Coggeshall in Essex
On an east west Roman road in Essex, between Braintree and Colchester, on the Blackwater River, lies the little town of Coggeshall. With over 300 listed buildings and a thriving antiques trade, it fair teems with history. Founded in Roman times, the settlement is recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086. In 1140 King Stephen founded an abbey there and a pair of carvings in the parish church are said to represent him and his Queen Matilda. Since 1256 a weekly market has taken place there under a charter granted by Henry III. Its oldest pub, the Chapel Inn, was first licensed in 1554. There is also a plaque in the town recalling Thomas Hawkes who was martyred near there in 1555.
The parish church, St Peter-ad-Vincula (St Peter in chains), occupies the site of an earlier Norman church. One of the largest churches in Essex, it once vied with Chelmsford to be the Cathedral. The present church is in late Gothic perpendicular style and was built in the first quarter of the 15th Century with wealth accrued in the wool trade; its large size testament to Coggeshall's affluence at the time.
The first reference to an incumbent, John the Vicar, goes back to the taxation of the Borough of Colchester in 1286. He was the first in a long line of vicars and curates to serve the parish.
John Owen
In the 16th and 17th centuries some few incumbents were Puritans. Most famous is John Owen (1616-1683) who moved there in 1647, having begun his ministry 40 miles north in Fordham. In 1644 he had married Mary Rooke (d 1675) a native of Coggeshall. Three daughters were born to them between 1647 and 1648, while in Coggeshall - Mary who died in infancy, Elizabeth and another Mary.
In Coggeshall, Owen served congregations of around 2000, Sunday by Sunday, the population being swollen at the time by an influx of Flemish tradesmen. Shortly after his arrival, Parliamentary forces led by General Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671), came to recover Colchester from Royalists and rescue a group of Parliamentarians trapped within the town. They maintained a strict siege of the town for close on ten weeks, based in Coggeshall. It was at that time that a lifelong friendship developed between Owen and Fairfax, who introduced him to Cromwell, who appointed Owen as an army chaplain, despite his strong desire to remain in Coggeshall.
William Dyke
Before Owen there was a William Dyke, who appears to have had Puritan sympathies. The Victorian historian George Beaumont believes this is the same man as the one Benjamin Brook (1776-1848) in Lives of the Puritans calls Daniel Dyke. It is more likely that Daniel was William's son. Daniel was born in Hempstead, Essex, between Haverhill and Saffron Walden, and educated at Cambridge. When the anti-puritan three articles of Archbishop Whitgift (1530-1604) appeared in 1583, Dyke appears to have been suspended by Bishop Aylmer (1521-1594) and driven out of Essex. He then ministered in St Albans, dying in 1614. Several of his works were published posthumously by his better known brother, Jeremiah Dyke (1584-1639). He collected Daniel's works and published them in two volumes in 1635.
Others after Dyke and before Owen
Various men followed Dyke in Coggeshall, including the leading Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Before he was imposed on the church two other Puritans were driven out, according to Bryan Dale in his Annals of Coggeshall - Laurence Newman (d 1599) and Thomas Stoughton (1567-1622). In 1609 a John Dodd was presented to the living, remaining until his death in 1639. His wife Martha died in 1630. Their son Nehemiah appears to have been John's curate for some time.
Beaumont references an interesting note he found that says of this John Dodd
I have often heard it reported of holy Mr Dodd, yt. when one, inraged at his close convincing doctrine, pick't a quarrell with him, smote him on ye face and dashed out two of his teeth, this meek servant of CHRIST spat out the teeth into his hand and said, 'See here you have knocked out two of my teeth and that without any just provocation, but on condition that I might do your soul good, I would give you leave to dash out all the rest.'
Despite often being identified with the John Dod (c 1549-1645) known as Decalogue Dod, a minister in Oxfordshire, this is probably not the case, although both were Puritans.
Obadiah Sedgwick
John Owen's story is fairly well known. What we wish to do this evening is to turn the spotlight on his lesser known predecessor Obadiah Sedgwick. Sedgwick followed Dodd and preceded Owen, serving in Coggeshall 1639 to 1647.
