Excellent work has been produced on this topic, yet there are still many assumptions to be tested, hypotheses to be explored and sources to be located, before we may gain a satisfactory answer to the big question of what actually happened in parishes across England and Wales during this turbulent period.¹ Parish life was disrupted – for many quite literally – during the course of the Civil Wars, but the whole ‘parochial system’ came under stress when between 1646 and 1660 the Church of England was technically dismantled. Bishops, archdeacons, cathedral deans and canons were abolished, and thus no longer involved in the oversight of the parochial duties of ministers, churchwardens and their associates.² Although this represented considerable change, it has been largely assumed that parish life continued much as before, and indeed, ministers and churchwardens continued to be appointed and to carry out customary duties, creating records in the process. This has been justly hailed as a sign of the strength of the parochial system.³ Yet the contents of the parish chest were diminished: there was no longer any obligation to produce glebe terriers, registers of visiting preachers or inventories of church goods, or to copy out bishops’ transcripts of the registers.⁴ Ministers and churchwardens were no longer subject to regular visitations by archdeacons and bishops, nor were they required to present cases to church courts. While the loss of authority and inspection routines may have brought comfort to some, there must surely have been some confusion and uncertainty at the local level. Much remains to be explored as to what was really entailed for local congregations during these critical years, and how they viewed what was happening.

This chapter focuses on the practicalities of religious life in parishes to raise questions about how ordinary people were affected during this turbulent period. While good work has been carried out on the 1640s and 1650s, attention has largely been focused on theological divisions, high politics, arguments between Independents, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Quakers, and the explosion of uncensored religious literature produced in this ‘world turned upside down’.⁵ Latterly, attention has been drawn to the staying power of episcopalians and their continued influence on what may have happened across many parishes.⁶ An excellent collection of essays edited by the late Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby set numerous hares running on subjects like preaching, Sunday observance, Catholics in the community, and the use of the prayer book.⁷ This chapter is written quite frankly as an agenda for local historians, a call to arms – a confession of ignorance indeed – for we need more research at parish level to answer fairly basic questions about what happened during this period. What follows is essentially a range of those questions with some tentative responses aimed at drawing attention to where further research is needed, and where local historians in particular may be of assistance.

Many traditional parish records were lost, but were there any gains?

A running theme throughout this chapter will be noting how we are affected by loss of records, but also observing where some gains have been made. As noted above, there were some considerable losses that historians will detect among traditional parish collections to be found in their local county record offices. Diocesan collections dried up quite rapidly after 1642 and even took some time to come back into existence after the Restoration in 1660.⁸ Parish registers continued, but with what contents and scope will be discussed shortly. But all is not gloom and doom. Certain major caches of evidence appear in this period, which, because they are often found in central rather than provincial record offices, are worthy of brief comment here. Parliamentary surveys were conducted of the land held by bishops and cathedral chapters, and some of these are now finding their way into publication.⁹ Declining interest in economic and social history has marginalized such material, yet there is no doubt that it provides rich pickings for those prepared to wade through the detail. Surveys of churches were conducted after 1650, the results of which have ended up in the archives of Lambeth Palace Library; they do not cover the entire country, but a fair proportion, and they too have been largely ignored owing to difficulty in use.¹⁰ Only comparatively recently have the records of the Cromwellian Church come under close scrutiny in the work of Rebecca Warren.¹¹ These sources help to provide important information on the clergy appointed under Cromwell in the 1650s. Recent publications have given us more on the earlier phase of the ejection of scandalous ministers, following the pioneering work of Clive Holmes, while the editor of this collection is famed for her study of John Walker, on whose work all accounts of the clergy of this period lean so heavily.¹² In keeping with how that work was constructed, we are coming to learn more about the interregnum by looking back from the situation of the latter half of the seventeenth century.¹³

What happened to parish registers?

