page_title: History of the Puritans under King Charles I
section_title: The Westminster Assembly, 1643–49
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Puritans under King Charles I / The Westminster Assembly, 1643–49
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Thomas Goodwin
context_page_description: Under Charles I, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Catholic influence both at Court and within the Church.
  After the First English Civil War political power was held by various factions of Puritans. The trials and executions of William Laud and then King Charles himself were decisive moves shaping British history. While in the short term Puritan power was consolidated by the Parliamentary armed forces and Oliver Cromwell, in the same years, the argument for theocracy failed to convince enough of the various groupings, and there was no Puritan religious settlement to match Cromwell's gradual assumption of dictatorial powers. The distinctive formulation of Reformed theology in the Westminster Assembly would prove to be its lasting legacy.
  In New England, immigration of what were Puritan family groups and congregations was at its peak for the period the middle years of King Charles's reign.
context_section_description: In 1642, the most ardent defenders of episcopacy in the Long Parliament left to join King Charles on the battlefield. However, although Civil War was beginning, Parliament was initially reluctant to pass legislation without it receiving royal assent. Thus, between June 1642 and May 1643, Parliament passed legislation providing for a religious assembly five times, but these bills did not receive royal assent and thus died. By June 1643, however, Parliament was willing to defy the king and call a religious assembly without the king's assent. This assembly, the Westminster Assembly, had its first meeting in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey on 1 July 1643. (In later sessions, the Assembly would meet in the Jerusalem Chamber.)
  The Assembly was charged with drawing up a new liturgy to replace the Book of Common Prayer and with determining what manner of church polity was appropriate for the Church of England. In both cases, it was assumed that the Westminster Assembly would only make recommendations and that Parliament would have the final word.
  The Long Parliament appointed 121 divines to the Westminster Assembly (at the time "divine", i.e. theologian, was used as a synonym for "clergyman"). Of these, approximately 25 never showed up – mainly because King Charles ordered all loyal subjects not to participate in the Assembly. To replace the divines who had failed to show up, Parliament later added 21 additional divines, known as the "Superadded Divines". The Assembly also included 30 lay assessors (10 nobles and 20 commoners). Although the Westminster Divines were mainly Puritan, they were broadly representative of all positions (except Laudianism) then on offer in the Church of England.
  For its first ten weeks, the Westminster Assembly's only task was to revise the Thirty-Nine Articles. However, in summer 1643, shortly after the calling of the Westminster Assembly, the Parliamentary forces, under the leadership of John Pym and Henry Vane the Younger concluded an agreement with the Scots known as the Solemn League and Covenant. As noted above, one of the main reasons why the Scots had launched the Second Bishops War in 1640 was because they hoped to bring about an end to episcopacy in England. They therefore insisted as a term of the agreement that the English agree to fight to extirpate "popery and prelacy". Since the Puritans were also interested in fighting these things, they readily agreed, and the Long Parliament agreed to swear to the Scottish National Covenant. Six Commissioners representing the Church of Scotland were now sent to attend the Westminster Assembly and on 12 October 1643, the Long Parliament ordered the Assembly to "confer and treat among themselves of such a discipline and government as may be most agreeable to God's holy word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland and other Reformed Churches abroad."
caption: Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), one of the "Five Dissenting Brethren" and a leader of the Independents in the Westminster Assembly.
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