Like the curate's egg of Victorian satire, parts of this “comprehensive encyclopedia” of Puritanism are quite good. It offers a useful survey of many of the topics and many of the lives that shaped the religious culture of Tudor and Stuart Britain and early colonial America. The publishers have assembled an international and interdisciplinary collective of six dozen contributors ranging from graduate students to distinguished senior scholars, the North Americans outnumbering the British. Over a hundred of the entries are by the hardworking principal editor, Francis J. Bremer of Millersville University, and over twenty-five by his coeditor Tom Webster of the University of Edinburgh. The two folio volumes, continuously paginated, feature a chronology, a glossary, and a bibliography, substantial sections on biographies, ideas, events, and issues, and a brief selection of primary sources.
The results are something of a mixed bag. Rather than adopting a coherent viewpoint to give shape to the subject the editors have allowed a variety of voices to be heard. The encyclopedia demonstrates the diversity of scholarly opinion on this impossibly slippery subject. Inevitably there are strains among the contributors: between those who see Puritanism as a movement and those who see it as a label; between those for whom Puritans were the hotter sort within the Church of England and others who stress its more radical and disruptive aspects; and between experts on English culture and specialists in New England. There are further divisions over dating between scholars (mostly British) who see the Puritan phenomenon emerging in the reign of Elizabeth I and foundering in the mid-Stuart revolution, and others (mostly American) who date the origins of Puritanism to the beginnings of the Reformation and its demise to the eighteenth century. The chronology that prefaces this encyclopedia begins with the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and extends to the work of Cotton Mather in 1702. Quite what John Cabot's landing in Newfoundland in 1497 or the publication of More's Utopia in 1516 have to do with Puritanism is unclear, though it is useful to be reminded of these dates. Similarly, toward the latter end of the period, Charles II's establishment of the Royal Society in 1662 and the great plague and fire of London in 1665 and 1666 are not normally thought to have Puritan connotations, nor are there entries on these topics to provide clarification. The skimpy introduction gives little guidance to the mutation of Puritanism over time and its transformation as it moved to America. We still need to know whether Puritanism died in the 1640s or was given a new lease of life in Restoration dissent.
The biographies introduce a galaxy of churchmen, both English and Anglo-American; a handful of bishops from Edmund Grindal to William Laud; a few Scots including Robert Baillie and John Knox; and a small number of women including Anne Bradstreet, Katherine Chidley, and Anne Hutchinson. Their lives and opinions show us many sorts of Puritans, but no monolithic Puritanism or Puritan movement. There are no entries for Francis Hacket, the Elizabethan Presbyterian prophet, or Edward Wightman, the last man to be burned for heresy in England, though both have been subjects of recent scholarship. Nor do we meet Stephen Dennison or John Etherington, the antagonists within the London Puritan underground recently studied by Peter Lake.
The section “Ideas, Events, and Issues” covers a rich miscellany of material from “Adiaphora” to “Witchcraft.” Richard Godbeer's cheerful essay on Puritan “sexuality” is followed by Dewey D. Wallace Jr.'s sober discussion of “sin.” Both invoke views of the innate depravity of mankind, derived from our first parents, though Wallace lays on a heavier dose of theology. The publishers announce on the back cover that “now the general reader can discover the truth about Puritanism” and discover “the values of the Puritans—thrift, hard work, and moral probity,” but none of the encyclopedia entries directly addresses these topics. There are fascinating snippets on angels and ballads, swearing and thanksgiving. Jeremy Bang's essay on “English Puritanism in the Netherlands” deserves to be expanded into a book. There is no entry on Anglicanism, perhaps because no such thing existed. Readers seeking to discover Puritan views about the sacraments, holy communion, or kneeling will find a place to start in Bremer's entry on “Altar Policy.”
Patrick Collinson's contributions are informed by a lifetime's familiarity with Puritan divines and the controversies that engaged them. He harbors a special regard for moderate and irenic Puritans, and regrets their estrangement from the established church. But some of Collinson's efforts to be accessible are only confusing. He calls John Field, one of the authors of the 1572 Admonition to the Parliament, “the leading Bolshevik, the Lenin of the further reformation … as much opposed to the moderate Mensheviks as the bishops” (296). He finds the writings of Martin Marprelate “as hilarious as Monty Python,” and compares the search for the Marprelate press to “the search for Osama bin Laden” (460). Some of these references deserve an encyclopedia of their own.
The encyclopedia closes with a selection of primary sources, arranged not thematically or chronologically but alphabetically. They include such staples as the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641, and the Declaration of Breda of 1660. Most interesting, and perhaps most teachable, are the Puritan covenants from Wethersfield, Essex, Swallowfield, Wiltshire, and from Salem, Boston, and Dedham in New England.
The work as a whole repays browsing, but does not satisfactorily explain why it exists. Amazon.com identifies the reading level as “young adult,” so presumably it is destined for high school and public libraries. A further clue comes from the ABC-CLIO Web site, which invites academic readers to “become an author.” The publisher also appears to be responsible for the distracting and anachronistic cover illustrations, mostly from nineteenth-century sources, which seem to announce a book about the heroes of colonial New England.