This was the starting point of my original appeal for help at the Warwick symposium, for although parish registers were maintained during this period, it is not clear how fully, or how widely across the country, and to what extent their keeping was disrupted.¹⁴ A case study based on 154 parishes in West Sussex, basically the Archdeaconry of Chichester, suggests some degree of disruption to record-keeping in both the 1640s and the 1650s.¹⁵ Some of the former may be put down to areas affected by warfare and turnover of incumbents, and these occur largely in more muddled entries often commented upon by later writers. Apologies were sometimes entered, as at New Shoreham, where in writing of 1646 it was recorded that ‘this year was a total neglect of registering in this parish’.¹⁶ And such apologies might remain in the memory much longer, for the new rector of Slinfold recorded on his appointment in 1683 that he would ‘endeavour to keep the register in good order, it having been badly kept up to that date’.¹⁷ Some of this was possibly a traditional problem with all registers, particularly in rural parishes – that of retaining scraps of paper for copying up later into the register. Occasionally, the problem can be traced to very physical disasters, as with the churches of St Bartholomew and St Pancras in Chichester that were both destroyed during the siege by Waller’s parliamentarian troops in 1642.¹⁸ Certainly, the most badly disrupted registers relate to the war years of the 1640s.

Legislation in 1653 brought changes that affected record-keeping greatly. Registrars, confusingly called ‘registers’, were appointed for each parish and new registers were purchased in many cases; the appointments were to be signed off by local justices of the peace.¹⁹ Given the complexity of religious views at the time, details of ‘births’ were now requested as opposed to ‘baptisms’, and to the delight of modern genealogists more detail was often given on parents. The Marriage Act of 1653 further complicated matters, for while banns were introduced formally, and now often recorded, justices of the peace conducted the marriages, at least until 1657 when the ‘system’ began to break down.²⁰ They were even provided with their own order of service.²¹ These changes affected record-keeping in many places as hard-pressed ministers and ‘registers’ had to decide on what to record, in what books, and many marriages might have gone either unrecorded or appear in registers of key towns where justices of the peace (JPs) resided.²² The appointment of new registrars is noted in a fair number of registers (as noted in the catalogues), some thirty-nine or around twenty-five per cent of the West Sussex sample. Many of the problems relate to confusion over marriages with banns being noted in registers, but no longer the marriages themselves.²³

What this amounts to is that differing degrees of disorder may be detected in around ninety-six (sixty-two per cent) of West Sussex parishes; and this figure is broadly similar for both decades. The survey is based only on analysis of parish catalogues, and so findings are provisional, but it suggests that more might be done with these basic registers.²⁴ It is tantalizing to note that a small number of surviving parish registers are actually deemed to commence in and around 1654, suggesting that old registers were abandoned, or changed hands and were lost.²⁵ A similar spike in numbers for the commencement of the survival of registers appears for the early 1660s, suggesting that the Restoration marked a clearing of the books for some parishes. Whereas around sixty-five per cent of all parish registers in Sussex commence in the sixteenth century, forty-three or twenty-seven per cent date from later than 1640, and of those surviving from the 1640s, 1650s and 1660s (seventeen), for all bar two, we have surviving bishops’ transcripts dating to earlier periods, confirming that registers had existed.²⁶

It is possible to extend this kind of enquiry by analysing data drawn from the classic Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers.²⁷ Using county numbers of parishes based on contemporary estimates, the variation of parish register survival between counties is enormous and cries out for investigation to establish credibility and possible significance.²⁸ For counties mainly in the north, as many as half the parishes have registers that only survive from the 1640s and 1650s onwards, which may be a comment on later formation of parishes out of chapelries and weaker record-keeping. For southern counties like Sussex the figure is around eleven per cent.²⁹ It would be interesting to see how survival correlates with areas that saw fighting in the Civil Wars, and also with the work of different officials, including the Major-Generals, under the Cromwellian Protectorate. And of course, we would need to place this matter of the best keeping of registers into a much longer time-scale to check how unusual was the degree of disruption in the 1640s and 1650s.³⁰ This analysis of the survival of parish registers based on The Phillimore Atlas throws up a confusing picture. Checking just for those registers noted as commencing in the 1640s, 1650s and 1660s, it suggests an average across all counties of England and Wales of around 14.5 per cent. This is very crude for it is based on contemporary estimates of the number of parishes across the country. This mad, brain-numbing number crunching does however suggest there might be more in this for local historians to deduce in the regions.

What happened to parish records in general?

While parish registers survived in relatively good order for the majority of parishes in England – with the caveats noted – historians are faced with considerable losses in records for this period, hence some of our problems. Churchwardens continued to maintain their annual accounts, no doubt under pressure from their congregations, even if no longer scrutinized by archdeacons, diocesan chancellors and their officials. Yet the national database produced by Dr Valerie Hitchman on survival of churchwardens’ accounts does reveal a slight blip in the numbers surviving for these two decades.³¹ With a survival rate for early modern churchwardens’ accounts of only around ten per cent for the whole country, and marked regional variations, this renders some of the past discussions of communion taking and survival of service practices and feasts, based largely on analysis of these records, rather tricky.³² Yet churchwardens’ accounts, where they can be found, obviously remain an invaluable source for local historians.

