The notable part played by women in the Reformation has rarely been given its due recognition in English historical studies. In recent years Professor Wallace Notestein has written with characteristic authority and grace on ‘The English Woman, 1580-1650,’ but one does not learn from this essay that the English women of this age had any religious propensities at all. And leaving aside the more prominent figures such as Queen Catherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, and Catherine Brandon, duchess of Suffolk, women make but few appearances in most accounts of the English Reformation. This is no doubt only one symptom of the tendency of so many of our histories to dwell upon the officially inspired aspects of the Reformation to the neglect of the spontaneous and the local; to be concerned with the making of settlements and their enforcement rather than with the means by which Protestantism actually spread in families, towns, and other communities. And of course there are special factors which obscure the female contribution to history, the legal disabilities of the sex, which so often hide the married woman and allow us to catch glimpses only of the widow, a ‘person’ in law.

One of the consequences of the dissolution of the monasteries was the amount of patronage which fell into lay hands. In the past the influence of laymen, apart from that of the Crown itself, on the emergent Elizabethan Church has largely been ignored. A great deal has been written about the wolves coming out of Geneva, and about the more moderate protestant clerics from less controversial backgrounds. Even recent studies of Church history in the Elizabethan period seem to give the impression that an informed interest in theology was confined to the clergy. Yet by the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign there was already a body of educated laymen committed to the doctrines of protestantism and their numbers increased as the reign progressed. In his edition of the letters of Thomas Wood, one such protestant layman, Dr Collinson has given ample evidence that the participation of some of the laity in Church matters cannot be ignored. In the company of Thomas Wood stands Sir Francis Hastings, an equally intrepid Elizabethan layman. By his enthusiasm he succeeded radically and consciously in altering the climate of thinking in the Church in those parts of England where he lived. By his public protestations in Parliament and in his published writings he made his opinions on religion known to the whole nation.

There are those ready to admire the Puritans almost for the very name (as did Spurgeon), and there are others who like Sir Andrew Aguecheek when confronted with ‘a kind of Puritan’ are ready ‘to beat him like a dog’ (as did Macaulay): but may we not with Sir Toby say to both these groups, ‘For being a Puritan? Thine exquisite reason?’—for Sir Toby, even in his cups, saw the need apparently to distinguish and define.

The problem of Puritanism is to define what it was and who the Puritans were—a fact often recognised but leading to little change in the treatment of the subject which is nearly always regarded as a comprehensive but homogeneous entity. Three examples may suffice to show what difficulties may arise for those who, seeking instruction, go to the most respected authors. First, A. S. P. Woodhouse, in Puritanism and Liberty, writes that ‘Puritanism is an entity’ capable of being extended to cover ‘the varied forces generated by the Protestant Reformation and given their opportunity by the revolt against the Crown and the Church in the first half of the seventeenth century.’ However, it is also possible to describe the Puritans as ‘the more conservative,’ ‘the strictly calvinistic,’ who ‘followed the Genevan pattern in Church and State’ and were ‘synonymous with Presbyterians.’ But, ‘the cleavage between the Presbyterians and sectaries is marked,’ yet this division leaves ‘the problem of the centre party, the Independents.’ Following Troeltsch one can speak of ‘a Puritan church type and a Puritan sect type, the ideal of the holy community is true of all the Puritan groups.’ Finally, ‘it is not necessary to posit a unity but there is continuity in Puritan thought.’ Here, as elsewhere, as soon as a statement is made a qualification of it, if not a contradiction of it, becomes necessary.

It is easy to lament the paucity of source materials, whether for certain historical periods, specific topics, or the lives of individuals. The cry is usually for more, more, whether of documents, monographs, or money, and the inordinate desires of man are frequently stimulated but rarely satisfied. Perhaps we should occasionally accentuate the positive, rejoice in what we have, and give silent thanks for the labours and foresights of those who have gone before. If we consider the Elizabethan period, we are blessed with the State Papers, Domestic, Foreign, Venetian, and Spanish. There are 45 volumes of the Acts of the Privy Council of England for the period 1542-1630, of which 26 relate to the Elizabethan period. We have the 27 volumes of John Strype, the 55 volumes of the Parker Society, the various works of the Alcuin Club Collections and the Canterbury and York Society. The members of the Catholic Record Society have provided us with 57 volumes of materials, and A. F. Allison and David Rogers have edited Biographical Studies and Recusant History since 1951.

These twenty questions, which clear so many points of difference between Reformed and non-Separating Independent polity, as well as elucidating doctrinal issues, have hitherto been known from a copy made of them, with their orthodox Reformed, and with Hooker’s own answers, for Sir William Boswell. This copy, to be found in the British Museum, was printed as an appendix by Professor Stearns in his study of ‘Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands,’ and was discussed by Professor Perry Miller, among others, in his definitive ‘Orthodoxy in Massachusetts.’ In the Consistory Register of the English Reformed Church in the Begynhof in Amsterdam, is a different version. Persons familiar with the subject will know that Thomas Hooker, who had been obliged to flee to Holland in 1630, following a threatened attack by the English High Commission, was about to receive a call, though irregularly, to the ministry of this church, where John Paget had been pastor since its opening in 1607. The Amsterdam version of this document, possibly more exact than that in the Boswell Papers, does illumine some of the considerable difficulties posed by the version as printed by Stearns. A collated text of both manuscripts and of the printed version appears as an appendix to my book about the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century.

‘I rejoice,’ wrote an anonymous correspondent in the British Magazine for June 1845, ‘that he had no power to act mischieviously but died, happily for his fame, ruling over boys.’ Such a judgement on Arnold’s career, although delivered two years after his death was equally current during his lifetime, not merely among his enemies—or at least those of them who did not denounce his influence in every sphere—but also among his own friends and disciples. From 1833 and in certain cases earlier, the older and more influential members of this circle—Bunsen, Whately, Keble, J. K. Coleridge, Hawkins, and the Hares—faced with Arnold’s powerful, and for him often undistinguishable, compound of political and theological radicalism, embarrassed by the polemical extremism of the Oxford Malignants, and increasingly aware of his growing public unpopularity, while largely maintaining some contact with him, found themselves not only opposing or ignoring his opinions but also reflecting that it was neither possible nor desirable that he should occupy a more conspicuous position beyond his headmastership. ‘I love Dr Arnold,’ Crabb Robinson quoted Wordsworth as telling Mrs Arnold, ‘he was a good man and an admirable school master, but he would make a desperate bad Bishop’. Wordsworth, although a firm Tory, also spoke for the many liberals whose confident predictions that Arnold’s elevation to the bench was purely a matter of time had gradually evaporated.