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A ‘disorderly tumultuous way of serving God’: prayer and order in Ireland’s church and state, 1660–89

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Kathryn Rose Sawyer
Kathryn Rose Sawyer*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
*
*Department of History, University of Notre Dame, ksawyer2@nd.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the Church of Ireland’s relationship with Scots Presbyterians after the Restoration, focusing on the churchmen’s regular complaints against the ‘disorderly’ practices of the Presbyterian communities in Ireland. The established church leaders spoke of the threat of political and social disorder from the Presbyterians, and they repeatedly targeted the spontaneous ex tempore prayer and preaching practised by Scottish ministers in order to illustrate their concerns. This article uncovers the theological roots of these apparently civic complaints to explain their ubiquity and vehemence. It argues that the churchmen feared that such uncontrolled, unscripted prayer could lead to blasphemy and provoke the wrath of God on the nation, thereby triggering war and unrest such as they had experienced in the preceding decades. In their view, there was little difference between holding to an improperly ordered church hierarchy and worship practice, and forcing this disorder on the state. By illustrating the links between theology, ecclesiology and the potential for political sedition as they were understood by Restoration churchmen, this article demonstrates the importance of theological nuance for clarifying the complex relationship between Ireland’s two largest Protestant denominations in the seventeenth century.

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Type
Research Article
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Irish Historical Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 162 , November 2018 , pp. 207 - 224
Copyright
© Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2018 

And if they can but prate like Parrots in the Scripture phrase, and sing three or four Psalms upon a Lords Day, and repeat at night the nonsence they heard the morning; nay if they commend the Preacher for bawling lowd, and making wry faces, and thumping the Pulpit, and holding forth for two or three hours, and preaching off Book such stuff as is impossible for a considering person to write; they conclude they have worship’d God sufficiently, and that no more is required of them.Footnote 1

With these words William Sheridan, Protestant bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh, described the piety and practice of Presbyterians during a sermon he preached in Dublin in 1685.Footnote 2 Sheridan’s tirade fired barbs at both Presbyterians and Catholics as he sought to defend the rights and practices of the established Church of Ireland following the accession of the Catholic King James II. Sheridan was not one to shy away from controversy; within five years of his sermon he would be deprived as a nonjuror, the only Irish bishop refusing to swear allegiance to William and Mary following England’s ‘Glorious Revolution’. Despite his outlier status later on, however, his opposition to ‘disorderly’ religious practices was widely shared by his confreres in the Irish church establishment, who defined in theological terms concerns about disorder and instability that were widespread in Restoration society.Footnote 3

This article looks beyond the well-known narrative of the threat of political sedition and republican rebellion during the Restoration to examine the theological reasons that lay behind harangues like Sheridan’s, at a time when clergy in the Church of Ireland clashed with Scots Presbyterians in Ulster over questions of order. It shows that among the Irish churchmen, objections regarding order in the religious practice of Presbyterians, especially as observed in their spontaneous manner of prayer and preaching, were indeed rooted in genuine religious concerns rather than ethnic tensions or political jealousies alone. This article therefore argues that the churchmen’s opposition to Presbyterian prayer practices was not just couched in the civil language of order, but that the two issues of prayer and order were, in fact, closely intertwined and rooted in the same theological understandings.

Concerns about ‘order’ were hardly unique to churchmen, Ireland, or the Restoration period. Much ink has been spilled documenting the upheavals of the early to mid-seventeenth century, both in the three kingdoms and further afield. The three kingdoms experienced a domino effect of challenge to King Charles I’s authority, first with the Bishops’ Wars in Scotland in the late 1630s, followed by the uprising in Ireland that began in 1641, which in turn helped to spark the first English Civil War in 1642. The widespread disturbance of the Civil Wars was followed by a radical turn of events in the later 1640s that culminated in the beheading of the monarch in 1649 and the introduction of a republican government which endured for more than a decade. Though the wars ceased in England, they continued into the 1650s in both Scotland and Ireland. The chaos of the three kingdoms in these decades had, as historical background, three decades of religious warfare that wreaked havoc across the European continent between 1618 and 1648, as the various local and national religious wars of the sixteenth century snowballed into a continent-wide and generation-long affair.Footnote 4 The continental war limped to an end in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, marking the conclusion of Europe’s wars of religion and the continental ‘Reformation’ period. The three kingdoms experienced a similar turn a few years later, in 1660, as local leaders attempted to bring order and stability back to their territories, while still harbouring fears that what they had lived through in the previous two decades could easily happen again. For both the civic and church leadership in each kingdom, the ensuing tussles over the Restoration religious settlement, the need for political uniformity, and the desire for peace and security were firmly rooted in this fear: as religious and governmental experimentation had resulted in what was remembered as anarchy and misery for many, so peace and prosperity could only be achieved through a complete reversal of that unruly situation.

The ‘constant threat of rebellion’ throughout the three kingdoms after 1660 was closely tied to the presence of political and religious dissent.Footnote 5 The two types of dissent were not easily separated: James I’s famous declaration of ‘no bishops, no king’ had become shockingly true when his son and successor was beheaded by men who had proscribed the hierarchy of bishops in the church and who advocated for rule of the nation by a unicameral parliament.Footnote 6 The fact that the trial and execution of the king was overseen by the Rump Parliament of Independents, following the purge of more moderate Presbyterian M.P.s by Colonel Thomas Pride, made little difference to those who remembered the preceding wars as being the work of a Presbyterian-controlled parliament. For the royalists, whose wartime experience was marked by suffering for their religion, ‘the diverse and often importantly different forces of Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism and Separatism, 1640s and 50s sectarianism and enthusiasm, and Scots Covenanting fanaticism were given natural heirs and successors in the separated Dissenters of the 1660s’. These disparate groups were then lumped together under the general label of ‘Presbyterians’, the largest of the non-episcopal groups, in anti-Dissenter rhetoric.Footnote 7 While the Presbyterians in England had risen from pre-war puritans and, following the Restoration, were just as likely to attend their local parish as not, in Ireland, especially as the Restoration period wore on, ‘Presbyterian’ overwhelmingly referred to the separated Scots Presbyterians whose strong institutional identity was reinforced by their close ties to Scotland. Unlike in England, where ‘Dissent’ functioned as a political category above all, in Ireland ‘Dissent’ signalled a parallel – and much more numerous – Protestant church structure and culture.Footnote 8

