The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/The Seconde Parte of a Register

by Williston Walker

The Seconde Parte of a Register: being a Calendar of Manuscripts under that Title intended for Publication by the Puritans about 1593, and now in Dr. Williams's Library, London. Edited by Albert Peel, M.A., Litt.D., B.Litt., Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. With a Preface by C. H. Firth, LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. In two volumes. (Cambridge: University Press. 1915. Pp. xviii, 311; 328. $6.50.)

About 1593 there was printed without name of publisher or place, but probably from the press of Robert Waldegrave in Edinburgh, or by that of Richard Schilders, possibly in London, a now rare volume, long known to students of English Puritanism, entitled A Parte of a Register; contayninge sundrie memorable Matters, written by divers godly and learned in our Time, which stande for and desire the Reformation of our Church, in Discipline and Ceremonies, accordinge to the pure Worde of God and the Lawe of our Lande. It was a collection of Puritan papers, letters, petitions, complaints, arguments, and proceedings of the ecclesiastical authorities, written between 1570 and 1588.

The title indicated that it was a portion of a larger collection, which the repressive action of the government prevented from publication in its entirety. In fact most copies of the Parte of a Register printed were destroyed by the authorities. Where the manuscripts for proposed further issues may now be, if in existence, is unknown; but fortunately they were copied, in the seventeenth century, for Roger Morrice (1628–1702), a clergyman of Puritan sympathies, and the transcript came in some way, now unknown, into the Williams Library of London. The collection was carelessly, but somewhat extensively, used by Neal in his History of the Puritans, and by Brook in his Lives of the Puritans, and it has been consulted on special topics by a few other authors. In general, it has been neglected or ignored.

The marked recent interest in Elizabethan religious history has induced Dr. Albert Peel to prepare a careful calendar which constitutes the volumes now under review. The work has been admirably done. The calendar includes 257 documents, the more important of which lie between 1570 and 1590, and the large majority in the last ten years of that period. Their content is such as to justify the claim of the editor "that no accurate account of the ecclesiastical history of the years 1570–1590 can be written without consulting them".

Naturally such a collection is of a very miscellaneous character, but there is abundant evidence of the aims of the Puritans, of the attempts made to realize those wishes in practice, and of the resistance encountered from the ecclesiastical authorities. Much light is thrown on the extent and localities of the Puritan movement among the clergy, and on the relatively scanty participation of the laity in it, in contrast to the seventeenth century. For the general student of the religious conditions of the period no documents are more suggestive than the elaborate surveys of the ministry of a considerable portion of England prepared by Puritans in 1586, and giving names of clergymen, parishes, sometimes stipends, and indicating whether pluralists, residents, and preachers or "dumbe". Even more significant is the estimate of moral worth or worthlessness given, with definite charges in the case of a large portion of the clergy here enumerated. Such charges were, of course, partizan; but their number and definiteness leave a distinct impression that many of the Elizabethan parish ministers, quite apart from any question of ability to preach, were unworthy of their office. As Professor Firth remarks in his interesting preface:

 

The revolutions through which the Church passed after 1551 were not calculated to increase the learning and efficiency of the clergy. Puritans and Bishops alike aimed at raising the standard, by different methods, and each with some success, though the process was a slow one.

 

The reader is glad to note that the editor plans speedily to reprint the rare Parte of a Register, for continuation of which the papers here calendared were originally collected; and to give with that republication an elaborate introduction to the whole body of documents thus gathered by the Elizabethan Puritans.

Williston Walker.