Throughout the 1640s and 1650s, the commitment to change by the godly met with significant resentment, obstruction and defiance. Dissatisfaction with godly reforms found expression in continued adherence to old patterns of public worship, and, outside the church, in persistent disregard of attempts to enforce moral behaviours. This discontent with parliament’s attempts at religious reform found its expression in parish churches, which continued to use the Book of Common Prayer and to celebrate the sacrament of holy communion at Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and other major festivals, in defiance of parliament.

This chapter examines the evidence for loyalist religion at a parish level, with a focus on the churchwardens’ accounts of selected parishes in southern England as case studies. The chapter comprises all parishes within Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, the Bristol city parishes, the Somerset hundreds of Taunton Deane and Wells Forum, the Wiltshire towns of Devizes, Marlborough, Salisbury and Wilton, and two rural Wiltshire parishes.¹ This allows for a comparison between both urban and rural areas. It includes the major urban centre and port of Bristol, as well as smaller market towns. Of the urban settlements, four had cathedrals: Bristol, Salisbury, Wells and Winchester. Most churchwardens’ accounts are to be found in local record offices, though two printed volumes of Wiltshire churchwardens’ accounts were examined for this chapter: a volume of accounts for the Salisbury parishes of St Edmund’s and St Thomas’s, and a volume for the Devizes parish of St Mary’s.² Further evidence for loyalist religion is found in vestry minutes and other parish records, minutes of parliamentary and local committees, quarter session and assize records, and contemporary printed accounts.

Despite the evidence for non-co-operation with parliament’s attempts to reform parish worship, less attention has been paid by scholars to loyalist religion in the parishes than to the parliamentary reforms, or the impact of radical sects. As Fiona McCall has commented, there has been little attention paid to royalist support below gentry level, a remark which is equally applicable to loyalist religion.³ Nevertheless, there have been a number of studies on the topic, including those by McCall, Bernard Capp, Judith Maltby and John Morrill.⁴ A. G. Matthews’s Walker Revised, on loyalist clergy ejected from their livings, though published over seventy years ago, is still widely cited.⁵ Some local studies have been made of loyalist congregations and conformist clergy for the localities surveyed for this chapter. Hampshire has been examined by Andrew Coleby in the context of a study of local government, by Andrew Thomson in his work on the clergy of the diocese of Winchester, and in this author’s own doctoral thesis.⁶ John Reeks has studied Somerset in a thesis based on substantial research into churchwardens’ accounts, while religious disruption in Bristol is discussed in Harlow’s volume on seventeenth-century Bristol ministers.⁷

Fincham and Tyacke state that the changes introduced by Archbishop Laud in the 1630s were largely abolished during the religious revolution of the 1640s; these included railed altars, decorated interiors and a formal ritualism.⁸ By the late 1640s there were few signs of Laud’s reforms remaining.⁹ Parliament had set out to purify churches of ‘popish’ ornamentations and practice even before the start of the Civil Wars, and these efforts continued throughout the 1640s.¹⁰ Episcopacy was abolished in October 1646.¹¹ Yet this did not mean that parishioners wished to abolish the practices of the Elizabethan and early Stuart Church which had preceded the Laudian reforms, or that they whole-heartedly embraced the reforms imposed on them by parliament. There remained a strong attachment to the Book of Common Prayer, despite its replacement in 1645 with the Directory for Publique Worship,¹² and an evident desire to continue the sacramental cycle of communion at major festivals in many parishes.

The religious reforms desired by the parliamentarians were held up by the fighting of the Civil Wars, and a fully functioning, country-wide Presbyterian system of Church government was never established.¹³ Nevertheless, large numbers of clergy found themselves condemned as malignants and deprived of their livings for failure to conform to these reforms; one figure suggests 2,425 English benefices were deprived of a clergyman (not necessarily the incumbent) between 1643 and 1660.¹⁴ The number of ejections varied from county to county. In Hampshire, seventy-two benefices had been sequestered between 1643 and 1660, though the majority of Hampshire sequestrations were in the years 1645 and 1646.¹⁵ Out of a total of 253 parishes, this represents sequestrations of around twenty-eight per cent.¹⁶ The neighbouring counties of Berkshire, Dorset and Wiltshire all saw slightly more sequestrations, between thirty-one and thirty-three per cent, while neighbouring Sussex saw twenty-six per cent of its livings sequestered.¹⁷ In Somerset, 104 benefices were sequestered.¹⁸ Bristol had seen several ejections in the 1640s, but after 1655, despite action against scandalous ministers being part of the remit of the Major-Generals from that year, no Bristol minister was ejected, possibly because the town was poorly supplied by parish minsters and could ill afford to lose those men remaining.¹⁹

