Dubbed by his enemies ‘the old illiterate Jew of Eton’, Rous was both more scholarly and more sincerely Christian than this insult suggests. Best known as the elderly Speaker of the Barebones Parliament, he deserves attention for his role in the 1620s as ‘an ideological spokesman for the Calvinist gentry’.
Rous entered Broadgates Hall, Oxford in 1593 and, ‘continuing under a constant and severe discipline’ as Anthony Wood reported, obtained his bachelor’s degree three-and-a-half years later. While at Oxford, he also penned his earliest known compositions, a sonnet praising verses by his friend Charles Fitzgeffrey on the life of Drake, published in 1596, and two lengthy poems collectively titled Thule, or Virtue’s History, probably written in the following year. These works demonstrated his familiarity with classical mythology, which he employed in the sonnet, and with Spenser’s Faerie Queene, which inspired the longer poems. Following Spenser, he introduced moralizing dictums into Thule, but they fit uncomfortably in an adolescent fantasy-world of distressed damsels, lusty knights, exotic monsters and gratuitous violence.
In 1598-9 Rous attended Leiden University, which had not yet become a centre for anti-Calvinist teachings. Envisaging a legal career for himself, he subsequently gained admission to the Middle Temple, where he was joined in 1602 by his step-brother, John Pym. His long friendship with fellow Middle Templar (Sir) Benjamin Rudyard* dated from the same period. Rous abandoned his studies, however, following a religious conversion. The date of this experience is uncertain, but a letter from his Oxford contemporary Degory Wheare in 1605 pictured Rous engaged in doleful contemplation of human nature. In 1619 he compared his change of direction metaphorically to Jonah’s flight from God’s purpose and his recall by ‘a storm from heaven’ to his true vocation as a prophet, the earliest statement of Rous’s personal sense of mission.
In 1609, on his last foreign journey, Rous encountered followers of the sceptic Montaigne in France. He probably also visited the Spanish Netherlands, since he made the acquaintance of the ambassador to Brussels, Sir Thomas Edmondes*, and his agent William Trumbull*.
During this phase of his life Rous apparently devoted himself to study and writing, and judging from the citations in his published works he accumulated an extensive library. He began by immersing himself in the Bible, the writings of major Church Fathers such as Cyprian and Augustine, and historians of the Early Church like Eusebius. By the start of the 1620s, however, he was exploring not only medieval authors, for example Bernard of Clairvaux and the mystic theologian Bonaventure, but also the Tridentine decrees, recent Roman Catholic apologists such as Robert Bellarmine, and the works of Montaigne. When he launched himself fully against Arminianism in 1626, Rous’s formidable arsenal of around 40 authors included two minor followers of Augustine (Fulgentius and Prosper), two medieval archbishops of Canterbury (Anselm and Thomas Bradwardine), and the then dean of Carlisle, the pro-Arminian Francis White, whom Rous had caught in print affirming Calvinist dogma.
The preoccupations which shaped Rous’s reading are clearly visible in his publications. His early religious treatises were essentially pastoral and evangelical in tone and content, the works of a man seeking Christian renewal within the existing framework of the Church of England. The first, which appeared in 1616, dedicated to Rous’s ‘brethren by the second birth’, makes this objective explicit in its title, Meditations of Instruction, of Exhortation, of Reproof: Endeavouring the Edification and Reparation of the House of God. This loose collection of short homilies on a diverse range of subjects was followed in 1619 by The Art of Happiness, a narrower and more systematic exposition of the path to salvation, presented as a tribute to his father. The third book, Diseases of the Time, Attended by their Remedies (1622), marked a return to the format of the Meditations, though it covered a smaller range of topics, each of which was addressed at greater length. The dedicatee was Rous’s old friend Sir Benjamin Rudyard, who had emerged in the 1621 Parliament as a champion of better provision for the clergy.