A large body of historical scholarship treats the relationship between religion and concepts of order in early-modern Ireland, yet few works consider how religious beliefs in themselves informed the thoughts of church and government leaders on issues relating to religious and social order.Footnote 9 A common theme in studies of religion in early-modern Ireland is the frustration of the clergy of the established church in the face of their inability to command the loyalty of the majority of the island’s population. Very little attention has been paid, however, to the ways that this frustration was reinforced by specific religious beliefs. This article will therefore examine sermons and tracts emanating from clergy in the restored Church of Ireland, to determine the link that existed in the minds of the churchmen between religious practice and social order. It is necessary to trace explicitly the links between political sedition and ‘deviant’ worship practices that were, to the seventeenth-century mind, so obvious as to need no further explanation. A closer examination of these discourses, and in particular of the presumed relationship between religious and social disorder that they reveal, indicates that the polemics of Church of Ireland clergy against Dissenters was more than a by-product of sectarian power struggles. The extreme unease expressed by the Church of Ireland hierarchy towards the use of spontaneous, or ex tempore, prayer in Presbyterian worship, and the symbolic value this form of prayer carried in establishment discourses, was not simply one expression of sectarian intolerance and political conflict. Instead, this marked an important clash over key doctrinal and ecclesiological issues that ultimately prevented the rapprochement of Anglicans and Presbyterians during the Restoration period.Footnote 10

Restoration churchmen across the three kingdoms regularly linked disorderly prayer practices among Presbyterians with the potential for political sedition. Both were seen as a particular manifestation of a larger disorderly system. The holistic understanding of the ordered nature of creation in early modern thought, and its specific manifestations in monarchy, church, and society, excluded the possibility of political loyalty where nonconformity to the established religion was evident. However, ‘order’, whether political, societal, or religious, was an ambiguous word because it carried multiple distinct, yet related, meanings. In the Irish Restoration context, ‘order’ could refer to hierarchy, with its earthly manifestations of monarchy and episcopacy, both divinely ordained and mirroring the hierarchical structure of heaven.Footnote 11 Relatedly, ‘order’ could refer to the created order of the universe, with disorder and chaos as its opposites: ‘the God that we serve, is a God of Order … and, both the beauty, and the safety of the Universe, consists in Order and Method’.Footnote 12 In this scheme of ordered creation, man had a particular relationship to God, seen in man’s place in the universe and in man’s way of relating to God, especially through the rituals of liturgy and worship. Finally, ‘order’ could refer to that state of being which fostered peace and security; just as ‘an army under its banners is in order’, so too ‘Church security and church beauty is in order’.Footnote 13 The two decades prior to the Restoration had seen a breakdown of all three types of ‘order’ – monarchy and episcopacy both abolished, the proper relationship of man to God denied and overturned by the various religious sects and their new modes of worship, and war and social unrest a constant reality. This state of affairs could be summed up in the single word ‘disorder’. Commentary on one type of disorder implied a necessary relationship to all three, and the churchmen’s fears, and their concern to re-establish and maintain ‘order’, could be used to refer immediately to one of these aspects while necessarily implying the other two.

This article traces the connection between disorderly prayer and political danger in Ireland in three stages. Because concerns about political disorder were either anchored in or proven by the practice of ex tempore prayer, this form of prayer is first defined and examined in light of the theology underlying the Church of Ireland’s understanding of the proper use and practice of prayer. The next section considers the sphere of ecclesiology, where questions of proper church structure and governance arose at the intersection of theology and practice. Disordered theology, seen in one instance in the form of prayer, led necessarily to a disordered ecclesiology. From there it was only a short jump to disordered politics, since in the holistic understanding of ordered creation, there was little essential difference between the government of the church and the government of the state. Each complemented the other in the recognition that each was preoccupied with different aspects of the same duty to provide for the security of both body and soul of the kingdom’s subjects. As this article shows, the link between church and state was so strong in the early modern imagination that it was deemed impossible for an individual or group who held to disordered ecclesiology or prayer practices to be able to be orderly in civil government. It was thus considered only a matter of time before those who practised disorder in their prayer and church government would force their disorder on the state as well. For those who remembered the earlier wars, regicide, and Interregnum, the link was clear and the potential consequences terrifying. This article will therefore discuss the worries that the churchmen had concerning order in prayer and ecclesiology before discussing fears about societal disorder, in order to illuminate the precise role that prayer practices played in fears of societal disorder among Presbyterians in Ireland.

I

The regime change in 1660 restored not just the monarchy, but also the episcopal-style church, which had been stripped of episcopacy and the use of the prayer book in 1647. In England, the restoration of the church took place over two years, between the arrival of Charles II in London in 1660, and the act of uniformity and prayer book revisions that gave the church its final restored shape in 1662. In Scotland, which had never had ‘a particularly powerful episcopalian tradition’, ‘bishops were restored … by royal fiat’ when Charles II declared his will that that episcopacy be restored there as in his other kingdoms, against the widespread preferences of his Scottish subjects.Footnote 14 The parliamentary process for enacting the royal wishes followed in 1662. Restoring the Irish church was both swifter and more drawn-out than in the neighbouring kingdoms. Legally, the Dublin parliament did not pass an act of uniformity for the episcopalian church settlement until 1666, four years after the English act on which it was modelled. But the nearly-decimated church hierarchy was quickly revitalised following the return of the king, despite the initial presbyterian leanings of the Dublin Convention as it considered a national church settlement in the spring of 1660.Footnote 15 Aided by the fact that the crown appointed episcopal candidates to Irish sees directly, ‘the names of the new bishops were common knowledge by the end of June’ of the same year and attempts by agents from Ulster to present a presbyterian settlement to the king were politely rebuffed.Footnote 16 Despite the relative speed of this process, Jeremy Taylor, in his typically dramatic style, wrote to privy councillor George Lane in December 1660 that ‘these Presbyterian Scots get heart & confidence by the great delay of the Justices coming over, & of the Bishops Consecration’.Footnote 17 By the end of January 1661, the consecration of ten bishops and two archbishops in a ceremony in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin finished, in one fell swoop, the process of filling sixteen of the seventeen sees that had fallen vacant by 1660.Footnote 18

It is difficult to give an accurate overview of the restored Irish episcopate because so little scholarly work has been done on this topic.Footnote 19 James McGuire has analysed the men who were appointed to the bench in 1660–61 and concluded that, with the exception of a couple of politically necessary appointments, the majority of the Restoration bishops reflected the particular vision of the church espoused by John Bramhall,Footnote 20 the former Laudian reformer of Derry who would die just a few years later.Footnote 21 In particular, like Bramhall himself, those men who were assigned to north-eastern dioceses, with a dense presence of Scots Presbyterians, ‘might loosely be called neo-Laudian’ in their religious preferences.Footnote 22 However, it is also difficult, in the absence of analysis of the restored episcopate beyond 1661, to judge how long Bramhall’s influence would last despite his carefully chosen appointees. Of the bishops on, or newly appointed to, the bench in 1661, thirteen would be dead within a dozen years, some of these much sooner, including eight of the twelve consecrated together in Dublin in January 1661, along with the three consecrating bishops, and Bramhall himself. The church of 1660–89 was, moreover, not dominated by any individual or group of strong personalities, unlike during the Ussherian era of the early seventeenth century or the period marked by the reformers of the 1690s, which adds to the difficulty of assessing the climate of the church at that time.Footnote 23

