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Hot
Protestants A History of Puritanism in England and America Michael
P. Winship New Haven
& London: Yale University Press, 2018 Hardback.
xiv+351 p. ISBN 978-0300126280. $28/£20 Reviewed by Pierre Lurbe Sorbonne
Université
Michael P. Winship's book began
life as a commission from Yale UP. It presents itself as an 'introduction to
puritanism's rich, dense, tumultuous history' [1], and its arresting title – aren't
protestants dour rather than hot? – is adapted from a 1581 quip by
Perceval Wiburn (who actually referred to 'the hotter sort of Protestants').
The book offers a transatlantic survey of Puritanism, in both its English and
American dimensions (but the reader wonders why Scotland is not included in the
title, since John Knox is very much part of the story), spanning the century
and a half between its “Rise and retreat, c.1540-c.1630” in Part I, and its “Endings,
1689-1690s” (note the plural) in Part IV, going through its “Reformations, c.1630-c.1660” in Part II and its “Twilight, c.1660-c.1689” in Part
III. Winship's contention is that
although puritanism properly speaking lasted only for little more than a
century and a half, its impact on all aspects of life – political, cultural and
religious – in Britain
and across the Atlantic was in reverse proportion to its comparatively short
duration. The book is very good at weaving the strands of a complex
transatlantic story, by laying stress on the reciprocal bonds and connections
between England and America, or more accurately, New England. Traffic ran both
ways, as Puritan ministers in England were inspired by the congregationalism
prevalent in Massachusetts to separate themselves from the parish church to set
up their own, separate churches [100]. The Atlantic therefore served not so much
as a barrier, as a bridge to connect the two shores. A case in point to
illustrate the intertwining of English and American history is that of Boston,
as the place from which Robert Radcliffe was the last Anglican minister to be
hounded out in 1689, while Cotton Mather was the last puritan minister to face
prosecution under the terms of the (English) Act of Uniformity [262]. The
reader is also reminded that the Glorious Revolution put paid to Puritan
political hopes simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic [267]. The focus of the title, on
'protestants' rather than on the 'history of puritanism' of the subtitle, makes
it clear from the outset that the focus of the book will be on significant
figures in that history, not on abstract notions and ideas. Although the book
is built on impeccable research and displays a consummate mastery of the topic – after all, its author is E. Merton Coulter Professor
of History at the University of Georgia – it carries its erudition lightly. This is history as
story – an apt reminder that the two are related, and fleshing out the dry
bones of historical narrative need not mean any lowering of academic standards.
Each part is itself made up of small, self-contained chapters (twenty-three in
number), each of which is focussed on one particularly striking representative
figure (or group of figures), of 'Hot protestants'. The reader is taken through
a collection of vignettes, which taken together, and inserted as they are in the
chronological arc c.1540-c.1690, gives a remarkably lively
picture of what it was and felt to be a Puritan on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nor are these figures necessarily among the most well-known, making for a
fascinating gallery of portraits. Even though we do come across
what reads like a roll-call of familiar names – John Cotton, John Winthrop,
William Laud, Roger Williams, Oliver Cromwell, John Owen, John Bunyan … – all
of them are taken at the point in their lives when they were as yet unknown,
giving a vivid and fresh sense of what it had felt like to be Cromwell ('a
down-on-his-luck minor country gentleman and MP who had turned out to be
Parliament's most effective soldier' [130]), or Bunyan ('an impoverished young
tinker',when first encountering the Bedford women, [147]), at the very beginning.
This is no less true of what came to be viewed as highly significant political
and religious groups, who were already active even before they were given a
name: 'These new opinions were being spread by a group that in a year or two
would become known as the Levellers' [136]. For this reviewer at least, the
most endearing and memorable characters in the book are those of the
comparatively lesser-known figures, who are nevertheless no less meaningful in
their own right than those who made it into the mainstream of history. Winship
is particularly deft at bringing back to life such figures as that of Katherine
Clarke [57], devoutedly taking notes on sermons in church as a little girl,
making a commonplace book out of her reading of books of practical divinity,
and writing a diary that her husband only found after her death – this gives
more than a glimpse of what the phrase 'lived religion' actually means. One of
the most intriguing, and endearing, stories is that of Waban, the Native
American turned Puritan in the early 1640s [194], whose community of Praying
Indians however failed the test when required to give convincing evidence of
their conversion to be allowed to set up their own church [197-198]. Even when
succeeding on their second attempt, the members of the native church at Natick
were not granted the right to take the sacrament in white Congregationalist
churches [199], a sorry reminder that equality in the eyes of God did not
necessarily translate into a human sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. Taking a leaf from journalistic
practice, Winship is not above providing grisly and gruesome accounts to
kickstart some chapters: the account of Hooper's protracted execution by fire
in 1555 [17] makes for gruelling reading, but then it gives more than a sense
of what it actually meant to die in this horrendous fashion, as well as
providing a reminder that the era was not one for the faint-hearted. In less
disturbing mode, he often takes a particular incident as a starting-point to
exemplify a much larger point, thereby connecting the local and particular to
the larger picture: The ease with which
Congregationalists and Presbyterians fell out in Exeter over what could have
been, and sometimes was, the mundane issue of transferring church membership,
reflected the ongoing divisive brittleness of puritanism after eighteen years
of power. [159] By rising in this way from the
particular to the general, and not the other way round, Winship uses a kind of
inductive method which is particularly congenial and reader-friendly. The story is kept going by
devices that provide unexpected links to the next chapter: it is common for the
final lines of a chapter to reverse the conclusion reached just before, and
ominously hint at what was to follow. Take for instance the concluding lines of
chapter one: There was no reason
for Hooper to think that England's reformation would not keep moving forward.
No reason, that is, until everything that Hooper and other Protestants had
built up during the reign of King Edward came crashing down on their heads.
[16] Perhaps the author could have
done without the kind of journalese into which he sometimes lapses – things
'come crashing down' embarrassingly often on various people's heads, starting
with Hooper and other Protestants in the quotation above ('The Knox committee's
plans for the Frankfurt church … came crashing down...' [19]; 'The
cat-and-mouse game between the General Court and the Lords of Trade and
Plantations came to a crashing halt in 1683' [252]). Speaking of 'a kamikaze
pulpit denunciation' [100] is perhaps a bit facile as well, but it would also
be facile and churlish to blame the author for writing with an eye and ear to
the lay reader, who may connect more easily to non-academic prose. Technically, Geneva was not part
of Switzerland, as wrongly claimed p. 21; French protestants can hardly be
referred to as 'Presbyterians' [38], a term they never used themselves; but
these are very minor quibbles when it comes to assessing a book which, on
balance, is an immensely enjoyable and informative
read, which is meant both for the lay, and for the more academically-minded,
readers.
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