The Rubble of Episcopacy

This chapter explores the politics of the Long Parliament in 1641, focusing on how efforts in parliament to remodel the church interacted with external pressure campaigns and informal propaganda flowing from London presses. The chapter examines the emergence of fissures within the godly front that was challenging the existing church order. Particular attention is devoted to the rise of “independency” as a label used by both friends and enemies to describe varying shades of congregational church government. The chapter also outlines the proactive steps taken by puritan reformists to bury these growing differences. It suggests that those steps paradoxically provided leverage to more militant “independent” ideologues, who were emboldened and abetted by the attack on episcopacy waged by leading MPs at Westminster, and who began to adopt and promote ever more extreme attacks on the existing order.