Chaplains in Early Modern England: Patronage, Literature and Religion (Politics, Culture & Society in Early Modern Britain) (Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain) [Illustrated] 0719088348, 9780719088346

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. Chaplains in early modern England Patronage, literature and religion

Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

.

Edited by HUGH ADLINGTON, TOM LOCKWOOD & GILLIAN WRIGHT

Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

Chaplains in early modern England

Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

.

Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Politics, culture and society in early modern Britain General editors professor ann hughes p r o f e s s o r anthony milton professor peter l ake This important series publishes monographs that take a fresh and challenging look at the interactions between politics, culture and society in Britain between 1500 and the mid-eighteenth century. It counteracts the fragmentation of current historiography through encouraging a variety of approaches which attempt to redefine the political, social and cultural worlds, and to explore their interconnection in a flexible and creative fashion. All the volumes in the series question and transcend traditional interdisciplinary boundaries, such as those between political history and literary studies, social history and divinity, urban history and anthropology. They thus contribute to a broader understanding of crucial developments in early modern Britain.

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Recently published in the series The Cooke sisters: Education, piety and politics in early modern England gemma allen Black Bartholomew’s Day  david j. appleby Insular Christianity: Alternative models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c. 1570–c. 1700 robert armstrong and tadhg ó hannrachain (eds) Reading and politics in early modern England: the mental world of a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman  geoff baker ‘No historie so meete’  jan broadway Republican learning  justin champion This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth  patrick collinson Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653) and the patriotic monarch: Patriarchalism in ­seventeenth-century political thought cesare cuttica Brave community  john gurney ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution andrew hopper The politics of the public sphere in early modern England peter lake and steven pincus (eds) Henry Neville and English republican culture  gaby mahlberg Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum  jason mcelligott and david l. smith Laudian and Royalist polemic in Stuart England:  anthony milton The later Stuart Church, 1660–1714  grant tapsell (ed.) Civic portraiture and political culture in the English local community  robert tittler Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700  nicholas tyacke Charitable hatred: tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500–1700  alexandra walsham Crowds and popular politics in early modern England  john walter Deism in enlightenment England: theology, politics, and Newtonian public science  jeffrey r. wigelsworth

Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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. Chaplains in early modern England Patronage, literature and religion

.

Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

Edited by HUGH ADLINGTON, TOM LOCKWOOD and GiLLIAN WRIGHT

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan

Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2013 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, ­copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester m13 9nr, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, ny 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, ny 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, bc, Canada v6t 1z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for isbn 978 0 7190 8834 6 hardback First published 2013

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The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Scala with Pastonchi display by Koinonia, Manchester

Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Contents

.

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list of illustrations—vi notes on contributors—vii acknowledgements—ix note on conventions and list of abbreviations—x 1 Introduction Hugh Adlington, Tom Lockwood and Gillian Wright 1 2 The roles and influence of household chaplains, c. 1600–c. 1660 Kenneth Fincham 11 3 Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility: activities, categories and patterns David J. Crankshaw 36 4 Episcopal chaplains and control of the media, 1586–1642 Mary Morrissey 64 5 Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley, anti-Catholic controversialist abroad Hugh Adlington 83 6 Poetry, patronage and cultural agency: the career of William Lewis Tom Lockwood 103 7 ‘His Lordships First, and Last, CHAPLEINE’: William Rawley and Francis Bacon Angus Vine 123 8 Richard Corbett and William Strode: chaplaincy and verse in early seventeenth-century Oxford Christopher Burlinson 141 9 The Isham family and their clergy Erica Longfellow 159 10 A chaplain and his patron: Samuel Willes and the 7th Earl of Huntingdon William Gibson 177 11 The reluctant chaplain: William Sancroft and the later Stuart Church Grant Tapsell 193 select bibliography—212 index of names—220

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List of illustrations

. 1 Daniel Featley, after unknown artist, line engraving, 1645; reproduced in Daniel Featley, The Dippers Dipt (1645). 97 2 An opening from a manuscript verse miscellany in the hand of Thomas Manne, chaplain of Christ Church, Oxford.

129

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3 An opening from William Rawley’s manuscript miscellany with notes on Francis Bacon.

112–13

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Notes on contributors

. Hugh Adlington is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birming­ ­ am. He is a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford, h 2011), and editor of vol. 2 of The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, gen. ed. P. McCullough (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Christopher Burlinson is College Lecturer in English at Jesus College, Cambridge. His recent publications include Edmund Spenser: Selected Letters and Other Papers (Oxford University Press, 2009), co-edited with Andrew Zurcher, and, with Ruth Connolly, a special edition of Studies in English Literature (winter 2012), entitled Editing Stuart Poetry. David J. Crankshaw is Lecturer in the History of Early Modern Christianity at King’s College London. Having published, inter alia, on St Paul’s Cathedral and on ecclesiastical statesmanship during the Reformation, he is completing an edition of Proceedings of the Privy Council of Queen Elizabeth I, 1582-1583 (Boydell and Brewer).

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Kenneth Fincham is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Kent. He has published widely on British religious history c.1550–c.1700, and is a co-director of the Clergy of the Church of England Database project, 1540-1835 (www.theclergydatabase.org.uk). William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University. He is author of a number of books on early modern religion, including A Social History of the Domestic Chaplain, 1530-1840 (Leicester University Press, 1997), as well as studies of Benjamin Hoadly and the trial of the seven bishops in 1688. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1688-1901 (Oxford University Press, 2012). Tom Lockwood is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham. He has published articles on manuscripts and their cultures from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, and is currently working towards an edition of Charles Lamb’s Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1808) for The Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Oxford University Press). Erica Longfellow is Dean of Divinity, Chaplain and Fellow of New College, Oxford. She is the author of Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and editor, with Elizabeth Clarke, of an online edition of the life-writing of Elizabeth Isham (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/projects/ isham/). Mary Morrissey is Lecturer in the Department of English Literature, University of Reading. She is author of Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford Uni­­­ versity Press, 2011) and is editing John Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermons for The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne.

vii Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Notes on contributors Grant Tapsell is Fellow and Tutor in History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He is the author of The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 (Boydell and Brewer, 2007), joint author (with George Southcombe) of Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660-1714 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and editor of the collection The Later Stuart Church, 1660-1714 (Manchester University Press, 2012). Angus Vine is Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Stirling. He is the author of In Defiance of Time: Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2010), and is one of the editors of the ‘Oxford Francis Bacon’.

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Gillian Wright is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She has published on early modern women’s devotional reading and writing, compilation practices in manuscript and print, and the reception of classical literature in English, and is the author of Producing Women’s Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

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Acknowledgements

.

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This volume has its origins in a one-day colloquium held at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford, in June 2010, under the auspices of the Centre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies (CREMS) at the University of Birmingham. We would like to thank the Institute for its hospitality and its former Director, Kate McLuskie, for her encouragement of our project. We would also like to thank CREMS, the School of English, Drama, and American and Canadian Studies, University of Birmingham, and the Society for Renaissance Studies for their generous financial support. An interdisciplinary volume such as this could not have been brought to completion without the help and kindness of many colleagues, which we gratefully acknowledge. The contributors to this collection, historians and literary scholars alike, have shown care and diligence beyond the call of duty, and have responded to our sometimes arcane editorial requests with patience, precision and generosity. In Birmingham, our colleagues Richard Cust and Claire Preston read and advised on early drafts of our introduction, for which Valerie Rumbold shared excerpts from her forthcoming edition of Swift’s Hoaxes, Parodies, Treatises and Mock-Treatises, which will be volume two of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift. We are also grateful to our anonymous readers and the series editors for their advice at various stages of our work on this project. Finally, we would like to thank Emma Brennan and her team at Manchester University Press for their willingness to commission such an interdisciplinary collection and for their support and encouragement throughout its production. Hugh Adlington Tom Lockwood Gillian Wright

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Note on conventions and list of abbreviations

.

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Original spelling, capitalisation and punctuation have been retained in quotations from early modern printed and manuscript sources; closing punctuation has been supplied for display quotations with [square brackets] where not present in the original. Quotations from manuscripts sources are normally semi-diplomatic, unless otherwise noted. Corrections and interlineations are given within and contractions expanded within [square brackets]. Deletions have not been transcribed or represented unless material to the argument. Place of publication for all texts printed before 1800 is London unless otherwise specified. Dates are Old Style throughout, though the calendar year is reckoned from 1 January, so adjustments have been made to years in respect of dates falling between 1 January and 24 March. The following abbreviations are used throughout the volume: Add. MS Additional Manuscript BL British Library, London Bodleian Bodleian Library, Oxford CA The College of Arms, London The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835, CCEd www.theclergydatabase.org.uk CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic (London: Public Record Office) Cambridge University Library CUL fol. (fols) folio(s) Folger Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC Gibson, Domestic W. Gibson, A Social History of the Domestic Chaplain, 1530–1840  Chaplain (London: Leicester University Press, 1997). Historical Manuscripts Commission HMC Huntington Library, San Marino, California Huntington P. Beal, ed. and comp., Index of English Literary Manuscripts, IELM Volume One: 1450-1625, 2 parts (London: Mansell, 1980); Volume Two: 1625-1700, 2 parts (London: Mansell, 1987–93) London Metropolitan Archives LMA LPL Lambeth Palace Library, London NA The National Archives, London ODNB The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com. OED The Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com sig. (sigs) signature(s) SP State Papers

x Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Conventions and abbreviations STC

Wing

A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475–1640, 2nd edn, rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson and K. F. Pantzer, 3 vols (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1976–91) D. Wing, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries 1641–1700, 2nd edn, rev. and ed. T. Crist, J. J. Morrison, C. W. Nelson et al. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1988–98)

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Names follow the spelling used in ODNB. All quotations from the ODNB follow the online edition; all online resources were accessed between July 2011 and June 2012.

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Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved. Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chapter 1

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Introduction Hugh Adlington, Tom Lockwood and Gillian Wright

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I

n the years after he became domestic chaplain and private secretary to Charles Berkeley, the 2nd Earl of Berkeley, Jonathan Swift thought hard about a chaplain’s responsibilities and opportunities, making him a particularly good example of the wider situations that this collection of essays explores. Before returning to England early in April 1701, Swift spent nearly two years in Berkeley’s Dublin household, engaged in a number of activities, most of which seem to have displeased him at one time or another, as his later writings in various ways recall. Not the least of the immediate causes of Swift’s ­dissatisfaction was having been so swiftly displaced from his position as secretary to Berkeley by Arthur Bushe, whom even many years afterwards he would not name.1 Swift wrote over thirty years later in his manuscript ‘Family of Swift’ that he had ‘acted as Secretary the whole Journy to Dublin. But’, as he later recalled, ‘another Person had so far insinuated himself into the Earls favour, by telling him, that the Post of a Secretary was not proper for a Clergyman, nor would be of any advantage to one who aimed onely at Churchpreferments, that his Lordship after a poor Apology gave that Office to the other’. Bushe’s secretarial appointment relegated Swift to the duties in and of the household; Berkeley’s official chaplains, among them Dr John Bolton, took responsibility for the public and state functions associated with his position as lord chief justice. And even ‘Church-preferments’ were not forthcoming. As if, Swift grumbled, to emphasise the power and financial opportunity that his new position gave him, Bushe, having taken (Swift alleged) a bribe from Bolton, appointed him rather than Swift to the deanship of Derry when it fell vacant under Berkeley’s disposition, leaving the disappointed Swift with a depreciated and lasting historical grudge, ‘put off’, as he put it, ‘with some other Church-livings not worth above a third part of that rich Deanry, and at this present time, not a sixth’.2

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Chaplains in early modern England Though his expectations of patronage and preferment were disappointed, not all of Swift’s occupations as chaplain in Berkeley’s household can have frustrated him. Certainly, he had time to translate from their French and Latin originals much of Sir William Temple’s correspondence, and to carry forward the editorial work for his edition of Temple’s Letters, published late in November 1699.3 He found less congenial the domestic cares and duties that fell to him in Dublin. Attending on one or other of the Berkeley women – either Elizabeth, Countess of Berkeley, or her daughter, Lady Betty, later Germain – Swift is reported to have grown tired of reading to her from Boyle’s Meditations. To extricate himself from future obligations, Swift composed his own mock Meditation upon a Broom-Stick and planted it on his unwitting victim, who praised it, either in private (as one account suggests) or in public (as another has it), to her subsequent embarrassment.4 ‘This had the desired Effect’, George Faulkner later drily noted, ‘as Mr. Swift never was called upon again to read to her Ladyship’. If, in different ways, Berkeley’s household offered his chaplain more or less welcome opportunities to participate in its textual culture, Swift seems later to have found his place in its social culture far harder to regulate, at least as far as the uneasy jokes of his Directions to Servants suggest. Some of the fierceness with which their parody operates may be in proportion to the distaste with which they look back on a young man’s social awkwardness and disappointment. The chaplains of Swift’s Directions are regularly the straight men to the larger comedy of the household. Be ‘pert and sawcy to all Mankind, especially to the Chaplain’, Swift advises the Footman; ‘if you happen to be young with Child by my Lord, you must take up with the Chaplain’, he counsels the Waiting Maid; and, reserving perhaps his bitterest directions for the Butler, thus: If an humble Companion, a Chaplain, a Tutor, or a dependent Cousin happen to be at Table, whom you find to be little regarded by the Master, and the Company, which no Body is readier to discover and observe than we Servants, it must be the Business of you and the Footman, to follow the Example of your Betters, by treating him many Degrees worse than any of the rest, and you cannot please your Master better, or at least your Lady.5

If such was the experience of a domestic chaplain, even the royal chaplains, as Swift reported in his Journal to Stella, fared little better. ‘I never dined with the chaplains till to-day’, he wrote – before adding with deadpan timing: ‘it is the worst provided table at court’.6 Such experience can only have confirmed his reasons for declining the offer of a chaplaincy extended to him, by ‘a second hand’, from the Earl of Oxford in 1711: ‘I will be no man’s chaplain alive’.7

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Introduction

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I If Swift, as we have seen, thought hard about chaplaincy, so it is clear that he thought little of it. But, as his example shows, chaplaincy interacted with a fascinating range of institutions and activities in the early modern period, interactions in which patronage, literature and religion are all in different ways involved. Even in his short and generally discontented tenure, Swift demonstrates the ways in which a chaplain’s position could be deeply enmeshed in early modern networks of civil and ecclesiastical patronage and preferment. His experience with Temple’s Letters and Boyle’s Meditations shows some of the ways in which a chaplain might, as an editor and as an imaginative writer, participate in the overlapping textual economies of print and manuscript in the book trade and the household. At the same time, his awkwardness about placement in the household and its metonymic table reveal something of the lasting difficulties of properly locating the chaplain, his role and his many activities both in early modern culture and in more recent scholarly writing. If, in the early seventeenth century, John Rastell’s Les Termes de la Ley (1624) could state that a ‘Chapleine, is hee that performeth Divine service in a Chappell’, such a narrowly technical definition hardly begins to reflect the range and variety of the chaplain’s duties and occupations.8 This collection of essays, by contrast, aims to provide a fuller, more detailed account. As well as recording the numerous types and functions of early modern chaplains, it also explores the important, but often hidden, contributions made by chaplains of different kinds and in different locations – royal, episcopal, noble, gentry, diplomatic – to early modern English culture. As the essays that follow make clear, such contributions encompass not only the spiritual guidance and companionship offered by chaplains to their patrons, but also their activities as political and literary agents. While in theory chaplains occupied a relatively subordinate status in early modern society, in practice many enjoyed a surprisingly extensive degree of influence and agency in households and institutions. Chaplains to leading figures in the Church, nobility and government might play a prominent role in offering spiritual or political counsel to their patrons, or acting as representatives for the latter in fields as diverse as ecclesiastical politics, licensing and censorship of books in print, construction and maintenance of epistolary networks, and cultural patronage. Chaplains within noble or gentry families might act as power brokers within the local community, and as spiritual guides to male or female patrons, encouraging certain forms of personal devotion and discouraging others, or advising on regimes of prayer and religious reading or the spiritual care of a large household. The office of chaplain could give a young man access to networks of power at an early stage of his career, and offer him the opportunity to advance his own interests as he advanced his patron’s. It could also provide him with the means to develop his own literary and i­ntellectual

3 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains in early modern England interests, whether independently or in conjunction with his patron; many chaplains during this period wrote poetry or acted as literary amanuenses for their employers, producing texts that are now key documents of the instrumental uses to which verse could be adapted, and, in their manuscript and printed forms, vital evidence for the textual and social milieux within which these men moved. Yet alongside the many opportunities afforded by the position, the role of the chaplain was also profoundly ambiguous and potentially problematic. Chaplains who stood to gain from the success of their patrons might also share in the downfall of patrons who suffered disgrace or scandal. The role also gave rise to potentially delicate power relationships, given that chaplains were often younger – and in some cases, of a lower social background – than the patrons over whom they, in theory, exercised spiritual authority.9 The early modern English chaplain, however, for all his cultural significance, remains a little studied figure, and may have been so even at the time. ‘Bishops or Presbyters we know & Deacons we know, but what are Chaplains?’, asked Milton.10 To date, just one single-volume study of the early modern chaplain has attempted an answer. William Gibson’s A Social History of the Domestic Chaplain, 1530-1840 (1997) charts the rise and fall in the status of domestic chaplains in England over three centuries, the period in which such chaplains were regulated by law. The present volume seeks to complement Gibson’s pioneering work, addressing a more restricted historical period, from the late sixteenth century to the first years of the eighteenth, and laying greater emphasis on literary and cultural matters and such topical issues as the role of chaplains as spiritual advisers to elite women. With its focus on fresh research and new contexts for understanding, Chaplains in Early Modern England: Patronage, Literature and Religion stands alongside recent interdisciplinary collections that examine early modern educational and professional institutions such as the Inns of Court.11 It also complements existing studies of the clerical profession,12 as well as two sustained studies of particular kinds of chaplain, in particular historical circumstances – parliamentary army chaplains, in Anne Laurence’s study of the years 1642–51, and royal chaplains, in Peter McCullough’s study of Elizabethan and Jacobean preaching.13 Discussion of the literary and cultural activities of chaplains also draws on recent scholarship on the role of secretaries – similarly pivotal figures within early modern cultures, with whom chaplains had much in common.14 Chaplains and their patrons, like secretaries and theirs, operated within ‘the complex ethics of obligation and reward’, and were active participants in the kinds of household knowledge economies familiar to scholars of textual transmission, patronage and the early modern household.15 The bibliographical sources available for reconstructing the lives and activities of chaplains are abundant, yet scattered and often incomplete. There

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Introduction is no single, major collection of manuscripts, for instance, which helps us to understand the duties and cultural influence of chaplains, nor are there printed manuals or popular guides comparable to those written about and for early modern secretaries, such as Angel Day’s The English Secretorie (1586). The dispensation rolls of the court of chancery and the lord chamberlain’s warrant books constitute the primary manuscript sources for the identification of chaplains, as Kenneth Fincham and David Crankshaw’s chapters make clear, while the documentary evidence of the activities of chaplains, in manuscript and print, is as extensive as the range of activities themselves, explored by our other contributors. Sermons, devotions and disputations, ecclesiastical and diplomatic papers and correspondence, commendatory and commemorative poems, plays and prose fiction, biographies, and even love letters – the entire spectrum of kinds of writing in the period, in fact – are all testament, as the following pages show, to the distinctive contribution of the chaplain to early modern life and culture. Lastly, two modern digital resources are indispensable aids for the study of early modern chaplains: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which provides a departure point for more detailed biographical enquiries, and the Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835 (CCEd), which offers a searchable consolidated archive of the principal records of clerical careers in England and Wales from the ­Reformation to the nineteenth century.

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II The ten chapters in this volume are arranged in broadly chronological order, and each treats in a different way the central question of how interactions in literature, patronage and religion made forms of cultural agency available to early modern chaplains, primarily in England. In each contribution, the question of how and why chaplains act as agents – on whom, for whom, and with whom – is framed in such a way as to make clear the extent to which they were also acted upon, by others, by circumstances and by events. Together, the contributions to our book open out the detail of the case studies of different, overlapping early modern cultures around and within which individual chapters are organised. While the volume is primarily concerned with chaplains within the Church of England, chapters by Kenneth Fincham, Hugh Adlington, Tom Lockwood and Grant Tapsell also provide glimpses of what such chaplains might do outside England, and Fincham’s chapter glances additionally at the role of Presbyterian and Independent chaplains to the Cromwellian court during the interregnum. Chaplains in Early Modern England aims both to shed light on the complex legal and procedural basis for early modern chaplaincy and to expand our understanding of what chaplains, in practice, actually did. Early chapters by

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Chaplains in early modern England Kenneth Fincham and David Crankshaw draw on statutory and case-study evidence to survey again the different types of chaplaincy current during the early modern period, the processes through which chaplains were appointed, and the rules and expectations which governed a chaplain’s activities. As they show, chaplaincy was subject to strict regulations on such matters as the numbers of chaplains that could be retained by patrons of different roles and ranks, the licensing of private chapels, and the right of chaplains to hold multiple appointments. Equally important to the life of a chaplain, as these chapters make clear, were the cultural assumptions which helped determine his place within ecclesiastical and social networks, shape his relationship with his patron, or establish the range and remit of his intellectual or literary interests. At the same time, the fact that chaplaincies, to some extent, fell outside the main structures of church authority – chaplains were not, for instance, directly licensed by a bishop16 – offered scope for individual clerics and their patrons to redefine the position according to their own circumstances and priorities, both spiritual and secular. Such factors, formal and informal, combined to produce a complex role with the potential not only to exercise a chaplain’s theological and pastoral skills but also to develop his intellectual abilities or draw him into local, national and even international politics. The numerous case studies discussed in Chaplains in Early Modern England include instances of both the public and the more private aspects of chaplaincy. Attending to the more public domain, Mary Morrissey’s chapter, ‘Episcopal chaplains and control of the media’, focuses on the responsibility of the bishop of London’s chaplains for pre-publication censorship of the press, while Hugh Adlington’s ‘Chaplains to embassies’ examines the part played by ambassadorial chaplains such as Daniel Featley within wider networks of international diplomacy, interconfessional rivalry and print polemic. At the more domestic end of the spectrum, Erica Longfellow’s study of the Isham family and their clergy uncovers a diverse range of roles and relationships. As Longfellow shows, John Dod’s success in advising the Ishams on both spiritual and more worldly matters contrasts not only with Samuel Rogers’s less happy experience as chaplain to Lady Margaret Denny but also with Daniel Baxter’s unexpected and counter-productive emotional dependence on his patron, Judith Isham. Other chapters illustrate how appointment to a chaplaincy could enable a clergyman to contribute to contemporary political, theological or intellectual debates, promote the interests of his friends and family, or indeed further his own advancement.17 Tom Lockwood tells, for instance, how an early appointment as chaplain to Francis Bacon contributed, albeit problematically, to the launching of William Lewis’s long and intermittently prosperous ecclesiastical career, while Grant Tapsell’s discussion of the ‘reluctant’ William Sancroft highlights the importance of Sancroft’s appointment as chaplain to John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, in re-establishing a career unsettled not only by

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Introduction the interregnum but also by his own personal qualms and reservations. Like Jonathan Swift, Sancroft was keenly aware of the lowly status often suffered by chaplains to the laity, and, as Tapsell shows, touchily alert to the many small humiliations to which they might be vulnerable. Chaplaincy to a bishop, by contrast, afforded Sancroft a position of unquestionable dignity from which he could publicly promote his own strongly held views on Anglican episcopacy. It would subsequently prove a crucial step in his rise to the very top of the Restoration Church of England. Patronage – the first issue emphasised in our subtitle – was evidently key to determining the roles, activities and significance of early modern chaplains. Unsurprisingly, patrons often chose chaplains whose interests and priorities, whether theological or secular, were similar or complementary to their own. Cosin’s patronage of Sancroft, whose elevated conception of Church and priesthood closely resembled his episcopal master’s, is an obvious case in point, as Tapsell’s chapter shows. This question and exploration of affinity is continued in the chapters by Angus Vine and Christopher Burlinson, which explore in related ways how Francis Bacon’s choice of William Rawley and Richard Corbett’s of William Strode as chaplains issued in, and may have resulted from, shared philosophical and poetical interests. Yet the benefits – or, indeed, disbenefits – produced within these patronage relationships did not merely flow in one direction. As Vine makes clear, the young William Rawley obviously had much to gain from his appointment as chaplain to the wealthy, influential and erudite Francis Bacon. Yet Bacon himself evidently benefited even within his own lifetime from Rawley’s ability to share and support his philosophical, scientific and literary activities, and would benefit still further, posthumously, from his erstwhile protégé’s steadfast dedication to editing, publishing and promoting his late patron’s work. In Christopher Burlinson’s account of the relationships between Corbett and Strode we see how the relationship of patron with client might rest as much on texts and information withheld as on the kind of exchanges that Rawley shared with Bacon. Equally, notwithstanding the social subordination so much deplored by Swift and Sancroft, an adept, persistent or strategically positioned chaplain might also stand to influence his patron’s theological or political views and practice. As Longfellow shows, the advice and example of the venerable John Dod undoubtedly helped to consolidate the more puritan aspects of the Isham family’s devotions; comparably, as William Gibson speculates, Samuel Willes’s views on politics and theology may have contributed to shaping the beliefs and public behaviour of his patron, the earl of Huntingdon. Episcopal chaplains, as Kenneth Fincham reveals in his wide-ranging chapter, also had a politically significant role in keeping lay patrons loyal to the Church of England during the interregnum. Complicating the picture still further are those other chaplains who failed to live up to their patrons’ expectations, or vice versa. William Sancroft, as

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Chaplains in early modern England Tapsell’s chapter invites us to conclude, was no doubt disappointed when his chaplain Henry Wharton, formerly a close theological ally, proved willing to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary so publicly refused by Sancroft himself. At a more local level, as Gibson demonstrates, the Earl of Huntingdon seems also to have been disappointed when Samuel Willes’s performance at an important service did not reach a sufficiently high standard. Conversely, as Longfellow shows, Samuel Rogers’s years as chaplain to Lady Margaret Denny were rendered difficult and unproductive by what the high-minded Rogers saw as poor devotional standards among his patron’s family. These chapters separately and together make clear that how such differences were, or were not, resolved also tells us much about the balance of power within chaplainpatron relationships. The elderly and disempowered Sancroft remained on good terms with Henry Wharton, who helped him stay in touch with public life after his deprivation. Samuel Willes, relatively secure in his chaplaincy, urged Huntingdon to give him more notice of such important duties in future. The young Samuel Rogers, despairing of the recalcitrant Dennys, moved on to the much more congenial household of Lady Mary Vere. Finally, alongside patronage and religion, this volume also considers the diverse array of literary activities undertaken by early modern chaplains. In terms of print publications, these activities range from Daniel Featley’s polemical treatises The Grand Sacrilege of the Church of Rome (1630) and Transubstantiation Exploded (1638) – both produced for self-evidently theological reasons, as Hugh Adlington’s chapter argues – to the more secular, scientific and historical interests represented by Rawley’s editions of Bacon. Chaplains were also involved in, and took advantage of, the culture of manuscript transmission and exchange that flourished in the 1620s and 1630s, especially around such male-dominated cultural institutions as the universities and Inns of Court. As Christopher Burlinson’s rich account makes clear, Richard Corbett, chaplain to King James, and his own episcopal chaplain, William Strode, were both deeply involved in the prolific manuscript networks centred on Christ Church, Oxford, featuring variously as subjects, producers, transmitters and hoarders of occasional poetry. Meanwhile, as Lockwood argues, the case of William Lewis shows how a less well-known and comparatively untalented poet might nonetheless try to exploit the conventions of manuscript circula­tion to further his own ecclesiastical career. Chaplains’ relationships with literature, as with their patrons, were complex and creative, and did not always follow predictable patterns. Chaplains, then, were everywhere and did everything: inside the household and out, at home and abroad – teaching, preaching, reading, writing, advising and animadverting. Rarely occupying a leading role, chaplains, like secretaries, were the versatile, ubiquitous and, until now, largely unsung, supporting actors of early modern cultural life. Though they may have been stock figures

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Introduction of avidity on stage – memorable examples include Tourneur’s Languebeau Snuffe, the hypocrite ‘Puritane’ in The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611), and the obliging Parson Will-doe, servile chaplain to Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633) – chaplains in life, in all the kinds and variety witnessed in the contributions to this volume, bore only fleeting resemblance to their traditional caricature. Even the present account, however, is by necessity selective. Clerical service to gentry and aristocratic Catholic families, for example, falls outside the scope of this book.18 Chaplains to the army and navy, to merchant and livery companies, to Oxford and Cambridge colleges, to the Inns of Court, to the Warden of the Cinque Ports, or to the lord chief justice of the court of King’s Bench all await detailed exposition. This volume, then, stands rather as an introduction than as a conclusion to this important area of study; begin to examine any aspect of early modern life and we find, to paraphrase the Latin-speaking, large-bellied chaplain in Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew (1652), that the chaplain ‘est ad manum’ (is at hand).19 Notes 1 I. Ehrenrpeis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols, corrected edn (London: Methuen, 1983), 2.5–15.

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2 H. Davis and others (eds), The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, 16 vols (Oxford: Blackwell, 1939–74), 5.195, citing Trinity College, Dublin, MS 1050, fols 1–10 (IELM, SwJ 407). 3 C. Probyn, ‘Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), ODNB; on Swift as an editor of his own works see A. Williams, ‘The difficulties of Swift’s Journal to Stella’, Review of English Studies, 62 (2011), 758–76; on Swift’s edition of Temple’s Letters see A. B. Irwin, ‘Swift as translator of the French of Sir William Temple and his correspondents’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 6 (1966), 483–98, and N. F. Lowe and W. J. McCormack, ‘Swift as “publisher” of Sir William Temple’s Letters and Miscellanea’, Swift Studies, 8 (1993), 46–57. 4 The Meditation was published in 1710: see J. Swift, Hoaxes, Parodies, Treatises and MockTreatises (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. 2), ed. V. Rumbold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2013). 5 Swift, Hoaxes, Parodies, Treatises and Mock-Treatises. 6 J. Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. H. Williams, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), [2].377–8. 7 Swift, Journal to Stella, [1].280. 8 J. Rastell, Les Termes de la Ley; or certaine difficult and obscure words and termes of the common lawes of this realme expounded (1624), fo. 60v. This is the earliest appearance of a definition for ‘chapleine’ in the many editions of Les Termes de la Ley. 9 For discussion of the respective ages of patrons and chaplains, see D. Crankshaw, ‘Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility: activities, categories and patterns’, pp. 36–63, in this volume. 10 J. Milton, Eikonoklastes in answer to a book intitl’d Eikon basilike, the portrature of his Sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings (1649), p. 192.

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Chaplains in early modern England 11 See J. E. Archer, E. Goldring and S. Knight (eds), The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 12 T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movements c.1620– 1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); R. O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979). 13 A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 1642–1651 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1990); P. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 14 See A. Stewart, ‘Instigating treason: the life and death of Henry Cuffe, Secretary’, in E. Sheen and L. Hutson (eds), Literature, Politics, and Law in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 50–70; A. G. R. Smith, ‘The secretariats of the Cecils, circa 1580–1612’, English Historical Review, 83 (1968), 481–504; P. E. J. Hammer, ‘The uses of scholarship: the secretariat of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, c.1585–1601’, English Historical Review, 109 (1994), 16–51. 15 E. Spenser, Selected Letters and Other Papers, ed. C. Burlinson and A. Zurcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. liv. For textual transmission, see H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), and J. Eckhardt, Manuscript Verse Collectors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For household knowledge economies, see M. McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

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16 See K. Fincham, ‘The roles and influence of household chaplains, c.1600–c.1660’, p. 13, in this volume. 17 For discussions of the first two possibilities, see respectively A. Vine, ‘“His Lordships First, and Last, CHAPLEINE”: William Rawley and Francis Bacon’, C. Burlinson, ‘Richard Corbett and William Strode: chaplaincy and verse in early seventeenth-century Oxford’, and G. Tapsell, ‘The reluctant chaplain: William Sancroft and the later Stuart Church’, and also W. Gibson, ‘A chaplain and his patron: Samuel Willes and the 7th Earl of Huntingdon’, in this volume. 18 See M. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, ­Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. pp. 293–330. 19 R. Brome, A Joviall Crew; or, The Merry Beggars presented in a Comedie at Drury-Lane, in the yeer 1641 (1652), 4.1.

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Chapter 2

.

The roles and influence of household chaplains, c.1600–c.1660 Kenneth Fincham

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I

n her diary for 1617–19, Lady Anne Clifford recorded some revealing contacts with two household chaplains. With one, Richard Rands, she began reading through the Old Testament until her husband, the 3rd Earl of Dorset, ‘told me it would hinder his study’. Clifford was engrossed in a dispute with Dorset over her inheritance, and had ‘much talk’ with another chaplain, Geoffrey Amherst, about the gossip in London following her decision to reject James I’s offer of arbitration. Rands acted as peacemaker between her and a servant she suspected of taking her husband’s side; Clifford agreed that ‘as I was a Christian I would forgive him’ and as a result chaplain and patron had ‘some hours speech’.1 Household chaplains evidently fulfilled a variety of roles, in this case as instructors, informants and mediators, and what these entries disclose about domestic religion and the politics of the household makes it surprising that chaplains have been so little studied.2 The probable explanation for this neglect is their sheer ubiquity, relative invisibility in the formal record, and performance of very diverse roles. This essay suggests that chaplains deserve critical attention. It focuses on three sorts of household chaplain: to the crown, the episcopate and the laity. Although they had features in common, each moved in a rather different world in terms of status, duties and influence. As we assess influence, we need to distinguish between that conferred by the post and that brought to it by a new appointee. It will also be suggested that a chaplaincy was an important office in the clerical profession, both for the opportunities associated with the post and for its central place in patronage and advancement. Moreover, for all the scholarship devoted to diocesan government, we have not fully grasped the importance of episcopal chaplains to the workings of the established Church. Most significantly for the period 1600–60 is new evidence on Archbishop Laud’s attempt to regulate domestic chaplaincies to the gentry, which underscores the radical character of the Laudian reformation of the 1630s. Finally, chaplaincies in the 1640s

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Chaplains in early modern England and 1650s indicate how the office effectively adapted to those ‘broken times’ and, in particular, helped to sustain the episcopalian cause. The chapter falls into six sections. A discussion of the sources is followed by an analysis of our three types of household chaplain, and then the focus moves, from themes to chronology, to assess the reforms of the 1630s, and thereafter the challenges posed by the civil war and interregnum.

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I It is no easy task to identity all those who held household chaplaincies. There are two principal sources for studying chaplains in this period: the dispensation rolls of the court of chancery, which contain the names of household chaplains qualified to hold livings in plurality under three Acts of Parliament of 1529–45, and the lord chamberlain’s warrant books, which note the appointment of royal chaplains.3 This evidence, however, has three major limitations. First, it is incomplete. Dispensation rolls survive for 1595–1638 and warrant books for 1627–44, which means that we have both for only eleven years, 1627–38, and neither for 1645–60. Secondly, the dispensation rolls are not a complete list of chaplains, merely a record of those who chose to hold multiple livings and could be dispensed according to the Henrician legislation. The Pluralities Act of 1529, supplemented by statutes in 1534 and 1542, specified how many chaplains holding pluralities could be employed by the aristocracy and their widows, the episcopate and major office-holders: eight by archbishops, six by dukes and bishops, four by viscounts, three by barons, two by widowed duchesses, countesses and baronesses, two by the king’s principal secretary and the master of the rolls, and so on.4 The legislation, however, made no mention of non-pluralist chaplains, whose number remained unregulated and whose names do not appear in the dispensation rolls. There was clearly a considerable number of them: between 1614 and 1623 Archbishop Abbot of Canterbury had sixty-one domestic chaplains, certainly more than eight at any one time, but only six of these are entered in the dispensation rolls as qualified to possess livings in plurality.5 Thirdly, these sources never record the names of chaplains to the gentry. Some can be recovered by resorting to a miscellany of sources: printed literature, especially dedicatory epistles to patrons, letters of appointment, household accounts, correspondence and wills, which incidentally also disclose names of some non-pluralist chaplains to the aristocracy and bishops. Diocesan archives, perhaps surprisingly, do not help much. Bishops’ registers occasionally record the appointment of episcopal chaplains, whose presence may also be noted at ordination or consecration ceremonies. A few surveys of the ministry in 1603, and exhibits books compiled for visitations, state that an incumbent was also a household chaplain, although this can

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Household chaplains repeat information available from the dispensation rolls.6 The explanation for this meagre yield is that household chaplains to the Crown and the laity were appointed by their patrons and not by the ecclesiastical authorities, and were effectively extra-diocesan, linked to a patron not a place, and therefore largely outside the jurisdiction and purview of bishops. Thus an important clerical office was not fully incorporated into the governance of the Church. Curiously, bishops had the authority to license private chapels, but not the chaplains who ministered in them.7 The canons of 1604 only mentioned chaplains once. Canon 71 limited their conduct of services to the chapels of private houses, and required that they should not officiate every Sunday and holy day to ensure that the household regularly attended their parish church. Visitation articles issued by bishops, archdeacons and other ordinaries, which were based squarely on these canons, accordingly paid little attention to chaplains.8 Much of this was to change in the 1630s. The dispensation rolls may only provide minimal totals of chaplains, but they do indicate the relative size of our three groups. In James I’s reign, they record 71 royal chaplaincies, 215 episcopal chaplaincies and 415 chaplaincies to the nobility and Crown office-holders. While the number of bishoprics remained fixed at 27, the aristocracy more than doubled in size, from 55 in 1603 to 126 in 1628, so the relatively large number of noble chaplains is predictable.9 There was some mobility between these three groups. Most clergy only ever possessed one chaplaincy, usually to a layman, but royal chaplains, in particular, had often served in the household of an episcopal or lay patron and sometimes continued to do so. Relatively few belonged to all three types, a conspicuous exception being William Laud, chaplain first to the Earl of Devonshire and then to Bishop Neile of Rochester, who had him enrolled as a royal chaplain in 1611.10 These three sorts of household chaplaincy obviously had much in common. Chaplains to the crown, episcopate and the aristocracy were formally appointed or sworn in, undertaking to conduct divine service according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England and in return qualifying to hold livings in plurality.11 They might also be discharged for unsatisfactory conduct, as was the fate in 1640 of Samuel Moore, a royal chaplain, for certain unspecified ‘miscarriages’.12 Chaplains usually resided in their patron’s household for a period of time each year, and in aristocratic and gentry houses, in particular, they faced the challenge of squaring their spiritual authority and university education with their position as a servant among many.13 Some chaplains to bishops or the laity became confidants of their patron, and found themselves undertaking a whole series of tasks, some administrative and others familial. This can be illustrated from the correspondence of William Sancroft, chaplain to Bishop Cosin of Durham, but based in London in 1661–62. From Durham, Cosin asked Sancroft to present his service to Bishop Sheldon of London ‘from

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Chaplains in early modern England whom I have not heard otherwise then by you’ and later to forward a letter to Sheldon. Sancroft was charged to find lodgings for Cosin for the forthcoming session of Parliament, and to organise the despatch of the new books of common prayer and bibles to Durham diocese. Cosin’s secretary also wrote that Sancroft was needed back in Durham to mediate once again between the bishop and his son, who now threatened to go abroad ‘and then I feare his being put into the inquisition will be almost the first newes of him’.14 Such favoured chaplains also performed the final offices for their patron, giving him absolution and holy communion at the deathbed, officiating at his burial and sometimes publishing the funeral sermon and, for bishops in particular, writing exemplary biographies.15 Another shared characteristic was the pivotal role that chaplaincies played in the tireless search for preferment. Most household chaplaincies permitted pluralism (the exception was those serving the gentry), and, as we shall see, they were often a springboard for further advancement. Patrons could confer chaplaincies themselves or seek them for their protégés elsewhere. In 1607 the Earl of Mar proposed Jordan Chadwick to be chaplain to the Earl of Salisbury, noting his ‘humble and faythfull zeal’ which ‘I ever accounted a chiefe virtue in a servant’. In 1625 Bishop Carleton requested that Archbishop Ussher employ his kinsman Mr Cliborn as a chaplain, promising that he would be ‘fruitfull and faithfull in the Lords harvest’. In each case, the recommendation was carefully crafted: Ussher was committed to the preaching ministry, while Mar stressed devotion to duty, probably because Chadwick was actually seeking re-admission into Salisbury’s household.16 Once in post, chaplains could expect their patrons to advance their careers. As Bishop Bancroft observed in 1599, and Sir Thomas Wentworth repeated in 1634, their own chaplains had first call on their patronage.17 Patrons also regularly backed their chaplains’ bids for livings elsewhere.18 So much for the similarities: what were the principal differences in roles and influence between these three types of domestic chaplain? II Let us start at the royal court, the apex of temporal and spiritual power. A royal chaplaincy in this period admits of several important divisions. In James I’s reign, each of the separate households of the King, his Queen Consort and the princes of Wales, first Prince Henry and then Prince Charles, had its own body of chaplains.19 In contrast, in Charles I’s reign, all chaplains served the king, since Henrietta Maria had her own Roman Catholic chaplains and Prince Charles, future Charles II, was a minor throughout the 1630s.20 Appointees served as either chaplains in ordinary or supernumeraries, known as chaplains in extraordinary. Both James I and Charles I had a fixed corps of forty-eight

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Household chaplains chaplains in ordinary, four attending the court each month in rotation, where they preached and ministered, providing two services on Sundays, one to the king and courtiers and the other to the royal household ‘below stairs’.21 The Crown also had any number of chaplains in extraordinary, with ill-defined duties beyond occasionally substituting for absent chaplains in ordinary. In July 1641, Charles I had no fewer than 124 chaplains in extraordinary. There was no automatic, or regular promotion from extraordinary to ordinary, but in return for minimal duties, a chaplain in extraordinary qualified for a dispensation to hold two livings in common and got a toehold at court. In the 1630s they were a mixed bag: the puritan writer Richard Bernard, Laudian lesser fry such as Jasper Fisher and Eleazar Duncan, as well as the future bishop Ralph Brownrigg.22 The clerical elite were the royal chaplains in ordinary. They were recruited first and foremost for their persuasive preaching. James I was famous as a connoisseur of sermons, but on at least four recorded occasions Charles I was so impressed with a preacher that he rewarded him with a chaplaincy, suggesting an enthusiasm for sermons which has not been as widely noted as his devotion to the beauty of holiness.23 Preaching regularly in the most privileged pulpit in the land, in front of the supreme governor and courtiers, all of them potential patrons, few chaplains in ordinary failed to impress their audience and advance their careers. An exception was Henry Hooke, who earned the enmity of some bishops for his attack on clerical non-residence in a sermon before James I, and he was later dismissed from his chaplaincy.24 The majority, however, prospered and ended with Crown livings, deaneries or bishoprics.25 So who controlled the vital entry to this stairway to preferment? Under James I, successive lords chamberlain exercised this responsibility; in contrast, under Charles I in the 1630s, it was effectively Archbishop Laud, who recruited chaplains sympathetic to his programme of ceremonialism and uniformity in worship, such as Peter Heylyn and Robert Skinner.26 The influence of royal chaplains is central to any narrative of ecclesiastical politics in the reigns of James I and Charles I. Both monarchs made extensive use of the learning and experience of their chaplains, many of whom, as a result, were prominent players in court intrigue and royal initiatives. Seven attended the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, and although they contributed little to the discussion, one of them, William Barlow, wrote The Summe and Substance, the definitive account of the meeting. The most enduring result of the conference was the decision to produce a fresh translation of the bible, and at least ten of the fifty or so scholars appointed were royal chaplains, though this is a commentary on their learning rather than their office.27 James I’s showpiece confrontation with Scottish Presbyterians in September 1606, at that other conference at Hampton Court, centred on sermons by four divines, two former and two current royal chaplains: Barlow, Andrewes, King and

15 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains in early modern England Buckeridge. The Crown picked chaplains to represent them abroad. Five of the six British delegates to the Synod of Dort were royal chaplains, while another, John Donne, was sent on James Hay’s embassy to Germany in 1619–20.28 Recent studies of preaching at James I’s court have demonstrated how royal chaplains contributed to a remarkable series of discussions from the pulpit about the priorities, character and future direction of the Church, which mirrors the breadth of churchmanship in the chaplaincy and the willingness of the supreme governor to have such matters argued out before him.29 In contrast, from the pulpit of St James Palace came the incessant drumbeat of militant evangelical Protestantism from the chaplains of Prince Henry and Prince Charles, at least until the trip to Madrid in 1623. One of them, George Hakewill, in 1621 presented Prince Charles with a treatise against Protestants marrying Catholics, for which he was imprisoned. Recognising the influence that chaplains could exert, James then imposed two of his own – Matthew Wren and Leonard Mawe, both future Laudians - on the prince’s household, with the intention of weaning Charles from such toxic divinity. It appears to have succeeded only too well.30 In the 1630s, the royal chapel at Whitehall became a dominant model for the beauty of holiness, repeatedly cited by Laudians to justify ceremonial changes such as the creation of permanent altars in parish churches. Many royal chaplains were enthusiastic spokesmen for the new order. Peter Heylyn was the most prominent publicist, defending the Book of Sports and justifying the erection of altars, while Walter Balcanquhall, Robert Skinner, Thomas Turner and Thomas Laurence preached before the king on the hot topics of the sanctity of churches, ritualism and Sunday recreations, and had their sermons published by royal command. Balcanquhall also ghosted the king’s Large Declaration of 1639, a vast volume justifying war against the Scottish covenanters.31 From his body of chaplains in ordinary, Charles also recruited his most trusted clerical intimates – William Juxon, Matthew Wren and Richard Steward. As we shall see, he would look to his chaplains for advice in the changed conditions of the mid-1640s. III A large number of royal chaplains had served their turn as episcopal chaplains. There they often acted as indispensable assistants to their patrons, performing a variety of duties which significantly contributed to the smooth and effective operation of diocesan government. At consecrations of churches and churchyards, chaplains preached or read lessons and the liturgy; they accompanied the bishop on visitation, helped examine children at confirmation services; acted as ‘posers’ or examiners at ordinations, assessing the suitability of candidates, and may have done likewise at institutions and the licensing of curates

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Household chaplains and preachers; a number also regularly sat as judges in the local consistory court.32 More broadly, they acted as the eyes and ears of the bishop. Archbishops of Canterbury often had chaplains among senior figures at the two universities to keep their finger on the academic pulse; Bishop Andrewes instructed his chaplains to scout for divines worthy of preferment, and through them discovered the distinguished Greek scholar John Bois, whom he collated to a canonry at Ely.33 Most chaplains probably attended the bishop at fixed times each year, in rotation. In 1618 Archbishop Matthew of York drew up a monthly roster for his eight chaplains to reside with him, singly or in pairs.34 Some chaplains became valued members of the episcopal household, and chose to follow their patron as he was promoted to a new diocese.35 Carefully chosen, chaplains could strengthen the bishop’s reach and control over his diocese. Some larger sees contained semi-independent archdeaconries, and it is no surprise that chaplains were often collated to them when vacancies occurred.36 Some episcopal chaplains were already well established in a diocese, and were selected by an incoming bishop for their local knowledge and connections and, on occasion, service as chaplain to his predecessor. Anthony Egglesfield was chaplain to Bishop Still (1593–1608) and then Bishop Montagu (1608–16) of Bath and Wells, and also worked as a surrogate in Wells consistory court. His experience may have been particularly valuable for Montagu, who ruled from afar as an absentee bishop.37 Other chaplains were enticed into a diocese from outside with the prospect of preferment, and were very much the bishop’s men, untainted by existing rivalries and networks. Thus Bishop Lake at Bath and Wells (1616–26) brought two chaplains with him from his Oxford college, who became long-serving incumbents in the diocese.38 He recruited other chaplains from the local clergy. One was William Sclater, a committed evangelical with a nonconformist past, and his selection represented a public expression of Lake’s solidarity with the Somerset puritan ministry.39 As Sclater’s appointment indicates, other motives were at work, beyond a concern for good governance. One was ideology. Richard Neile’s extensive patronage of like-minded chaplains to create that circle we know as the Durham House set helped to sustain and advance the avant-garde critique of the Church, which was to triumph in the 1630s.40 It has not been noticed that Neile’s protégé, Laud, was much more cautious a personal patron than his master. William Gouge commented in 1632 that Laud was ‘very choice in choosing chapleynes, and not forward to admitt so many as hee may’.41 Chaplains might also be appointed and advanced for more worldly reasons. Bishop James Montagu gave Taunton archdeaconry to his chaplain, Samuel Ward, presumably for its income, since Ward usually resided at Cambridge, as Master of Sidney Sussex.42 Chaplaincies also went to family, allowing them to qualify for pluralities; Francis Fotherby was made chaplain to his relative,

17 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains in early modern England Martin Fotherby, Bishop of Salisbury, which enabled him to hold two livings in the Fotherby heartland of Kent. A notorious example of nepotism was Bishop Cotton’s attempt to make his son and chaplain, Edward, chancellor of Exeter diocese, even though he had no formal legal qualifications, but this was quashed by the intervention of Archbishop Abbot.43 On the other hand, there were plenty of chaplains from a bishop’s family who proved to be effective administrators, such as Robert Newell, half-brother of Richard Neile and through him a long-serving Archdeacon of Buckingham.44 Chaplains attached to the households of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London represented a distinct and significant sub-group. They were often high-profile London clergy, with important livings in and around the capital, licensers for the press and impounders of illegal books, and sometimes junior members of High Commission; those serving the Bishop of London helped administer the Paul’s Cross sermons; a number were also chaplains to the Crown and canons of St Paul’s.45 These metropolitan chaplains in 1600 included Lancelot Andrewes, Samuel Harsnett and William Barlow, all future bishops; among their number in the 1630s were William Haywood, William Bray and Samuel Baker, whose prospects for bishoprics were wrecked by the abolition of episcopacy in the 1640s. Chaplains at Lambeth House were often prominent spokesmen for their masters. Archbishop Bancroft was troubled by the threat from puritan nonconformity, notwithstanding the King’s attempt to settle the Church at the Hampton Court Conference, and it is no coincidence that two of his chaplains, William Covell and Leonard Hutton, published defences of official ceremonies and discipline, while two others, William Westerman and Samuel Collins, berated puritans and schismatics from the pulpit at Paul’s Cross in 1607–8.46 In the 1610s, Archbishop Abbot and Bishop King worked together to promote the gospel and oppose popery, and a significant figure here was Daniel Featley, Abbot’s chaplain in 1617–25, an active licenser with close links with the London godly fraternity.47 By the mid-1620s, the threat was increasingly coming from the emergent anti-Calvinist interest associated with Neile’s group at Durham House, across the Thames. Their ascendancy in the late 1620s led to rival licensing policies being pursued by Lambeth and London Houses, under first Bishop Mountain and then Abbot’s nemesis, Bishop Laud. Chaplains got caught in the crossfire, with Abbot’s man Thomas Buckner, for example, censured for licensing William Prynne’s notorious Historiomastix in 1632. After 1633, Archbishop Laud’s chaplains helped to popularise the new ritualism in their prominent London livings, such as St Martin-in-the-Fields (William Bray) and St Giles-in-the-Fields (William Haywood), and as licensers curbed anti-Catholic rhetoric and endorsed provocative works such as John Pocklington’s Altare Christianum. They were denounced on both counts to the Long Parliament in 1640–41.48

18 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Household chaplains

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IV The largest group of chaplains served the laity: officers of state, the aristocracy and the gentry. Perhaps the most important of the chaplaincies attached to office-holders were those serving the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, who controlled patronage to all Crown livings worth under £20 a year as well as others temporarily in the King’s gift through deprivation, simony, lapse or minority. About a hundred livings fell vacant each year, and it was the responsibility of his chaplains to vet the petitioners for these posts. We possess presentations for 1596–1617 and 1627–40, in the time of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and Lord Keeper Coventry, and they show John King, John Williams and Gilbert Sheldon, chaplains and future bishops, to be particular active at scrutinising and recommending candidates. It was clearly a significant position. One reason for Christopher Potter’s election as Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, in June 1626 was the expectation that he would ‘helpe to procure advancement to some poor students, he being chaplain to [the] lord keeper’.49 John Hacket has left us a remarkable portrait of John Williams’s time as chaplain to Ellesmere in 1612–17. Not merely did he intercede on behalf of deserving scholars ‘and quickly became a great patron’, but his high standing with Ellesmere and his own legal acumen enabled him to advise on university affairs at Oxford, where Ellesmere was Chancellor, and to become fixer for the clerical interest. Williams dealt with matters submitted to him by ministers, cathedral chapters and bishops from across the country relating to titles to livings, rights of tithes or disputes over leases with the result, Hacket assures us, that ‘the chaplain’s readiness and felicity in assisting the clergy, was in a little while talked among church-men in all places’. In 1617 Williams chose not to accept the invitation to stay on as chaplain by Ellesmere’s successor, Sir Francis Bacon, but instead became a JP in Northamptonshire and a royal chaplain.50 A mere four years later, he was to become a bishop and Lord Keeper in place of Bacon. Williams was an exceptional figure, but the ways in which he transcended his formal responsibilities as an examining chaplain for Ellesmere can be found elsewhere, albeit on a less public stage. Chaplains in this period invariably had a university education, so it is no surprise that often they doubled as tutors to their patrons’ children, but sometimes their erudition was also tapped by their patrons.51 Robert Payne was an indispensable assistant to his patron, the 1st Earl of Newcastle, guiding his experiments in chemistry, optics and mechanics, as well as tightening up his poetry. As Newcastle recalled, on one occasion ‘Dr Payn, a divine, and my chaplain, who hath a very witty searching brain of his own’ was ‘at my house at Bolsover, lock’d up with me in a chamber, to make lapis prunellae’.52 William Bredon, a noted astrologer, and chaplain to Sir Christopher Heydon, helped his patron write A Defence of Iudiciall Astrologie (1603) in response to a printed attack calling for astrology

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Chaplains in early modern England to be outlawed. In the early 1650s Sir Robert Shirley paid his chaplain Peter Gunning £100 a year to write ‘such things as might be most advantageous’ to the beleaguered Church of England.53 On occasion, the roles might be reversed. John Lightfoot, eventually a distinguished Hebrew scholar, was encouraged and goaded into taking up the language by his patron Sir Rowland Cotton, himself a serious Hebraist, while other chaplains publicly acknowledged the backing they received for their preaching and writing.54 Publications were opportunities for chaplains to express their gratitude to their patrons, and it doing so to ‘honor and eternize their memories to all future ages’, as John Browning put it in a tract dedicated to Lord Maynard in 1636, but also, he hoped, to stir up others ‘if any shall receive any benefit by my poore labours, to praise and pray God for your noble lordship’.55 Beyond the study and pulpit, chaplains could be valued servants. Sir Robert Cecil used Richard Neile in the period c. 1600–6 as his informant and agent for business at Cambridge, where he was Chancellor. In the 1630s in puritan Colchester, the arch-Laudian commissary Thomas Newcomen seems to have collaborated with his patron, Sir John Lucas, to entrap John Bastwick, and have him summoned before High Commission.56 Some chaplains, however, went their own way: Peter Heylyn was acting chaplain to his patron, the Earl of Danby, on a visit to Guernsey in 1629 and wrote a critical report on Presbyterianism on the island to win the favour of Bishop Laud, but almost certainly in opposition to Danby’s wishes.57 Some household chaplains had few formal responsibilities. In 1611, at the same time that he was admitted to the rectory of Rotherhithe, Thomas Gataker became chaplain to Sir Henry Hobart, the Attorney General, which, as Gataker recalled, ‘I willinglie accepted, being but a titular matter, reqiring no constant attendance, onelie a visit now and than, and a sermon sometime upon some special occasions’. Gataker’s appointment to Rotherhithe had been contentious, so Hobart, a major landowner in the parish, gave him a chaplaincy in order that ‘I might sit the more qietlie, and exercise my ministrie more freelie’. Hobart was not able to save Gataker from a spell in the Fleet prison in 1625, for writing a preface to Edward Elton’s tract on the commandments which attracted the anger of James I, but it was Hobart via the Earl of Manchester who quickly secured his release.58 It is unclear just how many such ‘chaplains at large’ there were. Certainly chaplains were often attached to noble households many miles from their livings. Of the five chaplains listed in the dispensation rolls for the 3rd Earl of Dorset (1609–24), whose principal seats were in London, Kent and East Sussex, two were beneficed in Sussex and Surrey, but the others were based in Somerset, Norwich and Worcester.59 Were the latter three nominal chaplains? There needs to be more persuasive evidence than this to demonstrate that a chaplain never resided, such as the candid admission of Joseph Mede in 1638 that Archbishop Laud had admitted him as a chaplain but did not expect him to live at Lambeth.60

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Household chaplains

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More familiar is the crucial political support that lay patrons could provide. This might amount to no more than a timely intervention to resolve a dispute. In c.1630 Samuel Clarke, the biographer, accepted a chaplaincy from the Earl of Warwick in order to overcome local opposition and become lecturer at Warwick. On other occasions, it meant providing safe houses for nonconformists. Classic examples here are William Bradshaw, author of English Puritanisme, who was taken in by the Redich family of Derbyshire after being ousted from his lectureship at Chatham at the beginning of James I’s reign, and Thomas Shepard, on the run from Bishop Laud in the early 1630s, who found a refuge with the Darleys in Yorkshire.61 Such ‘common-law’ chaplaincies to the gentry were well established by custom, even though they fell outside the purview of the pluralities acts.62 Appointments were often informal, and, in contrast to royal or episcopal chaplaincies, they frequently went to young ordinands who did not feel ready for a pastoral charge. Thomas Cawton, Thomas Gataker and Ezechiel Rogers all began their ministry as chaplains.63 Richard Blackerby, chaplain to the Jermyns and then the Lewkenors in Suffolk, was not even ordained.64 Their constant service as sole chaplains rather than one of a number in periodic attendance may have meant they achieved a greater degree of spiritual intimacy with members of the household. Rogers reminded his former patron, Sir Thomas Barrington, of ‘my watching with you in the time of your melancholy, and risings at midnight to cherish and comfort you’, while Thomas Shepard, during his spell at the Darleys, was able to convert Thomas Allured, ‘a most profane young gentleman’, who through his preaching ‘fell to fasting and prayer and great reformation’.65 V In the 1630s the right of gentry to retain chaplains came under serious challenge from Charles I and Laud. In December 1629 the king issued wide-ranging instructions to the episcopate, clause 7 of which stated that ‘bishopps suffer none under noble men, and men qualified by the lawe to have any private chapplaine in his house’.66 Although this initiative has attracted some scholarly analysis, it has never been systematically investigated nor has its significance in the wider Laudian reform programme been properly ­recognised.67 A major concern running through the royal instructions of 1629 was the need to regulate the activities of puritan clergy more effectively, among them chaplains, who, as we have seen, enjoyed relative independence from ecclesiastical discipline, especially if they were unbeneficed.68 Clause 7 was based on a narrow reading of the Henrician statutes, which had been primarily concerned with pluralities, not chaplains, and, by excluding any not listed in the legislation, it disregarded the long-established custom that the gentry employ

21 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains in early modern England common-law chaplains. These, as one bishop put it, were merely ‘pretended’ chaplains.69 Laud’s promotion to Canterbury in 1633 appeared to mark a tightening of the screw. In October 1633 it was rumoured that the new archbishop ‘had forbidden all preaching in private houses’ and at the same time Laud reminded the episcopate of their duty, under canon 30 of 1604, only to ordain candidates to a specified title for their maintenance, which included a curacy or fellowship, but did not extend to a household chaplaincy. Contemporaries saw this as an attempt to bolster clause 7 of 1629 and as a result, according to the hostile testimony of William Prynne, ‘many yong divines’ were ‘quite excluded’ from taking up chaplaincies.70 At least two baronets faced problems in getting their chapels consecrated, in part because the authorities believed that they were not eligible to employ a chaplain. Archbishop Neile told Sir Henry Slingsby that he had ‘express command not to consecrate any, least it may be occasion of conventicles’, a vivid reminder of that Laudian association of chaplaincies and nonconformity.71 As so often, the Laudian bark was worse than its bite. Although many bishops incorporated the royal instructions into their visitation articles, ‘pretended’ chaplains elicited very few presentments, no doubt because churchwardens had no wish to incur the ire of their local gentleman, any more than bishops wished to cross so potent a social group in their dioceses. As a result, in their annual returns to the royal instructions, many bishops simply sidestepped clause 7. The principal exceptions were Bishops Dee, Towers, Maynwaring and Wren, predictably all standard-bearers for the Laudian agenda.72 The drive against gentry chaplains also ran up against harsh economic realities and difficulties of definition. In the north, the gentry often gave bed and board to local curates, thereby to supplement their income and ensure that impoverished impropriated livings were served at all; Archbishop Neile’s advice to the king was to tolerate this, so long as these curate-chaplains proved to be conformable. In the south, bishops reported that some gentry insisted they kept not chaplains but curates, or schoolmasters ‘under pretense to teach theyr children’, or scholars to converse with, yet, as Bishop Towers observed, ‘most of these read or saye service in theyr houses, which is the office of a chaplaine’. Laud’s view was that any such who were beneficed ministers should reside at their livings, but for the rest, the best tactic was to insist on their conformity.73 Too much has been made of Neile’s refusal to consecrate Slingsby’s chapel: at least seven gentry chapels were consecrated in the 1630s, two of them on the authority of Laud, and Slingsby himself managed to find a more compliant bishop than Neile to consecrate his.74 The fact that the drive against gentry chaplains was not a major grievance in the Long Parliament also points to its muted impact during the 1630s. Alongside this evidence of failure and compromise is clear evidence, by the late 1630s, of the evolution of a new policy. The appointment of common-law

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Household chaplains chaplains could be controlled through the grant of licences, usually issued by the episcopate, occasionally by the Crown. In keeping with so many Caroline expedients in the 1630s, there was a precedent for this device, but in times past such licences had been granted very sparingly.75 Licences brought the selection of chaplains within the jurisdiction of Church and State, and could be revoked if circumstances changed. The earliest known examples date from 1637. In January 1637 Charles I accepted Laud’s recommendation that Sir Richard Rudd of Aberglasney be permitted to have his chapel consecrated and use the local minister or ‘any other lawfully in orders’ as his chaplain. Crucially, the chaplain was to be licensed either by the diocesan bishop or Laud himself. Later that year Laud supervised the consecration of a new chapel at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, seat of Sir John Baker, and licensed Richard Bearecliffe to serve as chaplain.76 About the same time, Charles I himself, as supreme governor, licensed two northern gentlemen to keep chaplains. The idea was evidently gaining currency, to judge from Bishop Morton’s visitation articles for Durham diocese, also in 1637. Did any gentry, he enquired, ‘maintaine or keepe any chaplaine, contrary to the lawes of the land, not being thereunto licensed by the bishop of this diocesse?’77 In 1639–40 Sir Henry Rosewell of Forde Abbey, Devon, was prosecuted in High Commission for a variety of offences, including holding services in a former monastic chapel on his property, which had been used to house animals until its reconversion into a chapel. He was fined £100, ordered not to use the chapel until it was ‘reconciled’ or reconsecrated, and required to have his chaplain licensed by the local bishop.78 It is surely no coincidence that almost all these beneficiaries were baronets or knights, the highest tiers of the gentry. What is the broader significance of the crackdown on gentry chaplains in the 1630s? First, in taking up a matter hitherto ignored by the Crown and episcopate, and based on a contentious reading of custom and law, it constitutes another novel and disruptive element of the Laudian reformation of the Church. The audacity of attempting to eliminate or at least to regulate chaplains to hundreds of the gentry, a class of great wealth and political weight, points to the self-confidence and also the short-sightedness of Laud’s circle. Secondly, the campaign forms part of a wider attempt to assert the independence of the clerical estate and roll back lay control over its law, property and personnel. Usually this took the form of trying to recover lands or rights lost since Henry VIII’s reign, but the aim here was to seize new powers, by controlling the appointment of chaplains to the gentry. Thirdly, the slow development of a licensing policy typifies the approach of the Laudian authorities, introducing important reforms and then having to resolve the unexpected complexities which emerged, the obvious parallel being the creation of the permanently positioned altar and the controversy which ensued as to whether or not communicants should receive at the rails.79 It is a reminder, too, that the

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Chaplains in early modern England Laudian enterprise was still evolving in the later 1630s before being abruptly abandoned, on the collapse of the Personal Rule, in November 1640.

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VI The opening of the Long Parliament that month also marked the start of two decades of change and disruption for our three types of household chaplain. Charles I set up his headquarters at Oxford in the autumn of 1642, and each month a quartet of chaplains in ordinary continued to officiate in the Chapel Royal, now housed in the Cathedral at Christ Church. The Lord Chamberlain resumed formal control over the selection of chaplains, briefly usurped by Archbishop Laud in the 1630s. Perhaps the last to be sworn in was also one of the most distinguished, Henry Hammond, on 3 March 1646, shortly before Charles fled from Oxford. In June 1646 Isaac Basire was instructed to deputise for Herbert Croft that August and to ‘repayer to his Majesties court wheresoever it shall be’.80 A number of chaplains contributed to royalist propaganda, led by Peter Heylyn and Bruno Ryves who edited newspapers, and Henry Ferne and Henry Hammond, who wrote tracts on political obedience and episcopacy. Not all shared the same priorities, however, and some attacked fellow royalists who were prepared to trade Church government and bishops’ lands in return for political concessions from parliament.81 Posses of royal chaplains attended negotiations at Uxbridge in 1645, Hampton Court in 1647 and Newport in 1648. At Uxbridge Richard Steward, dean of the chapel and royal c­ ommissioner on the Church, debated with Alexander Henderson on Church government. Then other chaplains, including Ferne and Hammond, joined the fray, and Hammond’s defence of episcopacy was powerful enough to win over an opponent, Nathaniel Hardy, until then a committed Presbyterian.82 Charles certainly prized the company of his chaplains, for leading his devotions but also advising him on matters of law and conscience as he faced demands for far-reaching religious reforms. As a prisoner, Charles made repeated and unsuccessful requests in 1646–47 for his chaplains to be granted access to him, as he later complained in Eikon Basilike, until permission was eventually granted by the army in June 1647, in an attempt to lay the ground for fruitful discussions over the Heads of Proposals. Charles had particular respect for Gilbert Sheldon, his clerk of the closet, one of those chaplains allowed to join him in June 1647; that summer Sheldon canvassed opinion from the bishops about the propriety of the King agreeing to religious toleration. In September 1648, Robert Sanderson, another chaplain, wrote to Sheldon from Newport, wishing Sheldon could join them in the negotiations with Parliament, for ‘we never wanted you more than now’.83 In the end, this all came to nothing, and it was a former royal chaplain, Juxon of London, who ministered to the King in his last hours.