Sedgwick was born near the end of the reign of Elizabeth I and grew up during the reign of James I, 1603-1625. He would have been in his mid-twenties when Charles I came to the throne and was approaching 50 when Charles was beheaded in January, 1649. Sedgwick died before the end of Cromwell's Protectorate which lasted 1553-1559. These were momentous and often tumultuous days both for the Kingdom of England and for the Kingdom of God.
Earlier
years
Sedgwick was born not in Essex but in Marlborough, Wiltshire, around 1600. He was the son of Joseph Sedgwick (b c1575), the vicar of St Peter's, Marlborough, a Puritan who later moved a short distance north to Ogbourne St Andrew.
Obadiah was the third of eight children. Preceded by Elizabeth and John, he was followed by Margaret (who died in infancy), Abigail, Sarah, Joseph and Jane.
His older brother John Sedgwick (1601?-1643) followed a similar career path to Obadiah, becoming Rector of St Alphege's, London Wall, in 1641, having served as Obadiah's curate in Coggeshall after his studies in Cambridge. In 1643 he died and was buried at St Alphage’s, the funeral sermon being given by Presbyterian Puritan Thomas Case (1598-1682). A younger brother, Joseph Sedgwick (1634-1702), also became a preacher after studying in Cambridge. He outlived all his brothers and sisters.
We know nothing of Sedgwick's earlier education but we know he was sent to be educated at Queen's College, Oxford, in June, 1619, later moving to Magdalen Hall (now merged with Hertford College) which had been a hotbed of Puritanism since the 1560s. He gained his Bachelors' degree in May 1620 and his Master's in January 1623.
Having taken religious orders, in 1624 Sedgwick became chaplain to military leader Horace Vere, first Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565-1635) whom he accompanied to the Netherlands, where the Thirty Years War showed no signs of abating. There is a manuscript letter in the British Museum from Sedgwick to Lady Vere, a great friend to several Puritans. Sedgwick may have been recommended to Vere by Puritan minister John Davenport (1597-1670). Barbara Donagan (ODNB) says Sedgwick and Davenport corresponded at this time and that they were "part of a network of reform-minded clergy".
Vere had previously been in the Platinate having been personally commissioned by James I to defend his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Frederick V (1596-1632), King of Bohemia, in a Protestant uprising against King Ferdinand (1578-1637).
Interestingly, in his will Sedgwick went on to bequeath to his son "one piece of gold plate given to me by the King and Queen of Bohemia and two other pieces of plate".
Gerald Mick says that Sedgwick would have "witnessed first hand Lord Vere's remarkable ability to deliver his troops from seemingly hopeless circumstances through his calm, wise and brave leadership."
In 1626, on the recommendation of Anthony Kingscot (d 1654), Sedgwick became tutor to Kingscot's cousin Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) later to become Lord Chief Justice. Hale was a Puritan sympathiser, although at that time he was struggling very much between the temptations of the flesh and thoughts of becoming a minister. In January 1630 Sedgwick gained his BD from Oxford.
Ministry
Sedgwick's first preferment in the church was as lecturer and curate at St Mildred's, Bread Street, London, one of many churches later lost to the Great Fire of 1666. Lectureships so beloved of the Puritans, aimed to be independent of the bishops but Sedgwick's Puritanism got him into trouble with Bishop of London, William Juxon (1582-1663), who had him removed in 1637, the only London minister he was able to treat this way.
Sedgwick found refuge in Essex, in Leez Priory, Little Leighs, near Chelmsford, with Robert Rich, the second Earl of Warwick, (1557-1658). Leez Priory became a frequent haunt. Rich was an English colonial administrator, an admiral, a Puritan by conviction and a friend of Cromwell's. Donagan says of Sedgwick "in person he appears to have possessed the sociability that Warwick valued in his clerical friends".
In June 1638 the lawyer and diarist Robert Woodford (1606-1654) heard Sedgwick preach and wrote
Blessed be thy name Oh Lord for so good an instrument in thy church Lord bless his labours and endeavours to thy glory and the salvation of souls for the Lord's sake.
