The English Conventicle

Abstract

In the midst of the nervous excitement of the autumn of 1640 a Londoner called Roger Quatermayne, a puritan and, as we might say, barrackroom lawyer, was investigated by Archbishop Laud and other Privy Councillors for the offence of holding religious meetings in circumstances which were politically as well as ecclesiastically suspect, since it was thought that Quatermayne and his friends had made treasonable contact with the Scottish army, then at war with its king and in occupation of English soil. Quatermayne, charged with holding a conventicle, asked the archbishop to inform him ‘what a Conventicle is.’ Laud replied: ‘Why, this is a Conventicle, … when ten or twelve or more or lesse meet together to pray, reade, preach, expound, this is a conventicle.’ Laud’s definition may appear uncontroversial, particularly if to his ‘ten or twelve or more or less’ is added the formula of the 1664 Conventicle Act, ‘over and above those of the same Household’. But Quatermayne objected: ‘My Lord, I do not so understand it.’