24 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Household chaplains The royal chaplaincy survived the execution of Charles I. While some chaplains such as Hammond and Ferne remained at home, others followed the court of Charles II in exile, where the Chapel Royal maintained its rich ceremonial worship, first in Paris, then in the Low Countries, until its return to Whitehall in May 1660. It is unclear how many chaplains served the king. The best glimpse we have of them is from the diary of John Evelyn, who regularly attended the Chapel Royal while staying in Paris in 1650–52, and took notes of the sermons he heard from Richard Steward, now dean of the chapel to Charles II, John Cosin, John Earles, Andrew Clare and others.84 The episcopal office was formally abolished in October 1646, and individual bishops who lived on into the 1650s have generally received a poor press for apparently opting for a quiet retirement. We are beginning to appreciate that this is not the whole story. Some remained remarkably active, not least in satisfying a high demand for ordination, with the assistance, very often, of examining chaplains.85 Between 1646 and 1660 Robert Skinner, Bishop of Oxford, conferred orders in his parlour at Launton rectory, nine miles north of the university, supported by his two chaplains Ralph Bathurst and Thomas Lamplugh, who made no fewer than 300 journeys from Oxford to Launton in these years to help with ordination and confirmation. We know that other bishops such as Juxon of London and Brownrigg of Exeter retained chaplains, though their activities are less well documented.86 Royalist or episcopalian clergy, ejected from livings and university fellowships, often found shelter as household chaplains to the gentry and aristocracy. Common-law chaplaincies, once a target of Archbishop Laud, now provided succour for many of his followers. One such group were chaplains to Sir Robert Shirley, Royalist and episcopalian, at his houses at Staunton Harold in Leicestershire and at Astwell in Northamptonshire: Gilbert Sheldon, Peter Gunning, John Dolben, Robert Maplecroft and John Heavers. These chaplaincies provided a vital platform for sustaining the episcopalian cause. Throughout the 1650s Sheldon and Hammond, who resided with the Pakingtons of Worcestershire, effectively ran an employment agency, putting prospective patrons and potential chaplains in touch with each other. Chaplaincies gave work for needy clergymen and, it was hoped, would keep noble and gentry families loyal to episcopacy and the Prayer Book. Hammond and Sheldon also acted as intermediaries to ensure that charitable donations from episcopalian benefactors reached sequestered clergy and their families. Several chaplains were the most powerful and prolific advocates of episcopalianism in print, Hammond defending the discipline and rites of the Church, Jeremy Taylor, supported by the 2nd Earl of Carbery, writing immensely popular devotional works.87 Following an unsuccessful Royalist uprising in 1655, Cromwell banned sequestrated clergy from serving as chaplains, but quite quickly his Council began to make exceptions, once they were assured of a chaplain’s peaceful, in

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Chaplains in early modern England other words non-Royalist, conduct. One whom they did eject, who appears not to have been a sequestrated minister, was Leonard Hudson, chaplain to Sir Thomas Evelyn and labelled ‘prelaticall’. Hudson had used the Prayer Book, attracting a following among the locals of Long Ditton and, perhaps decisively for his case, had interfered with the ministry of the ‘godly and learned’ incumbent Nicholas Byfield, who complained that Hudson was hindering the work of reformation.88 Other episcopalians found work abroad. Robert Frampton was chaplain to the Earl of Elgin, but in 1655 he judged it prudent to become chaplain to the Levant Company at Aleppo in Syria.89 Whitehall preachers, or chaplains, were appointed to serve the republican Council of State and later Lord Protector Cromwell. These state chaplains included leading Independents and Presbyterians, and were united, it has been suggested, by ‘a common antiformalism’. Peter Sterry, Hugh Peter and Thomas Goodwin were already significant players at the centre of power, and their chaplaincies acknowledged rather than secured their influence. Other younger men appointed in the mid-1650s, such as John Howe and Jeremiah White, had to carve out a role. In 1658 Howe wrote to Richard Baxter for advice on how he might make best use of his ‘present station’. He willingly backed Baxter’s proposal for greater unity between Presbyterians and Independents, although to little avail, and came to the view that he was better suited ministering to his parishioners in Devon. ‘Here my influence is not like to bee much (as it is not to be expected a raw young man should bee much considerable among Grandees)’. Nevertheless he made his mark on Cromwell, from the pulpit, as an intercessor for Seth Ward and for discharging what Edmund Calamy called other ‘secret services’ for the Lord Protector.90 The political instability of the 1640s and 1650s accounts for the sizeable number of clergy who held more than one chaplaincy, which often included a post in the military. George Cokayne served twice as chaplain to LieutenantGeneral Fleetwood in the first civil war and again in 1651–52; he was also domestic chaplain to a sheriff of London and friend of Bulstrode Whitelocke, acting as chaplain to his family when Whitelocke was ambassador to Sweden in 1654. Richard Sherlock had five chaplaincies in these twenty years, including spells in the royalist army, at New College, Oxford, and in the family of Sir Robert Bindloss, near Lancaster. A few moderates effectively moved with the times. In 1651 Ralph Brideoake sought out William Lenthall, Speaker of the Rump Parliament, to plead for the life of his royalist patron, James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, with whom he had fought in the first civil war. Brideoake’s petition was unsuccessful, but Lenthall warmed to Brideoake, made him his chaplain and later preacher in the Rolls chapel. At the Restoration, through presenting himself as ‘a great sufferer’ and through astute use of patronage, Brideoake was to become a royal chaplain and eventually a bishop.91

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Household chaplains

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VII The Restoration marked an important watershed for chaplaincies, as with so much else in the Church. Dispensations under the pluralities legislation were resumed, and once again chaplaincies proved a crucial berth for nonconformists, this time for dissenters ejected from livings in 1660–62. There was to be no repetition of Laud’s licensing policy, nor of the ban imposed by Cromwell in 1655, and henceforth common-law chaplains were to be left in peace.92 This essay has proposed that chaplaincies and chaplains were an important force within Church and society. Chaplains performed a bewildering range of roles, and might enjoy some sway and authority within the household, in a locality or diocese, or even on the national stage. Of course this is not the whole story: John Howe’s anxieties are a timely reminder that influence was not necessarily easy to acquire or exercise. Most chaplains are mere names, their importance either lost or negligible, and their status sometimes lowly.93 Three themes stand out from this study of the office. First, chaplaincies represent a critical missing link in current work on the clerical profession.94 They opened the door to pluralities for those qualifying under the Henrician acts, and to further advancement for all types of household chaplain. For clergymen in trouble with the authorities – sequentially puritans, episcopalians and dissenters – chaplaincies provided political protection and an alternative source of employment. Secondly, episcopal chaplains were often a bishop’s trusted lieutenants, drawn into diocesan administration and providing vital support, advice and inside information. It is no surprise that an effective bishop such as Richard Neile had around him a loyal and committed group of chaplains. Equally telling is Bishop Sanderson’s decision, in the last weeks of his life, to delegate his authority to his chaplain, Josiah Pullen, rather than to his Chancellor.95 Episcopal chaplaincies also provided a valuable training for future bishops, among them William Laud, Matthew Wren, John Cosin and Benjamin Laney. Thirdly, those both in and out of power valued chaplains. The court of Cromwell, as much as that of James I, contained chaplains who enjoyed access and influence, while household chaplaincies helped to sustain nonconformist families. Both Laud and Cromwell recognised the importance of the office and, with mixed results, sought to regulate it. There remains much to explore. We know a good deal about chaplains to puritan patrons, not enough about others in conformist households, and very little about those serving Catholic peers and gentry.96 The role of chaplains to aristocratic widows is unknown territory. It is curious that while Cromwell is well-studied, his chaplains remain a remarkably shadowy group. Beyond the household, abroad there were chaplains to embassies and overseas factories, and at home chaplains to the inns of court, Oxford and Cambridge colleges, houses of correction, almhouses, the army and navy, some of whom are

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Chaplains in early modern England examined in the chapters that follow. 97 They may not have been as marginal as most of us once supposed. Notes I am most grateful to the following for their assistance and/or comments on earlier drafts of this essay: Nicholas Cranfield, David Crankshaw, Andrew Foster, Mark Jenner, Judith Maltby, Stephen Taylor, Rebecca Warren. 1 D. J. H. Clifford (ed.), The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1990), pp. 48, 50–2, 54, 60–1; see also A. Smyth, Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 72–93; www.theclergydatabase. org.uk (hereafter CCEd), ‘Richard Rands’ (Clergy ID 78733), ‘Geoffrey Amherst’ (2037). The Clergy of the Church of England Database remains a work in progress. 2 The fullest study is Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, which comes into its own for the period after 1660. Royal chaplains have been the only group to receive detailed attention: see P. E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chs 3–4; N. W. S. Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary at the early Stuart court: the purple road’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: University of York, 1996), pp. 120–47; K. Fincham, ‘William Laud and the exercise of Caroline ecclesiastical patronage’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), 71–5. 3 NA, C58/1–43, LC 5/132, 134–5; see also LC 3/1. C58/1–40 (for 1595–1635) are transcribed in BL, Add. MSS 39533–5 and now entered in CCEd. There are no archiepiscopal Faculty Office books extant for 1600–60.

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4 A. Luders et al. (eds), The Statutes of the Realm, 12 vols (London: Record Commision, 1810–28), 3.294, 457, 467–8. For the best discussion of the passage and scope of this legislation, see D. Crankshaw, ‘The Elizabethan Faculty Office and the aristocratic patronage of chaplains’, in Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment, pp. 20–75. 5 LPL, MS 1730, fols 8r–v; BL, Add. MSS 39533, fols 88r, 92r; 39534, fols 29v, 47, 53r, 87r. 6 See, for example, CCEd, ‘Thomas Bridgeman’ (Clergy ID 23125), ‘Andrew Perne’ (63170), ‘Henry Walmesley’ (15971), ‘Henry Frog’ (27652), ‘Thomas Heyney’ (77461), and ‘Robert Goffe’ (76595); for ordinations, see LMA, MS 9535/2, fols 134r–83r; for consecrations, see below, n. 32. 7 See for example, Surrey History Centre, Woking, LM/797, a grant by Bishop Bilson of Winchester, dated 1 June 1605, to Sir George More for divine service to be celebrated in his chapel at Loseley House. A similar licence for the chapel at Dunster Castle is dated 1726 and not 1626, as stated in Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 21. See Somerset Heritage Centre, Taunton, DD/L P39/12. 8 G. Bray (ed.), The Anglican Canons 1529–1947 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), p. 363; K. Fincham (ed.), Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, 2 vols (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994–98). 9 BL, Add. MSS 39533–4; L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 99, 104. In the 1560s, however, the nobility, though smaller in number, had an even greater proportion of chaplains. See Crankshaw, ‘Elizabethan Faculty Office’, p. 47. Relatively few of the 415 chaplaincies were attached to officers of state, although it is sometimes hard to identify them, since officers such as Salisbury

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Household chaplains and Ellesmere were able to appoint chaplains by virtue of their peerages as well as their posts. For some clear examples of chaplains to untitled officers, see BL, Add. MSS 39533, fols 71r, 98r, 39534, fols 18r, 21v, 40v. 10 J. Bliss and W. Scott (eds), The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, 7 vols (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1847–60), 3.132, 134–5. 11 For letters of appointment, see Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D 353, fol. 93r; Somerset Heritage Centre, DD/WHL no. 67; Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertford, DE/Z120/46369; Huntington, Hastings Personal Papers, Box 15, 8 October 1614. 12 NA, LC 5/134, p. 391; see also p. 346. 13 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, ch. 2. 14 BL, Harleian MS 3784, fols 29r, 31, 36v, 38r, 66r. For further discussion of Sancroft’s experience of chaplaincy, see G. Tapsell, ‘The reluctant chaplain: William Sancroft and the later Stuart Church’, pp. 193–211, in this volume. 15 For a selection, see B. M. Pask and M. Harvey (eds), The Letters of George Davenport 1651–1677, Surtees Society, 215 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), pp. 67, 69–71; I. Walton, The Life of Dr Sanderson, late Bishop of Lincoln (1678), sigs M4v, M4iiiiv, N2r–v; J. Gaule, A Defiance to Death. Being the Funebrious Commemoration of… Baptist Lord Hickes, Viscount Camden (1630) and Distractions, or the Holy Madnesse (1629), sig. A5iiv; J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata: A Memorial offer’d to the Great Deservings of John Williams (1693); also J. Martin, Walton’s Lives: Conformist Commemorations and the Rise of Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 3. 16 BL, Lansdowne MS 96, fol. 36; HMC, Salisbury MSS, 11.145, 24.12; CCEd, ‘Jordan Chadwick’ (Clergy ID 68179); Bodleian, Rawlinson Letters 89, fol. 17. 17 HMC, Salisbury MSS, 9.611; W. Knowler (ed.), The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters and Dispatches, 2 vols (1739), 1.299.

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18 For one example among many, see the 5th Earl of Huntingdon’s advocacy of his chaplains: CSPD 1603–10, p. 409; CSPD 1639, p. 542; Huntington, HA 5512, 6758. See also Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, ch. 4. 19 McCullough, Sermons at Court, chs 3–4. 20 William Brough and John Gurgany acted as chaplains to the Queen’s Protestant servants: S. Eward, ‘Brough, William (d. 1671)’, ODNB; CSPD 1660–1, p. 261. In 1633 Andrew Clare was appointed chaplain in ordinary to attend Prince Charles: NA, LC 5/132, p. 330. See also Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary’, p. 141. 21 McCullough, Sermons at Court, pp. 115–16; Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary’, pp. 126–7, 142–3. 22 NA, LC 3/1, fol. 38; LC 5/132, pp. 5, 45, 5/134, pp. 203, 233, 311, 329; Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary’, pp. 127–8; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 254–5. 23 Namely Thomas Howell, Richard Marsh, Sebastian Smith and Herbert Croft: NA, LC 5/132, p. 50, 5/134, pp. 87, 269, 5/135 i., p. 13; J. Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 41–2. 24 NA, SP 16/522/55; S. R. Gardiner (ed.), Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, Camden Society, new series, 39 (London, 1886), p. 257.

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Chaplains in early modern England 25 Another fringe benefit was letters under the signet exempting royal chaplains from cathedral statutes. See NA, SO 3/6, 15 October 1617 (Laud), December 1617 (Anian), September 1619 (Anian); 3/11, May 1636 (Jackson), September 1636 (Potter). 26 Fincham, ‘William Laud’, pp. 71–5; McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 115. 27 W. Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference, which, it pleased his Excellent Maiestie to have … at Hampton Court (1604), pp. 1–3, 21, 85; D. Norton, The King James Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 55–60. 28 Carleton had been chaplain to Prince Charles; Balcanquhall, Davenant, Hall and Ward were chaplains in post. The exception was the sixth, Thomas Goad, chaplain to Archbishop Abbot. P. R. Sellin, ‘So Doth, So Is Religion’: John Donne and Diplomatic Contexts in the Reformed Netherlands 1619–20 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1988), pp. 9–31. 29 McCullough, Sermons at Court, pp. 113–67; L. A. Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King's Preachers and the Rhetoric of Conformity 1603–1625 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 30 McCullough, Sermons at Court, pp. 183–209; Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary’, p. 142.

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31 A. Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), ch. 2; W. Balcanquhall, The Honour of Christian Churches (1633); R. Skinner, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall (1634); T. Turner, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall (1635); T. Laurence, A Sermon Preached before the Kings Maiestie (1637); J. Coffey, ‘Balcanquhall, Walter (c.1586–1645)’, ODNB. 32 K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 117, 126, 178–9 and n. 6, 183; R. O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), pp. 152–3; J. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Orders for Consecrating Churches in the Seventeenth Century, Henry Bradshaw Society, 41 (London, 1911), pp. 15, 30, 40, 45, 135–6, 143, 163–4, 166–7, 196; for confirmation, see also Barlow, Summe and Substance, pp. 33–4, and J. Aubrey, 'Brief Lives' Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set Down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696, ed. A. Clark, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), 1. 186. Archiepiscopal chaplains also preached at the consecration of bishops: see D. Featley, Clavis mystica: A Key Opening Divers Difficult and Mysterious Texts of Holy Scripture: Handled in Seventy Sermons, Preached at Solemn and Most Celebrious Assemblies, Upon Special Occasions in England and France (1636), pp. 122–44; R. Marsh, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration of ... Richard Senhouse, Lord Bishop of Carlile (1625). For the provocative questions posed by Bishop Bancroft’s chaplain, Edward Fulham, to prospective ordinands in the 1630s, see Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D 353, fol. 159r. 33 N. Tyacke (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford vol. 4: Seventeenth-Century Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 194; J. Twigg, The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625–1688 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990), ch. 2; Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 63; Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 191–2. 34 BL, Add. MS 4274, fol. 244. 35 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 161; CCEd, ‘Richard Etkins’ (Clergy ID 62683); ‘William Westerman’ (43898) and W. Westerman, Iacobs Well (1613); A. Foster, ‘Durham House Group (act. 1617–1630)’, ODNB; Isaac Basire is another, for whom see R. B[addeley] and J. N[aylor], The Life of Dr Thomas Morton (York, 1669), pp. 77, 85. ‘Thomas Emerson’ (24142) and ‘William Higgins’ (48870) also seem to fall into this category.

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Household chaplains 36 As did Bishop Harsnett at Norwich, and Bishop Morton at Coventry and Lichfield, and later Durham. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 163–4; B[addeley] and N[aylor], Life of Morton, pp. 76–7, 84–5; O’Day, The English Clergy, p. 152; CCEd, ‘Ralph Brownrigg’ (Clergy ID 22334), ‘William Jeffrey’ (27463), ‘Ewers Gower’ (26123) and ‘Isaac Basire’ (24727). 37 CCEd, ‘Anthony Egglesfield’ (Clergy ID 56653); Somerset Heritage Centre, D/D/Ca 146, fol. 32r; 201, fol. 70v; T. Hearne (ed.), Duo rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres, 2 vols (Oxford, 1732), 2.715. Other examples are Gabriel Powell, chaplain to Bishops Vaughan and Ravis of London, and John Fulnetby, who served Archbishops Bancroft and Abbot. See ‘Gabriel Powell’ (44554), ‘John Fulnetby’ (26368); LPL, MS 1730, fol. 8r. 38 CCEd, ‘Richard Adams’ (Clergy ID 7484), ‘Thomas Woodyeates’ (66037); CSPD 1623–5, p. 233. 39 W. Sclater, A Quaestion of Tythes Revised (1623), sig. §2v; J. Benedict, ‘Sclater, William (bap. 1575, d. 1627)’, ODNB. For others, see CCEd, ‘Richard Hadley’ (Clergy ID 57160), ‘Joseph Greenefeeld’ (57124). 40 Foster, ‘Durham House Group’, ODNB; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), ch. 5. 41 King’s College, Cambridge, KCGB/3/7/2; CSPD 1627–8, p. 479; Bodleian, MS Tanner 72, fol. 292. 42 M. M. Knappen (ed.), Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries (Chicago: American Society of Church History, 1933), p. 131; CCEd, ‘Samuel Ward’ (Clergy ID 55939); HMC, Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2.372, 373, 379, 386, 391, 414–15. 43 CCEd, ‘Francis Fotherby’ (Clergy ID 14055), ‘Edward Cotton’ (95800); Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 164.

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44 W. Hutchinson, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 3 vols (Newcastle and Carlisle, 1785–94), 2.171; CCEd, ‘Robert Newell’ (Clergy ID 28369); A. Foster, ‘Newell, Robert (1576–1642)’, ODNB. 45 See BL, Lansdowne MS 153, fols 66r, 67v, 73r; M. Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 26–8, 100; R. G. Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), pp. 345–61. 46 W. Covell, A Briefe Answer unto Certain Reasons by Way of an Apologie ... by Mr Iohn Burges (1606); L. Hutton, An Answere to a Certaine Treatise of the Crosse in Baptisme (Oxford, 1605), sig. ¶3ir; S. Collins, A Sermon Preached at Paules-Crosse (1608); W. Westerman, The Faithfull Subiect (1608), pp. 19–27, 44–60, 114–15. 47 For further discussion of the range of Daniel Featley’s activities as chaplain, see H. Adlington, ‘Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley, anti-Catholic controversialist abroad’, pp. 83–102, and M. Morrissey, ‘Episcopal chaplains and control of the media, 1586–1642’, pp. 64–82, both in this volume. 48 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 253–6; A. Hunt, ‘Featley, Daniel (1582–1645)’, ‘Bray, William (d. 1643)’, and ‘Haywood, William (1599/1600–1663)’, all ODNB; A. Milton, ‘Licensing, censorship and religious orthodoxy in early Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 625–51; A. Hunt, ‘Licensing and religious censorship in early modern England’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 127–46; CSPD 1631–3, p. 524; S. R. Gardiner (ed.), Documents Relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne, in 1634 and 1637, Camden Society, new series, 18 (London, 1877), pp. 2, 14, 15, 17; J. F. Merritt, The Social World of

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Chaplains in early modern England Early Modern Westminster (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 345–8; Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, pp. 252, 256–7. 49 R. O’Day, ‘The ecclesiastical patronage of the Lord Keeper 1558–1642’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 23 (1973), 89–109; Bodleian, MS Tanner 179; J. Broadway, R. Cust and S. K. Roberts (eds), A Calendar of the Docquets of Lord Keeper Coventry 1625–1640 (London: List and Index Society, Special Series, 34, 2004), pp. 96–131; F. S. Boas (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Crosfield (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 4. I owe the last reference to Andrew Hegarty. 50 Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, 1.24–31. 51 For chaplains as tutors, see Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 62, 88; Bodleian, MS Tanner 49, fol. 143; D. Walker, ‘Nicholson, William (1591–1672)’, ODNB; and the case of Francis Giffard, for whom see F. H. Ellis, ‘Wilmot, John, second earl of Rochester (1647–1680)’, ODNB. 52 T. Raylor, ‘Newcastle’s ghosts: Robert Payne, Ben Jonson and the “Cavendish circle”’, in C. J. Summers and T. L. Pebworth (eds), Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England (Columbia Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 92–114.

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53 The Lives of ... Elias Ashmole, esquire, and Mr William Lilly, written by themselves (1774), pp. 44–5; E. P. Shirley, Stemmata Shirleiana; or the Annals of the Shirley Family (London: Nichols and Son, 1873), p. 152; Bodleian, Add. MS C 304a, fol. 19. In the 1650s Viscount Scudamore was searching for a chaplain who could teach him philosophy: I. Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: the Career of John, First Viscount Scudamore (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 53. For chaplains writing on behalf of their patrons in the 1640s, see J. Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2004), pp. 82, 95, 101, 257. 54 J. Strype, ‘Some account of the Life of ... John Lightfoot’, in the Works of the Reverend and Learned John Lightfoot, 2 vols (1684), 1. pp. ii–iii, xxix–xxx; The Workes of Tho: Adams (1629), sig. ¶2r; for his chaplaincy, see T. Adams, The Happines of the Church (1619), sig. *2r–v; A. Jackson, Sorrowes Lenitive (1614), sig. A2; G. Goodwin, ‘Jackson, Abraham (1588/9–1646?)’, rev. V. Larminie, ODNB. 55 J. Br[owning], Publike-Prayer and the Fasts of the Church (1636), sig. A3ir. 56 HMC, Salisbury MSS, 10.429, 11.358, 12.191, 440, 648, 17.161, 18.422, CSPD 1603–10, p. 302; J. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 168, 177–8. For an example of chaplains electioneering for their patrons, see CSPD 1639–40, pp. 580–3. 57 Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic, pp. 22–5. 58 T. Gataker, A Discours Apologetical (1654), pp. 46–7, 53. 59 For the local pair, see CCEd, ‘Geoffrey Amherst’ (Clergy ID 2037) and ‘Robert Say’ (38353); the others were ‘Samuel Bowses’ (133864), ‘Tobias Davies’ (56437), ‘William Wyncote’ (77092). For Amherst, see above, p. 11. 60 Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton, Isham MS 221. 61 S. Clarke, The Lives of Thirty-Two English Divines (1677), pp. 41–3; ‘The Preface with the Life of the Author’, in S. Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Latter Age (1683), p. 6; M. McGiffert (ed.), God’s Plot. The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety. Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), p. 51.

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Household chaplains 62 F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 322, 350, 353; Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 14–15. 63 The Life and Death of ... Thomas Cawton (1662), pp. 14–15; S. Ashe, Gray Hayres Crowned with Grace (1655), pp. 45–6; M. Cotton, Magnalia Christi Americana, ed. T. Robbins, 2 vols (Hartford, Conn., 1853), p. 409. See also W. Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), p. 371. 64 Clarke, Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, p. 58; J. Yiannikkou, ‘Blackerby, Richard (1574– 1648)’, ODNB. 65 A. Searle (ed.), Barrington Family Letters 1628–1632, Camden Society, 4th series, 28 (London, 1983), p. 258; McGiffert (ed.), God’s Plot, p. 53. 66 K. Fincham (ed.), ‘Annual accounts of the Church of England, 1632–9’, in M. Barber, S. Taylor and G. Sewell (eds), From the Reformation to the Permissive Society (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 65–6, 79–80. 67 J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart England (London: Routledge, 1984), pp. 158, 162–8; Davies, The Caroline Captivity, pp. 161–3, followed by Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 28–33; Heal and Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, pp. 368–9. 68 See above, p. 13. 69 Fincham (ed.), Visitation Articles, 2.69. 70 Knowler (ed.), The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters, 1.141; P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus (1668), pp. 253–5; Prynne, Canterburies Doome, pp. 383–4. 71 D. Parsons (ed.), The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven, Bart (London: Longman, 1836), p. 19; Fincham (ed.), ‘Annual accounts’, p. 116; see also p. 113 for Charles I’s insistence that chaplains be ‘conformeable men’. 72 Ibid., pp. 85, 113, 116, 144–5, 147.

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73 Ibid., pp. 106, 109, 113, 119, 123–4, 141, 144–5, 147. 74 Wickham Legg (ed.), English Orders, p. 321; A. Spicer, ‘“God will have a house”: defining sacred space and rites of consecration in early seventeenth-century England’, in A. Spicer and S. Hamilton (eds), Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 228–30; R. Spalding (ed.), The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605–75 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 64–5; Parsons (ed.), The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby, p. 19n. 75 I only know of one such licence for the period 1603–29, from James I in 1609 to Sir Oliver Cromwell and his heirs, permitting them to keep one or more chaplains. NA, SO 3/4 (Oct. 1609), SP 15/36/77. For similar licences to employ unnamed chaplains before the Reformation, see Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 15–16. I owe the first of these references to Andrew Foster. 76 Fincham (ed.), ‘Annual accounts’, p. 116; LPL, Laud’s Register, i, fol. 281; R. Abbot, The Holinesse of Chrisian [sic] Churches, or a Sermon Preached at the Consecration of the Chappell of Sr Iohn Baker, of Sussing-Herst in Cranbrooke in Kent (1638). 77 Fincham (ed.), ‘Annual accounts’, p. 139; Fincham (ed.), Visitation Articles, 1.116. 78 NA, SP 16/434, fols 78r–9r, /443, fols 36r–8r. It was Laud who observed that Rosewell was under the rank of a baron and did not qualify for a chaplain. 79 Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, ch. 5.

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Chaplains in early modern England 80 Ibid., pp. 286–7; Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary’, p. 145; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 306, fol. 45r; Durham University Library, Cosin Letter Book 1A, no. 39. 81 A. Milton, ‘Anglicanism and royalism in the 1640s’, in J. Adamson (ed.), The English Civil War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 61–81. 82 E. Hyde, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. Macray, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 3.471–85; B. Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1853), 1.378–80; A. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses... to Which Are Added The Fasti, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols (London: Rivington and others, 1813–20), 3.896. Hammond was there as chaplain to the Duke of Richmond and Earl of Southampton. 83 C. Petrie (ed.), The Letters, Speeches and Proclamations of King Charles I (London: Cassell, 1935), pp. 212–13; P. A. Knachel (ed.), Eikon Basilike (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 140–8; G. S. Stevenson (ed.), Charles I in Captivity (New York: D. Appleton, 1927), pp. 44–5, 78, 88, 117–20; O. Ogle et al. (eds), Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, 5 vols (Oxford, 1852–1970), 1.363, 382, 384–6; Bodleian, MS Sancroft 78, pp. 15–23; Walton, The Life of Dr Sanderson, sigs D4iiv-iiir, E4iiiv–F2r; W. Jacobson (ed.), The Works of Robert Sanderson, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1854), 6.367; see also A. Milton, ‘Sacrilege and compromise: court divines and the king’s conscience, 1642–1649’, in M. J. Braddick and D. L. Smith (eds), The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 135–53. Sermons preached before the King at Newport by Ferne, Hammond, Haywood and Sanderson were all later published: Wing F806, H520, H1240, S628. 84 A. Keay, The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (London: Continuum, 2008), pp. 65–9; Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, pp. 288–9; E. S. de Beer (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 3.17–54; BL, Add. MS 78364, fols 2r–26r. For Clare, see above, n. 20.

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85 K. Fincham and S. Taylor, ‘Vital statistics: episcopal ordination and ordinands in England, 1646–60’, English Historical Review, 126 (2011), 319–44. 86 Ibid., 332. Samuel Baker and Robert Pory served Juxon, Seth Ward waited on Brownrigg: Bodleian, MS Eng. Misc. e 118, fol. 70r; A. G. Matthews, Walker Revised (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), p. 55; W. Pope, The Life of Seth Lord Bishop of Salisbury, ed. J. B. Bamborough (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961), p. 31. 87 Shirley, Stemmata Shirleiana, pp. 152, 154; BL, Harleian MS 6492, nos 61, 83, 91–3 and passim. The network centring on Sheldon and Hammond would repay systematic study. Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, pp. 291–4; K. Fincham and S. Taylor, ‘Episcopalian conformity and nonconformity, 1646–60’, in J. McElligott and D. L. Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 18–43 (pp. 27–8). 88 By the Protector. A Declaration of His Highnes with the Advice of the Council, in order to the Securing the Peace of this Commonwealth (24 November 1655); C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 165–6; Matthews, Walker Revised, pp. 21, 191, 295, 298; CSPD 1656–7, pp. 383–4; NA, SP 25/78, fol. 838r; A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 96–7. 89 Bodleian, MS Tanner 52, fol. 83r; T. S. Evans (ed.), The Life of Robert Frampton (London: Longman, 1876), pp. 12–22; LPL, MS 595, p. 57. For others, see R. S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement (London: Dacre Press, 1951), pp. 284–94.

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Household chaplains 90 J. C. Davis, ‘Cromwell’s religion’, in J. Morrill (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 205–6; R. Sherwood, The Court of Oliver Cromwell (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp. 105–10; R. P. Stearns, The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter 1598–1660 (Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois, 1954), ch. 14 and passim; V. de Sola Pinto, Peter Sterry, Platonist and Puritan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), pp. 19–39; N. H. Keeble and G. F. Nuttall (eds), Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1.294–5, 299–303, 306–11; E. Calamy, Memoirs of the Life of ... John Howe (1724), pp. 18–25. Very few interregnum Whitehall sermons were printed. For an exception, see P. Sterry, The True Way of Uniting the People of God in these Nations (1660). 91 S. J. Guscott, ‘Brideoake, Ralph (bap. 1613, d. 1678)’, and I. Green, ‘Sherlock, Richard (1612–1689)’, both ODNB; NA, SP 29/6, fol. 41r. For other examples, see the careers of Christopher Love and Stephen Charnock: E. C. Vernon, ‘Love, Christopher (1618–1651)’, and R. L. Greaves, ‘Charnock, Stephen (1628–1680)’, both ODNB; Samuel Kemme, in A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains 1642–1651 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990), p. 141; Richard Allestree (see J. Spurr, ‘Allestree, Richard (1621/2–1681)’, ODNB, and CSPD 1656–7, p. 3). 92 J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged, 1650–1700 (London: Routledge, 1993), ch. 10. A small number of chaplains subscribed to the 1662 Act of Uniformity, but this appears to have been voluntary. See, for example, CCEd, ‘Samuel Dove’ (Clergy ID 87821), ‘George Dawson’ (24234). 93 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 38–68, draws attention to the low status of some chaplains to the laity in this period. 94 O’Day, The English Clergy, and ‘The anatomy of a profession: the clergy of the Church of England’, in W. Prest (ed.), The Professions in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, c.1987), pp. 25–63.

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95 Walton, The Life of Dr Sanderson, sig. M4iiv; CCEd, ‘Josiah Pullen’ (Clergy ID 81474); H. E. D. Blakiston, ‘Pullen, Josiah (1631–1714)’, rev. J. H. Curthoys, ODNB. See, for instance, Pullen’s role in instituting John Robinson to Thornton with Bagworth vicarage in January 1663: ‘John Robinson’ (102110). 96 Important exceptions are M. C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 315–40; D. L. Smith, ‘Catholic, Anglican or Puritan? Edward Sackville, fourth Earl of Dorset and the ambiguities of religion in early Stuart England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 2 (1992), pp. 105–24. 97 See also W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts (London: Longman, 1972), ch. 9; Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains.

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Chapter 3

.

Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility: activities, categories and patterns David J. Crankshaw

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W

hat are we to make of the roles and significance of chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility? How much cultural agency did they possess, even if it can be decided what ‘cultural agency’ means? Part of the difficulty in answering these questions is that historians have tended to talk past each other. Revisionists, having demonstrated the general health of late medieval Roman Catholicism, have explained sixteenth-century religious change by highlighting its piecemeal character, processes being so protracted that we must factor in the varying perspectives bound up with generational turnover. It has been found convenient to slice the old-fashioned singular ‘English Reformation’ horizontally, distinguishing, above, successful political Reformations from, below, a parallel evangelical Reformation of limited efficacy. If vertical slicing has been attempted, then it has been conducted either temporally, isolating three political Reformations, occurring in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, or geographically, exposing developments in diverse localities, ranging from villages to dioceses.1 Of course, it is possible to combine these approaches, but the obvious focus for discerning links – religious patronage, especially that exercised by the laity – has often been ignored, probably owing to its inherent complexity. Postrevisionism has not done much better; its boldest exponent, claiming to find a dynamic ‘popular politics’ at play, has surprisingly little to say on this subject.2 Meanwhile, historians of the early modern clergy, some grappling with the concept of professionalisation, and otherwise well attuned to the need to explore patronage, have ignored the category of the domestic chaplain.3 Finally, the only scholar to have written about this species of cleric at any length chose a span so broad, and offered a treatment so thematic, that the context – not least England’s Reformations, however defined – almost disappeared.4 Due to these circumstances, and apart from the odd revealing case-study,5 we are barely any nearer to knowing whether or not lay patrons operated anything

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility resembling patronage policies; if they did, then what those policies might have been; and whether or not the implementation of such policies accounts, in any major way, for the patterns of religious change perceived on the ground. Research on that scale lies far beyond the scope of this chapter; and it may be true that, as regards the filling of parochial benefices, the nature of many relationships between patrons and clients will remain elusive. Nevertheless, a good argument can be made for beginning enquiries with chaplains to the nobility, for the identification of a peer’s complement of chaplains might shed light on his predilections, and hence perhaps on wider patronage policies; after all, many chaplains were also presented to benefices, sometimes by the same people as those retaining them. Moreover, beneficed chaplains, when not on duty in the noble household, were required to reside on their living, and therefore could function as a conduit to transmit the household’s religious ethos to another location. Indeed, the household itself might prove to be influential more generally:

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The preacher tho he be absent sometime either in the Princes service or attending in some noblemans household doth therein more proffitt the Common Wealth then in continuall residence vpon A small charge because it is most expedient for the Common wealth that the true feare & knowledge of God should be planted in the 6 houses of Princes & great persons[,] from whom the people fetch their light[.]

Here it is argued, firstly, that the definition of ‘chaplain’ is not straightforward and, secondly, that some chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility did enjoy an important cultural agency, though whether or not that agency came about because of their chaplaincies is difficult to determine. Furthermore, this chapter suggests, following preliminary prosopographical analysis using the author’s database of 809 chaplains, that one characteristic of a subset of that group – namely their age – was commonly inversely related to that of their patrons, and that that relationship has implications for aspects of cultural agency. I If some precious truths reside in particulars, then let us start by probing one household in which chaplains bulked large. In a 1622 dedicatory epistle, Walter Sweeper BA,7 ‘Minister of Strowd’, told the Herbert brothers, William, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, 1st Earl of Montgomery, that he had gained the greatest part of my litle learning through my acquaintance with your honorable fathers house and family, where you had a most religious and truly noble breeding and education, by the zealous care of your pious ... father [Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl 8 of Pembroke] ... Your ... fathers house for state and gouernment somewhat resembled Salomons Court ... And your famous Wilton house, like a litle Vniuersitie[,] was a more excellent nurcerie for learning and pietie, then euer it was in former times[.]

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Chaplains in early modern England This statement might be dismissed as mere hyperbole, were it not for the fact that Sweeper substantiates his assertion:

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Wilton house had in it that godly learned Phisitian and skilfull Mathematician M[aster] Doctor Moffet my most worthy and kind friend; it had in it great Hugh Sanford learned in all arts, sciences, knowledge, humane and diuine, ... from whom I neuer departed without some profit. To passe ouer Gerard the Herbalist, M[aster] Massinger and other Gentlemen schollers. Neuer noble house had successiuely deeper Diuines, namely Bishop Babington, B[ishop] Parry, M[aster] Conna[m], M[aster] Walford, M[aster] Parker, M[aster] Bigs ... These were the Trophees of your fathers house; he honoured God, and 9 God honoured him, and you his seed enioy the blessing[.]

Such trophies were indeed impressive. Dr Thomas Moffet – immortalised in the nursery rhyme on his daughter’s encounter with a spider – was a muchtravelled Paracelsian physician and naturalist who had befriended Robert Sidney in Strasbourg and had later been consulted by Sir Philip Sidney, the poet; it was perhaps the Sidney link that had brought him into Pembroke’s orbit, for these Sidneys were the earl’s brothers-in-law. Moffet was to be Sir Philip’s earliest known biographer.10 Sanford had been the 3rd Earl’s tutor and had assisted Lady Pembroke in producing the 1593 edition of her late brother’s Arcadia.11 The Herbert connection with the illustrious John Gerard appears to be hitherto unremarked in modern scholarship.12 Massinger was very likely Arthur, father of Philip, the dramatist; the former man is described elsewhere as the earl’s secretary.13 Of the divines, the first to be listed was Dr Gervase Babington, Bishop of Worcester from 1597 and a Calvinist predestinarian, who had been a chaplain at Wilton House in 1581, and perhaps part of 1582, maintaining ‘a close relationship with the Herberts for the rest of his life’. Babington received much preferment at the earl’s hands.14 His earliest surviving book, dated 1583 and dedicated to Pembroke, notes that the peer had caused him to minister in Cardiff, where, as inventories disclose, the family kept a lavish establishment, the castle being its chief residence among extensive South Wales estates. The author begs his patron to ‘Co[n]tinue ... that Christia[n] care to other the desolat flocks of the Lords people, that with so great and iust praise your Honour hath shewed of late so many waies’, and especially to the townsfolk of Cardiff. In this publication, he had ‘indeuored, both for them and others, to lay downe a briefe collectio[n] of such things concerning the commaundements of God, as in larger maner both before your Lo[rdship] and them were handled’.15 The implication is that the work had originated in either preaching or catechesis, and we learn from another source that Babington had lectured in Cardiff.16 Dr Henry Parry, the next divine and also a Calvinist, was hardly less distinguished, having been appointed reader in Greek at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and having published a hugely successful translation of Ursinus’s lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism, which had been co-written by Zacha-

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility rias Bär (Ursinus) and Kaspar von Olewig (Olevianus). Parry had subsequently become a chaplain to Elizabeth I and had followed Babington at Worcester, where a monument commemorates his ‘assiduous preaching’. Pembroke was the book’s dedicatee.17 Abraham Conham (d. 1613), a Cambridge BD, had replaced Babington as chaplain, lauding his predecessor in a preface to Babington’s 1583 work. He had gone on to acquire prebends in Salisbury, Wells and Lincoln Cathedrals.18 Clemens Walford, comparatively obscure, had become rector of Wolverton (in Warwickshire) in 1575, but his association with these stellar figures hints at hidden talents.19 The penultimate divine, Robert Parker, probably a native of Wilton, had become a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1585, being punished, in Oxford, for vestiarian nonconformity. Preferment to benefices (two in Pembroke’s gift) had followed subscription to the articles of religion. However, his conformity had been superficial, and the 1607 publication of his tract against ceremonies had exposed the extent of his antipathy to the status quo. Suspended from his ministry, he had fled to the Low Countries in order to pursue a career as a semi-separatist controversialist. His second book, published in 1611, was a continuation of a work on Christ’s descent into hell begun by Hugh Sanford. Two posthumous treatises cemented his reputa20 tion; he was revered by New England congregationalists as inspirational. Finally, Geoffrey Biggs was an Oxford MA, formerly chaplain of Magdalen College and preacher at nearby Horspath, who had joined the Pembroke household by 27 July 1593, when he had been instituted (on the earl’s presentation) to a Salisbury living.21 Sweeper may have named these chaplains more or less in their order of appointment; Conham and Parker were still in post when the earl died, but had by then been joined by three recruits.22 Everything suggests a tightly-knit community: Massinger, Moffet and Sanford witnessed Pembroke’s will and were offered legacies, while Moffet, who would be buried at Wilton, bequeathed his best English Bible to Parker.23 Given the quality of these chaplains, it is easy to believe that it might have been said of Pembroke, as it was of the 2nd Earl of Bedford,24 that he kept a minister in his house ‘for the watering of himselfe & his familie ... with the water of life’. ‘Assure your selues’, Dr Thomas Sparke declared at Bedford’s funeral, that hee made not his religion a stepping stone to clime vp to promotion by, nor his drudge to serue his turne to compasse his worldly ... deuices by. No, no, he was no vaine and prophane politike, that fauoured ... religion for his own turne: his vnfeined loue appeared towardes it, in that euen the feete, yea the very feete of the[m] that were messengers therof vnto him, were alwaies beautifull in his eies: insomuch, that hee tooke pleasure to ... conferre with them most familiarly ..., taking it as great 25 honour vnto himself, to patronise them in their good causes at al times[.]

Chaplains might vouch not only for a pious life, but also for a good death, being called upon to hear confessions and to offer up prayers. In some cases,

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Chaplains in early modern England spiritual ministration was mixed with medical intervention. A few chaplains were doubtless sufficiently versatile to be able to cope with both demands: Timothy Bright, for example, was a Cambridge MD and preacher serving Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.26 Those with no known medical qualifications, on the other hand, may have tried to muddle through, albeit perhaps unwittingly hastening the end. It is difficult not to sympathise with the 1st Earl of Essex.27 Returning to Ireland as governor of Ulster, he had fallen ill in late August 1576, with symptoms of either dysentery or typhoid, though convinced that poison was responsible. An account of his decline tells that the earl continually desired his chaplain – Thomas Knell, the elder – to say 28 prayers. Several points in this anonymous narrative are corroborated by a letter written soon after the peer’s demise: ‘Suche as toke vpon theme to be his phisitia[n]ns, as ... Knell[,] a preacher, ... applied him w[i]t[h] many glisters and therby filled his body full of winde ... so as ether ther ingnorance [sic], or some violent cavse beyonde ther skill[,] ended his life’.29 Rumour of foul play spread rapidly, helped by the fact that Lady Essex was engaged in a close relationship, ‘sporadic’ but ‘probably adulterous’, with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, her future husband.30 Knell was required to say what he knew. Confirming his presence during the earl’s last sickness, he told that, late one night, in the absence of a physician, he had administered ‘a glister’. After Essex had admitted his suspicion of poison, he was sent ‘a peece of vnicornes horne w[hi]ch I rased and gaue him’. The patient vomited at once, which ‘made him suspect the more’, as it was said ‘that vnicornes horne would not worke but where poyson was receaved’.31 Another chaplain wrote a poem alleging that, before going to Ireland, Essex had had a dream in which his death before Michaelmas had been predicted.32 Less dramatically, the final days of the godly 3rd Earl of Huntingdon33 were memorialised by a chaplain of impeccable evangelical credentials.34 Knell was no bumbling fool: earlier in the 1570s, he had gained two London benefices on the endorsement of Dr Alexander Nowell, the progressive Dean 35 of St Paul’s, while his book on prayer would appear posthumously. But his story affords us a rare glimpse of a chaplain at work, and shows the degree of intimacy that could subsist between peer and cleric. It raises the question of what functions chaplains might be expected to fulfil. That they did not necessarily constitute an aristocratic household’s educational elite is indicated by Sweeper’s testimony, though one wonders how far the Pembroke set-up was typical; politique peers existed, as Sparke implied. And ministers too could cynically exploit the patronage system. George Gifford warned that the Preachers of the Gospell ought to be farre from flattering the rich and great men of the world ... Noblemen haue their Chaplaines which attend vpon them in their houses, shall they commaund their Lords the things which S[aint] Paule ... willeth? Surely if they be faithfull to Christ ... they must needes do it, ... but if they seeke

40 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility themselues, and their worldly preferment, then will they flatter and be afraide for to displease, not caring much whether their Lords go to heauen or to hell, so they may 36 serue their owne turne, and get liuings and dignities.

In order to assess such claims, we need to take a closer look at what chaplains did. II A valuable insight into how one chaplain viewed his role is provided by a forthright letter written by William Overton, future Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, to the Earl of Leicester: I am yo[u]r Chapleyn of olde, I haue ben alwaies servisable at yo[u]r co[m]maundme[n]t, I haue ben plyable to yo[u]r l[ett]res & suyt[es], I haue ben & am in [such] case both able & ready to doe you hono[u]r if you will vse me. And though I haue not done you muche hono[u]r in the Court, wherin I haue not so muche ben, yet in the country wher I haue most contynued and wher I haue ben by yo[u]r owne ... assigneme[n]t, I haue done you most honour of all the Chapleyns you haue, both by preaching and houskepinge, w[hi]ch two thing[es] are the chief poynt[es] of hono[u]r & best peece of service that any Chapleyn can doe you: For what greater honour can you receave, than [ for it] to be knowne ... abrode that you keepe suche Chapleyns about you as both ca[n] & will sett furth the hono[u]r of God[.]

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Later in the text, the neurotic Overton (thinking that Leicester favoured his enemies) protested that: If ... I haue served God in the country, I haue served you also both in the country and in the Court, if I haue honoured hym there, I haue honoured you both there & eu[er]y where, for as much as it is eu[er]ywhere thought, how soeu[er] it be true, that in all such my doyng[es] I haue ben supported ... by yo[u]r Lordships meanes, whose name of Chapleyn I bare. And yet ... I haue done you hono[u]r in the Court indede, so often as I haue ben call[ed] vnto doyng[es] ... and would haue done you more if I had ben call[ed] oftener, neither wanteth ther any forwardnes in me, but goodwill 37 rather & inclination in your Lordship to call me forward.

Evidently, this frustrated careerist resented being kept away from Court for much of the time, curiously reducing his ‘country’ service to ‘preaching and houskepinge’. As we shall see, not all chaplains could preach, but, where masters aimed to project a godly ethos, regular sermons were presumably standard fare; the chaplains of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, allegedly supplied one each Sunday.38 It was reported that Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby, ‘hathe pr[e]achinge in his house Sabothly, by the best pr[e]achers in ye Countrie’, meaning Lancashire.39 Proof lies in domestic accounts for 1587–90: preachers are named for many Sundays, and additional sermons were given on certain feast days. Much of this preaching was provided by the earl’s chaplains beneficed locally: some were probably on duty in the household;

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Chaplains in early modern England others paid ‘flying visits’.40 ‘Guest preachers’, such as Thomas Sorocold and the Bishop of Chester, appeared now and then.41 Whether or not sermons were given in a private chapel, rather than in the great hall, is a moot point, since not all mansions contained one, and the inventories of those that did scarcely ever mention a pulpit, typically itemising only moveables.42 It is fortuitous that the location of some sermons preached before Derby – the chapel at New Park (Ormskirk) in Lancashire – is disclosed on the title-page of one example, given by a chaplain and published at the earl’s behest.43 Besides edifying faith via preaching, attending to the spiritual needs of family and servants must have constituted a large part of what Overton meant by ‘houskepinge’, though it has left little trace. Rules for Derby’s establishment stipulate that all domestic staff were generally to hear divine service 44 daily. Burghley’s early biographer noted his care that those living under his roof perform their devotions, invariably ‘taking ordre for praiers, morninge & eveninge, in his chappell’ and reprehending absentees.45 Was communion available? It is hard to say. John Horsfall, dedicating a book to the dowager Lady Sheffield, gave thanks ‘for yt it pleased your honour ... to ... take me to be your household Chaplaine, & as it were a guide and helper of that godly zeale of calling vpon the name of God, & receiuing of his Sacraments’.46 Perhaps this was more chaplain-as-mentor than as celebrant. Recalling the role of ‘confessor’ in Roman Catholicism, such ministration emerges most vividly in diaries. A famous example is that of Margaret, Lady Hoby, of Hackness Hall in Yorkshire. Her diary details devotions involving Richard Rhodes, chaplain there c.1599–c.1605. He often prayed with her and read to her – not only from the Bible, but also from evangelical classics, including Hugh Latimer’s sermons. And when they were apart, she wrote to him. In 1600, for instance, during a London trip, she intended to send notes on sermons that she had recently heard. Rhodes had clearly become a companion.47 While many of Lady Hoby’s observances took place in ‘my Closett’ or in ‘my Chamber’, some must have occurred before her household in the Hall’s chapel. But wherever they happened domestically, in no sense did she abandon the adjacent parish 48 church: the diary records many visits, not merely on Sundays. This case undermines the claim that ‘Chaplains supported the separateness of their patrons from the local community, by liberating them from attendance at the parish church, and thereby heightening their status’.49 Was there a legal basis for such alleged withdrawal, that would forestall a recusancy charge? The answer is ‘probably not’. When the 1559 Act of Uniformity requires all subjects regularly to resort to their parish church, ‘or chapel accustomed’, it almost certainly means dependent chapels found in large northern parishes, not domestic ones.50 Exhortations to public worship were not unknown.51 Nevertheless, the fact that noble and gentry families increasingly put up exclusive pews in parish churches renders the idea of withdrawal (except

42 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility by Roman Catholic recusants) inherently unlikely. There was a concern for privacy – Sir Thomas Gawdy’s pew at Redenhall was criticised for being ‘of a monstrous hight, curtayned like a bedstead’ – but it was privacy within the parish church.52 Where numerous chaplains were retained by one patron, domestic service may have been organised by rota, perhaps copying the royal pattern of quarterly stints.53 Richard Neile knew that, when on duty, he must stick to his tasks, not interfering in other affairs.54 And yet certain peers seem to have employed their chaplains in a wide variety of roles. Alban Langdale, longstanding chaplain to the Roman Catholic 1st Viscount Montague, endorsed an 55 indenture about a marriage settlement. Similarly, one of Thomas, 4th Baron Paget’s chaplains appears as an assignee in the instrument recognising agreement on the erection of a monument to the 1st Baron in Lichfield Cathedral.56 In fact, Peter Bottrell’s functions extended far beyond the merely secretarial, for in 1575 he was busy negotiating in a tithe dispute, while another document reveals that he had doubled as household steward.57 Even after he had ceased to be steward, his half-yearly wage was £3 6s. 8d. – the highest one listed for Paget’s staff at Christmas 1578.58 Dr John Favour, chaplain to the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, Lord President of the Council in the North, assisted (it was reported in January 1594) in the interrogation of papist prisoners.59 Although chaplains are readily associated with households, one must not forget that many also held benefices. Contemporaneous debate, mostly linked to ‘puritan’ efforts to combat so-called abuses of pluralism and non-residence,60 drew attention to the distances between cures; no limitation had been stated in the crucial Henrician Act of Parliament,61 but a restriction to thirty miles was imposed in 1584.62 However, just as important, regarding pluralist chaplains, was the proximity of each living to a patron’s main estates: how reasonable was it to expect them to return to their parishes when ‘off duty’, and how much time must have been spent travelling? Livings could be surprisingly remote. Anyone familiar with the history of the Paget family will recall West 63 Drayton (Middlesex) and Beaudesert (Staffordshire). Yet a chaplain to the 4th Baron was beneficed in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.64 Many such examples could be given. The location of benefices sometimes had nothing to do with a current chaplaincy – rather, it was a relic of earlier patronage. John Alwood, for instance, had obtained rectories at Morton (Derbyshire) and Clifton (Nottinghamshire) as chaplain to Sir James Dyer, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, but had attached himself, after Dyer’s death, to Lord St John of Bletsoe, and still held Clifton about the date of that appointment.65 Clearly, one must not attribute too much patronage to any particular chaplaincy. Even so, chaplains should have spent some time resident on their cures, or else churchwardens might complain in visitations; such presence is occasionally attested in local sources.66

43 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains in early modern England Periodic repair to a living was not the only cause of absence from the household: preaching chaplains accepted invitations to give ‘guest sermons’ elsewhere. In 1576, a chaplain to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was selected to appear at the important pulpit at St Mary’s Hospital in London.67 Interestingly, some visiting preachers are identified chiefly by chaplaincy, not by benefice.68 At Kingston-upon-Thames, it sufficed, in a few cases, to note only the patrons’ identities.69 Is this evidence that tenure of the post automatically conferred prestige – that any occupant was guaranteed a measure of public recognition? It tallies with other sources: contributing in 1576 to steeple works at Great St Mary’s Church in Cambridge, Richard Thorpe was described not as a fellow of Queens’ College, nor as a Leicestershire parson, but simply 70 as chaplain to Lord Rutland. This manner of ready association raises the question as to whether or not chaplains wore liveries, or bore some symbol – on a badge, perhaps – to show whom they served. A few may have welcomed that degree of protection that their service implicitly brought them, no matter how it was signified, for they had enemies. George Savage was so badly persecuted by his antagonist, Henry Standley, that Lord Berkeley told Walsingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury.71 The memorial brass to Henry Wilsha, chaplain to Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel, acknowledges protection afforded by Arundel, by his son, Lord Maltravers, and by his son-in-law, Lord Lumley.72

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III Chaplains requiring protection were evidently contributing to something, but did a chaplain’s work amount to cultural agency? We have seen that, through residence in the household, he must have helped to foster its religious culture, and that, to some extent, he acted similarly in any parish to which he returned as incumbent, while chaplains who were peripatetic preachers could make an impact more widely. However, for some, cultural agency was also manifest on a separate plane, as authors. It seems likely, for instance, that a chaplain 73 wrote the anonymous biography of the 12th Earl of Arundel. Burghley received a tract against the Roman Catholic Church penned by his chaplain Walter Marsh.74 In many cases, literary effort reached fruition in print, and it is those publications, not their clerical careers, that have brought lasting fame. The sermon is one genre in which chaplains feature significantly, especially when the initial version had been delivered from a prominent pulpit, though it is scarcely the only one.75 In 1571, John Northbrooke brought out a strident book of confessional polemic, his target being Thomas Harding, the Roman Catholic controversialist; he later leapt aboard the sabbatarian bandwagon.76 Francis Shakelton contributed to the burgeoning providentialist literature.77 Dr Anthony Rush, by contrast, dilated on the topical ‘mirror for magistrates’

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility theme.78 Among Dr Timothy Bright’s prolific output was an influential study of melancholy, believed to have been known to Shakespeare, and a ‘landmark’ work on shorthand.79 Mention of Shakespeare brings us to fiction. William Baldwin is today forgotten as chaplain to Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford, yet literary scholars hail him as the author of Beware the Cat (1570), ‘the first English novel’, according to William Ringler.80 Likewise, William Wager’s role as the 4th Earl of Derby’s chaplain is now totally overshadowed by his activity as a playwright.81 In fact, enthusiasts of Wager the author seem mostly to be oblivious to the career of Wager the cleric, a career that also saw him function as a licenser for the press.82 There is a conundrum here. However ‘cultural agency’ is defined, and wherever located, it must be admitted that the word ‘agency’ is problematic, or rather that an important distinction may have to be drawn between the cultural agency of chaplains – of men who, at some stage in their lives, were so designated – and a cultural agency effected as chaplains; care must be taken not to put the cart before the horse. No doubt, in many cases, literary production was a plea for patronage, signalled in a dedication. But bids did not necessarily succeed, at any rate not immediately. Let us consider one case. Formerly a Marian exile, Robert Fills published in 1562 a translation of Geneva’s legal codes dedicated to Lord Robert Dudley and testifying to Dudley’s ‘zeale ... to the aduau[n]cement of gods glorye ... and the ... fauour that you vsually shewe to the furtherers thereof’.83 Another Calvinist work was rendered into English the next year, dedicated to Huntingdon, Dudley’s brother-in-law.84 In [1564] came his translation of a Lutheran text. The dedication, addressed to Dudley, calls him ‘my ... good Lorde’, citing his ‘accustomable ... kindenes towards me’.85 Yet only in late 1567 was Fills first described as Leicester’s chaplain, and there is reason to believe that his formal appointment dated from about then.86 A subsequent book is dedicated to Walter Devereux, 2nd Viscount Hereford.87 Fills clearly possessed a cultural agency. But how much of it occurred whilst he was a chaplain, and which part of it arose because of his chaplaincy? Instrumentality, in other words, is central to the conundrum. Did a chaplaincy make any difference to what these men could do, and did? The only way to answer that question is to reconstruct their careers. IV Lawrence Stone argued in 1972 that over the previous forty years, collective biography (as the modern historians call it), multiple career-line analysis (as the social scientists call it), or prosopography (as the ancient historians call it) has developed into one of the most valuable ... techniques of the research historian. Prosopography is the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The

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Chaplains in early modern England method employed is to establish a universe to be studied, and then to ask a set of uniform questions – about birth and death, marriage and family, social origins and inherited economic position, place of residence, education, amount and source of personal wealth, occupation, religion, experience of office, and so on. The various types of information about the individuals in the universe are then juxtaposed and combined, and are examined for significant variables. They are tested both for internal correlations and for correlations with other forms of behavior or action.

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His essay outlines the intellectual roots of prosopography, showing how it built upon the vast quantities of raw biographical data assembled by antiquaries since the late eighteenth century. He also explains its limitations and dangers. One class of problems comes under the heading of ‘Deficiencies in the Data’. To begin with, prosopography on any meaningful scale is only realistic for well-documented groups. Suitable data is unlikely to be forthcoming for any era before the sixteenth century, when record creation soared. Another drawback is that documentation, in terms of generation and survival, always tends to be closely related to status: it deteriorates the further one descends a hierarchy. Unsurprisingly, prosopography is thus typically applied to elites. Namierism’s immediate legacy was for political elites to be chosen, yet Stone admits that the upper clergy can join ‘other groups which lend themselves ... to such treatment’. The third source limitation is that they may be rich for some facets of life, especially anything concerning property, but scarce for others, particularly mental outlook. Having noted possible errors in the classification of data, and mistakes in its interpretation, as well as ‘Limitations of Historical Understanding’, Stone turns to the positive side, holding that the ‘potentialities’ of elitist prosopography ‘are very great’. ‘All that is needed’, he avers, is more willingness to recognize the baffling complexity of human nature, the power of ideas, and the persistent influence of institutional structures. Prosopography does not have all the answers, but it is ideally fitted to reveal the web of ... ties that bind a group together.

Although care must be taken to avoid a ‘New Antiquarianism’, Stone concludes: the method works best when it is applied to easily defined and fairly small groups over a limited period of not much more than a hundred years, when the data is drawn from a very wide range of sources which complement and enrich each other, 88 and when the study is directed to solving a specific problem.

The problem being addressed here is that of the extent to which a chaplaincy was instrumental in the cultural agency of men who, for part of their careers, happen to have been chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility. Prosopography is an excellent methodology to adopt, for the reasons set out by Stone. In some ways, the Jacobean episcopate has already been subject to this kind of analysis.89 However, its application to the lower clergy would remain a pipe dream as long as scholars were confronted by the antiquaries’ defective products. Only the

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility massive post-1945 deposit of muniments in newly established county records offices made large-scale clerical prosopography a practical proposition. But the dawn of the computer age provided the real step-change, seen in the 1999 launch of the Clergy of the Church of England database. That database will illuminate the ‘universe’, in Stone’s terminology, valuably noticing both beneficed and unbeneficed clergy, though the recording of chaplaincies has hitherto not been prioritised. Independently, the present author has reconstructed the careers of 809 chaplains to the nobility holding title in the period 1558–88, so that, in due course, it should be possible to compare the characteristics of this subset to those of the set of all Elizabethan clergy. Central to these reconstructions have been surveys of the ministry, launched by Archbishop Parker in 1560, which occurred spasmodically into the early seventeenth century, sometimes rivalled by ‘puritan’ surveys, especially in the 1580s. Never before studied en masse, they have now been contextualised as manifestations of ‘confessionalisation’, and are crucial for prosopographical analysis since, inter alia, they record marital status, detail academic qualifica90 tions and assess aptitudes, such as preaching ability. One conclusion to be drawn from the compilation of the biographies is that the category ‘chaplain’ is far from straightforward: a basic legal dimension must be recognised.

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V An early Stuart tract reveals that, by common law, it was legal for any man, whether noble or ignoble, to retain as many chaplains as he wished for his religious instruction.91 Plenty did so. There are examples of chaplains being employed by gentlemen, by ambassadors and even by a regional council.92 Such common-law chaplains might be unbeneficed, presumably received a wage like any household servant and were unprivileged as far as the Church of England was concerned. In asking Burghley to admit him as a chaplain, Henry Smith, the famous ‘puritan’ lecturer at St Clement Danes in Westminster, denied that he sought a living, or that he would be chargeable, being content ‘to be accepted amongst them w[hi]ch serve yow’ – preferment of that kind would encourage his ministry and gratify both his and Burghley’s supporters. 93 But Smith may have been exceptional. Much about common-law chaplains remains shadowy as there was no mechanism for their regulation, and hence for recording their existence; they can be identified only incidentally. Knowable chaplains chiefly belong to the group of those who were privileged according to an Act of Parliament of 1529, the main aim of which was not to control chaplains as such, but to limit clerical pluralism and non-residence.94 For each of several types of person, the statute specifies a quota of chaplains (Table 1), who, because of their household attendance, were granted a certain immunity.95 Apart from ministers who were royal councillors, all chaplains

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Chaplains in early modern England retained under this statute were allowed to hold in plurality just two benefices with cure of souls. The text adds that pluralist clergy were to reside upon at least one of their livings, and that absence for an entire month, or on several occasions amounting to two months in a year, was to incur a £10 fine for every offence. However, immunity from this requirement was to be extended to people in stipulated circumstances, one of which was service as a qualified chaplain; even so, that exemption was to last only as long as they remained in their patrons’ households in daily attendance. It is stated that individuals thus empowered to employ pluralist chaplains must not ‘by colour of any of the same provysions’ overshoot their quota. Likewise, those appointed on these terms must not take more than their allowance of livings with cure of souls. A great deal turns on the interpretation of the phrase ‘by colour of’. Table 1: Quotas of chaplains qualified for dispensations for plurality, 96 established in 21 Henry VIII c. 13

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Qualifiers Members of the royal family Archbishops Dukes, bishops Marquesses, earls Viscounts Lord Chancellor of England, barons, knights of the garter Duchesses, marchionesses, countesses and baronesses, as widows [viscountesses are omitted, presumably accidentally] Treasurer and comptroller of the royal household, principal secretary, Dean of the Chapel Royal, sovereign’s almoner, Master of the Rolls Lord chief justice of the Court of King’s Bench, warden of the Cinque Ports

Quota unlimited 8 6 5 4 3 2 2 1

What made the statutory privileges available to a chaplain was a letter of ‘qualification’ – a document under the signature and seal of the patron testifying to the chaplaincy. Given to the clerics concerned, four Elizabethan originals issued by members of the nobility are known to survive;97 thirteen additional texts exist as copies.98 Typically writing in English,99 aristocrats functioning as qualifiers varied over how far they drew attention to the underlying l­ egislation. Some ignored it.100 A few vaguely referred to p ­ arliamentary statute.101 Others cited the 1529 law and nearly quote chapter and verse.102 The 7th Baron Berke­ ley, for instance, declared that he had ‘hired’ William Lyn­secombe as one of his three chaplains. Consequently, it was lawful for Lynsecombe, ‘when soeu[er] opo[u]rtunitie ... shall happen him to be advaunced ... vnto two b[e]n[e]fices w[i]th cure of soules[,] to ... enioye the same ... w[i]thoute encurringe any

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility daunger ... or penaltie’.103 For these patrons, it was clearly important for it to be seen that the qualification was founded upon the Henrician statute, as though to underline the fact – to be discussed shortly – that they might nevertheless employ supernumerary chaplains who were not similarly privileged. While certain parts of these texts can be formulaic, others strike a distinctive note, not least when nobles vouchsafed either the reasons for their patronage or the terms of engagement, or both.104 Lord Paget described his chaplain as ‘trustye and welbeloved’, calling upon anybody reading the letter not to impede him in whatever legitimate business the peer might commit to his oversight. Lord St John of Bletsoe said that he was appointing George Naysshe on account of ‘the good opinion’ formed of him, the ‘truste & confidence’ placed in him, and the man’s ‘honeste conuersation of livinge’. Critical for the dowager Lady Chandos of Sudeley was ‘the good report to me made by dyvers credible p[er]sons aswell of the learnyng as of the honest and vertuous conversa[tion]’ of her appointee. In another case, she proclaimed that it apperteyneth ... especially vnto noble men and weomen to have their Famylies ... trayned vp in the true ... feare and knowledge of god[,] to thend that Ieleues vnhonest pastyme[,] vice and wickednes may from them be quyte abandoned and vertue ... imbraced and good sciences practised[.]

Recognising, therefore,

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that this good service due vnto god and this ... vertuous educa[tion] of her famulye can not possible [sic] be [had] without good mynisters and good teachers[,] and knowing the good qualities[,] vertue and learnyng of Ambrose Hurst[,]

she was minded to make him a chaplain. Lord Sheffield said that by his letter he did ‘retayne Richarde Jaques ... to be my Chapleyn, duringe ou[r] two lyves yf we cann and doe so longe agree, takinge suche salary, as is betwene vs agreed’.105 Whether or not an appointment was sealed with the swearing of an oath, as it was for royal chaplains, is unclear.106 Furnished with a letter of qualification, a chaplain attended the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Court of Faculties, where a dispensation for plurality could be 107 purchased for £6 10s. That letters of qualification were normally registered is shown by the Jaques case, and by a fleeting reference from early in the reign of Charles I, but all the registers before 1660 are lost.108 We are fortunate that the granting of the dispensations themselves was recorded, in summary, in a separate run of registers. Original examples for 1534–40 and 1543–49 are extant,109 though a gap then intervenes, partly filled by a non-standard contemporaneous volume, covering 1560–70, comprised of highly condensed entries, mostly abstracted from a missing register.110 The series of originals resumes for 1567–93, only to lapse again until the Restoration.111 Despite complaint that the Court of Faculties failed to notice all salient details about qualifications,112 the anomalous compilation and the 1567–93 codex together constitute our

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Chaplains in early modern England chief source for the names of chaplains legally qualified under Elizabeth, for the qualifier is typically stated in the entry for each dispensation. They are all the more valuable since the last stage in the process – royal confirmation of the grant – is recorded so defectively: Dispensation Rolls in Chancery survive only from 1594.113 To assume that Court of Faculties registers, or manuscripts derived from them, tell us who was really active as a chaplain would be mistaken. It would be equally foolish to suppose that those known to have been chaplains qualified for plurality must perforce always have served their qualifiers. The truth is that the legislation was vague on practicalities, and that a case law emerged under Elizabeth. For instance, it transpired that the Act did not limit the total number of chaplains who could be retained; ‘by colour of any of the same provysions’ was interpreted to mean not ‘in accordance with’, but ‘allowed to take advantage of’. Chronology was key. A 1586 ruling in the Court of Common Pleas (Savacre’s Case) held that only the first chaplains qualified up to a qualifier’s quota could benefit from the statute; later appointees, beyond that quota, stood unprivileged as supernumeraries. This situation arose because a qualification was for life: no new qualifications could be offered whilst the initial grantees lived. Even a change in a grantee’s circumstances did not cancel the qualification: he might be sacked from service, yet would remain a ‘Chaplain 114 at large’, keeping his two benefices. Moreover, Drury’s Case (involving chaplains to the dowager Countess of Kent) determined, confirmed on appeal, that the retaining of supernumeraries did not affect the status of ‘StatuteChaplains’ – the privilege of pluralism could not be withdrawn as long as the latter remained qualified chaplains, though that privilege need not necessarily be exercised; if not exercised, then it did not devolve upon a supernumerary. Indeed, the death of a ‘Statute-Chaplain’ caused no automatic transfer of his qualification to the longest-standing supernumerary: the qualification expired, and a fresh one had to be issued (to whomsoever the qualifier chose) to make up the quota again.115 However, alteration of the qualifier’s condition did have implications. If the qualifier died, was attainted of treason or convicted of a felony, then the ‘Statute-Chaplain’, residing on one benefice, now became 116 punishable for non-residence on the other. As the judges noted, the Act’s purpose was to prevent excessive pluralism via the uncontrolled proliferation of qualifications, but it is difficult to see how these measures could effectively have been policed.117 VI The upshot here is that, for many members of the Elizabethan nobility, we can identify a large number of chaplains: Table 2 gives examples. Only a fraction were ‘Statute-Chaplains’; many must have been common-law supernumer-

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility aries. How far they differed domestically is unclear. While much less can be known about supernumeraries, tentative prosopographical analysis of the rest is possible. What kinds of clergymen became qualified chaplains to early Elizabethan aristocrats? Table 2: Specimen numbers of chaplains serving members of the nobility holding titles in the period 1558–88118 Nobleman or widowed noblewoman

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1st Earl of Pembroke Earl of Leicester 2nd Earl of Essex 1st Baron Hunsdon 10th Baron Cobham 3rd Earl of Huntingdon 3rd Earl of Rutland 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden Duchess of Somerset Dowager Countess of Warwick

Number of chaplains 29 26 18 17 15 14 14 9 4 4

Let us begin by looking at the correlation between the date of qualification and the date of dispensation. In twelve cases, listed in Table 3, both are more or less precisely known and are unproblematic. The proximity between them is what we might expect, for there was a strong incentive for chaplains to be dispensed swiftly: the validity of an unused qualification expired upon cessation of the qualifying power of the qualifier.119 It seems fair to conclude, therefore, that dates of dispensation are a reliable indicator – accurate to about a month, on average – of dates of qualification, which are much less well recorded. But does the date of qualification, even if only approximated like this, signify the start of a man’s employment as chaplain? In some cases, it must do – because reconstruction of clerical biographies shows that ordination had occurred around the same time, and hence such figures could not have functioned sacerdotally much earlier. Thomas Hollyday, for instance, had been ordained deacon and priest in June and July 1566 respectively, being named chaplain to Lord Clinton when dispensed for plurality in November. Meanwhile, he had obtained an Essex cure and been presented to a living in Northamptonshire. Endorsing his request for a dispensation, Lady Clinton told Archbishop Parker that Hollyday was ‘reported ... to be ... well learned ... & ... honest’.120 Where a chaplaincy arose through the involvement of a third party, it is also probable that the qualification marked the beginning of the relationship. In 1577, for example, John Manners informed his nephew,

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Chaplains in early modern England Table 3: Dates of qualification and dates of dispensation for plurality: a comparison Chaplain

Date of qualification

Date of dispensation

Time lapse: days

Barwick, Richard Debank, John

12 September 1578 17 January 1560

21 December 1578 15/28 February 1560

100 29/42

Forman, Robert Hellier, William Holdsworth, Richard Jaques, Richard Laing, Richard Lively, Richard Lynsecombe, William Scurfeild, John Stockton, Robert Williams, Henry

30 June 1566 20 September 1587 10 January 1585 16 May 1582 9 May 1584 19 April 1570 12 October 1565 6 July 1584 28 July 1562 3 May 1572

6 July 1566 19 November 1587 13 March 1585 10 June 1582 12 May 1584 23 April 1570 20 November 1565 7 July 1584 4 August 1562 26 May 1572

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AVERAGE:

6 60 62 25 3 4 39 1 7 23 30/31

the 3rd Earl of Rutland, that he had been urged by Robert Aldridge, rector of Wollaton in Nottinghamshire, to move the peer to appoint him a chaplain. ‘M[aste]r Undern is to resign to him the vicarage of St Mary’s in Nottingham’, said Manners, ‘which he may not receive unless he be qualified ... to hold two benefices, or belong to some nobleman. He is reputed a man of very honest conversation, ... is well learned, and a good preacher.’ Aldridge was dispensed as the earl’s chaplain six months later.121 Nevertheless, there must have been cases in which a common-law chaplain was eventually rewarded with qualification. That seems to have been Roger Crockett’s story. In 1560, the 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon notified Parker that Crockett ‘hath ben my Chapplayne Longe tyme before I was viscounte [i.e. January 1559] aswell in the daungerous season of Schysme and errour as nowe in the floorishinge tyme of the Gospell[,] wherefore I can do no lesse then in his behalf humblie to request you to shewe hym yo[u]r lawefull favo[u]r[.]’ He did this because ‘I knowe hym to be a right honest man’. A dispensation was granted, the viscount acting as qualifier, within a week.122 Qualification put any chaplaincy upon a formal footing, so that, even had there been prior service, the relationship became qualitatively different. If the date of dispensation is roughly indicative of the date of qualification, which for most men probably marked the beginning of their tenure, then what other variables might be examined on that basis? Lack of space allows analysis of only one: age. Was a chaplaincy to the early Elizabethan peerage a job for a young man or an old one?

