Contests, contexts, and the boundaries of conformity in early modern England

This chapter explores disputes over adiaphora or ‘matters indifferent’ to reflect on several paradoxical aspects of conformity in English Protestantism. These practices of worship, left unspecified in the Bible, seemed to operate in an area of potential compromise and contact between Reformed groups, and yet proved intractable, causing bitter conflicts over the right to exercise authority over these matters and the content of what was imposed. Yet the topic also linked to wider debates in which Protestants participated, and a core theme of the chapter is the revealing parallels between apparently dissociated quarrels, religious and temporal. Considering first the comparable and sometimes interwoven disputes over academic dress in mid-seventeenth-century Oxford, it shows both how such conflicts were impossible to avoid in daily life and how they became ensnared in issues of authority. Second, it turns to an example of how commentaries on Catholicism could also become entangled with the question of Reformed conformity. Finally, the chapter reflects on the complexities of the relationship between the theory and practice of religious co-existence. The interplay of official orders about how to worship, attempts to negotiate flexibility formally, and daily forbearance meant that Reformed conformity in early modern England had constantly fluctuating and porous boundaries.