In the 1650s, the new regime resolved that further action was needed if a truly godly Church was to be established. An ordinance of 1654 established a body of central commissioners or ‘Triers’ to examine candidates to the ministry, and a further ordinance was passed for ejecting scandalous and insufficient ministers.²⁰ But the ejectors appear to have managed to remove only around 200 men between 1654 and 1659, though the number of ejected ministers varied from county to county: Wiltshire was one of the counties that suffered most, with around twenty ministers ejected.²¹

Churchwardens’ accounts, as used in this chapter, have been used by several scholars to research evidence of prayer-book loyalism in the parishes.²² They are, as Valerie Hitchman commented, a rich source for historians.²³ Andrew Foster commended churchwardens’ accounts for the fascinating insights they provided into social and religious life during the early modern period.²⁴

But it is acknowledged that there are methodological problems with using churchwardens’ accounts, particularly in the survival rate of the records. According to Hitchman, of some 12,000 parishes in early modern England and Wales, around 3,350 have surviving churchwardens’ accounts.²⁵ Yet, as Hitchman noted, few of these records are complete, and, as Foster commented, it can be difficult to compare sets of accounts as not all itemize individual expenses.²⁶ In the period covered by this chapter some records survive for only part of this time, others survive for intermittent years. Some survive only as isolated single sheets of accounts. Not all are kept as itemized accounts of expenditure; some are summary accounts and records of parish officials only. Even where churchwardens’ accounts survive, their fragile state of preservation may mean they are unable to be used by researchers.²⁷

Survival rates vary from county to county. Hitchman’s study of eight counties in south-east England found 397 parishes with surviving seventeenth-century accounts, representing some twenty-one per cent of the total parishes within the area of her study. This she acknowledged as a high survival rate, due to several factors including a higher population density and economic prosperity than elsewhere in the country.²⁸ Morrill’s study of churchwardens’ accounts found a total of 150 records, but this covered all then-extant records in nine county record offices, with some records from elsewhere.²⁹ In Somerset, Reeks found forty-two usable churchwardens’ accounts, which represented around ten per cent of all parishes.³⁰ These records are not evenly distributed over the county; a study of the records for Wells Forum found churchwardens’ accounts for the period under examination in this chapter in only one parish, that of Wells St Cuthbert.³¹ The surviving accounts for the parishes of Taunton Deane do not include any for the parishes of Taunton itself.

Of 253 livings in the county of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, itemized churchwardens’ accounts for the period 1645–60 survive for only twenty-three parishes, and even these accounts are not necessarily complete in every year.³² Only a single sheet of itemized accounts survives for Hambledon (1647) and for Breamore (1654–5).³³ Many of the churchwardens’ accounts for the Hampshire market town of Fordingbridge are undated.³⁴ The accounts for Stoke Charity in Hampshire survive from 1657, but no itemized disbursements are recorded until 1665.³⁵

In Wiltshire, churchwardens’ accounts survive for the period 1645–60 for the Salisbury parishes of St Edmund’s, St Thomas’s and St Martin’s, but not for the now-demolished church of St Clement’s just outside the city boundaries in Fisherton Anger.³⁶ The full set of churchwardens’ accounts surviving for St Mary’s Devizes is not matched by any accounts from St John’s, the other parish church in Devizes. Of the two parishes in Marlborough, accounts survive from St Peter’s church, but not from St Mary’s.³⁷ A fully itemized set of accounts survives for Winterslow during the 1640s, but from 1653 onwards the churchwardens recorded only summary accounts and names of parish officials, a situation which continued well beyond the Restoration.³⁸ The survival of accounts may reflect the disruptions of war in the 1640s and the availability of suitable churchwardens. In March 1647, the Wiltshire assizes held at Salisbury heard that in many parishes in the county there were no churchwardens, and that in other parishes those elected to the office had refused to serve.³⁹ Throughout the period the varying abilities of churchwardens in the parishes may be reflected in the depth of information in the surviving accounts.

Churchwardens’ accounts are more likely to survive for urban than rural areas, according to Foster’s findings for the period 1558–1660.⁴⁰ There may be a number of reasons for this, including the likelihood of churchwardens in towns being more business-like than rural churchwardens and thus taking better care of the parish records.⁴¹ It was noted in this chapter that churchwardens’ accounts from market towns (including those with cathedrals) tended to be more detailed than those from rural areas, some exceptionally so; those of Wells St Cuthbert included details of payments from parishioners for seats in the church, and for each funeral knell sounded by the bell-ringers.⁴²

Nevertheless, the importance of churchwardens’ accounts is that they may record the purchase of bread and wine to celebrate the sacrament of holy communion at feast days, a practice banned by parliament in 1647.⁴³ The accounts may also record the purchase of the 1645 Directory for Publique Worship, which replaced the Book of Common Prayer. Churchwardens’ inventories may record existing copies of the prayer book after this date.

