The London Broughtonians

Abstract

In the first decade of the seventeenth century, a group of godly lay people with an interest in biblical scholarship began to gather in London. Among all the godly in London at this time, this group was distinguished by its devotion to the works of the Hebraist Hugh Broughton, who had died in 1612. Using archival evidence from across Europe and North America, this chapter reconstructs the activities of this group, giving us a rare glimpse into the intellectual lives of the puritan laity. By situating this reconstruction within the historiography of London godly communities as well as early modern print culture, this chapter recovers an ambitious community of men and women, bound by strong kin ties, who went beyond the usual godly pursuits of collecting sermons and annotating Bibles to engage with cutting-edge contemporary biblical criticism.