page_title: History of the Puritans under King Charles I
section_title: Suppression of the Feoffees for Impropriations
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Puritans under King Charles I / William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1633–1643 / Suppression of the Feoffees for Impropriations
caption_attribution_description: English: Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
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: Beginning in 1625, a group of Puritan lawyers, merchants, and clergymen (including Richard Sibbes and John Davenport) organized an organization known as the Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations. The feoffees would raise funds to purchase lay impropriations and advowsons, which would mean that the feoffees would then have the legal right to appoint their chosen candidates to benefices and lectureships. Thus, this provided a mechanism both for increasing the number of preaching ministers in the country, and a way to ensure that Puritans could receive ecclesiastical appointments.
  In 1629, Peter Heylin, a Magdalen don, preached a sermon in St Mary's denouncing the Feoffees for Impropriations for sowing tares among the wheat. As a result of the publicity, William Noy began to prosecute feoffees in the Exchequer court. The feoffees' defense was that all of the men they had had appointed to office conformed to the Church of England. Nevertheless, in 1632, the Feoffees for Impropriations were dissolved and the group's assets forfeited to the crown: Charles ordered that the money should be used to augment the salary of incumbents and used for other pious uses not controlled by the Puritans.
caption: Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) served as one of the Feoffees for Impropriations, who were organized in 1625 to support Puritanism in the Church of England, and which were dissolved with their assets forfeited to the crown in 1632.
exif: {}