At this stage of his career Rous was a ‘Calvinist conformist’. His upbringing and conversion experience had left him in no doubt that he was one of the Elect, ‘the citizens of the New Jerusalem’, and he was sensible of the gulf between this spiritual brotherhood and the wider ‘nominal’ membership of the church: ‘How glad should brethren and countrymen be to meet in a strange land, especially in the land of enemies, such as this world is. Think not all of them to be Israel that put on the name of Israel’. At the same time, while critical of Sunday sports and even of marriages between members of the godly and ‘gentiles’, Rous asserted the purity of Anglican doctrine and attacked those who rejected theologically sound ministers on account of their personal failings. Similarly, he inveighed against the fashion whereby ‘a true saint is called a puritan’, a term which clearly for him signified separatism, to which he was opposed.
The fact that Rous’s theology was largely self-taught probably fuelled his fundamentalist conviction that human wisdom was, by definition, no guide to salvation, which lay rather in the unquestioning acceptance of God’s decrees. In consequence, he rated effective evangelists more highly than most learned divines, and advocated meditation as a means of achieving a greater personal dependence on the Almighty. This outlook began as a reaction to papist errors and to the sceptical philosophy which he encountered in France, but it was also to dictate his response to Arminianism. One other very personal concern was a profound desire for Christian unity. Predictably he built his vision around the Elect, but by basing its membership on the single criterion of acceptance of Christ as only Saviour, and dismissing the significance of disagreement over subsidiary issues, he could contemplate a true church which embraced not only most Protestants but also some Roman Catholics. Disunity was seen as the work of the devil and, like secular undermining of the ministry and all other bars to evangelism, was to be resisted at all costs.
Rous subsequently modified his core beliefs relatively little except in terms of emphasis, a process induced by his efforts to resist the new political and religious trends of the later 1620s and 1630s. Initially he adopted a more aggressive posture in an attempt to inject greater urgency into his call for spiritual renewal. In his 1623 publication Oyl of Scorpions: the Miseries of these Times Turned into Medicines and Curing Themselves, he declared himself a prophet of God’s wrath. Complete with a schematic diagram to ram home the argument, the book defined the signs of divine displeasure, highlighted the principal sins whose continuance threatened destruction, and outlined a programme of repentance. While it is tempting to see this as a prelude to Rous’s diatribes later in the decade, the new approach primarily represented a change of style rather than of underlying message. That he was already concerned about the gradual spread of Arminian ideas and the softening government stance towards Rome, not least as seen in James I’s Spanish Match negotiations, is suggested by the space devoted in Diseases of the Time to defending Calvinist predestination and attacking popery.
The rapid rise to prominence from 1624 of alleged advocates of Arminianism, together with the growing success of international Catholicism against Protestant ventures such as the Mansfeld and Cadiz expeditions, caused Rous to revise his priorities. His next work, Testis Veritatis, written in 1626, concentrated exclusively on the threat posed by Arminianism and popery, specifically as perceived in Richard Montagu’s Appello Caesarem of the previous year. Rous’s outlook was almost certainly also influenced by his step-brother, John Pym, with whom he was linked, as he later recalled, ‘by many bands of alliance, co-education and intimate conversation’. Prior to this point the two men had apparently pursued separate agendas. While Pym launched a virulent attack on recusancy in the 1621 Parliament, Rous in Oyl of Scorpions stressed the harm caused by nominal Christians, whom he termed ‘recusants of no conscience’.
Appello Caesarem had questioned the widespread assumption that the Church of England endorsed Calvinist doctrines of salvation. Rous’s carefully oblique response was presented as a theological study supporting Charles I’s declared aim of opposing Arminianism, to which he attached an addendum, The Grounds of Arminianism, Natural and Politic, addressing the controversy head-on. Testis Veritatis explored the themes of predestination, free will and certainty of salvation, endeavouring to demonstrate that on these subjects James I, Anglican teachings and the uncorrupted Catholic Church all affirmed Calvinist positions.
Rous concluded The Grounds of Arminianism with an appeal to the 1626 Parliament to preserve that truth and unity which had hitherto protected England from its enemies. That he intended this as a call to action is indicated by his own election as an MP that year. He was returned by the borough of Truro, presumably with the backing of the locally dominant Robartes family, relatives by marriage of his nephew William Rous, who had secured a seat there in 1625.