This period provokes fresh questions about the survival of churchwardens’ accounts and their contents, over and above queries already raised about their use.³³ Local historians might usefully enquire as to how far the sets of accounts that survive for the interregnum represent a further skewed distribution to urban and wealthier livings. Such places as Devizes, for which we have a recent publication, had several reasons for keeping good records given the intertwinement of town and parish landholding; unsurprisingly perhaps, their records also maintained inventories of church goods.³⁴ Where runs of accounts get broken at this date, it would be interesting to see if patterns emerge concerning types of communities or regions.

A big loss, however, is the church court material that would have been associated with the diocesan and archdeaconry courts. Here the assumption has been that much of that work would have transferred to quarter sessions, and indeed we pick up cases dealing with Catholic recusants, morals and disorderly behaviour – associated with campaigns for better godly behaviour conducted under the Protectorate and the work of the Major-Generals in particular.³⁵ Yet the increase in work for the justices of the peace cannot match the church courts in their heyday in the 1630s.³⁶ More research is needed on precisely how – and where – churchwardens worked with JPs between 1646 and 1660, and the nature of cases commonly presented.³⁷

Other losses of records are also significant to different groups of historians; hence genealogists bewail the lack of bishops’ transcripts, always valuable when crosschecking entries in parish registers.³⁸ Glebe terriers were no longer required, but major changes to Church property at this level were not common (although such documents would have been vital in determining parish amalgamations and augmentations), and material produced after 1660 restores our picture of Church landholding.³⁹ ‘Registers of Strange Preachers’ were perhaps a thing of the past, when authorities sought to control unlicensed preaching in the 1630s, and we rarely have much evidence on this score apart from presentments in visitations noting the neglect of keeping such registers.⁴⁰ It would be wonderful if we could map the survival of records for this unique period, in order to provide context and provoke more ideas about regional differences and enforcement of official initiatives, by whom, when and why.

What happened to parish clergy?

Our knowledge of clergy active in this period is patchy, owing to the loss of particular sets of records at diocesan level. The now famous Clergy of the Church of England Database is based largely on evidence gleaned from institution act books, episcopal registers, libri cleri or call books, subscription books, exhibit books and licences to preach – all associated with records generated by episcopal and archidiaconal jurisdictions.⁴¹ The loss of this type of record-keeping explains gaps in the database that can only be filled by painstaking work by hundreds of local historians.⁴² The story is complicated by the work of various groups in the 1640s rooting out ‘scandalous ministers’ and later ‘ejections’ of clergy who did not meet the standards required by the Cromwellian ejectors.⁴³ The picture for clergy during this period is further confused now that evidence is coming to the fore of the work of several bishops carrying out clandestine ‘ordinations’ throughout the period, so enhancing the claims of earlier historians that as many as two-thirds of all clergy at this time were episcopally ordained.⁴⁴ Here is another topic on which local historians might be able to clarify the best dating of such remarks, for are we talking about the 1640s more than the 1650s?

Just to make matters even more complex, however, we are not sure exactly how many clergy were operating during this period. We know these were turbulent times with higher than usual turnover of ministers owing to expulsions and resignations. Between 2,500 and 3,000 ministers were apparently ejected from their livings during this period, although many found a way of moving elsewhere or getting back into livings later.⁴⁵ The Westminster Assembly may have interviewed as many as 5,000 ministers in the late 1640s, and a further 3,500 ministers were considered by the Triers in the 1650s.⁴⁶ These are much higher figures than usually proposed, and local knowledge is needed to clarify just how many clergy and parishes were affected, when one takes into account pluralism and non-residence, reasons given for many ejections in the 1640s.⁴⁷ It is little wonder that Joel Halcomb ended his appendix on the Westminster Assembly figures feeling that: ‘The scale of our results points towards the need to conduct a fresh study of clerical appointments during the Civil Wars and interregnum, one that considers the individual experiences and reactions to parliament’s reforms within a national and local context.’⁴⁸