Just over a year later, in July, 1639, Sedgwick was presented by Robert Rich to the vicarage of Coggeshall, in succession to Dod.
Coggeshall
While in Coggeshall, Sedgwick and his wife Priscilla Goddard, who had married back in Wiltshire in July 1638, had a son called Robert, born in 1641. he lived only 11 days. Beaumont says that they also had Francis (1640) and Susannah (1642). Sedgwick had been widowed twice before he married Priscilla. With his first wife Joane Fellow who he married in 1630 he had three children - Obadiah, Frances and Joseph. Joane died in 1635, when he married Judith Langley, to whom Susan was born. Judith also died a short way into the marriage.
Donagan says Sedgwick was said to be uxorious, which means to be excessively fond of one's wife. In the judgement of his enemies, she says, he was "a sensual and voluptuous man" which is no doubt unfair.
The Civil War period
For 11 years, from 1629-1640, Charles I had ruled without Parliament but in 1640 Parliament was recalled - first a short three week Parliament and then the Long Parliament, which was to last for 20 years. One of the first ways the change affected Sedgwick was that he regained his lectureship at St Mildred's.
A hostile witness, Anthony Wood (1632-1695), says that Sedgwick preached only to exasperate the people to rebel and confound episcopacy. He says
'twas usual with him, especially in hot weather, to unbutton his doublet in the pulpit, that his breath might be the longer, and his voice more audible to rail against the king's party, and those that were near to him, whom he called popish counsellors. He was a great leader and abettor of the reformation pretended to be carried on by the presbyterians; whose pious and peaceable maxims (like razors set with oil) cut the throat of majesty with a keen smoothness.
A similarly hostile Zachary Grey (1688-1766) unfairly calls him "a preacher of treason, rebellion and nonsense". The Royalist Sir John Birkhead (c 1617-1679) claimed that Sedgwick stole from Stephen Marshall (c1594–1655), another Essex preacher, and Marshall from Sedgwick but with no evidence.
An interesting story from the St Mildred period concerns a certain John Trumbull. He appears to have come to faith through Sedgwick's preaching. Trumbull says of himself that he grew up to be a man who regarded “nothing but back and belly and fulfilling my own lusts.” He became a sailor, and while away at sea came by a copy of Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven by Arthur Dent (d 1607),. He acquired it to practice his reading but was enthralled by the contents and went on to read a sermon on repentance by Dent and "so saw my misery" as he put it. He then moved “to a place where the means were twice” that is, where he could hear a Sunday sermon and a weekday lecture. It was when his ship came to London that he heard Sedgwick at St Mildred’s explain the difference between true believers and hypocrites. Moving on to Massachusetts, he settled there, Sedgwick's preaching now being part of his testimony.
In Autumn 1642 Sedgwick became chaplain to the regiment of foot raised by Denzil Holles (1599-1680). This Roundhead regiment fought at Edgehill in the first pitched battle of the Civil Wars.
Nehemiah Wharton, a young Parliamentarian volunteer, writes to his employer George Willingham (d 1651) of a parliamentary army fast at this time and how Sedgwick preached, the Lord extraordinarily assisting him “so that his doctrine wrought wonderfully upon many of us and doubtless hath fitted many of us for death which we all shortly expect."
In The Civil War in Worcestershire, 1642-1646, and the Scotch Invasion of 1651 John William Willis-Bund claims that Sedgwick, who he calls "one of the most fanatical of the fanatics of that day" fell into an argument with an Episcopalian rival called Cotterell over whether the Lord's Supper should be given to a Colonel Sandys, who was dying from gangrene caused by his wounds. Bund's source is a Royalist newspaper Mercurius Rusticus that refers to Sedgwick as "that scandalous, seditious minister of Essex".