The Protestant Church of Ireland had a long history of identifying itself as a beleaguered minority surrounded by a hostile majority, and the situation only worsened after 1660 when the enforcement of church law and practice under an episcopal hierarchy clashed with a Protestant population that had grown exponentially during the 1650s.Footnote 24 Unlike in England, where official Dissent generally comprised only a fraction of a population that was overwhelmingly conformist Protestant, Dissenters outnumbered the Irish Protestant establishment by an estimated average of more than two to one, on an island where Protestants of all stripes only totalled about one third of the population.Footnote 25 The denominational makeup of Dissent in Ireland also differed starkly from that of England, where Presbyterians ‘were smaller in number, arguably more open to accommodation, and easier to penalise’.Footnote 26 English Dissent largely comprised of a range of Presbyterians and Independents, which had grown out of an English puritanism rooted in the early seventeenth century. English Dissent thus included people who believed in the validity of Presbyterian ordination and church governance, yet who did not wish to separate officially from the Church of England.Footnote 27 In Ireland, by contrast, ‘Dissenter’ could be used almost interchangeably with ‘Scots Presbyterian’, the group that formed the overwhelming majority of non-episcopal Protestants on the island and which, in the counties of the north-east, formed upwards of half of the total population. Unlike the English style of Presbyterianism and official Dissent that encompassed a range of relationships to the established church, and ‘did not embrace a sectarian future at any time before 1689’, the Church of Ireland at the Restoration faced a Dissent dominated by an organised, populous, and culturally distinctive Scottish Presbyterianism which the civil government did little to quell.Footnote 28 The apparently contradictory policy of unofficially tolerating Dissent was made necessary by the situation in Ireland, which was different enough that the policies towards religious conformity and civil peace that had been so apparently successful in England simply could not be imported wholesale. As McGuire comments: ‘Security, lack of support from Whitehall and the sheer concentration of Scots Presbyterians in Ulster meant that policy must conform to reality’, one that would ‘seek rather to contain than to overcome the Presbyterian refusal to conform’.Footnote 29

II

Church of Ireland invectives against Dissent must be read in light of this unsettled situation, as churchmen emphasised that a lack of religious unity was just as dangerous as a lack of political unity, and for the same basic reasons. The common motif they employed was the Presbyterian practice of ex tempore prayer and preaching, which functioned for the churchmen as rhetorical shorthand for, and the key image of, Presbyterian disorder. Ex tempore prayer was the unscripted, spontaneous prayer offered by Scots Presbyterian ministers, a practice that contrasted sharply with the officially prescribed use of the written prayers found in the established church’s Book of Common Prayer. While other groups, such as the Quakers, practised forms of spontaneous prayer during their meetings, their small numbers merited them only passing comments in Church of Ireland diatribes. Rather, the churchmen feared the larger congregations of Scots Presbyterians in Ulster. Their practice of holding large outdoor worship meetings or conventicles, which included ex tempore prayer and preaching, helped to transform ex tempore prayer into a key symbol of the wider problem of religious and social disorder in Ireland.

Ex tempore prayer became popular in public worship settings among Presbyterians in Ireland during religious revivals that began in Ulster’s Scots Presbyterian community in 1625.Footnote 30 Previous worship practices, dating from the Scottish Reformation, had been heavily influenced by the Genevan reforms, whose liturgy left almost no room for prayers ‘at the minister’s discretion’.Footnote 31 The Ulster revivals were therefore a truly new phenomenon. What began as monthly lectures by ministers quickly grew in popularity in eastern Ulster and south-western Scotland, soon becoming multi-day events including massive communion services, multiple preachers, and a variety of sermons and prayers. The revivals ended in 1633 when the push for liturgical uniformity under Archbishop William Laud in England came to Ireland, but the practices cultivated among the Scottish population in Ulster during the previous eight years did not disappear. During the war and Interregnum periods of the 1640s and 1650s, the Presbyterian church in Ireland became more organised and institutionalised. However, unlike the Scottish Presbyterian church, whose public defiance of the episcopal Church of Scotland became increasingly militant throughout the Restoration period, the church leaders in Ulster struggled to maintain a balance between a carefully cultivated unofficial toleration interrupted by occasional periods of official persecution, and the desire of the laity for revivalist worship meetings. This tension was exploited by young preachers from Scotland who treated Ulster like mission territory, coming to Ireland for months at a time to itinerate through a preaching circuit. Their meetings were popular, drawing crowds of thousands for multi-day events, and in response Ulster-based ministers attempted to regain their congregations by offering their own large-scale communion services. It appears, however, that their efforts to protect the status of the Presbyterian community in Ireland by limiting numbers and rowdiness at these events was interpreted by the laity as cowardice, and these ‘official’ Irish meetings were considered, in consequence, to be spiritually dry.

These internal dynamics thus indicate that, rather than having a single form of worship, the Presbyterian community in Ireland had two distinct types of open-air conventicles that took place during the Restoration period, one of which was more politically driven and boisterous than the other. However, outside observers did not necessarily draw such distinctions. The Church of Ireland establishment simply perceived growing numbers of conventicles, the large crowds that attended these events, and escalating militancy and defiance from the meetings organised by the itinerant preachers. Ex tempore prayer, as practised by Irish Presbyterians, apparently uncontrolled both in its spontaneous delivery and in the enthusiastic bodily responses it could trigger among the congregants, was seen by the churchmen as integral to and indicative of a disordered and disorderly Presbyterian system. When, in 1685, the Presbyterian community in Scotland rose in armed resistance against the initiatives of James II, the churchmen in Ireland waited apprehensively for similar unrest at home.Footnote 32 The fact that, in the end, nothing happened mattered little; for the churchmen, violence and disorder were the inevitable fruit of an inherently violent and disorderly religion. Their invectives against Presbyterianism thus never failed to mention ex tempore prayer as both the cause and exemplar of the social problems posed by the Dissenting community. However, establishment objections to Dissent went far beyond the easily identifiable practice of spontaneous prayer to cover a range of theological, ecclesiological, and civil concerns. Seen as both a cause and an illustration of the danger posed by the Presbyterian system, ex tempore prayer served as a stock concept that the churchmen could draw on to laud the order and moderation offered by the established church, while decrying the danger posed by the uncontrolled practices of Dissenters.

