Baptists during the English Civil War & Commonwealth 1642 to 1660

‘He that prays and preaches best will fight best.’ – (Oliver Cromwell)

The Baptist movement in Britain dates from the early 17th century, with the first Baptist church being founded by Thomas Helwys in 1612 in Spitalfields in London. Baptists were Protestants who thought that the Reformation had not gone far enough. The Pope might have been replaced by the monarch, but for them the Church of England with its Bishops and rituals still had too many Catholic elements. Baptists yearned for a return to a purer form of worship based on the Bible, where the sermon and understanding scripture were central. They rejected infant baptism, believing that the only scriptural form was baptism by total immersion for adult believers who chose or were chosen by their congregations.

The Parable of the Sower and of the Seed

Baptists divided into two groups, General Baptists and Particular Baptists. General Baptists believed in religious toleration and salvation for all and preached universal salvation. Particular Baptists adhered to a basically Calvinist creed of Predestination, believing that only a chosen few (the elect) would be saved by God. General Baptists were anticlerical and evangelical, while Particular Baptists were always anxious to stress their respectability. Both groups were sometimes called Dippers, because of their belief in adult baptism.

Baptists had been persecuted under King Charles I, who wanted a state church that was ordered, and so disapproved of anyone who wanted to meet outside of the Church of England. When civil war broke out between the King and Parliament in 1642, Baptists supported the latter as they saw this side as a better guarantor of religious freedom of conscience.

Frontispiece to ‘Mercurius Rusticus’: The Country’s Complaint Recounting the Sad Events of the late Unparalleled Rebellion’ (1685). © Trustees of the British Museum

The growth of the Baptist churches was enabled by the breakdown of the Church of England during the war, and further strengthened by Parliament’s victory. Indeed, throughout England at this time, there were many who said that there was no universal church, but instead like-minded Christians should be allowed to separate and form their own churches, each with its own doctrines. Some believed that church ministers had no more authority than laymen, while the most radical denied the existence of sin altogether, believing that to the godly all things were pure, including blasphemy, drunkenness and fornication. Baptist congregations did not go as far as this.

Baptists served in Parliamentarian armies, and the movement flourished in the New Model Army which was formed in 1645. Wherever the New Model Army established itself for long, Baptist churches would frequently springing up. The soldiers took part in lay preaching and would meet in private, refusing to join in public worship in town and village churches, but instead keeping conventicles (secret religious meetings) in their own quarters and encampments.

Many people were made profoundly uneasy by the challenges and changes wrought by the Civil War, and viewed groups such as the Baptists as challenging the traditions of the Church and State. Formally university educated church ministers were greatly alarmed by untaught and sometimes illiterate amateur Baptist preachers who they saw as challenging their spiritual authority. For their part, Baptists rejected church tithes, viewing them as a system of enforced maintenance for Church of England ministers who they regarded as mercenary preachers. A repudiation of tithes marked a clear division between Baptists and the Church of England.

Civil War Re-enactors from the Sealed Knot

During the Civil War and under the Commonwealth and subsequent Protectorate, many Baptists rose to high office. One such was William Packer, a devout Baptist who had joined Parliament’s Army early on in the war and by 1644 was a lieutenant in Oliver Cromwell’s Ironsides regiment.  A noted lay preacher, in 1653 he received a licence to preach from the Council of State. He later went on to serve as one of Cromwell’s Major Generals, governing Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire between 1655 and 1656. He had a reputation for severity, denouncing the celebration of Christmas and is said to have attacked a Royalist gentleman who made the mistake of appearing before him drunk.

By the 1650s, five associations of Particular Baptists, the Welsh, the Berkshire, the Irish, the Western and the Midland, were meeting regularly. Different Baptist congregations, including the one in Tewkesbury, would send representatives, called Messengers, to these meetings at which matters including ideology, mutual support, marriage and baptisms were discussed. In 1655, the Messengers representing Tewkesbury at the Midlands Association meeting held at Warwick were John Fluck, Thomas Smith and William Heine. The Particular Baptists in Tewkesbury left the Church of England in the 1650s, rejecting what they perceived as the national church’s idolatry.

Adult believer’s baptism became both a testament of faith as well as a symbol of their separate religious identity and community. The ritual of baptism itself was performed not by sprinkling but by dipping the person in water to symbolize the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. The Bible was viewed as a handbook for life, offering as it did practical guidance for the creation of a godly community. Indeed, every rule was backed up by multiple citations from the Bible.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell who ruled England, Scotland and Ireland as Lord Protector between 1653 and 1658, can be identified with no particular religious sect. However, the Cromwellian church was a broad one and Baptists flourished. At the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, there may have been as many as three hundred either General or Particular Baptist churches in England. The subsequent Royalist dominated parliament passed a series of harsh laws against all religious Dissenters including Baptists.

The Corporation Act (1661) – This act stated that only Royalist supporters of the Church of England could hold government office.

The Act of Uniformity (1662) – Required that all who held church office were appointed by a bishop. The act set the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer as the only prayer book to be used for public worship. The act showed no concessions to Dissenters, resulting in as many as 1,800 ministers losing their positions.

The First Conventicle Act (1664)- Made it illegal, except for family gatherings, for more than five people over the age of sixteen to hold meetings for religious worship outside the established Church. The act penalised anyone who attended or preached at a Dissenters congregation. Anyone who allowed their building to be used by Dissenters was also penalised.

The Five Mile Act (1665) – Aimed at Dissenting ministers who had lost their ministries by the Uniformity Act, this act banned Dissenting ministers from coming within five miles of their previous parish. The act also forbade them to teach, or to take in lodgers.

These four acts meant that Dissenters faced a period of harsh persecution.

By Simon Lawton