Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642, by Mary Morrissey

The recent surge of interest in preaching in early modern England has reached a peak in a trio of recent publications: Arnold Hunt’s The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 (2010); the wide-ranging series of essays in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Peter McCullough and others (2011); and this reappraisal of the sermons given at Paul’s Cross under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. All share an awareness of the pitfalls faced by modern scholars: the siren call of contemporary handbooks on how to preach; the growing variety of types of sermon delivered, and the different functions they served; and the need to try hard to determine what was actually delivered from the pulpit and how listeners understood and appropriated what was said. What distinguishes Mary Morrissey’s volume is that it focuses on a single pulpit—the one located outdoors, next to the old preaching cross, in the churchyard of St Paul’s cathedral in London—and on the quite high proportion which survive, in one form or another, of the sermons given there (or in the choir) from 1558 to 1642 on Sunday mornings and on festive or commemorative occasions during the week. It was this corpus of about 250 sermons which, as a student of literature, Dr Morrissey wished to analyse, but found herself constantly seeking to contextualise. The result is a two-part study. The first four chapters, based on extensive digging in a wide variety of sources, provide a fascinating account of the logistics of the Paul’s Cross sermons: how the preachers were chosen; the arrangements for the sermons’ delivery; the tussles between the different groups—bishop, privy council, and Corporation of London—that felt they had a stake in what was said there; the audiences for live sermons, dominated by members of the corporation and city guildsmen in their livery, topped up by other citizens and interested visitors to the capital; and the means by which the sermons were disseminated in manuscript or print to a wider audience thereafter. Most preachers, it is suggested, fell within a broadly defined category of ‘conformable’; and the majority of their sermons purveyed catechetical information and exhortations to perform ‘the uncontroversial duties of a Christian subject’, such as love of God, attendance at church services, charity to others and obedience to those in authority. But, in seeking to isolate the role that this series might have played in the life and conflicts of the capital and nation from 1558 to 1642, Morrissey decided to focus on the minority of sermons that probably caused most stir by broaching political, ecclesiastical and doctrinal controversies. It was also in these, she believes, that the preachers, while never forgetting that their inspiration came from the Holy Spirit, felt able to vary their normal patterns of constructing sermons. In the last three chapters, therefore, she focuses on sermons preached at Paul’s Cross on political anniversaries associated with the Crown, such as the monarch’s accession day and the Fifth of November, on sermons targeted against the Church of Rome, and against enemies nearer home among zealous puritans, presbyterians and separatists. In these chapters Morrissey provides many insights into the strategies evolved and conventions adopted by preachers in order to combine their duty to preach the Law and the Gospel with their sincere belief in the need for good government and unity among both clergy and laity.

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