Hugh Peters, a Puritan Preacher

by Jason Vines

(I would like to note that while I was working on this paper, I researched in the Rare Books division of the Library of Congress.)

Known as the “Great Communicator,” United States President Ronald Reagan used plain speaking and affecting homilies to connect with his audiences, making them more willing to embrace his point of view. Reagan’s success as a persuasive orator ingratiated him with his allies, who appreciated his ability to win support for their cause, and infuriated his enemies, who could not understand how a man, with what they considered deficient ideas, could achieve the popular support Reagan did for his agenda. Thirteen years after his departure from the public scene, Reagan’s opponents still express deep hatred for him whenever his name appears in political discourse.

Three-and-a-half centuries ago, a very similar man wrought his influence on politics, both in England and in America. His name was Hugh Peters, and he shared Reagan’s ability to captivate and persuade the masses, with simple directness and descriptive metaphors.[1] Hugh,[2] too, received the appreciative approbation of his friends and the intense scorn of his foes. His enemies despised him so much they executed him, after which they wrote biting parodies of his viewpoints, such as The Tales and Jests of Hugh Peters, and slanderous biographies of his life, such as England’s Shame by William Yonge.[3]

Hugh Peters entered life in May or June, 1598, at Fowey, Cornwall,[4] a county that occupies a peninsula on England’s southwest corner.[5] Cornwall has a different past from the rest of England: even after the Saxons had long since established control elsewhere in England, the Cornish peninsula remained under the dominion of the Celts. Only in the tenth century AD did the Saxons take Cornwall, and even following the Saxons’ conquest, Cornish assimilation into greater English society occurred but slowly. In 1200 AD, 200 years after the Norman Conquest, Celtic culture still pervaded Cornwall, with the marked absence of big urban centers, the broad disbursement of its population, and the lingering predominance of its native language, Cornish. As of the 1640’s, the decade of the English Civil War, the majority of Cornwall’s residents west of the town of Truro continued to speak Cornish.

Cornwall’s early modern economy based itself upon something an industry unique to the peninsula, which no other region in the known world, much less England, possessed: tin mining. Even fishermen and farmers toiled in the mines during times of economic hardship. Tin mining exacted a harsh toll on workers, and for their difficult labor, the workers earned relatively little money. Presiding over the tin mining areas, and administering law and order, were not standard courts, but royal Stanneries that did not fall under the jurisdiction of normal English laws. Tin mining and Stanneries tied the Cornish together, so that the common inhabitants of the English-speaking East felt more loyalty to their counterparts in the Cornish-speaking West than to Englishmen in other counties.

Because of Cornwall’s societal and physical isolation from the rest of England, intermarriage amongst the Cornish happened often. A saying goes, “All Cornish gentlemen are cousins.” From 1509 to 1640, between 70 and 80 percent of weddings involving lowly ranking Cornish gentlemen were to Cornish wives, and the commoners intermarried yet more often. But the most highly ranking Cornish gentlemen, who often fulfilled such roles as justice of the peace, deputy lieutenant, and sheriff, did not partake of the rampant intermarriage, preferring to marry spouses outside the county, rather than choose fellow Cornish who gripped the lower rungs of the social ladder.

Upper gentry deviated from Cornish norms in other ways, too. They enjoyed more money and more education, and they possessed more interest in issues affecting all England. All the upper gentry spoke English, and many higher gentlemen in the East went so far as to despise Cornish. The Eastern gentry had assimilated themselves the most into English culture, and their religion was the most liberal, as opposed to the conservatism with which most Cornish beheld religion.[6] Naturally, the Eastern gentry would have felt more kinship with English elsewhere than with their Cornish neighbors.

Enter Hugh’s parents, whom he deemed “considerable.”[7] Hugh’s mother, nee Treffey, descended from the gentry family who governed the Eastern parish to which Fowey belonged. And Hugh’s father, whose Dutch ancestors had fled to England from Antwerp in 1543, because of persecution for their “reformed” Protestant religion, worked as a merchant.[8] Having upper Eastern Cornish gentry maternal ancestors, and Dutch paternal ancestors, Hugh lacked connections to the vast majority of other Cornishmen, who would overwhelmingly support King Charles I during the English Civil War, whereas Hugh and the numerically few Eastern gentry would support Parliament.[9]

Spending his childhood immersed in the successful merchant community, instead of the impoverished tin mining families, Hugh developed an interest in trade, especially that of New England, and particularly that in fish. Later emphasizing to Hugh the importance of healthy commerce, and inspiring within him a utilitarian perspective of life that valued business acumen, was financial misfortune Hugh’s family suffered after losing cargo at sea. As a result of their monetary decline, Hugh’s family had actually become poor by the time they sent him to Cambridge University in 1613.[10]

