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Home  »  Volume VII: English CAVALIER AND PURITAN  »  § 21. Lesser Laudians

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

VI. Caroline Divines

§ 21. Lesser Laudians

Besides these, there were, of course, many minor Laudians—some, in their writings, like Roger Mainwaring, of political rather than literary fame; others, such as William Strode, with a nice taste in poetry which showed itself happily in their sermons; others, again, like Richard Steward, one of the many notable fellows of All Souls who bore their part in the Laudian movement and stood for the king, with the church party, throughout the war and in exile. He held office after office, and, at last, the deanery of Westminster—where, however, he never secured possession. He was prominent among those who destroyed the influence of Calvin at Oxford and handed on the influence of Laud to the next generation. He has already been named among the notable preachers. Others who left few remains must not be forgotten. The circle of the primate’s friends and disciples was a wide one.

At the fringe of the literary and ecclesiastical party which looked to Laud as teacher and patron were wits like Abraham Wright, whose Five Sermons (1656) most cleverly took off the different styles of his age, and showed the difference between “ship board breeding and the Universities”; and Giles Widdowes, author of The Lawless Kneeless Schismatical Puritan (a blow for lawyer Prynne), but as Anthony à Wood tells us,

  • a harmless and honest man, a noted disputant, well read in the schoolmen, and as a conformable to and zealous in the established discipline of the Church of England as any person of his time, yet of so odd and strange parts that few or none could be compared to him.