The Great Ejectment Of 1662

By Bartholomew's Day, 24 August, 1662, all ministers and schoolmasters in England and Wales were required by the Act of Uniformity to have given their "unfeigned assent and consent" to the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. On theological grounds nearly two thousand ministers--approximately one fifth of the clergy of the Church of England--refused to comply and thereby forfeited their livings. This book has been written to commemorate the 350th Anniversary of the Great Ejectment. In Part One three early modern historians provide accounts of the antecedents and aftermath of the ejectment in England and Wales, while in Part Two the case is advanced that the negative responses of the ejected ministers to the legal requirements of the Act of Uniformity were rooted in positive doctrinal convictions that are of continuing ecumenical significance.

A fine introduction to Puritan preaching, this little book also recalls on of the great turning points I English Christianity-for these sermons were preached on 'the Farewell Sunday' in August, 1662, when two thousand ministers left the national Church for conscience' sake. Much has been written on the Great Ejection, but nothing is more important than to hear the ejected speak for themselves. Their watchword was: " I preach as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.

In these days of spiritual ignorance in the country and doctrinal laxity in the church, many Anglicans look back to former times with a certain degree of wistfulness. One date lingers in the collective Anglican memory as suggestive of a golden era: 1662. Yet 1662 was not a good year for those to whom the gospel and a good conscience were more precious than the institutional church. Hundreds of 'evangelical' puritan ministers were forced to leave the Church of England. Persecution of "dissenters" such as Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, and John Owen continued for a quarter of a century as they were banned from preaching and their like-minded congregations forbidden to meet. This study examines the reasons for the Great Ejection and Persecution, and the things modern day Anglicans and Free Churches can learn from these easily neglected events. Lee Gatiss is Associate Minister of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate in the City of London and Editor of The Theologian: The Internet Journal for Integrated Theology at www.theologian.org.uk. Having read Modern History at New College, Oxford and trained for Anglican ministry at Oak Hill Theological College he completed a curacy in Northamptonshire before moving to London. He is a member of the Latimer Trust Theological Work Group and the Editorial Board of the journal Churchman.

Those who were ejected in 1662 suffered as they did because of their loyalty to conscience, their belief that the Reformation was a great act of God that was essential and must be continued, and their insistence that Scripture and not tradition must reign supreme. In these days of doctrinal indifference those who suffered through the Ejection are a tremendous example to us all, Nonconformist or not. Read this account and you will be both historically informed and motivated to serve the Lord with the same principled zeal that was displayed by those thousands of heroes of the faith in 1662.

The 1662 Act of Uniformity and the consequent "ejections" on August 24 (St. Bartholomew's Day) of those who refused to comply with its stringent conditions comprise perhaps the single most significant episode in post-Reformation English religious history. Intended, in its own words, "to settle the peace of the church" by banishing dissent and outlawing Puritan opinion it instead led to penal religious legislation and persecution, vituperative controversy, and repeated attempts to diversify the religious life of the nation until, with the Toleration Act of 1689, its aspiration was finally abandoned and the freedom of the individual conscience and the right to dissent were, within limits, legally recognised. Bartholomew Day was hence, unintentionally but momentously, the first step towards today's pluralist and multicultural society. This volume brings together nine original essays which on the basis of new research examine afresh the nature and occasion of the Act, its repercussions and consequences and the competing ways in which its effects were shaped in public memory. A substantial introduction sets out the historical context. The result is an interdisciplinary volume which avoids partisanship to engage with episcopalian, nonconformist, and separatist perspectives; it understands "English" history as part of "British" history, taking in the Scottish and Irish experience; it recognises the importance of European and transatlantic relations by including the Netherlands and New England in its scope; and it engages with literary history in its discussions of the memorialisation of these events in autobiography, memoirs, and historiography. This collection constitutes the most wide-ranging and sustained discussion of this episode for fifty years.