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility Table 4: Chaplains’ age distribution at either qualification (Q) or dispensation for plurality (D)

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Age band at Q/D

Number of chaplains

Percentage of 114

20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60–64 65–69

5 21 28 19 14 7 11 3 3 3

4.4 18.4 24.6 16.7 12.3 6.1 9.7 2.6 2.6 2.6

TOTALS:

114

100

For 114 of our 809 chaplains, both year of birth and date of either qualification (14 cases) or dispensation for plurality (100 cases) are known.123 Table 4 reveals the age profile at that point. The greatest proportion of men were in their early 30s, though the youngest and oldest recipients were aged twentytwo and sixty-eight respectively. Because the data is distributed highly unevenly across the whole period 1545–98, and since age at qualification/dispensation might itself have fluctuated chronologically, it was decided to generate a moving average, using three-year blocks.124 This procedure discloses (Table 5) that, through much of the 1560s, the average age of those qualified/dispensed was substantially higher than it would be in the 1570s, though the figure was Table 5: Three-year moving averages of chaplains’ ages at either qualification or dispensation for plurality125 Years pre-Eliz. 1559–61 1560–62 1561–63 1562–64 1563–65 1564–66 1565–67 1566–68 1567–69

Average age

Years

Average age

Years

Average age

38 44 45.5 45 42 39 40.5 39.5 40 38

1568–70 1569–71 1570–72 1571–73 1575–77 1576–78 1577–79 1578–80 1582–84 1583–85

36 34 32 32 32 32.5 30 31 37 40

1584–86 1585–87 1586–88 1587–89 1588–90 1589–91 1590–92 1591–93 1592–94 1593–95

39 39 38 39 35 33 33 35 38 37

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Chaplains in early modern England to climb again in the 1580s. It is easy to think of reasons, concerning recent religious history, why noble patrons tended to retain older chaplains in the 1560s: many were perhaps hiring Edwardian Protestants, some of them former exiles. But another potential explanation is that a correlation existed between the ages of patron and chaplain. In ninety-three of the 114 cases now under investigation, the qualifier’s year of birth is also known.126 When details in these ninety-three cases are ranked according to the age differential between the two parties in the year in which the chaplain was either qualified or dispensed for plurality, it seems that in only twenty-seven instances (29%) is that difference five years or fewer. In twenty-two instances (24%), it is from six to ten years inclusive, while in the remaining forty-four instances (47%) it is eleven years or more. As the percentages bring out, an inverse relationship obtained: in general, young patrons chose much older chaplains and vice versa. Thus, to give two extreme examples, the 3rd Baron Stafford, at thirty-two, retained a chaplain (Oliver Bamforth) aged sixty-one in 1568, whereas Thomas Bewley was twenty-three years old when qualified in 1559 by Lord Rich, then sixty-three. This finding will obviously have a bearing on chaplains’ educational profiles: younger men appointed later in Elizabeth’s reign were much more likely to have been graduates than older men patronised earlier, so that a mere aggregation of graduates across the whole group of 809 chaplains would be simplistic. It may be true that some patrons adopted policies on minimum academic requirements in the light of changing expectations and a better supply of graduates. Can it be a coincidence that all six known chaplains to the stripling 3rd Earl of Bath (born in 1557) were MAs? Conversely, although the antique 1st Earl of Pembroke retained a ‘mixed bag’ of chaplains – many non-graduates, with a sprinkling of BAs and MAs – that cohort’s most outstanding feature was an apparent high ratio of non-preachers. Of twenty-eight known chaplains, the preaching status of seventeen is known unambiguously: three were preachers, fourteen were not. In the remaining cases, either sources are contradictory (one) or information is wanting (ten). Fourteen out of seventeen is 82%. Even counting fourteen out of all twenty-eight chaplains produces a figure of 50%. Though it is possible that many of the eleven whose status is obscure could in fact preach, that seems unlikely; on other evidence, Pembroke does not come 127 across as a probable sermon enthusiast. VII And so, with mention of an earl of Pembroke, father of the man who had turned Wilton House into ‘a litle Vniuersitie’ accommodating godly preachers, we return close to where we started, acknowledging the importance of generational turnover as a key factor in religious change in this period, as in any. While

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility the possibility of pluralism provided an economic incentive for clerics to seek a statutory chaplaincy, the post of domestic chaplain must have been valued by Elizabethan nobles, or else they would not have been so keen to fill their quotas, and to retain so many common-law supernumeraries – a practice that, to some extent, compensated for the rigidities (such as qualifications being life grants) emerging from judicial interpretation of the legislation. Regardless of the category to which they belonged, chaplains exercised a cultural agency: in the household, in their parishes (if they were beneficed) and perhaps further afield, as visiting preachers, not forgetting, for some, potential impact in print. But such agency must be assessed in the light of the issue of instrumentality, as contextualised in biography, for our prosopographical analysis reveals that chaplains’ career patterns were by no means uniform. A young man, fresh from university, obviously brought to a chaplaincy different perspectives, and probably also skills, than an elderly non-graduate. For the former, this kind of patronage was presumably token of a cultural agency not so much proven as expected – and it may well have been instrumental in enabling him to achieve it. For the latter, appointment as a chaplain could have crowned a lifetime of cultural achievement in which the aristocracy had played no part. However, by far the most intriguing discovery is that of the inverse relationship between the ages of patrons and clients at the point of qualification/dispensation for plurality. Pending further prosopographical research, generalisation on a range of connected problems is rather hazardous, but this disclosure does provoke the fundamental question of what members of the nobility were looking for in their chaplains.

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Notes Thanks are due to the following for their help, in various ways, in the preparation of this essay: Kenneth Fincham; George Gross; Arnold Hunt; and Elisabeth Leedham-Green. 1 E.g. E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); N. L. Jones, ‘Living the Reformations: generational experience and political perception in early modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 60 (1999), 273–88. 2 E. H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 3 R. O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979) and ‘The anatomy of a profession: the clergy of the Church of England’, in W. Prest (ed.), The Professions in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, c.1987), pp. 25–63. 4 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain. Chaplains appear only incidentally in the ‘Religion’ chapter of L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 725–45.

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Chaplains in early modern England 5 M. C. Cross, ‘Noble patronage in the Elizabethan Church’, Historical Journal, 3 (1960), 1–16. For a later period, see B. Donagan, ‘The clerical patronage of Robert Rich, second Earl of Warwick, 1619–1642’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120 (1976), 388–419. For discussion of chaplains to one Roman Catholic peerage family, see M. C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 317–39. 6 BL, Lansdowne MS 396, fol. 61r (in undated document about an Elizabethan pluralities Bill). 7 CCEd, Person ID 75660. 8 P. Williams, ‘Herbert, Henry, second earl of Pembroke (b. in or after 1538, d. 1601)’, ODNB. 9 W. Sweeper, A Briefe Treatise Declaring the True Noble-Man, and the Base Worldling (1622), sigs [A3v–A4r]. 10 V. Houliston, ‘Moffet [Moufet, Muffet], Thomas (1553–1604)’, ODNB. 11 M. Brennan, ‘The date of the countess of Pembroke’s translation of the Psalms’, Review of English Studies, new series, 33 (1982), 434–6 (p. 435). 12 Unknown to M. Smolenaars, ‘John Gerard (c.1545–1612)’, ODNB. 13 CA, Dethick MS vol. 2, fol. 668r–v; R. H. Ball, ‘Massinger and the house of Pembroke’, Modern Language Notes, 46 (1931), 399–400. 14 J. S. Macauley, ‘Babington, Gervase (1549/50–1610)’, ODNB. 15 G. Babington, A Very Fruitfull Exposition of the Commaundements by way of Questions and Answeres (1583) [STC, 1095], sigs ¶5v–[¶6v]; National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Bute MSS M7/17–M7/19.

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16 M. Smith (ed.), The Workes of ... Gervase Babington, late Bishop of Worcester (1615) [STC, 1078], sig. A3v. 17 W. Richardson, ‘Parry, Henry (1561–1616)’, ODNB (omits Pembroke chaplaincy and fails to identify 1587 book as a translation); Z. Ursinus, The Summe of Christian Religion, trans. H. Parry (Oxford, 1587) [STC, 24532], sigs *2r–*4v. For context, see C. M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 80, 91–2, 186. 18 CCEd, Person ID 56268; Babington, A Very Fruitfull Exposition, sigs ¶¶¶¶1r–[*4r]. 19 A student at St Alban Hall, Oxford, either in or before 1572, but no graduate: J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714, 4 vols (Oxford: Parker & Co., 1891–92), 4.1555; CCEd, Person ID 83194. The 1580s ‘puritan’ survey of the Warwickshire clergy calls him learned and a preacher, ‘dailie profiting and increasing in knowledge’: A. Peel (ed.), The Seconde Parte of a Register Being a Calendar of Manuscripts Under That Title Intended for Publication by the Puritans about 1593, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 2.166. 20 K. L. Sprunger, ‘Parker, Robert (c.1564–1614)’, ODNB. For one reader, Parker was clearly associated with Wilton, and thus with the Herberts, since the title-page to a BL example (shelfmark 1226.g.2) of his book A Scholasticall Discovrse Against Symbolizing with Antichrist in Ceremonies ([Middelburg], 1607) is annotated (early modern hand) ‘By Robert Parker: Minister at Wilton’.

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility 21 Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1.122; J. R. Bloxam, A Register of the Presidents, Fellows ... and Other Members of Saint Mary Magdalen College in ... Oxford, 8 vols (Oxford: W. Graham, 1853–85), 2.129; Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Chippenham, MS no reference (register of Bishop Coldwell), fol. 4r. 22 CA, Dethick MS vol. 2, fol. 668r–v. 23 NA, PROB 11/98, fol. 9r–v (in will dated 18 January 1596, proved 18 June 1601); T. Moffet, Health’s Improvement (1746), p. xxvii. 24 W. T. MacCaffrey, ‘Russell, Francis, second earl of Bedford (1526/7–1585)’, ODNB. 25 T. Sparke, A Sermon Preached at Cheanies the 14 of September, 1585 at the Buriall of ... the Earle of Bedford (Oxford, [1585]) [STC, 23021.5], pp. 81–2. See also Bodleian, MS Ashmole 818, fol. 48r. 26 LPL, MS Carte Miscellanee XII/9, fol. 124v; NA, C 58/2, mems 11–12; W. J. Carlton, Timothe Bright, Doctor of Phisicke: A Memoir of ‘The Father of Modern Shorthand’ (London: Elliot Stock, 1911); P. Life, ‘Bright, Timothy (1549/50–1615)’, ODNB, ignoring chaplaincy. 27 J. J. N. McGurk, ‘Devereux, Walter, first earl of Essex (1539–1576)’, ODNB. 28 Folger, MS V.b.317, fols 77r–80r, for exchanges. Further MS copies are elsewhere; lack of space prevents listing them. A fragmentary text is given in H. E. Malden (ed.), ‘Devereux papers with Richard Broughton’s memoranda (1575–1601)’, Camden Miscellany XIII, Camden Society, 3rd Series, 34 (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1923), pp. 6–11 (Items 9 and 10 belong to one narrative). See also D. J. Crankshaw, ‘Knell, Thomas, the elder (d. 1576/7)’, ODNB. 29 BL, Lansdowne MS 21, fols 66r–67v (Nicholas White to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, St Katherine’s near Dublin, 30 September 1576), reporting that Essex was also treated by two other named figures. For ‘glister’, read ‘clyster’: ‘A medicine injected into the rectum, to empty or cleanse the bowels, to afford nutrition, etc.’: OED.

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30 D. Wilson, Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1533–1588 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981; republished, London: Allison & Busby, 1997), p. 227. 31 BL, Add. MS 32092, fols 5r–6r, 10v (Thomas Knell to Sir Henry Sidney, no place, no date). This is an undated copy, the addressee’s name endorsed in an early modern hand. An extract from the text (but from another source) is printed in Malden (ed.), ‘Devereux papers’, pp. 11–12. 32 Printed ibid., pp. 12–15. 33 C. Cross, ‘Hastings, Henry, third earl of Huntingdon (1536?–1595)’, ODNB. 34 M. C. Cross, ‘The third earl of Huntingdon’s death-bed: A Calvinist example of the ars moriendi’, Northern History, 21 (1985), 80–107. 35 St Nicholas Acon and St Bride Fleet Street: BL, Lansdowne MS 443, fols 192v, 208v; LMA, MS 9531/13 pt 1, fols 159r, 171v–172r; T. Knell the elder, A Godlie ... Treatise, touching the Vse and Abuse of Praier (1581). 36 G. Gifford, Fovre Sermons vpon Severall Partes of Scripture (1598), pp. 5–6. 37 Longleat House, Wiltshire, Dudley Papers, vol. I, fols 237r–238v (fol. 237r) (Dr William Overton to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Chichester, 22 May 1571); R. O’Day, ‘Overton, William (1524/5?–1609)’, ODNB. 38 See an anonymous contemporaneous biography: F. Peck (ed.), Desiderata Curiosa, 2 vols in 1, [2nd edn] (1779), 1.34.

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Chaplains in early modern England 39 NA, SP 12/235/4, undated, but from the period between July 1589 (John Nutter presented to the deanery of Chester) and September 1593 (4th Earl of Derby died). 40 Some preachers listed in F. R. Raines (ed.), The Derby Household Books, Stanley Papers Part 2, Chetham Society, 31 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1853), pp. 28–83, 88–90 may be identified as chaplains via CA, Dethick MS vol. 2, fol. 401v. The arrivals of certain of them are recorded shortly before delivery day. On many occasions, the preacher’s name is undisclosed. 41 Sorocold was possibly a protégé of the chaplain Oliver Carter; the bishop, Dr William Chaderton, tended to preach on special days, such as Advent: Raines (ed.), The Derby Household Books, pp. 32, 44, 48, 56, 59, 64, 72, 89; S. Wright, ‘Sorocold, Thomas (1561/2–1617)’, ODNB (errors); C. Haigh, ‘Chaderton, William (d. 1608)’, ODNB. 42 For the first half of the century, private chapels are briefly noticed in M. Howard, The Early Tudor Country House: Architecture and Politics 1490–1550 (London: George Philip, 1987), pp. 114–15, where pulpits are ignored. I have yet to read the most comprehensive study: A. Ricketts, The English Country House Chapel: Building a Protestant Tradition (Reading: Spire Books, c.2007). This context is omitted from E. Rhatigan, ‘Preaching venues: architecture and auditories’, in P. McCullough et al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 87–119. Various household inventories have been sampled, but there is no space to give details. 43 J. Caldwell, A Sermon Preached before the ... Earle of Darbie (1578), revealing (sig. A2r) that the earl had chosen him to preach on 2 January 1578. Was that because this sermon fell within the Christmas season, or did the peer ordinarily fix the rota? 44 Raines (ed.), The Derby Household Books, p. 20. 45 Peck (ed.), Desiderata Curiosa, 1.34.

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46 N. Hemmingsen, The Preacher, or Methode of Preaching, trans. J. Horsfall (1574) [STC, 13065], sig. A3r. 47 She was not noble, but had been raised in the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon’s household and had, through her first husband, joined the Devereux family: J. Moody (ed.), The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), passim, but especially pp. 62, 96, 115, 121. 48 Ibid., pp. 46, 113. Parish church visits are noted passim. 49 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 2. He repeats the point on p. 3, stressing a desire for privacy. 50 A. Luders et al. (eds), The Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols in 12 (London: Record Commission, 1810–28), 4.1, pp. 355–8 (1 Elizabeth I c. 2). On chapels of ease, see C. Kitching, ‘Church and chapelry in sixteenth-century England’, in D. Baker (ed.), The Church in Town and Countryside, Studies in Church History, 16 (Oxford: Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1979), pp. 279–90. 51 S. Harward, Two Godlie and Learned Sermons, Preached at Manchester (1582), sigs [B7v– B8r]. 52 F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), p. 337. 53 A 1529 Act has chaplains present in the royal household ‘dayly or quarterly’: Luders et al. (eds), The Statutes of the Realm, 3.295 (21 Henry VIII c. 13). Cf. P. E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge:

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 73–4. Too many preachers’ names are lacking in the Derby household accounts for reconstruction of a rota: see above, n. 40. 54 R. Neile (ed.), M. Ant. de D[omi]nis Arch-Bishop of Spalato, his Shiftings in Religion (1624), p. 1. 55 Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, MS 5M53/184. On Langdale, see Questier, Catholicism and Community, passim. 56 Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, MS D(W)1734/J/1859, naming Peter Bottrell. 57 Staffordshire Record Office, D603/K/1/4/5 (Peter Bottrell to Thomas Paget, 4th Baron Paget, Burton upon Trent, 9 August 1575) and MS D(W)1734/3/3/283 (Bottrell, ‘late Stewarde’). On his chaplaincy, see below, n. 98. 58 Staffordshire Record Office, MS D(W)1734/3/4/214. 59 NA, SP 12/247/21 (Richard Topcliffe to Sir John Puckering, York, 25 January 1594). 60 Cf. R. M. Haines, ‘Some arguments in favour of plurality in the Elizabethan Church’, in G. J. Cuming (ed.), Studies in Church History, 5: The Church and Academic Learning (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), pp. 166–92. 61 Luders et al. (eds), The Statutes of the Realm, 3.292–6 (21 Henry VIII c. 13). Elizabethan Bills to regulate pluralism more strictly all failed, but there is no space to give details here. 62 Anon., Articuli per archiepiscopum, episcopos & reliquum clerum Cantuariensis provinciae in synodo [24 Nov.] 1584 ([1584]) [STC, 4583], sig. [A4r].

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63 S. A. J. MacVeigh, Drayton of the Pagets (West Drayton: West Drayton & District Local History Society, [1970]); H. Colvin, ‘Beaudesert, Staffordshire’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, new series, 29 (1985), 107–23. 64 Robert Armonde had acquired the Gloucestershire vicarage of Bisley in 1568 (BL, Lansdowne MS 443, fol. 166r) and the Wiltshire vicarage of Ashton Keynes in 1570 (Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Chippenham, MS no reference (register of Bishop Jewel), fol. 25r), being named Lord Paget’s chaplain in the latter year (LPL, MS F I/B, fol. 33v). 65 Lichfield Record Office, MS B/A/1/15, fol. 80v; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Parker Library, MS 114A, p. 341 (Sir James Dyer to Dr Matthew Parker, Serjeants’ Inn, 26 November 1565); NA, SP 12/76, fol. 34v (misdated); Borthwick Institute for Archives, York, MS Register 30, fol. 78v; LPL, MS F I/B, fol. 124v; Borthwick Institute for Archives, York, MS Institution Act Book 3, fol. 191v. 66 E.g. in the witnessing of a will: NA, SP 12/76, fol. 16r; F. G. Emmison (ed.), Essex Wills, 12 vols (Washington DC, etc.: National Genealogical Society etc., 1982–2000), 1.241. 67 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/021, unfoliated (entry dated 20 March 1576). 68 LMA, MS 9234/1, fols 38v, 62r; LMA, MS 9234/2, fols 31v, 34r, 119v, 120r, 123v, 124r; LMA, MS 9234/7, fols 107v, 134v. 69 W. H. Hart, ‘Notes from the parish registers of Richmond, Kingston, and Petersham, in the county of Surrey’, Surrey Archaeological Collections, 2 (London: Lovell Reeve & Co. for Surrey Archaeological Society, 1864), 82–98 (p. 89). 70 CUL, University Archives, Grace Book ∆, fol. 326v. 71 Norfolk Record Office, Norwich, MS 21509/42, 368x6, fols 50r (Henry Berkeley, 7th

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Chaplains in early modern England Baron Berkeley, to [Dr John Whitgift], Archbishop of Canterbury, no place, no date), 57r–v (same to Sir Francis Walsingham, Calloughdon, 12 April 1589). 72 The brass is at Storrington in West Sussex: J. H. Sperling, ‘The parochial history of Westbourne’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 22 (Lewes: Sussex Archaeological Society, 1870), 77–115 (pp. 101–2). The Latin text is imprecise: it certainly refers to protection given by Maltravers and Lumley, without precluding Arundel as a third protector; since Wilsha was Arundel’s chaplain, that role seems probable. 73 BL, Royal MS 17 A. IX. 74 BL, Lansdowne MS 119, fols 150r–155v. 75 E.g. NA, SP 12/76, fol. 40r; Richard Porder, A Sermon of Gods Fearefull Threatnings for Idolatrye ... Preached in Paules Churche (1570). 76 Spiritus est ... A Breefe ... Summe of the Christian Faith, made in Fourme of a Confession, with a Confutation of the Papistes Obiections (1571) [STC, 18663]; LPL, MS F I/B, fol. 80v (chaplain to 2nd Earl of Pembroke); Spiritus est ... A Treatise wherein Dicing, Dau[n]cing, Vaine Plaies or Enterludes with other Idle Pastimes, &c. commonly vsed on the Sabboth Day, are Reprooved (1579) [STC, 18671]. 77 A Blazyng Starre ..., seene the 10 of October laste ... set on Fire by Gods Prouidence, to Call all Sinners to ... Speedie Repentance (1580); LPL, MS F I/B, fol. 98v (chaplain to 11th Baron Zouche of Haryngworth); A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), citing his book. 78 NA, SP 12/40/3 (Dr Matthew Parker to Sir William Cecil, Croydon, 5 June 1566), mentioning chaplaincy to 3rd Earl of Sussex; A President for a Prince. Wherein is to be seene ... the duetie of Kings, Princes, and Gouernours (1566); G. W. Jenkins, ‘Rush, Anthony (1537–1577)’, ODNB.

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79 A Treatise of Melancholie (1586) [STC, 3747]; Charac[terie.] An Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing by Character (1588). See also above, n. 26. 80 NA, SP 12/76, fol. 16r; J. N. King, ‘Baldwin, William (d. in or before 1563)’, ODNB (errors, ignoring his chaplaincy); [W. Baldwin], A Marvelovs Hystory intitulede, Beware the Cat (1570) [STC, 1244]; W. A. Ringler, ‘Beware the Cat and the beginnings of English fiction’, Novel, 12 (1979), 113–26. 81 LPL, MS F I/B, fol. 77r; P. Happé, ‘Wager, William (1537/8?–1591)’, ODNB (omits chaplaincy). Wager’s extant works are: A ... Commedie, called The Longer thou Liuest, the More Foole thou Art ([1569]) and A Comedy ... intituled, Inough is as Good as a Feast ([1570?]). 82 W. W. Greg, Licensers for the Press, &c. to 1640, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, new series, 10 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1962), p. 93. For further discussion of the role of chaplains as licensers for the press, see Mary Morrissey, ‘Episcopal chaplains and control of the media, 1586–1642’, pp. 76–94, in this volume. 83 D. J. Crankshaw, ‘Fills, Robert (c.1521–1578)’, ODNB; Anon., The Lawes and Statutes of Geneua, as well concerning Ecclesiastical Discipline, as Ciuill Regiment, trans. R. Fills (1562), sig. *2r. 84 T. de Bèze, A Briefe ... Summe of the Christian Faith made in Forme of a Confession, trans. R. Fills (1563) [STC, 2006.7]. 85 M. Luther, A Treatice co[n]teining certain Meditatio[n]s of Trew & Perfect Consolatio[n], trans. R. Fills ([1564]), sigs [A2r], [A2v].

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility 86 NA, SP 12/76, fol. 42r. It is argued below that the date of dispensation for plurality is a good indication of the rough date of legal qualification as a chaplain. 87 R. Fills, Godly Prayers and Meditations, Paraphrasticallye made vpon all the Psalmes (157[2?]). 88 L. Stone, ‘Prosopography’, in F. Gilbert and S. R. Graubard (eds), Historical Studies Today (New York: W. W. Norton, [1972]), pp. 107–40. 89 K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 90 D. J. Crankshaw, ‘Elizabethan and early Jacobean surveys of the ministry of the Church of England’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2000). 91 BL, Cotton MS Julius C VIII, fol. 70v. 92 NA, SP 46/47, fol. 196r–v (Philip Okeover to Mr Williamson and Mr Hacker, Okeover, 3 October 1593); BL, Royal MS 12 G. XIII, fol. 2r; Inner Temple Library, London, Petyt MS 538/47, fol. 329r–v. 93 BL, Lansdowne MS 61, fol. 169r–v ([Henry] Smith to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, no place, no date); G. W. Jenkins, ‘Smith, Henry (c.1560–1591)’, ODNB. 94 Luders et al. (eds), The Statutes of the Realm, 3.292–6 (21 Henry VIII c. 13), setting an £8 threshold: rules against pluralism normally came into effect when a cleric holding a benefice with cure of souls valued at £8 a year or more took a second benefice with cure of souls. 95 BL, Cotton MS Julius C VIII, fols 70v–71r.

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96 Extended by 25 Henry VIII c. 16, though not touching the peerage: Luders et al. (eds), The Statutes of the Realm, 3.457. 97 (1) BL, Additional Charter 41893 (1st Baron St John of Bletsoe for George Naysshe, 1573); (2) untraced, but advertised in a catalogue (December 1995, Item 102) issued by A. R. Heath, 62 Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 3DX, and brought to my notice by Dr Arnold Hunt (dowager Lady Latimer for Matthew Pigott, 1577); (3) Devon Record Office, Sowton, MS 1499M/4/5/1(e) (1st Baron Hunsdon for Philip Hatherley, 1580); (4) Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, MS CP 222/30 (3rd Earl of Worcester for James Johnes, 1584). These items are henceforth cited by chaplain’s surname. 98 (1) LMA, MS DL/C/334, fol. 23v (11th Baron Morley for Thomas Chambers, 1560); (2) LMA, MS DL/C/333, fol. 86v (12th Earl of Arundel for Henry Powell, 1560); (3) LMA, MS DL/C/332, fol. 323v (3rd Earl of Derby for William Harwood, 1560); (4) LMA, MS DL/C/332, fols 66v–67r (Lord Strange, Lord Derby’s heir, but summoned to Parliament vitae patris, for Robert Stockton, 1562); (5) Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, MS GDR 2A, p. 143 (7th Baron Berkeley for William Lynsecombe, 1565); (6) Norfolk Record Office, Norwich, MS DN/REG 13 Book 19, fol. 263r (4th Baron Paget for Peter Bottrell, 1572); (7) LMA, MS DL/C/332, fol. 341r (17th Earl of Oxford for Henry Williams, 1572); (8) Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton, Peterborough Diocesan Records, MS X956/2, fol. 20r (dowager Lady Zouche of Haryngworth for William Bolling, 1573); (9) LPL, MS Arches F 4, fol. 145v (dowager Lady Chandos of Sudeley for Ambrose Hurst, 1573); (10) LPL, MS Arches F 4, fols 137v–138r (same for John Bonamy, 1575); (11) LMA, MS DL/C/333, fol. 357r–v (3rd Baron Sheffield for Richard Jaques, 1582); (12) CUL, Ely Diocesan Records, MS G/1/8, fol. 181r (2nd Earl of Essex for John Scurfeild, 1584); (13) Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, MS Add. Reg. 1, fol. 78r (3rd Earl of Huntingdon for Richard Holdsworth, 1585). These items are henceforth cited by chaplain’s surname.

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Chaplains in early modern England 99 Qualifications for Chambers, Powell, Williams, Hatherley, Scurfeild and Johnes are written in Latin. 100 Williams and Hurst. 101 Chambers, Powell, Bolling, Naysshe, Hatherley, Scurfeild, Johnes and Holdsworth. 102 Harwood, Stockton, Lynsecombe, Bottrell, Bonamy and Jaques. 103 Lynsecombe. For the dispensation, see Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, MS GDR 2A, p. 139, and NA, SP 12/76, fol. 34v. 104 Similarities between sections of Harwood, Lynsecombe, Bonamy and Jaques imply that a template existed, modified as required. 105 Quoted in the order Bottrell, Naysshe, Bonamy, Hurst and Jaques. 106 McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 74. 107 D. S. Chambers (ed.), Faculty Office Registers 1534–1549 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966); D. Crankshaw, ‘The Elizabethan Faculty Office and the aristocratic patronage of chaplains’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications , 1996), pp. 20–75; J. R. Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council of England, new series, 32 vols (London: HMSO, 1890–1907), 11.18. 108 Jaques’s dispensation for plurality was called into doubt because, as Dr William Lewin stated, the letter of qualification, under Lord Sheffield’s signature and seal, was unregistered in the Court of Faculties: LMA, MS DL/C/333, fol. 358r. As commissary of the faculties, Lewin was well placed to know about registration procedure: R. Houlbrooke, ‘Lewin, William (d. 1598)’, ODNB. Something had clearly gone awry, for there is no entry for Jaques in the dispensation register either: LPL, MS F I/B. For the Caroline reference, see E. Littleton, Les Reports Des Tres Honorable Edw. Seigneur Littleton (1683) [Wing, L2583], pp. 1–2. The post-1660 survival of registers is noted in Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 7, 199 (n. 21). 109 Calendared in Chambers (ed.), Faculty Office Registers.

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110 NA, SP 12/76 (only dispensations for plurality). 111 LPL, MSS F I/B, F I/C. 112 A MS relating to the Pluralities Bill (1601) calls for better registration of qualifications, specifically ‘whose Chaplein he is, whether he be his Lord or ladies first, second, thirde, fourth, fifte, sixth, seaventh or eight Chaplein’: D. Dean, Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 115. 113 NA, C 58/1. Dispensation Rolls name qualifiers. 114 Savacre’s Case, which concerned a chaplain to Sir James Croft and also established that a qualification was invalid if not signed as well as sealed, is noticed in J. Godbolt, Reports of Certain Cases, Arising ... In the Raignes of Q. Elizabeth, K. James, and the late King Charles (1652) [Wing, G911], pp. 41–2 and E. Anderson, Les Reports du Treserudite Edmund Anderson (1664) [Wing, A3085], pp. 200–1. This case probably underpins assertions found in BL, Cotton MS Julius C VIII, fol. 72r, 72v. That the grant was for life is stated in Scurfeild. 115 Drury’s Case was heard in the Court of Common Pleas in 1599, the appeal in the Court of Queen’s Bench in 1600: E. Coke, A Perfect Abridgment of the Eleaven Bookes of Reports, of ... Sr. Edw. Cook (1651) [Wing, C4941], p. 87; G. Croke, An Abridgement Of the Three Volumes of Reports Of the Learned Sr. George Croke Kt. (1665) [Wing, C7009], p. 303 (not

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Chaplains to the Elizabethan nobility ‘Darcies Case’); and G. Croke, The First Part (Though last publish’t) of the Reports of Sr George Croke Kt., 3rd edn (1683) [Wing, C7013], pp. 723–4, 839. See also BL, Cotton MS Julius C VIII, fol. 72r. 116 Acton’s Case: Coke, Perfect Abridgment, pp. 90–1 and BL, Cotton MS Julius C VIII, fols 71v, 72r. 117 It was acknowledged in Savacre’s Case (see above, n. 114) that had qualifications not been for life, and given that qualifiers could dismiss their chaplains at will, then infinite numbers of chaplains might be qualified for plurality. See also BL, Cotton MS Julius C VIII, fol. 72v. Effective policing would depend on the Court of Faculties recording how each qualified chaplain related to the quota (see above, n. 112) and receiving formal notification of the death of each ‘Statute-Chaplain’; neither happened. 118 Some clerics included in these figures were not explicitly identified as chaplains, but were described either as living in the aristocrat’s household or as being in that person’s service; a chaplaincy is conjectured. 119 W. Watson, The Clergy-Man’s Law: Or, the Complete Incumbent, 4th edn (1747), p. 16. 120 LMA, MS 9535/1, fols 125v, 126v; NA, SP 12/76, fol. 38v; LMA, MS 9531/13 pt 1, fol. 139r; BL, Lansdowne MS 443, fol. 150r; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Parker Library, MS 114A, p. 237 (Elizabeth Fiennes de Clinton, Lady Clinton, to Dr Matthew Parker, Hatfield, 14 July [1566]). 121 H. C. M. Lyte et al. (eds), The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, G.C.B., Preserved at Belvoir Castle, HMC, 4 vols: Twelfth Report, Appendix, pts 4 and 5; Fourteenth Report, Appendix, pt 1; and a free-standing volume (London: HMSO, 1888–1905), 1, p. 115 (John Manners to Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland, Haddon, 27 October 1577); LPL, MS F I/B, fol. 86v.

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122 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Parker Library, MS 114A, p. 163 (Thomas Howard, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon, to Dr Matthew Parker, Bindon, 14 October 1560); NA, SP 12/76, fol. 9r. 123 In reconstructing the biographies, years of birth were extrapolated from ages cited in various sources, such as those recording school admission, university matriculation or ordination. Some derive from ecclesiastical court depositions, more from surveys of the ministry. 124 The few pre-Elizabethan years – 1545 (1 case), 1546 (3 cases) and 1549 (1 case) – were grouped into one block. The Elizabethan blocks begin at 1559, as there is no data for 1558. Apart from 1574, 1581, 1596 and 1597, every year is represented up to 1598. 125 The sequence of three-year blocks is discontinuous because there is no data for 1574 and 1581. The one item of data for 1598 is ignored. A review of initial calculations indicated that the averages for 1575–77, 1576–78 and 1577–79 (for each of which there are only five items of data) were being badly skewed by the presence of an anomalous figure: 65 (William Harding’s age at the granting of his dispensation for plurality in 1577). Consequently, those averages have been re-calculated without that figure so as to reveal the general trend. 126 In some instances, there is uncertainty between one year and the next, but not enough to call into question the overall results presented here. Information is derived from ODNB, supplemented by G. E. C[okayne] et al. (eds), The Complete Peerage, 13 vols in 14, 2nd edn (London: St Catherine Press, 1910–59). 127 N. P. Sil, ‘Herbert, William, first earl of Pembroke (1506/7–1570)’, ODNB.

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Chapter 4

.

Episcopal chaplains and control of the media, 1586–1642 Mary Morrissey

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T

he chaplains to the bishop of London had a direct effect on English literature before the civil war in a more extensive and overtly political way than any other domestic chaplains, because the task of pre-publication press censorship was overwhelming theirs. This was particularly so after the Star Chamber decree of 1586, which made press licensing the responsibility of the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury, already the busiest clerics in the country.1 There has been much debate about the exact purpose of this decree: was it merely an extension of the Injunctions of 1559 that placed control of the press in the hands of High Commission, or was it rather a triumph for the Stationers’ Company in their campaign to restrict the number of presses, something strongly in their commercial interest?2 There is clear evidence that the impetus behind press control was not ideologically neutral. Richard McCabe has shown that the target of the ‘Bishops’ Ban’ of 1599 was seditious texts, a category extended into the realms of religious heterodoxy by the terms of the royal supremacy.3 Historians of the 1620s and 30s have amply demonstrated the importance of press control in the tussles for power between the anti-Calvinist avant-garde conformists of the ‘Durham House’ group and the more conservative Calvinist clerics sponsored by Archbishop Abbot.4 Arnold Hunt has described how licensing changed from being viewed ‘as a form of nihil obstat’ (nothing stands in the way) to providing an imprimatur (let it be printed), and views this as part of a longer-term process of ‘concentration and centralization of authority’ with respect to the licensing of print publications.5 In this essay, I would like to take Hunt’s point about the ‘concentration and centralization of authority’ in press licensing and consider it with respect to the chaplains who did most of the work as press licensers. The domestic chaplains of the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury were uniquely placed for the job of press licensing because their role evolved in the years after the Reformation into one concerned with the definition and preser-

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Episcopal chaplains and the media vation of religious orthodoxy. Giving them the task of smoothing the path of appropriate sermons into print, or of discouraging preachers from printing texts that might be considered contentious or unorthodox, and of suggesting revisions that might render contentious subjects less offensive, was an obvious extension of the part they already played on the bishops’ staff. There was a process of increasing formalisation and centralisation to the pre-publication censorship system, and it ran parallel with changes to the functions of these London-based chaplains. Through this process, we can discern the emergence of a particular group of chaplains whom we might describe as primarily press censors, and their part in the story of the Laudians and censorship has yet to be examined. First we must consider why episcopal chaplains were the obvious choice of deputies for the bishops in the task of press licensing. Episcopal chaplains had a rather different relationship with their employer than the domestic chaplains of most aristocrats. For some nobles, a chaplaincy might be no more than a piece of patronage, as it gave clergymen the right to hold two 6 benefices in plurality. But bishops belonged to the same professional group as their chaplains, and the chaplains assisted the bishop in the administration of the diocese, talent-spotting among the younger clergy and exercising some oversight of parishes.7 William Gibson has shown how bishops often looked out for promising clerics to act as their chaplains, and some notable bishops served as episcopal chaplains in the early parts of their careers.8 If a royal chaplaincy was a ‘purple road’ that ended at a see,9 an episcopal chaplaincy was an important route to a royal chaplaincy: Samuel Purchas (chaplain to John King of London) and John Buckeridge (chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift) are two examples. The use of chaplains as a reliable inner circle of administrators and preachers is particularly clear in the case of London, a compact diocese whose bishop did not have to travel to attend Parliament or court. The bishopric of London was a position for the ambitious: there were twelve bishops of London between Edmund Grindal and William Juxon (i.e., between 1570 and 1633), and seven of these became archbishops: five of Canterbury (Grindal, Bancroft, Abbot, Laud and Juxon) and two of York (Sandys and Mountain). The other five died in the see. For the bishop of London, a core of reliable ministers within the diocese could be created from the ambitious, graduate clergymen who served as his chaplains (before or after they were preferred to livings in the city). The chaplains of John King and Archbishop Abbot, for example, were active preachers in London.10 Given that bishops of London moved up or out, their chaplains must have had an expectation that they would stay in the city, and would have been valuable for their knowledge of this pivotal diocese. In a few cases, bishops of London seem to have inherited chaplains in a manner difficult to reconcile with a system of personal patronage: Thomas Crowe, who

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Chaplains in early modern England is said to have been chaplain to the bishop of London between 1592 and 1596, would thus have served under both John Aylmer and Richard Fletcher.11 The bishop of London could reward the loyalty and service of his chaplains: he was one of the most important patrons of ecclesiastical livings in the city, with many wealthy benefices in his gift.12 Gareth Owen suggests that ‘the practice was no by means deleterious; in fact, these livings often provided pulpits for the ablest men of the day’.13 The job of an episcopal chaplain was otherwise not well defined. A chaplain’s routine function was to lead morning and evening prayers in the chapel; he was also expected to preach and to assist the bishop at ordinations.14 The chaplain was employed by the bishop to be a member of his household, but he was not a diocesan official whose duties were defined by ecclesiastical 15 law. This was one of the reasons why Laud’s accusers at his trial argued that the archbishop could be held responsible for the actions of his chaplains, whose actions were in turn viewed as purely vicarious, as their duty was to the bishop himself, not to the see. It was claimed that Laud ‘ought much more to be answerable’ for his chaplains’ acts, because he could dismiss them at will, whereas his commissary ‘had a patent, and could not be put out at pleasure’. In response, Laud argued that the same legal fact demanded the opposite conclusion; because the commissary is the bishop’s legal deputy, ‘the Bishop and his Official ... make but one person in law’, but ‘the Bishop and his Chaplain are not one person in any construction of law’.16 This lack of definition in their role meant that Elizabethan and early Stuart bishops’ chaplains could be deployed for a variety of tasks of political significance that only emerged in the post-Reformation state. Among these was controlling access to heterodox books, Catholic or Protestant. The bishop of London was responsible for ensuring that books imported to England from the continent did not contain heretical (particularly Catholic) material.17 In December 1579, Bishop Aylmer reported to Lord Treasurer Burghley that he had arrested William Carter; Carter’s house had been searched and in it certain ‘naughty papistical books’ were found, including one in French on 18 ‘the Innocency of the Scotyshe Queene’. Not surprisingly, it was the bishop’s chaplains who did much of the legwork involved in the identification of Catholic sympathisers and possessors of Catholic texts. It was Thomas Watts, chaplain to Bishop Edmund Grindal of London, who undertook a search of John Stow’s books in 1569 and sent a catalogue of the same to the Bishop and William Cecil. Stow was questioned before the Lord Mayor but the matter went no further. Stow had been under suspicion for some time, however. In 1565, Thomas Bickley, chaplain to Archbishop Parker, had compared Stow to Catholic historians in his economy with the truth when dealing with embarrassing details from the Catholic Church’s history: in this case Stow’s silence on the celebrations for Queen’s Mary’s supposed pregnancy.19

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Episcopal chaplains and the media Because their job was not defined by law but developed according to the administrative needs of the bishop, chaplains to the bishop of London were used as a sort of religious secret police: as well as overseeing searches for heretical books, they were charged with the task of disputing with missionary priests. In 1582, the Privy Council sent the bishops a series of rules to be used when conferring with Jesuits and other Catholic priests (to argue from Scripture in preference to the Fathers, for example, and not to accept modern Catholic writers as authorities). There was also a list of clerics who were considered fit and able to be used in such conferences. The list included senior London clerics such as the deans of St Paul’s and Windsor, as well as men with a reputation for writing on religious controversy (for instance, William Fulke, Tobie Matthew, John Bridges and Roger Goad). Also included were men who were then, or had been, chaplains to the bishop of London or archbishop of Canterbury, such as John Still (chaplain to Archbishop Parker), John Mullyns and William Redman (both chaplains to Edmund Grindal), William Gravet 20 (chaplain to Aylmer) and John Copcot (chaplain to John Whitgift). A list of preachers sent into prisons to talk to radical Protestant separatists in 1589–90 contains the names of Mullyns and Gravet, along with Richard Wood (Whitgift’s chaplain in 1585), Thomas Stallard (who had served as chaplain to Archbishop Parker), William Fisher, William Cotton and William Hutchinson (all chaplains to John Aylmer).21 And there were other tasks assigned to these London-based chaplains that helped the bishop monitor the behaviour of the clergy (and laity) on a more day-to-day basis than the period visitations of the diocese. The bishop of London’s chaplains were responsible for overseeing the rota of Paul’s Cross sermons, and it fell to these men to take the place of any appointed preacher who failed to preach.22 Chaplains also acted as the eyes and ears of the bishop in other contentious matters, such as episodes of puritan agitation or cases of supposed demonic possession. William Gravet, for instance, was described as one of ‘dumb John [Aylmer’s] bousing mates’ by Martin Marprelate, but Martin’s dislike may have owed more to the anger Gravet caused among the 23 London godly by his officiousness in monitoring puritan activity in the city. Gravet was an active clergyman, who is named on both the lists of those who were to argue with Catholic priests and Protestant separatists. On 19 July 1573, Richard Crick delivered a notorious sermon from Paul’s Cross praising the Presbyterian platform advocated in the Admonition to Parliament. Gravet reported him and Crick was questioned. 24 Samuel Harsnett, chaplain to Richard Bancroft, also acted as an ideological policeman, particularly through his exposure of a case of demonic possession in his Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures (1603).25 It is in this context – the increasing use of these young and ambitious clergymen in the formidable task of defining and enforcing religious o ­ rthodoxy

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Chaplains in early modern England – that the devolution of press licensing to the chaplains of the bishops of London can be explained. Having them ‘peruse and allow’ printed publications on behalf of the bishops was a short step from the tasks that they were already undertaking. But we must also consider why the authorities would wish to settle the job of press licensing on a very few, London-based junior clergymen. To understand this, we must look briefly at the evolution of the system of press licensing in the years after Elizabeth’s succession. Here too there was a process of formalising and centralising the mechanism for press censorship, and this explains why the task fell to the bishop’s and archbishop’s chaplains. It might also explain the hitherto under-examined fact that the authority to license for the press became restricted to a subgroup among these chaplains some time in the late 1630s. The royal government had an obvious need to institute routine press oversight without daily intervention by over-stretched members of the 26 Privy Council or High Commission. The injunction of 11 November 1559 demanded that books be ‘perused and licensed’ by six privy councillors, or any two among the following: the archbishops of York or Canterbury, the bishop of London, the chancellors of the universities, a bishop or the local archdeacon, provided the ordinary (in most cases the bishop of that diocese) was one of the two. Obviously it was unrealistic that these men would be able to take the time to ‘peruse’ every text, even excepting the pamphlets that were assigned to members of the High Commission (which included many of the same people in any case) and works by classical authors that were exempted.27 Many texts went to the press without perusal and without adverse consequences. While stationers might well seek scrutiny and advice before the publication of some texts (works of religious controversy for example), it was not the bishops to whom they would immediately apply. Any reliable clergyman in London might give the necessary licence by putting his hand to the copy, a kind of nihil obstat, as Arnold Hunt has explained.28 When compiling information in preparation for the Star Chamber decree of 1637, Sir John Lambe (Dean of Arches and a member of High Commission) noted that ‘Master [Felix] kingston the now master Sayth that before the Decree [presumably of 1586] the master and wardens licensed all, And that when they had any Divinity booke of muche importance they would take the advice of some 2 or 3 ministers of this towne’.29 W. W. Greg’s study of the process of licensing has shown that ‘Kingston’s statement is borne out by the Register’, and that there was probably greater scrutiny of publications before 1586 than the sparse entries in the Stationers’ Register might suggest. He also notes that ‘the minister of the town to whom the wardens were mostly like to turn was Robert Crowley, vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, who was their fellow stationer.’30 In short, they went to someone familiar for reliable information on what would be deemed acceptable and orthodox. Other ministers ‘of this towne’ were called upon, but

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Episcopal chaplains and the media their names are not recorded in the Stationers’ Register as often as would be the case after the Star Chamber decree. Given how many of the entries from the early years of Elizabeth’s reign mention the bishop of London as ‘allowing’ the text, it may well be that his chaplains were already doing much of this work already. In ‘Eupolemia’, a manuscript recording his work as a translator and compiler of printed texts, Richard Robinson gives more details on the men who licensed the works with which he was involved than are provided by the Stationers’ Register. In several cases where the register lists the bishop of London as the authoriser, Robinson names one of his chaplains.31 The links between the Stationers’ Company and the ‘ministers of the towne’ suggests that the Stationers were a junior partner in an alliance with the ecclesiastical authority. One of the principles on which both sides agreed was the benefit of restricting printing as far as possible to members of the London company. In October 1583, the bishops presented articles to the queen in which there was a provision for restricting the licensing authority to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London (senior clerics, but also those most often in London) and of course this was the provision made in the Star Chamber 32 decree of June 1586. The printing trade was to be contained as far as possible in London, where the bishop’s and archbishop’s most trustworthy junior colleagues (i.e., their own chaplains) were on hand to oversee the licensing process. The Privy Council needed a mechanism for routine monitoring, and one way of doing this was by fostering a patronage relationship with individual printers, giving them patents that allowed them a monopoly on valuable bestsellers: most famously Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was printed by John Day and effectively subsidised by Day’s patent for printing the ABC with a Catechism; later also the Authorised Version was produced by the holders of the King’s Printer patent who also had the sole right to produce the Book of Common Prayer.33 But an equally important means of monitoring the press’s output was to restrict printing in England to the Stationers’ Company of London. William Laud understood this well and Arnold Hunt has shown how Laud ‘consistently supported the Company’s interests and tried to clip the wings of rival patentees’, and ‘discouraged the University of Oxford from competing with the Stationers, as Cambridge had done, in the market for Bibles, grammars 34 and primers’. Laud was otherwise a generous patron to Oxford, so his lack of support in this regard is notable. But Laud was doing no more than his predecessor. In 1583, Archbishop Whitgift had supported the Stationers’ Company of London against the claims of the press at Cambridge precisely because it was easier to control what was printed when presses only operated in London and under the direct supervision of the bishop and archbishop. He wrote as much to Burghley in June of that year, on hearing news that a work by the puritan William Travers had been printed at Cambridge. ‘Ever sens I hard that they had a printer in Cambridge I dyd greatlie fear that this and such like

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Chaplains in early modern England inconveniences wold followe’, he says, ‘for allthowgh Mr Vicechancellor that now ys, be a verie careful man and in all respects greatlie to be commended’, it might happen that ‘some such as shal succeade hym wyll not be so well affected, nor have such care for the publike peace of the Church, and of the state’.35 The Stationers’ Company of London had much to gain commercially from cooperation with the authorities: both as an organisation (particularly in the interminable tussle with the Cambridge University printers)36 and as individuals who might use some political leverage either against each other (e.g. Bonham Norton and John Bill, fractious members of the King’s Printing 37 House) or against the City authorities (e.g. John Day). They benefited from a de facto policy of centralising printing in London as much as possible, and of assigning press licensing to a number of familiar London-based clergymen, the majority of whom were or had been chaplains of the bishop and archbishop. It is not surprising, therefore, that we can discern a subgroup of particularly expert press licensers with whom the stationers worked, so that even from the 1580s it was not every chaplain of the bishop and archbishop who was a press licenser, nor did clergymen only act as licenser while serving as chaplain. But a term as chaplain was a significant element in the career profile of the men who were entrusted with the task of overseeing the press, and so it makes sense to think of press licensers as a specialised group of episcopal chaplains. Richard Robinson’s ‘Eupolemia’ describes Robert Temple as ‘the sayd Lord Bishop of London his other Chapleyn’.38 Bishops were entitled to six chaplains, and archbishops to eight. Presumably, only two of the chaplains took the job of press licenser at any time, either through a rota system or as specialists in that task, with other jobs (saying prayers in chapel, negotiation with Catholic priests, and so on) being handled by different men. Some men (like William Gravet and Daniel Featley) combined roles, while others appear to have specialised. Some men whose duties otherwise suggest that they were considered very reliable are nonetheless absent from the list of press licensers. Laurence Dyos, chaplain to Bishop Aylmer of London and a man who managed the Paul’s Cross preaching rota, is not listed as having licensed 39 any books for the press. William Fisher, another of Alymer’s chaplains and a Paul’s Cross preacher, is also absent among the list of press licensers. The evidence thus shows that, while many of the bishop’s and archbishop’s chaplains worked with the stationers in licensing for the press, not all did. Other ministers not serving as chaplains might also foster relationships with the stationers and could function as licensers too. But at least some of those concerned with press control favoured a greater restriction on the number of men acting as press licensers, and long before this came about (in the 1630s), there were attempts to effect it. In notes made c. 1635, Sir John Lambe recorded that in 1588:

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The Archbishop gave power to Doctor Cosin Doctor Stallard. Doctor Wood. master Hartwell master Gravett Master Crowley master Cotton and master Hutchingson, or any one of them to license bookes to be printed: Or any 2. of those following 40 master Judson master Trippe, master Cole and master Dickens.

If we look into these names a little, we see how far the chaplains were already dominating press licensing. Robert Crowley has been mentioned already, but he died soon after Whitgift set up this ‘panel of correctors’.41 Richard Cosin was a civil lawyer and Whitgift’s chancellor and close associate throughout his career; Abraham Hartwell was Whitgift’s secretary (in some ways an analogous role to a chaplain in that it was a position of trust whose duties were not defined by law).42 Most of the other members of the panel had been or were still acting as chaplains to either the bishop or the archbishop. Thomas Stallard, rector of All Saints Lombard Street, had been domestic chaplain to Archbishop Parker.43 Richard Wood, vicar of All Hallows Barking, was Whitgift’s chaplain in 1585 when he was appointed to that living.44 William Gravet, vicar of St Sepulchre’s, was chaplain to Aylmer, Bishop of London, as were William Cotton and William Hutchinson.45 Of the junior licensers on Whitgift’s list, Richard Judson, rector of St John Evangelist Watling Street, is not on record as an episcopal chaplain, but this living was in the gift of the dean and chapter of Canterbury so it is not unlikely that he was a chaplain to Whitgift.46 Henry Tripp was rector of St Faith’s under St Paul’s, the Stationers’ Company’s church, and preached before the Company several times in an annual sermon funded by a bequest of the stationer William Lamb.47 ‘Mr Cole’ has not been positively identified, but is probably Humphrey Cole, rector of Stepney and St Mary le Bow. ‘Mr Cole’ is described in the Stationers’ Register as ‘one of my lord graces chaplains’.48 George Dickens is known to have been chaplain to Aylmer in 1589 and would be given the St Paul’s prebend of Harleston in 1591.49 Whitgift’s panel of press correctors was not made up of all the bishop’s and archbishop’s current chaplains,50 but it was mostly made up of men who were at some time chaplain to the bishop of London or archbishop of Canterbury, or were (in the case of Crowley and Tripp) ministers already known and trusted by the Stationers’ Company. Some were particularly active: William Gravet was one of the ministers ‘of the towne’ being consulted by stationers before 1588; Abraham Hartwell also put his hands to many more texts than other colleagues on Whitgift’s panel of correctors.51 But this panel of press correctors did not become the only accepted authority for ‘perusing and allowing’ texts for publication: other names are mentioned regularly in the Stationers’ register, including Robert Temple (one of Aylmer’s chaplains), Martin Heton (Dean of Westminster and later Bishop of Ely) and Richard Lewis (rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate and not known to have been a bishop’s chaplain), who all authorised books for publication in the late years of Elizabeth’s reign.52 The

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Chaplains in early modern England same latitude to authorise publications, particularly by themselves, extended to the other bishops. The publisher of The Effect of Certen Sermons touching the Full Redemption of Mankind, by Bishop Thomas Bilson of Winchester, provided as authorisation ‘my lord graces letter’.53 Whitgift’s panel of correctors did not tie press control unambiguously to the office of episcopal chaplain, but it probably promoted the assumption that press licensing was a particular task undertaken by those men. The process of relying on the bishop’s chaplains to do most of the press licensing, while allowing other clergymen to do the job if they so wished, continued in the early years of James I’s reign. Between 1598 and 1610, some of those named in the Stationers’ register were episcopal chaplains (William Dix, Owen 54 Gwyn, James Speght); some are ecclesiastical officials like Thomas Bing, Dean of the Peculiars; some were prebendaries of St Paul’s and holders of London benefices such as Peter Lyly, chaplain of the Savoy; some were rather ordinary London ministers, for example Charles Sonnibank (who authorised very few publications).55 Occasionally, a preacher authorised his own sermon, as George Downame did with the published version of his Spital sermon of 1602.56 William Barlow, then Bishop of Rochester, authorised the printing of a court sermon preached by himself.57 Not all publications, even by episcopal chaplains, short-circuited the censoring process, however. Samuel Collins, chaplain to Archbishop Bancroft, preached a hard-hitting anti-puritan sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1607, and the sermon-book was authorised by Zachariah Pasfield, a prebendary of St Paul’s but not a bishop’s chaplain (though a frequent press censor in these years).58 The publisher was hardly doublechecking Collins’ credentials, and may have been concerned to demonstrate that his copytext was sound, particularly given the inflammatory nature of the sermon. Nonetheless, press censoring was increasingly centred in Lambeth Palace and London House. Cyndia Clegg writes that by ‘1611 the household of Abbot and King accounted for half the authorizations, and in 1612 two thirds’.59 There was a marked acceleration in this process of centralisation during the primacy of Archbishop Laud. The so-called ‘Laudian imprimatur’, demanded of the London stationers since 1632 and included among the provision of the 1637 Star Chamber decree, has been seen as proof of a campaign to restrict the range of theological opinions issuing from the press, and in particular to use the press to forward anti-Calvinist and anti-puritan writings. The only administrative change it made, however, was the order that the name of the licenser be printed in the book, which gives us more information about the licensers. Arnold Hunt has pointed out that Laud’s increased press control is not so much evident in any changes to the law, or in any systematic misrepresentation of a text by cutting. Laud did, however, insist on the letter of the law when it came to press licensing, and this in itself might result in more restrictive press control.60 Laud ensured that printed plays after 1638 carry

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Episcopal chaplains and the media the chaplain’s imprimatur rather than that of the Master of the Revels, and the then Master, Sir Henry Herbert, stopped licensing plays for the press. The practice of consulting experts in law and medicine for works in those subjects continued, but their names sit alongside those of the bishop’s chaplains in the imprimaturs after 1637.61 The practice of allowing any reliable and willing clergymen to authorise publication was discontinued, and press censoring was now overwhelmingly restricted to Laud’s and Juxon’s chaplains. This is particularly clear because there is such a marked degree of specialisation within the group of chaplains who acted as licensers. Two of the bishop of London’s chaplains (Thomas Weekes/Wykes and Samuel Baker) and two of the archbishop’s chaplains (William Bray and William Haywood) did far 62 more press censoring than any other men. Not asking a particular chaplain to work as a press censor does not indicate any lack of trust on the bishop’s part: Richard Stern, Laud’s chaplain since 1633 and the man who accompanied him to the scaffold, is not named on an imprimatur.63 Some bishops’ chaplains lived in the household,64 and this may include those who acted as press censors most regularly: those imprimaturs that name a place as well as a date mention the bishop’s and archbishop’s London residences (Lambeth Palace, London House and Fulham House).65 Press licensing was a London phenomenon, and the chaplains on hand in London carried it out. In his trial, Laud described William Haywood as ‘my chaplain in the house’ and Haywood was obviously serving the liturgical functions of a domestic chaplain there as well as being very active as a press licenser.66 In his trial, Laud also says that he deputed Sir John Lambe to ‘look to it carefully’ that Cowell’s Interpreter not be printed, because Laud himself ‘was then at Croydon’.67 Sir Edward H ­ ungerford is said to have come ‘to Lambeth to have a little book licensed at the press’.68 Of course, the licensing system remained far from foolproof, and books continued to be printed without a licence. But the dominance of a select group of the bishop’s and archbishop’s chaplains among those licensing for the press did have an effect on the Laudians’ ability to monitor print publications, and one of the first people to discover this was Daniel Featley, previously one of Archbishop Abbot’s chaplains and press licensers. Featley gave himself a licence for a collection of sermons, Clavis mystica, which did not appear in print until 1636. William Bray, Laud’s licenser, demanded stop-press changes to the text, which now exists in two states.69 The treatment of anti-papal rhetoric has been the focus of most scholars’ attention, as this was a matter discussed in Laud’s trial, but equally significant is what happened to the Rehearsal Sermon preached by Featley in 1618, in which he ‘rehearsed’, or summarised, the three sermons preached at St Mary’s Spital that Easter. Francis White (the man who would licence Richard Montagu’s Appello Caesarem),70 preached The Sacrifice of Righteousness on Psalm 4:5 and claimed that those who were generous in charitable donations would have their good deeds doubly restored to them

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Chaplains in early modern England in the ‘continuance of their good name on earth’ and an ‘immarcessible [i.e., incorruptible] crown in heaven’. Having rehearsed this sermon, Featley added a note to the printed copy explaining that the ‘grave & learned Divine’ dealt with difficult topics, and ‘illustrating’ Francis White’s meaning more fully by providing a summary of orthodox Calvinist views that good works do not contribute to salvation. When the censor came to Featley’s note, all but the first sentence was completely removed and was replaced with a list of patristic and biblical sources on the rewards of good works. So Featley practised a kind of ‘benign censorship’, recording but qualifying the statements made by the Arminian Francis White in the sermon. But Laud’s chaplain, William Bray, censored the text by cutting out Featley’s addition; in this case, ironically, the 71 censor’s cut probably reasserts White’s meaning. There was, in effect, a restriction of licensing to a subgroup of the bishop’s and archbishop’s chaplains, and this produced some anomalies that are hard to see as anything other than a tightening of censorship. Featley (already on the wrong side of the Durham House group for his agitation against Montagu)72 might expect little leeway, but his disqualification as a press censor once he ceased being a chaplain is not an isolated example. Bishop Joseph Hall’s Remedy of Profaneness (1637), for instance, was printed with an imprimatur by Samuel Baker. Hall’s relationship with the Durham House group was fraught, but having a work of practical piety authorised for publication by a junior colleague would seem at best anomalous were a strict reading of the Star Chamber decree not being enforced.73 Similarly, the sermons of Arthur Lake, the Jacobean Bishop of Bath and Wells, were printed in 1640 with an imprimatur signed by Thomas Browne. Lake was undoubtedly a Calvinist but died in 1626, and so the formal licensing of his work might be seen as a mark of consistency rather than any personal grudge against him.74 A further result of this strict interpretation of the rules was that Laud’s colleagues might have difficulty accessing the press in controversies where the Archbishop himself played a leading role. The so-called ‘altar policy’ is a prime example. Laud’s erstwhile patron and then enemy John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, took the unprecedented step of licensing his anonymous publication, The Holy Table, Name and Thing (1637) himself, but only for the Lincoln diocese. This work was an answer to Peter Heylyn’s A Coale from the Altar (1636), itself probably published in order to draw Williams into a very public quarrel where he would be found disagreeing with Charles I (which it did).75 The normal route through the London book trade was effectively closed to Williams, because it ran through the chaplains of Laud and Juxon. Licensing for his own diocese was the only means of promulgating his opinions through print. Laud’s centralisation of licensing, by placing it exclusively in the hands of a small number of his and Juxon’s chaplains, was not ideologically neutral even though it was technically no more than the regulations required. If we consider

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Episcopal chaplains and the media the dominance of one licenser, Thomas Weekes, we can see that Weekes would have had to be very fair-minded indeed not to let his opinions affect the tenor of the press’s output, simply because of the number of texts he licensed. Weekes is named as licenser of 631 items in the Stationers’ register between 1633 and 1640.76 If anything, he became more active as a press censor as time passed. Of the 28 imprimaturs printed in books from 1637, 9 are by Weekes; of the 52 from 1640, Weekes is named in 30.77 Weekes is a figure about whom we know very little: he printed no works of his own and is not known to have taken part in the other ideological policework that London chaplains carried out. But the biographical information that we do have suggests a man with a clear party affiliation. Weekes took an MA at St John’s College, Oxford, and so was a product of the same college as William Laud and William Juxon, the two bishops he served as domestic chaplain. His service for Laud seems to have 78 begun in 1626, and by 1633 he had become Juxon’s chaplain. Promotions did not come rapidly for Weekes, although he was made rector of Rollright Parva in Oxfordshire in 1630 and in 1635 was vicar of Great Dunmow in Essex (a living controlled by the bishop of London).79 In 1636, he was given the St Paul’s prebend of Finsbury, and in 1640 he became rector of Finchley, another parish controlled by the bishop. Weekes received his DD in 1639, denying the proposition that ‘temporal dominion is founded in Grace’, a thesis that Nicholas Tyacke considers had ‘reference to the Scottish rebellion’.80 He resigned the living in Finchley in 1642; given the date he may have jumped before he was pushed, as he does not appear to have been ejected.81 Weekes’s record suggests that he was, in effect, a full-time press licenser,82 and even if he was popular because he was quick, cheap or reasonably fair-minded, he was too close to Laud or Juxon for their opponents to imagine that their opinions would pass unnoticed into print. This close identification between the licensers and a particular ecclesiastical faction may have inhibited some men from printing their work. David Como has argued that, while Bishop of London, Laud enforced royal prohibitions on discussion of predestination unequally, less by ‘a policy of overt judicial persecution’ than by ‘a more subtle regime of quiet threat and harassment’: preachers were made aware that certain opinions would not be welcomed. That subtle pressure on puritan and Calvinist ministers was easier to exert when control of the press was more determinedly centralised.83 This is not to say that the Laudian authorities were less fair-minded than their opponents when it came to press control, but the effect was different. It was far easier for Calvinists to claim that their censoring of sermons and sermon-books was carried out in the interest of maintaining an orthodoxy to which all consented, because they were in the majority. Since the Laudians’ aim was to project the opinion of a minority of clerics as the official position of the English Church, their censorship was directed against the majority opinion, and so

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Chaplains in early modern England obviously appeared more oppressive. Lori Anne Ferrell has written that ‘the particular genius of Jacobean governmental polemic was its skill in repackaging an anti-Calvinist, sacramentalist minority ecclesiastical position, not merely as mainstream orthodoxy, which would be interesting enough, but as mainstream orthodoxy under attack, which was a much more effective undertaking’.84 Control of a more formal and centralised system of press censorship greatly facilitated Laud’s and Juxon’s programme. I have argued that press regulation in the years between the Elizabethan settlement and the outbreak of civil war was a process of increasing formalisation, a process of ‘concentration and centralization of authority’ to license print publications, to quote Arnold Hunt once again. Whether this process was always, or ever, politically neutral (because it was driven by the commercial needs of a guild working for a limited market) seems unlikely. The stationers’ relationship with the authorities was an unequal but symbiotic one, and the determining factors in the application of the laws on licensing for the press were the theological and political opinions of the bishops and of their younger colleagues who administered the process. This meant that, while there may have been practical advantages to a continuation of the policy of centralising and formalising press control, there were also politically significant consequences. Access to the print medium was almost inevitably restricted even further when licensing was left exclusively in the hands of a select group among the domestic chaplains of the bishop of London and archbishop of Canterbury, men who shared the anti-Calvinist bias of their employers and senior colleagues.