Between 1642 and 1648 Sedgwick preached some 14 or 15 times to one or other of the houses of parliament. Donagan says that from 1642 to 1644 these sermons served the interests of his old political and religious allies. She cites Haman's Vanity (1643) on the discovery of Waller's plot, An Arke Against a Deluge (1644), making the best of defeat at Lostwithiel, and an unpublished sermon of 18 December 1644 supporting the self-denying ordinance, which demanded all MPS to choose between Parliament and the army. Thereafter, she suggests, new preachers and new issues took centre stage, and only one of his later parliamentary sermons was published (The Nature and Danger of Heresies, 1647).
J F Wilson in Pulpit in Parliament: Puritanism During the English Civil Wars says
Sedgwick preached at the May fast to Commons in 1642, early in the series. Although he appeared once more in that sequence and several times in the Lords regular fasts, he made his basic contribution to the program on extraordinary occasions, delivering sermons to nine or ten of them between 1643 and the early fall of 1648.
Westminster Assembly
Sedgwick was considered worthy to sit at the Westminster Assembly that met from 1643 to 1653. Brook says "he constantly attended" the sessions, Donagan that he was “an original and assiduous member”. He was appointed to a committee of 19 to work on the Confession and was part of a committee of 20 that endeavoured to deal with differences between Congregationalists and Presbyterians. A fervent Presbyterian, Sedgwick showed some sympathy to the Congregationalists but advocated the removal of Congregationalist Philip Nye (1595-1672) from the Assembly when he appealed for liberty of conscience and spoke of the dangers of established presbyterianism.
When William Barker deals with a number of Westminster Divines in his Puritan Profiles, he interestingly puts Sedgwick among the preachers. Robert M Norris calls him one of the liveliest and most colourful preachers at the Assembly and Gerald Mick says of him "He was a popular preacher who did not mince words". A faithful preacher, he saw many conversions.
Chad van Dixhoorn says interestingly of Sedgwick that he believed that it was "but labour lost to set up anything but Christ" when preaching. Ministers are "to be much in preaching Christ". Again, "your labours in preaching, will come to little, perhaps to nothing, if it not be Christ, or something in reference to Christ, on which you so laboriously insist in preaching."
Sedgwick was also appointed a licenser of the press in 1643. This was a censorship role that arose when a new licensing act was passed in 1643, following the abolishment of Starchamber in 1640. This is the act John Milton (1608-1674) wrote against in his famous Areopagatica.
On 6 October 1643 Sedgwick spoke at the Guildhall in favour of the solemn league and covenant with Scotland, a speech later published, along with others by Gardiner, Calamy and Burroughs, in Foure Speeches, 1646.
Covent Garden
Sedgwick held for a short time the rectory of St Andrew's, Holborn, on the sequestration (13 December 1645) of John Hacket (1592-1670) later Bishop of Lichfield. The next year, however, before May 1646, he was appointed Rector of St Paul's, Covent Garden, which had recently become a parish independent of St Martin's in the fields. Around this time he was also appointed to preach once a month at St James' Palace in the presence of Charles I's short-lived daughter, Elizabeth Stuart (1635-1650).
It was at this time that he resigned his Coggeshall pastorate to be succeeded by John Owen. Covent Garden was a prestigious church with influential people in the congregation, people such as Oliver St John MP (1598-1673), diarist Sir John Evelyn (1620-1706) and Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656). Brook says of Sedgwick in Covent Garden that there "he was exceedingly followed, and was instrumental in the conversion of many souls."
Under the Protectorate
Sedgwick became a member of the eleventh London classis in the Parliamentary Presbyterian system. In 1651 he unsuccessfully petitioned Parliament on behalf of his Presbyterian friend Christopher Love (1618-1651) who was tried by Sir Matthew Hale. The Welsh preacher had been involved in an unsuccessful plot to restore the crown.
On 20 March 1654 Sedgwick was appointed one of Cromwell's 'triers' and in August of the same year was a clerical assistant to the 'expurgators' or ejectors. The Commission of Triers was a 38 man administrative commission established by Cromwell to assess the suitability of future parish ministers. The triers, and a related set of "ejectors" (whose role was to dismiss ministers and schoolmasters who deemed unsuitable for office) were intended to be at the vanguard of Cromwell's reform of parish worship in England. The 38 were made up of nine laymen and 29 clergy including Joseph Caryl, Walter Cradock, Daniel Dyke, Thomas Goodwin, Thomas Manton, Philip Nye, John Owen, etc.
