Royalist & Radical Religion, 1642-1660

Royalist Religion

Provisional programme

Workshop, September 11 2009, JRUL Deansgate

Arrival, coffee from 9.30

10-11

Anthony Milton (Sheffield), ‘Royalist divines and the king’s conscience in the 1640s’

Coffee

11.30-1

Ted Vallance (Liverpool), ‘Robert Sanderson’s use of amended prayer book services’

Marie-Louise Coolahan (Galway), ‘Royalism and the 1641 Depositions’

Jason McElligott (TCD), ‘Massacre, Infanticide and Psalm 137 in Early-Modern England’

1-2 Lunch

2-3

Lloyd Bowen (Cardiff), ‘Royalist Ministers and the Royalist Message, 1642-9′

Sue Wiseman (Birkbeck), ‘Vaughan and cat baptism’

Coffee

4-5

Molly Murray (Columbia),

Iain McClure (Birkbeck), ‘The development of interiority in Eikon Basilike’

Radical Religion, 1642-1660

24 April 2009, Trinity College Dublin

Arts Block sixth floor, room A6009

An event in the AHRC-IRCHSS funded “Royalist and Radical Religion,
1642-1660” series

9:45-10:00 Welcome and introduction (Crawford Gribben)

PANEL ONE:  RADICAL RELIGION IN THREE KINGDOMS CONTEXTS

Chair Jason McElligot 

10:00-10:30 Scott Spurlock, “Radical religion, Antichrist and England’s
Interregnum policies towards Ireland and Scotland”

10:30-11:00 Mark Sweetnam, “Radical religion in Ulster: The case of the
Antrim ministers”

11:00-11:30 Coffee

PANEL TWO: RADICAL RELIGION IN IRELAND

Chair Clodagh Tait

11:30-12:00 Caitlín Higgins Ní Chinnéide, “Baptists and military opposition
to the Protectorate in Ireland, 1653-1659”

12:00-12:30 John Cunningham, “Henry Ireton in Ireland”

12:30-14:00 Lunch

PANEL THREE: LITERATURE, RADICAL RELIGION, AND THE SUPERNATURAL 

Chair Jerome de Groot 

14:00-14:30 Naomi McAreavey, “Women, writing and radical religion in
Ireland”

14:30-15:00 Gráinne Mc Laughlin, title tbc

15:00-15:30 Crawford Gribben, “Heresy and the supernatural in Cromwellian
Ireland”

15:30-16:00 Stephen Roberts, “Radical religion in Wales, Ireland and
England: Henry Bowen and his apparition, 1655”

A postgraduate-led session took place on the 10^th March, by videoconference between Manchester and Dublin. The primary aim of the workshop was to develop research links between a range of postgraduates working on issues relating to the seventeenth century. To that end, the seminar heard research overviews from Jonathan Olson (University of Liverpool; ‘The Culture of Revision’), Michael Durrant (University of Manchester; ‘Henry Hills and 1680s Pamphleteering’), Stephen Kelly (TCD; ‘The Smock Alley Theatre’), Kathleen Miller (TCD; ‘Publishing During the Plague’), and Mark Sweetnam (TCD; ‘Minutes of the Antrim Ministers’ Meetings, 1664-8’).

These wide-ranging papers sparked much fruitful dialogue, and revealed a number of interesting overlaps. Key areas of discussion were:

The ways in which the demands of title-pages of texts can affect, and indeed drive, their production.

The idea that religion and the print market were combined economically, and how this might affect the self-presentation of the text and the printer.

The ways in which exceptional circumstances drove demands for particular texts, or types of texts.

How these circumstances negotiated the relative values of texts, especially with regard to authority attached to a classical author, or derived from the age of a text.

Additionally, the value placed on new (or revitalised) modes of writing, such as recipe books or bills of mortality, as a result of fundamental changes to the social system.

The ways in which the design of post-restoration theatre reinforced or revived ideas of the monarch as the primary origin of meaning and interpretation.

Professor Nigel Smith (Princeton University) will be giving a lecture at 1pm on the 22 January. The venue is the videoconferencing suite in the Kilburn building, University of Manchester (contact Crawford at Dublin for local details there), and his title is ‘Radicalism, Royalism and the Literary Canon.’ Professor Smith will also be giving a postgraduate masterclass immediately after his paper, let me know directly if you would like your students involved in this.