III

Contrasting theological understandings of prayer formed the core of Church of Ireland objections to variant Presbyterian practices. Disagreements centred on the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit and their application in the seventeenth-century church.Footnote 33 According to the Pentecost narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles’ Spirit-given ability to preach spontaneously in a variety of languages triggered a wave of conversions and, throughout the book, the inspired speeches of the apostles continued to win souls for Christ.Footnote 34 The question in seventeenth-century Ireland was whether these gifts remained valid through the centuries or whether they were given to the apostles and the earliest Christians in order to establish the young church, but were no longer necessary. Various puritan groups with roots in the Reformation, including Presbyterians, considered the gifts of preaching or praying through the direct inspiration of the Spirit to be still valid in the church, while the establishment churchmen firmly rejected this notion. Henry Leslie,Footnote 35 the long-time bishop of Down and Connor, considered the practice of praying with the Spirit spontaneously to be an antichristian innovation. He held that it contradicted the teaching of Christ himself, who had offered the specific words of the Lord’s Prayer when his disciples asked him how to pray.Footnote 36 ‘For that wild conceit that now possesseth men’, he said, ‘was not known in former ages, namely, that our prayers should wast themselves away in the making, and like smoak vanish in the ascending; that they should never be reiterated; but still conceived new … such devotion was never known unto the people of God: for they alwaies practised the contrary’.Footnote 37 Richard Lingard, the dean of Lismore,Footnote 38 granted that ‘while the Apostles lived, there was in the Church an extraordinary gift of Prayer that supplyed the place of stated Forms’, but he maintained that such gifts were proper and necessary only to the apostles themselves, and ‘as these Inspirations withdrew, so set composed Forms succeeded in the Church’.Footnote 39

The churchmen objected to ex tempore prayer from a theological perspective because they believed that the Presbyterians misused it, both in practice and in its broader intellectual applications. In practice, ex tempore prayer was perceived as disorderly and chaotic – the exact opposite of the ideal of holiness in the Anglican scheme.Footnote 40 Rather than seeking ‘the wild fury of the heathen affllations’,Footnote 41 a Christian should turn to those guides for prayer that were undeniably inspired by the Holy Spirit: scripture, which was of course directly inspired, and the Book of Common Prayer, which drew its content and doctrine from scripture and which was compiled by godly and learned men of the established Protestant church. The ‘many Godly prayers, psalmes and hymnes, recorded for our use’ in scripture could serve ‘either as prayers or patterns to frame our prayers by’.Footnote 42 The gifts of the Holy Spirit, it was argued, were to be used for the edification of the entire church community; what the churchmen saw as the incomprehensible, passionate rantings of the Presbyterian preachers clearly did not meet that standard. Better to draw on scripture directly, they said, which was available and comprehensible to all. ‘In our private devotions’, explained Leslie, ‘we may use any language which we our selves understand; but the Minister of publick prayer, must use only that language which is commonly understood by the People, and so pray, not only with the Spirit, but with the understanding also.’Footnote 43

The uncontrolled nature of ex tempore prayer worried the churchmen. In the establishment tradition, which held church hierarchy to be essential and whose worship was ordered by the Book of Common Prayer, a calm, grave, orderly worship that was uniform throughout the whole church community was considered to be the most proper way to approach God: ‘as the Apostle saith, In Gods Church all things might be done decently and in Order’.Footnote 44 By contrast, the individually-centred nature of ex tempore prayer left it entirely unvetted by the Christian leadership at large. Ex tempore prayer tied ‘the People … to the Prayer of the Minister, but not the Minister to the Prayers of the Church’.Footnote 45 For an individual’s private devotions, spontaneous prayer was acceptable and even encouraged within certain limitations, but as the public offering of the whole Christian community it was outside the bounds of reason.Footnote 46 The established church had watched in horror during the Civil Wars and Interregnum as radical sects multiplied alongside political chaos, and they had interpreted this period of trial as a punishment for the sins of the nation, especially following the execution of the king.Footnote 47 For those whose memories recalled to them that time of religious and social anarchy, the idea of random, spontaneous, individual prayer being offered as a communal act was entirely unacceptable.

The churchmen repeatedly challenged the Presbyterians to prove the theological trustworthiness of their words. When the Dissenters claimed divine inspiration for their unplanned speeches, their detractors demanded to know if they thereby thought their own words to be on par with holy scripture.Footnote 48 Such objections were hardly rhetorical. Rather, they illustrate the churchmen’s greatest theological objection: that extemporaneous prayer promoted blasphemy, heresy, and sacrilege. The Dissenters, they charged, preferred to ‘run all hazards of Impertinency, Non-sence, or Blasphemy, rather then join in those Prayers where their Faith and Religion is secured, and to which they can safely say Amen’.Footnote 49 ‘They belie the Spirit of God’, said Leslie, ‘and greatly dishonour him, when they pretend him to be the Author, and inditer, of their wild, impertinent, discourse, which no wise Man would willingly own. And sometime, in their prayers, they vent both Heresie and Blasphemy, and so intitle the holy-spirit, not only to their folly, but also to their impiety, which is a blaspheming of the holy-ghost’.Footnote 50 In sum, ‘it is the highest pitch of sacrileg to make the Scripture it self patronize impiety’.Footnote 51

The question of the continuance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in prayer and preaching was part of a larger conversation about the legacy of the earliest church, a topic that directly affected perceptions of proper church order. Ex tempore practices proved to the churchmen that the Presbyterians lacked entirely the proper means for worshipping God. As William Sheridan sneered, ‘thô I will not deny but several National Churches might differ from one another in their Forms of Worship; yet I never read nor heard of any who had not a Form by which they did worship, until our modern Presbyterians’.Footnote 52 As fierce as they could be, however, objections to ex tempore and other variants of prayer were limited to that which took place as part of public, communal worship. Jeremy Taylor justified the distinction, in that ‘decency is a relative term, and so is order’, and so ‘we may do that in private which in publick we may not’.Footnote 53 Public worship, after all, was not just about fervent prayer, though pious zeal was certainly encouraged. But to be Christian was to be a member of a community in the Body of Christ, and the church’s prayers were ‘those Offices by which we stand a visible Church’.Footnote 54 Public worship was a communal act, a formal expression of the church’s hierarchical relationship with God, from servant to master, from creature to Creator. In such a public setting, the spectacle of form and action, to be done ‘unanimously, in one general posture, reverently and decently’, was as important for conveying the message as the words and emotions involved.Footnote 55 As a result, explained Leslie, ‘this publick prayer is of farr more worth, then the private prayer of any one; for it is more forcible, and likely to prevail with God, by reason of the multitude of suppliants’.Footnote 56

This lack of liturgy among the Presbyterians paralleled their lack of church hierarchy, according to their detractors. The presbyterian system of church governance called for parity among the ordained ministers of the church. Unlike the episcopal system, in which bishops presided over the lower clergy, in presbyterian organisation all the ministers of an area met in assemblies for mutual support, correction, and decision-making. Since Ireland in the 1640s and 1650s had suffered a lack of Presbyterian ministers, an even stronger reliance had developed there on lay elders within the congregations than had been the case in Scotland.Footnote 57 But the Anglican churchmen denied entirely the validity of church governance ‘of Lay-Ruling Elders’ that lacked hierarchy when circumstances allowed for a hierarchical structure, as ‘an order new and unknown to the Church of God till of late’.Footnote 58 In a very practical sense, they feared that the ‘disorderly and tumultuous way of serving God’ in both worship and governance would be pressed onto Anglican clergy working in the difficult circumstances of Ireland, who might bend to the wishes and preferences of nonconforming parishioners in order to fill the pews and the church coffers.Footnote 59 In 1682, Samuel FoleyFootnote 60 encouraged his fellow clergy to hold fast to established practices, since permitting liturgical laxity in an attempt to attract nonconformists would only ‘make our Congregations irregular and disorderly, if we shuffle it over to make way for long Extempore Harangues of our own, and make for our Parishes new Rubricks, and new Canons’. This, he said, would in the end only ‘harden men in their Separation’.Footnote 61