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Notes 1 The Star Chamber decree is printed in E. Arber (ed.), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 AD, 5 vols (London: privately printed, 1875–94), 2.810, and C. S. Clegg (ed.), Censorship and the Press, vol. 1, 1557–1639 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009), p. 110. For details, see C.S. Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 57–60. 2 Sheila Lambert argues that ‘insofar as there was inhibition on the publication of ideas and opinions in print, economic and practical factors inherent in the small size of the market for books in England were quite as important as the formal censorship’: ‘The printers and the government, 1604–1637’, in R. Myers and M. Harris (eds), Aspects of Printing from 1600 (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1987), pp. 1–17 (p. 1). For a useful summary of the debate, see A. Hadfield, ‘Introduction: the politics of early modern censorship’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 1–13. 3 R. McCabe, ‘“Right puisante and terrible priests”: the role of the Anglican clergy in Elizabethan state censorship’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2001), pp. 75–94. 4 In particular, see N. Tyacke, ‘The rise of Arminianism reconsidered’, Past and Present, 115

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Episcopal chaplains and the media (1987), 201–16, and A. Milton, ‘Licensing, censorship, and religious orthodoxy in early Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 625–51 (pp. 628–31). 5 A. Hunt, ‘Licensing and religious censorship in early modern England’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2001), pp. 127–46 (pp. 135, 129). 6 D. Crankshaw, ‘The Elizabethan Faculty Office and the aristocratic patronage of chaplains’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: University of York for the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 1996), pp. 20–75 (pp. 62–4). 7 K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 164, 191. Edmund Grindal used his episcopal chaplains to visit and report on parishes, while Laud used his to oversee the enforcement of ceremonial observations. See Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 148–9. 8 Examples include Matthew Hutton, Archbishop of York (chaplain to Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London); John King, Bishop of London (chaplain to John Piers of Salisbury), William Cotton, Bishop of Exeter (chaplain to John Aylmer of London) and Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York (chaplain to Richard Bancroft of London). Bancroft had himself been chaplain to Richard Cox of Ely and later was chaplain to the Lord Chancellor, Christopher Hatton. John Buckeridge, later Bishop of Ely, also served as chaplain to a nobleman, the Earl of Essex. 9 N. W. S. Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary at the early Stuart court: the purple road’, in Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications), pp. 120–47. On the significance of a chaplaincy to career advancement, see R. O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), pp. 147–58. 10 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 255–6.

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11 W. W. Greg, ‘Richard Robinson and the Stationers’ Register’, Modern Language Review, 50 (1955), 407–13 (pp. 410–1). 12 H. G. Owen, ‘The London parish clergy in the reign of Elizabeth I’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1957), p. 89. 55% of the city’s livings were with clerical patrons (p. 258). Fourteen of the wealthiest livings in London were held in plurality, and ten of these were in the gift of ecclesiastical patrons, generally filled by bishops’ or archbishops’ chaplains (pp. 235–6). 13 Owen, ‘The London parish clergy’, p. 250. 14 Whitgift writes that the bishop brings ‘some competent nomber of such learned men, as he shall think convenient, either his Chaplaines, or other that he shall send for’ to assist with ordinations: John Strype, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, D.D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), p. 372. 15 It is difficult to argue from silence, but chaplains are absent from Richard Grey’s discussion of ecclesiastical law and offices in A System of English Ecclesiastical Law, 4th edn (1743). The informality of the chaplain’s position (compared to that of archdeacons or chancellors) is one of the reasons that these men are hard to trace: the only records of their services are ordination registers. 16 W. Cobbett et al. (ed.), Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, vol. 4 (London: R. Bagshaw, 1809), col. 483.

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Chaplains in early modern England 17 W. W. Greg, A Companion to Arber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 114–15. 18 Greg, A Companion to Arber, p. 20. Greg thinks this book is probably L’innocence de ... Marie, Royne d’Escosse ([Lyons], 1572). 19 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, 1.393; Greg, A Companion to Arber, p. 11; Bodleian, MS Tanner 50, fol. 15v. The sermon was preached on 2 December 1565. 20 Strype, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, pp. 195–8. Information on the men who were chaplains has been derived from entries in ODNB, except for John Copcot who is mentioned as Whitgift’s chaplain in 1588 in ibid. p. 522. 21 L. H. Carlson (ed.), Elizabethan Nonconformist Texts, vol. 4: The Writings of John Greenwood, 1589–1590 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), pp. 114–20. 22 See my Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 27. 23 J. L. Black (ed.) The Martin Marprelate Tracts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 128, 181. Black notes (p. 260, n. 105) that Gravet is described as a ‘drunkard, a glutton and a nonresident’ in the 1586 ‘Survey of the Ministry’. He was certainly non-resident, but as a bishop’s chaplain had a dispensation allowing this. It is impossible to judge the justice of the other charges with no other evidence, but the Marprelate tracts were guilty of at least exaggerating conformist clergy’s faults. 24 Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS 538, vol. 47, fols 476r–8v.

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25 On Harsnett’s involvement with Mary Glover, see T. Freeman, ‘Demons, deviance and defiance: John Darrell and the politics of exorcism in late Elizabethan England, in P. Lake and M. Questier (eds), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560– 1660 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 34–63. Other such incidents may have occurred: for the case of William Gravet, sued for allegedly slandering John Rogers as a sorcerer, see ODNB. 26 The earliest attempts at press control, however, do make it the responsibility of those equally highly placed in the government. In the Henrician period, privy councillors monitored what little printing there was: P. Blayney, ‘William Cecil and the Stationers’, in R. Myers and M. Harris (eds), The Stationers’ Company and the Book Trade, 1550–1900 (Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1997), pp. 11–34 (pp. 11–12). On the sixteenthcentury history of press control, see A. W. Pollard, ‘The regulation of the book trade in the sixteenth century’, The Library, 3rd ser., 7 (1916), 18–43. 27 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, 1.xxxviii–xxxix; Greg, A Companion to Arber, p. 5. 28 Hunt, ‘Licensing and religious censorship’, pp. 128–9. 29 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, 3.690. 30 W. W. Greg, ‘Licensing for the press’, in Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), pp. 41–62 (p. 47). 31 Greg, ‘Richard Robinson and the Stationers’ Register’, p. 410. 32 Greg, A Companion to Arber, pp. 34, 41, 137–8. The decree allowed the vice-chancellors of the universities to continue as licensers for those presses, as seen from the imprimaturs printed to the following publications: STC 25641 (Oxford), 13554 (Cambridge), 10780 (Cambridge), 6295 and 6298 (Cambridge). 33 On Day, see E. Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 52–3, 156–7. On the way Norton and Bill success-

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Episcopal chaplains and the media fully managed the printing of expensive editions such as the Authorised Version (unlike the previous holder of the patent, Christopher Barker), see G. Rees and M. Wakely, Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 66–92. 34 A. Hunt, ‘Book trade patents, 1603–1640’, in A. Hunt, G. Mandelbrote and A. Shell (eds), The Book Trade & its Customers, 1450–1900 (Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1997), pp. 27–54 (p. 36). 35 D. McKitterick, A History of Cambridge University Press, vol. 1: Printing and the Book Trade in Cambridge, 1534–1698 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 93. The letter is also printed in Greg, A Companion to Arber (pp. 35, 135) and Strype, The Life and Acts of JohnWhitgift (p. 300). It is easy to forget that the vice-chancellorship of both universities was often held by men at the middle rather than end of their career, which makes Whitgift’s concern for the character of the vice-chancellor easier to understand. 36 Greg, A Companion to Arber, pp, 29–32, 75–7, 134–5, 194–203. 37 Rees and Wakely point out how crucial John Bill’s patronage at court was to his handling of his trade disputes, and how that patronage derived from Bill’s ability to use his contacts in the continental book-trade to get James I’s works (and other works promoted by James) to a European audience: Publishing, Politics, and Culture, pp. 15–17, 36, 40, 190–215. On John Day, see P. W. M. Blayney, ‘John Day and the bookshop that never was’, in L. C. Orlin (ed.), Material London, ca. 1600, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 322–43. A more extensive study of Day as a printer, including a discussion of his patronage links with Matthew Parker in particular, is Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, esp. pp. 113–17, 119–50. 38 Greg, ‘Richard Robinson and the Stationers’ Register’, p. 410.

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39 In 1581, the Corporation complained to Aylmer about comments made by Dyos in a Paul’s Cross sermon. Aylmer’s reply defended Dyos as an assiduous Paul’s Cross preacher, who often filled in when the appointed preacher failed to appear: LMA, Corporation of London Remembrancia, vol. I, fols 117v–18r. 40 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, 3.690; see also Greg, A Companion to Arber, p. 96. Clegg sees the appointment of this panel as a sign of Whitgift’s ‘appropriation ... of the censorship authority’, but it is hard to see how Whitgift was ‘appropriating’ a role that was already assigned to him: Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, p. 60. 41 Greg, ‘Licensing for the press’, pp. 52–3. 42 On Cosin and Hartwell, see M. Ingram, ‘Cosin, Richard (1548?–1597)’, ODNB, and C. DeCoursey, ‘Society of Antiquaries (act. 1586–1607)’, ODNB. 43 CCEd, person ID 3137; Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714, 4 vols (Oxford: Parker & C0., 1891–92), 4.1405. 44 CCEd, person ID 66047, Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 4.1672; Lilian J. Redstone, ‘The history of All Hallows church’, Survey of London, 12 (1929), pp. 34–51, accessed through www.british-history.ac.uk. 45 I owe the information on these men acting as chaplains to Aylmer to Professor Kenneth Fincham, who kindly forwarded me information gathered for the CCEd on domestic chaplains. Hutchinson is listed as a chaplain to the bishop by W. W. Greg, Licensers for the Press, &c, to 1640 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1962), pp. 49–50. 46 CCEd, person ID 53402; S. Venn and J. A. Venn (eds), Alumni Cantabrigienses, Pt I from

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Chaplains in early modern England the Earliest Times to 1751, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–27), 2.491. 47 Greg, Licensers for the Press, pp. 90–1; Arber, A Transcript from the Registers, 1, fols 233v, 236v, 239r, 264v. 48 Greg, Licensers for the Press, p. 24. 49 Information received from Professor Kenneth Fincham; J. Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1541–1857, vol. 1, St Paul’s London, compiled by Joyce M. Horn (London: Athlone Press, for Institute of Historical Research, 1969). 50 Crankshaw, ‘The Elizabethan Faculty Office’, p. 53. 51 Greg, Licensers for the Press, pp. 38–9, 42–5. 52 On Robert Temple, see W. W. Greg, ‘Richard Robinson and the Stationers’ Register’, p. 410; On Martin Heton, see Brett Usher, ‘Heton, Martin (1554–1609)’, ODNB. 53 Arber, A Transcript from the Registers, 3, fol. 23v. 54 William Dix is named as chaplain to Bancroft when Bishop of London (1597) (Greg, Licensers for the Press, p. 30). Owen Gwen was chaplain to Richard Vaughan, Bishop of London, in 1605–7, and James Speght was chaplain to Thomas Ravis, Bishop of London, in 1608: information provided by Professor Kenneth Fincham. 55 Greg, Licensers for the Press, pp. 11, 64–5, 85. 56 Arber, A Transcript from the Registers, 3, fol. 80v. 57 Ibid., 3, fol. 143v. 58 S. Collins, A Sermon Preached at Paul’s Cross (1607); Arber, A Transcript from the Registers, 3, fol. 160v. Pasfield would later be chaplain to Archbishop George Abbot, but Abbot at this time was only Dean of Winchester. If Pasfield was already part of his household, it is not clear why he would be licensing for the press in that capacity.

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59 C. S. Clegg, Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 63. 60 Arnold Hunt sees a measure of ‘flexibility’ in the choice of licenser: ‘Licensing and religious censorship’, p. 138. I would suggest that there was less flexibility in the system than previously, because almost all licensing rested with a smaller group of men than had been the case when any conformable cleric, particularly a bishop, could put his hand to a press license. 61 F. B. Williams Jr, ‘The Laudian imprimatur’, The Library, 2nd ser., 15 (1960), 96–104. This provision was included in the Star Chamber decree on printing of 1637: Arber, A Transcript from the Registers, 4.528–36. 62 Robert Austin, chaplain to George Abbot, acted as press licenser in 1633–4, presumably until Laud’s chaplains took over; on Austin, see A. H. Bullen, ‘Austin, Robert (bap. 1593, d. 1661)’, rev. Anita McConnell, ODNB. Edward Martin was Laud’s chaplain while the latter was Bishop of London, and acted as press licenser in 1630–31; he does not appear to have continued in this role after Laud’s elevation to Canterbury: Anthony Milton, ‘Martin, Edward (d. 1662)’, ODNB; Williams, ‘The Laudian imprimatur’, p. 101. John Oliver, chaplain to Laud, Thomas Brown, chaplain to Laud (on both, see Greg, Licensers for the Press, pp. 13, 73), John Hansley (Juxon’s chaplain, see Venn and Venn (eds), Alumni Cantabrigienses, 2.300) and Matthew Clay (possibly the man who received an MA from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1636 [Venn and Venn (eds), Alumni

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Episcopal chaplains and the media Cantabrigienses, 1.350], but whom he served as chaplain is unclear) were also active, though far less so, in the years between 1637 and 1640. 63 A. F. Pollard, ‘Sterne, Richard (1595/6–1683)’, rev. John Spurr, ODNB. 64 F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 77. 65 For example, STC 20075, 17768.5, 12043a, 20447.5, 11650, 20078 and 20075 mention Lambeth Palace; STC 28536, 13267.5, 14007, 25027.5, 14500, 17780 and 14501 mention London House, and 12079 and 23625 mention Fulham Palace. 66 Haywood administered communion wearing a cope: Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, 4, col. 516. 67 Ibid., 4. col. 371. 68 Ibid., 4, col. 507. 69 On Featley’s problems in publishing Clavis mystica, see William Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), p. 254. Featley had actually only licensed six sermons, which were entered in the Stationers’ register: see Hunt, ‘Licensing and religious censorship’, p. 136. 70 On White, the ‘Durham House group’ and the licensing of Appello Caesarem, see N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 44, 108, 171–80. 71 Clavis mystica: A Key Opening Divers Difficult and Mysterous Texts of Holy Scripture: Handled in seventy Sermons, Preached at Solemn and Most Celebrious Assembles, Upon Special Occasions, in England and France (1636), p. 444. Both copies of Clavis mystica held in the Cambridge University Library (shelfmarks E.9.7 and G*.2.24), are uncensored. These were compared with two censored copies, one from the British Library (shelfmark 475.c.3) and one from the Bodleian Library (shelfmark F.1.11.Th).

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72 On Featley’s role in the controversies over Richard Montagu’s books, see S. Lambert, ‘Richard Montagu, Arminianism and censorship’, Past and Present, 124 (1989), 36–68 (pp. 49, 52). 73 J. Hall, The Remedy of Profanenesse (1637). On Joseph Hall as an example of the evangelical Protestantism being redefined as puritanism in the 1630s, see K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘Popularity, prelacy and puritanism in the 1630s: Joseph Hall explains himself’, The English Historical Review, 111 (1996), 856–81, and P. Lake, ‘Joseph Hall, Robert Skinner and the rhetoric of moderation at the early Stuart Court’, in L. A. Ferrell and P. McCullough (eds), The English Sermon Revised (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 167–85. 74 A. Lake, Ten Sermons upon Severall Occasions (1640). 75 On Williams, see Brian Quintrell, ‘Williams, John (1582–1650)’, ODNB. 76 Williams, ‘The Laudian imprimatur’, p.101. 77 Publications were sorted by date of publication on the English Short-Title Catalogue (http://estc.bl.uk) and all of those listed as carrying an imprimatur were checked for the censor’s name on Early English Books Online (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). 78 Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 4.1593; Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, 4, col. 481. 79 CCEd record ID: 88034 (Rollright Parva); CCEd record ID: 193967 (Great Dunmow).

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Chaplains in early modern England 80 Tyacke, ‘The rise of Arminianism reconsidered’, p. 213. 81 ‘Finchley: churches’, in T. F. T. Baker (ed.) Victoria County History: Middlesex, 6 (1980), pp. 82–86, accessed through www.british-history.ac.uk; A. G. Matthews, Walker Revised (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), p. 10; Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1541–1857, vol. 1, St Paul’s London. 82 Greg says that Weekes continued to work as a press licenser under the Long Parliament, but gives no details: Licensers for the Press, p. 106. 83 D. R. Como, ‘Predestination and political conflict in Laud’s London’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003), 263–94, p. 263.

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84 L. A. Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603–1625 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 7.

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Chapter 5

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley, anti-Catholic controversialist abroad Hugh Adlington

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A

t midday on 4 September 1612, a dozen or so men, English and French, assembled at the private residence in Paris of one Mr Knevet, an English gentleman abroad. The purpose of the meeting was religious disputation; the topic, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the real presence. For the next seven hours, arguments for and against the central question – ‘Whether the body of Christ were truly and substantially in the Sacrament, vnder the formes of bread and wine’ – were hashed out by two principal disputants: Daniel Featley, Protestant chaplain to the English Ambassador in Paris, and Richard Smith, Roman Catholic priest, controversialist and head of the Collège d’Arras, the recently formed academy of Catholic writers in Paris. Others present included, on the Protestant side, the English news-writer John Pory and the poet Ben Jonson; and for the Catholics, Smith’s cousin and fellow member of the Collège d’Arras, William Rayner, and the English poet and Catholic convert Henry Constable. The seven hours passed swiftly until, ‘because it grew late’, the party broke up, agreeing to meet again to continue the debate. As the company left Mr Knevet’s quarters, a Catholic Priest, ‘said to be D. Smiths Chamberfellow’, ‘was heard to say Profectò hæc fuit vera digladiatio, non Sorbonica velificatio: that is, This was a true fight, not a Sorbonicall flourishing’.1 This ‘true fight’, then, was no mere rhetorical or university exercise; yet what part did this particular debate, and others like it, play in the broader context of religious and political controversy in early modern Europe? And, by participating in such debates, what role did embassy chaplains such as Daniel Featley perform in the great schemes and subterfuges of international affairs in these years? During his memorable three-year stint in France (1610– 13), as chaplain to Sir Thomas Edmondes, the ‘polemicall’ Featley kept up a steady stream of anti-Catholic preaching and disputation. After his return from Paris in 1613, Featley leveraged his ‘correspondencies with the greatest clerks in those parts’ and his formidable reputation as an ‘accute and ready’

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Chaplains in early modern England controversialist to become one of the household chaplains of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, and, ex officio, ecclesiastical licenser of books for the press, and literary agent and adviser to authors. Yet how typical was the diverse assortment of Featley’s religious, political and literary activities as embassy chaplain, and his subsequent career trajectory? This essay argues, from the evidence of Featley’s ‘experience beyond the sea’ in particular, and of chaplaincies to early modern embassies in general, that the role of embassy chaplain was understood then, and should be now, to constitute something far more strategically significant than a mere adjunct to diplomacy.

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I The Featley-Smith disputation in Paris 1612 has not greatly occupied ­historians of post-Reformation religion and politics. Literary scholars have paid the episode most attention, chiefly on account of Ben Jonson’s presence at the 2 dispute, midway through his European travels of 1611–13. Jonson’s role as witness to the disputation is intriguing, especially given his own switches of allegiance between the English and Roman Churches, but Jonson was only a relatively minor player in the scene. Featley’s was the main part, and examining his handling of it more closely can add to our understanding of the range and significance of chaplains’ duties in the period. What, for example, did Featley, as chaplain to the English ambassador in France, hope to get out of the disputation? To what extent was he performing in Mr Knevet’s chamber in his official capacity as a high-ranking member of the ambassador’s suite? Or should participation in such doctrinal skirmishes be thought of as unofficial or private activity? Taking this further, can ‘public’ and ‘private’ realms of duty clearly be distinguished at all within the early modern embassy chaplain’s role? Prompted by such questions, a recent account of early modern diplomacy has called for further enquiry into ‘the associated figures and processes which require rehabilitation within the diplomatic landscape’; these include ‘agents, spies, information-gatherers, postal officers, staff within the diplomatic house3 hold’. There can be little doubt that the embassy chaplain, as a key member of staff within the ambassador’s retinue, fits this bill, yet little serious attention has been paid to his role. For the purposes of this essay, therefore, the argument staged in Knevet’s rooms in autumn 1612 is not so much of interest for what it tells us about the finer theological points of Catholic and Protestant debates over the Eucharist. Rather, the circumstances and reports of the Featley–Smith debate are of value for the light they shed on the role of embassy chaplains in such disputes, and the larger strategic significance of such chaplains in the ritualised shadowplay of contemporary diplomacy and foreign affairs. Before returning to Mr Knevet’s chamber, it may be useful to summarise what is currently known about the office of the early modern embassy chaplain.

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley Although appointment to an ambassador’s household was a recognised step in early modern clerical careers, little has been written about the variety of contributions, spiritual and otherwise, made by chaplains to embassies. In the fullest treatment to date, William Gibson describes a fivefold role for embassy chaplains: as preacher and pastor providing divine guidance and counsel to the ambassador and his household; as minister, offering the household the opportunity to take communion within the Church of England while living abroad; as translator and interpreter, putting his linguistic abilities at the service of the embassy in the role of de facto secretary, diplomatic attaché and spokesman; to be a prominent part of the embassy’s conspicuous display of state; and to provide an important connection with England for the ambassador, through correspondence and travel. The career advantages to the chaplain of accompanying an emissary abroad were significant. The opportunity to establish close relationships with the ambassador himself, as well as with foreign statesmen, secretaries, scholars and divines, was a considerable boon 4 in the early modern pursuit of place and patronage. By 1612, chaplains were routinely attached both to ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ embassies, though rather more senior clergymen might accompany the latter than the former.5 Exchange of residents between Catholic and Protestant powers had become the norm, and, in English embassies in Madrid, Venice, Paris, The Hague and other major capital cities, given the widespread acceptance of the axiom cujus regio ejus religio, ‘the right of the ambassador’s chaplain to conduct within the embassy divine service according to his country’s use was not seriously challenged’.6 This is not to say that freedom of worship always extended beyond the members of the ambassador’s household. In France, for example, there was limited toleration, but the number and types of strangers attending services and chapel at foreign embassies in Paris was still a sensitive subject in 1612.7 This sensitivity also extended to religious disputations of the kind in which Featley participated. A picture of the embassy chaplain’s office is beginning to emerge. Com­­­ panions, counsellors, preachers, secretaries and spokesmen: chaplains to Jacobean ambassadors – including churchmen as various as William Bedell (chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton in Venice), Barten Holyday (chaplain to Sir Francis Stewart in Madrid), and Joseph Hall and John Donne (chaplains, respectively, to James Hay’s embassies to France and the Palatinate) – conceived of and fulfilled these overlapping roles in sometimes strikingly different ways. Scholar-clerics such as Henry Denton and Thomas Smith, successive chaplains to the English ambassador in Constantinople, used their periods of service to master an array of languages (including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Slavonic and Turkish), to seek out rare manuscripts, and to forge enduring friendships abroad, such as Denton’s longstanding alliance with Joseph Georgirenes, Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Samos.8 Others took

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Chaplains in early modern England the process of assimilation even further: James Wadsworth, chaplain to the English ambassador in Spain, took the extreme step of leaving the embassy when he became a Catholic in 1610, his wife and children later joining him in Andalusia.9 Some chaplains occupied posts in the embassy other than that of chaplain: William Lewis served in 1626 as agent in the French court, possibly reporting to Sir Dudley Carleton when the latter was envoy to Paris; while clergymen as different as Richard Hakluyt and Robert South served as embassy secretaries.10 The ambassador’s secretary and his chaplain were likely to be two of the most learned men in the embassy, and many of them were accomplished poets, playwrights or prose writers. Featley’s own preferment to Paris followed soon after the appearance in print of his abridgement of Laurence Humphrey’s life of Bishop John Jewel. John Sandford, chaplain to Sir John Digby, ambassador to Spain, had a reputation in Oxford as a writer of Latin verse; John Davies of Hereford lauded him in The Scourge of Folly: ‘for Arte and Nature, th’art as good 11 / As whome soe’re, if made of Flesh and Bloud’. Thomas Wright, chaplain to Sir Henry Unton, ambassador to France, saw into print a ‘copious collection’ of Latin verse, published in Unton’s memory.12 Barten Holyday was known as a gifted orator and poet: his verse translation of Persius’s Satires was published in 1616; his play, Technogamia, or, The Marriages of the Arts, was acted at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1617 and published the year after. Christopher Newstead, chaplain between 1621 and 1628 to Sir Thomas Roe in Constantinople, published An Apology for Women, or, Womens Defense (1620) in answer to Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women. John Donne preached sermons in Heidelberg and The Hague in 1619 while chaplain to James Hay’s extraordinary embassy to Germany and the Low Countries, and lent a hand in writing diplomatic correspondence.13 And the poet Robert Herrick was chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham’s ill-fated 1627 expedition to the Île de Ré.14 Various as their roles were once in post, however, embassy chaplains in the period were united in the fact that all owed their appointments both to their reputation for learning and to their high-placed connections. In this respect, Daniel Featley’s appointment as embassy chaplain was no different: ‘His admired Disputations, his excellent Sermons, his grave, yet affable Demeanor, and his other rare Accomplishments made him so renowned, that Sir Thomas Edmonds being dispatched by King James to lye Leiger-Embassadour in France, he made choice of this Gentleman to travel with him as his chaplain.’15 Yet Featley’s renown for disputation and preaching would have been insufficient for his appointment had he not been recommended to Edmondes by a patron, John King, vice-chancellor of Oxford (1607–11).16 King’s recommendation gave Edmondes the assurance he needed: the embassy to France was a politically and religiously sensitive one, and it was important that

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley the ambassador choose his chaplain carefully. Following the murder of Henri IV in 1610, ‘whom Ravaliach ran into the side with a stiletto’, Edmondes arrived in Paris ‘to a court ... fearing a renewal of France’s internal strife’.17 Edmondes shared these anxieties throughout his tenure as ambassador at the French court, and his appointment of the staunchly Calvinist conformist Featley as chaplain was surely intended to bolster the Protestant position in Paris. All of Featley’s biographers testify to his effectiveness in this regard. According to John Featley, in the three years that his uncle Daniel spent in Paris, ‘he became the Honor both of our Religion and Nation, insomuch as his many Conflicts with, and Conquests of the learned Sorbonists, in defence of the Protestants, and opposition to the Papists, caused even those his Adversaries to give him this Encomium, that he was Featlaus acutissimus acerrimusque’ (Featley, the sharpest 18 and most piercing). But was such acuteness and sharpness in defence of the Protestant cause quite what Edmondes had bargained for when appointing Featley as embassy chaplain? As Ambassador, Edmondes had to keep in balance two frequently incompatible objectives: the vigorous upholding of ‘the trew Religion’ against Catholic and Jesuit incursion, and the maintainance of harmonious diplomatic relations. To what extent, then, did Edmondes see Featley’s outspoken anti-Catholicism as an asset, and to what extent a potential liability? In turning to the surviving accounts of the Featley–Smith disputation for answers, one crucial caveat needs to be borne in mind. All extant accounts of the 1612 disputation were published almost two decades after the event, in the 1630s, traded as polemical blows in the continuing religious controversy between the Roman and Reformed Churches. John Pory’s modern biographer assumes that Pory and Ben Jonson, in an attempt to discomfit Richard Smith, were in some way behind the timing of the 1630 publication of the dispute in Featley’s The Grand Sacrilege of the Church of Rome (1630).19 It seems more likely, however, that Featley himself arranged the 1630 publication as a way of continuing his long-standing anti-Catholic campaign. Witness statements by Pory and Jonson, at the foot of the twenty-two page account, indicate that it was worked up from written reports supplied by Smith and Featley: ‘I must willingly subscribe to the truth of that, which D. Smith did so voluntarily present to our eyes and eares; And for the rest, which is M. Featlies, none of the aduerse party 20 can take any iust exception against it. I. P. [John Pory].’ Jonson ratifies Pory’s statement: ‘I professe, that all things in this Narration deliuered and quoted out of D. Smiths Autographie, are true out of my examination. And of the rest I remember the most, or all: neither can I suspect any part. B. I. [Ben Jonson].’21 It seems likely, then, that Pory wrote up the report in September 1612 or shortly after, had it checked by Jonson, and then passed copies to Featley and Smith. For the next eighteen years this manuscript report gathered dust; Anthony à Wood suggests that Smith ‘stifled’ it.22 In 1630, however, when Featley began preparing The Grand Sacrilege for publication, in association with the printer

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Chaplains in early modern England Felix Kingston and the bookseller Robert Milbourne, he must have seen his opportunity to use the Pory-Jonson account to bolster his own standing and to embarrass Smith, who since 1625 had acted as Catholic vicar apostolic for England (with the title of Bishop of Chalcedon). In this role Smith had set up an extensive system of Church government, giving rise to popular fears of a papist plot.23 The publication in 1630 of the Featley–Smith disputation, by revealing Smith’s hostility to Protestantism, could only add to such fears. It is impossible, of course, to measure the precise damage done by The Grand Sacrilege to Smith and his support in England in 1630, especially given that Smith faced opposition not only from the Church of England but also from the Jesuits. In 1631, however, Smith left England for Paris, never to return, and it seems likely that publication of The Grand Sacrilege just a year previously 24 played a part in Smith’s decision to leave. In discussing the Featley–Smith disputation, therefore, it will be helpful to consider not only how Featley’s participation adds to our understanding of the activities of embassy chaplains in the period, but also how the religious and political reverberations of his chaplaincy in Paris long outlived his three-year period of service.

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II According to the five surviving accounts, all published in the 1630s, the Featley–Smith debate followed the course of a formal Oxford disputation. Featley acted as opponent, and Smith as respondent, with an understanding that the roles would be reversed at their second meeting. Apart from Featley, Smith and Knevet, those present included Knevet’s half-brother John Foord, Pory, Jonson, Rayner, Constable (lay associate of the English Catholic secular clergy in Paris) and Thomas Rant (a former student of Pory’s at Caius College, Cambridge). Unnamed others also attended, both English and French; the number may even have included Sir Walter Ralegh’s unruly son, Wat, Ben Jonson’s pupil. Featley had invited the celebrated Reformed minister and religious controversialist Pierre du Moulin to be present, but there is no 25 record of du Moulin’s attendance on the day. The first point on which all five accounts agree is that three ‘Lawes of Disputation’ were established at the outset: ‘1. That they should dispute calmely and peaceably. 2. That all impertinent discourses should be auoided. 3. That M. Featly at this time should onely oppose, and D. Smith onely answer.’26 The strong impression conveyed by the Pory-Jonson account published in The Grand Sacrilege is that Featley carried the day. Not surprisingly, the first published Catholic response, The Conference Mentioned by Doctour Featly in the end of his Sacrilege (1632), tilted the balance firmly back towards Smith, and queried many of the circumstances of the debate as stated in The Grand Sacrilege. Two principal claims are of particular interest here. The first is the Catholic charge that Featley ducked the return

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley disputation. According to The Conference, one of Featley’s own company reported that he did ‘exceedingly feare to vndertake the part of defendant, and sought a fit occasion to saue his honour’. The second Catholic allegation is that Featley publicised the disputation, or ‘importunely called it out’, without prior agreement to do so from Smith.27 The author of The Conference, known on the title page only by the initials ‘S. E.’, has subsequently been identified as Edmund Lechmere (alias Stratford), a Roman Catholic priest, and, according to Featley and others, sometime chaplain to Richard Smith.28 Given this, the claims made in The Conference must be regarded as being as parti pris as any made by Featley himself. In similarly partisan fashion, the precise circumstances of the Featley– Smith disputation were debated back and forth in two subsequent publications: the Protestant An Apologie for Daniel Featley (1634), by Myrth Waferer, rector 29 of Upham and later canon at Winchester; and the Catholic Relection of a Conference touching the Reall Presence (1635), a scholarly refutation of Waferer, attributed in STC to John Lechmere, the brother of Edmund.30 With regard to the charge that Featley ducked the return engagement, Waferer warmly refuted the Catholic allegation: ‘I am to let the world know that neither our Doctor is that flincher, nor Master Knevet that Turnecoate as you storie them.’31 In Featley’s defence Waferer then introduced an intriguing new dimension to the argument: ‘Where you accuse him for declining a second conflict in Paris; I answer, that in Paris hee could not meete his Lordship [Richard Smith], because his honour had so contrived the matter, that he left the towne before Doctor Featley had leave from the Ambassadour (whose Chaplaine hee then was) to encounter him.’32 Waferer’s suggestion here is that Featley, ex officio as embassy chaplain, required permission from Edmondes, the English Ambassador, to participate in such disputes. The reaction of the Catholic Relection in 1635 could hardly be more contemptuous: Not leaue, from the Ambassadour, in Fraunce? This excuse is to sillie to acquit your Champion from cowardize. Not leaue? ... Could he get leaue in England, of his Lord of Canterbury, to dispute, so many times: and afterwards to print his Disputations, of Religion; & not get leaue in Fraunce, of an Ambassadour? Fie, Fie, Waferer; the more you stirre, the worse --- it is. Some other would haue feigned a better tale to 33 saue his honour.

For the author of the Relection, the logic is clear. If Featley had ‘leaue’ from the Archbishop of Canterbury to engage in and publish accounts of disputations with Catholic adversaries, then perforce he would also have had permission to do so from a mere ‘Ambassadour’. The picture painted here of the embassy chaplain’s chain of command is revealing: namely, Lambeth first, Westminster second. According to this Catholic view, embassy chaplains such as Featley were to be regarded primarily as active members of George Abbot’s cadre of controversialist clerics (such as those based at Chelsea College), using

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their foreign postings to carry the polemical fight deep into enemy territory. In the eyes of the author of Relection, then, the Ambassador himself was merely a complaisant bystander in the more important business of religious ­controversy.34 In Transubstantiation Exploded (1638), the fifth and final shot in this exchange of hostilities, Featley defends himself from both charges, that he ducked the second meeting and that he pre-publicised the disputation. But before doing so he provides a useful context for the disputation itself, reporting that when he first arrived in Paris he ‘heard of divers English Priests resident there, who not onely set upon our English Gentlemen that travelled into those parts, and fixed some of them in the wrong ... but put the Embassadours Chaplaines 35 also oftentimes to some trouble’. Pierre du Moulin, in a letter to John King, Bishop of London, confirmed this view of the English priests of the Collège d’Arras: ‘their manner is to hancker about Paris, and to lye in wait for English Gentlemen that travail thither, that they may catch them in their nets, and engage them in the Romish quarrell’.36 At least five out of the eight offending priests listed by Featley – Richard Smith, Christopher Bagshaw, Thomas Wright, Anthony Champney and William Rayner – can positively be associated with the Collège d’Arras, and it is likely that the other three – ‘D. Stanhurst ... D. Stevens ... M. Meridith’ – were also engaged by the college in writing works of apologetics. Featley reports that for some time he declined to enter into debate with them, clearly aware of tactical considerations: Yet partly because I had not as then spent so much time in the studie of controversies, as I thought requisite for him who was to encounter with veterani milites, old souldiers of the Popes traine band: partly because I knew whatsoever my performance might be, the major part of the spectators addicted to the Romish partie, 37 would doe me no right in the relation; I carefully avoided all conflicts with them.

Eventually, however, Featley could resist no longer. Invited for dinner by Mr Alexander, a Scottish Roman Catholic experiencing religious doubts, and accompanied by Sir Thomas Edmondes’s secretary, John Woodford,38 Featley was drawn into dispute with Christopher Bagshaw: ‘M. Alexander blew the coale, and D. Bagshau presently tooke fire: and immediately after dinner 39 we fell to it with great vehemency for many houres.’ Featley’s fascinating portrayal of a culture of convivial yet heated religious debate in the expatriate English community in Paris reveals much. Clearly, the disputants knew and even socialised with one another; equally, both sides relished the opportunity to test the mettle of the other. Importantly, the disputations themselves were no mere ‘Sorbonicall flourishings’ of interest only to trained clergy. Rather, they appear to have been regarded as a source of after-dinner recreation, edification and even entertainment, with lay third parties such as John Woodford enjoying the fierce theological sparring over the spiritual conscience and confessional allegiance of a poor soul suffering weakness of faith. Woodford’s presence at

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley this disputation also suggests that Edmondes is likely to have been closely informed of Featley’s disputational activities and performance. Other ties between such disputes and the ambassador’s household are also evident. News of Alexander’s deathbed renunciation of Catholic rites, for example, brought to Featley by ‘a servant of his [Alexander’s] with weeping eyes’ was ‘related at my Lord Embassadours house’.40 This is not to say that the ambassador himself was personally present when the servant told his tale, but such anecdotes do suggest that a busy traffic of religious disputation, gossip and controversy was a characteristic feature of Edmondes’s household. Embassy chaplains such as Featley had to tread carefully in such a minutely observed environment. The potential kudos of winning souls via religious disputation, and the career advancement that often followed, was evenly balanced by the jeopardy of losing. Weighing up such risks was a crucial part of the embassy chaplain’s job. Featley, for example, baulked initially at another disputation in Paris, occasioned by the religious doubts of an ‘English Gentlewoman’, ‘because I had an inckling that this conference was sought for, 41 onely to give some colour to her intended revolt from us’. Featley also accused Richard Smith of capitalising on the spiritual worries of fellow-countrymen to engineer such disputations: ‘About this time you [Smith] came to Paris and understanding what had past betweene me and your pue-fellowes for reasons best knowne to your selfe, you dealt with M. Iohn Fourd by M. Knevet his halfe brother to draw us together’.42 This alleged tactic, if indeed it was one, clearly worked. In the case of the ‘English Gentlewoman’ Featley could hardly give up to Rome without a fight ‘a soule bought with Christs blood’; nor could a direct challenge from the Catholic priest ‘D. Stevens’ honourably be ignored. Once again John Pory was involved in the arrangements for the disputation, which took place at ‘M. Porie his Chamber in the Fauxburg of Saint Germaines’.43 The first round of the contest, however, was a disappointment. ‘The Doctor [Stevens] made an eloquent speech, imbroidered with all variety of learning’, but when it came to the disputation itself, wherein each combatant had to ‘propound his arguments in a syllogisticall forme’, Stevens ‘quite lost himselfe, being derided by some, and pittied by others in regard of his great age’. Consequently, another, ‘farre more solemn’ meeting was arranged, with Stevens replaced by Christopher Bagshaw, and ‘Lord Clifford and divers other persons of great quality being present’.44 Featley’s reference here to the identities of those in attendance is tantalisingly cryptic. ‘Lord Clifford’ almost certainly refers to the scholarly Henry Clifford, 5th Earl of Cumberland, just twenty years old in 1612, and recently married to Lady Frances Cecil, daughter of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury (who had died in May 1612). Clifford was staying in Paris at the time to pursue a course of education at ‘M. de Pluvinel’s academy’, and his English tutor, diplomat and agent William Becher may well have accompanied the young nobleman to the Featley–Bagshaw debate, to pick

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Chaplains in early modern England up points of theological argument as much as to support one side or the other.45 But which ‘other persons of great quality’ might have been present? One source suggests the presence of Edward Somerset, fourth Earl of Worcester, who in 1612, following the death of Salisbury in May of that year, had become one of the six commissioners for the treasury.46 An earlier source confuses Clifford with the English ambassador himself, though it seems conceivable, given the high-status noblemen present, that Edmondes may also have felt bound to attend.47 The upshot of these conferences, according to Featley, was that the ‘Gentlewoman ... gave lesse hope to the Papists than before’. A record of the meeting was swiftly dispatched to Lambeth: ‘the summe of which disputation was taken by M. Arscot and M. Ashley there present’, and afterwards ‘sent 48 over to his Grace of Canterbury’. The ‘M. Arscot’ referred to here is almost certainly Featley’s former pupil, Ezekiel Arscot, who in 1613 offered his former tutor the benefice at North Hill in Cornwall.49 It is evident, therefore, that as embassy chaplain Featley was an integral part of the ambassador’s retinue, but that he also operated within a tight network of ecclesiastical allegiance and patronage, with the keenly vigilant and thoroughly informed Archbishop of Canterbury at its head. In Transubstantiation Exploded, Featley’s defence of his disputational actions clearly demonstrates his tactical nous and value to Lambeth as a skilled controversialist. Featley does not deny that he publicised his conference with Smith, making ‘the matter knowne both to the English and to the French’.50 The three laws of the disputation, Featley argued legalistically, did not prohibit such action, saying nothing explicit about the private or public nature of the debate.51 Featley also refuted S. E.’s charge that he had made the disputation public because of an arrogant presumption of victory. In fact, Featley suggested, exactly the opposite was true. Only too aware of his own ignorance and the possibility of defeat, Featley chose to make the event public so that ‘if the auditory should not be satisfied in my arguments or answers, that they ought to impute it to the weakenesse of the advocate, not of the cause’.52 This barely seems credible. If Featley had feared defeat, it seems likely that he would have avoided the conference; rather, it is hard not to think that by inviting all and sundry a confident Featley hoped to inflict public humiliation on his adversaries. In response to the charge of ducking a second meeting with Smith, Featley simply pointed to his record of subsequent debates, with ‘D. Bagshaw at Paris, and since M. Sher, and M. Musket and D. Egleston, and M. Wood in England’.53 Yet most interesting here is what Featley does not say. Nowhere does he suggest, as his own supporter Myrth Waferer had earlier claimed, that Featley, as embassy chaplain, was bound to ask leave of the Ambassador before disputing with Smith again. Of course, Featley may have wanted to downplay his submission to Edmondes’s authority: how could he stand as a fearless champion of the true religion if meekly curbing his words

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley to accommodate the purely political objectives of the English state? Yet, this is to complicate matters unduly. Given that Featley’s anti-Catholic activities while in Paris were broadly in line with the political and religious aims of both the English state and Edmondes’s embassy, it seems unlikely, pace Waferer, that Featley had need to consult Edmondes at all. Edmondes’s official instructions, received from James I in May 1610, reinforce this sense of the dual religious and political priorities of the embassy following the death of Henri IV. First, the English and French must be made ‘to vnderstand each other vppon the subiect of Cleue’, ‘not just as a matter of ‘Justice’, but also ‘for the advancement of Religion’. In other words, Edmondes was to try to persuade the French court to support the claim of the Protestant Elector of Brandenburg to the duchy of Cleves, in opposition to the Catholic Habsburg claim. Second, protection and concern were to be declared for those 54 ‘that profess the trew Religion in that kingdome’. Through his disputations with Catholic opponents, Featley contributed significantly to this latter aim, complemented by a string of polemical sermons preached in the embassy chapel in Paris. In one such sermon, Featley warned his co-religionists to resist the imprecations of what du Moulin called the ‘pestilent wits’ of Paris: ‘Beware therefore, deare brethren, of the agents of Rome, who goe about to withdraw you from the love of your Country, your allegiance to your Prince, and which is worst of all, from the true and pure worship of God.’55 In other sermons Featley drew parallels between ‘our unnaturall countri-men, Jesuited Papists’ and, variously, Babylonians, Baalites and Edomites.56 According to a marginal note, one of these unabashedly anti-Catholic sermons was preached before ‘The Lord Wotton extraordinary Embassador, and the Lieger Sir Thomas Edmonds’.57 The presence of Edmondes suggests that he approved of Featley’s controversial stance, at least within the confines of the embassy chapel. But the King’s instructions for protecting Huguenots in France focused not just on threats from Catholics, but also on the danger of internecine squabbles among the French Protestant leaders. Chief among these was the bitter dispute which broke out in 1612 between du Moulin and the German-French 58 theologian Daniel Tilenus over the doctrine of justification. Edmondes’s letters to the King and his secretaries of state are full of minute developments in this controversy and other such religious matters, including the proposed establishment of an English convent in Paris, and the formation of the Collège d’Arras.59 Featley’s friendship with du Moulin, and his relationships with other Protestant ministers in France, such as David Hume of Godscroft, or with chaplains to English embassies in other countries, such as John Sandford in Spain, must then have been useful to Edmondes in his effort to quell such damaging quarrels.60 In short, the evidence found in surviving state papers and correspondence, and in Featley’s own correspondence and published works of 1610–13, places the embassy chaplain in the thick of the Europe-wide religious

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Chaplains in early modern England polemics of the time. Whether, ultimately, Featley owed his allegiance to the Archbishop of Canterbury or to the Ambassador is perhaps to ask the wrong question. In 1612, at least, the political and religious objectives of both were unusually aligned. In 1613 Daniel Featley visited Oxford to take his degree in divinity, intending to return to Paris and his embassy chaplaincy, but never in fact doing so.61 Offered a lucrative living in Cornwall, he took it and resigned his post with Edmondes, though against the advice of George Abbot. Yet Featley’s letters from England to John Woodford in Paris reflect Featley’s continuing affection for the embassy secretary, and his closeness to the ambassador himself: ‘Sr t I am as glad I haue such a friend at Pari [sic] as I am sorry t I haue left him there. I would to God some such occasion might draw you hethr as holds me here’; in closing, Featley asks Woodford to send ‘my best wishes ... to my L L’.62 Featley’s friendship with Woodford was such that he even felt able to use the ambassador’s secretary as a mail bureau, through which to send and receive love letters from a ‘Mrs Anne’ in Paris. Featley wrote telling ‘Mrs Anne’ how he kept her ‘in the closet of my hart and cabinet of my thoughts’ and how now, in absence, he might ‘converse wth you freely all ye day long wthout suspition of iealous friends’. Expressing warm feelings for her soul and body, he begged her pardon ‘if I wright not like a diuine’;63 clearly, the sphere of Featley’s embassy chaplaincy was not exclusively religious, political or diplomatic. Taken as whole, Featley’s letters from England in 1613 reflect the breadth and influence of the social and professional network he had built up while in France. His correspondence includes letters addressed to powerful Church leaders, college heads and noblemen: the Patriarch of Alexandria; Marco Antonio De Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato; Thomas Morton, Dean of Winchester; John Prideaux, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford; John Vale, chaplain to the Earl of Leicester; Thomas Gataker; John King, Bishop of London; Pierre du Moulin; and Sir Walter Ralegh.64 Other embassy chaplains were similarly well connected. Richard Crakanthorpe, who like Featley engaged vigorously in anti-Catholic religious polemic throughout his career, went in 1603 as chaplain to Lord Evers on his embassy to Germany. While abroad the two men ‘did advantage themselves exceedingly by conversing with learned men of other persuasions, and by visiting several universities and libraries there’.65 Such glimpses into the lives of ambassadors and their chaplains hint at their cosmopolitanism; through personal acquaintance with their religious and political opposite numbers, controversialists such as Featley and Crakanthorpe were able to maintain at least minimally civil diplomatic relations while prosecuting staunchly anti-Catholic arguments abroad. In 1614, Featley acknowledged his mistake in accepting the Cornwall benefice in such a ‘barren and thirsty soyle’ so far from ‘the wellsprings of knowledge’.66 He appealed for patronage to Thomas Morton, declaring

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley his suitability for more cosmopolitan chaplaincies, both ‘in regard of my experience beyond ye sea and particular correspondencies wth ye greatest clerks in those parts’ and ‘my long travaile in ye controversies of religion’.67 But it was not until 1617 that Featley was, as du Moulin put it, ‘called to an higher place’ when George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him as one of his household chaplains.68 As Abbot’s chaplain, Featley was kept busy as an ecclesiastical licenser of books for the press, while also continuing to enter into disputations with English Catholics whenever the occasion arose: with George Musket in 1621, with Dr Eglestone in 1623, and most famously, in partnership with Francis White in June 1623, with the Jesuit priests John Percy (alias Fisher) and John Sweet. Featley justified such disputations in high-minded terms: ‘As, by smiting the Flint with the Steele, wee strike out fire: so, by the conflict and 69 collision of contrary Arguments, the cleare light of Truth breaketh out.’ Yet Featley can hardly have been insensible of the publicity value of such events. Whether in Mr Knevet’s chamber in Paris, or facing Catholic opponents in London, Featley’s expert deployment of his ‘controversy-learning’ was never only a means to discover ‘the cleare light of Truth’;70 it was also a central duty of his chaplaincies, at home and abroad, to accommodate his controversialist activities to the shifting strategic priorities of both Church and State.

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III How typical of embassy chaplaincies more generally was Featley’s experience in Paris? In many respects, the career of John Sandford, who had served as ‘Sir Thomas Edmondes’s chaplain at Brussels’ before being engaged as chaplain to Sir John Digby, ambassador to Spain (1610–13), runs closest to Featley’s.71 Even after leaving Edmondes’s household, Sandford remained sufficiently close to his patron to write to him throughout the duration of his stay in Madrid, reporting on the embassy’s progress and on controversial religious matters in Spain.72 Like Featley, Sandford was one of a number of English ministers and statesmen (including Edmondes and Digby) in correspondence with Pierre 73 du Moulin concerning the international Protestant cause. Common intellectual and literary interests bound embassy chaplains and foreign scholars, writers and divines together, and the standard three- or four-year duration of a chaplain’s appointment to a resident ambassador allowed sufficient time for these bonds to strengthen, though such friendships were never innocent of policy. Through their relationships with figures such as du Moulin, Featley and Edmondes, like William Bedell and Henry Wotton in Venice – who were assiduous in cultivating the friendship of influential clergymen such as Marco Antonio De Dominis and Paolo Sarpi74– hoped, of course, to further their political, religious and diplomatic ends. In pursuing such objectives, chaplains such as Sandford, Featley and Bedell provided valuable scholarly service to

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Chaplains in early modern England their patrons, conveying strategic information and gossip and offering intellectual analysis of current events, books and papers.75 In return, the ambassadors took an interest in their chaplains’ careers. Like Featley, though rather more rapidly, Sandford graduated from his stint as embassy chaplain to become an archiepiscopal chaplain at Lambeth, as did John Parkhurst, after three years of service (1599–1602) as chaplain to Sir Henry Neville, ambassador to Paris.76 This promotion to ‘a higher place’ was not the lot of every embassy chaplain, but it was common enough that we might now see it as a relatively clearly defined career path for talented and energetic ministers such as Featley. In his 1645 funeral sermon for Featley, William Loe recalled an incident on a journey back from Germany. A civil lawyer, ‘travelling to Grominga’ (Groningen, in East Friesland), fell into conversation with Loe and showed him a ‘litle Breviate taken there [in Paris] of a Conference & Dispution between the Jesuites of the Cleremont [the Jesuit College in Paris], and one Doctor Featley of the Church of England’. The civilian recounted to Loe that the ‘Universities thereabouts held him [Featley] in such reputation and honour’ that in the ‘Tables’ that hung from their walls Featley’s name was placed next to those of ‘the most famous Schoole-men’. Reaching Groningen, the civil lawyer ‘went into their Schooles, and brought me a copy of the School-mens names’. The title given to Featley was ‘Doctor Daniel Featleius Acutissim. acerrimusque’, and Loe found him among illustrious company: ‘Doctor Alexander Halensis Irrefragabilis’ (Irrefutable), ‘Doctor Bonaventura Seraphicus’ (Seraphic/ Fervent), ‘Doctor Johannes Duns Scotus Subtilis’ (Subtle), ‘Doctor Tho. Aquinas 77 Angelicus’ (Angelic). Here, then, is direct evidence of the contribution made by Featley’s activities as embassy chaplain to his wider renown. But it was not only in the Reformed strongholds of the Low Countries that Featley was so well regarded. In 1670, the moderate, latitudinarian Church of England clergyman Clement Barksdale included Featley in his catalogue of ten ‘excellent men’, placing him in the company of Anglican luminaries such as John Reynolds, Richard Hooker, William Whitaker, Andrew Willet, Brian Duppa and Jeremy 78 Taylor. By any measure, then, Featley’s clerical career must be counted a success, his appointment as embassy chaplain in 1610 serving both as reward and showcase for his talents. To a ‘policy wonk’ ambassador such as Sir Thomas Edmondes – in contrast to ‘polymaths’ (such as Sir Henry Wotton and Sir Edward Herbert) and ‘dutiful office-wallahs’ (such as Sir Walter Aston and Sir Robert Anstruther)79 – Featley’s sharp disputational skills, combined with his astute interpretation of political and diplomatic priorities, made him of considerable strategic value. The epithets adorning an engraving of Featley’s tomb emphasise his learning and his combative qualities: Impugnator Papisimi (Opponent of the Pope); Propugnator Reformationis (Defender of the Reformation) ... Disputator Strenuus (Vigorous debater) (Figure 1).80

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley

Figure 1  Daniel Featley, after unknown artist, line engraving; reproduced in Daniel Featley, The Dippers Dipt (1645). © National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG D26794).

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Chaplains in early modern England Clearly, embassy chaplains performed more than simply a pastoral role when abroad, their significant strategic importance reminding us of the often fuzzy boundaries in the period between private and public motives and religious and political spheres of interest. This finding chimes with trends in recent studies of early modern international relations, which emphasise the important ways in which the practices of diplomacy were shaped not only by prescribed rules and protocols but also ‘by the actions, agendas, and personal styles of its contributing agents’.81 By the death of his friend, William Loe explains in his funeral sermon for Featley, ‘we have lost a chiefe Chariot of our Churches, and an Horse-man of the State, not of the Pike, but of the Pen’.82 Loe’s military metaphors here, pointedly linking Featley’s service to Church and to State, take us back to Mr Knevet’s chamber in Paris, one long afternoon in September 1612; and to the verdict of the Catholic priest, heard to say of Featley’s disputation with Smith that it had been ‘a true fight’. More than two decades later the same ‘true fight’ was still being fought; a consequence, and a reminder, of the significant political and religious agency of Daniel Featley, embassy chaplain. Notes

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I am grateful to Kenneth Fincham, Tom Lockwood and Gillian Wright for their helpful suggestions and comments on drafts of this essay. 1 D. Featley, The Grand Sacrilege of the Church of Rome ... together with two conferences; the former at Paris with D. Smith, now stiled by the Romanists B of Calcedon; the later at London with M Euerard, priest (1630), pp. 288, 305. ‘Digladation’: ‘fighting or fencing with swords; hand-to-hand fight’ (OED, n. 1); ‘velificatio’: literally, ‘sailing’ (C. T. Lewis and C. Short (eds), Latin Dictionary, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955)), but possibly alluding here, as a metaphor for rhetorical ‘flourishing’, to a stylistic technique in ancient Roman art in which a billowing garment is used to frame the body (P. Rehak, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius, ed. J. G. Younger (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p. 111). 2 I. Donaldson, Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 299; R. Coronato, ‘Was it just an anecdote? Ben Jonson and the eucharist, Paris 1612’, Ben Jonson Journal, 4 (1997), 35–46; W. D. Kay, Ben Jonson: A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 136–8; D. Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 188–91; W. D. Briggs, ‘On certain incidents in Ben Jonson’s life’, Modern Philology 11 (1913), 279–88. 3 R. Adams and R. Cox, ‘Introduction’, in R. Adams and R. Cox (eds), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 1–12 (p. 8). 4 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 56–9. 5 T. Cogswell, ‘State Papers Foreign, 1603–1640’, State Papers Online, 1509–1714 (Cengage Learning EMEA, 2011). ‘Ordinary’ or resident ambassadors included figures such as Sir Thomas Edmondes in Paris; ‘extraordinary’ ambassadors included veteran diplomats such as Sir John Digby, or prominent courtiers such as the earls of Carlisle or Arundel,

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley who conducted specific high-level negotiations, ‘often regarding a marriage alliance, a military league or a peace treaty’. 6 G. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), p. 281. 7 E. R. Adair, The Exterritoriality of Ambassadors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929), p. 191. 8 A. Hamilton, ‘Denton, Henry (c.1640–1681)’, ODNB; T. Harmsen, ‘Smith, Thomas (1638–1710)’, ODNB. 9 G. Martin Murphy, ‘Wadsworth, James (c.1572–1623)’, ODNB. 10 For Lewis’s career, see Tom Lockwood’s chapter in this volume. Hakluyt served as secretary (1583–89) to Sir Edward Stafford, resident ambassador in France; South performed the same role (1676–77) for Laurence Hyde, ambassador extraordinary to Poland. (See G. M. Bell (ed.), A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, 1509–1688 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990), pp. 95, 108, 216.) 11 C. Fell-Smith, ‘Sandford, John (c.1565–1629)’, rev. E. Haresnape, ODNB; J. Davies, The Scourge of Folly (1611), p. 215. 12 [T. Wright], Funebria nobilissimi ac praestantissimi equitis, D. Henrici Vntoni, ad Gallos bis legati Regij (Oxford, 1596). 13 H. Adlington, ‘Donne and diplomacy’, in J. Shami (ed.), Renaissance Tropologies: The Cultural Imagination of Early Modern England (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2008), pp. 187–218.

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14 T. Cain, ‘Herrick, Robert (bap. 1591, d. 1674)’, ODNB. See also G. Parry, ‘His noble numbers’, in R. Connolly and T. Cain (eds), ‘Lords of Wine and Oile’: Community and Conviviality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 276–99 (pp. 279–80). It should be acknowledged, however, that Buckingham’s expedition to relieve the Huguenots was not strictly a diplomatic one. 15 J. Featley, Featlæi Παλιγ γενεσια: or Doctor D. Featley revived, 2 pts (1660), pt 1, p. 9. Much of Featley’s account is repeated by Anthony Wood in Athenae Oxonienses... to Which Are Added The Fasti, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols (London: Rivington and Others, 1813–20, 3.156–64 (Fasti). 16 D. Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded: or an encounter with Richard [Smith] the Titularie Bishop of Chalcedon, concerning Christ his presence at his holy Table ... Whereunto is annexed a ... Disputation [touching the same point, etc.] held at Paris with C. Bagshaw (1638), pp. 16–17. See also A. Hunt, ‘Featley [Fairclough], Daniel (1582–1645)’, ODNB. King resigned as vice-chancellor in 1611; in the same year he was consecrated as Bishop of London. I am grateful to Kenneth Fincham for providing me with these dates. Cf. P. E. McCullough, ‘King, John (d. 1621)’, ODNB. 17 Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded, p. 16; M. Greengrass, ‘Edmondes, Sir Thomas (d. 1639)’, ODNB. 18 J. Featley, Doctor D. Featley Revived, p. 10. Featley’s friend William Loe or Leo, who preached Featley’s funeral sermon in 1645, gives a similar account of the high esteem in which his Jesuit adversaries held him: W. Loe [Leo?], A Sermon preached at Lambeth, April 21, 1645, at the funerall of Daniel Featley (1645), p. 22. 19 W. S. Powell, John Pory 1572–1636: The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts, with microfiche supplement, Letters and Other Minor Writings (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pp. 39–41.

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Chaplains in early modern England 20 Featley, The Grand Sacrilege, p. 306. 21 Ibid., p. 306. 22 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 3.161. 23 J. Bergin, ‘Smith, Richard (1567–1655)’, ODNB. 24 Powell, John Pory, p. 39. 25 Ibid., p. 38: ‘Pory was probably serving as an agent or correspondent for Lord [George] Carew, either in a private business venture or to aid him in his position of mastergeneral of the ordnance by observing developments in France’. Carew had been resident ambassador to France, 1605–9. 26 Featley, The Grand Sacrilege, p. 287. 27 The Conference mentioned by Doctour Featly in the end of his Sacrilege: ... by S. E. (Douai, 1632), p. 188. 28 T. Cooper, ‘Lechmere, Edmund (c.1586–1640)’, rev. G. Bradley, ODNB; Transubstantiation Exploded, p. 25; M. Waferer, An Apologie for Daniel Featley, Dr. in Divinitie, against the calumnies of one S.E. in respect of his conference had with Doctor Smith, since intituled by the Pope, Bishop, of Chalcedon, &c. concerning the Reall Presence (1634), p. 96. 29 Waferer was born in 1610; his account must therefore be heavily derivative. I am grateful to Kenneth Fincham for this point. 30 No external evidence, however, has been found to ascribe this work to John Lechmere; nor is there any evidence that he was a student at Oxford, which the title-page of The Relection claims for ‘L. I.’. 31 Waferer, An Apologie, p. 99. 32 Ibid., p. 100.

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33 The Relection of a Conference touching the Reall Presence. Or a Bachelours Censure of a Masters Apologie for Doctour Featlie. By L. I. B. of Art, of Oxford (Douai, 1635), p. 591. 34 Whether Featley really was acting under orders from Lambeth while in Paris, however, is unclear from the available evidence. 35 Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded, p. 17. 36 D. Featley, Sacra nemesis, the Levites scourge (1644), p. 84. 37 Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded, p. 21. 38 Bell (ed.), A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, p. 104. 39 Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded, pp. 21–2. 40 Ibid., p. 22. 41 Ibid., p. 25. 42 Ibid., p. 25. ‘Pue-fellowes’: co-religionists (OED, ‘pew-fellow’, n.). 43 Ibid., p. 23. 44 Ibid., p. 24. 45 R. T. Spence, ‘Clifford, Henry, fifth earl of Cumberland (1592–1643)’, ODNB; S. A. Baron, ‘Becher, Sir William (bap. 1580, d. 1651)’, ODNB. Becher had previously been employed by Sir George Carew as embassy agent in Paris.

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Chaplains to embassies: Daniel Featley 46 A. Hunt, ‘Featley [Fairclough], Daniel (1582–1645)’, ODNB; P. Croft, ‘Somerset, Edward, fourth earl of Worcester (c.1550–1628)’, ODNB. 47 J. Bliss and W. Scott (ed.), The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, 7 vols (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1847–60), 2. vi. 48 Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded, p. 24. 49 Hunt, ‘Daniel Featley’, ODNB. 50 Featley, Transubstantiation Exploded, pp. 32–3. 51 Ibid., pp. 35–6. 52 Ibid., pp. 32–3. 53 Ibid., pp. 223. 54 NA, SP 78/56/31 (instructions for Sir Thomas Edmondes). See also T. Birch (ed.), An Historical View of the Negotiations between the Courts of England, France and Brussels from the year 1572 to 1617 (1749), p. 344. 55 D. Featley, Clavis mystica: A Key Opening Divers Difficult and Mysterious Texts of Holy Scripture; Handled in Seventy Sermons, Preached at Solemn and Most Celebrious Assemblies, Upon Speciall Occasions, in England and France (1636), p. 796, ‘Ambodexters Ambosinisters: or One God, one true Religion’. For du Moulin, see Featley, Sacra nemesis, p. 84. 56 Featley, Clavis mystica, p. 786 (‘Old and New Idolatry Paralleled’), p. 810 (‘Bloudy Edome’). 57 Featley, Clavis mystica, p. 786 (‘Old and New Idolatry Paralleled’). Edward, Lord Wotton (elder brother of Sir Henry), arrived in Paris as ambassador extraordinary in September 1610, and returned to England with Isaac Casaubon; Wotton later became a secret Catholic, and had wanted to do so since 1610. See Birch, An Historical View of the Negotiations, p. 325, and A. J. Loomie, ‘Wotton, Edward, first Baron Wotton (1548–1628)’, ODNB. 58 BL, Stowe MS 173, fols 1–4, 5, 64. Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

59 NA, SP 78/60/41 (Edmondes to James I); BL, Stowe MS 173, fol. 127. 60 BL, Stowe MS 173, fol. 190, 6 November 1612. Hume dedicated to James I his book Le contr’assassin; ou response à l’apologie des Jesuites (1612). BL, Stowe MS 173, fol. 188, November 1612: Sandford wrote from Madrid to alert Edmondes that Francisco Suárez’s Defensio fidei Catholicae (Coimbra, 1613) was in press. Suárez’s book was one of a number of Jesuit responses to James I’s Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus. Or An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (1607). 61 BL, Stowe MS 174, fol. 152v. 62 Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D47, fol. 48r. This manuscript contains copies taken in Featley’s own hand of his theological pieces and letters to friends. 63 Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D47, fol. 48v. In 1624, Featley married the twice-widowed Joyce Halloway, one of his parishioners, in what seems to have been a marriage for financial advantage, rather than love. (Hunt, ‘Daniel Featley’, ODNB.) 64 Copies of letters to these addressees, in Featley’s hand, are found in Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D47. 65 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 2.361. 66 Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D47, fol. 41r.

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Chaplains in early modern England 67 Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D47, fol. 50r. See also, Hunt, ‘Daniel Featley’, ODNB. 68 Du Moulin, in a commendatory letter addressed to John King, Bishop of London, included in Featley, Sacra nemesis, p. 84. 69 D. Featley, The Romish Fisher Caught and Held in his Owne Net (1624), sigs I*v-I2*r. 70 Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D47, fol. 41r. 71 Birch, An Historical View of the Negotiations, pp. 337–8. 72 See, for example, BL, Stowe MSS 171, fol. 370r; 172, fols 154v, fol. 226; 173, fol. 188; 174, fol. 19. Sandford also sent to Edmondes a presentation copy of his Propylaion, or, Entrance to the Spanish Tongue (1611), written for the benefit of the household of Digby’s embassy to Spain. 73 In 1610 Sandford published an English translation (A Defence of the Catholicke Faith) of du Moulin’s Défense de la foy Catholique. Sandford’s translation was corrected and reviewed by du Moulin himself. 74 K. S. Bottigheimer and V. Larminie, ‘Bedell, William (bap. 1572, d. 1642)’, ODNB. 75 L. Jardine and W. Sherman, ‘Pragmatic readers: knowledge transactions and scholarly services in late Elizabethan England’, in A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (eds), Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 102–24 (pp. 102–3). 76 V. Larminie, ‘Parkhurst, John (1563–1639)’, ODNB. Parkhurst’s Lambeth chaplaincy may have owed as much to his local and collegiate ties with Abbot (Guildford and Balliol, Oxford) as to his service abroad. 77 Loe [Leo?], A Sermon preached at Lambeth, p. 30. 78 C. Barksdale, A Remembrancer of Excellent Men (1670), title page, pp. 72–87. 79 T. Cogswell, ‘State Papers Foreign, 1603–1640’, State Papers Online, 1509–1714.

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80 Unknown artist, line engraving, 1645 (National Portrait Gallery, D26794). 81 M. Netzloff, ‘The ambassador’s household: Sir Henry Wotton, domesticity, and diplomatic writing’, in R. Adams and R. Cox (eds), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 155–71 (p. 156). 82 Loe [Leo?], A Sermon preached at Lambeth, p. 22.

