204, GL, 44a r
94. Macfarlane, Diary, 112, 156
95. As such, it echoes recent work on the uses of more administrative documents such as parish accounts. See, e.g., Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, CT, 2001)
96. Wallington, "Record of the Mercies of God," MS 204, GL
97. "A Narrative; or, An Historical] Account of the Most Materiall Passages in the Life of John Rastrick," MS HM 6131, HEHL. Wallington was a prolific titler of his books
98. For a list, see Paul S. Seaver, Wallington's World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (Stanford, CA, 1985), 199-202
99. John Hopkins, "The Prodigal's Teares; or, The Poor Sinner," BL Add MS 18774, fol. 1r
100. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. C. Jackson, Surtees Society, vol. 65 (Durham, 1877), 1
101. "The Autobiography of Adam Martindale," BL Add MS 4239
102. Roger North, "Notes of Me," BL Add MS 32506, fols. 2r-v
103. Nehemiah Wallington, "A Record of the Mercies of God: or, A Thankefull Rememberance," MS 204, GL, unpaginated papers before start
104. for indexes, see "Letters on Religion Topics," Sloane MS 922, fols. 200r-205r, BL
105. "A Memoriall of Gods Judgments upon Sabbath Breakers, Drunkerds and Other Vile Livers," Sloane MS 1457, fols. 105r-v, BL
106. "Growth of a Christian," BL Add MS 40883, fols. 189r
107. Wallington, "Growth of a Christian," BL Add MS 40883
108. "The Autobiography of Adam Martmdale," BL Add MS 4239
109. For uses of margins, paragraphs, pagination, and spacing, see Wallington, "A Memoriall of Gods Judgments upon Sabbath Breakers, Drunkerds and Other Vile Livers," Sloane MS 1457, BL, and "Growth of a Christian," BL Add 40883
110. "Autobiography of Oliver Heywood," BL Add MS 45964
111. William H. Sherman, "Toward a History of the Manicule," in Owners, Annotators, and the Signs of Reading, ed. Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote (London, 2005), 19-48
112. For footnotes beneath a ruled line, see "Autobiography of Edmund Calamy," BL Add MS 50958, 1-5
113. For marginal notes, see "The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby," Egerton MS 2614, fols. 27r, 30r, BL
114. Heywood, Diaries, 2:243
115. "Autobiography, or Abstract of Diary, of Henry Newcome," MS A.3.123, CL, lii
116. Knappen, Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, 209
117. For example, Newcome, Diary
118. See Warnicke, "Lady Mildmay's Journal," 57
119. For example, "Diary of Oliver Heywood," BL Add MS, 45965
120. Edmund Calamy, "A Historical Account of my own Life with Some Reflections on the Times I Have Lived in," BL Add MS 50958-59
121. See Cambers and Wolfe, "Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity," 875-96
122. See ODNB, s.w. "Henry, Philip," "Henry, Matthew," and "Savage, Sarah"; for Philip Henry's book of scripture questions for his family, see MS A.2.126, CL
123. for his diaries more generally, see Geoffrey Nuttall, "The Nurture of Nonconformity: Philip Henry's Diaries," Transaction of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1997, n.s., 4 (1998): 5-27
124. Newcome, Autobiography, 14
125. Todd, "Puritan Self-Fashioning," 243
126. Henry Fishwick, ed., The Note Book of the Rev. Thomas Jolly, A.D. 1671-1693, Chetham Society, n.s., 33, (1895), introduction
127. Richard Rogers, Seven Treatises
128. For Margaret Hoby's reading of Richard Rogers, see Cambers, "Print, Manuscript, and Godly Cultures," 59
129. for Bruen, see Samuel Clark, The Second Part of the Marrow of Ecclesiastical History: Containing the Lives of Many Eminent Christians (London, 1675), 93
130. Rogers, Seven Treatises, 399-404
131. Wallington, "Letters on Religious Topics," Sloane MS 922, fols. 7r-22v, BL
132. Collinson, "A Magazine of Religious Patterns," 499-525
133. See Como, Blown by the Spirit, 134-36
134. Robert Markham's interleaved diary within John Gadbury, Ephemeris: or, a Diary Astronomical, Astrological, Meterological, for the Year of our Lord, 1681 (London, 1681), BLAdd MS 18721
