The Lancashire and Cheshire Presbyterian Campaigns of 1646 and the Politics of Accommodation

Mawdesley, James (2024) The Lancashire and Cheshire Presbyterian Campaigns of 1646 and the Politics of Accommodation. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 75 (3). pp. 457-479. ISSN 0022-0469

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Abstract

This article explores the politics which lay behind the Presbyterian petitioning campaigns in Lancashire and Cheshire during 1646. Focusing particularly upon clerical activists, this article traces the linkages back to the petitioning campaigns of 1641-2 and highlights the continuities in both personnel and an impulse for accommodation. The article unravels the networks which stretched between London and north-western England, and investigates how Presbyterian politics in London in 1646 might have influenced the Lancashire and Cheshire campaigns for a Presbyterian settlement of the Church. Finally, the article comments upon why the Lancashire campaign succeeded when the Cheshire campaign did not.