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Chapter 6

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency: the career of William Lewis Tom Lockwood

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A

uden told us that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, writing ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’; but in the early modern period, Auden’s confident denial and counterbalancing assertion – ‘poetry makes nothing happen: it survives | In the valley of its making’ – might have seemed at the very least problematic.1 Aiming to be more than just a smack at Auden, this chapter takes seriously the ways in which poetry made a good deal happen in the career of one chaplain, William Lewis, exploring the different ways in which he used manuscript verse to construct a place for himself within the major institutions of early modern culture, and across the range of their temporal and spiritual activities. Making things happen might be, perhaps, the broadest useful definition of agency; and attention to the path of Lewis’s career reveals the means of access that poetry provided him to these institutions, and its importance as a means of advancement once within them. To follow Lewis’s writing and career along these lines is to place him, and to explore his agency as a chaplain, in different cultures: not only in the established Church but within the Inns of Court, the universities, Parliament, the royal court and its diplomatic embassies, and, finally, at the centre of this institutional mapping, the household, monarchical and aristocratic. By moving back and forth between the poetic texts of Lewis’s career and the events and institutions with which they interact, I want throughout this chapter to ask questions about how one might make the other happen. What kind of agency, then, did poetry provide Lewis with? What kind of things did it make happen in his career? Or, to put the questions in another way: how many poems did it take to make a chaplain’s career? I The short answer to that question is that William Lewis wrote – or, as we shall see, contemporaries understood him to have written – five tightly occasional

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Chaplains in early modern England poems over the years between 1616 and 1629, the key early period of his long, and by turns rather unexpected, career. The Union First Line Index of English Verse hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library allows today for a rapid view of the surviving texts in the holdings of a representative, if necessarily incomplete, cohort of major research libraries.2 The first poem regularly attributed to Lewis, surviving in at least eight manuscripts, is an elegy, variously titled, for Dr Roger Fenton of Gray’s Inn, whose death in January 1616 the poem commemorates, and by which it can be dated. Next follows a poem in defence of Lewis’s then patron, Francis Bacon, to whose impeachment and removal from office in 1621 the poem responds; surviving in at least 19 manuscripts, this poem, though not an elegy, was often transcribed among elegiac or memorial sections of miscellanies. The third poem attributed to Lewis is, in fact, a two-part composition: a linked elegy and epitaph written in 1623 in commemoration of the short life of Thomas Washington, one of three pages to travel with Prince Charles to Madrid during negotiations for the Spanish Match. At least sixteen manuscript texts of Lewis’s elegy for Washington survive, and nineteen texts of the epitaph; the epitaph was later printed, as ‘On M. Washington, page to the 3 Prince’, in Witts Recreations (1640). The final two poems securely attributed to Lewis are linked by their connections to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Lewis’s poem in celebration of Buckingham’s art collections, housed in the long gallery of York House, survives in at least seven manuscript texts, and in a shortened form in a printed verse miscellany of 1656, Parnassus Biceps, edited by Abraham Wright.4 Apparently circulating in manuscript much less widely than Lewis’s other elegiac writing, his epitaph for Buckingham survives in just four manuscripts, though, having been printed, like the Washington elegy, in Witts Recreations, it circulated in two further print miscellanies derived from Witts Recreations, and, as the product of ‘a learned Pen’, in Richard Head’s quasi-prophetic collection, The Life and Death of Mother Shipton (1677).5 The texts of Lewis’s verse gathered in these miscellanies vary from one another in many ways, large and small; nor are the manuscripts preserving texts of these poems unanimous in attributing them to Lewis’s authorship. This is, of course, a common feature of early modern authorship as it is constructed in manuscript, and the mis- or re-attributions in some manuscripts may tell us something of the networks in which Lewis’s verse moved, and the kinds of authors with whom he may have been confused or conflated by contemporaries. The elegy and epitaph for Washington is preserved in three manuscripts with an alternative attribution to Matthew Wren, one of three chaplains to Prince Charles in Madrid, and so, since the poem is not Wren’s, perhaps part of earliest coterie circulation of Lewis’s poems (Rosenbach Museum and Library MSS 1083/17, 239/23 and 239/27). In a similar way, early transcribers of Lewis’s poem in celebration of Buckingham’s cultural acquisitions also favoured it with alternative attributions, one to John Earle

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency (in Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 47), one to ‘T. B.’ (British Library, Harleian MS 3511), and two others to Thomas Browne (Cambridge University Library, Additional MS 4138, and Folger MS V.a.276.2). Other compilers paid Lewis the compliment of attributing to him verse that certainly is not his: the compiler of at least one miscellany, Bodleian MS Malone 21, attributed Randolph’s ‘On a deformed Gentlewoman with a Sweet Voice’ to Lewis (IELM, RnT 341); and the compiler of another manuscript, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e. 97, attributed to him a text of the poem that is possibly Carew’s, ‘A Lover’s Passion’ (IELM, CwT 1257). Lewis’s contemporaries, then, associated him with a substantial body of manuscript evidence, but in succeeding periods the poems explored in this chapter have not previously been thought obvious, or indeed necessary, for an account of Lewis’s career. Even without the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography it would be perfectly possible to write a biography of Lewis, and so to investigate his agency in culture, while paying no attention to poetry: the framework of his appointments and advancement within the Church are recorded in the Clergy of the Church of England Database; and it is within this mainly ecclesiastical context that the later part of Lewis’s career is treated in 6 Andrew Thomson’s valuable account of Winchester Cathedral and its clergy. In fact, it is in the ODNB that such an unpoetic biography of Lewis exists, the fine, factual and foundational life of Lewis by Stephen Wright that, for all its undoubted strengths, makes no mention of the verse written by, or attributed to, its subject.7 The surviving manuscript texts demonstrate, however, that the verse occupies almost all of the forms that make up what Harold Love called ‘“publication” in the scribal medium’.8 Although autograph correspondence does survive, it seems unlikely that any autograph texts of Lewis’s verse do; but there certainly are interesting and recoverable coterie texts of the poems, in the hands and miscellanies of those who shared locations and a professional formation with him, just as there are texts in the separates and miscellanies of those further away from the centre of those circulating communities, together representing ‘user publication’, to use Love’s term, in all its varying kinds. There are texts of Lewis’s verse, too, that entered circulation through commercial networks of manuscript circulation, evidence that although the ‘entrepreneurial publication’ of these poems will not quite have made anyone rich, his writing had a wide cultural currency through the middle part of the century. It is to the details of those poems that I now turn. II The clergyman and author Roger Fenton died, at the time and afterwards much mourned, in January 1616.9 He had been from 1606 preacher at Gray’s Inn, admitted to the position in March, having preached there informally from

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Chaplains in early modern England

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1598, establishing a long relationship of mutual benefit that this appointment formalised. Fenton had been, from about 1600, one of Sir Thomas Egerton’s chaplains;10 and Fenton fulfilled these two roles alongside a progression of appointments at churches in London and Essex that saw him finally installed in the prebend of St Pancras, St Paul’s. How William Lewis came, in his mid-twenties, to write a fifty-six–line elegy ‘On Dr: Fenton of Grayes Inne’ is not immediately clear.11 Lewis took his BA degree, having studied at Hart Hall, Oxford, on 20 April 1608; he was translated to a fellowship at Oriel College soon after, on 15 September 1609, and proceeded there to his MA in June 1612; he was busily at work through the middle part of the decade fundraising for the Bodleian Library, and subsequently for Oriel College, as he proudly 12 remembered in his will. Lewis’s memorial elegy for Roger Fenton is notable as a starting point not only for making a beginning of someone else’s end, but immediately for asking questions about how the cultures and the personnel of the Inns of Court and the universities interact and overlap. Though it tries to be ample both to Fenton’s learning and his bodily elegance – we learn of Fenton that ‘Hee had more Learning in his face & Lookes / Then manie in their minds or in their bookes’ – Lewis’s poem is strategically aware of its own potential agency. Later in the poem, praise of Fenton finds two ways in which to measure (and practically to dispraise) the vehicle of those comparisons. Sure all Immortall partes hee seem’d to haue, And there was nothing left to fill a Graue. Nothing his Ease durst trouble; & shall I Goe burie him aliue in Poetry? With a false Elogie? W[he]n I haue s[ai]d hee died, Who Euer heard him preach will say I lyed.

Lewis’s question is perhaps awkwardly asked in an elegy in which poetic technique is not always secure; but it is not, all the same, an unserious question to have asked: for the parallel that the lines propose between the skills of the poet and those of the preacher surely must have been central to someone with Lewis’s training and cultural engagements. Memories of Fenton as a preacher here shape the space within which the memorial poem can be received: But when I came where hee did diuinely steale Away admiring heart[e]s Enflamd with Zeale And like a fruitfull meteor showre like snow, Vpon their head[e]s, Beloued It is Soe. [...] When hee did preach the lengthned houre would stay His hasty minuits & beguile the day. And yet the gredy hearers chid the hast Of a false {houre} that ran away soe fast.

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency No printed texts of Fenton’s Gray’s Inn sermons survive, though Lewis’s poem here perhaps records four words from one (‘Beloued It is Soe’), and in doing so contributes, if a little conventionally, to our sense of how they were received by their ‘louing Auditorie’.13 Few readers today would accuse this verse, with its unvarying pentameter couplets, of over-rapidity; but the parallel between the form of the sermon and the form of the poem itself explicitly challenges us – so far as we are able – to begin to calibrate the cultural reach of this poem, and through that the cultural agency of its author. The manuscript from which I have quoted Lewis’s elegy for Fenton – Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e. 97 – does not, in fact, attribute it to him, though it does later improbably ascribe ‘A Louers Passion’ to him (p. 187). In miniature, these examples remind us that authorship is displaced and refashioned in manuscript, and at the same time, paradoxically, the extent to which known authorship does influence the agency that a poem (and a poet) might have. As Marcy North has reminded us, even when anonymous, 14 elegies of this kind ‘celebrate the author as well as the subject’. Lewis’s poem is aware of the parallel between its own audience as elegy, and the audiences to Fenton’s preaching that it remembers and half-creates; these two audiences are shaped in later lines as a ‘Societie’ that will have a duty of care for Fenton in his burial. Addressing Fenton, Lewis writes:

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did they neglect thy work & burie thee In a poore competent obscurity Thinke thee preferd enough & not to seeke for more, but heare & praise thee once a weeke.

Finally, though, the poem argues that Fenton’s ‘seruice’ should have a formal memorial: ‘A thankfull Tomb then build him, & therein / Engraue this Epitaph here lies Grayes Inne’. This poetic interment is in one way careful generic modulation on Lewis’s part, folding as it does the usually separate epitaph into the body of his elegy.15 It is also, in its own way, an advertisement: the poem, in its subtly self-referential cleverness, its mention of preferment (‘Thinke thee preferd enough...’) a not-so-subtle piece of self-promotion. Is this the poem as job application? From what happened next it is easy – and tempting – to think that this might have been so. The advance of Lewis’s career, seen simply in its dates and events, is rapid in the period between 1616 and 1618. Not without controversy, he was on 10 January 1618 elected as dean of Oriel; on 21 February, with yet more rumblings, he was elected Provost; and on 28 March installed as head of house. John Chamberlain, with his usual efficiency, reported this process to Dudley Carleton on 14 February 1628: I know not whether I wrote you that Dr. Blincow is lately dead at Oxford, leaving li to the value of 3000 , a goode part whereof he bestowed on Oriall College. There

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Chaplains in early modern England

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hath ben somwhat ado about the choise of a new Provost, the Lord Chauncellor labouring for a chaplain of his, one Lewes a man of 26 yeares old, who I heare by his meanes hath carried yt, Master Sherbourn having ben employed three or fowre days thether about yt.

In the face of opposition from George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and John King, the Bishop of London, who together ‘stoode for others of more years and gravitie’, the Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, offered not so much argument as epigram: ‘he replied’, Chamberlain recorded, ‘that he respected not minoritie of years where there was a majoritie of parts’.16 News was moving quickly here, Chamberlain’s letter of 14 February 1618 in fact predating the confirmation a week later of Lewis’s election; and it is tempting to think that, for the Lord Chancellor to be in a position so efficiently and swiftly to promote the interests of his own candidate, Lewis, for the vacant position, a relationship of patronage must already have existed between them for some time. The elegy for Roger Fenton, with its institutional address to Gray’s Inn, of which Bacon had himself been a member since 1576, and where he kept chambers throughout his life (‘digs’, as Michael Kiernan calls them), seems at least likely to have cemented, if not to have created, that bond.17 Lewis’s seems to have been the only poetic tribute to Fenton on his death; and Bacon, as Treasurer of Gray’s Inn from 1608–17, would have been well placed to encounter it, and any memorial planned following it. The documentary evidence, at the very least, confirms a first link between Lewis and Bacon shortly after this period. ‘A Cheque’ taken of Bacon’s household, provisionally dated to July 1618, shows at the head of the list, above even his two secretaries, John Young and Thomas Meautys, Bacon’s two chaplains: ‘Mr. Oates’, first, and below him ‘Mr. Lewis’, his name written over that of a deleted ‘Mr. Cecill’.18 Newly installed in the household and with responsibility for spiritual matters, Lewis was in a position squarely to benefit from Bacon’s temporal patronage. This period of Lewis’s life, as head of house in Oxford and within Bacon’s household in London, must at the time have seemed very secure; and, as Kenneth Fincham has written, it was a period during which Bacon was active in promoting the interests of former fellows and college members, inviting one, Michael Wigmore, to preach at York House, and supporting the application for a fellowship at All Souls by another, Charles Child.19 But the events that shocked this household in 1621, and jolted Lewis out of it, would have dispelled such security very rapidly. Proceedings against Bacon moved with such speed through the first four months of 1621 that John Chamberlain could report on 5 May 1621 with an awful finality (and a helpful gloss) ‘the sentence pronounced against the late Lord Chauncellor, which was to this effect, that he is fined at 40000li, to be imprisoned in the Towre during the Kings pleasure, disabled ever to beare office in the court or commonwealth, to have no voice in parlement, not to come within the vierge (or twelve miles)

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency of the court’.20 The consequences for those under Bacon’s patronage were in a way scarcely less serious. Alastair Bellany and Andrew McRae’s Early Stuart Libels gathers from manuscript the great swell of angry writing that attended on the business of monopolies and corruption in the 1621 parliament.21 That Lewis should have contributed to this manuscript culture a long poem not attacking but in defence of Bacon has been marked by the editors: Lewis’s defence – a long, 170–line poem, widely circulated in the period, beginning ‘When you awake, dull Brittons, and behould / What treasure you have throwne into the mould’ – offers a series of defences of Bacon that rebut, not quite point by point, the 22 various charges levelled in the other circulating libels. The poem is a real oddity: not so much a libel as an anti-libel, and read widely enough to have generated its own attacking response.23 If it singularly failed to rally support for Bacon, Lewis’s poem does show one of the ways in which manuscript libel poetry offers a medium through which the actions of institutions and the actions of individuals can be calibrated against one another: about how the Lord Chancellor’s conduct of his private household can be read against his public conduct; and about how members of that household can write from within it about the operations of the Commons and the Lords. Bacon’s ‘humble submission and supplication’ was read to the House of Lords on 24 April 1621; six days later, on 30 April 1621, ‘William Lewis, maister in arts of Oriall Colledge in Oxford’ was granted a ‘passe’ by the Privy Council ‘to travaile for three yeares, and to carrie with him his necessarie provision (not being prohibited), with a provisoe not to goe to Rome’, swearing the necessary oath of allegiance in the process.24 The sequence of the two events is striking; and the passport granted by the Privy Council might have seemed for other men, and for other careers, the end, as Bacon’s dismissal and fine seemed at the time to him. Signifying as it clearly did to contemporaries the cessation not only of Bacon’s powerful patronage, but also Lewis’s own withdrawal from Oxford, this might singly have been bad enough. The circumstances of Lewis’s departure as they were recorded at Oriel were uncontentious, but as reported, and eagerly repeated even many years afterwards, outside the college, they were rather less propitious. John Walker, looking back nearly a hundred years later on, wrote of Lewis’s provostship that, ‘indulging himself in some things very unbecoming of it, he was in a manner forced to resign it’.25 John Chamberlain was, at the time, less circumspect: ‘One Lewis a fine chaplain of his [Bacon’s] whom he preferred to be provost of Oriall College against the haire, is run away to Paris, some say for debt, some for a fowler fault, and that he was Domini similis’.26 William Prynne – who, for all his rebarbative lack of sympathy, and for all that his charge carries complicated and historically nuanced meaning, might have been in a good place to know: he matriculated at Oriel in 1616, and was awarded his BA on 22 January 1621 – was even blunter,

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Chaplains in early modern England in the index to his Canterburies Doome (1646): Lewis, Prynne wrote, ‘fled hence for sodomy’.27 The first continental phase of Lewis’s career, unlike his later exile during the 1650s, in the existing biographies is a matter for conjecture. It is known, as we will see later, that he can be associated later in the decade with Buckingham, whose agent in Paris he was, and with King Charles, for whom he seems to have served a similar function and who, here and in the following decade, would extend further patronage to him. But how, from the aftermath of his patronage by Bacon, Lewis established an association, first with Buckingham and then with Charles, has not been well understood. Here, vitally, Lewis’s verse can supply that missing connection, and another intriguing location, for his elegy on Thomas Washington suggests strongly that he was in Madrid in the summer of 1623. One context for Lewis’s poem is related in James Howell’s Epistolae Ho-Elianae, in a letter to Sir John North from Madrid, dated 15 August 1623: Mr. Washington the Prince his Page is lately dead of a Calenture, and I was at his buriall under a Figtree behind my Lord of Bristols house. A little before his death one Ballard an English Priest went to tamper with him, and Sir Edmund Varney meeting him coming down the stairs out of Washingtons chamber, they fell from words to blows; but they were parted. The busines was like to gather very ill bloud, 28 and to com to a great height, had not Count Gondomar quasht it[.]

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In such an oppositional culture, it is scarcely surprising that a contemporary Spanish account of Washington’s death aligns events, and agency, rather differently. After relating the illness that had afflicted Sir Francis Cottington, the reporter continued: An English gentleman, one of those who had come in the Prince’s service, being also attacked by a sickness, without any hope of life, desired to die as a son of the Catholic Church with its sacraments; and sending for this purpose to a Catholic Priest of his own nation, Dr. Henry [Ballard] by name, some of the Prince’s servants came up to hinder his entrance, and that too, as was understood, by His Highness’s order. They went so far as to prevent the clergyman from coming in by force of arms, and one of them struck him a violent blow upon the face with his fist. Nor would they have stopped here, but for the interposition of the Count of Gondomar, who had come up to appease the disturbance, followed by a large number of people. The occurrence, taking place thus openly, was generally held as an intimation of the 29 conduct which was hereafter to be expected from the Prince.

At this stage of the negotiations for the Spanish Match such an event can hardly have been welcomed by any of the principals; and the event becomes even further layered in the Spanish account with the revelation that Ballard had been all along a client of Buckingham’s, ‘sent into Spain ... as soon as he opened the negotiation of the marriage, in order that he, taking part in it as a Catholic, might hasten matters on’.30

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency Thomas Washington’s death at eighteen raised questions of poetry for William Lewis, whose presence is not documented among the fluid and rapidly changing members of Charles’s and Buckingham’s entourage, but the poem clearly places him at any rate on its edges.31 ‘Hast thou beene dead a Moneth,’ Lewis’s poem begins, ‘and can I bee / Compos’d of any thing but Elegy?’32 In fact, the two-part elegy and epitaph that he wrote for Washington – the elegy a long, bitter poem of ninety pentameter lines and the epitaph a shorter, fifteen–line poem in tetrameter – contain within their compositions rather more than simple grief. The elegy, addressed throughout to the departed Washington, sets itself squarely against (in the poem’s phrase) ‘the barbarisme that durst increase / Thy dolours with disturbing thy last peace’, and the agents of that disturbance, the single Jesuit, unnamed in the poem, and the many Spaniards whose aim it had been ‘to molest / Or interrupt his everlasting rest’. The poet and the departed page are averse to every aspect of life in Madrid, even mimicking in rhyme the city’s Castilian pronunciation: O you who henceforth shall desire to seeth Or stewe yourselues in July at Madrith; Hope not your temperance or youth can cure, Or guard your goodnesse from a Calenture.

The ‘Epitaph’ repeats this same cluster of objections:

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Enquire not his disease or payne he dy’de of nothing els but Spayne Where the worst Calentures he feels 33 Are Jesuits and Alguazeeles.

An alguazil was in the early seventeenth century a warrant-officer or sergeant: in a small way, the precision of the vocabulary represents in the poem the officiousness from which Washington’s ‘quiet grave’ protects him. In a gesture that is characteristic of Lewis’s epitaphic practice, the poem closes by contemplating Washington’s grave: he needs no Epitaph nor stone But this; here lyes lov’d Washington t Write this with teares in y loose dust And every greiv’d beholder must (When he knowes it, & weighs his yeares) Renew the letters with his teares.

The elegy and epitaph, when they have been noticed, have not been properly understood: Glyn Redworth captures neither quite the disposition of the elegy and epitaph’s author, nor their own literary qualities, when he writes dismissively of them as the work of a ‘vicious doggerel-writer’.34 Thomas Cogswell’s rather calmer mention of the elegy and epitaph, too, stands in need of some gentle literary correction when he treats the two as unconnected: Lewis’s

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Chaplains in early modern England

Figure 2  Thomas Manne’s verse miscellany. © British Library Board, Add. MS 58215, fols 20v–21r.

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency

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Chaplains in early modern England two-part elegy and epitaph follows a very common pattern for memorial verse in the early seventeenth century and, although the epitaph does circulate separately in manuscript in the period, the design of the pair clearly expects the connection between elegy and epitaph to be recognised.35 One further connection arises from the poems also: the beginnings of the patronage extended by Buckingham to Lewis. Again, the link between the poem and the subsequent documentary evidence is implicit rather than direct. The record of business submitted to the king in the first part of November 1626 records a payment of £165 to ‘Mr Lewis’, ‘being after the rate of 20s a daie and .99li. for transportacion and other extraordinary charges’ for service in France, attending to one of the many 36 ‘foreign policy emergencies’ of that summer. The departure of ‘a gentleman of Lord Holland to the French Court’ that Alvise Contarini, the Venetian ambassador in London, reported on 25 December 1626 may probably have been Lewis’s, returning to France for a second period of service; in February 1627, Contarini’s Parisian counterpart, Zorzi Zorzi, reported that ‘Secretary Luis has come for 100,000 lire of this country, for the hire of the English ships which served France in its siege of La Rochelle’.37 Lewis, having followed two of Buckingham’s men, Edward Clarke and Balthazar Gerbier, to Paris, followed them back to London: ‘All negotiations between England and France are broken off’, Zorzi reported on 26 February 1627; ‘Gierbier [sic] left on Saturday and the Secretary Luis departed to-day without money and very ill-pleased’.38 His return, and something of his earlier employments – ‘a certain preacher, Lewis by name, who having been some time agent at the French Court, was despatched thither’ – was noted by Contarini.39 Although his mission may outwardly have been unsuccessful, while in France, Lewis seems to have been Buckingham’s main source of high-level analysis and reporting from Paris, on Richelieu, and, in January 1627, on French naval expansion: ‘Fears, necessity and loss are the best rhetoric to persuade them [the French] to reason; and the dissipation of their naval designs (which may be done yet with Your Grace’s 40 least breath as well as with a tempest) the ... best preface of agreements.’ Agreements, though, were not forthcoming, and by the time of Buckingham’s ill-fated campaign on the Île de Ré that earlier confidence would look badly misplaced. We can, though, place Lewis – rather desperately, it would seem – on Ré with his patron; and this link with Buckingham, as well as with Gerbier and Dudley Carleton, Ambassador Extraordinary through the difficult summer of 1626, proved crucial to the next stage of his career. Writing of the composition of Buckingham’s household for the Ré campaign, Lockyer emphasises both the scale and the cost of the undertaking.41 Among the household were a number of chaplains, whether as members of Buckingham’s personal entourage or as part of the gathered forces; the poet Robert Herrick was among them, though his precise status, as is the case for Lewis, remains

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency unclear, for no independent evidence (as yet) confirms Wood’s claim that Lewis was formally chaplain to Buckingham.42 Among this small force, Buckingham and his chaplains were visible, organising figures for the ship’s crew on the voyage – at public prayers as the Triumph, driven into shallow waters by storm, seemed at danger of foundering – and their visibility increased over the frantic summer as the small attacking force became ever smaller.43 That Lewis was part of this entourage, in whatever capacity, is proved by a letter in his hand sent from St Martin, the main town on Ré, to Sir Edward Nicholas dated 16 October 1627. Written to cover two enclosures to the Bishop of Bath and Wells and Lord Sussex, the letter speaks familiarly to Nicholas, Buckingham’s secretary:

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if you know not o[u]r wantes before this tyme it will bee too Late to remedy them, wee haue Lookt our selfes and our perspectiues blinde in Looking after my Ld of Hollande from the topp[e]s of houses if hee come w[i]thin 4 or 5 dayes some good may yet bee done. I haue been ill of 28 boates that releeued the cittadelle and a feauer [...] God haue us And you in his holye & mercifull protection and sende us 44 an honourable returne to you.

Holland, who was to command the relief of the stranded English forces, in fact met Buckingham’s beaten and severely reduced troops on their return just off the English coast.45 Lewis’s larger experience on the Île de Ré is no longer recoverable, although Walker, in writing his capsule biography at the start of the eighteenth century, reported an account by Lewis of the expedition that Anthony Wood had earlier seen, A General Relation of a Voyage to Rhe under the Command and Conduct of the Duke of Buckingham, surviving then ‘in a folio MS. of 18 sheets or more’ but not known today, if it is still extant.46 In the absence of that longer, apparently lost account, the covering letter written from St Martin’s emphasises not merely a generic familiarity between the correspondents, but provides a context for reading the next poem of Lewis’s, a poem that makes York House, the physical space of one of Buckingham’s households, its focus and organising principle. Markku Peltonen has written feelingly of York House as one of the key ‘central emotional places’ in Francis Bacon’s life; and there are reasons for 47 thinking that the phrase might apply, too, to Lewis. As one of Bacon’s domestic chaplains Lewis must have known it well; and, whether as one of Buckingham’s secretaries, as a chaplain or merely as a member of his extended client network, Lewis had reason to reencounter the house and its spaces, perhaps through attendance at The Departure of the Navy, the now-lost masque that Buckingham staged at York House on 15 May 1627 for those taking sail to Ré.48 The poem attributed to Lewis, ‘On the Duke of Buckingham’s Gallery’, certainly displays an onlooker’s familiarity with, if not necessarily expertise in, the art objects with which the duke had furnished the house, and the fabric of the house itself. The contrast between the visual poverty on Ré and the abundance of York House is strikingly marked.

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Chaplains in early modern England It was to the polymathic Balthazar Gerbier, soon to be in Paris with Lewis, that Buckingham turned for the extensive remodelling of York House that he put in train following the negotiations, or rather coercions, through which he had obliged Bacon to surrender the lease to the property for £1300 early in 1622.49 By 1624–25 Gerbier was at work for Buckingham both at New Hall in Essex and on the Strand at York House; and he remembered in his Brief Discourse ... of Magnificent Building (1662) with a mixture of what seems pride and aghastness the speed with which, ‘as a Toadestoole groweth in a night’, the house was reordered and reinforced, its ‘Butterises ... thrown down’ and ‘the Seeling of Roomes supported with Iron-bolts’, to accommodate both 50 the duke’s ambitions and his collections. The rapidity and innovation that Gerbier later recalled was evident at the time in his correspondence, where he wrote with real delight a visit from Inigo Jones to York House, in which the Surveyor, ‘confus et honteux’, arrived almost as if to inspect the paving of the ‘grandre chambre’, only poorly concealing (if at all) his jealousy at what he saw (‘il en est fort jaloux’).51 Among the other additions to, and renovations at, York House in this period seem to have been a long gallery.52 The long gallery, as Lena Cowen Orlin has argued, was one of the key new cultural and political spaces of early modern England, and in the case of York House one of the main areas in which Buckingham could display himself among this collection.53 ‘On the Duke of Buckingham’s Gallery’ is very unlike the other poems attributed to Lewis. Descriptive rather than primarily commemorative, the poem progresses through what is (in effect) a guided gallery tour, examining and in some manuscripts numbering, one to five, the pictures at which this ekphrastic poem pauses, better to direct the reading viewer’s gaze. Questions of identity attend on the pictures described in the poem – if, indeed, the ‘pictures’ may be less descriptions of individual works than layered collections of allusions to many images.54 For finally, the poem concentrates not so much on the art objects viewed as on the poet viewing them: On the glasse wall What ruder ages thought the best of all Nosce teipsum hangs about the wall Clothed in glasse; where every one may see Not what he is but what he seemes to be.

Francis Bacon’s advice in his essay ‘Of Building’ had recommended ‘two Delicate or Rich Cabinets, Daintily Paved, Richly Hanged, Glased with Crystalline Glasse, and a Rich Cupola in the Middest’.55 What do we see in this crystalline glass? The poem’s delighted self-inspection offers a moment to situate Lewis as a cultural agent within the European field of artists, architects, writers and collectors, all of whom, through Buckingham’s patronage, and the patronage of others in the court, were beginning to be mobile in early modern culture; it alerts us, too, to the instrumental aspects of Claire Preston’s

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency reminder that, whatever else it is, ekphrasis has always been a ‘shamelessly self-publicising’ figure, functioning in self-advertisement here much as elegy had earlier functioned for Lewis.56 What is clear again, though, is that the two poems associated with Buckingham coincide with yet another set of crucial appointments in Lewis’s career. In quick succession he was in March 1627 appointed as a prebendary at Winchester cathedral, and in May 1627 ‘graced’ doctor of divinity at Oxford by royal mandate, ‘out of our experience of his diligence and ability of some affairs of weight, wherein we have in foreign parts employ’d him’; in February 1628 he was presented to the mastership of the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester, left vacant by the death of Sir Peter Young, and in June 1628 was appointed a chaplain in ordinary in the Chapel Royal, one aspect, perhaps, of the ‘further service, wherein we think him fit’, towards which the 57 King’s mandate had gestured. The events of this year gave rise to the last of Lewis’s poems that I want to discuss, a poem that shifts institutions again, back towards the King and the Church. This again is an odd, retrospective memorial poem, written here not quite to a pregnant widow, but about the infant son of Lewis’s one-time patron. Buckingham’s assassination, as ongoing work by Cogswell, Bellany and others continues to remind us, was mediated through manuscript, in the libel poetry collected and annotated in Early Stuart Libels. The poem that Lewis contributed to this debate is unlike the others only in being so late, written not in the heat of August 1628, but nearly a year later in the following spring, after the birth of Buckingham’s posthumous son, Francis, born on 2 April 1629. ‘To My Lord Duke of Buckingham His Memory’ begins with Lewis’s by now customary generic self-reflection (or literary self-awareness, we could call it, if feeling charitable): Hee that can[n] reade a sigh, or spell a teare, Pronounce amazement, and accent wild feare, Or get all greif by hart; hee, onely hee, Is fitt to reade, or write thy Elegie. Vnvalued Lord! whoe wer’t soe hard a text 58 Writt in one age, but vnderstood ith’ next.

These lines, at least, were forceful enough to begin to circulate later in the century as an independent text, removed from the circumstances of their original composition, and treated in the abstract as a meditation on the shifting patterns of historical appreciation. But the poem as a whole, read early in 1629, takes a rather different path, castigating the various publics held to have criticised Buckingham during his life and to have denigrated him after his death, closing as it attributes to them a yet further inattention: ‘See yow not howe he Phenixe is renew’d / And to him from his death, more years acru’d!’ Moving from the dead to the living Buckingham, and incorporating them both

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Chaplains in early modern England in its pronouns, the poem’s last clauses look to the future, towards a coming time, imagined twenty years’ hence, when ‘thy fast / Sprouting and growing glory will in strength / (Though short nowe) yet be writt agayne at length’.

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III So far as the verse record extends, Lewis does not appear to have ‘writt agayne at length’, making this the close (at least) of his poetic career. The elegy to one Buckingham, and the anticipation of another, is the last poem that I have found attributed to him over his career, a career that in its later stages seems not to have needed poetry to make anything more happen. In his mastership of St Cross Lewis enthusiastically responded to Laudian innovations, on more than one occasion emphasising the expense in which alterations to the fabric of the hospital – ‘a ruinous house and Churche to bee Repayred’ – had 59 personally involved him. These renovations – windows ‘new barr’d, and glaz’d’, ‘An Organ sett vp’, ‘The Church ... newly pav’d’ – are all presented in Lewis’s ‘personall answere’ to Laud’s metropolitical visitation articles of 1635 as responses to the dilapidation of the fabric of St Cross as he encountered it on taking up the mastership; but they are all strongly legible, too, against ‘the beauty of holiness’, indicators of a doctrinal closeness to the developing politics and practices of the Caroline Church that is evident also in his letterreports to Laud in the later part of the decade.60 In search of funds to support this enthusiastic programme of building and beautification, Lewis worked hard to gather livings to himself, manoeuvring to obtain ‘a prebende, and two Liuinges’ in 1630, and even providing briefing notes on his own case at the time; 61 the document approving this gift, a secretary’s draft emended by Dudley Carleton, who had been in Paris with Lewis, starchly deletes ‘a prebend’ from Lewis’s ambitions, though it adds, perhaps remembering the terms of the royal mandate that gained Lewis his DD, ‘hasardous seruice ... in Forraine parts’ to the initial account of ‘his abilityes in the ministerye’, and, striking perhaps a more personal tone, ‘more then ordinarie care of the person 62 whom it concerns’. At St Cross, too, Lewis as master had his own chaplain, ‘who by our statute’, the response to the visitation articles recorded, ‘is to performe divi[ne] offices amongst vs, wch are alsoe many times performed by the Master himselfe’.63 And he was himself as we have seen from 1628, and in other documents between 1635 and 1644, recorded among the royal chaplains in ordinary, taking a February turn in the company of Thomas Lawrence and the Jacobean holdovers, William Peterson and Accepted Frewen, until 1641, and with Benjamin Laney replacing Frewen after 1641.64 But of Lewis’s spiritual activities and his preaching, to which his career turned, nothing more appears to survive. The poems that do, I have hoped to show, have been nonetheless a very odd series of poems with which to leverage

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency advancement within a career, not least in their having looked so consistently backward as a means of securing forward advancement. Seen in one light as fiercely instrumental, Lewis’s poems might seem by another fiercely loyal, choosing to commemorate preachers, patrons and (perhaps) friends at times when to do so can scarcely have seemed to coincide with present interest. His will, and his son’s later petition to Charles II, record just the same pattern of loyalty to the royal cause during the period of the civil wars and interregnum: a willingness to stand firm, and stand for, individuals, institutions and their common causes at times of difficulty.65 Lewis’s elegies are an expression of agency in a world of institutions and advancement, committed to individual opportunity, of course, but perhaps more powerfully to community. His poems offer a fascinating record of one man’s Zelig-like progress through a full sample of the major events of 1620s history; they record, more lastingly, the kind of continued expressions of loyalty through which poetry may make things happen. Notes In addition to the specific acknowledgements noticed below, I am grateful to seminar audiences in Birmingham, Leicester and Stratford for feedback on this chapter; and to Hugh Adlington, Kenneth Fincham, Angus Vine and Gillian Wright for reading, and improving, earlier drafts. 1 W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. E. Mendelson, rev. edn (London: Faber, 1991), p. 248; earlier texts read ‘saying’ (e.g. W. H. Auden, Selected Poems, ed. E. Mendelson (London: Faber, 1979), p. 82).

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2 Locations and classmarks for the manuscripts surveyed here can be found at firstlines. folger.edu. 3 Witts Recreations (1640), sigs 2C6v–7r. 4 ‘Upon some pieces of work in York House’, unattributed, in A. Wright (ed.), Parnassus Biceps; Or, Severall Choice Pieces of Poetry, ed. Peter Beal (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990), pp. 32–4. 5 R. Head, The Life and Death of Mother Shipton (1677), p. 45. 6 CCEd, person ID 94166; A. Thomson, ‘Winchester Cathedral: its clergy and their duties before and after the Interregnum’, [part I] Southern History, 26 (2004), 38–65, and ‘part II: the business of the cathedral chapter’, Southern History, 27 (2005), 1–23. 7 S. Wright, ‘Lewis, William (1591/2–1667)’, ODNB; unless otherwise noted, details of Lewis’s life and career are drawn from this source. 8 H. Love, The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998 [originally Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993]), pp. 35–89. 9 L. A. Knafla, ‘Fenton, Roger (1565–1616)’, ODNB. 10 L. A. Knafla, ‘Mr Secretary Donne: the years with Sir Thomas Egerton’, in D. Colclough (ed.), John Donne’s Professional Lives (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 37–71 (pp. 51–2).

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Chaplains in early modern England 11 I quote the text of the poem from Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e. 97, a miscellany probably associated with Christ Church, Oxford, containing verse from the late 1620s to mid-1640s; it is described in IELM as Strode Δ6. 12 Hampshire Record Office, Wincester, MS 1667 P 31, signed will of William Lewis, 16 July 1666, in the hand of the Winchester scribe Edward Traffles; another copy is at NA, PROB 11/325, fols 310–11. 13 On preaching at Gray’s Inn and Fenton’s ‘Anglican conformity’ see H. Adlington, ‘Gospel, law, and ars praedicandi at the Inns of Court, c.1570–1640’, in J. E. Archer, E. Goldring and S. Knight (eds), The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 51–74 (p. 54). 14 M. L. North, ‘Anonymity in early modern manuscript culture: finding a purposeful convention in a ubiquitous condition’, in J. W. Starner and B. H. Traister (eds), Anonymity in Early Modern England: What’s in a Name? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 13–42 (p. 15). 15 On the two traditions see D. Kay, Melodious Tears: The English Funeral Elegy from Spenser to Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), and J. Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from Jonson to Wordsworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 16 N. H. McClure (ed.) The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), 2.139–40. 17 F. Bacon, The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh and Other Works of the 1620s, ed. Michael Kiernan, The Oxford Francis Bacon, VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), p. 591. 18 NA, SP 14/95/64; on the career of Thomas Cecill, see CCEd (person ID 22559), and on the identity of Thomas Oates (probably not the Oates recorded as CCEd, person ID 73068), see Angus Vine’s chapter in this collection.

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19 K. Fincham, ‘Expansion and Retrenchment’, in J. Catto (ed.), Oriel College: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 20 McClure (ed.) The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2.371. 21 A. Bellany and A. McRae (eds), Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources 2005–Section M [www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/index.html]. 22 Early Stuart Libels, Mii8, incorporating one emended reading; I give a fuller account of this poem and its contexts in ‘“Empericks of state”: manuscript verse and the impeachment of Francis Bacon’, Philological Quarterly, 91 (2012), 23–47. 23 Early Stuart Libels, Mii10. 24 J. Spedding (ed.), The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, 7 vols (London: Longman, 1861–74), 7.242–5; Acts of the Privy Council, 1619–1621 (London: HMSO, 1930), p. 378. 25 J. Walker, An Attempt Towards Recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England, 2 pts in 1 (1714), 2.77. 26 McClure (ed.), Letters of John Chamberlain, 2.385 (23 June 1621); ‘against the haire’, first cited in 1621 by OED, runs into English from French à contrepoil; ‘Domini similis’, like his master. 27 W. Lamont, ‘Prynne, William (1600–1669)’, ODNB; W. Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), ‘The Table’, sig. C2v.

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Poetry, patronage and cultural agency 28 J. Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae (1650), pt 3, p. 67. 29 S. R. Gardiner (ed. and trans), Narrative of the Spanish Marriage Treaty (Camden Society, London. old series, 101 1869), pp. 249–50, translating the Spanish text (p. 83). 30 Gardiner (ed.), Narrative of the Spanish Marriage Treaty, p. 250. 31 An annotated text of Sir Richard Wynn’s record of the entourage that departed for Spain is provided in Glyn Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 186–8. 32 I quote from BL, Add. MS 58215, fols 20v–2r; this miscellany is predominantly in the hand of Thomas Manne, amanuensis to Henry King, and chaplain of Christ Church, Oxford, from 1605–1635 (IELM, vol. 2 pt 1, pp. 590, 592). 33 I quote from Bodleian, MS Rawl. poet. 160, fol. 56v. 34 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, p. 130. 35 T. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 46. 36 NA, SP 16/525/29, memorial of business, 6–16 November 1626; R. Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow: Longman, 2005), p. 63; these payments are also recorded in NA, SP 78/78–80: see G. M. Bell, (ed.) A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, 1509–1688 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990), p. 108. 37 Calendar of State Papers Venetian, 1626–1628 (London: HMSO, 1914), pp. 69, 122; NA, SP 78/81 records payments from December 1626–March 1627 at the same rate of 20s per day: Bell, Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, p. 108. 38 Calendar of State Papers Venetian, 1626–1628, p. 132. 39 Ibid., 1626–1628, p. 135. 40 R. Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London: Longman, 1981), pp. 356, 359.

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41 Lockyer, Buckingham, pp. 373–4. 42 G. Parry, ‘His noble numbers’, in R. Connolly and T. Cain (eds), ‘Lords of Wine and Oile’: Community and Conviviality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 276–99 (pp. 279–80); A. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses ... to Which Are Added The Fasti, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols (London: Rivington and Others, 1813–20), 2.437 (Fasti). 43 Lockyer, Buckingham, p. 380. 44 NA, SP 16/81/154, Lewis to Nicholas, 16 October 1627. 45 Lockyer, Buckingham, pp. 400–2. 46 Walker, An Attempt towards Recovering, p. 77; Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 2.437 (Fasti). 47 M. Peltonen, ‘Bacon, Francis, Viscount St Alban (1561–1626)’, ODNB. 48 M. Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 370. 49 Lockyer, Buckingham, p. 119. 50 B. Gerbier, A Brief Discourse Concerning the Three Chief Principles of Magnificent Building (1662), p. 8.

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Chaplains in early modern England 51 H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840, 3rd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 397. 52 G. H. Gater and E. P. Wheeler (eds), Survey of London, 18: St Martin-in-the-Fields II: The Strand (London: London City Council, 1937), pp. 51–60 and Plates 1b and 2b. 53 L. C. Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 226–61; and on Buckingham’s collections, see P. McEvansoneya, ‘Italian paintings in the Buckingham collection’, in E. Chaney (ed.), The Evolution of English Collecting: Receptions of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 315–36; A. Bellany, ‘“Naught but illusion?” Buckingham’s painted selves’, in K. Sharpe and S. N. Zwicker (eds), Writing Lives: Biography and Textuality, Identity and Representation in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 127–60. 54 I am grateful to Philip McEvansoneya for this suggestion. 55 F. Bacon, The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, ed. M. Kiernan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 138. 56 C. Preston, ‘Ekphrasis: painting in words’ in S. Adamson, G. Alexander and K. Ettenhuber (eds), Renaissance Figures of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 114–29 (p. 120). 57 CCEd, person ID 94166; Wood, Athenae'Oxonieses, 2.436 (Fasti). 58 I quote from Bodleian, MS Rawl. poet. 26, fols 37v–38r. 59 NA, SP 16/173/22, Lewis to Carleton, 10 September 1630.

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60 Hampshire Record Office, 11194W/C5/2, ‘Articles ministred vnto the Master ... of St Crosse’, and 11194W/C5/3, ‘The personall answere of the Master ... of St Crosse’, 1635 (contrary to 1634 endorsement); K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 227–73; NA, SP 16/206/132, Lewis to Laud, 28 August 1635, SP 16/402/49, Lewis to Laud, 20 November 1638, and SP 16/432/143, Lewis to Laud, 17 November 1639. 61 NA, SP 16/173/22, Lewis to Carleton, 10 September 1630; NA SP 16/173/22, draft petition to the Bishop of Winchester, endorsed 13 September 1630; and NA SP 16/178/115, ‘A memorial concerning Dr Lewis’, in Lewis’s own hand, undated. 62 NA, SP 16/173/32, draft letter from the King to Bishop Neile of Winchester, 13 September 1630; I am grateful to Sarah Poynting for advice on Carleton’s hand. 63 Hampshire Record Office, 11194W/C5/2. 64 N. W. S. Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary at the early Stuart court: the purple road’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 1996), pp. 120–47. 65 NA, SP 29/259/230, petition of John Lewis, 5 May 1669, for aid in return for gifts ‘in the tyme of the Late warrs’ of ‘fiue hundred pounds in gold with four good horses besides seuerall other summes’, and further losses ‘to the value of three thousand pounds’ to the Committee for Compounding (see Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding , 5 pts (London: HMSO, 1889–92), 4.2693–5).

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Chapter 7

.

‘His Lordships First, and Last, chapleine’: William Rawley and Francis Bacon Angus Vine

A

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t the west end of the nave of All Saints’, Landbeach, lies a black marble tomb slab, commemorating one of that church’s better-known seventeenth-century incumbents: Dr William Rawley, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and chaplain in turn to Sir Francis Bacon, Charles I and Charles II. The tombstone was originally located in the chancel, where Rawley was buried in accordance with his last will and testament, but it was moved in the late nineteenth century following restoration work to that part of the church.1 On the stone there is an inscription, which remembers Rawley in a number of ways: Hic Iacet Guilielmus Rawley S. T. Doctor. Vir Gratijs et Musis ex æquo charus. o do Sereniss Regibus Car. 1 et 2 a’ Sacris. o D . Franc verulamio Sacellanus primus atq[ue] ultimus Cujus Opera, Summa cum fide edita, ei debent Literæ. Uxorem Habuit, Barbaram, ad latus Mariti positam Jo. Wixted, Aldermanni nuper Cantabr Filiam. Ex ea Filium Suscepit unicum, Guilielmum In Cujus cineribus Salis haud parum latet. Ecclesiam hanc per annos 50 prudens administravit. Tandem placide, ut vixit, in Domino obdormivit.   Anno {Domini M D C L X V II Jun 18 2        {Ætat. 79. (Here lies William Rawley, doctor of theology, a man dear in equal measure to the Graces and the Muses, chaplain to the most serene kings Charles I and Charles II, and first and last chaplain to Sir Francis Verulam, whose works he edited with the utmost fidelity, for which the world of letters is indebted to him. He had a wife Barbara, who is placed at the side of her husband, and was the daughter of John Wixted, lately alderman of Cambridge. From her he begat his only son William. In his remains no small amount of wit lies hidden. He administered this church

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wisely for 50 years. At last, calmly, as he lived, he fell asleep in the Lord. In the year of our Lord 1667 18 June, at the age of 79.)

As we might expect, the inscription describes his family life, naming his wife Barbara and his son young William and also his father-in-law, the Cambridge alderman John Wicksted. It also commemorates his stewardship of the parish and praises him for his prudence and placidity. Again, this is the sort of thing that we might expect to find on the tombstone of a rural rector. What is perhaps less expected is that the inscription also praises Rawley for his literary endeavours – and, in particular, for those on behalf of his first patron, Bacon. Here, the inscription records, first of all, that Rawley was Bacon’s first and last chaplain, echoing a phrase that was used on the title page of one of Rawley’s own publications.3 Then it praises him for his faithful editing of Bacon’s works. What is more, its wording here seems to imply a link between these two things. For the stonemason, and even for Rawley’s relatives, who presumably paid for the tombstone, that connection may simply have been an accident of time and place. But the connection, as I argue in this chapter, was, in fact, an important and real one. It was Rawley’s chaplaincy, I suggest, that enabled him to become, in the words of Graham Rees, ‘the most important disseminator of Bacon’s work and propagator of Bacon’s reputation in the seventeenth century’.4 For had Rawley not been Bacon’s chaplain, he would likely not have become his secretary, and had he not been his secretary, he would surely not have undertaken that editorial work described in the inscription with quite such authority or confidence. Despite this, Rawley remains poorly served by modern scholarship, and his editing in particular is imperfectly understood. As Rees also observes, it is ‘seldom appreciated how much of Bacon’s life and work are still seen through his eyes’. While Bacon scholars do often mention Rawley, more specific accounts are essentially limited to Rees’s own fine biography in volume XIII of ‘The Oxford Francis Bacon’, Alan Stewart’s life in the ODNB, and unpublished research by Pete Langman.5 My chapter is therefore an attempt to fill that gap: to restore attention, first of all, to the important role played by Rawley in the production of Bacon’s literary and philosophical works, a role that went beyond just seeing their passage through the press, although that was certainly part of it, and then to examine the nature of his editorial projects. But to do this, as the tombstone inscription reminds us, we also need a sense of Rawley’s role as a chaplain, to examine his place and significance not only in Bacon’s works, but also in his household. Rawley probably came to Bacon’s attention in the first place thanks to his Cambridge connections. Potential chaplains were recommended to patrons in all sorts of ways, but the two universities seem to have been particularly important here.6 Rawley’s own career at university began in 1600, when he was admitted as a Bible clerk to Corpus Christi College, or Bene’t Hall as it was

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon known at the time.7 He then followed the standard path of academic success, proceeding BA and MA before being elected to a fellowship of the college on 19 March 1609. Shortly after that he was ordained and presented to the rectory of Bowthorpe in Norfolk. Initially, his fellowship was unremarkable, but in 1616 he blotted his copybook somewhat by his opposition to the election of Dr Thomas Jegon as Master of Corpus that year. Rawley, along with some of the other fellows, objected to Jegon on the grounds that he had pre-elected his son John into the next vacant fellowship, despite his not being statutably eligible. According to Robert Masters, historian of Corpus in the eighteenth century, Rawley was suspended from his fellowship at the time for ‘refusing to admit Sir Jegon’ and for ‘treating the Master uncivilly’, and was even threatened with 8 expulsion from the college. It is at this point that Bacon enters the story. For in that same year he procured for Rawley a much more prestigious, and also richer, living: All Saints’, Landbeach. This parish, just five miles north of Cambridge, yielded a handsome income to its incumbent. In 1650, for example, the lease on the parsonage and the rectory to one Thomas Sparrow the younger brought Rawley the not inconsiderable sum of £160.9 From the late fourteenth century, presentation of the living remained with Corpus, and its members had regularly been chosen as the incumbents.10 As a fellow of the college, Rawley was therefore an obvious candidate for this preferment, despite his opposition to Jegon. How Bacon came to advance Rawley, though, is less obvious. Bacon himself was neither a fellow nor a member of Corpus and had been a student at Trinity instead. However, family connections may hold the answer. Bacon’s father Nicholas had been a member of Corpus, and he had reinforced that connection shortly before his death, when he became a significant benefactor of the college, donating a sum of £200 in 1578 to go towards the building of the new chapel.11 Rawley seems to have entered Bacon’s household shortly afterwards, perhaps within two years of acquiring the living. The exact date is unknown, but it presumably followed Bacon’s appointments first to the office of Lord Keeper in March 1617 and then to the Lord Chancellorship ten months later. The Pluralities Act of 1529 permitted the Lord Chancellor to have three beneficed chaplains and an Elizabethan amendment extended this same privilege to the Lord Keeper.12 Bacon himself, incidentally, was also concerned with plurality and spoke about the issue more than once. In 1608, for example, in his ‘Argument in the Case of the Post-Nati’, he reflected on the rights of the nobility to retain multiple chaplains and drew directly on the Henrician Act: The statute of 21. H. 8. ordeyneth, that a Marquesse may retayne 6. Chaplaines qualir fied. A Lo. Threasorer of England 4. a priuie Counsello 3. The Lord Treasorer Paulett, r was Marquesse of Winchester Lo: Treasorer of England, and Priuie Counsello all at once? Question was whether he should qualifie 13. Chaplaines? now by the rule Cum

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duo iura, he should; but adiudged he should not. And the reason was; because the Attendance of Chapleyns concerned & respected his naturall person, he had but one 13 soule, thoughe he had 3. offices.

The answer to the question, as Bacon points out, was unambiguous. Despite holding multiple offices, Paulet was not permitted to have any more chaplains than the number stipulated in the Act for a marquess. The reason, as Bacon reports it, was that the duties of Paulet’s chaplains were to him personally, not to his offices. Bacon again spoke on the issue of plurality in 1621, claiming that year that ‘the demands of serving a noble household were an argument for a chaplain to hold no other benefice rather than to hold two in plurality’.14 As well as the question of plurality, Bacon also concerned himself with the patronage of clergy more generally. (As Lord Keeper, this was, of course, his direct remit.) In a letter of April 1617, for example, to a Mr Maxey of Christ Church, Oxford, he explained his own principles regarding clerical advancement. He told Maxey, whom he was presenting in the same letter to the living of Frome St. Quintin in Dorset, that his ‘purpose was to make choice of men rather by care and inquiry, than by their own suits and commendatory letters’.15 Rawley is unlikely, therefore, to have become one of Bacon’s chaplains before 1617 or 1618. However, if he did enter Bacon’s service at that time, he was not named in the list of his household drawn up in the first half of 1618. This list, which is preserved among the State Papers, and is headed ‘A cheque of all the Servants of the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, Lord Chancellor of England’, names two other chaplains instead: ‘Mr. Oates’ and ‘Mr. Lewis’.16 Oates has not been identified by any of Bacon’s biographers, but he may conceivably have been the Samuel Oates who was admitted as a sizar to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, on 6 March 1594–5, matriculated in 1595, took his BA in 1598–9 and his MA in 1602, and was ordained as a priest on 21 December 1601.17 Given Bacon’s family connections with Corpus, and Rawley’s own provenance, it seems reasonable to assume that he may have looked to the same source for another of his domestic chaplains. A second possibility is that he was the Thomas Oates who in 1617, a date that roughly coincides with Rawley’s entry into the household, took up the living of Stoke Hammond in Buckinghamshire. ‘Mr. Lewis’, by contrast, is a much more familiar figure. He is the William Lewis who with Bacon’s explicit support would controversially become Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, also in 1618, and who in the 1630s would become one of the chaplains ‘in ordinary’ that waited upon Charles I. (He is also the subject of the previous chapter in this book.) Given Bacon’s position as Lord Chancellor, he could, of course, have employed Rawley alongside Lewis and Oates. However, the omission of his name from the cheque is unlikely to be just an error; the list seems too detailed and precise for that. So the suggestion of one recent scholar that Bacon chose Rawley to replace Lewis, after his elevation to the provostship

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon

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of Oriel, is certainly possible.18 If that is the case, though, the description of Rawley as Bacon’s first and last chaplain is, in terms of chronology at least, certainly puzzling.19 Rawley’s role in Bacon’s household is, however, more securely documented. As a chaplain, his duties would have taken two different forms: spiritual and secular. Given what we know about other domestic chaplains, his spiritual duties would probably have been light and certainly lighter than his duties as parish priest in Landbeach. His secular duties, on the other hand, might have been more extensive. Chaplains’ duties here typically included tutoring their patrons’ children, undertaking intimate family tasks, sharing in their patrons’ leisure activities and sport, and forming part of the utility of their 20 households more generally. Rawley would likely therefore have undertaken a series of such tasks. In this respect, we know, for example, that he was one of the seven witnesses to the publication of Bacon’s final will on 19 December 1625.21 However, his primary secular role in the household was a different, and an essentially literary, one: working as Bacon’s secretary and amanuensis. Various sources attest to this, and Rawley himself describes some of his literary duties in the prefatory epistle to his Resuscitatio volume, a collection of primarily political pieces that he brought out in 1657: Having been employed, as an Amanuensis, or dayly instrument, to this Honourable Authour; And acquainted with his Lordships Conceits, in the composing, of his Works, for many years together; Especially, in his writing Time; I conceived, that no Man, could pretend a better Interest, or Claim, to the ordering of them, after his Death, then my self. For which cause, I have compiled in one, whatsoever bears the true Stamp, of his Lordships excellent Genius; And hath hitherto slept, and been suppressed; In this present Volume; Not leaving any Thing, to a future Hand, which I found, to be of moment, and communicable to the Publick; Save onely some few 22 Latine Works; Which, by Gods Favour and sufferance, shall soon after follow.

Strictly speaking, an amanuensis was one who copied or wrote down from the dictation of another, and an instrument was a person used by someone 23 else for the accomplishment of a particular task. Other accounts seem to confirm that Bacon did compose at least some of his works in both these ways. Aside from Rawley, those who may have been employed in a similar capacity included William Boswell, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Meautys. John Aubrey, for example, tells us that Hobbes often accompanied Bacon ‘in his delicate groves where he did meditate: and when a notion darted into his mind Mr. Hobbes was presently to write it downe’.24 If we take his own word for it, Rawley was employed in essentially the same role, but on a ‘dayly’ basis. On this evidence, he must therefore have been one of Bacon’s most regular amanuenses. What is also striking about Rawley’s claim here is that he uses it to defend his own position as Bacon’s editor. It is his proximity to his late master, his

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Chaplains in early modern England intimate knowledge both of him and his intellectual projects, that gives him the best ‘Interest, or Claim’ to the ‘ordering’ of his works. Furthermore, that intimacy, as he suggests, comes from being his ‘dayly instrument’, and thus ultimately also from being his domestic chaplain. Elsewhere, too, Rawley makes this claim. The prefatory material to the Sylva sylvarum, for example, which he brought out in two issues in 1626 and early 1627, is full of such assertions. In the dedicatory epistle to Charles I, Rawley describes himself as ‘one that was trusted with his Lordships Writings, euen to the last’, and in his epistle to the reader he speaks of ‘[h]auing had the Honour to be continually with my Lord, in compiling of this Worke’.25 Throughout the second epistle he also alludes to what he has ‘heard’ Bacon say: assertions of his proximity to his late master, which serve first of all to defend his role as editor and then to authorise the text that he is publishing. As a final token of his authenticity, he also includes a short note, printed in the outer margin beyond the main text-block: ‘This Epistle is the same, that should haue been prefixed to this 26 Booke, if his Lordship had liued.’ Although the note is printed in a much smaller type size (long primer) than the text-block, which is in double pica, we should not underestimate its importance to Rawley’s purpose and rhetoric in the epistle. The best evidence for Rawley’s intimacy with Bacon, though, comes from a manuscript now preserved in Lambeth Palace Library.27 This miscellaneous manuscript, which contains more than 900 different entries, was compiled by Rawley over a period of twenty years from the early 1620s, when he was in Bacon’s service, through to the mid-1640s, when his daughter Mary was born. Although its contents are truly diverse, ranging from culinary and medical recipes to card tricks and travel notes, much of the volume is taken up with anecdotes about Bacon and with his apophthegms. Early on, for instance, Rawley records the following story, evidently intended as an exemplum of his master’s wit: Ther were Fishermen drawing ye Riuer at chelsey; My Lo came thither by chance in the Afternoone, and offred to buy their Draught: He asked them what r they would take; They said; Thirty shillings. M Bacon offred them ten: They refused r it: why then, saith M Bacon, I will be onely a looker on. They drew, and catched r nothing. Saith M Bacon, Are not you mad Fellowes now, that might haue had an r Angell in yo purse, to haue made merry withall, and to haue warmed you throughly; th and now you must goe home w nothing: I but, said the Fishermen, we had hope r then to make a better Game of it: Saith m Bacon well my maisters, then I’le tell you: 28 Hope is a good Breakfast, but it’s a bad Supp[er].

It is fair to say that some of the apophthegms have stood the test of time better than others; this is one of the wittier ones. Some anecdotes also document Bacon’s political connections, but these, too, seem intended primarily as illustrations of his wit. The manuscript records, for example, a series of playful

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon

Figure 3 William Rawley’s manuscript miscellany. © Lambeth Palace Library MS 2086, fol. 1r.

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Chaplains in early modern England exchanges between Bacon and Elizabeth I, presumably reported to Rawley, since he did not enter Bacon’s service until long after Elizabeth’s death.29 It also records conversations between Bacon and James I, including one about the dress of ‘mr Gorge, one of my lo: chancellers men, who was somewhat phantasticall’, and an intriguing exchange between Bacon and Count Gondomar, after Bacon’s elevation to the Lord Chancellorship, in which the Spanish ambassador told him the fable of ‘an old Ratt’ and his wheel of ‘parmizan Cheese’.30 The question that all these apophthegms invite is how Rawley came to hear of them. From the manuscript, the impression is of a puppyish Rawley following his master around, with notebook in hand, ever ready to copy down examples of his eloquence and wit. Incidentally, from other sources there is reason to believe that this is precisely what he did do when he was in Bacon’s company. In his own ‘Life’ of Bacon, for example, which first appeared in the Resuscitatio, Rawley describes others doing this, as he remembers his master’s table-talk:

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His Meales, were Refections, of the Eare, as well as of the Stomack: Like the Noctes Atticæ; or Convivia Deipno-Sophistarum; Wherein, a Man might be refreshed, in his Minde, and understanding, no lesse, then in his Body. And I have known some, of no mean Parts, that have professed, to make use, of their Note-Books, when they 31 have risen, from his Table.

But for anyone familiar with the Lambeth Palace manuscript, it is hard not to think that Rawley was also talking about himself here, and that he, too, made use of his notebook after rising from Bacon’s table. And yet, even if this was the case, Rawley cannot have heard all the apophthegms in his miscellany – at least, not at firsthand. Many of them concern private conversations, and others, as we have seen, actually predate his entry into Bacon’s household. We might then suppose them to be reading notes copied from a printed text of the Apophthegms, such as the authorised inaugural edition of 1625, except that many of them, including both the fishing anecdote and Gondomar’s fable, appear only in editions that postdate Rawley’s compilation of his miscellany.32 One possibility, then, is that Rawley came to know the anecdotes through Bacon himself. That is to say, the manuscript may also document conversations between Bacon and Rawley in which Bacon recalled and recounted his exchanges with others. A likelier explanation, though, is Michael Kiernan’s recent suggestion that when Rawley transcribed apophthegms in the manuscript, he drew upon Bacon’s unpublished papers.33 Ultimately, though, however we explain the apophthegms, their presence in the miscellany amply testifies to Rawley’s closeness to and intimacy with his master. Other early modern authorities corroborate Rawley’s account of his relationship with Bacon. Archbishop Tenison, for example, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, paints a similar picture. In his Baconiana (1679) he twice attests to Rawley’s role as Bacon’s secretary and also to him taking notes

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon from dictation. First of all, he recalls the following story about the composition of the Sylva sylvarum:

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One day, his Lordship was dictating to that Doctor [Rawley], some of the Experiments in his Sylva. The same day, he had sent a Friend to Court, to receive for him a final Answer, touching the effect of a Grant which had been made him by King James. […] His Friend returning, told him plainly, that he must thenceforth, despair of that Grant, how much soever his Fortunes needed it. Be it so, said his Lordship; and then he dismissed his Friend very chearfully, with thankful acknowledgments of his Service. His Friend being gone, he came straightway to Dr. Rawley, and said thus to him. Well Sir! Yon Business won’t go on; let us go on with this, for this is in our Power. And then he dictated to him afresh, for some Hours, without the least 34 hesitancie of Speech, or discernible interruption of Thought.

This anecdote tells us a great deal about both Bacon’s working methods and Rawley’s importance to them, and it also offers support to Rawley’s account in the preface to the Sylva sylvarum. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that Tenison had it on good authority. Rawley’s son William and his nephew John were both friends with Tenison, and they are certainly plausible, perhaps even probable, sources for it. Slightly later in the Baconiana, Tenison again attests to Rawley’s secretarial role, this time describing him as ‘[a] Person whom his Lordship chiefly us’d in his Life-time, in Writing down, Transcribing, Digesting, and Publishing his Composures’.35 In fact, Tenison’s description here suggests that Rawley was more than just an amanuensis or scribe. ‘Digesting’ is the key word, since this connotes not only mechanical copying or transcription, but also arrangement, disposition, method and systematic form. Tenison’s description as a whole may also suggest this, since each term in his list implies a greater degree of intellectual involvement on Rawley’s part. Thus if his account is correct, Rawley appears to have been much more engaged in Bacon’s literary projects than a copyist or scribe would customarily have been. In short, he seems to have had a significant editorial role even before Bacon’s death. Bacon’s works, in many ways, bear out Tenison’s assertion. The first of his books to which Rawley indisputably contributed was the De augmentis scientiarum of 1623, and this is a case in point. This work is usually characterised as a Latin translation (and also expansion) of The Advancement of Learning, which was published eighteen years earlier in 1605. Bacon employed various scholars at different times to work on the translation, including the clergyman Dr Thomas Playfere, whom he approached early on, and a young George Herbert.36 Rawley, too, worked on the project, and he seems to have been employed primarily in a coordinating role, editing the work of the translators and seeing the passage of the book through the press. In the prefatory epistle that he contributed to it, he describes this role at some length.37 But he is also confident enough there to speak about the intellectual contents of the

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Chaplains in early modern England work, exploring first of all its relationship to The Advancement, and then locating it within Bacon’s larger scheme for the reform of learning, his ‘Great Instauration’. This, in turn, again suggests that Rawley’s involvement in Bacon’s intellectual projects was close and went beyond that of just a copyist or scribe. Early modern secretaries did, in fact, often play this sort of literary role, although the extent of Rawley’s involvement in Bacon’s projects is certainly unusual. As Harold Love has shown, secretaries to men of letters not only took regular turns at transcription, but also served as a vital point of relay in the process of print or manuscript publication.38 We know that Rowland Evans, for example, secretary (but not chaplain) to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was intimately involved in the production of manuscripts of his master’s 39 Autobiography. Secretaries, in the words of Angel Day in the longest early modern treatise extant on the subject, had to be capable of using ‘the Pen, the Wit and Inuention togethers’.40 Secretaries, in other words, were always more than just copyists or scribes. Rawley demonstrates Day’s ideal secretary perfectly, for his work, as we have seen, did go beyond transcription to presentation and ultimately publication. In his work, he did have to use not only his pen, but also his wit and invention. Furthermore, Rawley’s privy knowledge, his close access to Bacon, was not unusual for a secretary either. A secretary, after all, as the etymology of the word suggests, was also one who was entrusted with private or secret affairs. After Bacon’s death in April 1626, Rawley continued to work on his master’s behalf, and for the best part of the next forty years he devoted himself to editing and bringing out his previously unpublished works. In many ways, Rawley was the obvious candidate to take on this task. Although he was not named as one of Bacon’s literary executors in his will, he was one of the two principal recipients of his literary remains and so came to have control over a large part of his unpublished papers.41 The first of his editions duly appeared three years later in the summer of 1629: Certaine Miscellany Works of the Right Honovrable, Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount S. Alban. This volume, a small quarto printed by John Haviland of the Eliot’s Court Press, contains four of Bacon’s political pieces: Considerations Touching a Warre with Spaine, An Advertisement Tovching an Holy Warre, An Offer to Ovr Late Soueraigne King Iames, of a Digest to be Made of the Lawes of England, and the skeletal History of the Reigne of King Henry the Eighth.42 Apart from the first, all of these pieces were printed for the first time in Rawley’s volume. What makes this edition so striking is the trenchant preface that Rawley wrote for it. In this preface, Rawley presents himself first of all as the guardian of his master’s flame, again drawing upon his service as chaplain to him to justify this, and then as the defender of his works from what he describes as the unauthorised incursions of the press:

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon

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I Haue thought good, as a Seruant, to the Labours, and Memory, of that Noble Lord, the Lo. Viscount S. Alban, to collect into one, these few, rather Parcells, than Iust Works, of his excellent Pen. Which I haue done for these Causes. First, to vindicate the Wrong, his Lordship suffered, by a corrupt, and surreptitious Edition, of that Discourse of his, Touching a Warre with Spaine, lately set forth. Secondly, by way of Preuention, to exempt, from the like Iniury, & Defacements, those other Discourses of his, herein contained. Lastly, to satisfie the Desires of some, who hold it vnreasonable, that any the Delineations of that Pen, though in neuer so small a Modell, 43 should not be shewen to the World.

The volume to which Rawley alludes here is an unauthorised edition of the Considerations Touching a Warre with Spaine, which was brought out earlier in 1629, without a proper imprint, and had not been not entered in the Stationers’ Register.44 He therefore fashions his own volume as a kind of textual rehabilitation, a defence of Bacon from the murky world of unlicensed printing. But he does not stop there. Not only content with righting previous bibliographical wrongs, he also proceeds to defend Bacon from any future wrongs by explaining his decision to print the other three unpublished texts. In doing this, he also, of course, helps to stake his own claim to Baconian textual authority and establish his legitimacy as Bacon’s editor. As a final justification for his publication of the volume, he implies that he has been asked to bring it out: he has published the edition, in his own words, to ‘satisifie the Desires of some’. At first, we might assume Rawley’s assertions to be little more than editorial puff, an attempt to boost sales of his volume on the basis of its textual authority. While some businesses, perhaps most obviously the king’s printing house, did have both the resources and the manpower to bring out properly corrected new editions, many early modern printers did not, and so this kind of profession of editorial correctness should be treated with some scepticism.45 But in Rawley’s case, his claims to correctness do have a certain validity. He had, as we have already seen, privileged access to authorial manuscripts. His commitment to publishing Bacon’s works was also long standing. Intellectual reasons and service to his late master, rather than financial motivation, therefore seem to have been his primary incentives. In fact, in publishing the Certaine Miscellany Works, Rawley may also have been concerned with the reputation of his master more generally. As Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart have pointed out, the language of his preface is ‘irresistibly resonant of Bacon’s fall’ following his impeachment in spring 1621.46 It is hard therefore not to connect Rawley’s rehabilitation of Bacon’s texts there with his broader project to restore and promote his master’s reputation, a process which began six years earlier with the dedication of the printed text of his Sermon of Meeknesse, preached at the pulpit cross at St Mary Spital on Easter Tuesday 1623. Rawley, incidentally, seems to have missed the irony in dedicating a sermon on meekness to Bacon.