The rescinding of the requirement to attend parish church regularly on pain of fines in 1650 must have affected clerical/lay relations.⁴⁹ Tensions arose over matters like the taking of communion, ‘baptisms’, marriages and burials – when traditionalists might take issue with a new minister not using the form of words they wanted to hear.⁵⁰ Such tensions might lead to separation of parts of the congregation to join the newly emerging dissenting communities. In Lancashire and Essex, strong Presbyterian associations formed, examples of what had been hoped for briefly in the mid 1640s.⁵¹ Some have claimed that godly clergymen of this period perhaps over-stressed the importance of preaching over other activities, notably their pastoral roles of hospitality, visiting the sick, leading catechism classes and taking care of the poor and elderly.⁵² Certainly, manuals published after the Restoration emphasized pastoral duties, possibly in reaction to things learned during the interregnum, and perhaps also in reaction to how well clergymen in the new dissenting groups fared in this regard.⁵³

It is claimed that Walker’s famous Sufferings of the Clergy, produced much later and based on oral testimonies, is reasonably accurate in picking up those clergy ejected during the 1640s.⁵⁴ This group may be usefully compared with those recorded by Calamy as having been forced out of the Church of England in 1660–2.⁵⁵ Both sets of accounts provide tantalisingly vivid details that suggest we can learn a lot about some ministers, yet they still need to be corroborated and placed in local context.⁵⁶ We need to pick up other ‘ministers’ whose existence as such was extremely transitory. Just as attention is now being paid to the notion of ‘getting along’, particularly in those communities that harboured Roman Catholic recusants, so we need to investigate how many moderate ministers were adopted by their congregations and enabled to find security after the Restoration without undue scrutiny of their ordination.⁵⁷ The period must surely have witnessed many kinds of compromises. The parish register and tithing book kept by Thomas Hassall of Amwell in Hertfordshire suggests continued recording of baptisms and careful concern for the rights of his church in troubled times.⁵⁸

One theme that comes through in literature produced after the Restoration is complaints about the quality, education and experience of clergy appointed during this period, itself perhaps a comment on the high numbers required. In one tract published in 1663, Thomas Ken lamented ‘five groans of the Church’, one of which was that ‘instead of the ancient fathers, we have children who are made priests in all lands’.⁵⁹ He also suggested that 1,342 ‘factious ministers’ had been ordained without real care as to whether they could really be reformed.⁶⁰ He went on to catalogue the incidence of non-resident clergy by counties. The veracity of all these claims cries out to be checked in the localities, while also remembering that such complaints did have a long history.⁶¹

In considering the appointment of ministers, it is important to think about what happened to patronage during the interregnum and how clergymen came to be appointed without reference to bishops, ordinations and licensing. On the abolition of episcopacy in 1646, patronage of a large number of parish livings fell to parliament, which delegated matters concerning suitability of appointees to the Westminster Assembly. Likewise, the considerable number of livings that were under crown and ecclesiastical presentation fell to central authorities administered through the Committee for Plundered Ministers. Another portion of livings, such as those held by delinquent royalists, incumbents and patrons alike, also passed into the hands of the new authorities. As clergy were ejected or died, this thus put pressure on local communities who had to petition parliament for the appointment of a minister. What followed was first extensive work under the auspices of the Westminster Assembly, and later in 1654, in response to yet further petitions regarding the dearth of qualified ministers in the land, the creation of the Triers.⁶² A group of trustees then presided over some appointments following nominations with testimonials. Most modern commentators have guessed that this system worked quite well, ensuring at least minimum standards of competence and orthodoxy among new clergy, and responding fairly and judiciously to local representation.⁶³ This optimistic assessment needs testing in the localities.

What happened to Church officials?

Ministers may have come and gone with greater rapidity than usual, as noted above, but questions need to be asked about how much continuity existed for those elected as churchwardens and appointed as overseers of the poor and parish constables.⁶⁴ Family traditions of service to the locality may have been broken, first during wartime, and later by fresh divisions in the parish created by the arrival of new ministers. This would carry with it questions about the ability of those who came to serve the ‘vestry’, for many of the ‘registers’ of the 1650s were men of humble origin. The appointment of new registrars was not always welcome, nor timely. At Shermanbury in 1661, it was recorded that ‘Robert Tredcroft was Rector … when this Register book was brought, but was denied the keeping of it by William Freeman and the rest of that rebellious crew.’⁶⁵ The names of such people appointed were often recorded in the parish registers, as already noted, and work could be done on tracking their parish affiliations, social status, and political and religious opinions.

