The restoration of the episcopate and the English Reformation

Abstract

While puritan displeasure at bishops as being a so-called ‘Popish Dreg’ is much discussed in modern scholarly writing, attempts by defenders of the office to align this authority with reformed doctrines is an under-examined aspect of English ecclesiastical history. Analysing the period when the suppression of episcopacy under the Commonwealth was coming to an end, this article questions one particular scholarly reading of English episcopal authority, in that the doctrinal and ecclesial positions of the Laudian Church shaped the reconstruction of the episcopal hierarchy up to and beyond 1660, especially the theories of jure divino episcopacy. Detailed analysis of John Gauden’s The Loosing of St Peters Bands will demonstrate how the restored episcopate could appeal to its immediate context in order to justify its authority as reformed. Gauden looked to reformed churches in Europe and Scotland to illuminate the reformed features of English episcopacy. Paradoxically, the reformed confessions which had no bishops provided his evidence for how reformers revered episcopacy. His ideas were a reaction to many decades of anti-episcopal Protestant polemic in England. In this context, appeals to reformed authorities were the most compelling way to defend English episcopacy.