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Chaplains in early modern England The Certaine Miscellany Works was the first of four major collections of Baconiana that Rawley published. In 1638 he brought out Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Vervlamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, Opervm Moralivm et Civilivm Tomus, which contained among other things Bacon’s final version of the De sapientia veterum and important, but previously unpublished, pieces belonging to the Instauratio magna. In 1657 he brought out the first edition of his Resuscitatio volume, and a year later a collection of mostly philosophical pieces, the Opuscula Varia Posthuma, Philosophica, Civilia, et Theologica. An undated memorandum in his miscellany suggests that he may also have made some attempt, or at least had some intention, to have Bacon’s works published 47 abroad: ‘To gett my Lds. Booke printed in France’. In each of his editions, as with the Certaine Miscellany Works, Rawley presents himself as defender of the text, rescuing his master’s works from the infamy of corrupt and mangled editions. In the preface to the Resuscitatio, for example, he admits that Bacon, in fact, never intended to publish some of the works therein: ‘It is true, that for some of the Pieces, herein contained, his Lordship did not aim, at the Publication of them, but at the Preservation onely’. But, just as John Heminges and Henry Condell had done in Shakespeare’s First Folio, he justifies his own publication of them on the grounds of unauthorised editions that have nevertheless appeared: ‘But now, for that, through the loose keeping, of his Lordships Papers, whilest he lived, divers Surreptitious Copies have been taken; which have since, employed the Presse, with sundry Corrupt, and Mangled, Editions; whereby Nothing hath been more difficult, than to find the Lord Saint Alban, in the Lord Saint Alban’.48 Finally, in language that is again redolent of rehabilitation and justice, he writes that he therefore considered himself ‘in a sort, tied, to vindicate these Injuries, and wrongs, done to the Monuments, of his Lordships Penne’.49 Despite these professions of authenticity, Rawley was himself not above emending the texts in his possession. In fact, collation of his editions with surviving manuscript copies suggests that he could be highly interventionist as an editor. In his Resuscitatio volume, for example, he seems to have gone through many of the texts and emended verb endings, favouring the more archaic – eth where the surviving manuscript witnesses do not. Thus in his edition of Certaine Articles or Considerations Touching the Union of the Kingdomes of England and Scotland (1604), for example, his text reads ‘Prohibiteth’, ‘beholdeth’, ‘termeth’, ‘resteth’, ‘maketh’, and ‘resteth’, where all the other witnesses read ‘prohibittes’, ‘Beholdes’, ‘termmes’, ‘restes’, ‘makes’, and ‘restes’.50 The same pattern can be observed in his edition of A Brief Discourse Touching the Happy Union of the Kingdomes of England and Scotland (1603). Again, contrary to the other witnesses, the Resuscitatio text favours –eth endings. These readings may, of course, have been present in Rawley’s exemplars, which do not survive, but the fact that they appear only in the Resuscitatio certainly makes it possible

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon that they originated with him. Why he might have wanted to archaise his texts in this manner is a matter of conjecture, but we might understand it as a further bid for textual authenticity. More strikingly, Rawley also seems to have emended some of his texts according to political circumstances. Thus in his edition of the Certaine Articles he changed the phrase ‘yo[u]r Com[m]ons’ to ‘the Commons’: a minor emendation, but one that is in keeping with that volume’s broader attempt to tone down the extent of Bacon’s monarchism for its Protectorate readership.51 Given Rawley’s own position as a former royal chaplain, and the suspicions that his parishioners raised about him at various points in the 1640s and 1650s, it is hardly surprising that he sought to do this.52 Rawley promoted Bacon’s reputation after his death in one other way as well. In addition to publishing his texts, he also had a hand, at local level at least, in their dissemination. Each time that he published a volume, he donated a copy to the library of his old college. Robert Masters was the first to record this, noting in his History that ‘[h]e presented Lord Bacon’s Works to the College Library as he published them’.53 Today, only one of these donations can be identified with any certainty: a copy of the Opervm Moralivm et Civilivm Tomus, which has an ex dono inscription, probably in Rawley’s own hand, at the foot of the title-page (‘Ex dono clarissimi viri Guilielmi Rawley SS. Theol: Doctoris huius Collegij quondam Socij’ [By gift of the most famous man William Rawley, Doctor of Theology, former fellow of this college]).54 Given its exceptionally wide outer margins (c. 80 mm), this is likely to be a large paper copy: in keeping, of course, with its status as a presentation volume. The book itself is bound in calf, decorated in a plain style with an outline frame of broad fillets and an additional second fillet parallel to the spine. The close proximity of this second line to the spine suggests a date of around 1640, when this style of binding was first in vogue, which in turn suggests that the book is still in its original binding.55 While this is the only one of Rawley’s Bacon volumes that survives, some of his other donations are still in the college library. These include the ‘Plato ex Interpretatione Serrani in Three Volumes in Fol’ and the ‘Ciceroes Workes in Fol in 2. Volumes printed by Charles Stephen’ that he bequeathed to the college in his will, and four of the seven books in a 56 manuscript list recording a previous donation by him. In many ways, of course, the example of Rawley is an unusual one. Few noble patrons involved their chaplains in their literary projects to quite the extent that Bacon did, and in this respect few early modern households resembled his at Gorhambury. Indeed, more than anything, what the example of Rawley does illustrate is that model of collaborative scholarship, which was so integral to Bacon’s ‘instauration’, and for which he so assiduously argued. Furthermore, Rawley’s duties as a secretary were also very particular. While secretaries did, as we have seen, undertake literary tasks for their patrons, their day-to-day duties more typically involved what we might think of as office

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Chaplains in early modern England work: copying, writing letters, docketing papers, filing documents. These, on the evidence of surviving manuscripts and his own account, were not, in the main, the tasks that Rawley undertook. Indeed, Bacon seems to have employed other secretaries to work in that day-to-day capacity. Thus while his chaplain worked as a literary secretary, assisting him with his publications, other young men, such as Thomas Meautys, undertook the more mundane secretarial tasks. In this respect, it is telling that among Bacon’s papers we find very little material copied, or even docketed, by Rawley himself, and where we do, such as the Sylva sylvarum drafts, it is clear that once again his role went beyond that of a copyist or scribe.57 So in many ways, too, the tombstone inscription with which this chapter began rightly emphasises the unusualness of Rawley’s career as a domestic chaplain. And yet the example of Rawley can tell us something about the cultural significance of early modern chaplains more generally. As William Gibson has pointed out, ‘[i]n many households a chaplain and his patron might be the only educated men, perhaps the only graduates’, and this meant that chaplains were therefore obvious candidates to become secretaries.58 Rawley, of course, was not the only educated man employed by Bacon. Nor was he the only secretary in Bacon’s household. But his role there does still illustrate the kinds of secular duty that a domestic chaplain might undertake. More than anything, though, his role in the household demonstrates the intimacy that might develop between an early modern chaplain and his patron. That intimacy, as I have suggested in this chapter, was what enabled Rawley to become, in the words of the Landbeach inscription, so faithful an editor of Bacon’s works. And that intimacy, too, perhaps helps to explain why Rawley came to be known as ‘[h]is Lordships First, and Last, CHAPLEINE’. For while Rawley was not the first – rather, he was the last – of Bacon’s chaplains in terms of chronology, he clearly was the first in terms of importance, intimacy and rank. Notes 1 In his will Rawley asked that his ‘body […] bee buried in the Chancell of Land Beach close to the Head of [his] wife’; see NA, PROB 11/324, sig. 97. For the relocation of his tombstone (and others in the church), see R. Gambell, All Saints’ Landbeach: The Story of a Fen-Edge Church (Cambridge: Milton Contact, 2009), pp. 97–100. 2 The transcription is a fully diplomative one. For reproductions of the tombstone, see B. G. Theobald, Dr. Rawley’s Epitaph (Bath: Bacon Society, 1940), p. 6; and Gambell, All Saints’ Landbeach, p. 98. 3 See W. Rawley, Resuscitatio, Or, Bringing into Publick Light Severall Pieces, of the Works, Civil, Historical, Philosophical, & Theological, Hitherto Sleeping; Of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount Saint Alban (1657), sig. (a)2r: ‘WILLIAM RAWLEY, Doctor in Divinity, His Lordships First, and Last, CHAPLEINE’.

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon 4 G. Rees, ‘Introduction’, to Francis Bacon, The Instauratio magna: Last Writings, ed. G. Rees, The Oxford Francis Bacon XIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. lxxiii. 5 Ibid., pp. lxxiii–lxxxiii; A. Stewart, ‘Rawley, William (c. 1588–1667)’, ODNB; and A. P. Langman, ‘“Beyond, both the Old World, and the New”: authority and knowledge in the works of Francis Bacon, with special reference to the New Atlantis’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of London, 2007), pp. 27–81. The last, though, should be treated with some caution, as it makes claims about Rawley’s self-promotion through his editing of Bacon that depend heavily on the prefatory material to the Sylva sylvarum and are not necessarily sustainable if we look at his editorial projects as a whole. 6 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 117. 7 For the most detailed account of Rawley’s time at Cambridge, see R. Masters, The History of the College of Corpus Christi and the B. Virgin Mary (Commonly called Bene’t) in the University of Cambridge, From its Foundation to the present Time (Cambridge, 1753), pp. 357–60. 8 Masters, The History of the College of Corpus Christi, pp. 133–4. 9 W. K. Clay, A History of the Parish of Landbeach (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1861), p. 60. 10 A. P. M. Wright and C. P. Lewis (eds), A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, IX: Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds (North and North-West of Cambridge) (Oxford: Oxford University Press for The Institute of Historical Research, 1989), p. 151.

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11 See R. Tittler, Nicholas Bacon: The Making of a Tudor Statesman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976), p. 187. 12 21 Henry VIII 13, c. 11: ‘And that the Chauncellour of England for the time beyng and every Baron and Knyght of the Garter may have thre Chapleyns’. This Act was an attempt by the House of Commons to restrict clerical plurality and non-residence. However, as the example of the Lord Chancellor shows, it permitted numerous exceptions to the rule. For useful discussions of the act, see S. E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 92–4, and D. Crankshaw, ‘The Elizabethan Faculty Office and the aristocratic patronage of chaplains’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications, 1996), pp. 20–75. 13 BL, MS Royal 17 A LVI, fol. 26r–v. 14 Quoted in Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 27. 15 J. Spedding, The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, 7 vols (London: Longman, 1861–74), 6.173. See also R. O’Day, ‘The ecclesiastical patronage of the Lord Keeper, 1558–1642’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 23 (1973), 89–109 (p. 94). 16 NA, SP 14/95/64. The fact that the cheque refers to Bacon as Lord Chancellor, but does not call him Baron Verulam, suggests that it was written some time between January 1618, when he was appointed to the Lord Chancellorship, and 12 July that year, when he was given the title Baron Verulam of Verulam. 17 See J. Venn and J. A. Venn (eds), Alumni Cantabrigienses, Pt. I from the Earliest Times to 1751, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–7), 3.273. 18 S. Matthews, Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 121.

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Chaplains in early modern England 19 Whatever the chronology, the designation of Rawley as ‘First, and Last’ seems to reflect a new emphasis on chaplains’ precedence and rank: something also reflected in a late Elizabethan bill, which sought to amend the original Pluralities Act and required chaplains to bishops and noblemen to register themselves in this kind of way. See further D. Dean, Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 112–15. 20 For the most detailed account of the role of a domestic chaplain in the early modern period, see Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 69–111. 21 Spedding, Letters and the Life, 7.45. 22 Rawley, Resuscitatio (1657), sig. (a)4r. 23 OED, s.v. ‘amanuensis’, n., and OED, s.v. ‘instrument’, n. 1(b). 24 J. Aubrey, ‘Brief Lives’, Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set Down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696, ed. A. Clark, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), 1.70. 25 F. Bacon, Sylva Sylvarvm: Or A Natvrall Historie. In Ten Centvries (1627), sigs ¶1v, A1r. 26 Bacon, Sylva Sylvarvm, sig. A3r. 27 LPL, MS 2086. For descriptions of the manuscript, see E. G. W. Bill, A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library: MSS 1907–2340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 90; and F. Bacon, The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh and Other Works of the 1620s, ed. M. Kiernan, The Oxford Francis Bacon, VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), pp. 636–7. 28 LPL, MS 2086, fol. 1r. See also F. Bacon, Apophthegmes, in Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh and Other Works of the 1620s, p. 263. 29 See, for example, LPL, MS 2086, fols 3r–v, 4v, 17v. 30 LPL, MS 2086, fols 5r, 7v.

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31 W. Rawley, ‘The Life of the Honourable Author’, in Resuscitatio (1657), sig. C1v. 32 For the first printed texts of these two apophthegms, see A Collection of Apothegmes New and Old, in W. Rawley, Resuscitatio, Or, bringing into Pvblick Light Several Pieces of the Works, Civil, Historical, Philosophical, & Theological, Hitherto Sleeping, Of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount Saint Alban (1661), sigs 2P4v (n. 36) and 2Q1v (n. 43). 33 M. Kiernan, ‘Introduction’, to Bacon, Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh and Other Works of the 1620s, p. cxx. See also pp. cxvi–cxxxvi, for an account of the complex textual history of the Apophthegmes more generally, including the relationship between the Lambeth Palace manuscript and the various printed witnesses. 34 T. Tenison, ‘An Account Of all the Lord Bacon’s Works’, in Baconiana. Or Certain r Genuine Remains of S . Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, and Viscount of St. Albans; In Arguments Civil and Moral, Natural and Medical, Theological, and Bibliographical; Now the First time faithfully Published (1679), pp. 45–6. 35 Ibid., p. 79. 36 For Playfere’s involvement, see Bacon’s letter to him, probably of August or September 1606 (Spedding, Letters and the Life, 3.300–1). For Bacon’s employment of Herbert, see Tenison, ‘An Account’, p. 24. 37 See ‘Gvilielmvs Rawley, Sacræ Theologiæ Professor, Illustrissimi Domini D. Francisci Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, Sacellanus, Lectori S.’, in Opera

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William Rawley and Francis Bacon Francisci Baronis de Vervlamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, Tomvs Primvs: Qui continet De Dignitate & Augmentis Scientiarum Libros IX (1623), sig. ¶2r: ‘Cvm Domino meo placuerit, eo me dignari Honore, vt in edendis Operibus suis, operâ mea vsus sit; non abs re fore existimaui, si Lectorem de aliquibus, quæ ad hunc Primu[m] Tomu[m] pertinent, breuitèr moneam’ [Since it has pleased my Lord to deem me worthy of this honour, that he used my work in publishing his works, I thought that it would not be amiss if I briefly advised the reader of some things which relate to this first volume]. 38 H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 98–9. 39 See M. Rossi, La Vite, le opere, i tempi di Edoardo Herbert di Chirbury, 3 vols (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1947), 3.509. 40 A. Day, The English Secretary, Or Methode of writing of Epistles and Letters (1599), sig. 2Q3r. For an illuminating discussion of Day’s concept of the secretary, see A. Stewart, Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 175. 41 For a list of Bacon manuscripts in Rawley’s possession, see BL, MS Sloane 629, fols 244r–45v. 42 For Haviland’s involvement in the Eliot’s Court syndicate, see H. R. Plomer, ‘The Eliot’s Court printing house, 1584–1674’, The Library, 2 (1922), 175–84 (pp. 181–3). 43 Certaine Miscellany Works of the Right Honovrable, Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount S. Alban (1629), sig. A3r–v.

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44 Rawley’s edition, on the other hand, was entered on 4 May 1629. See E. Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 AD, 5 vols (London: privately printed, 1875–94), 4.210. 45 As Brian Richardson has shown, these professions were often nothing more than a marketing strategy; see Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 1–18. For the editors and correctors employed by the king’s printing house, see G. Rees and M. Wakely, Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 53–5. 46 L. Jardine and A. Stewart, Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998), p. 521. 47 LPL, MS 2086, fol. 41r. 48 See Mr. William Shakespeares, Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies (1623), sig. A3r: ‘we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to haue collected & publish’d them; and so to haue publish’d them, as where (before) you were abus’d with diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors, that expos’d them: euen those, are now offer’d to your view cur’d, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued the[m]’. 49 Rawley, Resuscitatio (1657), sig. (a)4r–v. 50 For Rawley’s edition of the Certaine Articles, see Resuscitatio (1657), sigs 2D3v–2F2v. The other witnesses to the text are: BL, Add MS 4149, fols 114r–31v; BL, Add MS 41613, fols 37r–47r; Folger MS G.b.9, fols 210r–26v; Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, MS Hardwick 51, fols [82]r–[93]v; Senate House Library, University of London, MS 20, fols 231v–48r;

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Chaplains in early modern England and The Queen’s College, Oxford, MS 32, fols 194r–202r. While Rawley’s text is closely related to three of these manuscripts (Add. MS 41613, MS Hardwick 51, and MS 32), collation suggests that none was its exemplar. 51 See Rawley, Resuscitatio (1657), sig. 2D4r. 52 In 1644, for example, twelve parishioners petitioned against Rawley, and in 1650 he was accused of being ‘no profitable minister’; see Rees, ‘Introduction’, to Bacon, The Instauratio magna, p. lxxv. 53 Masters, The History of the College of Corpus Christi, p. 359. 54 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, shelf-mark M.4.47. 55 For this style of binding, see D. Pearson, English Bookbinding Styles 1450–1800: A Handbook (London: British Library, 2005), pp. 66–8. 56 This list, in an unidentified late seventeenth-century italic hand, is headed ‘Books given by Mr. Rawley to ye library of C.C.C.C.’, and is copied on one of the front flyleaves of a 1659 Basle edition of Johann Buxtorf’s Exercitationes (now Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, shelf-mark B.10.12). The books bequeathed in Rawley’s will are Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, shelf-marks G.2.2–4 and G.1.11. 57 See G. Rees, ‘An unpublished manuscript by Francis Bacon: Sylva sylvarum drafts and other working notes’, Annals of Science, 38 (1981), 377–412.

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58 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 2.

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Chapter 8

.

Richard Corbett and William Strode: chaplaincy and verse in early seventeenth-century Oxford Christopher Burlinson

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C

hrist Church, Oxford – college and cathedral – was home in the first half of the seventeenth century to a succession of poets who were, or would become, chaplains (John Gregory, William Strode, Jasper Mayne); bishops, either in Oxford or beyond (George Morley, Brian Duppa, Henry King, Richard Corbett, many of whom had also served as chaplains in one capacity or another); or churchmen of some other rank (such as William Cartwright). It was an institution where the structures of the Church (as well as the careers of its churchmen) were intimately connected with the composition and transmission of poetry – poetry which was itself closely shaped by the practices and routines of academic and ecclesiastical life at college. Many of these poems, as literary scholarship has now widely come to appreciate, passed from hand to hand in manuscript alone; often anonymous, brief, and concerned with the comings and goings of life in college and in the city of Oxford, they survive today in some of the dozens of notebooks and other manuscript collections, of various forms and degrees of scribal formality, that were compiled in Christ Church or owned by its fellows and students. Several of them re-appeared, later in the seventeenth century, in printed miscellanies that often explicitly acknowledged, or indeed advertised, their university origins: to take one example, Parnassus Biceps; or, Severall Choice Pieces of Poetry, Composed by the Best Wits that were in both the Universities before their Dissolution (1656).1 And a further number of printed collections, including several volumes of royal panegyric, originated in Christ Church or were associated with its academic and ecclesiastical members.2 The careers of chaplaincy and poetry, then, were tightly entwined at Christ Church. Much of the aforementioned poetry was written by chaplains themselves (members of college who served – or would come to serve – as royal chaplains; or chaplains to the Bishop of Oxford at Christ Church) or by figures served by them; some of it was written about chaplains, and it was

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sometimes copied and distributed by them. This connection is explicitly noted by a number of recent studies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry. H. R. Woudhuysen, for instance, points out that ‘a great impetus was given to this activity by Henry King when a canon of the Cathedral, by allowing copies of his own verse to be made, principally by Thomas Manne, the college Chaplain’, and that ‘along with King’s presence at Christ Church (William Strode was his chaplain), Richard Corbett also contributed to its importance as the centre for Oxford poetry in manuscript’.3 The connection extends to more minor figures, too. John Gregory, for instance, student of Christ Church, scholar and librarian at the college, who was made chaplain to Brian Duppa after Duppa’s appointment as dean of the cathedral at Christ Church, and who then accompanied Duppa in the same capacity when he became Bishop of Chichester in 1638 and was translated to Salisbury in 1641, was no more than an occasional poet. His poem on the breaking of Christ Church windows, however, 4 found its way into manuscript circulation, and he was memorialized after his death in 1646 by a number of elegaic poems in the preface to a 1649 volume of his writings, augmented in 1650, a volume that in its full title (Gregorii Posthuma; or, Certain Learned Tracts Written by John Gregorie, M.A. and Chaplain of Christ-Church in Oxford, together with a Short Account of the Autor’s Life, and Elegies on his Much-Lamented Death) remembers him explicitly as chaplain. This poetic commemoration includes verses by Richard Goodridge, ‘To the memory of my dear Friend, and Tutor, Mr John Gregory’ (not in the 1649 edition), and others ‘Upon the much Deplored Deceas of Mr Iohn Gregorie, Chaplain of Christ-Church’, which remember him as a person with ‘a perfect Knowledg of each Art, / That either Rome or Athens could impart’, a man ‘so admir’d of all’,         that had alone Diversitie of Tongues for’s Portion; So fluent, so redundant in them all, 5 That each which hee had got seem’d Natural.

Richard Corbett, royal chaplain early in his ecclesiastical career, then Bishop of Oxford from 1628 until 1632, and subsequently Bishop of Norwich until his death in 1635, exemplifies both of these aspects of Christ Church life – Church and poetry – and their many connections; he is a figure in whose life (and writings) chaplaincy and verse intersect in frequently prominent and often unexpected ways. Corbett’s poems, written on various subjects (elegies and religious satires, accounts of court politics and the emergent news culture, witty remarks upon university occasions and scandals, and so on), enjoyed an extraordinarily wide readership in the 1620s and 1630s. Very few of them were printed during his lifetime, but they recur on the pages of Oxford miscellanies and collections with roughly the same frequency as those of Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew or Henry King (if not quite so remarkably often as those of John Donne).6 Alongside them circulated poems about Corbett, celebrating

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford moments in his life (such as his marriage) and also his ecclesiastical career at Christ Church, as well as his career as a poet and a patron of poetry – poems in which he was celebrated, in the words of his most recent editors, ‘as the Maecenas of the university’.7 That his poetic renown in Oxford seems to have persisted even after his elevation to the episcopacy is suggested by a poem written by another Christ Church man, Nicholas Oldisworth, dating to the early 1630s, which delivers a rebuke to the current generation of poets for their failure to commemorate the deeds of the renowned Protestant hero, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden:

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        I am loath to wish, Yet I must wish, that reverend Corbett were Noe bishoppe: hee such Pyramids would reare, 8 As should out-last all Time.

A further number of poems circulated alongside these, meanwhile, that satirised Corbett in his ecclesiastical capacity, more than one of which mocked his shambolic performance as royal chaplain when preaching to King James at Woodstock in August 1621. Another voiced a barbed response to Corbett’s poem addressed to the Duke of Buckingham on the occasion of his visit to Spain with Prince Charles in 1623, sending up, in its first four words, Corbett’s own ecclesiastical oath: ‘False on his deanery!’9 As well as this poetic prominence, Corbett also exemplifies a particular route through Jacobean and Caroline ecclesiastical preferment and promotion, a route in which chaplaincy figures in more ways than one. He became Dean of Christ Church in 1620, was a royal chaplain throughout the 1620s, and was then appointed as a bishop, with chaplains of his own, William Strode and Thomas Lushington, both of whom followed him in the same capacity when he was translated to Norwich. Brian Duppa, likewise, whom Raymond Anselment describes as the most influential figure of his day in the promotion of panegyric verse at Christ Church,10 was serving as royal chaplain in 1628, became Dean of Christ Church in 1629, and then Bishop of Chichester, Salisbury, and in 1660, Winchester; Henry King, too, served as royal chaplain from 1618, canon of Christ Church from 1624, and then Bishop of Chichester after Duppa. The anecdotes about Corbett famously recorded by John Aubrey (who says of Corbett that ‘[his] poems are pure natural wit, delightful and easy’) may perhaps be apocryphal, but they suggest at least a proverbial proximity between this particular bishop and his chaplain, and also the broader intersection between the languages of friendship and chaplaincy in the seventeenth century. On one occasion, Aubrey writes, ‘being to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his chaplaine (Lushington) and sayd, “Some dust, Lushington” (to keepe his hand from slipping).’11 He writes later that ‘his chaplain, Dr. Lushington, was a very learned and ingeniose man, and they loved one another’:

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The bishop sometimes would take the key of the wine-cellar, and he and his chaplaine would goe and lock themselves in and be merry. Then first he layes down his episcopall hat,—‘There lyes the Dr.’ Then he putts of his gowne,—‘There lies the 12 Bishop.’ Then ’twas, ‘Here’s to thee, Corbet,’ and ‘Here’s to thee, Lushington.’

Corbett’s last words, according to Aubrey, remembered his chaplain one final time: ‘The last words he sayd were, “Good night, Lushington”’. Little or no verse known to have been written by Lushington survives today, even though his acquaintance with Corbett’s poetry may possibly be suggested by a miscellany containing two of Corbett’s poems (and a further erroneous ascription of authorship to Corbett) compiled by Elizabeth Lyttelton, daughter of Sir Thomas Browne (Cambridge University Library, Additional MS 8460), to whom Lushington had once been tutor.13 But Corbett’s other chaplain, William Strode, was a poet every bit as productive, as widely read, and at least as distinguished as Corbett himself.14 The connection between their poetic careers predated the period of Strode’s chaplaincy; Strode’s Latin ‘Oratio’, for instance, headed ‘In Admissionem Decani Corbett’, commemorated Corbett’s receipt of the deanship of Christ Church in 1620.15 And it derived, too, from the frequently occasional quality of the poetry produced in seventeenth-century Oxford, and the tendency of a number of poems by various authors commenting upon the same occasions (births and deaths, for instance, university events, or moments of political import) to circulate, and be collected, alongside one another. Shared response to a single occasion or figure gave rise to much of this poetry, as well as shaping the way in which it was collected in manuscript as well as print, and bishop and chaplain participated together. In the early 1630s, for instance, both Corbett and Strode wrote poems on the fortuitous survival of the stained glass windows at Fairford church in Gloucestershire (as did Jeremiel Terrent, another student of Christ Church), and their poems on the subject are frequently adjacent in contemporary manuscript copies.16 Strode also translated a number of Corbett’s poems into Latin; one of these translations, of Corbett’s poem written on the birthday of his son, Vincent (‘What I shall leave thee none can tell’), appears in a number of manuscript copies. That the author of this particular poem should occasionally be identified explicitly as Corbett’s chaplain demonstrates the knowledge shared by many of these verse collectors of the ecclesiastical institutions at Christ Church.17 More of Strode’s Latin translations of Corbett’s English poems, meanwhile, appear in a notebook (Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 325) compiled in Strode’s own hand, but they do not appear to have been circulated more widely than this. This particular manuscript contains a sequence of Latin translations, all identified as Strode’s own, of Corbett’s poem on the birth of Prince Charles (‘What Ioy that Shunamite did once inherit’; IELM, CoR 512), headed ‘Natalitium Caroli’ (IELM, StW 1460; fols 24r–25r), of an unattributed poem ‘On the same’ (‘Great Child, who gazest on the world new-showne’; IELM, CoR

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford 759), beginning ‘Magne Puer, qui monstratum circumspicis orbem’ (IELM, StW 1459; fol. 25r), of Corbett’s poem, mentioned above, on Vincent Corbett’s birthday (IELM, StW 1387; fol. 26r), and of a poem on the death of Benet Corbett, Richard Corbett’s mother, in October 1634 (‘Heere, or not many feete from hence’; IELM, CoR 58), beginning ‘Herberti Cinis invidere noli’ (IELM, StW 1439; fol. 27r). This section of Strode’s notebook is neatly arranged, with English poems on a succession of verso pages, and their Latin translations on the facing rectos, suggesting not only that Strode had a number of texts to hand and copied them all in a single stint (and did not, therefore, need to transcribe strictly page by page), but also that he was being careful to record his own verse in parallel with that of Corbett. These poems all date to 1630–34, the period when Strode was serving as Corbett’s chaplain in Oxford, and then in Norwich. Strode and Corbett’s poetic collaboration, in other words, persisted when they were no longer based at Christ Church, but the poetry to which it gave rise came to be circulated very differently – recorded privately in Strode’s notebook rather than in Christ Church miscellanies. The Latin translations appear in no other manuscript copy, although two are printed in the Oxford collection, Britanniae natalis (1630), both with attributions to other authors (seemingly the authors of their English versions) – the translations of ‘Great Child’, attributed to Leonard Hutton, and of ‘What Ioy’, attributed to 18 Corbett himself. The composition of Latin verse on designated topics may have been part of rhetorical teaching in seventeenth-century Oxford; such poems were, at least, recorded in other student notebooks in conjunction with other more conventionally pedagogical material. St John’s College, Cambridge MS S.31, for instance, contains a number of Latin verses entitled ‘In Somnum’, and others entitled ‘Carmen Funebre’, alongside prose exercises and letters to academic figures; that the various letters recorded in this manuscript ‘ad Decanum’ (to the dean) are superscribed ‘Reuerendissime Mecænas’ [sic] suggests that their originals might have been written to Corbett in the 1620s.19 Strode also participated more broadly in the translation of English poems into different Latin versions: Folger, MS V.a.322, for instance, collates three translations (two by Randolph and one by Strode) of Ben Jonson’s ‘Farewell to the Stage’, transcribing corresponding stanzas of each on successive openings (pp. 170–81). The poems in Strode’s notebook, then, correspond rather neatly with some of the different ways in which Latin verse was written and read in seventeenth-century Oxford. In their proximity, and in their use of Latin translation, the poems of Corbett and Strode, bishop and his chaplain, occupy a very similar transmissional space to those of tutor and student. But the relationship between Corbett and Strode, as this essay will argue, is unusual and important because it suggests that that the connection between poetry and chaplaincy in early seventeenth-century Oxford was not necessarily

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Chaplains in early modern England (at least, not exclusively) one of transmission – as some of the work conducted by the scholars mentioned at the start of this essay has suggested. Mary Hobbs’s scrupulous analysis of the notebook of Thomas Manne, senior chaplain and lecturer in rhetoric at Christ Church from the 1620s until the early 1630s, for instance, shows that Manne enjoyed access to Henry King’s copies of his own poems, and that he methodically copied King’s poems and disseminated them.20 But Strode’s example, as I shall argue, shows that chaplains were not necessarily always conduits for, or active distributors of, the poems written by their bishops or canons – or, at least, that the process of transmission also involved holding poems back, keeping hold of them and denying them circulation, as well as releasing them to be copied. And as we follow Strode and Corbett to Norwich, their history also allows us to re-examine the poetic relationship between bishop and chaplain as it moves away from the centre of verse transmission in Oxford.

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I The significance of chaplaincy for the transmission – and the holding back – of verse arises in two poems that date from Corbett’s time as a royal chaplain, one of them written partly about him and the other written by him. Corbett served in this capacity throughout the 1620s, until 1628, when he was appointed Bishop of Oxford; his career followed the pattern that Kenneth Fincham has described as characteristic of the Caroline chaplaincy and episcopacy; under Charles, as Fincham shows, bishops were increasingly chosen from the Chapel Royal (rather than among the chaplains of noblemen, for instance, as had occasionally been the practice under James), often with the explicit guidance 21 of William Laud, later Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud, as I will suggest later, seems to have continued to have had an influential relationship with Corbett, a relationship which shaped Corbett’s treatment of Strode’s verse. In 1621, King James visited Woodstock, about ten miles from Oxford, where he was met by a group from the university and heard a sermon preached by Corbett. As Peter McCullough has written, James was eager to hear sermons delivered by masters of arts and bachelors of divinity from Cambridge when on hunting trips at Newmarket or Royston; at Woodstock, similarly, he could hear preachers from Oxford.22 On this particular occasion, James watched a performance of Barton Holliday’s play Technogamia, which had previously been put on at Christ Church in 1618, and the performance of which at Woodstock gave rise to a remarkable outpouring of satirical and counter-satirical verse in manuscript.23 Corbett’s sermon has not survived, but it was commemorated satirically: Corbett was widely ridiculed for having lost his train of thought while fiddling with a ring that James had given him. A frequently copied poem, for instance, concludes by mocking him:

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford The King and the Court desirous of sport    To Woodstock apart did hye. Thither went the proctors and the Sattin sleeu’d doctors    And the rest of the learned fry. Theire noses did shine more of Ale, then of wine    So that euery one their thought, And guest by their hue (as then it was true)    They were better fed then taught. Many on foote, not a Cloake, nor a Boote,    And yet to Woodstock they wud [sic] Which was for to show how far they would goe    To doe his Majestie good. Many beside with their wenches did ryde,    (For Scholars yee know are kynd) And still euermore, as they ride before    They were kissing their wenches behynd.

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The Reuerend Deane with his band starcht cleane,    Did preach before the King. A Ring was spyed in his bandstring tyed,    Was not that a prettie thing? The Ring without doubt, was the thing put him out,    So oft hee forgott what was next; For they that were neere will say and sweare 24    That hee handled it, more then his text.

The incident appears to have become proverbial for Corbett’s ineptitude as a preacher (and a convenient way of ridiculing him), and references to it recur in other poems about him. A response to Corbett’s poem ‘To the Ladyes of the New Dresse’, for instance, rebukes Corbett for his zealous advice about Lenten dress, and ends with a reference to his ring: Be wise, recant what you have writ, Least you do pennance for your wit; Love-charmes have power to weave a string 25 Shall tye you as you ty’d your ring; (lines 13–16)

The final eight lines of ‘The King and the Court’, which appear frequently in isolation in contemporary manuscript copies, are little more than lightweight (if abusive) satire, but they are illustrative of at least two important attitudes to Corbett’s chaplaincy, or of the ways in which those attitudes were expressed. Firstly, the primarily university-based references in the poem (in which Corbett is described as ‘Dean’ rather than royal chaplain, and in which he is juxtaposed with other university figures – proctors, doctors, and scholars) remind us that this kind of satire emerged from, and circulated within, the university, even if it often posed as the voice of an outsider. And secondly,

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the lines suggest that in the early years of his chaplaincy, Corbett was being mocked for his excessive attachment to the gifts of his patrons. This accusation about Corbett’s grasping after patronage, and his obsequi­ ousness as royal chaplain, resonates with another, much more significant, poem from the early 1620s. Early in 1623, Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham travelled to Spain to attempt to secure Charles’s marriage to the Infanta, Maria.26 This proposed marriage had already been under negotiation for almost a decade, since the 1614 visit to England of the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar; along with the concessions to Catholics that James had seemed willing to grant, these marriage negotiations had given rise to a great deal of anti-Catholic sentiment in England, as well as a number of anti-Catholic verse libels. Charles and Buckingham set off for Spain, ostensibly incognito, and thereby instigated another volley of libellous verses; their delegation, though, was a disaster, and Charles returned to England without a wife. Corbett’s poem on the 1623 voyage (‘A Letter to the Duke of Buckingham’) poses as an astonished rebuke to the many fanciful libels circulating about the prince and his companion while they remained abroad, and as a wish that Buckingham could return to England once again in disguise (‘oh that you were / Now in Blackfryers in a disguis’d haire’, lines 13–14), perhaps under the false identity with which he had travelled to Spain (‘that you were Smith againe’, line 15), so that he could hear and scoff at the tales being told about him. Corbett proceeds to recount a number of these slanders, beginning with the claim that Prince Charles’s chaplains have been excluded from his company: There you should heare, how the State-Grandees flout you, With their twice-double diligence about you; How our environ’d Prince walkes with a guard Of Spanish Spies, and his owne Servants barr’d; How not a Chaplaine of his owne may stay, When hee would heare a Sermon preach’d, or pray. (lines 21–26)

Two chaplains had indeed accompanied Charles and Buckingham to Spain, both of them heads of Cambridge colleges: Matthew Wren, President of Pembroke, and Leonard Mawe, Master of Peterhouse. An elegy written on the death of Thomas Washington, one of Charles’s pages on this journey, is sometimes attributed to Wren.27 Corbett’s lines are perhaps most striking for the collocation that they make between chaplains and ‘Servants’, and their figuring of the service of chaplaincy (and other kinds of service) as one of ‘environ[ing]’. Corbett lines up a series of institutions and circumstances that embrace and enclose Charles and Buckingham: the libellous attention of the ‘State-Grandees’ back home that circulates ‘about’ the two travellers, the ‘guard / Of Spanish Spies’ that have allegedly been placed upon him in Madrid, the corresponding bar that excludes his own servants and chaplains who have accompanied him from England,

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford and, implicitly, the enclosure of the Chapel Royal (either topographically or institutionally), which ought to be providing the prince with a private place to worship and hear sermons. Tellingly, Corbett does not (and perhaps, given his distance from Spain, cannot) explicitly debunk these libels, and so the nature of his response to their authors is somewhat unclear. In line with the other exaggerated rumours that Corbett recounts, often about the price and scarcity of food in Spain, his poem seems to imply – but does not explicitly declare – that they are false, but it remarks sardonically, on the other hand, on the obsessions of the writers that lead them to report such things: in the case of the rumours about food, for instance, ‘Lord! how our stomackes come to us againe, / When wee conceive what snatching is in Spaine’ (lines 47–8). This lack of an explicit rebuff means that Corbett, in the lines above, seems poised between a sarcastic insinuation that Charles must, of course, have complete access to his chaplains, and on the other hand the implication that it would not greatly matter if he were denied that access. The final lines of the poem, though, go some way to resolving this ambiguity, as Corbett imagines a triumphant outcome to the Spanish journey: Charles and Buckingham’s safe return and a tableau that once again turns on the environing of the royal figure:

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        The Prince and You At either hand of Iames, (You need not sue) Hee on the right, you on the left, the King Safe in the mid’st, you both invironing. (lines 79–82)

The last of these lines, though, permits a further syntactical ambiguity – is the King ‘invironing’ Charles and Buckingham, or they him? Who is protecting, and isolating, whom? This question, moreover, corresponds exactly with the complex relationship that Corbett imputes between himself and his patrons. He concludes by anticipating the reward that he apparently hopes to receive from Buckingham (and perhaps the royal party), either on account of the poem that he has written to and about them, or because of their continued patronage: In this I have a part, In this I see Some new addition smiling upon mee: Who, in an humble distance, claime a share In all your greatnesse, what soe ere you are. (lines 89–92)

Andrew McRae, in one of the few recent sustained critical assessments of Corbett’s poetry, describes these lines as an ‘outright profession of selfinterest’. Corbett’s ‘vision’, McRae claims, is of ‘a familial circle of royal patronage, hedged from criticism by the lines of a loyal poet’, and therefore an ‘enclosed and self-sustaining’ domain, which stands for both Corbett’s idealisation of royal hierarchy, and the environed space from which he speaks.

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Chaplains in early modern England Corbett both ‘hedge[s]’ this domain, then, in McRae’s words, and is implicitly ‘hedged’ by it: he attempts to legitimate himself through his proximity to (or presence within) the very enclosure that he praises and creates.28 But this poem is also unique (at least among the surviving contemporary libels about the Spanish Match, and Charles and Buckingham’s journey to Spain) in mentioning Charles’s chaplains;29 and this, in turn, suggests that Corbett, himself a royal chaplain, is not only asserting a clear link between chaplaincy and patronage (or even staking a claim, in his position as chaplain, to a place that would empower him to make open requests for advancement), but is also accounting for that enclosed space as either physically or metaphorically devotional. The poetic voice of royal chaplaincy grants, and is sustained by, that ideal royal environment. This combination of exclusiveness and self-interest with the devotion both voiced and permitted by the institution of chaplaincy is borne out by Corbett’s correspondence with Buckingham in the early 1620s. A letter written by Corbett on 26 February 1623/24 protests elliptically that he has suffered (undefined) ‘great losses’, and claims that if his letter is not a means to repair them, ‘I 30 fear I am in dainger to bee utterly undon’. Another, written one or two years earlier, in response to questions posed by Buckingham about the true Church, and accompanying some ‘rather conclusions then discourses’ upon the subject, seems to corroborate anxieties shared by Laud that Buckingham was contemplating a conversion to Catholicism, but Corbett claims a relationship of complete exclusivity with its recipient: ‘I have used that secrecy that I have not yet read it over to any’.31 Bennett and Trevor-Roper point out (contra Corbett’s previous nineteenth-century editor, Octavius Gilchrist) that Corbett’s intention in these letters may have been to acquire a bishopric rather than a chaplaincy, since he was already a royal chaplain. But it is equally clear, from Corbett’s poetic ‘Letter’ to Buckingham, that he associates chaplaincy with a position that makes it possible for him to seek the favours of patronage, and with the granting of an ‘inviron[ed]’, devotional space to those very patrons. And the protestation that all other witnesses had been denied admission to his correspondence with Buckingham has striking similarities to a letter sent from Corbett to Archbishop Laud about seven or eight years later, in relation to one of his own chaplains, William Strode. II Corbett wrote to William Laud, then Bishop of London, on 27 April 1630, congratulating him on the confirmation that he was to be elected Chancellor of Oxford University, and sending him a copy of a poem written to commemorate this occasion:32

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford My Honorable Lord;

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Not longe after your Lordships Election theis verses were brought mee in honor of the Chancellor; sure the man had a good meaning that made them and is rather to bee com[m]ended for his nature then his Art; It is in your L[o]rdships power wheather your self will read them or not; and as much in the same power wheather any else shall read the[m], for as yet they haue past no hands but mine owne, and ar not in the Memory scarss in the Conscience of the Author; … Londinensis in Angelum Cathedræ? pæan; Oxonij quod eligatur Est hoc Iudicij; Quod eligatur Omnes ante alios Amoris hoc est; Vincendo geminu[m] Decus reportat, Affectu fruitur Sibj dilato Detractòq[­ue] alijs. Simul creatur Vno sic titulo bis Alterisdem. Bis præses meritò; An Caput præesset Cuj imponant Crerebro=disertiora De Vulgj mediocritate Membra? An tot præsbyteros doceret vnus Aulæ Laicus? Aulicusne tantj est? Vt nobis Dominus præesset Ille Qui seruum acciperet sibi futurum Ductorem, et Dominu[m]? pudet periclis; At nunc Mitra Togam trahit sequacem; Nunc Matrem Pater Vniuersitatem; Expertus Iuuenem; Senem Verendus. Artes Relligio; Piusque doctos; Et Qui Templa regit Scholas gubernat; Vultis plaudere fortius Camanæ? Delectum hunc Catharus, Britoque damnant;

Cambros, et Catharos vnicis certamine in vno? Væ Tibj; Noster eras; Arminianus eris.

May all those honors bee multiplied vppon your L[o]rdship w[h]ich you haue allready in the wishes

of your L[o]rdships humble freind and seruant 33

Rich: Oxon

(... for the messenger of the Cathedral of London. This is a mark of judgement that he has been elected as a Paean to Oxford; it is a mark of love that he has been elected before all others; he brings back a double glory from his victory, who enjoys the love that is enlarged upon him and taken away from others, who, at the same

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Chaplains in early modern England time as he is elected to a single title, is twice elected head. Deservedly twice a head: for can the head preside when the common, vulgar parts are victorious over the wiser brains? And should one of the hall of the lay teach so many priests? Is this petty courtier of such worth, that he should stand forth as lord over us – who should receive, as a servant, that man who should be leader and lord over him? Even the threat is shameful! But now the mitre leads the toga behind it; now the father leads the mother university; the experienced man, the youth; a venerable man, the old; religion, the arts; and a good man, the learned. And he who rules the Church, governs the schools. Do you want to applaud more loudly than Camana? This one was chosen by the clean one, and the Britons condemned. Woe is you, Welsh and Puritan, united in a single battle; you were ours, you will be Arminian.)

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The composition and circulation of Latin verse could speak powerfully to a poet’s identity, and the materiality through which such an identity was shaped: Corbett’s own Latin poems were predominantly published in occasional print volumes rather than in manuscript, as was the case for his vernacular verse.34 Here, the poem he transcribes further complicates questions of identity, with its closing repetition of the puzzling (and hard to translate) ‘Catharus’ – probably, but not certainly, here meaning ‘the clean one’ or puritan. Those questions of identity extend further in this manuscript text, for Corbett does not identify the author of the poem offered to Laud, but it was almost certainly written by his chaplain, William Strode, and survives today in only one other copy – Strode’s personal notebook described in the first section of this essay (Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 325). Corbett’s copy, however, is incomplete: in Strode’s book, the poem has a small number of minor textual variants, and also a further seven lines at the beginning, which supplement its abrupt opening in Corbett’s letter: Isis quod Thamisi vehit Tributum, Argenti nitido fluens Liquore, Omnis Theiologo quòd Ars ministrat, Et Mitram simulat Iugum Bicorne, Casu hoc euenit, an latet profundum? Certè Emblemata debitos honores Musarum Oxonidum vocâsse credo Londinensis in Angelum Cathedræ. (That Isis which bears its tribute to the Thames, flowing with bright silver water, in the same way that every art attends upon theology, and whose two-forked mouth looks like a mitre, does this happen by chance, or does it hide some deeper truth? Certainly I believe that these due honours bestowed upon you by the Oxford Muses called them forth as emblems for the messenger of the Cathedral of London.)

Corbett’s ellipses may suggest that he had only part of the poem to hand (perhaps one sheet of an early copy); the uncontroversial nature of the absent lines, within this rather conventional gesture of devotion on the part of the

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford university, make it difficult to believe that he would have omitted them deliberately. But Corbett’s promise to Laud that he will not circulate the poem any more widely, alongside the claim that it exists neither in the ‘Memory’ nor the ‘Conscience’ of its author, seems to hand its property over to Laud at the same time as it separates the text from its actual author, and also grants Laud the power to circulate it to other readers, should he so wish. With the passive construction at the beginning of the letter, indeed (‘theis verses were brought mee’), and the omission of Strode’s name as the poem’s author, Corbett transforms his chaplain from a writer to a conveyor of poetry; Laud, in his power to hold the poem back, almost becomes its new author. This poem of dedication and praise, then, which has passed from the hand of a chaplain to his bishop, is now passed again from a former royal chaplain to a senior bishop and university head; in both cases, the chaplain delegates to the poem’s recipient (whether intentionally or by force) the power to pass it on further. Corbett’s letter, then, provides further illustration of some of the ways in which the poetry of chaplains was embedded within the relationships of patronage in early seventeenth-century Oxford. The nuances of Corbett’s relationship with Laud, though, remain obscure. Is he using Strode’s poetic declaration as a way of ingratiating himself with Laud, the new chancellor of the university, to emphasise the discretion of their relationship, and to apprise him of the conduct of his subjects in the university? Or is he also attempting to help Strode into Laud’s patronage, perhaps into a position such as a royal chaplaincy? If that is the case, though, Corbett remains strikingly ambivalent about the place of poetry in managing those relations, since his letter passes on Strode’s poem at the same time as it seems to disavow its skill, or the skill of its author (‘rather to bee commended for his nature then his Art’); it hints, furthermore, at the possible commendation of Strode for his devotion at the same time as it withholds his name. By keeping his chaplain’s name from Laud, is Corbett retaining part of the agency within that process of patronage, ensuring that Laud would have to seek his advice before offering advancement to his chaplain, or even finessing Strode’s dedicatory poem into an opportunity for his own favour and advancement? Strode’s own career – university orator from 1629 (in which capacity he delivered, in Peter Beal’s words, ‘numerous orations and sermons, both in Latin and English’, at least four of which were 35 published), involvement in Oxford ceremonial politics from 1636, possibly at Laud’s instigation, and canon at Christ Church from 1638 – shows once again that chaplaincy and promotion coincided within the poetic circles of Christ Church, but Corbett’s letter (like his 1623 ‘Letter’ to Buckingham) shows him environing his powerful supporter, and closing off (both as a textual editor and a conduit for transmission) the news that reaches him. As for Corbett’s claim, though, that this poem exists no longer in the memory, and scarcely in the conscience, of its author – the existence of the

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Chaplains in early modern England fuller copy in Strode’s notebook suggests that he is correct in one way, but wrong in another. That copy makes it possible, or even very likely, that the poem was still in Strode’s possession in 1630, and either that he had already copied it into his book when Corbett sent it to Laud, or that he still owned an original sheet that he would later use to produce that copy. (It is not impossible, however, that Strode had handed his copy to Corbett in 1630, and only retrieved it, and copied it, later, perhaps even after Corbett’s death in 1635.) But the fact that this is the only other extant copy of the poem does suggest that Strode may not have shared it (whether in an early copy or in this book, whether in 1630 or later) – at least, to judge from the surviving evidence, it suggests that it may have had no further transmissional history beyond Corbett, Strode and Laud. And in spite of the claims that the poem makes to be speaking with a common Oxonian voice, it has a very private, and unshared transmissional history, shared only between bishop and chaplain, even after the bishop’s death. Strode’s notebook, indeed, contains a number of transmissional dead ends – poems about Corbett (such as the verses on his appointment as Dean of Christ Church), and by Corbett, that appear in no other contemporary copies. The anthem ‘For Trinity Sunday’, for instance, appears only here and in a much later seventeenth-century copy 36 made directly from this book by William Fulman. Bennett and Trevor-Roper place the ‘Antheme’ at the end of their chronological sequence of Corbett’s verse (noting also that Strode wrote two similarly titled poems, one of them on Good Friday).37 The copy in Corpus Christi College, MS 325, is subscribed ‘R. Norv.’ – in other words, Richard, Bishop of Norwich – referring explicitly to the period 1632–35, though this could denote the date of transcription, as well as the date of composition. Corbett’s poem on Benet Corbett appears only in Strode’s notebook, in Fulman’s copy, and in British Library, Harleian MS 464, in the hand of Corbett’s secretary, as the only poem within a sequence of Corbett’s letters dating to 1632–34. His elegy on Gustavus Adolphus exists in manuscript in only two other copies. The two clearly datable poems among these transmissional dead ends derive from 1632–34: in other words, from the time that Corbett and Strode spent, as bishop and chaplain, in Norwich. (The final poem in Strode’s notebook, incidentally, relates explicitly to a Norwich occasion: ‘A Prologe Crownd with Flowres / On the Florists Feast at Norwich’, and exists in no other extant copy.) This manuscript may suggest a number of things about the nature of Corbett’s late poetic career, then, and about the way in which it was shaped by his chaplain. It suggests, first of all, that Nicholas Oldisworth’s insinuation, recorded above, that Corbett stopped writing poetry when he became a bishop, was untrue. But it shows, too, that the poetry which he did write when he was Bishop of Norwich was transmitted very differently from his earlier verse – these few poems enjoyed a very limited transmission, circumscribed by

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford his chaplain, Strode (who seems to have kept hold of the poetry written in 1632–35, to have environed it, just as Corbett circumscribes Strode’s poem to Laud in 1630 as he environs Laud himself). It may suggest that Strode simply stopped, at that point in his own career, wanting to transmit and circulate poems – or that he stopped using Corpus Christi College, MS 325 to do so. Mary Hobbs suggests that Strode’s notebook was used in about 1631–32 by Daniel Leare, Strode’s cousin, as the source for a number of poems copied into his own manuscript (British Library, Additional MS 30982); this would not be inconsistent with Strode taking back the notebook and using it to copy poems that Corbett wrote at Norwich in 1632–34, but it might imply that he did not lend the book out to any future copiers – at least, not to ones whose 38 copies survive today. It may suggest that the transmission of verse was more shaped and constrained by geography than by institutional and ecclesiastical relationships themselves, that chaplains were able to act as conduits to their bishops’ poems only when they dwelt in a centre of poetic transmission such as Oxford or London. Corbett may have written other poems in Norwich that have now been lost, or it may just be that Oxford and London readers were less inclined to transcribe poems (such as Strode’s on the florists’ feast) that smacked of the provincial. But Corbett’s Norwich poems are hardly more frivolous than some of those dated to his Oxford career, and his poem on Gustavus Adolphus does appear in a contemporary collection (Folger, MS V.a.245) that contains a sequence of poems on the same subject, as well as forty poems by Strode. Strode, furthermore, returned to Oxford after Corbett’s death, as early as 1636 (when he gave a speech welcoming King Charles and was commissioned by Laud to write a play, The Floating Island, celebrating the occasion), and yet these late poems of Corbett’s did not enter circulation even then; the poem on Benet Corbett and the ‘Anthem’ on Trinity Sunday, indeed, are absent from the collections of Corbett’s verse printed in 1647 and 1648. It is clear that the transmissional agency that a chaplain could provide for the circulation of verse in seventeenth-century Oxford was not uniform and not automatic, and that it contained numerous eddies of environing and retaining—of holding poems back from distribution as well as passing them on. Notes 1 On these miscellanies, see A. Smyth, ‘Profit and Delight’: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004). 2 See R. A. Anselment, ‘The Oxford University poets and Caroline panegyric’, John Donne Journal, 3 (1984), 181–201. 3 H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 169–70. See also M. M. Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-

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Chaplains in early modern England Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot: Scolar, 1992), who provides scrupulous detail on both King and Manne, and on Corbett and Strode, which will be reviewed in greater detail below; and A. F. Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 32–3. 4 Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e. 97, p. 43. 5 Gregorii Posthuma (London, 1650), sigs. (a)5r-–v; (b)2v–3r. 6 IELM lists 764 poems by Corbett, including some of uncertain authorship but not including others of doubtful authorship attributed to Corbett. Very many of these copies appear in collections deriving from Oxford, and scores more will be listed in the updated online Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts. Corresponding figures for these other poets in Beal’s Index are 555 copies (Jonson), 799 copies (King), 1,289 copies (Carew), and 3,997 copies (Donne). 7 J. A. W. Bennett and H. R. Trevor-Roper (eds), The Poems of Richard Corbett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. xxxii, citing Bodleian Library, MS Latin Misc. e 32; unless otherwise stated, all verse quotations are taken from this edition. 8 Nicholas Oldisworth’s Manuscript (Bodleian MS. Don.c.24), ed. J. Gouws (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009), p. 83. The poem also survives in two other manuscript copies, Folger, MSS V.a.170 and V.a.319, both of which read ‘illustrious [instead of ‘reverend’] Corbett’. 9 Not printed in Bennett and Trevor-Roper (eds), Poems of Richard Corbett, but published online in A. Bellony and A. McBae (eds), Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from manuscript Sources . 10 Anselment, ‘The Oxford University Poets’, pp. 185–6. Duppa, for instance, edited Jonsonus Virbius (1638), a commemorative volume on the death of Ben Jonson.

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11 J. Aubrey, ‘Brief Lives’, Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set Down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696, ed. A. Clark, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), 1.186–7. 12 For more on such gently bibulous friendships, see S. Achilleos, ‘The Anacreontea and a tradition of refined male sociability’, in A. Smyth (ed.), A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2004), pp. 21–35. 13 The Union First Line Index of English Poetry, hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library (http://firstlines.folger.edu), lists only one possible attribution, entitled ‘Upon one dying of the purples by Mr. Lushington’, and beginning ‘Let none suppose a foul disease’: Rosenbach Library, MS 239/23, p. 377. The poem also appears in Bodleian, MS Rawl. poet. 199, p. 57, though without the attribution to Lushington. It is certainly possible (though can be only speculation) that some of the anonymous verse recorded in these manuscripts was composed by Lushington. 14 Beal, Index lists 1,385 copies of Strode’s English poems in manuscript, as well as a number of Greek and Latin poems; compare n.6 above. For a recent attempt to rehabilitate Strode’s writings, after long neglect, see A. Smyth, ‘“Art reflexive”: the poetry, sermons, and drama of William Strode (1601?-1645)’, Studies in Philology, 103 (2006), 436–64. See also S. Nixon, ‘“Aske me no more” and the manuscript verse miscellany’, English Literary Renaissance, 29 (1999), 97–130, and M. Forey, ‘Manuscript evidence and the author of “Aske me no more”: William Strode, not Thomas Carew’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, 12 (2005), 180–200, which illustrate the fluidity and complexity of authorial attribution in these manuscript witnesses.

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Chaplaincy & verse in 17th-century Oxford 15 Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 325, fols 4v-–5r (IELM, StW 1425). 16 Bennett and Trevor-Roper point out that Strode’s poem contains reference to windows installed at Fairford by Abraham van Linge between 1630 and 1640, and so must postdate 1630. They tentatively date the poems to c. 1630, but since they also write that the puritan destruction of windows, which Corbett’s poem in particular reviles, began around 1632, a later date (perhaps corresponding to Corbett and Strode’s time as bishop and chaplain in Norwich) seems quite possible: see Poems of Richard Corbett, pp. 156–7. 17 Strode is identified as Corbett’s chaplain alongside this translation in Bodleian, MS Rawl. poet. 206, pp. 52–3; his Latin poem also appears (never independently from Corbett’s English poem) in National Library of Wales, MS 12443A, I, pp. 10–12; Los Angeles, Clark Library, MS 1950.024, p. 12; Bodleian, MS Rawl. poet. 147, pp. 84–5; Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D 398, fol. 185r; Folger, MS V.a.245, fol. 22r; BL, Add. MS 30982, fol 43r-–43v; Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 325, fol. 26r. 18 Britanniae natalis (Oxford, 1630), sig K4r–v. 19 See http://scriptorium.english.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/images/index.php?ms=S.31& page=1. For more on this manuscript, see C. Burlinson, ‘The use and re-use of early seventeenth-century student notebooks: inside and outside the university’, in J. Daybell and P. Hinds (eds), Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 229–45. 20 Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, pp. 82–5. Manne’s note­­ book survives as BL, Add. MS 58215. ‘It would be hard’, as Hobbs writes, ‘to exaggerate Manne’s importance, as the only scribe linking Oxford and London to whom we can give a name’ (p. 84). 21 K. Fincham, ‘William Laud and the exercise of Caroline ecclesiastical patronage’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), 69–93.

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22 P. E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 125–41. 23 For notes on this occasion, and some of the texts (though not of the play itself), see J. Nichols (ed.), The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, His Royal Consort, Family, and Court, Collected from Original Manuscripts, Scarce Pamphlets, Corporation Records, Comprising Forty Masques and Entertainments; Ten Civic Pageants, Numerous Original Letters; and Annotated Lists of the Peers, Baronets, and Knights, Who Received Those Honours during the Reign of King James, 4 vols (London: J. B. Nichols, 1828), 4.713–15. 24 The poem (or the final eight lines) appears in numerous manuscript miscellanies; this copy taken from Folger, MS V.a.262, pp. 60–1, where it is entitled ‘Vpon King Iames his being at Woodstock / Song’. Bennett and Trevor-Roper do not reproduce this poem in their edition, and are generally dismissive of the textual significance of Corbett’s manuscript transmission: see C. Burlinson, ‘Response and accumulation: textual editors and Richard Corbett’s “Oxford Ballad”’, Studies in English Literature, 52 (2012), 35–50, in which I sketch out some plans for an edition of Corbett that will be more sensitive to the complexities of the manuscript tradition, and more accommodating to poems written about Corbett and in response to him. 25 Bennett and Trevor-Roper (eds), Poems of Richard Corbett, p. 91. 26 See further G. Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

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Chaplains in early modern England 27 The Union First Line Index identifies attributions to Wren in Rosenbach Museum, MS 1083/17, p. 159b; Rosenbach Museum MS 239/23, p. 189; and Rosenbach Museum MS 239/27, p. 338. The poem is on occasions attributed to another chaplain (though not one of Charles’s chaplains in Spain), William Lewis. Tom Lockwood argues that the attribution to Wren may show that he was ‘part of the poems’ earliest coterie circulation’: ‘Poetry, patronage and cultural agency: the career of William Lewis’, in the present volume, pp. 103–22. 28 A. McRae, Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 167–8. 29 See http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/spanish_match_section/Nv1.html. 30 BL, Harleian MS 7000, fol. 146, quoted in Bennett and Trevor-Roper (eds), The Poems of Richard Corbett, p. xxvi. 31 Bodleian, Rawlinson MS D 853, fol. 172, quoted in Bennett and Trevor-Roper (eds), Poems of Richard Corbett, p. xxiv. For more on this incident, see T. H. Watkins, ‘The Percy-“Fisher” controversies and the ecclesiastical politics of Jacobean anti-Catholicism, 1622–1625’, Church History, 57 (1988), 153–68.

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32 On Laud’s chancellorship, in particular his reform of the statutes of the university, see K. Sharpe, ‘Archbishop Laud and the University of Oxford’, in H. Lloyd-Jones, V. Pearl and B. Worden (eds), History & Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper (London: Duckworth, 1981), pp. 146–64. 33 Pierpont Morgan Library, MA 420 (St. Paul’s Cathedral vol. I, p. 59); a facsimile of the letter appears in IELM, vol. 2 pt 1, Plate 8. In transcribing the manuscript, I have expanded contractions and brevigraphs in square brackets, but have silently lowered raised letters, and have otherwise preserved spelling and punctuation. Corbett precedes the poem with four lines of marks that have the appearance of commas or apostrophes: these are reproduced in my transcription as one line of ellipsis. The letter is transcribed in Norfolk Archaeology; Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to the Antiquities of the County of Norfolk, 8 (1879), 332–3. For their invaluable assistance with parts of the following translation, I thank Tim Hill, Annie Bartoň, and Julie Barrau; all remaining errors of grammar and judgement are my own. 34 IELM, vol. 2 pt 1, p. 160. 35 IELM, vol. 2 pt 1, p. 361. 36 Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 325, fol. 49v. Fulman’s manuscript is Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 315; Strode’s notebook contains a number of notes, annotations and additional poems in Fulman’s hand. 37 Bennett and Trevor-Roper (eds), Poems of Richard Corbett, p. 161. 38 Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, pp. 120–4.

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Chapter 9

.