The abortive bill for ‘peace and unity’ was effectively countered on 16 June 1626 by a Proclamation ‘for the establishing of the peace and quiet of the Church of England’, which, while ostensibly even-handed, in practice banned publication of further attacks on Arminianism. Rous, who was recognized as one of Montagu’s leading critics, was therefore obliged to change his tactics once more.
Despite the show of pessimism about worldly institutions, Rous was again returned to Parliament in 1628, this time for Tregony. As the borough was controlled by allies of William Coryton*, who had emerged as a vocal critic of government policies, it is probable that Rous was now recognized in Cornwall as sharing their views. In the records of this Parliament reference is made only to ‘Mr. Rous’, who could be Rous’s cousin Anthony. However, it seems most likely that it was this Member who was intended, as the business concerned was of an almost exclusively religious nature. Indeed, in the 1628 session four of the committee nominations were for bills nearly identical in content to those debated in 1626, such as ‘peace and unity in church and commonwealth’ (7 Apr. 1628) and clerical subscription (23 April).
During the 1628 session a handful of MPs, including Sir Robert Harley and Christopher Sherland, began to draw connections between theological innovation and arbitrary government, and between ecclesiastical unity and national security. However, religious concerns in general took a poor second place to questions of civil liberty, Pym and Rous making little headway with their anti-Arminian agenda. The same pattern prevailed at the outset of the 1629 session, with the continuing impasse over Tunnage and Poundage in particular highlighted by the efforts of a sitting Member, John Rolle, to recover merchandize seized by customs farmers. When a new bill for Tunnage and Poundage was introduced on 26 Jan., Sir John Eliot and Sir Robert Phelips pressed for civil grievances to be resolved before discussion of the legislation.
I desire that we may look into the belly and bowels of this Trojan horse, to see if there be not men in it ready to open the gates to Romish tyranny and Spanish monarchy. For an Arminian is the spawn of a papist; and if there come the warmth of favour upon him, you shall see him turn into one of those frogs that rise out of the bottomless pit.
Having drawn thus far on the arguments of The Grounds of Arminianism, Rous took a new tack, asserting that the destruction of true religion was the real goal of those, like Manwaring, who stirred up division over property rights. Then, using the biblical image of Job, who, deprived of his goods by the devil, recovered them by refusing to reject God, he revived his demand, first made in The Only Remedy, for a national covenant: ‘hold fast [to] our God and our religion, and then shall we ... certainly expect prosperity in this kingdom’.
The king’s decision to do without Parliaments during the 1630s returned Rous to his life of retirement. Publication of his first new work, Catholic Charity, a reply to Roman Catholic polemic, was blocked until 1641, and, as in the aftermath of the 1626 Proclamation, he turned to less controversial subjects. His next books, The Mystical Marriage (1635) and The Heavenly Academy (1638) marked a return to his interest in inward spiritual development, using imagery drawn from the Song of Solomon and the world of education as an aid to contemplation. The decade presumably also saw the composition of his metrical psalms, his first recourse to verse since Thule, published in 1641 and adopted, with modifications, for use by the Church of Scotland.
Rous sat in both Short and Long Parliaments, and wasted no time in resuming his anti-Arminian attacks. The death of Pym, whose executor he was, deprived him in 1643 of his political mentor, but during the Civil War years he acquired a number of executive roles in Parliament, along with the provostship of Eton. His priority, however, remained settlement of religion, and, adopting Presbyterianism as the best way forward, he took the Covenant in 1643 and became a strong ally of the Scots in the Westminster Assembly. Theologically his outlook had changed little. He reiterated his views on election and free will in The Great Oracle (1644), and remained reluctant to take too narrow a view of true religion; his Balm of Love (1648), sometimes read as a plea for outright toleration, in fact essentially repeated his early conviction that membership of the true church of the Elect should take precedence over minor sectarian differences.