RELIGION BELIEF SUPERSTITION

c. 400 – c. 1550

School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester

8-9 June 2009

Keynote Speaker: Dr Anthony Bale (Birkbeck)

Prayer, pilgrimage, sacrifice, private and public devotion

All these might be safely thought to fall in to the category of ‘religion’. But does this category, particularly as it is understood by modern scholars, correspond with the practices and beliefs held by the premodern peoples we hope to understand? What were the roles of religion, belief and superstition in medieval cultures? This conference seeks to explore the boundaries of these categories, examining the diverse and often ambiguous ways in which religions, beliefs and superstitions become central to the ways in which peoples define and understand themselves and their communities. Moreover, what methodological presuppositions do twenty-first century medieval scholars bring to the study of religions and beliefs? What do we stand to learn from each other?

The conference committee invites proposals from postgraduate students and recent post-doctoral researchers in all disciplines working on any aspect of medieval cultures. Papers from researchers working on non-Christian cultures are particularly encouraged.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

Religion and Morality

The impact of religious dicta on the lives of ordinary people

Philosophy and Political Thought

Constructing religious ‘Others’

Intersections of Muslim, Jewish and Christian Beliefs

Deviance, Heresy, Magic, Popular Belief

Literary and Material Culture

Architecture, Sacred Space and its Uses

Religion and Performance

Abstracts of no more than 250 words for 20 minute papers should be submitted to kate.ash@manchester.ac.uk by 14 February 2009.

This from Crawford:

Things bubbling in my mind included the following:

What about Scotland? Should Scottish Presbyterians (in Scotland and in north-east Ireland) be regarded as Royalists or Radicals or both simultaneously?

Is the classification of “Radical” entirely dependent on geographical and chronological factors?

How should we read sermons in an age of ideological conflict - as the shapers of or the shaped by public thought?

Your fascinating quotes, coupled with my current reading in John Owen in 1643, is making me question whether religious aesthetics or doctrine were as central to the civil wars as I once thought.

How do Royalist / Radical aesthetics / ideologies relate to each other?

When does Radical become Radical?

My paper “English poetry in Cromwellian Ireland” describes one important element of the literary culture of royalist and radical writing in the late 1640s and 1650s. While the Irish Cromwellian interlude has not gained fame for its poetry, it did witness the production of a substantial body of verse. The English Parliament’s intervention in Ireland was both defined and contested in poetic forms. Irish Catholic writers worried that loyal and quietist Irishmen had been provoked into participation in the British wars by the horror of the regicide. Parliamentary writers argued instead that the wars had begun in Ireland, and that no quarter should be given to those who had exported into England the terrors of the previous decade. These sentiments were expressed in verse published in stand-alone collections and anthologies, and in verse attached to volumes of sermons and medical philosophy. In a series of readings of a wide range of poetic writing, from the doggerel of Parliamentary propaganda to the stylish and theological wit of Faithful Teate, this paper argues that the poetry produced in Cromwellian Ireland was often more sophisticated than it suggested, and displayed a wider religious range than many readers might expect.

The first video-conference session took place on the 17 December in Dublin and Manchester. Jerome de Groot introduced the session and the workshop, and welcomed the participants. The conference then heard two papers, a short piece on Royalist Sermons from Jerome de Groot and a longer piece on religious poetry in Cromwellian Ireland from Crawford Gribben. Both generated interesting debate and are outlined at greater length in subsequent postings.

Key issues arising from our debate included:

The crucial idea of multiplicity and complication – particularly the notion that Royalist theology might be multiple and complicated, and that religious thought and expression during this period was extremely dynamic and shifting

The overlaps of Radicalism and Royalism, particularly in an Irish context

Furthermore, the importance of geography to an interpretation of religious writing

The difficulties of interpreting specific texts such as sermons

The range of work still not considered – key resources such as Irish poetry and sermons which have had very little work done on them during this period

The diversity of religious writing

The need to investigate in much greater depth the manuscript and print culture of Ireland during the 1640s and 1650s, and how it relates to and informs/ is informed by that of England; indeed, much more work is needed on print culture and the relationship between Ireland and England (and Europe) during the 1640s and 1650s

The idea of a conservative Royalism post-1649, particularly in Ireland, and in contrast to the more revolutionary Royalist thought proffered by writers in England and Europe

The particular need to consider Ireland post-1649 in conjunction with other Royalist communities such as the exilic courts

The flexibility of religious and political identity in the 1640s and 1650s