The Isham family and their clergy Erica Longfellow

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I

n the early 1620s Daniel Baxter, rector of All Saints, Lamport, North­­ amptonshire, wrote to Lady Judith Isham of Lamport House to thank her for the letter she had written following his wife’s death. Baxter began his letter with conventional thanks for her condolences, but before the end of the first sentence he had descended into an account of his ‘comfortless desolation’, a despair that we would now probably call depression. Baxter bewailed the fact that he had lost ‘father, mother, brethren, sisters and allmost everye one of my kindred’. Not surprisingly, he compared himself to Job and movingly described his feelings of powerlessness in the face of affliction: ‘[T]he Almightie hath sett me as a marke to shoote at and runneth vppon me, as a giant’.1 The language is powerful and even shocking in light of the reserved advice of contemporary grief manuals.2 But what is most interesting about this letter is not the depths of Baxter’s anguish but the fact that he chose to express his intemperate sorrow to a woman who was both his patron and his parishioner. By virtue of both her sex and her lay status, Lady Judith should have been submissive to Baxter’s superior, male, ordained spiritual authority. Yet she was also his patron, who probably supported him economically and professionally and certainly supported him spiritually. This letter demonstrates the complexity of that relationship, in which social superiority could outweigh the privileges of gender and clerical status. Not only did Baxter expose himself in this letter by sharing his despair with Lady Judith; he also explicitly begged for her spiritual advice and prayer. ‘[B]ecause I knowe your selfe hath beene in the Schole of affliction’, he explained, ‘I impart that Spirituall consideration which fare aggravateth myne affliction’. Lady Judith’s religious experience positioned her as one who could impart advice, as well as receive it. Baxter was one of four rectors of All Saints, Lamport, during the tenure of Sir John Isham, the first baronet, who owned Lamport Hall from 1605 until his death in 1651. The Ishams were typical of the upwardly mobile families

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Chaplains in early modern England of the period who established themselves as country gentry by carefully and ruthlessly investing fortunes made as London merchants. Sir John’s grandfather, another John Isham, was born in Northamptonshire, had a successful career as a mercer in London, and eventually returned to the county of his birth. He purchased the manor of Lamport not quite ten miles north of Northampton and secured the family fortune through enclosure and the canny purchase of the lease on Lamport rectory.3 The family’s careful stewardship of their holdings is reflected in their preservation of hundreds of letters, deeds, wills, mortgages, accounts, petitions and other papers relating to the estate, now in Northamptonshire Record Office. The Ishams also had an unusual family habit, fortuitous to the historian, of turning over a letter received to draft the reply on the verso, so that the archive in many cases preserves both sides of a correspondence. Sir John maintained the usual connections of a man in his position, exchanging letters and gifts with wealthy neighbours and kin, but, like his father and grandfather, he seems to have focused his ambitions on his children, serving in county offices but holding no position at court or as an MP. His son, Sir Justinian, the second baronet, was groomed to be a gentleman of leisure and pursued interests in science, literature, and theology. He continues to be known for his wide correspondence and 4 his part in the foundation of the Royal Society. Sir John’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth Isham, was respected among the local puritan gentry for her piety and intellect, and wrote what may be the first long narrative autobiography in English in 1638–39, as well as keeping a further paper with notes on her life.5 This rich archive offers an unusually rounded view of a minor gentry family in the first half of the seventeenth century. It enables us to see which neighbours they trusted, how they negotiated marriages, which books they read and how they treated their illnesses. It merits a place in this volume because it also gives us a rare glimpse of the complex social and spiritual relationships between such families and their clergy. Families like the Ishams rarely possessed house chapels, and the law did not allow them to retain a domestic chaplain. But their wealth and social position often enabled them to keep a chaplain in practice if not in name, either through control of the local beneficed clergy, as at Lamport, or through less official arrangements. Both Daniel Baxter and his immediate successor Thomas Bunning took on roles typical of a chaplain, providing spiritual advice and visiting the Isham family frequently, catechising, tutoring and representing the family on errands. Both were also financially and socially dependent on their patrons. But the Ishams also simultaneously enjoyed a close relationship with a much more eminent clergyman, the puritan John Dod, who acted as spiritual guide to Lady Judith and her daughters and became involved in family business. Dod, too, took on some of the duties of a chaplain, but his reputation enabled him to interact with the Ishams as a spiritual superior and social equal. The interactions between

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The Isham family and their clergy the Ishams and all of these ministers provide a microcosm of the shifting balance of power in clergy–gentry relations in the first half of the seventeenth century. Through their financial and social patronage of local clergy, the Ishams and families like them who could not keep chaplains were able to secure the spiritual services of a minister. For many families, including close associates of the Ishams, these unofficial chaplaincies also served to advance a religious cause, placing ministers of a particular persuasion – usually puritan – in safe situations, or providing shelter to ejected clergy.6 In his study of the domestic chaplain in this period, William Gibson notes that there are few diaries and letters by chaplains and no major manuscript 7 collections. Sources are particularly poor for the period before the Restoration. In the absence of such material, the wealth and variety of the Isham family papers enables us to test the limits of domestic chaplaincy in this period, discerning what was distinctive about the chaplain’s role and status, and what was common to all clergy who were dependent on patrons, whether or not they were officially employed as members of the household. The evidence suggests that in most cases lay families such as the Ishams consolidated their power over dependent clergy in this period, and that, with the exception of Dod, even clergy of higher social status found it difficult to exercise social and spiritual agency in their relationships with the local gentry. In the first half of the seventeenth century domestic chaplains were often poor and of lower status, and, like Daniel Baxter and his predecessors and successors, beholden to the family that employed them.8 Many parish clergy, by contrast, were on the rise socially and financially, in a way that often upset local hierarchies. In the early 1620s, for example, Stephen Marshall, the puritan lecturer of Wethersfield, Essex, married the niece of a baronet. The citizens of Wethersfield had secured a promise from Marshall that he would remain as their lecturer when they spent the large sum of £50 on a theological library for his use, but soon after his marriage Marshall began to feel that his stipend was not sufficient to support his new status. When William Kempe considered him for the living of Finchingfeld in 1625, Marshall took his case to a meeting of his fellow ministers, who decided that his new circumstances justified breaking 9 his promise to the people of Wethersfield. In this case, at least, the clergy did not feel that social and economic ambitions were incompatible with a puritan calling. In the 1630s, similar ambitions led to outright hostilities between Dr Thomas Temple, rector of Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, and the leading families of the parish, over Temple’s insistence on seating his family in a prominent pew. The feud culminated in a dubious accusation that Temple had been seen committing adultery in the offending pew. Christopher Haigh concludes that the feud demonstrates how complex and fraught relations between clergy and local gentry had become as clerical status rose. Temple was as well connected, if not better connected, as any of his Gloucestershire

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Chaplains in early modern England parishioners, but they saw his office rather than his pedigree, and refused, literally, to give way to a mere clergyman, blocking the path when they met Temple and his wife in the fields of the parish. ‘[I]t was not fit a parson’s wife should sit above her landlord!’ cried one of the offended gentlewomen, summing up local attitudes toward Temple and his social pretension.10 One underlying issue in Bourton-on-the-Water was that the ‘landlord’ had no real control over presentation to the living. Temple had acquired the living by purchasing it with his father, conveying it to a relative, and persuading the current incumbent to resign so that the relative could present the living to Temple.11 At Lamport, by contrast, John Isham the elder had in 1568 purchased a ninety-nine–year lease on the living of Lamport, worth about £100 a year at the time, but for which he and his descendants paid rent of only £48 a year. The lease on the rectory, along with the enclosure of local land, enabled John Isham to consolidate the fortune he had built as a mercer in the City of London, and laid the foundations for the long-term prosperity of the family, who held Lamport until the twentieth century.12 Such long leases were not very common, and it is not surprising that some of their contemporaries thought the Ishams’ prosperity had come at the expense of ministry in the local parish.13 A puritan pamphlet from the county printed in 1641 commented that the living at Lamport was ‘worth about 400 pounds yearely’, and ‘would give entertainment to any one of the most eminent Divines in either Universities’, were the Ishams not taking the income and allotting the incumbent only a stipend. ‘’tis pitty’, the writer concluded, ‘that such a great living should be swallowed up under colour only of a lease’.14 Whatever the morality of their lease on the rectory, the arrangement enabled the Ishams to maintain close control over the parish and its ministers, to serve as ‘landlords’ to the local clergy in a way that the gentry families of Bourton-on-the-Water could not. Several rectors of Lamport in the century from 1570 were related to the Ishams, and so already closely tied to them by kinship or marriage. Eusebius Pagit (rector 1572–74), was the grandson of Eusebius Isham of Pytchley and cousin of John Isham the elder, who had purchased the lease on Lamport rectory. Pagit was a puritan who was deprived for nonconformity by Edmund Scambler, Bishop of Peterborough, on 29 January 1573/74, but his cousin offered support and protection at Lamport until he found another living in Cornwall.15 Thomas Deane (rector 1587–1602) was a cousin by marriage of John Isham the elder, and Thomas Bunning (rector 1629–36, and curate from at least 1618) was the son-in-law of John Isham’s younger son Henry, like his brother Richard bequeathed only £100 to purchase a farm when the large estate worth thousands had passed in its entirety to the eldest son Thomas, and then to Thomas’s only son, the first baronet, Sir John. In her autobiography Elizabeth Isham frequently mentions her ‘Aunt Isham’, Henry Isham’s wife Elizabeth,

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The Isham family and their clergy daughter of Thomas Caunton of Nonnington, Kent, who appears to have acted as a dependent companion to Sir John’s invalid wife Lady Judith, with whom she shared memories of a Kentish childhood.16 Like Daniel Baxter, this elder Elizabeth Isham had a place of intimacy in the family and was privy to her patroness’s agonised deathbed scene. The younger Elizabeth describes herself as learning from the forbearance of her aunt, who ‘with cherefullnes’ bore ‘many afflictions’ of poverty and illness, ‘being [ fated] to work for her living heretofore’.17 Thomas Bunning was married to her daughter, Anne, and was thus probably doubly dependent on the upwardly mobile gentry family at Lamport Hall, whose prosperity had been secured through the poverty of their near relations and their clergy. The 1641 Northamptonshire pamphlet that bewailed the circumstances of the living at Lamport described Thomas Bunning as the curate, rather than the rector, and noted that he had ‘lived very 18 poore and long’ and that there was little preaching during his tenure. It is clear that a clergyman could not expect to earn his fortune or rise in the world as rector of Lamport. But how did that lowly status affect the social and spiritual agency of such clergymen, particularly their relationship with the local gentry? Sir John’s daughter Elizabeth’s autobiographical ‘Booke of Rememberance’, begun in 1638, offers evidence of what the family expected from its local clergy and how they were incorporated into the household, almost like trusted dependents. Elizabeth seems to have synthesised the conflicting religious sympathies of the family, including royalism, Prayer Book ceremonialism, and puritan styles of devotion and exposition of scripture.19 Her great-grandfather, John Isham the elder, who had purchased the lease on All Saints, and her father, Sir John, the first baronet, appear to have been more concerned with consolidating the family finances and their position in the local community than with religion of any persuasion – even John Isham’s decision to shelter his nephew Eusebius Pagit after he was ejected from the living at Lamport might be seen in this light.20 The culmination of their pragmatic conservatism was the second baronet, Sir Justinian, who had the security to take a more hardened position and go into hiding in the 1640s for his royalist and Laudian sympathies. This less devout side of the family was balanced by the exaggerated piety of several other members. Sir John’s blind father Thomas, probably influenced in his youth by Pagit, sent a book of his own devotions to the puritan minister William Fludd in 1585. Thomas’s wife Elizabeth the elder ‘rejoyce[d] together’ with her invalid daughter-in-law Lady Judith over their devotional reading; after an illness she gave away her property and lived thereafter on a small allowance, devoting herself to God. The younger Elizabeth Isham learned from all of these pious examples; in her ‘Book of Rememberance’ she recalls that the friendship between her mother and grandmother ‘hath ofton made mee call to mind of the love betwext Naomi and Ruth which they would sumtimes

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Chaplains in early modern England mencion’. The family also took great care over the religious education of their children; Sir John insisted that his daughter have Pagit’s catechism, and when Elizabeth the elder suggested that her grandchildren should learn the psalms, Lady Judith cautioned that they were too young to sing them with reverence.21 Elizabeth the younger mentions being influenced by the moderate puritan texts read by her mother and grandparents, such as Christian Praiers and Holy Meditations (1568), the sermons of John King, Randall and Preston, and A Garden of Spirituall Flowers (1610), by Perkins, Rogers and others.22 In the 1620s and 1630s, then, the Isham family combined a puritan devotional style with a reverence for ceremony that they did not regard as incompatible. Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Booke of Rememberance’ makes clear that in the 1630s they did not consider themselves as ‘precise’ as many of their neighbours in Northamptonshire, a county that fostered pockets of militant 23 puritanism. By the 1640s the Ishams would be staunchly royalist and would support a ‘malignant’ – probably Laudian – minister, William Noke, who was the subject of a petition to Parliament from the citizens of Lamport and Houghton, begging that he be replaced with ‘a godly divine’.24 Before the civil wars the Ishams seem to have expected the rectors of All Saints, Lamport, to share their combination of puritan learning and humble conformity. Daniel Baxter’s father Thomas, rector of neighbouring Draughton, maintained contacts with more radical puritans in the county, although he himself never troubled the authorities. Thomas Baxter sent his son to be one of the first students to matriculate at the new godly foundation of Emmanuel, Cambridge, in 1584, where he took his B.D. in 1607, and most likely learned the importance of a preaching ministry.25 In her ‘Booke of Rememberance’, Elizabeth introduces Daniel Baxter as ‘the disspencer of [that] word in this our parish’, and long after his death remembers that she learned particular interpretations from his teaching.26 Elizabeth and her mother and grandmother valued Baxter’s ‘good gift’ of praying and interpreting scripture extemporaneously, and felt that his making house calls to ‘expound’ to her 27 housebound grandmother was an important service. These were typically puritan practices, meant to supplement preaching, but Elizabeth Isham also praises the use of ceremonies, vestments, church music and feasts, which she most likely encountered at All Saints, since she rarely travelled beyond the village.28 The Ishams also seem to have valued intimacy with the parish clergy in a way that brought the latter under the control of the family. Daniel Baxter made regular house calls to the elder Elizabeth Isham, who was confined to her chamber during her final years, and to Lady Judith in her periods of illness. He was also sent as a representative of the family to consult the famous astrological physician Richard Napier over Lady Judith’s final illness. Lady Judith rightly suspected that Napier used ‘inderict meanes’ – magic – and refused to go to

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The Isham family and their clergy him herself. The family felt that a clergyman would be better able to distinguish ‘the lawfull waye of physicke’ from such ‘inderict meanes’. In the end Baxter’s discernment was unnecessary; Elizabeth reports that Napier prescribed only soothing cordials and prayer, ‘thereby intimating I suppose that she was past his care’.29 Although the element of magic makes this incident a little unusual, in visiting the sick and performing a personal service for his patron, Baxter was carrying out the expected duties of a parish clergyman. Herbert exhorts the country parson to have ‘thoroughly digested all the points of consolation’ to use when visiting the sick, and even an otherwise negligent minister might seize the opportunity to represent a wealthy patron on a personal errand.30 But Baxter’s concern for the family appears to have derived from more than clerical duty or self-interest, as the letter quoted at the beginning of this article suggests. In her account of his visit to Napier, Elizabeth Isham refers to Baxter as ‘our minister, who was ready to doe any good office’, and her accounts of family deathbeds demonstrate how emotionally connected to the family he 31 had become. When Elizabeth Isham the elder died on 10 August 1621, Baxter tried to comfort her son and daughter-in-law, but was so ‘over ruld’ with his own passionate sorrow that he only enhanced their grief, crying out ‘gon \is/ that worthy woman she is gon she is gon’. Baxter’s affection for his patron was so great that he could not keep the distance necessary to comfort the family and to help them to a Christian acceptance of her pious death. Elizabeth Isham the younger remembers that instead of learning resignation from the minister, his words moved her to indulge the vain wish that her grandmother was still alive.32 Baxter’s intemperate response had such an effect on the family that the rumour spread that his grief had made the dying woman ‘give another grone after they thought she was dead’, so that four years later her failing daughterin-law confided in a relative that she hoped that ‘he might not be with her at the time of her death for she feared that the vehemmency [sic] of his affect[ion] might bring her a gaine.’33 According to her daughter’s account, Baxter did manage to maintain a vigil by Lady Judith’s bed until she died, but he broke down during the private funeral, ‘having much a doe to read the buriall for 34 her’. The traces of Daniel Baxter’s association with the Isham family provide us with conflicting evidence of the agency of this sort of parish clergyman, a quasi-chaplain dependent upon his gentry patrons. It is clear that Baxter’s emotional involvement in the family at times compromised his clerical duty and even his dignity. At key moments when he should have been able to take the upper hand as a guide and model for the family of restrained Christian grief, Baxter lost control and probably lost some of the family’s respect; Elizabeth Isham confesses in her notes on her life that she had trouble restraining herself from scoffing or laughing at him in those years.35 Yet, his

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Chaplains in early modern England intimacy with the family also enabled Baxter to have great influence over their spiritual development. As the letter quoted at the beginning of this article suggests, his relationship with Lady Judith was one of reciprocal spiritual guidance, with each advising and encouraging the other in times of affliction. If her daughter’s interpretation of her deathbed is correct, Lady Judith was so concerned for Baxter that as she lay dying she worried that he would grieve excessively. Baxter’s agency in this case was to enable Lady Judith to develop an individual religious identity and her own role as his spiritual guide, in a way that is a precursor to the post-Restoration partnerships between women and their chaplains that Gibson discusses.36 The succeeding rector, Thomas Bunning, had rather less social and spiritual agency than Baxter. Bunning himself appears not to have had a university education, although his sons would go on to Sidney Sussex, the other Elizabethan godly foundation at Cambridge.37 Bunning served as curate from as early as 1618, when he is first mentioned in the ‘Booke of Rememberance’, before taking over as rector of All Saints in 1629, when Baxter finally moved to the wealthier living of Marston St Laurence, near Banbury, where he died in 1633. In spite, or perhaps because, of Bunning’s direct connection to the family as husband to Sir John’s first cousin Anne, Bunning appears to have had less influence on the Isham family than Baxter. He was Justinian Isham’s tutor in his early years – a typical role for a domestic chaplain – before Justinian was sent to Uppingham School.38 Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Booke of Rememberance’ mentions Bunning only four times: once when Elizabeth herself as a child asked him to explain the sin against the holy ghost; once when her mother asked him to preach on a particular text, Psalm 52:10, in thanksgiving for her recovery from an illness; and twice when he comforted her sister Judith after her mother’s death in 1625 and in her own final illness in 1636, probably shortly before his own death.39 Thomas Bunning had served in the parish for at least eighteen years of Elizabeth Isham’s life, nearly as many as Daniel Baxter, but he clearly was much less of a presence in her life and the life of the family, although he still performed some of the functions of a domestic chaplain for her mother and sister. Elizabeth Isham’s memories suggest that the judgement of the puritan pamphlet that Bunning ‘lived very poore and long, and no marvell if there were little preaching’, was less biased than one might expect from such a source.40 The evidence of Baxter’s and Bunning’s incumbencies demonstrate that the rector of Lamport was dependent upon the patron financially and even emotionally, and was expected to perform some of the duties of a domestic chaplain in addition to serving the local parish. The unusually long lease aggravated the dependency of the rector’s position, but the arrangement was not singular. Rosemary O’Day discusses the case of Sir John Coke, secretary of state to Charles I, who in 1639 arranged for the puritan Richard Lowe to

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The Isham family and their clergy be presented to the living of Melbourne, near Coke’s principal residence of Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire. Although the bishop of Carlisle held the advowson for Melbourne, Coke effectively controlled the living because he could supplement the meagre income. In return Coke expected the incumbent to act as chaplain to his household as well as to provide puritan ministry to the parish. Coke’s letters to his son demonstrate that Lowe acted in this role, undertaking a course of study with Coke’s son and submitting to Coke’s direction, but when Lowe died unexpectedly in 1640, the chosen successor, John Jemmat, declined the position because he feared being so dependent upon a patron’s generosity, even though Jemmat’s current position as a lecturer in Essex was far from ideal or secure. Jemmat’s decision may have been made with an eye on the changing times – Coke would be forced to flee Parliamentarian forces in 1644 – but it nevertheless suggests that clergymen were aware of, and wary of, the efforts of powerful gentry to control the clergy in poorer livings, through a combination of financial support and integration 41 into the household as chaplains. O’Day suggests that the Coke example, among others, provides evidence that puritan efforts to create lectureships and place godly ministers in vacant livings did not tend to lead to greater clerical control over the profession as a whole, but rather tended to consolidate lay control.42 The relationships between the Isham family and the rectors of Lamport can also usefully be compared to the experiences of Samuel Rogers. Rogers’s diary is one of the few surviving personal manuscripts by an official house chaplain from the period. Set alongside the material in the Isham archive, it can illuminate how the social and spiritual agency of a minister officially employed as a chaplain differed from the dependent parish clergy at Lamport. Rogers was the son of Daniel Rogers, lecturer of Wethersfield, Essex, 1625–52, and grandson of Richard Rogers, the renowned puritan writer of Seven Treatises (1603) and contributor to A Garden of Spirituall Flowers (1610), which both Elizabeth Isham and her grandmother read.43 Samuel Rogers also studied at Emmanuel, Cambridge, then in September 1635 became the chaplain to Lady Margaret Denny, widow of Sir Edward Denny, of Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. The Dennys were an old family who had lost most of their fortune in the Irish wars. As Tom Webster, editor of the diary, speculates, the arrangement ‘might have been a good match in social terms, bringing cheap renown to Lady Denny and a post of some status to Samuel Rogers’ but ‘it was far from perfect spiritually.’44 Rogers’ upbringing in a godly family and his education at Emmanuel had ill prepared him to serve in a family of more ordinary religious interests. On his second night in the household Rogers was already worried that he could not ‘see that fruite and sweetnes in family dutyes’ that he was accustomed to. Alas, the Dennys did not improve upon acquaintance; in his twenty-seven months there, Rogers would frequently

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Chaplains in early modern England lament the difficulty of serving ‘this frozen familye’, ‘a most barren rotten company’. Not only were some members of the family prone to drunkenness, but they were indifferent to the sabbath and chafed at his long prayers. Rogers found it a great challenge to his faith to serve such a family; by the end of his first year he was plaintively praying for ‘some fruit some fruit’, some sign that the family had been converted.45 The Isham family clearly returned more ‘fruit’ to their clergy than the Dennys did to Rogers, but Rogers also reported his frustrations at his social position in the household, and these entries shed light on the situation of dependent clergy in households like Lamport Hall. Rogers was not yet ordained when he served as chaplain to the Dennys; he was too young and needed a benefice before he could be ordained. Rogers never mentioned his lack of orders in the diary, but his lay status would have contributed to his dependence on the family and his inferior relationship to the conformist local vicar, Richard Butler, who quickly irritated Rogers by speaking out against New England, ‘Zelotes’ and those who opposed the Book of Common Prayer. On his second night in Bishop’s Stortford Rogers worried that ‘I am somew[ha]t = streightned bec:[ause] of pl1c3 [place]’, suggesting that he was already aware 46 of his subordinate position in the Denny household. By the late spring of his first year with the Dennys Rogers was lamenting that ‘I cannot be free in this place I am in; it is hard to conflict with great, imperious, captious, spirits’. That it was not merely the Dennys’ tempers, but their exercise of power that constrained Rogers is evident from his observation that ‘a litle with freedome, is better than abundance with putting a foot under anothers table’. By the end of June Rogers was bold to pray ‘that I may not put my foot under anothers table; but that with libertye, and sweetnes I may savour thee’.47 Rogers clearly perceived that his dependence on the Dennys’ hospitality prevented him from freely exercising his ministry. Daniel Baxter does not appear to have felt the same about his relationship to the Isham family, but their dependent relation Thomas Bunning may have. The evidence of Rogers’ diary demonstrates that frictions of social status, as well as of piety and religious inclination, could have a considerable effect on a chaplain’s living conditions and agency as a spiritual guide. We must be careful, though, not to assume that dependent clergy like Samuel Rogers or Thomas Bunning were always so strictly constrained by their inferior status in relation to local gentry. The practice of godly sociability meant that like-minded puritans of any status, ordained and lay, visited one another, prayed together and supported one another. The respect due from the lower ranks to the higher was still expected, but nevertheless a greater freedom of communication was sometimes possible in these gatherings. The staunchly puritan Harleys of Brampton Bryan, for example, regularly hosted ‘exercises’ attended by clergy and laity, and Sir Robert Harley’s support for

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The Isham family and their clergy puritan clergy extended to considering giving over his tithes from one living to supplement the income of the vicar of Brampton Bryan.48 Rogers reported attending prayer gatherings and fasts in Bishop’s Stortford and Hatfield Broad Oak, and repeatedly noted how his faith was ‘sweetly refreshed’ by more informal encounters with godly men and women in the locality, including local gentry such as Lady Denny’s son-in-law Richard Harlakenden of Earls Colne and the Barringtons of Hatfield Broad Oak, but also local men and women of lower status, including the Denny servants.49 When Rogers left Bishop’s Stortford in December 1637 to take up the post of chaplain in the much more godly household of Lady Mary Vere, he found himself in a significantly improved position, freed to exercise his calling, and his pleas that he might see the fruit of his ministry ceased. Rogers not only felt himself among like-minded people, but also found that his relationship with Lady Mary was the reciprocal one he had craved. Like Daniel Baxter in his mutual dependence on Lady Judith Isham, Rogers not only expected to minister to his mistress, but also to learn from her godly example. Three days after his arrival in Hackney he thanked God for giving him ‘great comfort in my Lady oh most difference between L. M.[argaret Denny] and her; oh my happy change’, and the next month prayed that he might learn from her ‘humble society’. Rogers did not see himself entirely as the pupil in this relationship; ten days later he noted that Lady Vere ‘multum consolata est me; (egoque vicem illam)’ [‘even much consolation is to me; (I consoled her in my 50 turn)’]. Rogers clearly expected their relationship to be one of mutual support and care, and was not afraid to humble himself before his mistress. He did, however, still experience occasional flashes of anger when he felt himself unduly constrained by ‘the darke, dusty, dulsome cariage of these women’, his mistress and her secretary Priscilla Watson, who ordered him not to add to a sermon he was charged to repeat and once complained, as Lady Denny often had, of his long prayers. Rogers clearly felt there were some areas in which a minister (even a still unordained chaplain) should have free rein and not be constrained by a laywoman, no matter how superior her status or how godly 51 her own credentials. Even if he still had the occasional complaint, in the Vere household Rogers clearly gained agency through the levelling effect of godly sociability. In this sense his experience can fruitfully be compared with that of another minister who features in the Isham archive and provides an interesting counterexample of a puritan clergyman who performed many of the duties of a domestic chaplain to various gentry patrons, but enjoyed considerably more autonomy and status than the Lamport clergy or Samuel Rogers. In her ‘Booke of Rememberance’, Elizabeth Isham introduces an episode in the year 1618 with the words ‘my mother began to be somthing sadd’. Lady Judith experienced a bout of religious melancholy, confining herself to her chamber

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Chaplains in early modern England and condemning herself for small or imagined failures, such as not being a sufficiently grateful daughter-in-law. The family sought help from Baxter, whose prayers provided her with some relief, but her daughter reports that he was unable to discover ‘the mallady of her trouble, that thereby he might have aplied a fitt Salve to her sore’. When the family could find no other relief their influential puritan neighbour Sir John Pickering recommended the eminent and by now elderly puritan divine John Dod, who, Elizabeth testified, had ‘a singuler gift in comforting afflicted consciences above any I know’. On his very first visit in autumn 1619, Dod succeeded in persuading Lady Judith to leave her chamber for the first time in months by expounding the 28th chapter of Isaiah, explaining that ‘whereas the wicked is broken, his chosen seed is beaten and tried and made as fitt ground to receve his word.’ Lady Judith’s subsequent recovery served as convincing evidence of the power of preaching ministry; nearly two decades later her daughter would remember how ‘all the house rejoyced at it’ – as well as the terms of the lesson that had been so effective. ‘I well remember those excelant expositions of his as if 52 they were but yesterday’, she wrote. Lady Judith’s illness and recovery were paralleled shortly after by the more famous affliction of Mrs Joan Drake of Esher in Surrey, who suffered bouts of extreme melancholy and possession that lasted ten years. Tom Webster describes Joan Drake’s case as an example of ‘the ground where pastoral reputations were made and advanced’, as Dod and other ministers worked to bring about the near miraculous cure of this wealthy gentlewoman.53 Elizabeth Isham’s account of her mother’s illness demonstrates that Dod had a well-established reputation for ‘comforting afflicted consciences’ before he encountered Joan Drake. Like the Drake case, Lady Judith’s illness also demonstrates puritan gentry networks in action. Dod was recommended to the Ishams by Pickering, and after he began her cure Lady Judith went to stay with another puritan neighbour, Mrs Nicholls, who ‘very Neighbourly used what helpe she could for [Lady Judith], having many ministers of her acquantance to be with her’.54 Dod was widely connected with the puritan gentry of Northamptonshire, who were not only more ‘precise’ than the Ishams, but also much more active in encouraging the spread of puritanism across the county. Dod had moved to the area when he was offered shelter by the Drydens of Canons Ashby after being ejected from his living in 1604. From 1606 Dod had served as the minister of Canons Ashby, a former abbey church that the Drydens regarded as a peculiar, something between a house chapel and a parish church. At Canons Ashby Dod appears to have served the Dryden family but also to have evangelised the locality, and he was repeatedly pursued for preaching without a licence, although the authorities were reluctant to move too decisively against such a popular and aged divine, by then in his late fifties. From 1611 the Bishop of Coventry, Richard Neile, moved against Dod and he was forced to leave

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The Isham family and their clergy

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Canons Ashby and by 1614 was in hiding. Dod then came under the protection of Richard Knightley of Fawsley, one of the most active puritan patrons in the county. In 1625 Knightley appointed Dod vicar of Fawsley, another irregular living where Dod, now seventy-five, served effectively as chaplain to the household, while others ministered to the parish, including his own grandson John Wilkins. Although Fawsley was a parish church, ODNB describes both Fawsley and Canons Ashby as ‘essentially private chapel[s]’ during Dod’s tenure.55 These successive appointments shielded Dod from episcopal sanction and provided him with a secure base from which to encourage puritanism in many of the leading families of the county. Lady Judith’s illness provided an excellent opportunity for Dod to cultivate a relationship with the Isham family. Dod continued to be a support to Lady Judith as she recovered, and was so trusted by the family that Sir John asked him to break the news of her brother’s sudden death. On his first visit to attend to Lady Judith, Dod also took on the task of catechising, setting the Isham children daily scripture reading and examining them on it, at times explaining what they had read, and then ordering that this routine be continued with the parents acting as examiners. The adult Elizabeth recalled much of what he said on his many visits, including comforting interpretations of scripture and rebukes directed to her personally (which she did not always choose to follow). His influence was so great that Elizabeth confessed she did not profit as much as she might have from Baxter and Bunning because their talents paled beside Dod’s: for Mr Dod had a delightfull easey way. which was very efectuall. and it was the more pleaseing because he expouned those comfortable places of Scripture which the other did not . soe in these times I found that this pleasent easey way was profitable to me that 56 “milke is for Babes”; strong meate for them of ripper sort[.]

Elizabeth Isham’s judgement here implies that Dod was best at confirming the faith of immature Christians. Her next comment demonstrates that he had also taught her to reason through what she read and was taught, as she skilfully employed one of Dod’s own interpretations against him. ‘I am not of there opinion’, she averred, who extole Mr Dod above all others. for it is a hard mater to make comparison. for so I should doe without my knowledge: every owne hath his proper gift of God one after this maner, and another after that neither bind I my selfe to the privat opinion of any. I know there is none but hath there infirmities, as Mr Dod excellenly 57 expounded James the v. [and] the 17.

Dod’s influence over Elizabeth Isham’s faith formation is evident here even as she attempted to push it away. Her account demonstrates that Dod, at this point without a benefice and in semi-retirement, was performing many of the

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Chaplains in early modern England duties of a domestic chaplain to the Isham family, as spiritual guide, catechiser and teacher. Yet, unlike Baxter and Bunning, Dod was relatively autonomous in this relationship, in part because of his status as a puritan elder, and in part because he did not depend on the Ishams for patronage. In Samuel Rogers’ terms, Dod did not have to put his feet under the Ishams’ table. Dod’s relative independence enabled him to plant seeds in the Isham family that he hoped would mature into fruitful puritan individuals, who might eventually become a nursery of godly evangelism like the Dryden and Fawsley households, sending out shoots of influence all over the county. Elizabeth Isham records Dod’s last visit to the family as shortly before her mother’s death in the summer of 1625, when Richard Knightley appointed him as vicar 58 of Fawsley. Dod surfaces again in the Isham family papers in 1630 when he and Knightley became involved in brokering a match between Elizabeth Isham and John Dryden, grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, who had sheltered Dod twenty-five years earlier. In his first letter to Sir John, Sir Erasmus notes that ‘my much honoured freind Mr Knightley and [by] our truly reuerensed and worthely beloued Mr Dodd’ had suggested the match and had offered ‘ample testimonye’ of Elizabeth’s ‘pietye and modestye’. 59 Dod’s role in the marriage negotiations is evidence of his high standing and social agency, as he acts here in much the same role as his gentleman patron Richard Knightley, as a trusted local connection who could introduce the families to one another and help smooth the arrangements between them. Isaac Stephens has documented the complex progress of these ultimately failed negotiations. He particularly notes Elizabeth Isham’s own agency in finally choosing not to press her father to agree to Dryden’s insufficient offer, in spite of her own developing love for her suitor.60 In addition to Dod’s role in the negotiations, the proposed terms for the marriage articles also provide evidence of the social and even religio-political agency of godly clergy and their relationship to their patrons. In Sir Erasmus’s first letter to Sir John, he requested ‘that you will constantly keepe in your howse, such a faithfull Mynister as they shall like of, to instruct and gouerne your howse’. Although the provision was soon overtaken by heated disagreements over jointure, Sir John appears to have promised initially to ‘keep’ a ‘faithfull Mynister’, possibly one ejected from his living, as a teacher and spiritual guide, chosen by Knightley and Dod (or possibly by the young couple themselves – the referent of ‘they’ is ambiguous). Sir John’s acceptance of this provision prompted Sir Erasmus ‘wth due thankfulnes to god (for this spetiall fauour)’ to offer what he saw as favourable terms for the marriage.61 At least initially, the advantage of the match from Dryden’s perspective was to bring a new and wealthy family into the Knightley–Dryden–Pickering circle that was supporting puritan clergy in Northamptonshire. The fact that this ‘faithfull Mynister’ was to serve in a chaplain’s role as instructor and

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The Isham family and their clergy household guide but is never in fact called a chaplain may reflect a puritan distaste for the dependency of a domestic chaplain, as well as the fact that the Ishams had no legal right to keep one. This ‘faithfull Mynister’, like Dod – but unlike Daniel Baxter or Thomas Bunning – would serve as an independent family adviser, rather than a dependent client. The support for puritan ministry was presumably expected to extend to the next generation, since Dod had nurtured Elizabeth Isham himself and could vouch for her piety and Calvinist orthodoxy, even if she were not as ‘precise’ as her prospective groom. Dod’s testimony to her piety seems to have borne more weight than any of the ceremonies about which they differed, which she agreed were ‘things indifferent’. The match was significant enough to local religious politics that when the negotiations broke down a puritan neighbour – possibly Knightley – intervened to try to prevent the breach becoming, as Elizabeth Isham put it, ‘a scandall to that Religion which they profest’. The marriage was clearly perceived as a key religious alliance that would add another family to the local gentry who were supporting an unbeneficed puritan clergyman. Although the negotiations finally broke down in the spring of 1631, and John Dryden died suddenly six months later, Dod did not give up on the idea of using Elizabeth Isham to found a new line of puritan gentry, recommending another suitor to her a year or two later. At this point Elizabeth announced her decision never to marry, but Dod’s connection to the family appears to have continued, as Elizabeth Isham records visits from a Mistress Dod, possibly Dod’s second 62 wife, in 1633, and a Jane Dod in 1640. Compared to Daniel Baxter and Thomas Bunning, the surviving traces of John Dod’s relationship to the Isham family offer an example of a much more independent model of ministers acting in part as domestic chaplains. John Dod was able to exercise the freedom in his ministry that Samuel Rogers had longed for because his age and reputation placed him on an even footing with his patrons Sir Richard Knightley and Sir Erasmus Dryden, who could introduce him to the Ishams as a peer. Dod also benefited from the willingness of his patrons to subscribe to the godly sociability that mitigated the power imbalances of social hierarchies; unlike Lady Margaret Denny, neither Knightley nor Dryden took advantage of Dod’s dependent position when he acted, in effect, as chaplain to their households, but instead allowed him free rein to exercise his ministry throughout the county and beyond. As a result, Dod was able to exercise much more agency than many beneficed clergy, as well as than other domestic chaplains. Dod’s interaction with the Ishams provides evidence to balance Rosemary O’Day’s conclusion that puritan efforts to increase the number of godly ministers tended to consolidate lay control, rather than increasing clerical control. We know that Dod supported and mentored many younger puritan clergy in a kind of informal seminary at Canons Ashby, but the evidence of his association with the Ishams demonstrates that he also used

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Chaplains in early modern England his standing to influence the direction of lay religious politics in the county. Dod may have been attempting to establish such independent arrangements for other clergy, so that the dependent situation of the Baxters and Bunnings of the world might come to an end.63 Notes 1 Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton, Isham Correspondence MS 4618, (citing Job 16:12, 14). 2 E. Clarke, ‘“A heart terrifying Sorrow”: the deaths of children in seventeenth-century women’s manuscript journals’, in G. Avery and K. Reynolds (eds), Representations of Childhood Death (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 65–86. 3 M. E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1540–1640, Northampton­ shire Record Society (Oxford, 1956), pp. 6–37. 4 G. Isham (ed.), The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham 1650–1660, Northamptonshire Record Society (Lamport, 1955). Justinian’s other corre­ spondents included Seth Ward and Lady Dolly Long, Bishop Duppa’s niece. 5 Elizabeth Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’ and ‘Memoranda’, in E. Clarke, E. Longfellow, J. Millman and A. Eardley (eds), Elizabeth Isham’s Lives, www.warwick. ac.uk/english/perdita/Isham/. The site is an edition of Princeton University Library, Robert H. Taylor Collection, MS RTC01 no. 62, and Northamptonshire Record Office, Isham of Lamport MS 3365. References to the ‘Memoranda’ are cited below by year. 6 On the regulation of chaplaincies, and the status of unofficial or common-law chaplains, see Kenneth Fincham, ‘The roles and influence of household chaplains, c.1600–c.1660’, pp. 12–40, in this volume. 7 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. v.

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8 See ibid., p. 74. 9 T. Webster, ‘Introduction’, in T. Webster and K. Shipps (eds), The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634–1638 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), pp. xvi–xvii. Entries from the diary are cited below by date and page number. 10 C. Haigh, ‘Dr Temple’s pew: sex and clerical status in the 1630s’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), 497–516 (p. 499). 11 Ibid., p. 498. 12 Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, pp. 6–22. 13 R. O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), p. 173. 14 A Certificate from Northamptonshire (1641), p. 7. 15 Pagit was rector of Kirkhampton, Cornwall, from 1580–84, then deprived again, and was finally rector of St Anne Aldersgate, 1604–17. G. Isham, All Saints Church (‘All Hallows’), Lamport, Northamptonshire (Rugby: George Over, 1950), pp. 15–16. 16 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fol. 12v. Lady Judith Isham was the daughter of William Lewyn of Otterden, Kent.

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The Isham family and their clergy 17 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fol. 19r–v and notes, 26r and n. 18 A Certificate from Northamptonshire, p. 7. 19 I. Stephens, ‘Confessional identity in early Stuart England: the “Prayer Book puritanism” of Elizabeth Isham’, Journal of British Studies, 50 (2011), 24–47. 20 R. L. Greaves, ‘Pagit, Eusebius (1546/7–1617)’, ODNB. 21 For extracts from Sir John’s family papers see W. Rye, ‘Isham family memoranda’, The Genealogist, 1st ser., 2 (1878), 241–50 (pp. 247–8); W. J. Sheils, The Puritans of the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610, Northamptonshire Record Society (Northampton, 13 1979), pp. 100–1; E. Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fols 4v, 6r, 10v, 5r. 22 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, for example, fols 5r, 12v, 15v, 16v, 22r. 23 Ibid., fol. 23v; Sheils, The Puritans of the Diocese of Peterborough, pp. 119–30. 24 Isham, All Saints Church, p. 16; Northamptonshire Record Office, Isham MS 3819. 25 Sheils, Puritans of the Diocese of Peterborough, p. 54; J. Venn and J. A. Venn (eds), Alumni Cantabrigienses, Pt. I from the Earliest Times to 1751, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 1.110. 26 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fols 15v, 28v n., 35r n. 27 Ibid., fol 11r, 15v. 28 Ibid., fols 31v n., 8v. Isham does not mention any particular minister’s use of liturgy, so it is not clear whether it was Baxter or his successor who maintained these ceremonial traditions. 29 Ibid., fol. 18v. 30 G. Herbert, A Priest to the Temple, ed. F. E. Hutchinson, in The Works of George Herbert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 249. 31 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fol. 18v.

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32 Ibid., fol. 17r. 33 Ibid., fol. 19r n. 34 Ibid., fol. 19r, 19v n. 35 Isham, ‘Memoranda’, 1624. 36 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 80–6; see also P. Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), pp. 289–324. 37 Venn and Venn (eds) Alumni Cantabrigienses, 1.255. 38 R. Priestley, ‘Isham, Sir Justinian, second baronet (1611–1675)’, ODNB. 39 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fols 13r, 16r, 22r n., 30v n. 40 A Certificate from Northamptonshire, p. 7. 41 O’Day, English Clergy, pp. 95–9; Michael B. Young, ‘Coke, Sir John (1563–1644)’, ODNB. 42 O’Day, English Clergy, p. 94. 43 Webster, ‘Introduction in The Diary of Samuel Rogers’, p. xvii; J. Yiannikkou, ‘Rogers, Daniel (1573–1652)’, ODNB. 44 Webster, ‘Introduction in The Diary of Samuel Rogers’, pp. xxviii, xxx, xxxi; N. Doggett, ‘Denny, Sir Edward (1547–1600)’, ODNB.

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Chaplains in early modern England 45 Webster and Shipps (eds), The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 2 September 1635, p. 28; 19 March 1636, p. 48; 29 April 1636, p. 52; 30 November 1635, p. 36; 26 February 1636, p. 45; 7 August 1636, p. 65; 10 November 1635, p. 35; 13 July 1637, p. 109; 17 August 1636, p. 67, see also 21 August, p. 67; 22 and 27 August, p. 68. 46 Ibid., 14 September 1635, p. 29; 20 March 1636, p. 48; 2 September 1635, p. 28. In some entries Rogers used a simple code in which 1=a, 2=e, 3=i, 4=0, 5=u or y; he occasionally misspells the code, as here. 47 Ibid., 6 May 1636, p. 54; 28 May 1636, p. 57; 26 June 1636, p. 61. 48 J. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 59–60, 66. 49 Webster and Shipps (eds), Diary of Samuel Rogers, 25 October 1635, p. 32; 21 June 1636, p. 60; 9 November 1636, p. 80. 50 Ibid., 24 December 1637, p. 130; 19 January 1638, p. 136; 29 January 1638, p. 139. It is not clear why Rogers shifted to Latin for parts of his diary. The content of these entries is similar to the content of the entries in English, suggesting that Rogers was practising his Latin rather than using it to obscure his thoughts in case anyone stumbled upon his diary. 51 Ibid., 25 May 1638, p. 150; 14 October 1638, p. 163; 7 September 1638, p. 160. 52 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fols 10v, 11r, 11v, 12r, 19r. 53 J. Hart, Trodden down Strength, by the God of Strength, or, Mrs Drake Revived, (1647); T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement c.1620– 1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 52; see also pp. 11–12, 53. Nearly twenty years later a very elderly Dod also visited an ailing Samuel Rogers, who described him as ‘an Angel’; Webster and Shipps (eds), The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 14 April 1638, p. 146. 54 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fol. 12r.

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55 J. Fielding, ‘Dod, John (1550–1645)’, ODNB; J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart England (London: Routledge, 1984), pp. 180–2. 56 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fol. 15r. The clause in brackets is added in a marginal note. 57 Ibid., fol. 15r. A marginal note also refers to 1 Corinthians 7:7. 58 Ibid., fol. 19r. 59 Northamptonshire Record Office, Isham Correspondence MS 184. 60 I. Stephens, ‘The courtship and singlehood of Elizabeth Isham, 1630–1634’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), 1–25. 61 Northamptonshire Record Office, Isham Correspondence MS 184. 62 Isham, ‘My Booke of Rememberance’, fols 23v, 23r, 27r, ‘Memoranda’, 1633, 1640. 63 Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 25.

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Chapter 10

.

A chaplain and his patron: Samuel Willes and the 7th Earl of Huntingdon William Gibson

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A

rarely considered aspect of the cultural agency of chaplains is the ways in which a chaplain’s relationship with his patron contributed to an ambient and pervasive culture of patronage in wider society in early modern England. Patronage was an essential element in a society which lacked the educational and recruitment systems of an industrial economy. Without the opportunities to advertise vacancies, to calibrate and measure merit and potential, and to select on the basis of competitive examinations, patronage was the best method of recruitment. Patronage had several distinct advantages for both parties. Most obviously, it tied a patron and a client together in mutual bonds of obligation and reciprocation. It also elevated and enhanced the status of the patron and reinforced the orders of society by the act of condescension that patronage implied. In ways that question modern assumptions, patronage tended to promote effectiveness: a patron did not want to be discredited by an incompetent client; and clients who gave satisfaction could reasonably hope for further advancement. Patronage was also highly interactive and diffusive. A client obtained an enhanced status as a consequence of attracting patronage and, by proximity to a patron, might assist the advancement of his own friends and dependents. In this way, effective networks developed in much the same way as they do in some sectors of modern economies.1 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the highest point and most developed forms of patronage in Britain before the emergence of a fully industrial economy. Consequently Britain was a society in which social mobility and preferment were dependent on patronage and the culture of patronage it created. However, outside the realms of politics and the arts, examples of the ambient culture of patronage have been largely unexplored by scholars.2 This chapter considers the development of the culture of patronage in the relationship of a chaplain and his patron. It argues that there was an essential patronage association at the centre of the relationship. Thus, in the

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Chaplains in early modern England East Midlands, far beyond the metropolitan core of patronage for politicians, writers and artists in London, there was a smaller, local network of clients and patron. The relationship of the 7th Earl of Huntingdon and Samuel Willes, his chaplain between 1660 and 1684, was a building block and foundation on which other patronage networks rested. To take another metaphor, Willes’ career, is an example of a patronage node from which radiated a small provincial network of clients and interdependence, linked through the expression of friendship and spiritual welfare. The Reverend Samuel Willes is an obscure clergyman, of whom little is known. His monumental inscription in All Saints Church, Derby, records his death in 1685 at the age of forty-four, which would suggest a birth year 3 around 1641. But the same inscription claims also that he was minister of All Saints for twenty-five years, which would place him below the canonical age for ordination on his appointment to the living. His dates of birth and death vary according to his monumental inscription, his entry in the British Library catalogue and his fragmented entry in the Church of England clergy database.4 It is known, however, that in August 1658 Willes married Mrs Hannah Hawse of Walsall and that in August 1659 the first child of a large family, a daughter, was born.5 It is also known that Willes was appointed chaplain to the ten-yearold Theophilus, 7th Earl of Huntingdon, around 1660; and that subsequently Huntingdon, or more probably his mother and trustees, appointed him to the family living of Belton near Donnington Park, the earl’s seat.6 This suggests that Willes was likely to have been, or at least was expected to be, resident near Donnington Park and therefore able to serve as chaplain to the earl’s household, and that Willes was not aiming to hold the chaplaincy simply to qualify to hold two livings in plurality.7 The probability is that Willes made frequent visits to Donnington, led household worship and supported the earl’s family as its spiritual guide.8 Willes’s appointment was almost certainly due, in part, to his staunch royalism, which saw its zenith in the publication of a poem, To The King’s Most Sacred Majesty, Upon His Happy and Glorious Return, An Endeavoured Poem, celebrating Charles II’s Restoration in 1660. The poem, which occupied two quarto sheets, began: Come now the greater Muses all have done, And with majestick steps measur’d the story, Now Cowley, and the rest the race have run, And in their way swallow’d up all the glory,  I’le pump a rime or two, come Muse, we’l go,  Iove loves a true devotion through’t be slow. Welcome Great Charles! Heark, how the British Isle Bellow’s the gallant Echo, ev’ry Sea Changes his angry Frown into a smile

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon And tells th’enquiring winds ’tis Holyday.  Charles is return’d, and every thing must be 9   Cloathed with brisk and sweet serenity.

Willes’s views of the Commonwealth and its religion and politics, if not already evident, were squarely framed in a later stanza: O mighty influence of great Charles his Name, That makes the Gates of Hell to shake, The damned souls get strength against the flame, And by that intermission Breath they take.   But stay (sad souls!) a Troop of Fiends comes there  he Legions routed now from Westminster.

Willes concluded:

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Under thy potent Influence I trust Some condescending Muse will visit me, And lift my grovelling Phansie out o’th’dust Stretching my dwarfish Rimes to Poetry;   Then the first Theme divine, of which I’le sing 10   Shall be a Panegyrick to the KING.

It is not clear whether Willes, in conceding greater poetic talent to ‘Cowley, and the rest’, was indulging in ritual poetic humility or an element of modest selfabnegation: the titular reference An Endeavoured Poem could imply either. Nor was the publication of his poem so far behind that of other celebrations of the King’s return to London on 29 May: George Thomason noted the date, ‘June 15’, on his copy.11 Given that Willes permitted or organised the publication of the poem, he perhaps had poetic aspirations: such pretensions at least might have promoted Willes’s ambitions as a chaplain over the claims of clergy with no literary talent or ambition. As this poem makes clear, Willes was a staunch royalist Anglican who welcomed the Restoration which re-established the Church and ended the political and ecclesiastical experiment of the Commonwealth. Such a clergyman was likely to find approval in the Huntingdon household, which had suffered serious losses during the interregnum. It was central to the operation of patronage that a chaplain had to be of proven political loyalty, or at least political congruence with his patron, and the public self-declaration in print offered one of the most secure means of evidencing and testing a client’s true principles. Willes’s appointment to the parish of Belton in 1662 to replace a Presbyterian ejectee suggests that he was regarded doctrinally as a safe, orthodox Anglican. If our knowledge of Willes is, as we have seen, partial, a good deal is known about his patron, Theophilus Hastings. He was born in December 1650 and succeeded to the title in 1656 on the early death of his father from

179 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Chaplains in early modern England smallpox. Before him lay a political career that would bring him to friendship with James II. During the 1680s he abandoned a close association with Lord Shaftesbury and became a confirmed and visible Tory; this ruined his political standing after the Glorious Revolution, when he was briefly imprisoned. Thereafter, he was suspected to be a Jacobite and his protest against the Act of Settlement came a few weeks before his death in 1701.12 The fragmentary correspondence between Willes and the earl, preserved in the Hastings Papers in the Huntington Library in California, illuminates the nature of this particular client–patron relationship and sheds flickering light onto the nature of patronage and its operation through a chaplaincy.13 It shows, for one thing, that Willes was skilled at the more subtle aspects of a chaplain’s role and responsibilities, having clearly had the knack of knowing how to engage with his young patron: sending him, for instance, in August 1664, news of derring-do in the First Dutch War. Willes wrote to the earl that ‘our fleet’ had returned with a prize of twelve Dutch ships laden with pitch, tar, cables and all manner of ‘ships materials’. To this Willes added a daring tale of a woman passenger ‘rifl’d’ of her rings by the Dutch privateers and eventually thrown into the sea and only saved by the flotation of her skirts which enabled her to 14 reach English ships and rescue. The facility shown by Willes in poetry and epistolarity extended into the spiritual aspects of his writing. One of the few published sources for Willes’s chaplaincy is a poem contributed in 1665 to Hesychia Christianou; or, A Christian’s acquiescence in all the products of divine providence. The volume was a commemoration of the life of Lady Elizabeth Langham, Huntingdon’s twentynine-year-old sister, and wife of Sir James Langham, a wealthy merchant.15 She had been married to Sir James for two years, being his third wife, and her death from smallpox produced an extraordinary outpouring of grief, not least because Elizabeth had been known for her strong faith and exemplary piety. She was well educated, a noted linguist, and took particular delight in reading and hearing sermons. Hesychia Christianou is a remarkable work. Most of its 226 pages are devoted to a funeral sermon by Simon Ford, an ejected dissenting minister in Northamptonshire. However, it also included a number of poems in Lady Elizabeth’s honour. Some of the contributors of poems to the volume were also ejected dissenters from the parishes around Sir James’s seat at Cottesbrooke.16 This reflected Sir James’s own devout Presbyterianism. Not only did Samuel Willes contribute to the memorial volume but Bishop Henchman of London’s chaplain, Thomas Grigg, granted it a formal imprimatur. Among the other contributors of poems in the collection were two women: Anne Lumley, a fellow aristocrat, and Bathsua Makin, tutor to both Elizabeth and her mother.17 The other Anglican contributors were leading clergy: Edward Pierce, a client of Langham and rector of Cottesbrooke; Thomas Horton, President of Queen’s College, Cambridge, under the Commonwealth

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon and a Presbyterian who later conformed to the Church of England; Anthony Scattergood, rector of Winwick, Northamptonshire, and a distinguished scholar; and Samuel Woodford, the parson and poet.18 Willes’s contribution to the volume, ‘On the Death of the Right Honourable, the Lady Elizabeth Langham’, chose to focus on her family connections: Though the just Prayses of her House would be, Things nobler, than the handsm’st Flattery Ascribes to Others; since no Soul from Hence E’re rose; but Liv’d Example or Defence Unto his Country, and nor any Name In the whole Race needs lean upon the Fame Of a great Ancestor; yet to this Tomb No pompous brag of Pedigree does come, Nor any Hist’ry of her Princely Blood, 19 Writ big, to make the rest o’ th’ Epitaph good.

The tone of Willes’s verse implies that he knew Elizabeth well, for he writes of the time when her ‘Religion did begin’, of her manners, conscience and few indulgences. He concluded:

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She that was Great and Noble without thought Of being so, and never poorly bought Renown by little Ambushes of Good, Conceal’d, on purpose to be understood. She that being grown in every One so high, Could use so many Vertues rev’rendly; Enjoy’d so much of Heaven, by such Grace, 20 She dy’d for mere distinction of the Place.

Elizabeth’s death was a great loss to her mother and brother, Willes’s patrons, and in producing such an ode, he clearly aimed to elevate her piety and character while demonstrating his own service to the Huntingdon family. It is probable that, as a firm royalist, Willes had misgivings at contributing to a volume in which there was such a strong dissenting and Presbyterian presence. But he put these aside in order to oblige his patron. The poem also offers some circumstantial evidence that Willes may well have had some connection with the Huntingdon family which predated his appointment as chaplain. The poem shows direct knowledge of Lady Elizabeth, though Willes’s appointment as chaplain occurred only two years before her marriage to Sir James Langham; so it may be that, as was often the case, Willes had some informal role in the Huntingdon household during the Commonwealth and its aftermath. For the Huntingdon family, one of the benefits for a nobleman in having a chaplain resident in its house or the locality was that he could provide household services and stand in as speaker, preacher and leader of worship at family

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Chaplains in early modern England events. In this, Samuel Willes may have been something of a disappointment to the Earl of Huntingdon. In March 1666, Willes wrote to the earl regarding a service in which Huntingdon had asked him to participate. With an element of self-justification Willes pointed out that ‘if your Lordship had vouchsafed me an earlier command, I had then had some possibility of working my poor endeavours into something proportionate to ye solemnity of ye occasion and ye treatment of ye audience’.21 Such an explanation was a significant matter. Clientage, by its nature, implied criticism of a patron if the client was ineffective. What did such ineffectiveness say about the discrimination and discernment of a patron? So Willes’s desire for his ineffective performance to be viewed as a function of insufficient warning, rather than lack of talent, was an important matter. The plea for an ‘earlier command’ was for their shared benefit. For Willes, there were very significant benefits in being chaplain to a nobleman. These included the status that was conferred on him by such noble patronage (a status that Willes referred to on the title pages of his publications). Moreover, there was the expectation of obtaining nomination from the earl to one or more of the Church livings in his gift, as well as the legal right under 22 the Act of 1530 to hold two livings in plurality. These made chaplaincies prized places in the ecclesiastical world. Since a chaplain could qualify to hold two livings, this guaranteed him a higher income than most clergy; and in the late seventeenth century chaplaincies emerged as a higher rung on the ecclesiastical ladder of preferment than a parish living. Consequently a significant number of senior clergy in the eighteenth century had held a noble chaplaincy. However, a chaplain who hoped to exploit the advantage of his position would also need to ensure that his patron did not view an approach on this issue as motivated simply by craven self-interest. Any such suspicion would negate the essentially patron-focused relationship of a chaplaincy.23 In November 1666, Willes wrote a flattering letter to the earl, thanking him for his ‘noble constancy’ and ‘great patronage’. He wrote: when I seriously consider the inconstancy, or avarice, or pride, or debauchery of ye most part of those persons from whom we of ye clergy must receive Church livings, I find my self inclined to make a resolution against all offers of removal and remain in this place to which your Lordship has appointed me.

Thus Huntingdon’s credentials as a patron of principle and merit were established between them. Willes claimed that he had no greater ambition than of ‘doing some service to God and his Church’. But he had other considerations, namely: them that have a dependency on me, to whom I would not be wanting in any thing which my utmost industry can accomplish; having enough observed ye sad condition to which ye widows and children of churchmen have been reduced, when his, on whose life they depended has been snatched from amongst them.

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon

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Dependency was a potent issue. Willes’s dependency on Huntingdon was naturally legitimised and magnified by the claims of Willes’s own dependents. Moreover, if Willes was to be successful, Huntingdon would be bestowing his patronage not simply on Willes but on his whole family, all of whom would thereby owe the earl a debt. His dependents, a family of six children, clearly weighed heavily on Willes. It is also important to note that Willes’s motivation for preferment seeking was, in part, for the support of his family. A clerical family was uniquely dependent on the life of the parson: it would lose its income and home when a clergyman died, and there were many cases of hardship among clergy widows and children. (It is for this reason that the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy was founded in 1655 and chartered by Charles II in 1678; its object was ‘Releefe of the poore Widdowes and Children 24 of Clergymen’.) Willes therefore proposed that the earl support and promote his nomination to the living of Long Whatton, which adjoined that of Belton, which was in the King’s gift, and had an income of £120 a year. It is clear that Willes intended to use his legal right as an earl’s chaplain to hold Belton and Long Whatton together in plurality. The arguments for the appointment of Willes to this second living were persuasive. Like Belton, Long Whatton was just a few miles from Donnington Park, and would therefore allow Willes to continue his services to the earl and his family, and, as Willes pointed, out ‘ye present incumbent is 70 years of age and upwards’. Moreover, Long Whatton was the neighbouring parish to Willes’s own living of Belton, and consequently there was a strong financial reason for the parson of the two parishes to be the same man. Willes explained: Part of ye tithe of Belton (to the value of £20 p.a.) lies in ye field. And by reason of ye many little closes purchased by ye men of Whatton in Belton fields they are soe well furnished with opportunities of false dealing yt by shifting their ewes from field to field at such time as their lambs fall and their sheep are shorn, both ye Parson at Whatton and myself are cheated of almost all ye wool and lamb which is a considerable loss to us both and ye corn tithes which I have them bring is so intermingled with that belonging to Whatton is yearly ye cause of some strife and no little damage in getting it.

All of this would be prevented if the two livings were held by the same parson. In short, without being a drain on the earl’s resources, Willes could obtain a larger income. In a patronage culture, such a self-serving proposal could not be advanced without recognition of the wider advantages of the arrangement in terms of professional effectiveness. So Willes added, ‘if such a thing were mine I should hope to discharge ye duty of ye place soe diligently as not to incur your lordship’s displeasure’. The nearness of the two parishes meant that Willes would be able to preach ‘once each day in either place’ and keep an assistant curate to help him. In this way the existing arrangement of two clergy serving the parishes would continue. In addition, Willes pointed out

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Chaplains in early modern England that part of the village of Long Whatton lay within his parish of Belton. It was, claimed Willes, almost the same as when two churches lay in a single parish. Thus the advantage to Willes was not to the detriment of the earl or of the parishioners; it was an entirely benevolent and efficient use of patronage and of the chaplain’s right to hold two livings in plurality. Willes’s objective in writing to Huntingdon about this was not merely to gain his patron’s agreement for the proposal, but to ask him also to persuade the Bishop of Lincoln that this would be a good idea at such time as the current parson of Long Whatton, Andrew Butler, might die. Willes’s desire to enlist Huntingdon’s support in advance of the vacancy was also because there were ‘so many acts used (to which I desire to continue a stranger) for ye seizing any preferment so soon as there is a vacancy’. There was consequently a danger that the living might fall to a more rapacious and less deserving parson without any of the benefits to Willes, the earl, and the parishioners. The need for action was a particular one since Willes was aware of ‘a clergyman or two in this neighbourhood who (as I have reason to believe) doe aim at it for their sons’. In hoping for the assistance of his patron, Willes implied that Huntingdon, who had access to the King, could more effectively support his cause than could a necessarily less well connected 25 ‘private person’. In this way the tiny sinews of local patronage connected to the great muscular tendons of royal patronage with which Huntingdon was increasingly connected. If he secured the living for Willes, the earl would gain the benefit of showing locally that he could command important patronage through his influence and connection with the King. Given Andrew Butler’s existing incumbency of Long Whatton there was nothing to be done immediately, but in January 1669 Willes thanked Huntingdon for his recommendation to the Bishop of Lincoln and the earl’s promise not to forget Willes when the occasion demanded it. It seems probable therefore that Willes felt himself secure in the belief that the earl intended to use the influence he could muster with Charles II to secure his royal nomination to Long Whatton. Willes said that the earl’s reassurance would allow him ‘to address myself to the dutys of my place, by an honest though meek discharge of which I know I shall gain the liking of God and 26 of your honour and of my own conscience’. In fact Andrew Butler did not vacate his living for a further two years, dying on 26 March 1671.27 Later, in January 1669, Willes wrote to Huntingdon again on the issue of patronage, this time on behalf of a fellow clergyman and ‘the dearest friend I have among all of my brethren in the clergy’, David Llewelin, who was curate of Kegworth from 1662 to 1681. Llewelin was, claimed Willes, a pious, learned and sober man: his credentials, as Willes was careful to establish, made him a worthy recipient of Huntingdon’s patronage. He quickly briefed his patron on the background to the request. Llewelin owned a ‘midiety’ (or half share)

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon of the parsonage of Derby; however the wealthy living of Darley, near Derby, had fallen vacant, of which Llewelin’s uncle, Dean Honywood of Lincoln, was the patron. Honywood had granted the parish to Llewelin to hold in plurality with his half-share of the living of Derby, and Llewelin aimed to live in one of the parishes and provide a curate to supply the services to the other. However, Llewelin needed a legal qualification to hold two livings in plurality, and one of these was, of course, to hold the post of chaplain to a nobleman.28 Since, as an earl, Huntingdon had the legal right to appoint five chaplains, he had vacancies to which he could appoint Llewelin. Llewelin, said Willes, would be ‘in this age of vice and folly’, keen to be chaplain to his lordship.29 Huntingdon’s willingness to oblige Llewelin was, wrote Willes later, a favour such as made him ‘the ornament of society.’ Such condescension lay at the heart of the client–patron relationship and emphasised the relative status of patron and client. Willes commented to the earl that when such a favour was granted by a ‘great superiority’ to one so far his inferior it was a special kindness. Willes also wrote that he thought himself blessed that Lord Huntingdon’s sisters were godmothers to his daughters, and asked the earl to act as godfather to his son, 30 for which, Willes wrote, ‘I blush at my own boldness.’ It is clear that Willes was a skilled operator in the arena of patronage, and one who appreciated the interplay of patronage and clientage. Such condescension as he sought from the earl would place an obligation on Llewelin as, in effect, the client of both men; as such manoeuvrings elevated the status of the patron so might they also, and as importantly, elevate the status of Willes as the intermediary. By February 1671, perhaps due to the stubborn longevity of the incumbent of Long Whatton, Willes’s plans for his own career had changed. Instead Willes had his sights set on a move to Derby, organised by, and to succeed, his friend David Llewelin. Perhaps Llewelin had agreed this arrangement as a return for Willes’s nomination of him to Huntingdon for a chaplaincy. But there was also mention of the possibility of Willes holding a second living, in Northamptonshire, with that of Derby. Willes wrote to Huntingdon saying that he understood that he did not need any further legal dispensation also to hold the living in Northamptonshire in addition to Derby since the living was thirty miles from Derby (and therefore within the legal distance for two livings held together) and was in any case a donative without cure of souls. Willes was clearly planning to hold the Northamptonshire living, of which Huntingdon was the patron, with Derby, which his friend Llewelin was resigning. Willes wrote: Though I am far from judging pluralities, in due circumstances, unlawful, yet I should not have thought of holding my title to your living in Northamptonshire had it not been to preserve to myself a convenient retreat from Derby.

The living in Derby was that of All Saints (also known as All Hallows), Derby, which was worth £80 a year, together with other fees which, wrote Willes,

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Chaplains in early modern England ‘they tell me will be considerable’.31 It was an appointment in the gift of the corporation of Derby. Perhaps a growing family and the problem of extracting tithes from the wily parishioners of Belton and Long Whatton had become too much for Willes. He told Huntingdon that he had been chosen unanimously by the corporation and without ‘any contradictions’, which he said was ‘a great inducement’ to go there. Despite the need to resign the living of Belton, Willes felt the move was the best for his family and would allow him to continue to serve as Lord Huntingdon’s chaplain, though presumably he would be less frequently present at Donnington Park. He asked the earl to seek a ‘sober, learned and religious minister’ to succeed him in Belton. Willes added that he would try to prevent the tithes spoiling by resigning on 5 May so that his 32 successor could be in post in the summer to secure them. Willes’s move to Derby happened rather more quickly than he had anticipated, and by April 1671 he was writing to Huntingdon from the town. Willes indicated that ‘the importunity of Derby men drew me from Belton sooner than I designed’. He told Huntingdon that though he still felt it was necessary to have left Belton, the parting was ‘extremely difficult’. Willes wrote that ‘it was the hardest day that I ever got through’, in part because of the kind and touching expressions of his former parishioners. Willes said that he tried to put them in mind of the providence of God and of the earl, ‘whereby they are out of the common danger of being either through avarice easily sold, or through negligence thrown under ye charge of any scandalous and insufficient person’. This is an important matter. It would be easy to misrepresent the operation of patronage as simply a transaction motivated by rapacity and self-interest. But for patronage to work there had to be a recognition of (and by) a community of interests. In this way self-interest did not damage the interests of others. Thus Willes may have had an eye to his advancement and security for his dependents, but this did not mean that he was not also attached to his parishioners and found that they became part of the emotional patchwork of his life. Nor was it the case that the operation of patronage was in conflict with the spiritual and religious interests of Willes’s parishioners. Although some of them might have denied Willes his full tithes, he was still anxious to ensure that his parishioners were served by a ‘sufficient’ person for their religious needs. Piety and patronage were natural bedfellows. So Willes found leaving his parishioners painful (or found it advisable to perform a painful leave-taking for Huntingdon’s benefit), and keenly felt the desire to entrust them to someone with a similar view to their interests. To replace Willes at Belton, Huntingdon had chosen the Rev. Cadwallader Vaughan, to whom Willes promised to hand over the finances of the parish and provide a guide in the handling of tithe contracts with local farmers. Vaughan was also appointed one of Huntingdon’s chaplain, though he did not replace Willes.33

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon A year later, Willes wrote to Lord Huntingdon from Derby with congra­­ tulations on his marriage, to Elizabeth Lewis. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter and heiress of Sir John Lewis of Ledstone Hall, Yorkshire, had been chosen for Huntingdon by his mother.34 Willes’s motives in writing were not entirely altruistic; he also hoped to gain Huntingdon’s support for a friend’s candidacy for the headship of Repton School. Willes indicated that he knew of the earl’s ‘great and just zeal to encourage loyalty and conformity’ in all persons on whom he bestowed his patronage. Masters of schools, wrote Willes, had the ‘opportunity and advantage’ to ‘instill principles and mould a new generation into what form they please; upon which considerations I easily forsee with what caution your honour will proceed in appointing a master for that famous school.’ In the year he had lived in Derby, Willes had observed that his friend, Edward Litherland, or Letherland, who kept a free school there, was loyal to the King, and his conformity to the Church was ‘exact’. In the atmosphere of the Restoration settlement in which the Church of England and Protestant dissent were in fierce competition and in which the state sought to buttress the Church with legislation entrenching its monopoly, religious and political allegiances were vital in matters of patronage. Willes was also alert to the need for professional competence; he told Huntingdon that Litherland had the skill of providing a good example to the scholars. He had been educated at Repton School himself and was keen to ‘restore the ancient ways of teaching’ which had been interrupted in the school of late. In short, Willes did not 35 know ‘any man fitter’ for the post. It seems that Huntingdon heeded Willes’s recommendation, since in 1672 Edward Litherland was appointed master of the school and subscribed to the articles required by the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.36 By February 1674, Willes was ill and unable to attend Huntingdon. He wrote to the earl that he had hoped to be able to visit Donnington Park but over Christmas he had experienced a ‘sharp pain in my breast’ and had been spitting blood. He had undergone ‘more physick prescriptions than in the rest of my whole life’ and the recent burial of a corpse had not helped as the pain returned after every small labour. He was not able to walk and could not think 37 of sitting on a horseback. Such extreme symptoms alone would excuse him from attending the earl at Christmas. Willes’s last letter to Huntingdon, written four years later, on Christmas Day 1678, was an attempt to defend himself from accounts of his ‘slender performance’ at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The ‘performance’ was the sermon Willes had preached at Ashby at the funeral of Huntingdon’s sister, Lady Mary Jolife of Caverswell Castle. The accounts the earl received of the funeral, claimed Willes, did not come from his friends or those who were compassionate to him. Willes’s letter admitted that ‘my voice could not reach ye whole audience and overcome that noise which upon such solemnities cannot be provided

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Chaplains in early modern England against’. Willes promised to send the earl a copy of the sermon, which was subsequently published, so that, despite the rumours, the latter could judge the content of it for himself.38 In the preface to the published sermon, which was dedicated to Lord Huntingdon, Willes commented ‘had your Lordship commanded to this performance a person of sufficiencies in any tolerable measure, suitable to the occasion of it, you had found yourself better served’. Such a publicly embarrassing performance required Willes to make an explanation, and his audience to recognise that they shared the responsibility for his inadequacy. Willes also admitted that he had little direct knowledge of Lady Mary Jolife, but had gained much from speaking to others. His aim was to present her as ‘an illustrious example’ and one ‘to excite in others a 39 virtuous emulation’. Nevertheless the purpose of publishing the sermon was to provide evidence of the religious competence of the preacher despite the weakness of his voice. Willes lived on until February 1686. In 1682 he had been appointed prebendary of Bubbenhall in Lichfield Cathedral by Bishop Thomas Wood of Lichfield and Coventry.40 This appointment happened at the height of Wood’s unpopularity with Archbishop Sancroft and the King,41 and two years before he was formally suspended from the living, and therefore may well have been made under the influence of Lord Huntingdon. Samuel Willes’s will suggests that by his death he had become a man of some property. He bequeathed sums to his six children, and nieces and nephews, and various parcels of land and property in Coventry to his wife. He also arranged for marriage portions for his daughters.42 The relative affluence of Samuel Willes raises the issue of how typical he was of domestic chaplains in this period. Willes was one of a new generation of domestic chaplains who were characterised by higher social and economic status than their predecessors. Although he was Huntingdon’s client and patronised by the young earl, Willes was socially superior to the impoverished domestic chaplains of the early seventeenth century. He was a graduate, with literary and ecclesiastical ambitions and his own circle of associates; two generations earlier a chaplain in a noble household might have been more akin to a lowly servant than a junior member of the extended family. Willes was also representative of a trend among chaplains in that he migrated from the position of a resident household priest at Donnington, to a parish incumbent and finally a pluralist prebendary, whose chaplaincy to Huntingdon was both a qualification for pluralism and a source of patronage. In the wider Church this trend accelerated in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until noble domestic chaplaincies had become largely titular with few actually resident.43 Whether Willes’s personal relationship with the earl and his family was more broadly representative of chaplains and their patrons is rather more difficult to determine. Willes clearly devoted his pen and preaching to his

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon patron but he did not undertake the sort of secretarial duties, or have the same intimacy with his patron, enjoyed by William Lewis, William Rawley and Archbishop Sancroft’s chaplains described in other essays in this volume.44 Willes’s letters to Huntingdon, despite the difference in their ages, were marked by that self-consciously formal tone of a client addressing a patron rather than priest and penitent or even a relationship approximating to familiarity. Inevitably, perhaps, Huntingdon may have recognised that national politics was his natural arena and milieu, where Willes did not have sufficient talents or instincts to be of much service. It is difficult to know whether the two occasions represented here of Willes’s under-performance may have led the earl to conclude he would not be of help in a more responsible role. Equally, with a large family and a commitment to a career in the Church, Willes may have only sought a role in local society. For an obscure clergyman like Willes, possession of a chaplaincy brought obvious opportunities for career advancement and, just as importantly, access to patronage with which he could also hope to gain credit for, and from, his friends. Willes gained such credit from David Llewelin and Edward Litherland in directing his patron’s attention to their advantage. Their friendships with Willes brought them material and social advancement. So Samuel Willes, through his chaplaincy with Huntingdon, became a minor patron among his own circle. This interplay was central to the role chaplains played in clerical and aristocratic circles. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the patron, and client of greater men, George Bubb Doddington, wrote: ‘Service is obligation, obligation implies return. Could any man of honour, profess friendship, accept the offers of his friend’s whole services, suffer those offers to be carried into execution, avail himself of their whole utility, and then tell him he could not 45 or would not make him any return?’ This reciprocity was the foundation on which the client–patron relationship was built. Willes and his friends received the patronage of the earl, but thereby they incurred complex debts both to Huntingdon and to Willes. These debts were discharged, in the case of Llewelin, by serving his patron in a way that earned for the earl the esteem and respect of others for a selection well made; and in the case of Litherland, by political and religious reliability at Repton School. In the case of Willes, Llewellin’s indebtedness to him was discharged by supporting Willes’s appointment to Derby. And in all three cases, the earl acted as guarantor that these clergy would discharge their professional responsibilities conscientiously. Without such performance, the earl’s reputation would be tarnished along with those of his clients. Arguably, Willes himself did not serve the earl well in this respect, appearing to fail as an adequate leader of worship on at least two occasions. The patronage of chaplains formed an important element in the bonds of patronage which connected the Church and aristocracy with wider society and which also demonstrates the role of chaplains as cultural agents. It would be

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Chaplains in early modern England too much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude that Huntingdon might have absorbed from Willes the stubborn Anglicanism which prevented his conversion to Catholicism under James II, or that he drew on Willes’s staunch royalism in his switch from Whig exclusionist to Tory royalist in the 1680s. But perhaps he gleaned from Willes some of the ways in which patronage operated, and in particular how the ripples of sponsorship and clientage spread outwards to create wider concentric circles around their principal and his intermediary. Notes 1 An impressive study of early modern patronage which considers the clergy in detail is R. O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979). On recruitment of the clergy, see C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications, 1996). 2 Exceptions include W. Gibson, ‘Patterns of nepotism and kinship in the eighteenth century Church’, Journal of Religious History, 14 (1987), 382–9 (p. 4), and ‘Nepotism, family and merit’, Journal of Family History, 18 (1993), 179–90 (p. 2).