While Hugh was attending Cambridge, his tutor passed away, leaving 14-year-old Hugh “exposed to my shifts.”[11] The newly master-less teenager, according to Royalists writing after his death, then became what English society at the timed feared: a sinful, dishonest, and promiscuous young man. Cambridge authorities supposedly flogged and expelled Hugh for his dissolute immorality. That, however, would have been news to Hugh, who received his BA from Cambridge in 1618.[12]

Even though Hugh matriculated at Cambridge at the same time as several notable Puritans, such as Thomas Goodwin, and most likely interacted with them, Hugh apparently did not adopt their ways of thinking. That happened two years after Hugh graduated from Cambridge, in 1620.[13] Hugh heard a minister preaching from the text “The Burden of Dumah” at St. Paul’s in London, and then, “God struck me with the sense of my sinful estate.”[14] Hugh awakened to the cause of Puritan religion, becoming a deacon in 1621. Hugh returned to Cambridge for his MA in 1622, and in the latter part of that year, he spent a few months in London, listening to the sermons of the Puritans Davenport, Gouge, and Sibbes. The next year, in 1623, the Bishop of London licensed Hugh as a priest, a short time after which the Earl of Warwick appointed Hugh as curator of the Holy Trinity Church in Rayleigh, Essex.[15]

During his stay in Essex, Hugh completed his conversion to Puritanism after listening to the words of Thomas Hooker, another Puritan divine[16] (who would eventually, in America, defend the right of the people to elect their own representatives).[17] After preaching in Rayleigh for a few years, Hugh in 1625 wedded a “good gentlewoman,” a widower named Elizabeth Reade, who brought with her an income of 200-300 pounds annually. Hugh’s new step-daughter by virtue of this marriage was the wife of John Winthrop, Jr., with whom Hugh would become a friend.[18]

In 1626, assisted by his new money,[19] Hugh ventured to London, not to preach, but to study religion further. Some of Hugh’s friends, though, persuaded him to preach one time at St. Sepulcher’s Church; a “young man” in attendance, whom Hugh said was an MP, offered to arrange for Hugh 30 pounds yearly if he would preach at St. Sepulcher’s once a month.[20] Hugh agreed to do so, and his sermons eventually attracted so many devotees as to necessitate weekly appearances.[21] A hundred per sermon Hugh claimed to convert to Puritanism. Hugh achieved so much success, he said, that others experienced “envy and anger.”[22]

That might just be rationalization for what happened shortly thereafter. In November of 1626, the Earl of Warwick invited Hugh to preach at Christ Church. On the pulpit, Hugh prayed that the Queen abandon her Catholic religion, lest she die for her sinful practices. Subsequently, the authorities imprisoned Hugh, but Warwick paid bail to release him. His brush with jail did not deter Hugh, for he then prayed again, at St. Sepulcher’s, that the Queen forswear Catholicism. Hugh thusly won a six-month holiday in New Prison, without the possibility of bail. Once Hugh had finished his sentence, the Bishop of London revoked his preaching license, ignoring Hugh’s protestations of loyalty to the Church of England. Despite having no license, Hugh resumed preaching anyway, at his old Rayleigh church, for the rector and the wardens weren’t cognizant of Hugh’s expulsion from the ministry. Hugh justified his defiance of the Church’s commands and doctrines, while simultaneously professing loyalty to it, by insisting he was loyal to the true Church of England, the core of it, if not to its current wretched façade.

Meanwhile, throughout the 1620’s, Hugh engaged in other activities aside from preaching to advance the Puritan cause. He helped to fund lay appropriations, whereby Puritans purchased church ministries throughout England for Puritan preachers to occupy. Also, in May 1628, Hugh bought 50 pounds of stock in the New England Company, which eventually changed into the Massachusetts Bay Company.[23] Presumably from his participation in this enterprise, Hugh knew John White of Dorchester, whom Hugh called, “That good man, my dear firm friend.”[24]

In the late 1620’s, because of “some trouble” (likely his confrontations with Church officials), Hugh journeyed to Holland. Once there, Hugh adhered to the army of United Provinces Stadholder Frederick Henry, who practiced the religion for which Hugh’s paternal ancestors suffered oppression, but tolerated other Protestant religions as well. Frederick’s forces included four English regiments; Hugh became the chaplain of the regiment under the command of Sir Edward Hardwood. Hugh accompanied Hardwood’s regiment through several battles, while also learning the virtues of the tolerant Protestantism Frederick espoused.

