Royal Policies, Local Alternatives

This chapter explores the early decades of the seventeenth century, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England and controversy about worship and the structure of the state church erupted anew in Scotland. When James I succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603 and added England, Wales, and Ireland to his native Scotland, the hopeful and the admiring outnumbered the detractors, for the godly knew that in 1592 he had endorsed presbyterianism in Scotland and, more recently, had disparaged Catholicism and Dutch Arminianism. Their hopes aroused, a small group of English activists initiated a petition the king received as he made his way to London. The “Millenary Petition,” so named because of the assertion it was endorsed by a thousand ministers, complained of pluralism and nonresidency, singled out bishops as pluralists although otherwise saying nothing about episcopacy, and called for higher standards in admitting men to the work of ministry. The Millenary Petition signaled the persistence of Puritan sympathies in England despite the damage done to the movement in the 1590s. The chapter also considers “Dutch Puritanism,” a convenient shorthand for the more radical or safety-seeking laypeople and ministers who went to the Netherlands as early as the 1580s.