Evidence for the Directory and the Book of Common Prayer

Those dissatisfied with the Book of Common Prayer had long sought reform. The Directory for Publique Worship was published in 1645, approved by an ordinance of parliament to replace the prayer book. Unlike the prayer book it was not a series of fixed liturgies, but rather a set of directions for worship.⁴⁴ Although use of the prayer book was banned, use of the Directory was optional, and perhaps less than a quarter of parishes in the country acquired a copy.⁴⁵ Parliament endeavoured to distribute copies of the Directory to the parishes, but it is doubtful how efficiently it was distributed, and even six months after its publication only ten per cent of parishes had a copy.⁴⁶ This may suggest that it was unpopular, but Judith Maltby noted that it was an inexpensive volume that might have been purchased by clergy themselves, rather than by churchwardens. Furthermore, it appears to have gone through over fifteen editions, which suggests it was not that deeply unpopular.⁴⁷

Churchwardens’ accounts and inventories may be assumed to mention the Directory, yet few of the surviving records from parishes studied in this chapter actually do mention it. Of the Hampshire parishes, only two sets of accounts from 1645–6 explicitly mention a directory, at South Warnborough and at Headbourne Worthy.⁴⁸ In Wiltshire, the Winterslow churchwardens purchased a directory, though apparently not until 1646–7.⁴⁹ These are all rural parishes. There are references in other accounts which hint at the purchase of the Directory. The accounts for the Hampshire parish of North Waltham record a payment for a new book, which may refer to the Directory.⁵⁰ Other references are uncertain. In the Hampshire parish of East Worldham, the water-damaged churchwardens’ accounts may refer to an untitled book bought in 1645–6.⁵¹ A reference to untitled books was made in the 1644–5 accounts for two Bristol parishes.⁵² Bristol was under royalist control from July 1643 to September 1645, so it seems unlikely that these were copies of the Directory (unless clandestinely acquired) but this does not explain why no directories appear to have been recorded in the churchwardens’ accounts after the city fell to the parliamentarian forces.⁵³

The evidence for purchase of the Directory is, therefore, inconclusive, and many churches may never have acquired a copy. Inventories of Church property for the period 1645–60 similarly show a lack of copies of the Directory. Several Bristol churches listed books in their inventories, but none mentioned a directory. The church of St Michael on the Mount Within inventoried a Bible and the Paraphrases of Erasmus in 1645 and 1654.⁵⁴ All Saints’ church held two Bibles and the Paraphrases, according to an inventory of 1652.⁵⁵ St Mary Redcliffe had a Bible in an inventory taken in 1650–1.⁵⁶ A Bible could be the only book recorded in a parish inventory; the 1647 inventory of Winchester St Peter Chesil also recorded only one Bible.⁵⁷

If churchwardens were not buying the Directory, some were disposing of their prayer books and the Book of Homilies, another banned volume.⁵⁸ In the Hampshire parish of Ellingham, the inventory of April 1639 included a Bible, two communion books and the Book of Homilies. By April 1650 only the Bible remained.⁵⁹ The churchwardens of Winchester St John parish included a Bible and two prayer books in their inventory of 1643, but by 1646 the Bible was the only book listed.⁶⁰ In Wiltshire, the inventory for Devizes St Mary’s church of 1646 listed two prayer books, among other books held by the church. The prayer books were no longer listed by the time the next inventory was taken in 1650–1, though the church kept its copy of the Paraphrases of Erasmus and its Book of Martyrs, and had acquired two psalm books.⁶¹

Other parishes held on to their prayer books, despite an order to surrender them.⁶² Southampton St Lawrence recorded four prayer books in 1637, which were still there in an inventory made c.1648, and in subsequent inventories made in 1651 and 1655. The four books were recorded after the Restoration, which suggests the parish was holding on to its pre-1645 prayer books.⁶³ In Wells St Cuthbert parish, an inventory of 1649 recorded four old prayer books, which remained in the church’s hands at least until 1663, despite the purchase of the new prayer book in September 1662.⁶⁴ In Wiltshire, the churchwardens of St Edmund’s in Salisbury recorded two prayer books in 1634, which they still held in 1649.⁶⁵ By c.1647 the churchwardens of Marlborough St Peter’s no longer held the prayer book they had rebound in 1643–4, though they still kept the Book of Homilies.⁶⁶ In Bristol, St Philip’s had a Bible and three other printed books in its inventory taken in 1653; the other three books were not described, and it is possible the churchwardens were being discreet about copies of the prayer book.⁶⁷

