Some congregations went further, declared themselves separated from the national church, and remade themselves into communities of “visible saints,” withdrawn from the English City of Man into a self-proclaimed City of God. In the early decades of the 17th century, some groups of worshipers began to separate themselves from the main body of their local parish church where preaching was inadequate and to engage an energetic “lecturer,” typically a young man with a fresh Cambridge degree, who was a lively speaker and steeped in reform theology. The English countryside was plagued by scavengers, highwaymen and vagabonds–a newly visible class of the poor who strained the ancient charity laws and pressed upon the townsfolk new questions of social responsibility. Under the rule of primogeniture, younger sons tended to enter the professions (especially the law) with increasing frequency and seek their livelihood in the burgeoning cities.
Subsistence farmers were called upon to enter the world of production for profit. Many men and women were more and more forced to contend with the dislocations–emotional as well as physical–that accompanied the beginnings of a market economy.
#SCAFFOLD MEANING TO PURITAN COMMUNITY PROFESSIONAL#
The movement found wide support among these new professional classes, who saw in it a mirror for their growing discontent with economic restraints.ĭuring the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an uneasy peace prevailed within English religious life, but the struggle over the tone and purpose of the church continued. Yet the Puritan attack on the established church gained popular strength, especially in East Anglia and among the lawyers and merchants of London. Still, others were content to remain within the structure of the national church but set themselves against Catholic and episcopal authority.Īs they gained strength, Puritans were portrayed by their enemies as hairsplitters who slavishly followed their Bibles as guides to daily life or hypocrites who cheated the very neighbors they judged inadequate Christians. Some Puritans favored a presbyterian form of church organization others, more radical, began to claim autonomy for individual congregations. Through the reigns of the Protestant King Edward VI (1547-1553), who introduced the first vernacular prayer book, and the Catholic Mary I (1553-1558), who sent some dissenting clergymen to their deaths and others into exile, the Puritan movement–whether tolerated or suppressed–continued to grow. Priests were immune to certain penalties of the civil law, further feeding anticlerical hostility and contributing to their isolation from the spiritual needs of the people. Employment by more than one parish was common, so they moved often, preventing them from forming deep roots in their communities. Well into the 16th century, many priests were barely literate and often very poor. Did you know? In keeping with their focus on the home, Puritan migration to the New World usually consisted of entire families, rather than the young, single men who comprised many other early European settlements.
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