Hugh departed the Stadholder’s army in winter 1631 to attend the Convention of Protestant Estates at Leipzig, which Gustavus Adolphus had organized. The Convention’s purpose was to mobilize the various Protestant churches against Roman Catholicism, but the divide between Calvinists and Lutherans proved too great for the sects to cohere into a large Protestant alliance. But the Convention did provide Hugh yet another outlet to demonstrate his commitment to the worldwide struggle against Catholics.[25]

Following the Convention of Protestant Estates, Hugh Peters accepted in 1632 the ministry of an English church in Rotterdam. Under Hugh’s guidance, his congregation accepted ideas in which the future Independents would believe. In addition, Hugh displayed his tolerant leanings by refusing to shun the Brownists, of whom many English religious figures disapproved. Neither of these activities pleased the Church of England, which was, with Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud at the forefront, at this time attempting to establish control over English churches in the Netherlands. Facing harassment from the Laudians, Hugh left the Continent.[26]

Upon the advice of some of his Puritan friends in New England, Hugh resolved to sail to America.[27] After evading Laud’s minions in England with great difficulty, Hugh boarded a ship bound for Massachusetts in July 1635. Accompanying Hugh on this adventure were, amongst other passengers, Sir Henry Vane, the son of a privy councilor, and John Winthrop, Jr., the husband of Hugh’s stepdaughter.

The men found a colony suffering from economic depression and political division. Hugh drew on his experience and fascination with trade and finance to help Massachusetts improve its economy, by urging its inhabitants to focus on commercial endeavors, such as shipbuilding and fishing, instead of on agriculture, as the colonists had been doing. In order to ameliorate the political discord, which Hugh loathed, he worked with Vane to set up a “reconciliation meeting” of myriad factions in November 1635. Hugh sat on a committee to revise Massachusetts law as well, aiming to help reduce “legal disputes.” A year after his arrival, in December 1636, Hugh replaced Roger Williams as minister at Salem, and fairly quickly ended the conflict Williams had engendered…[28] if only by excommunicating Williams and having one of his followers killed so everyone in Salem would be too scared to challenge their former preacher’s expulsion or their new preacher’s doctrine.[29]

Around the same time, Hugh also seemed to flout his own principles of Protestant toleration in a confrontation with Ms. Anne Hutchinson. Hutchinson had formulated three levels of Christian progression, beginning with “nature and instinct,” proceeding to “law and human reason,” and concluding with “spirit, grace, and divine reason.” According to Hutchinson, many people who occupy the second stage mistakenly presume themselves to inhabit the third stage; one of those individuals, said Hutchinson, was Hugh Peters. Hugh, in turn, labeled Hutchinson’s beliefs heresy, that would encourage worshipers to ignore the words of God, thus exhibiting “devil-inspired individualism.” As of December 1636, though, Hutchinson’s followers paid no attention to what Hugh and his compatriots had to say.

Consequently, in May 1637, Hugh played an integral role in castigating and expelling Hutchinson and her top devotees from Massachusetts. Hugh perceived little contradiction between his actions vis-à-vis Hutchinson and Williams followers, and his ostensible tolerance of other Protestant viewpoints. Tolerance, to Hugh, did not extend to those he considered subversives trying to foment discord and disagreement. Also, because in Hugh’s mind, New England was a more perfect godly society than old England, displaying more intolerance in Massachusetts was acceptable. Elsewhere, where the godly had not established as much control, Hugh’s utilitarian expediency demanded more toleration. And, even if a slight contradiction did exist between his actions in America and in Europe, Hugh believed God might lead people to do inconsistent things, to shape a consistent larger picture.[30] Of course, that philosophy would have granted Hugh license to do essentially anything he wanted, but Hugh did not acknowledge that.

A few years after the business with Hutchinson and Williams, on August 3, 1641, Hugh departed Massachusetts to return to England, with the mission of assisting with creditors, encouraging the West Indies cotton trade, jumpstarting migration to Massachusetts, and helping the Puritan cause any way he could. When he arrived in his home country, Hugh discovered a nation in strife, the English Civil War just beginning.[31] With godly fears of a Catholic attack from Ireland permeating the religious atmosphere after the outbreak of an Irish rebellion[32] on October 23, 1641, Hugh abandoned his position as colony representative and signed on as chaplain to a parliamentary force heading for Ireland, which Hugh determined, “The clearest work.” Hugh’s intention was to do everything he could to “Christianize and civilize the Irish.”