Parish inventories may not be a wholly authoritative guide to the possessions of the church. Not all inventories listed books, but this did not mean the church possessed none. At North Waltham, none of the inventories made by the churchwardens from 1640 to 1660 listed any books, not even a Bible. Yet as noted above, the churchwardens purchased a new book, possibly the Directory, in 1645–6, and there was a further entry in the accounts of 1657 for a payment made to binding the church Bible.⁶⁸

If the Directory is conspicuous by its absence in the inventories and accounts, then so is the prayer book. This raises the question of what service book the minister was using. Some ministers may have used the Directory with remembered parts of the prayer-book services. Both Maltby and McCall have found evidence of ministers memorizing prayer-book services, while Spurr considered the possibility that ministers creatively employed their own forms of worship.⁶⁹ There is no evidence for either practice in the parishes examined for this chapter, but that is not to say that it did not occur. That some parishes held on to their old prayer books suggests that the prayer book continued to be used. Morrill’s study of churchwardens’ accounts suggests that it was not a minority of parishes that did this, but rather that it was commonly used in the parishes.⁷⁰

Evidence for the celebration of major festivals

The practice of celebrating major festivals was condemned in the Directory for Publique Worship. Festival or holy days, having no scriptural warrant, were no longer to be continued.⁷¹ In 1647, the Long parliament reiterated this with an ordinance confirming the abolition of the celebration of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, and the restrictions continued to be enforced with further parliamentary legislation during the 1650s.⁷² The Directory did permit the celebration of communion at other times, though how often was to be decided by individual ministers and congregations.⁷³ There were also issues concerning who should be admitted to take communion, though the debate over ‘open’ or ‘closed’ communion is beyond the scope of this chapter.⁷⁴

John Morrill’s study of 150 parishes in East Anglia and western England found that, despite the introduction of the Directory, eighty-five per cent of those parishes were holding festal communions in 1646, and forty-three per cent held communion at Easter 1650. While this represents a decline, Morrill then found that the proportion of parishes celebrating the sacrament at major festivals actually rose during the 1650s, until by Easter 1660 the sacrament was celebrated in just over half the parishes in Morrill’s study.⁷⁵ Ronald Hutton’s research came to a somewhat different conclusion. His study of 367 churchwardens’ accounts found that instances of festal communions did decline during the 1640s but that the decline continued during the 1650s. Only thirty-four of Hutton’s parishes regularly recorded communion services at major festivals during the 1650s, while another sixteen held them at Easter only.⁷⁶

If the studies by Morrill and Hutton demonstrate a decline in festal communions for at least part of the period, they do not indicate a total eradication of the practice. The sacramental cycle continued to be celebrated, as confirmed by David Underdown’s study of the West Country.⁷⁷ Such observances were not without risk. At Christmas 1657, John Evelyn and his wife were among those in the congregation threatened by parliamentary troopers as they went up to take communion during a service held at a London private house.⁷⁸

Although Morrill found forty-three per cent of the parishes in his study celebrating Easter in 1650, these findings were not replicated in the parishes studied for this chapter. None of the Hampshire or Bristol parishes recorded buying bread and wine at Easter 1650, nor did any of the Somerset parishes studied in the hundreds of Wells Forum and Taunton Deane. Not all parishes with surviving accounts necessarily have accounts covering Easter 1650, which means that unrecorded celebrations may have taken place, and undated entries in existing accounts may disguise a festal communion. The Hampshire parish of Chawton celebrated communion on holy days regularly throughout the 1640s and 1650s and may well have celebrated at Easter 1650, but there is a gap in the records for the period 1649–51.⁷⁹ Another Hampshire parish, North Waltham, celebrated communion on several occasions in the period, including festivals, and undated references to the purchase of bread and wine for Easter may hide a celebration of 1650.⁸⁰ Neither parish appears to have suffered the ejection of its minister during this period, which implies an accommodation between incumbent and parishioners over the practice.⁸¹

