Thomas Paget (Puritan minister)

of Trinity College was ordained deacon by the local ordinary, Martin Heton, on 6 June 1609 at Little Downham,[3] a Cambridgeshire village where the Bishop of Ely had a palace: this seems to be him, although the Clergy of the Church of England database makes no link between this and his later career in Manchester.

[13] However, he was appointed well before this, although clearly not as early as 1603, or even 1600, which some sources give, basing this on the earliest possible date attributable to a "platform" or plan of the chapel in which a Mr Paget is mentioned.

The king responded positively and ordered Thomas Morton, the Bishop of Chester, who was the preacher on the occasion, to prepare the Declaration of Sports, which was later applied to the whole country but was read out initially only in Lancashire.

[37] Shortly afterwards, Morton published A Defence of the Innocencie of the Three Ceremonies of the Church of England, viz., the Surplice, Crosse after Baptisme, and Kneeling at the Receiving of the Blessed Sacrament.

[40] His successor at Chester, John Bridgeman was initially fairly lenient, although the churchwardens of Blackley were ordered in 1622 to provide copies of the Book of Homilies and the Thirty-Nine Articles and warned not to allow unlicensed preachers into the pulpit.

On the basis of 1 Corinthians 14:40, "Let all things be done decently and in order," Morton argued that it was The Puritan view was that the practice was idolatrous, defying the Second Commandment,[43] Exodus 20:4–6, and evoking the Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass.

[48] From 1625 the country had been ruled by Charles I's, who was perceived as an Arminian,[47] opposed on a much deeper level to the Puritans, and closely supported by William Laud, whom he initially appointed Bishop of London.

In 1631 the Court of High Commission moved to serve Paget and other ministers with attachments for the various fines they had incurred, which increased at each hearing, and ordered they be imprisoned at York until they could offer securities.

With still higher fines and costs mounting, they fled, taking refuge in the Dutch Republic, where his brother John was pastor of the English Reformed Church, Amsterdam.

In 1639 she published his Meditations of Death in, adding her own preface and dedicating it to Charles I's sister, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, the Protestant heroine of the Thirty Years' War.

In 1641 Thomas Paget made a significant intervention in the English political situation by arranging for the publication in London and presentation to the Long Parliament of his brother's book: A Defence Of Church-Government, Exercised in Presbyteriall, Classicall, & Synodall Assemblies.

Examination of the finished product immediately reveals Thomas's work to have been printed entirely separately from the rest of the book: it is unnumbered and is a much cruder and more rushed piece of typesetting.

The title page of the book explains that it advocates the "Authority of Classes and Synods, against the Patrons of Independencie: answering in this poynt Mr Davenport..."[56] It was originally a response to John Paget's problems at the Amsterdam church in the previous decade.

Countering fears that Presbyterianism was incompatible with good order, he was able to point out that "The United Netherlands doe finde by experience that Presbytery is no way to conducible to Anarchie.

The town had fallen to the Parliamentarians as a result of a daring operation planned by Willem Reinking, a Dutch professional soldier, under the direction of its parliamentary committee, on 21 February.

Some time in 1646 the congregation of St Chad's Church elected him as their minister, "for this was now become the mode of appointment,"[65] as Owen and Blakeway, both later Anglican clergymen in the town, remark in their 1825 History of Shrewsbury.

[70] The entries shows that the honorific "Saint" was no longer being used in the name of the church, in line with Puritan practice, which allowed it only for New Testament personages, or sometimes just for the Twelve Apostles.

[80] The scheme is recorded in a document entitled The Severall Divisions and Persons for Classicall Presbyteries in the County of Salop,[81] issued over the signature of Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester.

Mackworth was one of Paget's parishioners and had a history of involvement in ecclesiastical politics stretching back to the 1620s, when he had opposed Peter Studley, the Laudian vicar of St Chad's and refused to kneel for communion.

With the king implicated in the outbreak of a Second English Civil War and Presbyterianism tainted by the invasion of the Scottish Engagers, the Independents in the New Model Army began to put pressure on Parliament for a more radical turn.

[82] Paget had important family links to Oliver Cromwell, who increasingly set the pace politically, as well as apparently close relations with his chief parishioner.

"[92] Although news only reached London in July[93] The outbreak of bubonic plague began a month earlier, as a marginal note in Chad's register makes clear.

[75] Owen and Blakeway's calculations show a peak in the summer months, with 76 in August, and a fairly rapid decline in the winter, tailing off to just two plague deaths in January 1651.

It was on 16 August that the Council of State wrote to Mackworth ordering him "to turn out of his garrison all such persons as, either in the pulpit or elsewhere, by seditious words endeavour to stir up sedition and uproar among the people.

It seems that normal life was resumed fairly quickly, Whitelocke noting as early as December 1650 news "Of the ceasing of the plague in Shrewsbury, and thereupon that the markets were as full as ever.

"[101] There is no trace of an incumbent at Alkmund's before 29 August 1651, just after the king's army moved on, when the corporation agreed to add £5 towards the salary of Richard Heath,[102] and it was not until January 1653 that Francis Tallents was installed at Mary's.

Under the Rule of the Major-Generals, Shropshire fell into the area governed by the Independent James Berry[106] and he brought to the fore Thomas Hunt, a leading local Presbyterian.

[107] Baxter visited and encouraged John Bryan, who was having a hard time with a conservative congregation at Holy Cross, the former Shrewsbury Abbey, just to the east of the town.

The congregation of Julian's wanted to secure one of these fresh voices and began to spend considerable sums on improvements to the church, as well as making a direct approach to Newcome.

[115] Thus Newcome and Heyricke were able to visit Paget socially, sitting in the rectory at Stockport to hear the old man reminisce about the resistance to Bishop Morton, its former occupant.