The continued separation of the Presbyterians from the established church was the most irksome point for the churchmen as they grappled with issues of prayer, liturgy, and church governance. As members of a church that valued the prayer book liturgy, the churchmen could only conclude that the practice of ex tempore prayer in itself led to and maintained schism. Those who continued to practice it were, by definition, obstinate schismatics. Men like Sheridan, Foley, and their peers were by and large members of the established church because they believed that it was the best way to heaven; they were ministers in that church because they wished, at least in some capacity, to help others get there as well. For some, such an allegiance was perhaps comfortably in line with an already ritualistic and hierarchical personal nature. But for others, especially those of Presbyterian tendencies who had nevertheless conformed at the Restoration, the fact that the Church of Ireland was the one established by law at the pleasure of the king and decree of parliament was in itself an argument for its validity.Footnote 62 If the king as God’s appointed regent on earth for the English, Irish, and Scottish people established the episcopal church with the prayer book liturgy, then following the wishes of the king in this point was indeed to follow the ordinances of God. In such a case, schism was not simply about liturgical preferences or even a question of politics; schism from the church as established by law was an act of defiance against God himself.

The churchmen used their own experiences of exile and suppression, whether in Ireland, England, or abroad, to draw immediate parallels between public ex tempore prayer and the recent descent into civil chaos under the leadership of those who practised it. Taylor appealed ‘to the experience of this last age, in which extempore prayer have been born & bred’ for proof that such a practice must be suppressed before it turned into outright crime.Footnote 63 A generation later, Foley warned that ‘wicked Clergy-men have by their evil deeds propagated impiety, preached men into Atheism, and in fine, destroyed Religion, and ruined their Country. Thus it hapned, and thus it may happen again’.Footnote 64 The logical path that led from the ecclesiologically schismatic practice of ex tempore prayer to overt rebellion against the civil state was reinforced by the close ties between the church and state in the Restoration kingdoms. The established church and the monarchy were considered as two pillars that upheld society; if one were to fall, the other would follow by necessity: ‘Princes seldom fall alone, Crowns and Miters like Twins cannot well be parted’.Footnote 65 This had happened once already to the great misfortune of the church, when the triumphal parliamentary forces in 1646 had followed their defeat of the king and his government with a suppression of the established church and its practice of using the prayer book for public worship.Footnote 66 It was entirely clear that the church depended on the state for support and protection. And for the churchmen, whether the state appreciated it or not, the state depended on the church as a national body to uphold moral order and to pray as a community for the physical and spiritual protection of the nation.Footnote 67

By exempting themselves from the public worship of the established church and forming their own parallel conventicled societies, the Dissenters were in a very tangible way placing themselves above the law. There was no essential difference in the eyes of the churchmen for whom the state–church bond was so strong, between placing oneself above the law as it pertained to the church, and placing oneself above any other law that might apply in society. Thus could Sheridan draw an explicit connection between the ‘false and erroneous’ faith of the ‘dissenting Brethren’ and ‘their rebellious and seditious practices against the State’, demonstrated clearly by their ‘contempt of Authority’ and opposition to ‘the establish’d and known Laws, by their riotous, unlawful Assemblies’.Footnote 68 This was not to say that each individual Dissenter (or, for that matter, every Catholic) was looked upon as having malicious intent towards the church and the state. The churchmen recognised that this was not the case: in everyday life their neighbours, servants, and even sometimes their family members were of a different denomination, and a certain balance had to be reached to make such daily interactions tolerable.Footnote 69 They were in fact at pains, across the board, to stress the ignorance of the masses in religious practice. These were merely ‘the fools’, who ‘through simplicity were seduced into sedition and Disloyalty’.Footnote 70 In the hierarchical society of the seventeenth century, in which the people were expected to follow where their superiors led, the real problem was the malicious teaching of the Dissenting and Catholic leadership, ‘who now, under pretence of the Spirit, do but cheat you out of your Religion’.Footnote 71 While some Dissenters were to be considered ‘misguided’ rather than guilty of ‘profaneness’, those who incited schism were ‘profane and irreligious wretches’.Footnote 72

The Old Testament examples of the rebellion of Absalom in 2 Samuel 15 and the schism under Korah from Israelite worship in Numbers 16 were used to illustrate the ways in which large numbers of people could be enticed into unholy actions by an unscrupulous leader, all the while believing that they were acting rightly. ‘Very many, who have in the simplicity of their hearts, followed Absalom in a rebellion, do now likewise follow Korah in a schism’, lamented Hopkins.Footnote 73 However, ignorance and good intentions would not protect the nation from the judgment of God for an act that was in itself unholy. As Parry demanded, ‘Can we think our selves safe without sincere repentance and reformation of our sins; or that we stand so secure, as not to fall again?’Footnote 74 If the Lord withdrew his protection from his people, as had happened when the king was executed and episcopacy driven underground, the resulting chaos and destruction would be general among the nation, taking no heed of personal innocence or guilt. As Benjamin Parry warned in a sermon against nonconformity that he preached before the lord lieutenant, ‘Where did we ever yet see Tumults guided by discretion, or a Riotous multitude observe any bounds? … Rebellion having once got ground and footing, knowes no limits but its own Ruine, and as it began with the Devil first, so it seldom stops till it come to Hell.’Footnote 75

IV

A clear chain of logic in the Restoration Church of Ireland linked faulty Presbyterian theology to disorderly ecclesiology and deduced a general Presbyterian potential for political sedition. For the establishment clergy, spontaneous prayer and preaching ran the risk of blasphemy, whether it was outright or because a minister, feeling himself inspired by the Holy Spirit, would dare choose his own words over those of scripture to offer as a communal act of worship. This minister, without a bishop acting in spiritual authority over him, had no checks or means of correction in the case that he did indeed preach heresy. The simple, uneducated people in the gathered conventicles, already stirred into an emotional frenzy through fiery preaching, would take whatever he said as teaching from God because it issued from a minister’s mouth. In this way could large sections of the population be led into resistance, schism, and even violent rebellion against the church and state, believing in their ignorance that their actions were being directed by God through the teachings of their clergy.

The perceived causal relationship between ‘disorderly’ prayer and national calamity indicates that Church of Ireland invectives against Presbyterian religious practices should not simply be read at the political or social levels, where they might appear to be little more than fear-mongering or near-hysterical attempts to maintain the political monopoly of the small established church. Rather, spontaneous prayer could be used as rhetorical shorthand for political and societal disorder precisely because the churchmen’s objections to it were grounded in an understanding of the world in which improper prayer could trigger the wrath of God upon the nation. The theological objections could not be separated from the political and social. Tracing this development explains why, at a very practical level, ex tempore prayer was considered to be so dangerous, and why it was therefore so necessary that the prayer book and set liturgy be upheld in the Restoration church.

