Unlikely Advocates: The Vicar of Bisley and Other Clerical Defenders of Dancing in 17th-Century England

In 1618, Christopher Windle, vicar of Bisley in Gloucestershire, sent James I a lengthy Latin tribute to, and defense of, the king’s newly issued and highly controversial Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning Lawfull Sports. The Book of Sports, as it came to be called, sanctioned dancing and other recreations on Sundays and holy days provided that the dancers first attended divine services in their own parish church. The Book of Sports was James I’s intervention in the Sabbatarian debate, which dominated the discourse on dance in England from the 1580s through the 1630s. A true champion of the Terpsichorean art, Christopher Windle’s commentary applauded the monarchial approval of Sunday recreations, offered biblical passages to bolster the declaration’s arguments, and augmented these with his own justifications. Moreover, the treatise was not Windle’s first defense of dancing. In May 1610, he had vigorously promoted dancing from the pulpit, arguing that, not only was it perfectly acceptable to dance on Sundays, but it was actually just as “lawfull” as attending a sermon. This was a rather bold assertion, and some of Windle’s parishioners presented him in the episcopal court for irreverence. Windle saw the Book of Sports as a vindication of his views.

Christopher Windle might have been one of early modern England’s most passionate promoters of dancing, but he was certainly not alone in his approbation. Other parochial clergy like Edward Reese, curate of Mathon in Worcestershire, defended local dancers and dancing traditions, while Laudians like Peter Heylyn and Edmund Reeve highlighted the biblical sanction of dancing as part of their defense of Charles I’s reissue of the Book of Sports in 1633. This paper examines clerical defenses of dancing and their authors, arguing that they hold an essential key to understanding the religious reform movements and controversies of seventeenth-century England.