John Donne and English Puritanism, 1650–1700

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn recent decades, it has become clear that John Donne’s seventeenth-century readership is larger and more varied than was once believed. One audience that has not been given much scholarly attention, however, is English puritans on both sides of the Atlantic. This article brings to light several possible avenues for the transmission of Donne’s works to these readers and then identifies explicit references and poetic allusions to Donne by writers of these theological and ecclesiastical persuasions.KEYWORDS: John Donnepuritanismnonconformity Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Brooke Conti, rev. of Manuscript Matters, E100.2 Lein, ‘John Donne’, 114–16, lists twenty-four first editions of complete works authored by Donne printed in the seventeenth century; Sullivan, ‘Modern Scholarly Editions’, 65–80, works through the early prose publications/editions among these; he also collects hundreds of appearances of Donne’s verse in seventeenth-century multi-authored works in The Influence of John Donne.3 Critical studies of Donne’s early reception include A.J. Smith, ‘Donne’s Reputation’, and John Donne: The Critical Heritage; Shawcross, ‘Some Early References to John Donne’, ‘Some Further Early Allusions to Donne’, and ‘More Early Allusions to Donne and Herbert’; Sullivan, Influence of John Donne and ‘John Donne’s Seventeenth-Century Readers’; Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers; Lara M. Crowley, Manuscript Matters; and Joshua Eckhardt, Religion around John Donne.4 Sullivan, ‘Donne’s Seventeenth-Century Readers’, 26–27.5 ‘Puritan’, ‘Reformed’, ‘nonconformist’, and ‘dissenter’ have different meanings, the latter two applying in the Restoration when conformity to the established church was again enforced in England to varying degrees. Nonetheless, there is considerable overlap on the ground among members of these groups between 1650 and 1700, and in this essay I aim to cast a net over this theological and ecclesiastical plot – even including members of radical sects – defined against conforming or Catholic readers. For a discussion of the complexity of these categories, see Adlington, ‘Restoration, Religion, and Law’, 424–25; a helpful survey of the literary output of dissenters between 1558 and 1689 can be found in Sell, ‘Varieties of English Separatist and Dissenting Writings’, 25–46.6 Ibid., 29.7 Sullivan, Influence of John Donne, 7.8 Barbara Lewalski, Donne’s Anniversaries and the Poetry of Praise, 307–70.9 Raspa, ‘Introduction’, xli-xliv; Sullivan, ‘Introduction’, xlii-lvii, xxiv.10 Raspa, ‘Introduction’, lxxii-iii.11 Sullivan (ed.), Biathanatos, 73, citing Paul Sellin. Notably, Grindal’s parents were English puritan separatists who emigrated in 1608: see Schoneveld, ‘t Word grooter plas, 19.12 Dixon, ‘Sermons in Print’, 469. Dixon adds that ‘Isaac Watts’s copy [of Ecclesiastes], in which he recorded the recommendations of his tutor Thomas Rowe, is in Dr Williams’s Library, London’. Rowe (1656/7–1705) was an Independent minister.13 Rothwell, A catalogue of approved divinity-books, 77, lists ‘A sermon at whitehall 24 February, A sermon 15 September at Pauls Cross, [and] Deaths Duell’.14 Eckhardt, Religion around John Donne, 121.15 Ibid., 135–36.16 Some puritans may even have read him in manuscript: for instance, Donne’s Essayes in Divinity was dedicated to Sir Henry Vane the elder, a political moderate whose son was a noted parliamentarian and friend to numerous later nonconformists: see Raspa, ‘Introduction’ to Devotions, li and Mayers, ‘Vane, Sir Henry, the younger (1613–1662)’. On the breadth of manuscript circulation in early modern England, see for instance Ezell, The Patriarch’s Wife.17 Sullivan, Influence of John Donne, 7–9.18 James Jacob, Henry Stubbe, 1–2, roundly attacks the idea that Stubbe was ‘a turncoat who rejected the Revolution and became a conservative defender of the established church’, finding in the Restoration Stubbe instead a devotee of ‘a radical civil religion’ which ‘entailed a policy of toleration for Protestant Dissenters’. In the 2004 entry on Stubbe in the ODNB, on the other hand, Mordechai Feingold points out that Stubbe took the oath of allegiance by 1662. In any case, he was professedly an Independent Republican in the 1650s, when he was translating Donne’s poems.19 Stubbe, Deliciae poetarum, 36–41: the poems are ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’, ‘Hero and Leander’, and the epigram ‘A Licentious Person’. The quotation comes from Lord Bacon’s Relation, 64 and probably refers to Constantijn Huygens, whose translations of nineteen of Donne’s poems were first published in 1658. See Sullivan, Influence of John Donne, 129–30 and