“A Decade of Grievances”

A Puritan Tractate, "A Decade of Grievances", showing the Caroline Fathers Falling Out of a Tree

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

The illustration above is the fronticepiece from the book, "A Decade of Grievances: Presented and Approved to the Right Honourable and High Court of Parliament, Against the Hierarchy or Government of the Lord Bishops, and Their Dependant Offices, by a Multitude of People, Who are Sensible of the Ruine of Religion, the Sinking of the State, and of the Plots and Insultations of Enemies Against Both" by Alexander Leighton in 1641. Leighton incited sedition in England for the Puritan cause, and in the same year of this publication was imprisoned and publicly whipped for his part in fomenting rebellion. Many claim that he died from his wounds to create sympathy for the Puritan cause, but records show that he lived to see his enemies deposed and killed in 1649. This tract was presented to Parliament and would later be credited as contributing to the martyrdom of King Charles I, the elevation of Oliver Cromwell to the British throne as "Lord Protector", and either the murder or exile of the Caroline Fathers, Abp. William Laud, Bp. Lancelot Andrewes, Bp. Jeremy Taylor and Bp. John Cosin. The great bishops are here depicted as being shaken from a tree by the Puritan Faction of the English Church. It is an extremely fitting illustration of how the original, fundamentally Patristic vision of Anglicanism was rejected by Presbyterianizing Puritans.

Notice what they thought were objectionable aspects of Anglicanism before Cromwell were in the above illustration: Miter, Crozier, Crucifixes, Candles, Incense, Rosaries, and Slippers (a tradition that grew from Moses removing his shoes while attending to God's Presence in the Burning Bush). All of these are not only innocuous, but universally re-embraced by the English Church through the work of the Oxford movement. And, of note also is that, of these “shaken from the tree”, none of these men lived their lives unmolested or in peace or power. They did not maintain their theological perspectives either because they were popular or popish. 

The Puritans only came to the US as “persecuted” after their regime was found so violent and odious that the vast majority of English-speaking and Continental Protestants found them “a bridge too far” and ostracized them. They were definitely not the religious heroes that many of us grew up adoring. We are never taught about Cromwell and the reign of Puritan terror here in the US. Interestingly enough, Puritanism experienced a mass conversion to Unitarianism in the US, three generations after their immigration. It seems that the younger generation of Puritans could not stand this vision of an "Angry God" any more than the British people could.

Reading the sources of these tragic times, both in the writings of our Anglican Patrimony and the notes and letters of Cromwell himself, we see a very different vision emerging. Cromwell was, unfortunately, a catatonic depressive, and felt that he was “converted” by experiencing the unmitigated rage of God the Father. His rise through the polity of England, his excessively violent rule, and the genocide he perpetrated on the Irish Catholics, bears only one resemblance - the Life of Mohammad. Cromwell was a radical and violent tyrant, so extreme that he made all the English people sorely miss their righteous, mild and studious king, Charles the First, and illuminated him as a saint in the minds of his abused people. King Charles is still the only saint that has been officially glorified by act of Parliament! 

It is important to remember these facts, lest we forget that the Puritans were radical iconoclasts, aggressive perpetrators of mass murder and genocide, and those who helped to expunge the original Orthodox vision of Anglicanism is favor of a Reformed vision that broke it from the Tree of the Apostolic Church. It is also important to remember that we, the Ancient Church of the West, are the true inheritors of this glorious vision - a vision for a Western Orthodox Church in communion with other Orthodox Churches around the world, shining in the inheritance of the Caroline Anglican Patrimony!

Saint King Charles Martyr, Blessed Bishops Laud, Andrewes, and Taylor, and Cosin, pray for us!