Portrait
A portrait of Sedgwick exists. It was engraved by William Richardson from the work of an unknown artist. Thomas Athow created a water colour portrait from this engraving in the 19th century. It shows a thin faced man in clerical dress with moderately long wavy hair under a skull cap and a generous moustache but no beard.
Final years
When his health began to fail, Sedgwick wanted to resign from his St Paul's rectorate. This he did in 1656, when a successor was found - another great Puritan, Thomas Manton (1620-1677). Manton is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Sedgwick's son-in-law. Manton was in fact married to a Mrs Morgan from Devon.
It appears from Sedgwick's will that by this time he had become a man of property, being lord of the manor of Ashmansworth, Hampshire, purchased in 1649 and left to his eldest son Obadiah. He also had land in Albourne, Sussex. He retired back to Marlborough, where he died at the beginning of January, 1658 being buried near his father, in the chancel of Ogbourne St Andrew. In his will he left 40 books and money to his wife; land, books, money and plate to Obadiah; money to his daughters and son and to his sisters, his niece and brother-in-law. The 'godly poor' of Covent Garden were also remembered.
Sedgwick's writings and theology
In his lifetime and immediately after as many as twenty works by Sedgwick appeared, some single sermons and some full length books.
Donagan says
Donagan says
The style of his printed sermons is clear and easy, less bloodthirsty than that of many of his contemporaries, but marked by vivid images: God's special providence, he said, 'clasps the Church, as the fethers of the hen doth the chicken' (Haman's Vanity, 15, 16).
- His earliest work seems to be Military discipline for the Christian soldier drawne out in a sermon preached to the captains and soldiers exercising arms in the artillery garden, at their general meeting in St Andrew's Undershaft, in London, October 18. 1638.
- Another of his early publications (1640) is Christ's counsell to his languishing Church of Sardis or the dying or decaying Christian, etc.
- In 1641 he published The doubting believer a treatise on assurance of salvation, looking at the nature of doubt in the lives of believers and suggesting a remedy grounded in faithfulness.
- In 1642 England's preservation or a sermon discovering the only way to prevent destroying judgements: preached to the Honourable House of commons at their last solemne fast, being on May, 25, 1642 appeared. It expounds the only way to escape judgement.
- Haman's vanity a sermon displaying the birthless issues of church-destroying adversaries preached to the Commons in 1643 explains how enemies of the church's attempts to destroy it are ultimately thwarted by God. "Written in the throes of the English Civil War" someone has written "Sedgwick’s work is a poignant testimony to God’s faithfulness in the midst of chaos."
- An ark against a deluge (1644) is another Parliamentary sermon. It discusses the nature of fear (the flood) and hope (the ark). It explains that when trials come, it is normal to be moved with fear - but in preparation for a flood, it is necessary to build an ark. It argues that we must fear enough to take action but have hope enough not to despair.
- The nature and danger of heresies of 1647 asks three central questions: What is God without truth? What is all the goodness of the gospel without truth? And what is the fabric of man’s salvation without truth? He concludes that a church is never closer to death than when it gives up its claim to the only truth.
- Also in 1647 he published a catechism A short catechisme being a briefe instruction of the most ignorant, before the receiving of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper.
- In 1648 The best and the worst magistrate or the people's happiness and unhappiness, laid open in a sermon preached at the late election of the Lord Mayor for the famous City of London, Sept. 29. 1648.
- Elisha's lamentation over the translation of Elijah was preached in 1654 at the funeral of a minister, William Strong. "His sermon is both a moving eulogy and clear window into Puritan teaching on death and heaven."
- In 1656 came The humbled sinner resolved what he should do to be saved or, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only way of salvation for sensible sinners. On Acts 16:39, 31 this work testifies to Christ’s status as the only way of salvation for sinners. Sedgwick distinguishes strong and weak faith, discusses the difficulty of believing, the misery of unbelief and the nature of living by faith. He also examines the concept of assurance and much more.