L. Strengholt, ‘Constantijn Huygens’ Translation’, 173.20 Catalogus variorum & insignium, 19, 22, 38, and 40.21 e.g. Manton, XVIII Sermons, 460; A Practical Exposition, 434; A second volume of sermons, 73; A fourth volume, 354 and 710; and A practical commentary, 116. These are all separate references, not reprintings of the same sermon. Calvin uses the phrase arcem … mentis in Institutes 2.1.9, declaring that impiety and pride (not Satan) occupy the citadel.22 Gribben, Puritan Millennium, 212.23 Manton, A second volume of sermons, 73. Compare as well to Baxter’s 1681 poem ‘The Lamentation’ in Poetical Fragments, 63: ‘It is not causless, if [God] pierce the Heart/ … /Where should Jehovah’s battering Cannons play,/But at the Fortress where his Enemy lay?’24 For example, William Prynne (another difficult person to classify) lists Donne’s ‘printed sermons’ among a litany of authorities who attack the Jesuits in his Seasonable, legal, and historicall vindication … of all English freemen (London, 1655), unnumbered page.25 Lee, Orbis Miraculum, 6.26 Wells, 567.27 Burgess, Christians earnest expectation, 33–34.28 Ness, A distinct discourse, 13–14.29 Shower, A new-years gift, 15–16.30 Ley, The Saints Rest, 27.31 Ley, Exceptions many and just, 30.32 Dunn et al. (eds.), The Papers of William Penn, 81.33 Penn, No Cross, No Crown,, preface.34 Ibid., 100.35 Ibid., preface.36 Fair Warnings was published again in 1668, this time with a named author: the royalist and biographer David Lloyd (1635–92).37 e.g. Mayhew, Tria Sunt Omnia, 166 and Sichah, 190–91; Whitcombe, An essay to promote virtue, 46; Turner, A compleat history, 88; and Piggot, A Funeral Sermon, 406. Robert Overton also uses this quotation: see Norbrook, ‘Blushing Tribute’, 234.38 Nehemiah Rogers cites Donne as ‘a learned Doctor’ in The Figg-less Figg-tree, 13 and 248 and The rich fool set forth, 109.39 Greaves, ‘Rogers, John (b. 1627)’, ODNB.40 John Rogers, Ohel or Beth-Shemesh, 378.41 Ibid., 390. Smith, Perfection Proclaimed, 36 and Gribben, Puritan Millennium, 212, note Rogers’s allusions to Donne.42 Norbrook, ‘Blushing Tribute’, 220.43 Shawcross twice alleges that Pain is ‘Anglican’ but gives no evidence for this in either place: ‘Pain, Philip (1647–1667), poet’, ANB, mentioning allegations to the contrary, and ‘Some Colonial American Writers’, 36. Given that Congregationalism was established in Massachusetts, I view the burden of proof as resting on the scholar maintaining that a member of this colony was ‘Anglican’.44 e.g. Warren, ‘Edward Taylor’s Poetry’ and Wallace Cable Brown, ‘Edward Taylor: An American “Metaphysical”’; for a more recent assessment of Donne and Taylor’s shared poetics, see Kimberly Johnson, Made Flesh, e.g. 88–89: “Like Taylor’s menstrual poetics, Donne’s metaphors relocate significance to the fleshly … . As Taylor does, Donne leaves in his sermons a healthy metacommentary on the concerns that animate his poetry’.45 Thomas H. Johnson, ‘Edward Taylor: A Puritan “Sacred Poet”’, 322.46 Shawcross, ‘Some Colonial American Writers’, 36.47 Ibid., 33.48 Ibid., 36.49 Harold S. Jantz, ‘The First Century of New England Verse’, 423.50 Shawcross, ‘Some Colonial American Writers’, 39.51 Dailey, Barbara. ‘Oakes, Urian (1631–25 July 1681)’, ANB.52 Shawcross, ‘Some Colonial American Writers’, 41.53 Harrison T. Maserole, Seventeenth-Century American Poetry (New York, 1968), 213–14.54 Works by Donne begin to crop up in auction catalogues in the early eighteenth century: the Early American Imprints database lists Biathanatos in a catalogue from 1719 and ‘treatises’ by Donne in one from 1720.55 Scott-Bauman, Forms of Engagement 126, and Norbrook, ‘Blushing Tribute’, 234, assert Donne’s popularity among puritans, but neither gives examples of puritan readers of Donne outside of Overton and Hutchinson. Scott-Bauman cites Lewalski’s Donne’s Anniversaries and the Poetry of Praise (1973) in defence of this claim, naming Daniel Price and Andrew Marvell in particular, but Price, though a staunch Calvinist, was Dean of Hereford and died in 1631. Lewalski’s study of Donne’s legacy stops in the 1650s with Marvell, whose ecclesiology is slippery.56 Barbara Taft, ‘Overton, Robert (1608/9–1678/9), parliamentarian army officer’, ODNB.57 Norbrook, ‘Blushing Tribute’, 236.58 Jessie Hock, The Erotics of Materialism, 118–44, discusses Hutchinson’s use of Lucretian themes her biblical epic Order and Disorder as well as her Elegies for John Hutchinson.59 Scott-Bauman, Forms of Engagement, 126.60 Ibid., 135–36.61 Hock, Erotics of Materialism, 135.62 Norbrook, ‘Lucy Hutchinson’s “Elegies”’ 505–6, 511. On page 480 Norbrook asserts that ‘The Recovery’ also recalls ‘Forbidding Mourning’.63 Hutchinson, Order and Disorder, 172–73.64 Helen Wilcox, ‘In the Temple Precincts’, 264.