Ultimately, though, Hugh’s stint in Ireland did not last long enough to effect any sort of mass Irish conversion, for the parliamentary force stayed in Ireland only from June to September 1642, achieving little success. Hugh still professed worry over the plight of Protestants in Ireland, however, and he preached his concern to his fellow Englishmen. Finally, in November 1646, Parliament assigned Hugh to organize supplies and troops destined for Ireland. His good performance of that task recommended Hugh for the mission of arranging materiel for Oliver Cromwell’s expedition to Ireland in 1649, to subdue the Irish rebellion completely. After finishing his initial assignment, Hugh then joined Cromwell’s army in Ireland as a chaplain and an advisor to Cromwell. Hugh suggested that Cromwell prosecute the war mercilessly, engaging in an archaic shock-and-awe campaign to persuade the Irish to lay down their arms, thus potentially ending the conflict more quickly.

Hugh’s work in Ireland, though, was but a small portion of his contribution to the parliamentary cause during the English Civil War; for most of the conflict, he occupied himself in England. On April 29, 1644, Hugh Peters went to the Committee of Both Kingdoms. Soon afterwards, Hugh joined the army of his old friend, the Earl of Warwick, as a chaplain. When the winds of war began blowing against Parliament, Hugh made preparations to flee England, but when Parliament’s fortunes increased, Hugh started propagandizing for Parliament throughout the country, via his passionate and persuasive sermons. Hugh additionally preached to Londoners “against the Reformed Churches, the Presbyterial Government, Assembly, Uniformity, Common Council and City of London and for a toleration of all sects.”[33] Political Independents welcomed Hugh’s efforts, but moderates found him off-putting, and political Presbyterians reviled the man.[34]

Beginning in October 1645, Hugh performed as chaplain for Oliver Cromwell, commencing a political relationship in which Hugh would, from that time forward, enthusiastically support Cromwell. As a chaplain attached to Cromwell’s unit, Hugh frequently briefed Parliament about the battles in which Cromwell’s forces engaged. Hugh acted, too, at the behest of other generals besides Cromwell; in February 1646, Fairfax sent the Cornish Hugh Peters on a mission to persuade the Royalists in Cornwall not to attack Fairfax’s men. Personally going to Royalist headquarters in Cornwall, Hugh sparked talks that successfully convinced the Cornish Royalists not to assail Fairfax’s army.[35]

After the first war concluded, Hugh defended the Army’s decision not to disband in his 1647 tract A Word for the Armie, and Two Words for the Kingdom, saying that the Army had not yet received arrears and indemnity and had needed to fight corruption in the House of Commons, and that the Army was still essential to preservation of law and order, and to resolve the Irish troubles. Furthermore, the Army deserved gratitude for winning the war against the King. In answer to concern over some soldiers’ lack of discipline, Hugh explained that lack of pay was the motivation, so compensating the troops for their efforts was necessary.[36]

Hugh did other things to keep himself busy after the first war as well. Motivated by his lifelong revulsion of disagreement, Hugh said during the 1647 Putney debate that the participants should try to find a subject on which they agreed, after the discussion of voting and representation proved divisive.[37] Hugh accompanied Cromwell as chaplain during both the second war and the 1649 Irish campaign, as heretofore described. In what might have sealed his fate after the Restoration, Hugh also propagandized for the King’s death,[38] calling him “a dead dog.”[39] Hugh was not actually averse to the idea of monarchy—during the first war, he claimed to be fighting for England’s true king, and years afterward, when Cromwell was considering kingship, Hugh was ready to preach in support of a King Oliver I—but the behavior of Charles I led Hugh to resolve he could not fit within a godly system, so he had to die.[40]

Following the King’s execution, Hugh continued to preach, now in Whitehall, on behalf of his friend, the new Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.[41] In March 1654, Cromwell appointed Hugh to a new government group, the Commissioners for the Approbation of Public Preachers, also known as Triers, whose objective was to ensure that preachers applying for open positions were qualified for them. Hugh led the Triers to approve men based on their moral rectitude, not their religious denomination, because for Hugh, morality was what mattered, not theology (at least, when he was in England). Under Hugh’s guidance, the Triers accepted Independents, Presbyterians, Baptists, and, surprisingly, Episcopalians.

When Oliver Cromwell died, Hugh Peters preached at his funeral. “My servant, Moses, is dead,” Hugh proclaimed. Hugh proceeded to support Oliver’s son, Richard Cromwell, as Lord Protector, until his departure at the Restoration. Hugh offered some words of encouragement for the Restoration, but generally withdrew from public life after the ascension of King Charles II.