Establishment harangues against ex tempore prayer and preaching were not merely about prayer preferences or an aesthetic attachment to liturgical style. Instead they were indicative of a broader vision in the church for a Restored Ireland as a Protestant kingdom, unified in the orderly communal worship of God through the prayer book, and kept safe under the protection of the king. The vehemence and ubiquity of these diatribes belie a deep-seated fear of the chaos that would ensue in the nation if such a vision was not enforced. Following this logic from its basis in theological interpretations to its temporal ramifications in issues of church governance and civil order allows the student of Irish history to appreciate the complexity that defined intra-Protestant relations in seventeenth-century Ireland. Digging down to the theological roots of the Church of Ireland’s often hostile and sometimes panicked reaction to the Presbyterian presence on the island helps explain the church’s ‘hard stance’ towards Dissenters despite the ‘accommodationist’ approach favoured by many civil Protestant leaders.Footnote 76 It also sheds light on the puzzling inability of the two largest Protestant groups to cooperate with each other, despite the obvious advantages to doing so, especially in the face of real threats, whether they resulted from the administrative overhaul by James II that favoured Catholics in the later 1680s or the more localised fears of attack by a hostile Catholic populace. For the clergy of the Church of Ireland, outnumbered by Presbyterians, especially in the north, the threat posed by ex tempore prayer and all that flowed from it was not just paranoia or an obsession with social control: it was a clear and present danger of which they were constantly aware in their day-to-day lives. Recognising this dynamic between theology and everyday experience ultimately allows for a fuller understanding of what Ireland as a restored kingdom represented in the eyes of its established church, and why this vision proved to be so consistently contentious among the Irish Protestant leadership.

References

1 Sheridan, William, S. Pauls confession of faith, or, a brief account of his religion in a sermon preach’d at St. Warbroughs church in Dublin, March 22, 1684/5 (Dublin, 1685), p. 11 Google Scholar .

2 William Sheridan (1636–1711), bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh from 1682, was deprived for nonjuring by 1692. See John Bergin, ‘Sheridan, William (1636–1711)’, in D.I.B.

3 When Sheridan published his sermon in response to the political and social backlash he received following its initial delivery, it carried endorsements from his fellow churchmen Anthony Dopping (1643–97), bishop of Kildare from 1679 and of Meath from 1682, and William King (1650–1729), who became bishop of Derry in 1691 and archbishop of Dublin in 1703, and at the time of Sheridan’s sermon was chancellor of St Patrick’s Cathedral and rector of St Werburgh’s parish in Dublin. See James McGuire, ‘Dopping, Anthony (1643–97)’ and Philip O’Regan, ‘King, William (1650–1729)’, in D.I.B.

4 Discussing the forces that shaped the arc of the seventeenth century, Jonathan Scott argues, ‘In their most destabilising form these arrived in Stuart England through central Europe in 1618. The troubles by which Charles I’s monarchy would be overwhelmed were given their immediate force by the Thirty Years War.’ (Jonathan Scott, England’s troubles: seventeenth-century English political instability in European context (Cambridge, 2000), p. 5.) John Morrill is even more explicit when he states, ‘The English Civil War was not the first European revolution: it was the last of the wars of religion.’ (John Morrill, ‘The religious context of the English Civil War’ in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds), The English Civil War (London, 1997), p. 176.)

5 Connolly, S. J., Religion, law, and power: the making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992), p. 24 Google Scholar .

6 Tim Harris argues that ‘This conditioned the Restoration regime’s attitude towards questions of security, and helps explain why there was a desire to have a reliable, professional army in all three kingdoms to prevent any possible rumblings, why the authorities were so concerned about the problem of dissent (since most of the radicals were dissenters), and why there was a tendency to take an unduly harsh approach to the suppression of crowd unrest if there was ever the slightest suspicion that republican elements might be involved.’ (Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London, 2005), p. 50.)

7 J. C. D. Clark, English society, 1660–1832: religion, ideology and politics during the ancien régime (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2000), p. 46.

8 The ambiguous position of English Dissent at the Restoration is considered in Spurr, John, ‘From puritanism to Dissent, 1660–1700’ in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (eds), The culture of English puritanism, 1560–1700 (Basingstoke, 1996), pp 234–265 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For the Irish Presbyterian perspective, see Westerkamp, Marilyn J., Triumph of the laity: Scots-Irish piety and the Great Awakening, 1625–1760 (Oxford, 1988), pp 15–72 Google Scholar ; Greaves, Richard L., God’s other children: Protestant nonconformists and the emergence of denominational churches in Ireland, 1660–1700 (Stanford, California, 1997), pp 159–248 Google Scholar ; Kilroy, Phil, Protestant Dissent and controversy in Ireland, 1660–1714 (Cork, 1994), pp 15–59 Google Scholar .

9 Key works on religion and social order in Ireland include Connolly, Religion, law, and power; Barnard, T. C., A new anatomy of Ireland: the Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (London, 2003)Google Scholar ; Connolly, S. J., Divided kingdom: Ireland, 1630–1800 (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Ohlmeyer, Jane H., Making Ireland English: the Irish aristocracy in the seventeenth century (London, 2012)Google Scholar ; Brady, Ciaran and Ohlmeyer, Jane (eds), British interventions in early modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Boran, Elizabethanne and Gribben, Crawford (eds), Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700 (Aldershot, 2006)Google Scholar . Notable exceptions that do consider the interplay of theology and questions of social order for the pre-Restoration period include Ford, Alan, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987)Google Scholar ; Gribben, Crawford, God’s Irishmen: theological debates in Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

10 One solution for comprehension at the Restoration was a vision drawn up by the Irish bishop James Ussher, explored in William M. Abbott, ‘James Ussher and the “Ussherian” episcopacy, 1640–1656: the primate and his reduction manuscript’ in Albion, xxii (1990), pp 237–59.

11 ‘Angels look down, and Joy to see, / Like that above, a Monarchie. / Angels look down, and Joy to see, / like that above, an Hierarchie’, sang the choir in the anthem composed for the mass consecration in 1661 ( Loftus, Dudley, The proceedings observed in order to, and in the consecration of the twelve bishops, at St. Patricks Church, Dublin, on Sunday the 27 of January 1660 (London, 1661), p. 7)Google Scholar .

12 Hinde, Samuel, A sermon preach’t before the right honourable the lord mayor of the city of Dublin, and the rest of the society of the city, and county palatine of Chester, and of the county palatine of Cheshire (Dublin, 1672), p. 29 Google Scholar . Hinde was one of the king’s chaplains during the Restoration period.

