‘Letting a Room in London-House’

Abstract

This chapter considers Reasons Humbly Offered in Justification [ … ] of Letting a Room in London-House unto Certain Peaceable Christians, Called Anabaptists (?1647). Written by a Presbyterian elder, possibly Richard Coysh, this anonymous tract defends the decision to rent a room in the Bishop of London’s palace to Baptists led by Henry Jessey and William Kiffin. It signals a key moment in the formation of religious identities and allegiances during the English Revolution, when the disestablishment of the Church of England made available ‘waste’ rooms for Dissenters to occupy, even within the grounds of St. Paul’s Cathedral. This chapter brings into focus some unexpected causes and consequences for religious toleration in seventeenth-century London, and considers afresh the jurisdictions and protective authorities as well as the architectural forms and features of an urban landscape that affected Dissenting ‘church life’ and its accommodation in a time of ecclesiastical renewal, contest, experimentation, and opportunism.