If the evidence for Easter 1650 is uncertain, parishes in southern England were still celebrating communion at major festivals during the last half of the 1640s and during the 1650s. Of the total of twenty-three parishes studied in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight with surviving accounts itemized for one or more years between the introduction of the Directory in 1645 and the Restoration in 1660, fifteen accounts contained references to the purchase of bread and wine for communion, and ten of these contained at least one reference to the purchase of bread and wine for communion at a major festival during the period 1645 to 1660. Nine of these parishes were rural; only one, Fordingbridge, was a market town.⁸² In some Hampshire parishes the sacramental cycle was celebrated frequently. The churchwardens of Chawton made explicit reference on seven occasions in the 1650s to bread and wine purchased at Christmas, and on eight occasions to bread and wine purchased for Palm Sunday and Easter. In 1655, communion was apparently celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas, not on the day itself.⁸³ Upham churchwardens’ accounts record payments for bread and wine at Easter on five occasions between 1647 and 1659, as well as on two occasions in the same period for Whitsuntide, and, in the accounts drawn up for 1654, for Christmas and Low Sunday as well.⁸⁴ At Easton, surviving accounts from 1655 record celebration of the sacramental cycle in the period up to the Restoration on two occasions each for Easter, Christmas and Whitsun.⁸⁵ The parish of Soberton recorded an Easter communion and one other communion in the accounts for 1658 and 1659.⁸⁶ Although the surviving evidence is limited, this does indicate some measure of support for the old prayer book, and consequently, a lack of support for the forms of worship outlined in the Directory. Furthermore, while some parishes, such as Upham, focused on Easter as the occasion when communion would be celebrated, it is noticeable that those parishes which continued to celebrate the sacramental cycle tended to celebrate at least the three major festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, even though Christmas, a festival associated with secular merry-making, might have been expected to be abandoned even if Easter continued to be celebrated.

In Wiltshire, the Salisbury parish of St Edmund’s purchased bread and wine throughout the 1640s and 1650s, so holy communion was celebrated, but the churchwardens made no reference to it being purchased for festivals.⁸⁷ This may be a reflection of the practices of the rector of St Edmund’s, John Strickland, who was ejected from the living in 1662 for non-conformity, and later ministered to dissenting congregations.⁸⁸ The accounts for St Thomas’s Salisbury include payments for bread and wine made throughout the 1640s and 1650s, but there is no record of the sacrament on major feast days, though in 1651 holy communion was celebrated on 21 December, the Sunday before Christmas Day.⁸⁹ Yet Christmas was celebrated at least once at St Thomas’s in the period, as a payment of one shilling is recorded for dressing and cleaning the church for Christmas 1655.⁹⁰

The churchwardens’ accounts for St Mary’s Devizes record payments for bread and wine for Easter and Low Sunday in 1645.⁹¹ Further entries in the accounts for the last half of the 1640s record communions at Easter (including Palm Sunday and Low Sunday), though only on one occasion at Christmas.⁹² Bread and wine continued to be purchased throughout the 1650s, and though these entries are without explicit mention of dates or festivals, communion may still have been celebrated at Easter and at other major festivals.⁹³ Elsewhere in Wiltshire, festival communions were celebrated in Wilton (where the church was also cleaned for Christmas 1646), and similarly in the village of Stratford sub Castle; in both churches there are entries for festal bread and wine up to the Restoration.⁹⁴

The accounts of several Bristol churches record the purchase of bread and wine for communion during the period, but almost invariably do not record the occasions at which the sacrament was administered. Of the few occasions when it was, communion is recorded as being celebrated at St Michael on the Mount Within on Palm Sunday on one occasion in the early 1650s, while Easter was celebrated at St Mary Redcliffe in 1646 and 1648.⁹⁵ St Mary’s also rang its bells at Whitsuntide on at least three occasions between 1649 and the Restoration.⁹⁶ Festive occasions could be celebrated by other means than communion; the rosemary, bay and holly purchased by the churchwardens of St John the Baptist in the 1650s may have decorated the church at Christmas.⁹⁷

In the Somerset hundreds of Taunton Deane and Wells Forum, the evidence is handicapped by the survival of the records. At Trull, in Taunton Deane, a single surviving sheet of accounts drawn up by a churchwarden in 1655 records a payment of 3s for bread and wine at Whitsuntide, though no other payments for bread and wine at any other time.⁹⁸ In the parish of Wells St Cuthbert, where accounts survive from 1649, there are regular references to bread and wine for communion, though the occasions are not usually specified. In 1654, communion was celebrated on Christmas Eve, but the following communion was celebrated on 9 April 1655, which was not Easter Day, which that year fell on 15 April. A celebration of communions recorded for 28 October 1654 and 2 November 1655 suggest a celebration of Allhallowtide.⁹⁹