In an important article on poor relief, Tim Wales has argued that ‘this period forms a distinctive phase in the development of poor relief, involving significant changes in parochial practice: in levels of rates raised, of numbers relieved, of individual payments made. Not all of this survived significantly beyond 1660, but much did.’⁶⁶ He also drew attention to significant demographic and economic crises that peaked during this period, with particularly bad harvests over the latter half of the 1640s, all of which added pressure on the hard-worked overseers of the poor. Higher levels of parish expenditure may be detected all round owing to a ‘double whammy’ of higher taxation and demand for poor relief.⁶⁷ For Wales, the burden fell squarely on the shoulders of local parish congregations who found little help or leadership from a relatively new and inexperienced bench of justices of the peace, one consequence of a period that saw damage to the power of a predominantly royalist aristocracy and gentry. This research was based on Norfolk and is suggestive for what local historians might investigate elsewhere. Should we be talking about a sea change in how parishes thought about the poor and ‘charity’ as a result of this critical period?

What happened to Church services, customs and ‘rites of passage’?

Big changes would have hit people when they were ordered to drop use of the Book of Common Prayer in 1645 in favour of the Directory for Publique Worship.⁶⁸ Huge question marks remain, however, as to how many copies of the Directory were actually purchased and available in parishes. Nor is it clear how effectively use of this book was ever enforced, loose though its guidelines were. Surviving churchwardens’ accounts for the period do not suggest that it was purchased in large numbers.⁶⁹ Indeed, many commentators since have noted plenty of examples where parishioners sought to hear services conducted with the Book of Common Prayer, and some clergymen who knew it by heart boasted of being congratulated on their ostensibly extempore services by ill-informed listeners.⁷⁰ In a reversal of the ‘sermon gadding’ common in the 1630s, the interregnum affords examples of people ‘gadding’ to those churches where they knew traditional services might be held; this was admittedly easier in urban settings with a variety of churches to choose from, or where house chapels were available. The popularity of the Directory is debatable: for some historians, it lacked familiar ringing phrases, and, it has been argued, changed the relationship between minister and congregation in services, affording the latter little real scope for participation.⁷¹ On the other hand, it might have met with approval for the very scope it gave ministers.⁷²

Even more difficult to gauge is how people sought to maintain customs now banned, like observing Christmas celebrations or parish feasts. What happened to parish customs traditionally used to aid the poor, such as perambulations held at Rogationtide or harvest festivals? A number of classic ‘services’ must have gone by the wayside, such as the practice of confirmation. Yet catechism classes apparently came back into fashion, having been criticized by puritans in the 1630s.⁷³ It is debatable as to how many churches continued to use baptism in the 1650s, when the registers now stressed ‘births’.⁷⁴ Controversies erupted over the conduct of communion for all, marriages and even burials, as already noted, largely in relation to a given minister’s predilections vis-à-vis members of the congregation over which service books to employ.

Genealogists have done sterling work investigating what the changes to registration entailed for ‘births’, deaths and marriages.⁷⁵ Ironically, although there are problems assessing loss of records, we probably have more data for these life events than for many years before or later. Less is known about associated ‘rites of passage’ such as the survival of catechism classes, churching of women, the impact of changes relating to marriage and confirmation. Demographers have been excited by the possibilities of a mini-population crisis in the mid seventeenth century, and also worked on birth–baptism intervals and what they may reveal.⁷⁶ Given what needs to be investigated about the completeness of parish registers during this period, it is sadly not clear how far this might turn out to be an optical illusion.

The Directory contained instructions for the key ceremonies concerning baptism, marriage and burials. Yet registration of births soon replaced baptisms and burial services were stripped of kneeling and processions, which had apparently been greatly abused.⁷⁷ Although various ordinances were issued concerning marriage, leading to the famous act of 1653, that act clearly confused registrars as to what they should record and where. It has been claimed that ‘in many parishes, however, registers contain few marriage entries after 1642 and none after 1653 until 1660’.⁷⁸ It is a claim that once again cries out to be tested by local historians for it has great ramifications for demographers and family historians. My West Sussex case study suggests that there is something in the claim, for around eighty-two parish registers, approximately fifty-six per cent, have significant gaps in the recording of marriages in the 1640s and 1650s. On an associated theme, observance of the prohibited degrees of marriage was clearly a concern for the Commonwealth and Protectorate authorities, for acts were passed on the matter in 1650 and again in 1653.⁷⁹ How were such matters now checked by JPs, or was that left to ministers at the point at which banns were read?

What happened to the maintenance and repair of churches?

