This project is made possible by First Presbyterian Church and the Westminster Assembly Project. For more information, see the Bibliography Project.

The addition of Dr Volmer to the team as a Leverhulme Post-doctoral Research Associate should lead to significant enhancement of the critical edition of the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, enabling the creation of indispensable editorial content for future researchers. 

The correspondence of the Westminster Assembly chiefly comprises exchanges with Parliament and with foreign states, churches and persons. The letters of the Assembly provide insight into international ecclesiastical relations and structures, personal friendships, academic connections, and political responses to ecumenism. From the perspective of English Parliamentary history, the letters reveal which ecclesiastical bodies on the continent were suspected of being most favourable to the Parliamentary war effort and the cause of reform. The Assembly’s correspondence also sheds light on the errors of Parliament and its Assembly: the Reformed Church of France was angry when it received letters from the Assembly, the Church of Bremen was irritated when it did not. The Assembly’s unpublished papers remain priceless for researchers, as they shed light on intellectual connections and patterns of communication as well as provide us with a new window into the history of the Assembly and Parliament.    

The Assembly is known to have corresponded with bodies in Germany, France, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Most of the research in the Netherlands will be conducted with the help of Prof. Fred van Lieburg. Dr Inga Volmer will assist in visiting archives elsewhere in Europe.

The correspondence of the Westminster Assembly chiefly comprises exchanges with Parliament and with foreign states, churches and persons. The letters of the Assembly provide insight into international ecclesiastical relations and structures, personal friendships, academic connections, and political responses to ecumenism. From the perspective of English Parliamentary history, the letters reveal which ecclesiastical bodies on the continent were suspected of being most favourable to the Parliamentary war effort and the cause of reform. The Assembly’s correspondence also sheds light on the errors of Parliament and its Assembly: the Reformed Church of France was angry when it received letters from the Assembly, the Church of Bremen was irritated when it did not. The Assembly’s unpublished papers remain priceless for researchers, as they shed light on intellectual connections and patterns of communication as well as provide us with a new window into the history of the Assembly and Parliament.    

The Assembly is known to have corresponded with bodies in Germany, France, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Most of the research in the Netherlands will be conducted with the help of Prof. Fred van Lieburg. Dr Inga Volmer will assist in visiting archives elsewhere in Europe.

The workshop was made possible by the generous gift of the particpants’ time and expertise and by the financial support of the University of Edinburgh. It was hosted by the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. The editors wish to express their thanks to all involved.

Workshop participants
Prof. David F. Wright (Emeritus, New College, University of Edinburgh)
David is the project’s founder, consulting editor and chair of the advisory editorial board.

Dr Chad Van Dixhoorn (University of Cambridge)
Chad is the principal researcher of the Westminster Assembly Project and general editor of the edition in progress.
Prof. Gerald Bray (Samford University)
Prof. Bray is a theologian and a historian of biblical interpretation, creeds and councils. His most recent publication is a twenty-volume edition of the records of convocation of the Church of England.

Dr John Coffey (University of Leicester)
Among his other works, Dr Coffey has written two significant studies of colourful theological characters at the time of the Westminster Assembly. The first is a biography of the Scottish Calvinist Presbyterian, Samuel Rutherford. The second is a study of the English Arminian Congregationalist, John Goodwin.

Dr Mark Garcia (University of Cambridge)
Dr Garcia’s doctoral work focused on the soteriology of John Calvin. Mark is responsible for identifying the texts and theologians mentioned in the minutes of the Assembly and for aiding in the development of related editorial conventions.

Dr Aza Goudriaan (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Dr Goudriaan has published in the field of early-modern philosophical theology in Europe, with his second major work coming out last year: Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625-1750 (Leiden: Brill 2006). More recently he has focussed on the rise of and variations within Arminianism.

Dr Robert Letham (Evangelical Theological College of England and Wales)
Dr Letham writes and teaches in the field of systematic theology. He recently completed a study of Eastern Orthodoxy and he is now beginning a book on the theology of the Westminster Assembly. In preparation for that study he has read the entire minutes of the Assembly as they are transcribed in a recent doctoral thesis.

Dr Anthony Milton (University of Sheffield)
Dr Milton has published a major study of early-modern Reformed and Catholic theology and polemics, has edited a volume of primary texts on the Synod of Dort, and has recently completed a biography of Peter Heylyn the historian, polemicist and formidable foe of Presbyterianism.

Dr Jason Rampelt (Faraday Research Institute, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge)
Dr Rampelt works in intellectual history, particularly in the early-modern period. His PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University considered John Wallis (1616-1703), an Oxford mathematician and natural philosopher who was a scribe at the Westminster Assembly early in his career. Wallis outlived all of the other assemblymen and his autobiography preserves the last first-hand testimony of its proceedings.

Dr Inga Volmer (University of Cambridge)
Dr Volmer entered the politics of the 1640s by examining the tragedies of war in the three kingdoms. Thanks to the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy, Inga is now a research associate of the project working on the front lines of an archival search for the Assembly’s European correspondence.
 

Mr Halcomb’s doctoral research is funded by the Gates Cambridge Trust. He is studying Congregationalism in England and Wales, 1640-1672 under the supervision of Prof. John Morrill.

Workshop participants

Dr Mark Goldie (Churchill College, Cambridge)

Prof. Jackie Eales (Canterbury Christ Church University)

Mr Joel Halcomb (Project research assistant and PhD student, University of Cambridge)

Prof. Ann Hughes (Keele University)

Prof. Keith Lindley (University of Ulster)

Prof. John Morrill (Selwyn College, Cambridge)

Dr David Smith (Selwyn College, Cambridge)

Prof. John Spurr (University of Wales Swansea)

Dr Chad Van Dixhoorn (Wolfson College, Cambridge)

Dr Inga Volmer (Project postdoctoral research associate; University of Cambridge)

Dr David Wykes (Director, Dr Williams’s library; co-director, Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies) 
 

Key project members unable to be present: 

Prof. David F. Wright (Emeritus, New College, University of Edinburgh)

Dr Mark Garcia (formerly, Wolfson College; now minister in Oakdale, Pennsylvania)

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