135. "Pocket-book of Anthony Hammond," written on the blank pages in The Ladies Diary: or, the Woman's Almanack, for the Tear of our Lord, 1717 (London, 1717), BL Add MS 22584
136. Adam Winthrop made similar use of Allestree. A New Almanacke and Prognostication (London, 1620)
137. See Bremer, John Winthrop, 127
138. Newcome's reading of Angier's diary (305) could refer to Angier's manuscript diary for 1662-76, which has been lost since the nineteenth century, or to Oliver Heywood, A Narrative of the Holy Life and Happy Death of ... Mr. John Angier (London, 1677)
139. Samuel Clark, The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 3rd ed. (London, 1675)
140. (Henry Newcome), A Faithfull Narrative of the Life and Death of that Holy and Laborious Preacher, Mr John Machin (London, 1671)
141. John Harland, ed., Collectanea Relating to Manchester and its Neighbourhood at Various Periods, Chetham Society, o.s., 68 (1866), 187
142. Parkinson, Martindale, 74, 135
143. Notably, H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558-1640 (Oxford, 1996)
144. and Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993)
145. Webster, "Writing to Redundancy," 47-48, 55
146. "Diary of Edmund Harrold," entry for 7 September 1712, MS A.2.137, CL
147. Heywood, Diaries, 3:264, 1:329
148. For the composition of Jollie's book, see Fishwick, The Note Book of the Rev. Thomas Jolly, 108
149. Newcome, Autobiography, 157
150. ForWallington's notebooks, see Seaver, Wallington's World, 199-208
151. Wallington, "A Memoriall of Gods Judgments upon Sabbath Breakers, Drunkerds and Other Vile Livers," Sloane MS 1457, fol. 2v, BL
152. For goal-orientatedreading, see Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, "'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy," Past and Present, no. 129 (November 1990): 30-78
153. For social reading, see Roger Charrier, "Leisure and Sociability: Reading Aloud in Early Modern Europe," in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark, NJ, 1989), 103-20
154. Elsewhere Chartier has cautioned against using secondhand accounts alone as evidence of social reading and warned that such descriptions formed part of a discourse intended to underscore the ordered and fraternal nature of rural life and contrast it with the disorder and selfishness of urban existence as much as they described readerly praxis. See Roger Chartier, Cultural History; Between Practices and Representations (Oxford, 1988), 163-64
155. "A Narrative; or, An Historicall Account of the Most Materiall Passages in the Life of John Rastrick," MS HM 6131, fols, 1v, 2v, HEHL
156. For Whiteway and his connections with Mounsell, see William Whiteway of Dorchester: His Diary, 1618-1635, Dorset Record Society, 12 (Dorchester, 1991), 105, 106, 133, 157. I am grateful to Ian Archer for alerting me to Mounsell
157. and "Record of the Mercies of God," MS 204, GL, unpaginated page at start of volume
158. See also Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, CT, 2002), 171
159. ODNB, s.v. "Henry, Philip"
160. Edward Bagshaw, The Life and Death of Mr Vavasor Powell (London, 1671), 12. Bagshaw's account was extracted from Powell's papers
161. Macfarlane, Diary, 557, 56
162. Shepard's autobiography is printed in Michael McGiffert, ed., God's Plot: Puritan Spirituality in Tilomas Shepard's Cambridge, rev. ed. (Amherst, MA, 1994), 35-80
163. For Ralph Thoresby's transcript of John Shaw's "Life," see BL Add MS 4460; for multiple copies of Mary Love's biography of Christopher Love, see Sloane MS 3945, BL, and MS 28.58, Dr. Williams's Library, London. Neither is the original
164. See ODNB, s.v. "Love, Mary (fl. 1639-1660)."
165. For the importance of scribal copies of diaries, see Clarke, "Elizabeth Jekyll's Spiritual Diary," 218-37
166. For Morrice, see The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, ed. Mark Goldie et al. (Woodbridge, 2007)
167. See Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rainbow (London, 1997), 207-22, 223-51
168. Heywood, Diaries, 1:133, 138