13 Jones, Henry, A sermon preached at the consecration of the Right Reverend Father in God Ambrose Lord Bishop of Kildare in Christ-Church, Dublin, June 29, 1667 (Dublin, 1667), p. 39 Google Scholar . Jones (1605–1682), of an established Church of Ireland family, collaborated with the Cromwellian government while remaining a staunch episcopalian, and bishop of Clogher, in the 1650s. After the Restoration he was named bishop of Meath. See Aidan Clarke, ‘Jones, Henry (1605–82)’, in D.I.B.

14 Harris, Restoration, pp 112–13.

15 This shift from a possible presbyterian national settlement to a fully episcopalian one over the course of 1660 is detailed in J. I. McGuire, ‘The Dublin Convention, the Protestant community and the emergence of an ecclesiastical settlement in 1660’ in Art Cosgrove and J. I. McGuire (eds), Parliament and community: Historical Studies XIV (Belfast, 1983), pp 121–46.

16 McGuire, James, ‘Ormond and Presbyterian nonconformity, 1660–63’ in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The politics of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1997), p. 42 Google Scholar ; McGuire, ‘Dublin Convention’, p. 138.

17 Jeremy Taylor to George Lane, 19 Dec. 1660 (Bodl., Carte MS 45, f. 44). Taylor (1613–1667) was consecrated bishop of Down and Connor in 1661; see James McGuire, ‘Taylor, Jeremy (1613–67)’, in D.I.B.

18 Thomas Price, the incoming bishop of Kildare, was not consecrated until March 1661, at the same time that the death of Henry Leslie, newly translated from Down & Connor to Meath, set off another round of diocesan appointments.

19 This is a lacuna I hope to address at least in part in my dissertation, currently in progress, on the use of religious belief in the construction and maintenance of identity among the Church of Ireland hierarchy from 1660 to 1689.

20 John Bramhall (1594–1663), an Englishman, was named bishop of Derry in 1633 under the influence of William Laud, and was instrumental in bringing the Laudian reforms to the Church of Ireland. After spending much of the 1640s and 1650s in exile on the continent, he was named archbishop of Armagh in 1661, shortly before his death. See John McCafferty, ‘Bramhall, John (1594–1663)’, in D.I.B.

21 McGuire, James, ‘Policy and patronage: the appointment of bishops, 1660–61’ in Alan Ford, James McGuire, and Kenneth Milne (eds), As by law established: the Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), pp 112–119 Google Scholar .

22 McGuire, ‘Ormond and Presbyterian nonconformity’, pp 41–2.

23 Jeremy Taylor’s prolific written output notwithstanding. Despite his death in 1667, less than ten years after his arrival in Ireland, he is often assumed to be representative of the Irish Restoration church, as seen for instance in Bolton, F. R., The Caroline tradition of the Church of Ireland, with particular reference to Bishop Jeremy Taylor (London, 1958)Google Scholar . My preliminary research on the Irish episcopate in these years suggests that a much more diverse view of the Irish hierarchy is needed.

24 Gribben, Crawford, The puritan millennium: literature & theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin, 2000), p. 81 Google Scholar ; the theological dynamics that resulted from this Protestant population explosion is explored in Gribben, God’s Irishmen.

25 Tim Harris notes that the Compton survey of 1676, which put the total number of English Dissenters at about 5%, was ‘a serious underestimate’ because it only counted those who had officially separated from the Church of England and not occasional conformists, as most Dissenters in England were. However, even in urban areas ‘with particularly heavy concentrations’ of Dissenters, they never totalled much more than one third of the population, and even in London were only about 15%–20% of the total population (Harris, Restoration, pp 28–9); Toby Barnard gives the most detailed breakdown of Protestants to Catholics in Ireland, with Protestants numbering just over a quarter of the population in 1732, though this was after waves of migration from Scotland in the 1690s, and it does not distinguish between Presbyterians, members of the Church of Ireland, and others (Barnard, A new anatomy of Ireland, pp 1–3). Drawing on the estimates of Sir William Petty, the approximate percentage for Church of Ireland members in the Restoration period is perhaps 10% of the island’s total population of about 2 million, with higher concentrations in Dublin and other cities of the south and east. See L. M. Cullen, ‘Population trends in seventeenth-century Ireland’ in Economic and Social Review, vi, no. 2 (1975), pp 149–65; Harris, Restoration, p. 30.

26 McGuire, ‘Ormond and Presbyterian nonconformity’, p. 43.

27 A tension explored in Spurr, ‘Puritanism to Dissent’, pp 234–47.

28 John Spurr, English puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 140; McGuire, ‘Ormond and Presbyterian nonconformity’, p. 41. The hesitancy of the government was certainly not helped by the presence, especially early on, of men whose sympathies lay either partially or entirely with the idea of a presbyterian-style national church, the dynamics of which are discussed in McGuire, ‘Dublin Convention’.

29 McGuire, ‘Ormond and Presbyterian nonconformity’, p. 51.

30 Marilyn Westerkamp has traced the beginnings of the Great Awakening revivals in the middle colonies of North America in the eighteenth century to the revivals among the Scots-Irish in Ulster in the 1620s and 1630s. The information in this paragraph is largely taken from Westerkamp, Triumph of the laity, pp 15–73.

31 From the notes pertaining to the ‘prayer of illumination’ that followed the general confession and psalm during the Sunday morning service: John Calvin, La forme des prières ecclésiastiques ([Geneva], 1542). John McCallum has argued for ‘the very high value placed on the reading of the word [in the prayer book] even by kirk sessions which had experienced a half century of regular preaching: it was necessary, not a temporary substitute for preaching’ (John McCallum, Reforming the Scottish parish: the Reformation in Fife, 1560–1640 (Farnham, Surrey, 2010), p. 86).

32 Greaves, God’s other children, pp 135, 378.

33 The gifts are listed in 1 Corinthians 12:1–31.

34 Acts 2:1–43.

35 Henry Leslie (1580–1661) became bishop of Down and Connor in 1635. He was appointed to the see of Meath at the Restoration, but died shortly thereafter. See Alan Ford, ‘Leslie, Henry (1580–1661)’, in D.I.B.

36 Leslie, Henry, A discourse of praying with the Spirit, and with the understanding (London, 1660), pp 13–14 Google Scholar .

37 Ibid., p. 13.

38 Lingard (d. 1670) was dean of Lismore at the time of the sermon quoted here; an Englishman, he was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1621. See David Murphy, ‘Lingard (Lyngard), Richard (d. 1670)’, in D.I.B.

39 Lingard, Richard, A sermon preached before the king at White-Hall, July 26, 1668, in defence of the liturgy of our church (London, 1668), pp 13–14 Google Scholar .

40 A description of an orderly creation can be found in The whole works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., lord bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore, ed. Reginald Heber and Charles Page Eden (10 vols, London, 1850), viii, 499.

41 Hackett, Thomas, A sermon preached before the convocation of the clergy in Ireland at the cathedral church of S. Patricks in Dublin, May 9, Anno 1661, at the time of their general receiving the h. communion (London, 1662), p. 6 Google Scholar . Hackett (d. 1697) would be appointed bishop of Down and Connor in 1672, though he would be deprived in 1694 for chronic absenteeism and resulting neglect and scandal within his dioceses. See John Bergin, ‘Hackett, Thomas (d. 1697)’, in D.I.B.