- In 1657 The fountain opened and the water of life flowing forth, for the refreshing of thirsty sinners was published. It grew out of sermons on Isaiah 55:1-3 preached in Covent Garden.
- Another work of 1657 is The Riches of Grace displayed in the offer and tender of salvation to poor sinners on Revelation 3:20. Here he says
What is meant by Christ’s standing at this door … Christ is a thousand times more willing to come to thee, than thou art to come to Christ … (pp 4, 5). He also speaks of Christ’s “earnest desire” for admittance. ... Yet at their doors does Christ stand and knock, he begs at the doors of beggars, mercy begs to misery, happiness begs to wretchedness, riches begs to poverty … (p 15) ... He hath stood at our doors more than one day or night, more than one week or two, more than one year or two, more than twenty years or two. Would he do this if he were not willing to come in and save us? (p 22)
- A final late work is on Psalm 23 The Shepherd of Israel, or God's pastoral care over his people which was published together with The doctrine of providence, practically handled on Matthew 10:29-31.
Posthumously, there was
- The anatomy of secret sins, presumptuous sins, sins in dominion, and uprightness: Wherein divers weighty cases are resolved in relation to all those particulars based on sermons from his St Mildred's days on Psalm 19: 12, 13. In it he says
The principal object of God’s eye is the inward and secret frame of the soul: labour, therefore, to be cleansed from secret sins. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me (Ps 66:18). Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts (Ps 51:6). Therefore is he often said in Scripture to search the heart and reins which intimates his special observation of the secret frame. It is true that God gives charge against open sins. Why? Because He would not have any to be profane; and so He gives singular charge against secret sins. Why? Because He cannot endure any to be hypocritical. The man is to God what his inside is. If you work wickedness in your heart, God will destroy you. Plaster your visible part with all sorts of pious expressions: if yet you can set up a form of sinning within, you are no-table hypocrites. The Lord sees you to be false and rotten, and He will discharge himself of you ….
- The Bowels of Tender Mercy Sealed in the Everlasting Covenant, wherein is set forth the nature, conditions and excellencies of it, and how a sinner should do to enter into it, and the danger of refusing this covenant-relation. Here he says in one place
… Christ did grieve at the hardness of man's heart, and yet thou dost not grieve at the hardness of thine own heart; he shed tears and wept over the hardness of Jerusalem, and yet thou weepest not at the hardness of thine own heart ….
- The parable of the prodigal containing The riotous prodigal, or, The sinners aversion from God; Returning prodigal, or, The penitents conversion to God; Prodigals acception, or, Favourable entertainment with God.
Lessons
1. The story of Obadiah Sedgwick is a reminder what a rich seam there is to mine in our Puritan heritage. There is so much to benefit from. Sedgwick is one of the more obscure Puritans and yet some of his books are well worth delving into.
2. There is perhaps a warning here against mixing politics with the gospel. It can be argued that at one point Sedgwick became so taken up with the politics of the day that there was the danger of it detracting from the gospel. We need to take care that nothing so distracts.
3. Let me quote again from his sermon on Revelation 3:20
There is a latitude, a full latitude in the offer of Christ and grace: No sinner (under the Gospel) is excluded by Christ, but by himself. Although the Application of Christ be definite and particular, yet the proclamation is indefinite and general.
Donald J McLean points out how committed Sedgwick was to the free offer of the gospel. It is reminder that the best Puritans while holding to particular atonement were in no doubt about freely offering Jesus Christ to sinners, as we should also.
4. Finally, there is the providence of God. Neither the church in Coggeshall nor the one in Covent Garden appear to be evangelical today. However, the gospel does continue. Next to Coggeshall parish church is the Wool Pack inn where Scotsman Thomas Lowrey ejected in 1665 held worship meetings under license from 1672. Evangelical churches exist in the area to this day and even in Covent Garden there is a Reformed evangelical church.
Paper given at the Essex onference