This is difficult to ascertain. After surveys from which we learn much about church interiors in the 1630s – usually associated with Laudian ceremonialism – we have less information on what happened in the 1640s and 1650s.⁸⁰ There are hotspots, however, associated with iconoclasm carried out in East Anglia under Dowsing in the 1640s, particularly in Cambridge colleges where altars and rails were pulled down and stained-glass windows smashed.⁸¹ Conversely, we also know of one or two churches actually built during this period, usually with strong gentry involvement, such as the chapel of Staunton Harold in Leicestershire.⁸² We know that parliament was concerned about the condition of churches as an ordinance was passed on the matter in February 1648, interestingly coupled with instructions on payments through churchwardens, possibly suggesting the need to reinforce the continuity of that function.⁸³ There were also the important surveys of churches carried out for parliament in 1650, the records of which have yet to be fully exploited.⁸⁴ These were used to guide instances where poor livings were augmented, usually from funds coming from royalist fines, confiscations or cathedral and episcopal estates. They were also used to inform decisions made in a number of cases, many relating to the reduction in number of poor city livings, as in Chichester, through amalgamations.⁸⁵ Few of these changes survived the Restoration and it remained for Queen Anne’s Bounty much later to try to deal with the poverty of so many livings within the Church of England.⁸⁶

Only where we have surviving churchwardens’ accounts are we likely to find answers to what happened to items like the royal coat of arms after 1649, and to what extent incidents of iconoclasm occurred in parish churches as well as in the more famous cases of Oxbridge colleges and cathedrals. In the church of Maids Moreton in Buckinghamshire, the rector recorded that ‘the windows were broken, a costly deske in the form of a Spread Eagle guilt, on which we used to lay Bpp Jewells Works, hewed to pieces as an abominable Idoll’; he also noted that they managed to hide a number of items, including the register, hence it ‘is not absolutely perfect for divers years’.⁸⁷ Where money could be found for work on church interiors, we know that it was spent on providing pulpits and galleries rather than fittings around an altar. That this was in response to local need and relatively popular may be deduced from the survival of such galleries after the Restoration.⁸⁸ In a general account of iconoclasm in this period, Julie Spraggon noted that after initial attacks on altars and communion rails in the early 1640s, ‘responses to the 1643 and 1644 ordinances are harder to come by in parish accounts’.⁸⁹ This fits well with what John Walter found for the period 1641–2, but more work is needed by local historians around the country to give a fuller answer to the question posed by Spraggon on the enforcement of iconoclastic legislation in the localities and what happened later.⁹⁰

How were parishes financed during this period?

In theory, much should have remained as before: ministers would have been paid out of fees for services, tithes, lived off their own glebe land if they were fortunate enough to possess such property, and other customary perquisites of office such as gifts at Easter. In practice, much of this came into dispute during the period as first there might be problems with ejected ministers refusing to give up residences and perquisites of office; and as time wore on, with fewer levers available for enforcement of practice, payment of tithes might become a problem in certain areas.⁹¹ One of the very last acts of this period, which was passed in March 1660, related to tithes and other sources of grievance in Wales.⁹² Certainly, this was a thorny issue that many hoped would be resolved by reforms proposed in parliaments held in the 1650s, yet it never happened. To what extent tithe disputes continued through quarter sessions is another question that requires more research. Classic articles by Paul Carter, Rosemary O’Day and Ann Hughes provide ample signposts for further work that is required on this murky topic of finance, whether talking about income or expenditure.⁹³

What happened to ‘Church/state relations’ during this period?

To say that relations changed between Church and state would be an understatement. With the authority of the crown, bishops and archdeacons removed – the hierarchy above the parishes was lost and replaced by secular authorities. Committees of parliament, the trustees, Triers and ejectors, local justices of the peace and the Major-Generals, all came to play a strong part in the life of parishes. Yet it is difficult to see how this worked in practice, such as, for example, compliance with orders to the churchwardens to present cases to quarter sessions. We know from literature produced by many divines at this time that a fierce debate ensued as to how far episcopalians should comply with the new regime; there were debates about ‘where was the Church of England without its bishops, or indeed, their king?’⁹⁴ While the balance of power may have swung away from the clergy and towards the laity and secular functions of the parish, it is worth remembering just how new and inexperienced some JPs and military authorities would have been in the face of parish traditions.⁹⁵