What is noticeable is that in the Hampshire parishes of South Warnborough and Headbourne Worthy, and the Wiltshire parish of Winterslow, all parishes where a Directory was purchased, there are also references in the accounts to the purchase of bread and wine for communion on a holy day. Similarly, in the parish of North Waltham, where the purchase of the new book may indicate a Directory, bread and wine were purchased for festal communions. In South Warnborough there are several references to the purchase of bread and wine, at least one of which, at Easter 1648, was for a festival.¹⁰⁰ Headbourne Worthy’s accounts of May 1648 record the purchase of bread and wine for Christmas, Easter and Whitsun.¹⁰¹ The Winterslow churchwardens recorded payments for bread and wine at eight separate communions in their accounts to Easter 1645, including at Whitsuntide, Palm Sunday and Easter Day.¹⁰² In the year to Easter 1647, communion was celebrated on four occasions, including Easter Day, and the following year the accounts record bread and wine purchased for Palm Sunday and Easter Day.¹⁰³ At North Waltham there are references in the accounts drawn up in September 1654, some eight or nine years later, to bread and wine purchased for Christmas, Palm Sunday, Easter Day and Midsummer, and a further set of accounts, for the year 1659, includes payments made for bread and wine at Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter.¹⁰⁴

Clearly, even those parishes which purchased the Directory cannot be assumed to be free of prayer-book loyalists, although it may be that the festal communions were being celebrated using the Directory. It is not possible to make authoritative statements on the evidence of only three or four parishes, especially as the evidence for purchase of a Directory at North Waltham is open to debate, but a possible explanation could be that an outward compliance did not reflect the actual beliefs of the parishioners. It may also indicate divisions of opinion among the congregation, but it could equally indicate a compromise between different factions within a congregation, or between the congregation and the minister.

If the surviving evidence of the Hampshire churchwardens’ accounts is representative of the county as a whole, then over two-fifths of the parishes in the county would, at some time, have celebrated communion at the major festivals. The evidence of the Wiltshire accounts also indicates a significant minority of parishes that were celebrating the major festivals. This implies a definite grassroots reaction against the religious orders of parliament, and of willing disobedience of those orders by ministers. Why churchwardens willingly recorded evidence of this resistance in the accounts is unclear. Kevin Sharpe’s theory was that the fullest records were kept by the most diligent churchwardens, who were most inclined to order.¹⁰⁵ If this was the case, then this inclination to order was reflected in a clear loyalty to the old prayer-book ways, even to the extent of recording evidence of that loyalty in the accounts. The recording of the purchase of bread and wine for festivals, and the listing of banned prayer books in inventories, may also indicate a need by the churchwardens, and the congregation more generally, for control in an uncertain political, social and religious period. The act of writing down the evidence for the continued observance of banned practices further suggests a deliberate act of non-compliance. More practically, churchwardens may have recorded expenditure to prove to fellow parishioners and the minister that they had honestly and conscientiously discharged their duties during their time in office. The accounts were unlikely to be scrutinized by those outside the parish. Occasionally, however, records might be examined by local magistrates; there is some evidence of this in Hampshire in the 1650s.¹⁰⁶

The loyalty to the old ways on the part of the churchwardens may or may not have been shared by the minister. Durston and Maltby noted that a number of ministers loyal to the prayer book’s form of worship managed to keep their cures and clandestinely provide services based upon it. But some, when challenged by the authorities, claimed to have been under pressure from their parishioners to do so. As an act of 1650 removed the legal requirement to attend one’s parish church, it may have been that some parish ministers were providing prayer-book services not under coercion, but through the need to keep their parishioners and prevent them transferring their allegiance to another church.¹⁰⁷ The threat of parishioners deserting their parish church for radical sects such as the Baptists and Quakers was all too real for some ministers. Robert Abbot moved to rural Hampshire after large numbers of his Kent parishioners left to join sectarian groups.¹⁰⁸

A more positive interpretation can be put on the evidence of the churchwardens’ accounts. Alexandra Walsham suggested that belief in a Christian duty of charity and neighbourliness had led to a tolerance that over-rode the demands made by the authorities.¹⁰⁹ Although she was referring to the period of Restoration persecutions, the comment is as relevant during the period of the English Revolution. There is no reason to suppose that all parishes were seething cauldrons of discontent, and the churchwardens’ accounts and inventories may well indicate harmony between a minister and his parishioners. Compromise between loyalists and puritans enabled a degree of peace and unity, which is reflected in those parishes which continued to celebrate Easter and Christmas communions.¹¹⁰ Yet historians invariably write about cases of conflict, rather than instances of toleration, and published studies have tended to focus on minsters who were ejected, not on those who remained.¹¹¹ There is no equivalent to Walker Revised for those ministers who were not ejected. This reflects the records available: court cases, records of county committees, published accounts of ejected clergy. In contrast, positive relationships between clergy and laity have left little trace in the historical record.

