“So Full of Novelties”

This chapter explores the environment of theological experimentation and improvisation that emerged in radical puritan circles during the early 1640s. This environment was fostered by the same stationers responsible for the period’s most extreme and daring works of political propaganda (examined in previous chapters). These publishers generated a stream of unlicensed tracts, which articulated and dispersed heterodox opinions, including antinomianism, anabaptism, mortalism, and forms of “egalitarian redistributionism” which hinted at a redistribution of economic resources. These opinions are subjected to analysis, and the chapter seeks to illuminate the breakdown of Calvinist theological orthodoxy that took place during the early 1640s. Finally, the chapter examines the passage, in June 1643, of parliament’s Licensing Ordinance, which imposed a new system of censorship, and which was now turned against some committed parliamentarians, provoking controversy within the coalition.