The historiography of Puritanism in the later nineteenth century and the early twentieth gave considerable attention to questions of church polity, partly in quest of denominational origins, and partly (especially in the United States) to parse the distinctions and significances of separatist and non-separatist among those who rejected the episcopacy of the Church of England and came to New England. The study of Puritanism in the middle of the twentieth century and thereafter turned away from polity to focus on the piety, mentality, and socio-cultural ambience of Puritans. Polly Ha in this book returns to the subject of polity, but with fresh insights and conclusions that cast light on some old questions.

She does this by astute contextualization and careful reading and analysis of neglected treatises and newly recovered manuscripts related especially to Walter Travers, hitherto best known as a presbyterian opponent of Richard Hooker. Utilizing these materials, she rewrites the history of presbyterianism in England, not as a proto-denomination, but as a movement that continued to be lively, creative and catalytic (while often clandestine) between the 1590s, when it was supposed to have been rendered quiescent, and the 1640s, when it reappeared with polemical vigor in an unsettled time. As she sees it, some widely circulated presbyterian manuscripts played an important role in debates over church polity during this period and “provide a key to interpreting the polemical literature of the early Stuart period” (3). Far from being quiescent, these presbyterians carried out a challenging and persistent “assault on the hierarchy of the Church of England” that explains the ferocity of the rejoinders of Peter Heylyn and other defenders of the established church (5). At the opposite end of the spectrum of religious opinion from ardent conformists, response to presbyterian arguments helped shape the congregationalist ideas of Henry Jacob and others.

The first two chapters of the book treat the presbyterian attempt to build an alliance with a legal profession committed to the common law and to assert and propogate within the Church of England a presbyterian system to replace bishops understood as a superior order of clergy. In the process of doing so they revealed their willingness to combine presbyterian polity with the authority of the magistrate and royal supremacy in order to promote true religion, so long as this did not compromise the independence of the church in fulfilling its proper role. They rejected episcopacy because it tied ecclesiastical roles to civil power and jurisdiction, especially through church courts. These presbyterians thought that only spiritual censures were appropriate to the church itself, although they envisioned a system in which the civil and ecclesiastical realms would work together to shape a godly society, godly clergy advising pliable magistrates.

Chapters 3 to 5 analyze the intra-puritan argument between the presbyterians and an emergent congregationalism. Presbyterians thought pure congregationalism would surrender the program of creating a godly society by basing it on little more than a “covenantal pledge to godly conduct” (43) within independent congregations free of synodal oversight. Congregationalism in turn developed not just in reaction to episcopacy but also to preserve congregational liberty from the putative tyranny of presbyterian synods. For congregationalists, unlike presbyterians and episcopalians, there was no visible church beyond independent congregations; for presbyterians the liberty of the congregation was compatible with synodal supervision. Thus the nature of the visible church had become a chief matter of dispute. Another locus of dispute concerned the inclusiveness of the church: for presbyterians a parish system, a body of clergy deriving their authority from an institutionalized national church, and a wider administration of baptism, all important for shaping a godly society, would be nullified by congregational independence.

Disputes between presbyterians and congregationalists spilled over into the Netherlands, where the expatriate presbyterian John Paget, long the pastor of the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam, carried on a sustained argument against those of a congregationalist persuasion. The last two chapters take up “Presbyterianism in Practice” by focusing on the presbyterian experiences of Paget's Amsterdam congregation and, to a lesser extent, on the English Merchant Adventurer Church in Antwerp, briefly led by Travers, as well as on those Puritans in England, Holland, and New England with which these churches were in communication. More than thirty pages are devoted to analyzing the detailed consistory records of Amsterdam's English Reformed Church in order to determine how presbyterian charity, discipline, and polity worked out in practice. The stories Polly Ha has uncovered from these records are fascinating as an investigation of “lived” religion.

Important findings and conclusions emerge from this book. One such finding is paramount, the discovery of how widespread and continuous the debates about polity were in the period after the 1590s and before the 1640s. Another matter of interest uncovered by the author is the extensive use of history and precedent by the competing controversialists, particularly exemplified by the importance given to a few passages in St. Jerome on the equivalence of presbyters and bishops. Among the conclusions of this book that call for revision in the prevailing narrative are a downgrading of the effectiveness of Archbishop Bancroft's suppression of the presbyterian movement; a recognition of greater continuity in debates about polity during the period covered, so that the reappearance of these discussions in the civil war years appears less surprising; the emergence of congregationalist polity as catalyzed by a presbyterian opposition; the accommodation of royal supremacy by English, unlike Scottish, presbyterians; the coming into focus of an international presbyterianism that influenced the English breed; the appearance of a congregationalist polity that was willing to dissolve the traditional ideal of a universal visible church; and the compatibility, in local situations, of extensive lay agency and involvement in church discipline that cut across class lines. The author, however, could have been more careful in the use of the term “separation of church and state” (14) as some might understand it to mean more than she intends; but on the whole English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 is a fine example of research and analysis on the “micro” level leading to significant “macro” conclusions.