Other evidence for loyalist religion

The evidence of the churchwardens’ accounts for the celebration of communion at major festivals is suggestive of continued use of the prayer book in at least some parishes. There is other evidence for the use of the prayer book in contemporary sources. In 1647, the Hampshire minister Philip Oldfield was accused of using the prayer book, among other offences.¹¹² In the same year Robert Clarke, ejected from Andover, had, with the support of several parishioners, attempted to continue to officiate there, and obstructed the efforts of others to do so.¹¹³ In or around 1655, some Winchester clergy petitioned Oliver Cromwell, by then Lord Protector, about the activities of Mr Preston, sequestered minister of Droxford and former prebendary of Winchester cathedral, who had for several years been holding prayer-book services in the abandoned church of St Michael’s, Kingsgate Street and receiving financial support from his congregation. Other former Winchester cathedral clergy were alleged to be conducting private communion services around the city.¹¹⁴

Parliament’s attempt at religious reformation also met with opposition from Hampshire congregations as well as from the clergy. In March 1651, the Hampshire quarter sessions heard a petition from Andover that some inhabitants of neighbouring villages had been ignoring the laws regarding travel on the Lord’s day.¹¹⁵ But enforcing Sabbath observance remained a problem. In 1656, the quarter sessions felt it necessary to issue an order banning church ales, since such festivals were frequently held on a Saturday evening, leaving the participants totally unfit to attend to their Sabbath duties.¹¹⁶ That such an order was issued suggests that festivities were still being held.

In Wiltshire, a loyalist service in Fisherton Anger church was disrupted by parliamentarian soldiers in 1647, the godly minister having been ousted by royalists.¹¹⁷ In the same year, the Wiltshire Assizes heard that the national day of fasting and humiliation held on the last Wednesday of each month was being ignored by many people, and that the Lord’s day was not being observed in many places.¹¹⁸ Nathaniel Forster, an ejected Wiltshire minister, is said to have read the prayer book to congregations at his home in Salisbury, and to a condemned woman on the night before her execution in 1655.¹¹⁹

Throughout Wiltshire there was evidence of clergy demonstrating obstinate loyalty to the old prayer book practices. In October 1645, Thomas Hickman, parson of Upton Lovell, obliged his parishioners to come up to the altar rails if they wished to receive communion.¹²⁰ In 1646, several clergymen were accused of using the prayer book, among other offences. Christopher Ryly, rector of Newton Tony, was accused of bowing at the name of Jesus and bowing to the altar; not surprisingly, he also extolled the prayer book. His devotion to ceremonial was not the only charge against him; among a long list of alleged misdemeanours was the accusation that he had said women ought not to read the scriptures.¹²¹ Thomas Lawrence, rector of Fugglestone with Bemerton, was accused of having railed the communion table and turned it altar-wise.¹²² In Chilmark, the rector Robert Walker was accused of using the prayer book despite having been given a copy of the Directory.¹²³ A similar accusation to that against Walker was levied against James White, rector of Rollestone, who stated that he would rather lose his living than part with the prayer book.¹²⁴ Not all loyalist clergy were on the receiving end of accusations; some received support from their one-time congregations. Leonard Alexander, sequestered vicar of Collingbourne Kingston, continued to receive the tithes of his former parishioners who preferred to pay their tithes to him, rather than to John Norris, the intruded minister.¹²⁵

Rogationtide perambulations of the parish boundaries, though abolished by ordinance in 1644, continued to take place.¹²⁶ As Hutton has commented, they had the obvious function of teaching the youth of the parish where its boundaries lay.¹²⁷ Sixty-eight per cent of Hutton’s London parishes with surviving records observed the practice during the interregnum.¹²⁸ The practice was also observed at Winchester and in Bristol, though no evidence was found by this study in the churchwardens’ accounts for its observance in rural Hampshire.¹²⁹ It is likely that in towns and cities with several small parishes, a knowledge of the boundaries had importance for practical reasons such as poor relief, and turning the event into a festive occasion was more likely to encourage parishioners to attend.

It is worth considering if there was any difference in the practice of loyalist religion between urban and rural parishes, and if there were any unique characteristics in the cathedral cities of Bristol, Salisbury, Wells and Winchester. With the abolition of episcopacy in 1646, Richardson has observed that cathedrals became preaching houses, if they had any function at all. Many were damaged during the Civil Wars, and in 1651 the Commons even debated their demolition.¹³⁰ Cathedrals suffered disproportionately; at least fifteen of twenty-six cathedrals were seriously vandalized.¹³¹ While some did became preaching houses, others were turned over to secular use.¹³² Winchester cathedral was badly damaged by parliamentarian troops.¹³³ In 1649, the traveller John Taylor gave a poor report of the state of the cathedral churches at both Wells and Salisbury, implying that services were no longer held in the latter.¹³⁴ But cathedral cities were not only identified by their cathedrals; they were also important market towns and centres of trade and commerce. With the removal of bishops, deans and chapters, their importance as official ecclesiastical centres had substantially diminished. But as urban areas they would be more likely than rural areas to have a population of enough loyalist religionists to support an official or unofficial minister, and loyalists from the rural hinterland may also have attended services.