That did not save from the wrath of the newly empowered Royalists. For many of them, even though Hugh did not personally help execute King Charles I or sign his death warrant, Hugh’s public relations efforts were still quite pernicious, maybe more than the regicide itself.[42] The Act of Indemnity excluded Hugh,[43] and in May 1659, the Royalists put Hugh in jail. On October 12, 1659, Hugh’s trial judge, after denying Hugh legal representation, found Hugh guilty of assisting with the King’s execution, and sentenced Hugh to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered.” A year later, on October 16, 1660,[44] Hugh perished at Charing Cross.[45]

Throughout his 40 years on the public stage, Hugh Peters sounded one note continuously, both in his speeches and in his writings: the necessity of faith in God. In A Word for the Armie, for example, Hugh suggested that many of the problems England was experiencing had their roots in popular lack of belief in and gratitude towards God. To solve England’s difficulties, Hugh recommended that Englishmen trust in God more, to “manage” England well. The English should also have devoted themselves to God more, because as things stood, “We content ourselves to give him a female when we have a male in the flock.” (Apparently, the concept of equality between the sexes eluded Hugh, not that anyone else in the era was progressive on the matter.) If England’s government were to improve, godly men, obsequious before their Lord, would have to run it.[46]

Hugh’s belief in the need for faith had not changed when, while waiting in the Tower of London for his impending doom, Hugh wrote to his daughter in 1660 A Dying Father’s Last Legacy to an Onely Child. In this text, Hugh unceasingly expounded the wisdom of embracing God and Christ. On the second page, Hugh told his child, “Above all things know, that nothing can do you any good without Union with Christ.” Page 70 found Hugh commanding, “Stand in awe of God, and fear him always; hold to the Word as to Life; Question not Truths… Be very low and humble before the Lord.” Hugh concluded the work with a poem, in which, “I wish you neither Poverty, / nor Riches, / but Godliness…” Of course, Hugh also had to work in a condemnation of Roman Catholicism: “I wish Religion / truly pure may grow, / Above Profaneness and Idolatry, / Which strike to nip it, / and to keep it low…”[47]

A Sermon by Hugh Peters: Preached Shortly before His Death, from 1660 as well, echoed many of the same points. Only Jesus Christ can “give satisfaction to the soul,” said Hugh. Fleeting riches and beauty do not suffice for true happiness, and people who seek those things above all else will never find the peace Christ can bring. Instead, such vain interests comprise “a worm in the gourd that will eat it out.” If a person does not have Christ, Satan will draw him or her into Hell, a fate from which neither money nor friends can offer protection. In order to enjoy the benefits Christ provides, one cannot embrace him only when he is most beneficial; the proposition is all-or-nothing. Mere Gospel will not bring one to Christ, for the “Doctrine of Devils,” such as Catholicism, can stymie it. Only Christians with “sincere affection after Christ,” strong faith from reading Scripture, and humility before God can attract Christ into them. The destiny of everyone else lies in the fires of Hell.[48]

In his writings, Hugh did talk about more than just God. In Last Legacy, he included some autobiographical details towards the end, and he registered sorrow at for his popularity,[49] which is hardly surprising, considering his notoriety earned him a death sentence. In A Word for the Armie, Hugh made some secular recommendations as to how the English might improve their government. He thought Parliament should make journalists accountable to the state, to prevent “scandalous and slanderous personal affronts,” or if that were impossible, to hold people accountable for what they wrote, for the public would know their names. Paying government officials, so they would not connive for money, also struck Hugh as a good idea. Hugh wanted peaceful relations with other countries, particularly Scotland, and successful resolution of the Irish situation (which came in 1649). Also on Hugh’s agenda were proposals to feed all the English children, institute academies to teach “piety and righteousness,” abolish primogeniture, make prisons more humane, eliminate judicial pageantry, quicken legal proceedings, apportion Parliament seats better, and allow people to ward off tyranny by choosing their own representatives.[50]

Even though few people would know of Hugh Peters today, he was an influential speaker and propagandist in his time. Many of his suggestions for the shape of English government might not have took hold, and his achievements on behalf of Parliament might have been transitory, but some of Hugh’s other accomplishments, such as assisting with the financial rescue of Massachusetts, which could have enabled it to lead a revolution a century later, continue to resonate today. Perhaps contemporary sentiment against Hugh, for the role he played in the execution of King Charles I, has prevented at least semi-popular recognition of him.