Lot 2041 , RH [Sir Robert Heath], ‘Some exceptions against the petition sent up by the Lords, February 1640’ [1641]

RH [Sir Robert Heath], ‘Some exceptions against the petition sent up by the Lords, February 1640’ [1641] This document is an eloquent witness to the turmoil which embroiled the English church and state in the years preceding the outbreak of the English civil war, specifically following the impeachment for high treason of William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury on 18 December 1640 and continuing agitation to purify the English church, not least by the removal of bishops from the House of Lords.
The document presents a discussion of six exceptions, presumably made by the House of Lords, against an unspecified petition, which is called only ‘The petition for the Hierarchy’. The petition is described as ‘desiring only the regulating of the rigour of ecclesiastical courts to suit with the temper of our laws’, and clearly discussed the outlook of the bishops, reference being made to the role of the British delegates at the anti-Arminian Synod of Dort of 1618–19, an international meeting of divines to settle disputed doctrinal controversies. The text supports confession as a means of correcting ‘notorious offenders’, but inveighs against ‘[Robert] Shelford [and John] Pocklington, the fautors of imagery, and such as are minters of ceremonies without special warrant of law’. An un-named speaker mentioned in the petition is described as an ‘exotic, bold, daring, impudent man worthy of exemplary punishment’. Finally the author engages with the form of the petition itself – ‘the multitude of hands, tag, rag, and bobtail, is base and unworthy. I dare say there are some subscribers (nay many) that are not sui juris, nor are they able (if you show them the petition) to tell, to what they subscribed’.
The petition which best suits this description is that submitted from Cheshire, including 113 pages of signatures, and delivered into the House on 27 February 1641 (parliamentary Archives HL/PO/JO/5/1/7). It dissented from the opinions expressed in the ‘many petitions circulated in the country in favour of innovations in religion’, and specifically the ‘positions preached at St John’s church in Chester by Mr Samuel Eaton, a minister lately returned from New England’, perhaps the ‘bold, daring, impudent man’ referred to in the text. The petition was referred by the Lords to the newly established committee for religion on 1 March 1641.
Sir Robert Heath (1575–1649) of the Inner Temple came to prominence in 1616, when he entered the service of George Villiers, later duke of Buckingham, in 1621 gaining the office of solicitor-general and a knighthood. An active parliamentarian, Heath’s position survived Buckingham’s assassination and on 23 January 1641 he was appointed a justice of king’s bench, ‘and consequent to this position he served as a messenger from the Lords to the Commons during the early months of the Long Parliament’ (ODNB). Religion played an important part in Heath’s life: an inventory of his library drawn up in 1647 suggests that his reading, other than for professional purposes, consisted largely of sacred works. He was a devout Calvinist and, although there is no evidence that he was personally dissatisfied with the structure and worship of the established church, he may have had some sympathy with moderate puritanism as he supported episcopacy but could be critical of the bishops (History of Parliament).
The petition’s mention of Dr John Pocklington was timely: on 12 February 1641 the Lords heard a petition exhibited against him by one of his parishioners. They found him ‘a man, both by his practice and doctrine, to be a great instrument and introducer of innovations into the church, and a perverter of the people. In his practice, he hath been very superstitious, and full of idolatry, as bowing to the altar, and using many other gestures and ceremonies in the church, not being established by the Laws of this Realm’. He was deprived of his benefices, barred from holding any office in the church and his books ordered to be burnt at London, Cambridge and Oxford ‘by the hand of the common executioner’ (House of Lords Journal Volume 4: 12 February 1641).
In 1635 Robert Shelford (c1563–1639) published Five Pious and Learned Discourses, a controversial work in which he made his Laudian sympathies clear, criticising what he saw as the puritan obsession with preaching, and worst of all calling for more friendly relations between protestants and Catholics. The book was allegedly sent to Ireland ‘to confirm our papists in their obstinacy, and to assure them that we are now coming home unto them as fast as we can’ (ODNB).
Samuel Eaton (d. 1665), rector of West Kirby in Cheshire, settled in New Haven Connecticut in 1637, Eaton preaching regularly at Harvard. In 1640 he sailed for England, returning to a transformed political climate and, after the opening of the Long Parliament in November 1640, wasted no time in contributing to evolving debates concerning church government (ODNB).
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