Loyalist ministers may have found it more practical to establish themselves in towns, but prayer book loyalism functioned in both rural and urban parishes. For example, in Wiltshire holy communion was celebrated at festivals in the market towns of Devizes and Wilton, but also in the rural parishes of Stratford sub Castle and Winterslow. Each parish no doubt had its own unique set of characteristics, such as the existing religious persuasions of both minister and congregation, the state of relationships between them, and influences outside the parish community.

The Restoration and after

Both Morrill and Hutton found evidence in churchwardens’ accounts that at the Restoration many parishes returned to the prayer-book sacramental cycle.¹³⁵ This was, as Morrill noted, an outbreak of enthusiasm at the restoration of the old forms of worship, in complete contrast to the sometimes lukewarm reception given to the Church order imposed by parliament.¹³⁶

This enthusiasm was reflected in many of the parishes studied for this chapter. Several recorded painting the king’s arms in the church: at Marlborough St Peter’s in Wiltshire and at Upham in Hampshire, among other churches.¹³⁷ Surplices, previously proscribed, were purchased, as were copies of the prayer book. In Somerset, Wells St Cuthbert purchased the new prayer book in September 1662, but still kept their four old prayer books.¹³⁸ Many Hampshire parishes bought copies of the prayer book, on occasion buying the old prayer book before the new one was issued in 1662, and some bought a new surplice.¹³⁹ At least two parishes, North Waltham and Soberton, bought copies of the Book of Homilies.¹⁴⁰

In Wiltshire, Marlborough St Peter’s, an apparently ‘godly’ church in the 1640s which had frequently hosted visiting preachers, had by April 1663 conformed in its purchase of a prayer book and a surplice.¹⁴¹ Devizes St Mary’s churchwardens hastily paid 14s for prayer books shortly after the Restoration.¹⁴² Having paid for these prayer books, the churchwardens then purchased a copy of the new prayer book in 1662–3, along with a new surplice.¹⁴³ The church of St Edmund’s in Salisbury was ordered to move its communion table back to the east end of the church (the position of the altar) and ensure that it was railed.¹⁴⁴ This suggests some reluctance, but the church did buy six prayer books in the year to 1662.¹⁴⁵ Elsewhere in the city, St Thomas’s churchwardens bought a prayer book in the year 1660–1, and recorded a payment for holly, rosemary and bay, probably to decorate the church at Christmas; by 1663 the churchwardens had also bought a copy of the new prayer book and a surplice.¹⁴⁶

In conclusion, larger-scale studies such as those by Morrill, Hutton and Hitchman are invaluable for an overview of the extent of loyalist religion at a national or regional level. At a local or county level, however, the picture begins to fragment. Broad trends are less observable, and statistical analysis less viable. Unquestionably, in some parishes the major festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun continued to be celebrated with the service of holy communion. In other areas, notably in the Bristol parishes, old ritual practices continued but these did not necessarily extend to festal communion. But to what extent the sacramental cycle continued in any locality is difficult to quantify, given the survival rate of the records, and the detail with which they were maintained by the churchwardens. A single surviving sheet of accounts is evidence for the sacramental cycle being celebrated, but not of the extent to which festivals were celebrated throughout the period. Churchwardens’ accounts and other records have survived in sufficient numbers to enable historians to ascertain that loyalist religion existed, and indeed flourished, in many parishes during the Civil Wars and interregnum, but the lost and incomplete accounts mean that the full extent of the practice can never be truly known. What can be deduced from this chapter, as from other studies, is that there was something of a failure to totally eradicate the practices familiar to many from before 1640. Despite the efforts of central government, the attempts of the godly in the localities, and the ejection of unreformed ministers, loyalty to the prayer book and to sacramental observance at major religious festivals seems to have remained in a significant minority of parishes for which records survive. Attempts at moral reformation were also only partially successful, as the justices sought to impose these changes on what appears to have been an uninvolved citizenry. The efforts of the godly to reform religious worship in the parishes could not undo the religious practices of many years previous to these attempted reforms. This failure to reform the public worship and personal piety of the populace would explain the relative ease with which Anglicanism was re-established in England, after the Restoration.

R. Johnson, ‘Malignant parties: loyalist religion in southern England’, in Church and people in interregnum Britain, ed. F. McCall (London, 2021), pp. 195–215. License: CC BY-NC-ND.