One considerable – and yet possibly undervalued – loss might have been that of clerical representation in parliament. Bishops might never have been particularly robust advocates on parochial concerns, but they did sit in the Lords. Examples can be found of their advocacy in very particular cases, as when Bishop Neile spoke up against a bill to split two poor livings in Kent in 1610.⁹⁶ The whole apparatus of Convocation that used to sit alongside parliamentary sessions did provide opportunities for discussion of parish affairs as proctors were appointed from dioceses to the lower house.⁹⁷ Visitations brought clergy together from deaneries fairly regularly. Rural deans were significant administrators in some large dioceses, and an important link between clergy and their archdeacons.⁹⁸ One wonders how isolated many clergy operating the ‘parochial system’ – as it was shorn in the 1640s and 1650s – may have felt, and how they might have viewed the attractions of a Presbyterian classis, or a network of Congregationalists, or the voluntary associations of Worcestershire.

How did people feel about these changes?

This is very difficult to gauge. We have much literature about the religious debates of the times, evidence of growing tensions, and a feeling that the end of the world was nigh in some areas. At the parish level, one wonders how traumatic the events of the times must have felt. Parishes had existed within a well-defined structure that was now abandoned: they related to rural deaneries in many areas, to the larger units of archdeaconries which handled probate affairs and court cases in their own right, and to dioceses with bishops to whom they could appeal. Unless they were in peculiar jurisdictions – another category of parishes whose experiences need to be investigated – they were not necessarily as isolated as we may have thought. It was common still for many wills in the seventeenth century to leave gifts for the ‘mother church’ of the cathedral. How did people react when they learned that several cathedrals had been sacked and looted by troops during the wars, clergy turned out, books and goods pillaged, and lands confiscated for other uses? No wonder that the more literate and those associated with bishops speculated on the nature of the Church without bishops, and what that might entail. Was the Church now really just a ‘community of the faithful’?⁹⁹

A common theme in the writings of historians about this period is a sense of heightened tensions and anxieties. Godly preachers now had an opportunity to preach without restraint and must have challenged – or delighted – many of their parishioners. There was a new determination to enforce Sabbath-day observance and control of behaviour: drinking, alehouses, gambling and sports. All of this represented a threat to how many went about their lives. The very appearance of new sects with radical views must have been disturbing. With the loss of sanctions, many of the worldly in the parishes must have wondered about the necessity to attend church. With one form of loose identity lost, namely the whole Church structure, it is little wonder that people clung to new forms of identity based around their congregations, often willing to draw new lines regarding inclusion and exclusion.¹⁰⁰

How can we get towards a fuller picture?

As should be clear by now, research on this period is difficult. While we have suffered losses in parochial records, we have also made gains in material kept largely in central repositories. This presents new challenges to local historians, but there is much to be gained and good case studies exist to light the way, as chapters in this volume also illustrate.¹⁰¹ Painstaking work will one day reveal much more about the clergy and the officers who served their parishes. Concepts like ‘getting along’ might be more profitable lines of enquiry than those that have hitherto suggested conflict, even though there were clearly parishes in which major disturbances occurred. While strife-torn areas often produce the most compelling evidence, it is harder to distinguish what was happening in communities where people compromised. Local studies can helpfully provide timescales for events that modify the picture as viewed from London, and reveal how different groups in the parishes – whether dissenters or Catholics – fared.

Difficult as this agenda might be, it could be very rewarding. It affords a chance to look again at our parish communities during troubled times, to see what worked for them, and think about how they were subtly affected by those years without a supreme governor and bishops. ‘Identity’ is a fragile thing, and although we see how swiftly the restored Church was welcomed back by some, many cracks with long-standing implications may have appeared below the surface. It was not the same old Church of England. Ministers were forced to think about how they related to their congregations; rival views came into existence of what was entailed in pastoral care. Not everyone welcomed the return of the Church of England, and many gains made in the interregnum were now lost. It was to take some time before events of these troubled times were forgotten. To end on yet more questions: to what extent did puritan reformers achieve what they had hoped for in the 1640s? How far were traditionalists able to hold on to their old ways, old services and old ministers that they liked? How disruptive was this period for ordinary parishioners? Research on the Church of England post Restoration is now needed to look back on the legacy of the interregnum with fresh eyes.

A. Foster, ‘What happened in English and Welsh parishes c.1642– 62?: a research agenda’, in Church and people in interregnum Britain, ed. F. McCall (London, 2021), pp. 19–39. License: CC BY-NC-ND.