George Gifford and the reformation of the common sort: Puritan priorities in Elizabethan religious life (England)

In this study I use the life and works of Elizabethan minister George Gifford (1548–1600) to investigate puritan attitudes toward those Gifford called “the common sort of Christian.” Gifford lived in a time when the English church was being shaped by Protestant evangelicals who felt compelled to carry their understanding of “true religion” to all corners of England. Known among themselves as “the godly” or “gospellers” and to their enemies as “puritans” or “precisionists,” these ministers believed the Church of England was only partially reformed. They sought to convert the many parishioners whom they believed to be Protestant in name only, people Gifford called “men indifferent” due to their acceptance of whatever religion was thrust upon them.; My sources include archival records and Gifford's large corpus of published treatises, dialogues, and sermons. In the first chapter I place Gifford's ministry in Maldon in the context of English church politics in the 1580s, with attention to Gifford's support and opposition in Maldon and his recurring conflicts with ecclesiastical authorities. In chapters two through four I explore Gifford's writings on Catholicism, separatism, and witchcraft, in each case considering how his attention to practical ministry interacted with national church issues. In the final chapter I analyze Gifford's attempt in his sermons to translate Protestant doctrines into a language accessible to the average layperson.; Throughout I argue Gifford deployed the image of the “common sort” in two distinct and sometimes contradictory ways. Gifford frequently spoke of the common sort in a manner that stressed both his sympathy with their plight and his faith in their ability: although they had been abandoned by their church and stranded between Catholicism and Protestantism, they nevertheless possessed an untapped spiritual potential that, when properly exploited, testified to the simplicity of the gospel. However, Gifford also emphasized the great distinction between the godly and the ungodly: the common sort stubbornly held to profane recreations and superstitious beliefs, and resisted the intrusion of zealous ministers into their lives. With this more pessimistic tone, Gifford helped establish the godly identity as a minority outside the mainstream of the church.