42 Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, p. 13.

43 Ibid., p. 5.

44 Edward Wolley, Altare evangelicum. A sermon preached at Christ-Church in Dublin, on the 27th of April before His Excellency Arthur earl of Essex, lord lieutenant general, and general governour of the kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1673), p. 14, referencing 1 Corinthians 14:40. Wolley (1604–1684), an Englishman, was appointed to the sees of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh in 1665. See Sean Kelsey, ‘Wolley, Edward (bap. 1604, d. 1684)’, in O.D.N.B.

45 Lingard, A Sermon preached before the king, pp 25–6.

46 Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, p. 15; Jeremy Taylor made a similar point in the ‘introductory letter’ (not paginated) to this same work.

47 Spurr, John, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (London, 1991), pp 20–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

48 ‘What would these Men be at? Would they manage all by immediate Inspirations like the Apostles? Then let them speak with Tongues, reveal Secrets, design Ministers, decide Controversies by Inspiration, and we will admit of their Prayers in behalf of the Church: or if they cannot give these proofs of Christs speaking in them, let them at least demonstrate by distinctive Characters, that their words cannot issue from wit, or passion, or natural Enthusiasm; but are of a different stamp from that fervent, confident, fluent pouring out of Divine things, which hath been observed in the worst of Men.’ (Lingard, A sermon preached before the king, p. 26.)

49 Ibid.

50 Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, p. 30.

51 Ibid., p. 1.

52 Sheridan, S. Pauls confession of faith, p. 16.

53 Taylor, ‘Introductory letter’, in Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, unpaginated.

54 Lingard, A sermon preached before the king, p. 28.

55 Parry, John, Nehemiah, or, the excellent governour being a discourse delivered at the Cathedrall of the Holy Trinity, Dublin, Aug. 1669, before the Right Honourable Thomas earl of Ossory (Oxford, 1670), p. 16 Google Scholar . Parry (d. 1677), older brother to Benjamin (below), served as chaplain to the duke of Ormond and was the dean of Christ Church Cathedral at the time of this discourse. He was made bishop of Ossory in 1672. See Terry Clavin, ‘John Parry (d. 1677)’ in ‘Parry, Edward (d. 1650)’, in D.I.B.

56 Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, pp 4–5.

57 Westerkamp, Triumph of the laity, p. 49.

58 The works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Ezekiel Hopkins, D.D., successively lord bishop of Raphoe and Derry. Now first collected. Arranged and revised, with a life of the author, and a copious index (4 vols, London, 1809), i, 506. Hopkins (1634–1690), an Englishman, was made bishop of Raphoe in 1671 and of Derry in 1681. See John Bergin, ‘Hopkins, Ezekiel (1634–90)’, in D.I.B. The specification of hierarchy ‘when available’ was an important distinction for the Irish churchmen, who wished to condemn Presbyterians and other Dissenters at home while maintaining a sense of communion with non-episcopal foreign churches such as those in France. See also Kathryn Rose Sawyer, ‘True church, national church, minority church: episcopacy and authority in the restored Church of Ireland’ in Church History, lxxxv, no. 2 (June 2016), pp 236–7.

59 Sheridan, S. Pauls confession of faith, p. 16.

60 Samuel Foley (1655–1695) became bishop of Down and Connor a few months before his early death. At the time of this sermon he was vicar of Finglas. See Linde Lunney, ‘Foley, Samuel (1655–95)’, in D.I.B.

61 Foley, Samuel, A sermon preached at the primary visitation of His Grace Francis Lord Arch-Bishop of Dublin (London, 1683), p. 31 Google Scholar .

62 Edward Worth, a puritan-leaning minister made bishop of Killaloe at the Restoration, is one clear example of this conforming attitude. Henry Jones’s collaboration with the Cromwellian regime did not prevent his appointment to the see of Meath after Henry Leslie’s death in 1661. See McGuire, ‘Policy and patronage’, pp 115, 117; Terry Clavin, ‘Worth, Edward (d. 1669)’, in D.I.B.

63 Taylor, ‘Introductory letter’ in Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, unpaginated.

64 Foley, A sermon preached at the primary visitation, p. 11.

65 Parry, Benjamin, More than conquerour a sermon preach’t on the martyrdom of King Charles the I, Jan, 30, at Christ-Church, Dublin: before His Excellency Arthur Earl of Essex, lord lieutenant general and general governour of the kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1673), p. 26 Google Scholar .

Parry (1634–78), made bishop of Ossory a few months before his death in 1678, preached this sermon while he was prebend of St Michan’s, Christ Church Cathedral. See Terry Clavin, ‘Benjamin Parry (1634–78)’ in ‘Parry, Edward (d. 1650)’, in D.I.B; also Sawyer, ‘True church’, pp 239–40.

66 The fact that the Dublin parliament never passed its own version of the bill for the suppression of the prayer book did not make much difference in the lived experience of the established clergy, who complained that they were ‘effectually debarred from our Churches, and the exercise of our Ministery by your Honours Injunction and Command’, though this fact was later to be used as proof of the Irish church’s unbroken apostolic succession: A declaration of the Protestant clergie of the city of Dublin, shewing the reasons why they cannot consent to the taking away of the Book of Common Prayer, and comply with the Directory ([London], 1647), p. 1; Bolton, Caroline tradition of the Church of Ireland, p. 22.

67 Parry, The excellent governour, p. 30.

68 Sheridan, S. Pauls confession of faith, p. 6.

69 The Irish Articles of 1615 had recognized this reality as well, in the curt language of article 66: ‘Faith given is to be kept, even with Heretics and Infidels’.

70 Mossom, Robert, A narrative panegyrical of the life, sickness, and death, of George ... lord bishop of Derry in Ireland as it was delivered at his funerals in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (commonly Called Christ Church) in Dublin on Friday the 12th of January, anno Domini 1665/6 (Dublin, 1666), p. 7 Google Scholar . Mossom (d. 1679), an Englishman, came to Ireland to take up church preferments at the Restoration, and was dean of Christ Church Cathedral at the time of this sermon. He succeeded George Wilde, subject of this funeral sermon, as bishop of Derry in 1666. See Terry Clavin, ‘Mossom, Robert (d. 1679)’, in D.I.B.

71 Leslie, Discourse of praying with the Spirit, p. 1.

72 Works of Ezekiel Hopkins, i, 345–6.

73 Ibid., i, 344; see also Jones, A sermon preached at the consecration, pp 37–8.

74 Parry, More than conqueror, p. 36.

75 Ibid., pp 27–8.

76 Greaves, God’s other children, p. 378. I would like to thank the Church of Ireland Historical Society for awarding a shorter version of this article the W. G. Neely Prize (2016), and, in particular, Professor David Hayton for his helpful suggestions in preparing the article for publication.