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3 The monumental inscription is included in R. Simpson, A Collection of Fragments Illustrative of the History and Antiquities of Derby (Derby: G. Wilkinson, 1836), 1.361. 4 The British Library catalogue gives his dates as 1611–84, which would make him fiftythree years of age on his appointment to Belton. Samuel Willes appears to have two CCED entries as person ID 60634 and 105037; he appears in the database in a third guise as incumbent of All Saints Derby (ID 60855). A Samuel Willes had also been appointed vicar of Croxhall, Derbyshire, in 1637 by Charles I: CCEd ID 227095. A Samuel Willes was ordered to be installed rector of Birmingham by the House of Lords in 1646, though he was also deprived of the living in 1663 (Commonwealth Record, Comm/1/9 14 July 1646). Willes does not appear in other standard reference works such as Foster or Venn. 5 W. F. Carter, E. A. B. Barnard and P. B. Chawin (eds), Records of King Edward’s School Birmingham (London: Oxford University Press for the Dugdale Society, 1933), vol. 3 p. 276. 6 The living of Belton seems to have been held briefly by Nicholas Hill between the ejection of William Parkes in 1662 and the appointment of Willes. 7 The loss of the Hastings family property in London and elsewhere meant that Donnington Park was the seat of the family in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration: T. C. Jeffries, ‘Lucy Hastings, countess of Huntingdon (1613–1679)’, ODNB. 8 Samuel Willes’s manuscript sermons, which he bequeathed to his eldest son, survive in the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center (MS 162, c1) and included sermons preached at Donnington Park as well as other places. 9 S. Willes, To the Kings most sacred Majesty, upon his happy and glorious return, an endeavoured poem (1660), p. 1. 10 S. Willes, To the Kings most sacred Majesty, pp. 7, 12. 11 This copy is now British Library, E.1027.(15.).

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Samuel Willes & the 7th Earl of Huntingdon 12 C. F. Patterson, ‘Hastings, Theophilus, seventh earl of Huntingdon (1650–1701)’, ODNB. 13 For the nature of such a relationship see also W. Gibson, ‘Some advice to a domestic chaplain in 1663’, in Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 137 (1993), 123–6. 14 Huntington, Hastings Papers, HA 13316, Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 18 August 1664. The Hastings Papers are not foliated; further quotations from them are identified by date only. 15 R. M. Warnicke, ‘Lady Elizabeth Langham (1635–1664)’, in ODNB. It was a measure of the depredation of the Huntingdon estates in the civil war that Lucy Countess of Huntingdon was forced to sell some Irish estates to raise dowries for her daughters; and it was thought that in marrying knights, both her daughters had married beneath them. Jeffries, ‘Lucy Hastings, countess of Huntingdon (1613–1679)’, in ODNB. 16 G. F. Nuttall, ‘Peterborough ordinations, 1612–1630, and early nonconformity’, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30 (1979), 231–42. 17 For the remarkable Bathsua Makin see F. Teague, ‘Bathsua Makin née Reginald (b. 1600, d. in or after 1675)’ ODNB, and J. R. Brink, ‘Bathsua Reginald Makin: “Most Learned Matron”’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 54 (1991), 313–26. 18 L. W. Cowie, ‘Edward Pierce (1630–1694)’, S. Wright, ‘Thomas Horton, (d. 1673)’, H. de Quehen, ‘Anthony Scattergood (bap. 1611, d. 1687)’ and N. H. Keeble, ‘Samuel Woodford (1636–1700)’, all in ODNB. Samuel Woodford was an ancestor of Parson James Woodford. Other parson contributors to the volume were John Joynes, rector of St Peter’s Lincoln and prebendary of Buckden; Samuel Bold, vicar of Mickleover and prebendary of Curborough in Lichfield Cathedral; John Rosse, rector of Osgarthorpe; and Samuel Newton, rector of Weston under Lizard. 19 S. Ford, Hesychia Christianou; or, A Christian’s acquiescence in all the products of divine providence opened in a Sermon, Preached at Cottesbrooke in Northamptonshire April the 16, 1664… (1665), p. 204. 20 S. Ford, Hesychia Christianou, p. 206. Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

21 Hastings Papers, HA 13317. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 28 March 1666. 22 For details of the 1530 Law and the legal qualifications of various ranks of the nobility and office-holders see Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 4–6. 23 See for example, W. Gibson, ‘“Unreasonable and Unbecoming”: self-recommendation and place-seeking in the Church of England, 1700–1900’, Albion 27 (1995), 43–63, and ‘“Importunate Cries of Misery”: The correspondence of Lucius Henry Hibbins and the Duke of Newcastle 1741–1758”, British Library Journal, 17 (1991), 87–93. 24 N. Cox, Bridging the Gap: A History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy Over 300 Years, 1655–1978 (Oxford: Becket Publications, 1978). 25 Hastings Papers, HA 13318. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 2 November 1666. 26 Ibid., Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 9 January 1668/69. 27 CCEd, person ID 47955. 28 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 4–6. 29 Hastings Papers, HA 13320. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 23 January 1668/69. It seems likely that Huntingdon appointed Llewelin, as the latter was appointed to Darley.

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Chaplains in early modern England 30 Ibid., HA 13321. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 30 March 1670. 31 J. C. Cox, Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, 4 vols (London: Palmer and Edmunds, 1875), 3.79, refers to Willes as incumbent of All Saints, in succession to John Boylston DD. Cox makes clear that All Saints, Derby, was originally intended to have two clergymen, but the corporation put the two stipends together for a single incumbent. 32 Hastings Papers, HA 13322. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 27 February 1670/71. 33 Ibid., HA 13323. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 15 April 1671. Earls had the right to appoint five chaplains by the law of 1530. See Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 4. 34 Patterson, ‘Hastings, Theophilus, seventh earl of Huntingdon (1650–1701)’, ODNB. 35 Hastings Papers, HA 13324. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 8 April 1672. 36 See CCEd, person ID 191948. He remained at the school until after 1676. R. Bigsby, Historical and Topographical Description of Repton, in the County of Derby (London: Woodfall and Kinder, 1854), p. 177. 37 Hastings Papers, HA 13325. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 19 February 1673/74. 38 Ibid., HA 13326. Samuel Willes to 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 25 December 1678. The sermon was published as S. Willes, A Sermon Preach’d At the Funeral of the Right Hon’ble The Lady Mary, Daughter to Ferdinando late Earl of Huntingdon and Wife to William Jolife of Caverswell-Castle in the County of Stafford, Esq; At Ashby-De-la-Zouch, Decemb. xii, 1678 (1679). On the title page, Willes was described as ‘Preacher at All-hallows in Derby.’ 39 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 40 J. Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1541–1857, 10: Lichfield and Coventry, compiled by J. M. Horn (London: University of London, 2003), p. 25.

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41 B. S. Benedikz, ‘Wood, Thomas (1607–1692’, ODNB. 42 Coventry Archives, probate copy of will: Samuel Willes PA 61/1. His wife also received ‘the silver cup and spoons which she likes best… the best feather bed, all the furniture and the best linnen’. His daughters attracted a dowry of £120 if they married with the consent of his wife. 43 For discussion of the issue of the social status of chaplains in this period, see Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, chapter 2; for discussion of the growth of non-resident chaplaincies in the eighteenth century, see ibid., pp. 64–9. 44 See T. Lockwood, ‘Poetry, patronage and cultural agency: the career of William Lewis’, A. Vine, ‘“His Lordships First, and Last, CHAPLEINE”: William Rawley and Francis Bacon’ and G. Tapsell, ‘The reluctant chaplain: William Sancroft and the later Stuart Church’, elsewhere in this volume. I am most grateful to each of these colleagues for permitting me to read drafts of their essays. 45 J. Carswell and L. A. Dralle (eds), The Political Journal of George Bubb Doddington, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 281.

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Chapter 11

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The reluctant chaplain: William Sancroft and the later Stuart Church Grant Tapsell

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W

illiam Sancroft cannot have looked back fondly on the events of 17 October 1686. That day featured the consecration of Thomas Cartwright, a man he did not respect and whose promotion he had lobbied against, as Bishop of Chester. To add injury to insult we learn from Cartwright’s diary that the sixty-nine-year-old primate ‘fell flat on his face as he passed with the Holy Bread from the south to the north side of the altar, his head to the place where he knelt; but being raised up by his two chaplains, Dr Morice and Dr Batly, he proceeded well to the end of the service’.1 Chaplains performed many roles in early modern England, but few more symbolic than helping the elderly Archbishop of Canterbury back to his feet after he stumbled during the reign of England’s first Roman Catholic monarch since Mary Tudor. Seen in a wider perspective it was merely one unhappy incident in Sancroft’s broader and varied experience of the phenomenon of chaplaincy from the 1640s to the 1690s. That this experience has been little discussed to date is in part a consequence of the general neglect of the subject of chaplaincy that this book is designed to mitigate. It also reflects the specific neglect of Sancroft’s career by modern scholars despite his obvious importance within the Restoration Church of England.2 This chapter will focus on three aspects of chaplaincy in Sancroft’s life: resisting becoming a chaplain in the 1640s and 1650s; acting as an episcopal and royal chaplain in the 1660s and 1670s; and interacting with his own chaplains while Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1680s and 1690s.3 Chaplaincy thus formed a significant part of an extraordinary career in the Church of England. After serving as a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1642–51), Sancroft then endured deprivation and shared in the Church of England’s wilderness years during the interregnum. After the Restoration, Sancroft was the seventh Master of Emmanuel (1662–65) continuing a tradition begun by his uncle, also called William Sancroft (1628–37).4 He was appointed Dean of York in 1664, before being translated in the same year to the deanery

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Chaplains in early modern England of St Paul’s. This post occupied him for thirteen years, a period dominated by the calamitous Great Fire of London that required the complete rebuilding of the cathedral.5 Sancroft was central to the hectic round of planning, lobbying and fund-raising that this involved, becoming a prominent and respected public figure in the process.6 This level of exposure and access to the corridors of power interacted with a complex yet deep-seated level of personal ambition. Although Sancroft repeatedly turned down offers of bishoprics, his desire for promotion is clear from his private correspondence and would ultimately be fulfilled as a result of Charles II’s superficially surprising decision to raise him direct from a deanery to the archbishopric of Canterbury at the end of 1677.7 The precise nature of the process that led up to this final advancement remains, like so many manoeuvres at the Carolean court, unclear, with contradictory evidence about the degree of support leading politicians gave to two more obvious candidates: Henry Compton, Bishop of London, and Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop of Durham. Both were socially significant figures: Compton the brother of the Earl of Northampton, and Crewe a son of John Baron Crewe. (Crewe was even said to have had ‘the crest of his father’s 8 baronage embroidered on his surplice’.) Both possessed powerful backers at Court: Charles II’s Lord Treasurer, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, at least superficially favoured Compton, while the heir to the throne, James, Duke of York, was believed by some contemporaries to support Crewe. Both ultimately proved too divisive to be promoted primate, which Charles II may well always have recognised.9 As Sancroft himself had noted in a clear-eyed appreciation of the realities of patronage soon after the Restoration, ‘whoever expects prfermt at Court, it highly imports him, as to have potent friends, soe noe enemies there’.10 Buoyed by his own lack of significant detractors, Sancroft was duly promoted by a king just as anxious to avoid overweening servants in the clerical sphere as he was in the temporal. The most dedicated modern student of Sancroft’s life is right to note that the appointment owed much to the fact that he was the King’s man.11 This reflected a long-standing commitment to doctrines of obedience and respect for the royal supremacy over the Church 12 of England. It may also have owed much to Charles II’s long experience of Sancroft as one of his chaplains. Before returning to a discussion of Sancroft’s actual experiences of chaplaincy after 1660 it is worth turning first to his activities and dilemmas during the 1640s and 1650s to explore the formation of his beliefs and assumptions. I Sancroft abhorred the notion of becoming a chaplain. His ideal métier was Cambridge college life, and as a fellow of Emmanuel from 1642 he became a much sought-after tutor.13 Thanks to a remarkably successful series of delaying

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church tactics in the face of parliamentarian pressure, probably mixed with quiet support from an influential member of the regime, Sancroft succeeded in remaining at Emmanuel until July 1651. His letters from this period resonate with the language of seclusion and withdrawal that was a recurring feature of his psyche. Oppressed by the events of the previous decade, by January 1650 Sancroft longed for ‘some more private retirement’. Indeed, ‘Were ye Primitive Monkery retriv’d’, and given some form of authority to match what monasticism had enjoyed during previous periods of religious persecution, ‘I could be content if not to vow, yet professe myself one, & runne fro[m] the horror of beholdg ye debauches of an age soe wicked into ye utmost recesses, e 14 & solitudes of y desert.’ In the wake of Cromwell’s crushing victory over the Scots at Dunbar in September of the same year, Sancroft was appalled to be summoned to take the Engagement to ‘be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords’, and joined the bulk of the ‘Prelatical Divines of the King’s Party’ in his hostility to something he took to be against his divinely sanctioned loyalty to the Stuart monarchy:

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I hope, God will enable us to lett them see they are deceived : & to teach them, y swords, & pistols, though they may overthrow kingdoms, yet alter noe Principles in 15 Divinity.

To move out of college and into another mode of life was clearly an immensely distasteful prospect for the Cambridge don, and one to be contemplated only in the face of extreme duress. But Sancroft’s reluctance to contemplate life as a chaplain stemmed from more than love of collegiate life. It was also a matter of social status. Long before his rise to national eminence Sancroft maintained a strong sense of his family’s long-standing significance as a pillar of county life in Suffolk, especially within the area around his native village of Fressingfield.16 In a mocking letter-cum-travelogue of 1648, Sancroft had emphasised the isolation of the locale during a period of extended heavy rain and flooding, sardonically e referring to ‘high Suffolk’ and, by contrast, ‘Sloughland in y midst of quicks, & quagmires’, with terra firma miles away in every direction, inaccessible without a Venetian-style gondola.17 Decades later, as an old man returning to live in Fressingfield as an exile from Lambeth Palace after his deprivation from the primacy, Sancroft would refer to ‘this obscure corner of the world’ – ‘this wilderness’ – and its total lack of news.18 Yet in between times he identified with Suffolk men on his travels, maintained close links with family and friends, and regularly returned to convalesce during his frequent illnesses. After the Restoration he would launch an intensive search for records to substantiate his armorial pretensions, finally satisfying them after he gained a cathedral dignity.19

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Chaplains in early modern England For a man convinced of his own gentility to enter the household of another family as chaplain would be profoundly demeaning.20 This need not simply be deduced from a general awareness of Sancroft’s social standing; he explicitly set out his objections to the notion of serving as a chaplain at length in a letter to a friend in early 1657. To be a chaplain would be to join ‘a sort of Men, who[m] ye world genrally useth with much contemt & mean[n]ess’. Their days were filled with petty slights and marks of inferiority:

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If they dine at first sitting, that wch is a table to others, is a manger to ym, they may r th eat, but must say nothing, but take y provender in much silence, & sneake of w e e e y waiting woman before y close, to ease the butler of y trouble of removing a supernumerary trencher, & stand by like a serving man, though of a different Livery.

It is not hard to sense Sancroft’s flesh creeping at the prospect. As he emphasised, such a life would leech out the valuable and enjoyable, leaving only the mechanical act of eating: it was ‘sweet converse, & handsome familiarity, wch is ye soule of Life’.21 This might serve as an optimistic account of life at high table in a Cambridge college. Certainly, such a deep-seated detestation of the prospect explains why Sancroft refused numerous offers of chaplaincies during the interregnum, assisted by the financial security provided by an affectionate and close-knit family.22 As this analysis and self-analysis suggests, thinking about chaplaincy was no mere abstract pursuit for Sancroft. During the late 1640s and 1650s he received a stream of offers of employment in several capacities: indeed he may have been pursued during the interregnum by more would-be patrons than any other cleric of his generation.23 This popularity surely reflects his prior popularity as a Cambridge tutor, and the range of contacts this afforded among the lay social elite of the country. Such offers were manna from heaven to many impoverished Church of England clergymen who had been evicted from their livings, even if we are beginning to appreciate how large a proportion of clerics made accommodations with successive puritan regimes.24 Nevertheless, Sancroft’s experience reveals an unusual range of possible roles, as well as general offers of a place of ‘retirement’ should he be forced to leave Emmanuel.25 In 1645 he was relieved to find that initial intelligence about travelling overseas with a friend’s son was inaccurate, and that the young man’s father was a merchant and not a noble: ‘For then he would have lookt for more respect, & attendance, nor should I have had soe much influence unpon him for his good: breifely I should then have bin a servant, & now a Mr, or at least a companion.’26 He nevertheless turned down the opportunity. £50 per annum was offered to lure him to act as chaplain in a merchant’s house in Pisa the following year; £20 per annum to live with a family in Essex in 1650.27 One unspecified offer initially appeared more enticing: to receive a ‘subsistence full up to that of my fellowship’ whilst being left to ‘as much liberty as I am at present’.28 He also appears to have toyed

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church with the notion of sharing a house near Cambridge with Ralph Brownrigg, the ejected Bishop of Exeter.29 The future Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, John Hacket, though a stranger to Sancroft at the time, mooted a chaplaincy for him in 1655 with the Earl of Elgin, apologising that ‘The employment … considering your great gifts, is too mean a great deale for you.’30 The most idiosyncratic offer emanated from Sir George Savile, the future ‘trimmer’ Marquess of Halifax. After his chaplain married the waiting gentlewoman in his household, Savile was reported to be looking for a chaplain older than forty, and thus presumably beyond carnal temptations.31 Bearing in mind Savile’s renowned cynicism and anti-clerical edge in later life, this might have been a fascinating mismatch, but ultimately Sancroft preferred to travel abroad for much of 1657–60, often acting as a well-remunerated companion to younger charges. Although such travel allowed Sancroft to meet foreign scholars, to indulge his bibliophilia, and to develop his aesthetic interests, his letters frequently display a sense of the unhappy Englishman abroad: he was relieved to be able to find accommodation in Geneva with someone who possessed perfect spoken English and a Welsh wife who ‘brewes beere after e 32 y English fashion’. Even whilst overseas Sancroft found himself lobbied in 1658 to become a chaplain, in this case to the Princess of Orange. The offer was, however, ambiguous: it was unclear whether Sancroft was being asked to serve as the princess’s senior chaplain, or whether he would have to play a secondary role behind another cleric. Ultimately, he preferred to travel into Italy instead.33 Better times lay ahead.

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II Although the Restoration of the monarchy transformed the political and religious landscape of England, Sancroft’s career initially failed to soar, not least because of the leisurely pace of his return from the continent. John Bramhall, Archbishop-elect of Armagh, may have been carefully addressed by Sancroft as ‘my very good Lord & Patrone’, but he was unable or unwilling to gratify the latter’s hunt for preferment in Ireland, leading Sancroft to 34 make the best of a bad job and to deny designs on ecclesiastical dignities. These allusive exchanges seem to have referred to the very lucrative deanery of Armagh, though Sancroft claimed to aspire only to something of ‘meaner rank, yt will afford a subsistence, & opportunity of serving G[od] solemnly (as in a Cathedrall) & of following my studies’.35 The preoccupation with cathedral life and scholarly endeavour would prove to be an enduring aspect of Sancroft’s clerical identity. Although he professed the highest regard for the Marquess of Ormond, this did not extend so far as to contemplate travelling to Ireland as his chaplain.36 Bearing in mind his earlier anxiety about being employed as a social inferior to an English nobleman’s son, the prospect of

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Chaplains in early modern England total eclipse next to the grandest of Irish grandees cannot have been appealing, even if Ormond was a sound Protestant and would prove to be a pillar of the established Church.37 Instead, Sancroft hitched his career onto that of John Cosin, the new Bishop of Durham, who had benefited from the younger man’s financial assistance in Europe in the 1650s.38 Becoming Cosin’s chaplain had three specific attractions. The first was intellectual: both men had been educated in Cambridge, favoured a vision of the Church of England centred on elaborate ceremonialism, and were impatient of those who criticised the clerical establishment. The second was social: acting as a bishop’s chaplain did not present Sancroft with the same status anxieties that troubled him with regard to lay peers. Finally, close proximity to a bishop as chaplain was an obvious marker along the path to 39 other, more senior, clerical appointments. As Table 6 shows (see appendix), Sancroft was one of at least fifteen bishops between 1660 and 1688 who owed some of their ascent up the clerical hierarchy to time spent as an episcopal chaplain. Cosin himself had enjoyed preferment partially as a result of acting as chaplain to Richard Neile, Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of York, in the 1620s and 1630s.40 More positively and less cynically, Sancroft’s new role allowed his glowing vision of episcopal government for the Church to be given free rein, notably in the sermon he preached at Cosin’s consecration in 1660. Taking Titus 1:5 as his text, Sancroft waxed lyrical about ‘the beautifull Order’ of the primitive Church’s hierarchy, sanctioned by St Paul – conveniently, not St Peter – in a seamless chain through Jesus Christ to God on high: ‘the Bishops of the Church’, like angels, ‘incessantly bringing down the Commands of God to the Church in their Doctrine, and carrying up the Prayers of the Church before God’s Throne, in their holy Offices, and Intercessions’. Only those ‘blind with Ignorance’ or ‘blear’d with Passion’ could fail to appreciate ‘this comely, and exquisite Order’ and its sanction in scripture.41 In 1660, of course, there were many who did harbour very significant doubts about episcopacy, especially if it were to be recreated without revision from the early Stuart experience. Sancroft’s sermon represented a bold statement, not least because it was originally delivered on such an important occasion in the wider recovery of episcopal government: Cosin was one of seven bishops consecrated together ‘on the first Sunday in Advent’.42 The highly polemical edge of the printed sermon accurately reflected Sancroft’s uncompromising character in ecclesiastical affairs. Partly for this reason, it marked the practical start of an harmonious relationship with Cosin, all the more striking in view of the latter’s considerable capacity to incite conflict and his chaplain’s equally considerable capacity to look on the gloomy side of life. In terms of patronage, Sancroft could have had little to complain about: he was given the extremely valuable rectory of Houghton-le-

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church Spring and a prebend in Durham Cathedral.43 But the geographical location of his good fortune remained a serious source of regret. Sancroft never mentally accommodated himself to life in the north of England, regretting his position ‘so farr fro[m] ye Sun, & my dearest Relations’, though in Durham he was at least gratified to find a number of Suffolk ‘countrymen’ among the local clergy.44 His journey to the north had been repeatedly postponed, with Sancroft claiming episcopal warrant for his tardiness in the face of increasingly pointed calls from the Durham Cathedral chapter to come and take up his prebend – the latter an irony bearing in mind Sancroft’s later obsession with due order in cathedrals, whether as Dean of York and St Paul’s, 45 or Archbishop of Canterbury. Cosin was indeed anxious for Sancroft to keep him abreast of discussions in London about revisions to the Book of Common Prayer.46 However, others were at least as anxious for Sancroft to appear in the episcopal household in order to act as a buffer between the irascible prelate and his family.47 In particular, Cosin’s subordinates were concerned that his son, John, had reconverted to Catholicism, after a previous conversion during the early 1650s, and were fearful of the bishop’s likely reaction.48 Sancroft’s efforts to effect a solution to the familial crisis failed, not least because Cosin’s son was ‘so violent and so passionate’ in his humours, and eager to travel into Europe.49 Nevertheless, Sancroft’s general standing in Cosin’s eyes was evidently very high. Not only did he have to resist his patron’s enthusiastic efforts to marry him off to a suitable local woman, but Cosin was ‘heartily sorry’ to lose him as chaplain when Sancroft was elected master of Emmanuel in late 1662.50 Thanks to the poverty of his old college’s foundation, and the wrangles within the fellowship that he foresaw, Sancroft’s resolve to quit his episcopal chaplaincy was steeled only by several chivvying letters, including a typically brusque and stern missive on the theme of public duty from Gilbert Sheldon, the formidable Bishop of London, Dean of the Chapel Royal, and future Archbishop of Canterbury.51 The transition from Durham to Cambridge must have owed a good deal to Sancroft’s other role in the early Restoration period: chaplain-in-ordinary to the King. Appointed in 1661 through the influence of Sheldon, Sancroft was in a prime ecclesiastical position from which to gain further royal patronage, one that the early Stuart period had shown represented a well-trodden path to the episcopal bench.52 As the figures in Table 6 show, the Restoration episcopate continued to owe an overwhelming debt to their time as royal chaplains: fifty-seven bishops out of the sixty-six with well-documented careers acted as a chaplain either to the King or to another member of the royal family.53 Certainly Sheldon gave Cosin due warning that he might not benefit from his chaplain’s presence for long: ‘if there be occasion to use him elsewhere I know you will not be too severe to us if we take him from you’.54 Although Sancroft was ordered to preach annually at court in January or February, and

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Chaplains in early modern England

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despite garnering praise for his pulpit performances, he rarely troubled the printers with the fruits of his labours.55 The major exception to this rule was a sermon he preached before the King in his capacity as Dean of St Paul’s after the Great Fire, and which was ‘published by his Majesties special Command’ as Lex Ignea: Or, The School of Righteousness. Rather than following popular conventional wisdom and presenting the Fire as part of a sinister foreign plot against Protestant England – ‘if you’l needs finde out the Incendiary, look not abroad’ – Sancroft chose instead to echo the sentiments of the royal proclamation for a general fast and describe it as a divine judgement on a people suffering from ‘a kind of Moral Rickets, that swells, and puffs up 56 the Head, while the whole inner Man of the Heart wasts, and dwindles’. A host of lessons needed to be learned, and true repentance experienced, if ‘the Dregs of the Cup of Fury’ were not to be poured over England. Moral and political deficiencies were, of course, closely linked, with memories of the civil wars and interregnum not so stilled that rebellion had faded as a threat for the present and the future: ‘yet this ill spirit, this restless Fury … walks about day and night, seeking Rest, and finds none; and he saith in his heart, I will return some time or other to my House, from whence I came out’.57 Here Sancroft trod a delicate and successful path between exciting a mood of self-examination, and not offending his courtly audience by locating sins and misdemeanours too close to the King and his debauched favourites. Such tact in his role as royal chaplain no doubt contributed to his appointment as Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1668, and several offers of bishoprics – including Chichester twice, in 1669 and 1675 – before it received its ultimate reward with Sancroft’s ascent to the archbishopric in 1677/8.58 III Becoming Archbishop of Canterbury represented a change in personal status and lifestyle that it is hard fully to appreciate. This is even truer for Sancroft, who had no previous episcopal experience, than it must have been for most of his predecessors. However busy his life had been as Dean of St Paul’s, his elevation to the primacy profoundly changed him in some respects, yet clearly left him determined to maintain certain aspects of his earlier life. Chaplains played a part both in the immense changes and considerable continuities that occurred across his nomination and election as archbishop in late 1677 and early 1678. The immediate changes to his life are evident in the transformation of his correspondence. Always a keen hoarder of papers, Sancroft found that his ‘in-tray’ exploded as soon as rumours of his likely elevation began.59 Thanks to the considerable size of an archbishop of Canterbury’s household many of the letters he received came from those anxious for patronage. In some cases this

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church was in pursuit of positions as menial servants,60 but some of the keenest letters indicated a desire to serve Sancroft as chaplain. Under the terms of 21 Henry VIII c. 13, archbishops were permitted the services of up to eight chaplains who held other ecclesiastical employments, but this substantial number could not have gratified all the aspirants.61 Demand exceeded supply in part because Sancroft felt obliged – or claimed to feel obliged – to retain some of his predecessor’s chaplains. To an extent this represented a pragmatic decision. In the sudden extreme press of business, the new archbishop simply did not have time to examine the credentials of hordes of eager suitors, especially as ‘it was the King’s pleasure, that he should hasten his consecration, as much as might be, the Parlement being ready to sit down’. This created the urgent imperative for a consecration sermon to be written by a chaplain already in 62 residence. Continuing with those he found within Sheldon’s household saved time, though it also indicated respect for one of the key architects of Anglican recovery.63 The competition for place that inevitably resulted was cutthroat. The master of Sancroft’s old college offered the unsolicited advice that a potential chaplain was ‘very haughty, & self willed & passionate’ (as well as rich already), while Mr Layfield was pronounced unfit for the role on unspecified grounds: ‘I will not Bespatter him’.64 Although this jockeying for position may have been distasteful to the new archbishop, chaplains came to play a major role in Sancroft’s life at Lambeth. At the most profound but least visible level, they were a key part of the chapel within Lambeth Palace, the centre of Sancroft’s spiritual life during the demanding years of his archiepiscopate. After finally leaving Lambeth in 1691, following protracted efforts to eject him in the wake of his refusal to acknowledge William and Mary, Sancroft refused all offers of devotional assistance from his former clients: ‘I must be… my own chaplain’.65 This was in part because he argued that there was not room in his family’s Suffolk house, Ufford Hall, in Fressingfield, conveniently to accommodate long-term companions.66 But it also reflected the fact that he knew he was under scrutiny by the Williamite regime. He denied rumours – ‘the spirit of calumny, the persecution of the tongue’ – that he attended services in his parish church, which would have implied some kind of acceptance of the religio-political realities of the 1690s: ‘I never suffered our vicar, or any other, nor even my chaplains, when they were here, so much as to say grace, where I eat’.67 Isolated with his own family, Sancroft regretted that he could no longer say his prayers ‘in so proper a place, as at Lambeth’; indeed he professed to miss nothing about his life as archbishop except for the chapel at Lambeth and the company of a few individuals.68 Sancroft’s chaplains were key figures in the life of a man who eschewed marriage but embraced close friends. His vast correspondence provides ample evidence of the centrality of friendship within all the phases of his

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Chaplains in early modern England life. As a young student at Cambridge he enjoyed a relationship of passionate intensity with one of his contemporaries, Arthur Bownest, that was broken prematurely by the latter’s death; as a don, and later dean, he remained close to many of his pupils – notably George Davenport and Henry Paman – long after they had graduated.69 If chaplains were usually a part of the ‘household’ of an early modern archbishop, in Sancroft’s case it is possible to see them performing a particularly important supportive role within his generally austere and disciplined bachelor life. Of those chaplains appointed by Sancroft during the period of his archiepiscopate, there are several clear patterns of connection binding patron and clients. One is geographical: John Batteley was a Suffolk man who followed in Sancroft’s footsteps to Bury St Edmunds grammar school. Another is that of university education: William Needham and George Thorp were both products of Emmanuel College. A third was that of intellectual interests: Henry Maurice enjoyed a distinguished career at Oxford, culminating in election as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, and published a defence of diocesan episcopacy; Henry Wharton was a formidable ecclesiastical historian and antagonist of Gilbert Burnet. Indeed Sancroft’s chaplains neatly reflected their master’s mind and background: Wharton also hailed from East Anglia, and was educated at Cambridge, as well as publishing an account of the celibacy of the clergy in 1688; Batteley was a keen student of the Anglo-Saxon Church; Maurice shared the archbishop’s interest in modern 70 languages. 1688/89 marked a considerable parting of the political ways, however, with Sancroft’s chaplains taking the oaths to William and Mary that the archbishop notoriously did not. Yet whatever the short-term tensions that this serious division may have provoked, it evidently did not break all ties of affection: Henry Wharton, particularly, remained a frequent correspondent and visitor of Sancroft in Suffolk, and ultimately would be entrusted by the dying and deprived archbishop with the manuscript of Laud’s diary and account of his trial for final editing and publication.71 As well as providing spiritual, personal and intellectual companionship for Sancroft, his chaplains were also significant in the wider context of the primate’s government of the Church. Never a natural or enthusiastic traveler, and always prone to wallowing in various illnesses, Sancroft became archbishop at the relatively advanced age of sixty. His surviving archive demonstrates an exceptional diligence when it came to processing business at his desk. It also implicitly makes evident the need he had for good information, and the assistance of willing younger men to run errands and filter the successive waves of requests for patronage, promotion, or other personal favour from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Accordingly, Sancroft’s chaplains were often the ‘point of contact’ between Lambeth and the wider clerical and political world. This role ranged from receiving news about continuing problems of ecclesiastical governance on the island of Jersey in

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church 1680, or tensions within Bristol, to much broader and more serious political issues.72 Sancroft’s chaplains were, for instance, lobbied in 1679 about the need for convocation to sit in order to concede changes within the Church there rather than at the hands of a hostile House of Commons: ‘We are allready upbraided for a p[ar]liamentary Religion’.73 Worse still, in March 1689, an anonymous informant sent a warning to Sancroft’s junior helpers at Lambeth that some MPs were making enquiries in the localities about the residence and behaviour of bishops as a means of discrediting those in the order who were considering refusing the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. They were urged to press Sancroft to conduct his own investigation, ‘to prevent a e great mischeife and scandall, that else will expose y great neglect of some good Bishops, and lay an Eternall blott and infamy upon them’.74 For their part, Tillison, Maurice, and Batteley fed the archbishop news of the Church in the localities, of confirmation tours, the health of a bishop, local addresses that were deemed inadequately loyal after the Rye House Plot, or the state of Suffolk archdeaconries.75 The distribution of patronage could become a matter of concerted activity among the chaplains, with one who was away from Lambeth relying on the ‘prudence’ of another who was in situ to judge whether one claimant’s request be fed through to Sancroft or not.76 Perhaps most importantly of all at a practical level, the archbishop might use his chaplains to act as his eyes, ears and executive arms in his diocese of Canterbury. Here George Thorp, who was jobbed in to the Cathedral chapter, played a crucial role, producing a great deal of detailed information, and speaking for Sancroft within a diocese that featured an unusually high proportion of livings in clerical hands: 105 benefices were in the archbishop’s gift.77 Finally, it is clear that Sancroft retained the personal loyalty of his chaplains even after he had retreated from Lambeth to Suffolk after his deprivation. Henry Wharton, in particular, served as a key conduit of news, and despatcher of books and periodicals, from London to Fressingfield.78 Although Sancroft liked to emphasise his isolation in Suffolk, and his lack of interest in the affairs of the world in the 1690s, this was something of a pose: as Patrick Collinson has noted, he retained subscriptions to foreign news-sheets, and made notes 79 on the Salem witch trials from a pamphlet published in 1693. If Sancroft’s self-image in his last years was that of a hermit, he remained surprisingly worldly with the assistance of his former chaplains. IV How important ultimately was chaplaincy in the life and career of William Sancroft? There is certainly a risk of isolating and over-emphasising this dimension of his life at the expense of others. At a public level, functioning as Archbishop of Canterbury without an effective support mechanism of able

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Chaplains in early modern England and dynamic chaplains would have been well-nigh impossible, bearing in mind the sheer scale of the administrative and political challenges Sancroft faced during the 1680s. Nevertheless, some of Sancroft’s closest lieutenants, informants, and allies were not linked to him as chaplains. Francis Turner, Bishop of Rochester and then Ely, for instance, was a grateful client eager to please his master, and frequently functioned as Sancroft’s ‘man at court’; William Lloyd, Bishop successively of Peterborough and Norwich was at least as close a clerical ally, and would ultimately be commissioned by Sancroft with his primatial authority;80 and John Dolben as Archbishop of York worked hand-in-glove with Sancroft, notably sending messages of support in the early stages of James II’s reign. Outside the clerical estate, Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, was a High Church ally when the going was good from 1681–85, a regular visitor to Lambeth, and an ineffectual ally in the era of the Revolu81 tion of 1688/89. At a private level, as we have seen, Sancroft was far from reliant on his chaplains for friendship and support in all the phases of his life: clergymen like George Davenport and Michael Honywood, Dean of Lincoln, and laymen like Henry Paman, were clearly very close to him, in mind and spirit if not always in person, as were his extended family and kin network in Suffolk. More broadly, the shape of Sancroft’s career owed much to patrons and supporters to whom he was not tied by the bond of chaplaincy, notably Ralph Brownrigg in the 1650s, and Gilbert Sheldon in the 1660s.82 Yet for all these qualifications, the phenomenon of chaplaincy was an important animating force in his life as a cleric, not least in the inner spiritual world that it remains hard to penetrate. One of his chaplains, William Needham, described his master from personal experience as ‘the most pious humble good Christian I ever knew in all my life. His hours for chapel were six in the morning, twelve before dinner, three in the afternoon, and nine at night, at which time he was constantly present, and always dressed’.83 For all the conventional hagiographical tone of these remarks, there is no reason to doubt their essential accuracy of detail, and Sancroft’s sadness at losing access to the chapel at Lambeth after his deprivation has already been cited. The archbishop’s closeness to his chaplains fits into a broader paradigm of quasi-familial relationships: he was said to give every one of his ‘sons’ on the episcopal bench a day to dine privately with him during his purdah at Lambeth following the Williamite coup, and some craved his ‘Fatherly counsell, direction, or reproofe’ around the same time.84 It is not too far-fetched to see his much younger chaplains like Henry Wharton as spiritual sons within his bachelor life. Although he ascended to the very highest office of the Church, there remained something of the devoted college tutor in his character that must have made the Lambeth of his archiepiscopate an exceptionally scholarly environment. In the last analysis, if Sancroft was himself a reluctant chaplain, he nevertheless significantly benefited from acting in that role, and learned

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church to harness the potential of his own clerical network as archbishop before the Revolution of 1688/89 brought to a premature end his powers as a patron, and laid to waste his vision for the Church. Appendix Table 6: Bishops of the Church of England, 1660–88, and their experience of chaplaincy Total

Royal

Lay nobles/gentry

66 (81) 57

31

Episcopal

Other

15

13

Sources: E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter and I. Roy (eds.), Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); individual entries in the ODNB; R. O. Bucholz, ‘The Chapel Royal: chaplains, 1660–1837’, OfficeHolders in Modern Britain: vol. 11 (rev.): Court Officers, 1660–1837 (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2006), and other standard secondary works, including published ­biographies.

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Categories: ‘Royal’ refers to chaplains either to the King, or to another member of the royal family. ‘Other’ usually indicates chaplains to Oxbridge colleges or trading companies. Most men were chaplains in more than one category at different points in their careers. Figures: The total figure of 66 (81) indicates that, although 81 men were bishops within England and Wales, 1660–88, only 66 can definitely be said to have acted as chaplains from their ODNB entries. Four bishops have no ODNB entry at all: William Beaw (Llandaff, 1679–1706), Henry Glemham (St Asaph, 1667–70), Robert Price (who died before his election as Bishop of Bangor was completed), and John Pritchett (Gloucester, 1672–81). A further twelve do not appear to have acted as chaplains: Thomas Barlow, Timothy Hall, Humphrey Henchman, Alexander Hyde, John Lake, Hugh Lloyd, John Lloyd, Nicholas Monck, William Roberts, Anthony Sparrow, Thomas Watson. Some of these men enjoyed very high social significance or were otherwise well-connected (Hyde was a cousin of Clarendon; Monck a brother of Albemarle; Hall a client of the Duchess of Portsmouth); several had distinguished royalist credentials from the civil wars and interregnum (Henchman, Lake, Hugh Lloyd, Roberts, Sparrow); and others enjoyed significant university careers at Oxford (Barlow, John Lloyd). Watson rose rapidly in the unusual circumstances of James’s reign, patronized by the Catholic peer Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover.   The figure for episcopal chaplains (15), although crudely derived, suggests that 18.5% of those raised to the episcopate in 1660–88 can definitely be said to have had experience as an episcopal chaplain. D. R. Hirschberg’s more carefully derived figures are 85 complicated by being broken into two parts: 28.3% for 1660–74 and 8% for 1675–88.

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Chaplains in early modern England Notes I am very grateful to Ken Fincham, Stephen Taylor and the editors, for comments on versions of this chapter. 1 J. Hunter (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, Camden Soc., old series, 22 (London, 1843), p. 6; M. Mullett, ‘Cartwright, Thomas (1634–1689)’, ODNB. Sancroft had advised James II to appoint James Jeffreys, brother of the judge, to the see of Chester: Bodleian, MS Tanner 30, fol. 93r (draft); G. W. Keeton, Lord Chancellor Jeffreys and the Stuart Cause (London: Macdonald, 1965), pp. 361–5. 2 Apart from R. Beddard’s fine ODNB life of Sancroft, see also the characteristically brilliant essay by P. Collinson, ‘William Sancroft, 1617–1693: a retiring disposition in a revolutionary age’ in his From Cranmer to Sancroft (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), pp. 173–200, 241–52; H. Carron, ‘William Sancroft (1617–93): a seventeenthcentury collector and his library’, The Library, 7th ser., 1 (2000), 290–307; and E. A. O. Whiteman, ‘Two letter books of Archbishops Sheldon and Sancroft’, Bodleian Library Record, 4 (1952–53), 209–15. For one of Sancroft’s most frequent correspondents, see now B. M. Pask and M. Harvey (ed), The Letters of George Davenport 1651–1677, Surtees Soc., 215 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011). I am at present engaged on a full-scale study of Sancroft’s career. 3 W. Gibson has used Sancroft as a case study at several points within his broader study of chaplaincy, usually derived from the only substantial published biography to date, by G. D’Oyly in 1821: Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. 40, 43, 69, 92, 112, 115, 124, 136, 146–7, 176.

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4 S. Bendall, C. Brooke and P. Collinson (eds), A History of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), chs. 6, 8–9 (all by Collinson). 5 J. Lang, Rebuilding St Paul’s after the Great Fire of London (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), places Sancroft at the heart of events, and reproduces numerous extracts from letters between the Dean and Wren, but he is an oddly fleeting presence in D. Keene, A. Burns and A. Saint (eds), St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London 604–2004 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 67, 187–87, 208, 310–11, 419–20. 6 Even before the Fire Sancroft was complimented for the ‘indefatigable paines’ he had taken in auditing the cathedral’s accounts: BL, Harleian MS 3785, fol. 12r (see also a wealth of material in Bodleian, MS Tanner 145). 7 His successor, John Tillotson, followed the same route to the archbishopric, albeit in very different circumstances: I. Rivers, ‘Tillotson, John (1639–1690)’, ODNB. 8 W. G. Simon, The Restoration Episcopate (New York: Bookman Associates, 1965), p. 11. 9 Contradictory accounts of the battle to succeed Sheldon can be found in: G. D’Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1821), 1.151–3; A. Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds. 1632–1712, 3 vols (Glasgow: Jackson, 1951), 1.204; E. Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop. Being the Life of Henry Compton, 1632–1713 Bishop of London (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956), pp. 38–42; C. E. Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe Bishop of Durham (1674–1721) and His Diocese (London: SPCK, 1940), pp. 94–5; A. M. Coleby, ‘Compton, Henry (1631/2–1713)’, ODNB; M. Johnson, ‘Crew (Crewe), Nathaniel (1633–1721)’, ODNB; Simon, The Restoration Episcopate, p. 54 (relying on [Anon.], Life and Character of Lord Nathaniel Crewe (1792), p. 39).

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church 10 Bodleian, MS Tanner 49, fol. 99r: Sancroft to Dr Thomas Holdsworth, London, 20 May 1661. (Sancroft was here questioning the wisdom of a sermon Holdsworth had preached that had offered a ‘lash’ to ‘Court Ignorance’.) 11 R. A. P. J. Beddard, ‘Sancroft, William (1617–1693)’, ODNB. 12 For the wider context, see J. Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 13 For specific references to his pupils and tuition rates, see Bodleian, MSS Tanner 59, fols 74r, 86r, 105r, 227r, 594r; 57, fol. 15r; 56, fols 211r, 214r. 14 Bodleian, MS Tanner 56, fol. 164r: Sancroft to Sir Framlingham Gaudy, 6 January 1649[/50] (draft). 15 S. R. Gardiner, The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906), p. 391; R. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. M. Sylvester (1696), p. 64; Bodleian, MS Tanner 56, fol. 229r: Sancroft to his brother Thomas, 18 September 1650. 16 Beddard, ‘Sancroft’; D’Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, 1.2–5; J. Raven, ‘The Sancrofts’, Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, 7 (1891), 68–76; C. Boyce, ‘The family of William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury’, ibid., 20 (1930), 116–23. 17 Bodleian, MS Tanner 57, fols 384v–384r: Sancroft to Mr Widdrington, 21 October 1648 (draft). 18 Familiar Letters of Dr William Sancroft, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, to Mr North, afterwards Sir Henry North of Mildenhall, Bart. (1757), pp. 10, 24: Sancroft to North, Fressingfield, 12 August 1691, 23 December 1691. 19 Although Beddard notes the grant of arms in January 1663 (‘Sancroft’), Sancroft had been investigating his pedigree since at least October 1661: Bodleian, MS Tanner 49, fol. 121r.

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20 For the low status of chaplains, see Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, pp. v, 2, 38–43. Gibson argues that this improved after 1660: ibid., pp. 55–64. 21 Bodleian, MS Tanner 52, fol. 195r: Sancroft to John Gayer, Fressingfield, 25 February 1656[/57]. 22 Beddard, ‘William Sancroft’. 23 I am grateful to Ken Fincham for emphasising this to me. 24 J. Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), ch. 1; J. Maltby, ‘Suffering and surviving: the civil wars, the Commonwealth and the formation of “Anglicanism”’, in C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds), Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 158–80; K. Fincham and S. Taylor, ‘Episcopalian conformity and nonconformity, 1646–1660’, in J. McElligott and D. L. Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 18–43 and ‘Vital Statistics: Episcopal ordination and ordinands in England, 1646–60’, English Historical Review, 126 (2011), 319–44. 25 Bodleian, MS Tanner 60, fol. 165r: James Beverley to Sancroft, Clophill, 4 June 1645. 26 Ibid., fol. 326r: Sancroft to his father, 20 October 1645. 27 Bodleian, MSS Tanner 59, fols 302r, 304r; 56, fol. 163r.

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Chaplains in early modern England 28 Bodleian, MS Tanner 54, fol. 35r: Sancroft to his brother, Thomas, 22 April 1651. 29 Ibid., fol. 183r. 30 Bodleian., MS Tanner 52, fol. 83r: John Hacket to Sancroft, Cheam, 21 September 1655. 31 Ibid., fols 183r, 205r (the latter printed in Pask and Harvey (ed), The Letters of George Davenport, p. 54). Sancroft was thirty-nine years old at the time. 32 Beddard, ‘Sancroft’; Bodleian, MSS Tanner 52, fols 202r, 204r; 51, fols 68r, 54r: Sancroft to his brother, Thomas, Geneva, 9 August 1659. 33 BL, Harleian MS 3783, fols 202r, 211r, 213r–v, 218r–v, 233v–4v. 34 Bodleian., MS Tanner 49, fol. 38r (and Sancroft’s draft reply at fol. 39r). 35 Ibid., fol. 39r: Sancroft to Bramhall, after 24 November 1660. (For rumours that Sancroft would be made Dean of Armagh, see ibid., fol. 47r.) 36 Ibid. 37 R. Gillespie, ‘The religion of the first duke of Ormond’, in T. Barnard and J. Fenlon (eds), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 101–13. 38 G. Ornsby (ed.), The Correspondence of John Cosin, Surtees Soc., 2 vols., 52, 55 (Durham: Andrews & Co., 1869–72), 1.287–90. 39 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, ch. 5. 40 A. Milton, ‘Cosin, John (1595–1672)’, ODNB; P. H. Osmond, A Life of John Cosin Bishop of Durham, 1660–1672 (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1913), p. 6. 41 W. Sancroft, A Sermon Preached In S. Peter’s Westminster, on the first Sunday in Advent (1660), pp. 2–3. (Sancroft was the second-choice preacher, and was approached by Cosin after ‘Dr Ball’ proved unavailable: Bodleian, MS Tanner 49, fol. 36r.)

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42 Sancroft, A Sermon, title page. I am grateful to Stephen Taylor for reminding me of the broader symbolism of the occasion. 43 For the rewards of acting as an episcopal chaplain, see D. R. Hirschberg, ‘A social history of the Anglican episcopate, 1660–1760’ (PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1976), pp. 241–4. Houghton-le-Spring was so lucrative that Sancroft was advised in 1662 not to give it up for any diocese worse than Salisbury, and in 1664 its revenues were estimated as being in excess of £400 p.a.: Pask and Harvey (eds.), The Letters of George Davenport, pp. 89–90, 115, 119, 122. 44 Bodleian, MSS Tanner 49, fol. 148r: Sancroft to his brother, Thomas, London, 10 March 1661; 48, fol. 40r: same to same, Durham, 4 September 1662. See also ibid., 47, fol. 205r. 45 Bodleian, MS Tanner 49, fol. 119r; BL, Harleian MS 3784, fols 46r, 51r, 55r. 46 D’Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, 1.110–17; G. J. Cuming (ed.), The Durham Book (London: The Alcuin Club, 1975), pp. xxi–xxii, where Sancroft’s role in revising the Prayer Book is described as ‘editorial rather than constructive’. 47 Bodleian, MS Tanner 48, fol. 12r; BL, Harleian MS 3784, fol. 31v. 48 Bodleian, MS Tanner 49, fol. 140r; Pask and Harvey (eds.), The Letters of George Davenport, p. 13; A. Milton, ‘John Cosin’. 49 Ornsby (ed.), The Correspondence of John Cosin, 2.313: Richard Neile to Miles Stapylton [Cosin’s secretary], London, 4 March 1661/62.

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church 50 D’Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, 1.120–2; Bodleian, MS Tanner 48, fol. 55r: George Davenport to Sancroft, Bishop Auckland, 4 October 1662 (printed in Pask and Harvey (eds.), The Letters of George Davenport, p. 99). The bishop’s regard for his ‘exquisite judgement’ was emphasised to Sancroft after the bishop’s death: Bodleian, MS Tanner 42, fol. 69r: John Durel to Sancroft, 8 January 1673/74. 51 Bodleian, MS Tanner 48, fols 52r, 53r; BL, Harleian MS 3784, fol. 77r. 52 Beddard, ‘William Sancroft’; N. W. S. Cranfield, ‘Chaplains in ordinary at the early Stuart court: the purple road’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications, 1996), pp. 120–47. 53 Such figures should hardly be surprising in the context of the recent emphasis on the enduring importance of the royal court well beyond 1660, most notably H. Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. pt III. See also, Simon, The Restoration Episcopate, pp. 17–19. 54 Ornsby (ed.), The Correspondence of John Cosin, 2.24–5: Sheldon to Cosin, 3 Sept. 1661. 55 For orders to preach, see Bodleian, MSS Tanner 49, fol. 130r; 45, fols 131r, 239r; for praise (from the egregious Thomas Pierce), see Bodleian, MS Tanner 48, fol. 104r. 56 W. Sancroft, Lex Ignea: Or, The School of Righteousness. A Sermon Preach’d before the King, Octob. 10. 1666 (1666), pp. 22, 8. For the fast, see A Proclamation for a General Fast ... on Wednesday the Tenth of October Next (1666). I am grateful to Stephen Taylor for drawing my attention to this proclamation. 57 Sancroft, Lex Ignea, p. 50.

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58 For the archdeaconry, see Bodleian, MS Tanner 44, fol. 38r and J. Gregory, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828: Archbishops of Canterbury and Their Diocese (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 29, 190; for offers of Chichester diocese, see Bodleian, MSS Tanner 44, fol. 161r; 42, fol. 139r. 59 For the crudest indicator, the standard Bodleian catalogue devoted to the Tanner MSS features 38 columns of description for the core chronological volumes of Sancroft’s correspondence for 1660–1677/78 (cols. 145–50, 156–78, 182–90) but 92 are required for 1678–91 (cols. 52–102, 105–45), not counting the huge supplementary materials devoted to individual dioceses: A. Hackman (comp.), Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecœ Bodleianœ pars quarta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1860). 60 E.g., Bodleian, MS Tanner 40, fol. 151r. 61 Gibson, Domestic Chaplain, p. 4. (There was no stipulated limit on the number of non-pluralist chaplains employed by an archbishop: I am grateful to Ken Fincham for pointing this out to me.) 62 Bodleian, MS Tanner 40, fols 166r–v: William Sancroft (the archbishop’s nephew) to Francis Sancroft, 21 January 1677/78. For requests to be Sancroft’s chaplains, see Bodleian, MS Tanner 40, fols 113r, 114r, 129r, 146r, 147r, 149r, 160r (fols 155r, 157r do not stipulate precisely what employment is being sought in Sancroft’s household). I have not seen a full contemporary list of Sancroft’s chaplains. 63 R. A. Beddard, ‘Sheldon and Anglican recovery’, Historical Journal, 19 (1976), 1005–17, an astringent review of V. D. Sutch’s biography, Gilbert Sheldon, Architect of Anglican Survival, 1640–75 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). 64 Bodleian, MS Tanner 40, fols 146r–7r: Thomas Holbech to John Tillison, Emmanuel College, 5 January 1677/78; William Turner to the same, 5 January 1677/78.

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Chaplains in early modern England 65 Familiar Letters, p. 10: Sancroft to Henry North, Fressingfield, 12 August 1691. For the fullest account of the events leading up to Sancroft’s ejection, see D’Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, 1, ch. X. 66 Sancroft chose to live even more privately by building a small house for himself ‘at the end of the garden’: ibid., 2.4. 67 Familiar Letters, pp. 24–5: same to same, Fressingfield, 23 December 1691. (The phrase about not even saying grace was echoed in a report on Sancroft’s death written for Anthony Wood: Bodleian, MS Tanner 25, fol. 108v.) 68 Familiar Letters, p. 23: Sancroft to Henry North, Fressingfield, 11 November 1691; Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3894, fol. 27r. 69 Collinson, ‘William Sancroft’, pp. 176–7; Pask and Harvey (eds.), The Letters of George Davenport, passim; N. Moore, rev. M. Bevan, ‘Henry Paman’, ODNB. 70 S. Denne, Historical Particulars of Lambeth Parish and Lambeth Palace (1795), pp. 224–8; J.-L. Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 325–6; entries for Batteley, Maurice, and Wharton in ODNB. 71 H. Wharton, The History of the Troubles and Tryal of ... William Laud, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (1695); H. and E. Wharton, The Second Volume of the Remains of the Most Reverend Father in God, and Blessed Martyr William Laud, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (1700). For Wharton’s continued contact with Sancroft in his last years, see, e.g., Bodleian., MSS Tanner 27, fols 209r, 241r; 25, fol. 349r. 72 Bodleian, MSS Tanner 37, fol. 132r; 34, fols 45r–6r. 73 Bodleian, MS Tanner 39, fol. 214r: Laurence Womock to George Thorp, Ely, 18 March 1678/79.

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74 Bodleian, MS Tanner 27, fol. 6r: ‘W.H.’ to Dr Paman or Mr Wharton, 30 March 1689. The author claimed to be an old Cambridge acquaintance and denied he was authoring a mere libel. 75 Bodleian, MSS Tanner 28, fol. 84r; 34, fols 88r, 101r, 172r. (Some particularly bold claimants nevertheless wrote directly to Sancroft to ask to be his chaplain; for instance, Zachary Cawdrey in 1683: Bodleian, MS Tanner 34, fol. 26r.) 76 Bodleian, MS Tanner 28 fol. 331r: George Thorp to [Henry Wharton], Christchurch, Canterbury, 23 January 1688/89. (For a rare instance of someone requesting not to be the beneficiary of Sancroft’s patronage, see ibid., 28, fol. 328r.) 77 Gregory, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, pp. 62–3, 36–7; Beddard, ‘Sancroft’; Bodleian, MSS Tanner 36, fol. 223r; 35, fol. 44r; 123, fols 7r, 11r, 21r, 80r, 107r, 130r–1r; 124, fols 40r, 42r, 49r, 54r, 63r, 82r, 97r–8r, 107r, 156r, 237r; 125, fol. 62r; 126, fols 118r, 165r, 169r, 170r, 171r, 173r, 174r, 176r. 78 Bodleian, MSS Tanner 27, fol. 209r; 25, fol. 349r. 79 Familiar Letters, pp. 17–18, 25, 28–9, 39–40; Collinson, ‘William Sancroft’, pp. 198–9, 252 n. 125. 80 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3899, no. 7 (for the delegation of powers to Lloyd). 81 R. A. Beddard, ‘The Commission for Ecclesiastical Promotions, 1681–4: an instrument of Tory reaction’, Historical Journal, 10 (1967), 11–40, and ‘The Guildhall declaration of 11 December 1688 and the counter-revolution of the loyalists’, ibid., 11 (1968), 403–20;

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William Sancroft & the later Stuart Church Clarendon’s diary for the summer of 1688 to the summer of 1689: S. W. Singer, The Correspondence of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and His Brother Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, 2 vols. (London, 1828), 2.180–285. 82 Most of the named individuals in this paragraph feature prominently in the Tanner MSS, and their wider careers may be traced in the ODNB. See also Pask and Harvey (eds.), The Letters of George Davenport. 83 Quoted in D’Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, 2.69 (i.e., fully dressed in lawful clerical vestments). 84 Bodleian, MS Tanner 27, fols 31r, 40r: Bishop of Ely to Sancroft, Ascension Day [1689], Bishop of Gloucester to same, 10 June 1689.

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85 Hirschberg, ‘A social history of the Anglican Episcopate’, p. 236 table 31. It is deeply regrettable that this vastly researched thesis was never published.

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Printed Sources Adair, E. R. The Exterritoriality of Ambassadors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929). Adams, R., and R. Cox (eds). Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Adlington, H. ‘Donne and diplomacy’, in J. Shami (ed.), Renaissance Tropologies: The Cultural Imagination of Early Modern England (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2008), pp. 187–218. —— ‘Gospel, law, and ars praedicandi at the Inns of Court, c.1570–1640’, in J. E. Archer, E. Goldring and S. Knight (eds), The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 51–74. Anselment, R. A. ‘The Oxford University poets and Caroline panegyric’, John Donne Journal, 3 (1984), 181–201. Arber, E. (ed.). A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 AD, 5 vols (London: privately printed, 1875–94). Archer, J. E., E. Goldring and S. Knight (eds). The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). Atherton, I. Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: The Career of John, First Viscount Scudamore (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). Aubrey, J. ‘Brief Lives’: Chiefly of Contemporaries Set Down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 and 1696, ed. A. Clark, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898). Bacon, F. The Instauratio Magna: Last Writings, ed. G. Rees, The Oxford Francis Bacon XIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). —— The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh and Other Works of the 1620s, ed. M. Kiernan, The Oxford Francis Bacon, VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012) Bell, G. M. A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, 1509–1688 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990). Bennett, J. A. W., and H. R. Trevor-Roper (eds). The Poems of Richard Corbett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). Biow, D. Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Black, J. L. (ed.). The Martin Marprelate Tracts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Bosher, R. S. The Restoration Settlement (New York: Oxford University Press). Bray, G. (ed.). The Anglican Canons 1529–1947 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998). Brink, J. R. ‘Bathsua Reginald Makin: “Most Learned Matron”’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 54 (1991), 313–26. Burlinson, C. ‘The use and re-use of early seventeenth-century student notebooks:

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Select bibliography inside and outside the university’, in J. Daybell and P. Hinds (eds), Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 229–45. —— ‘Response and accumulation: textual editors and Richard Corbett’s “Oxford Ballad”’, Studies in English Literature, 52 (2012), 35–50. Butler, M. The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Chamberlain, J. The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, 2 vols (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939). Charry, B. and G. Shahani (eds), Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009). Clarke, E. ‘“A heart terrifying Sorrow”: the deaths of children in seventeenth-century women’s manuscript journals’, in G. Avery and K. Reynolds (eds), Representations of Childhood Death (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 65–86. Clegg, C. S. Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). —— Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Clegg, C. S. (ed.). Censorship and the Press, vol. I, 1557–1639 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009). Cliffe, J. T. The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart England (London: Routledge, 1984). —— The Puritan Gentry Besieged, 1650–1700 (London: Routledge, 1993). Cogswell, T. The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Como, D. R. ‘Predestination and political conflict in Laud’s London’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003), 263–94. Cox, J. C. Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, 4 vols (London: Palmer and Edmunds, 1875). Cox, N. Bridging the Gap: A History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy over 300 Years, 1655–1978 (Oxford: Becket Publications, 1978). Cranfield, N. W. S. ‘Chaplains in ordinary at the early Stuart court: the purple road’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications, 1996), pp. 120–47. Crankshaw, D. ‘The Elizabethan Faculty Office and the aristocratic patronage of chaplains’, in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications, 1996), pp. 20–75. Cross, C. (ed.). Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (York: Borthwick Institute Publications, 1996). Dasent, J. R. (ed.). Acts of the Privy Council of England, new series, 32 vols (London: HMSO, 1890–1907). Davies, J. The Caroline Captivity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Dean, D. Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Dent, C. M. Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

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Select bibliography Duffy, E. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992). Durston, C., and J. Maltby (eds). Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). Eales, J. Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Eckhardt, J. Manuscript Verse Collectors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Ferrell, L. A. Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603–1625 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). Ferrell, L. A., and P. E. McCullough (eds). The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Fincham, K. Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). —— ‘William Laud and the exercise of Caroline ecclesiastical patronage’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), 69–93. Fincham, K. (ed.). Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, 2 vols (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994–98). ——‘Annual accounts of the Church of England, 1632–9’, in M. Barber, S. Taylor and G. Sewell (eds), From the Reformation to the Permissive Society (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 63–149. Fincham, K., and S. Taylor. ‘Episcopalian conformity and nonconformity, 1646–60’, in J. McElligott and D. L. Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 18–43. —— ‘Vital statistics: episcopal ordination and ordinands, 1646–60’, English Historical Review, 126 (2011), 319–44. Fincham, K., and N. Tyacke. Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Forey, M. ‘Manuscript evidence and the author of ‘Aske Me No More’: William Strode, not Thomas Carew’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, 12 (2005), 180–200. Foster, J. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714, 4 vols (Oxford: Parker & Co., 1891–2). Gardiner, S. R. The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906). Gibson, W. ‘Patterns of nepotism and kinship in the eighteenth century church’, Journal of Religious History, 14 (1987), 382–9. —— ‘Nepotism, family and merit’, Journal of Family History, 18 (1993), 179–90. —— ‘Some advice to a domestic chaplain in 1663’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 137 (1993), 123–6. —— ‘“Unreasonable and unbecoming”: self-recommendation and place-seeking in the Church of England, 1700–1900’, Albion, 27 (1995), 43–63. —— A Social History of the Domestic Chaplain, 1530–1840 (London: Leicester University Press, 1997). Greg, W. W. ‘Licensing for the press’, in Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956). —— Licensers for the Press, &c. to 1640 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1962). Gregory, J. Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828: Archbishops of Canterbury and Their Diocese (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

214 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

—— ‘Chapelles Domestiques et Chapelains de la Noblesse Anglaise au Temps du Duc Léopold de Lorraine’, in De la

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Select bibliography Hadfield, A. (ed.). Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Haigh, C. English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). —— ‘Dr Temple’s pew: sex and clerical status in the 1630s’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), 497–516. Haines, R. M. ‘Some arguments in favour of plurality in the Elizabethan Church’, in G. J. Cuming (ed.), Studies in Church History, 5: The Church and Academic Learning, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), pp. 166–92. Hammer, P. E. J. ‘The uses of scholarship: the secretariat of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, c.1585–1601’, English Historical Review, 109 (1994), 16–51. Heal, F. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Heal, F., and C. Holmes. The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994). Historical Manuscripts Commission. Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols (London: HMSO, 1907–14). Hobbs, M. M. Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot: Scolar, 1992). Hunt, A. ‘Licensing and religious censorship in early modern England’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 127–46. Isham, G. (ed.). The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham 1650–1660 (Lamport: Northamptonshire Record Society, 1955). Jardine, L., and W. Sherman. ‘Pragmatic readers: knowledge transactions and scholarly services in late Elizabethan England’, in A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (eds), Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 102–24. Jardine, L., and A. Stewart. Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998). Kay, D. Melodious Tears: The English Funeral Elegy from Spenser to Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Keene, D., A. Burns and A. Saint (eds), St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London 604–2004 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). Kitching, C. ‘Church and chapelry in sixteenth-century England’, in D. Baker (ed.), The Church in Town and Countryside, Studies in Church History, 16 (Oxford: Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1979), pp. 279–90. Knafla, L. A. ‘Mr Secretary Donne: the years with Sir Thomas Egerton’, in D. Colclough (ed.), John Donne’s Professional Lives (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 37–71. Lake, P., and M. Questier (eds). Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560– 1660 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000). Lambert, S. ‘The printers and the government, 1604–1637’, in R. Myers and M. Harris (eds), Aspects of Printing from 1600 (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1987), pp. 1–17. Laurence, A. Parliamentary Army Chaplains 1642–1651 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990). Lehmberg, S. E. The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

215 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Select bibliography Lockyer, R. Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London: Longman, 1981). Love, H. Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Luders, A. et al. (eds). The Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols in 12 (London: Record Commission, 1810–28). Marotti, A. F. Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­­­ versity Press, 1995). Matthews, S. Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Mattingly, G. Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955). McCabe, R. ‘“Right puisante and terrible priests”: the role of the Anglican clergy in Elizabethan state censorship’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 75–94. McCullough, P. E. Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). McCullough, P. E., H. Adlington and E. Rhatigan (eds). The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). McElligott, J., and D. L. Smith (eds). Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). McKeon, M. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). McRae, A. Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Merritt, J. The Social World of Early Modern Westminster (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). Milton, A. ‘Licensing, censorship and religious orthodoxy in early Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 625–51. —— Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). —— ‘Anglicanism and royalism in the 1640s’, in J. S. A. Adamson (ed.), The English Civil War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 61–81, 252–7. —— ‘Sacrilege and compromise: court divines and the king’s conscience, 1642–1649’, in M. J. Braddick and D. L. Smith (eds), The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 135–53. Morrissey, M. Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Myers, R., and M. Harris (eds). Aspects of Printing from 1600 (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1987). Netzloff, M. ‘The ambassador’s household: Sir Henry Wotton, domesticity, and diplomatic writing’, in R. Adams and R. Cox (eds), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 155–71. North, M. L. ‘Anonymity in early modern manuscript culture: finding a purposeful convention in a ubiquitous condition’, in J. W. Starner and B. H. Traister (eds), Anonymity in Early Modern England: What’s in a Name? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 13–42.

216 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Select bibliography Norton, D. The King’s Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today (Cambridge: Cam­­­­ bridge University Press, 2011). Nuttall, G. F. ‘Peterborough ordinations, 1612–1630, and early nonconformity’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30 (1979), 231–42. O’Day, R. ‘The ecclesiastical patronage of the Lord Keeper 1558–1642’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 23 (1973), 89–109. —— The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979). —— ‘The anatomy of a profession: the clergy of the Church of England’, in W. Prest (ed.), The Professions in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 25–63. Orlin, L. C. Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Parry, G. ‘His noble numbers’, in R. Connolly and T. Cain (eds), ‘Lords of Wine and Oile’: Community and Conviviality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 276–99. Peacey, J. Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2004). Powell, W. S. John Pory 1572–1636: The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts, with microfiche supplement, Letters and Other Minor Writings (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977). Prest, W. R. The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts (London: Longman, 1972). Quantin, J.-L. The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Questier, M. C. Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Redworth, G. The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Rees, G., and M. Wakely. Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Richardson, B. Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Ricketts, A. The English Country House Chapel: Building a Protestant Tradition (Reading: Spire Books, c.2007). Rose, J. Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Scodel, J. The English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from Jonson to Wordsworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). Shagan, E. H. Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Sharpe, K., and S. N. Zwicker (eds). Writing Lives: Biography and Textuality, Identity and Representation in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Sheen, E., and L. Hutson (eds). Literature, Politics, and Law in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Sheils, W. J. The Puritans of the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610, Northamptonshire Record Society (Northampton, 1979).

217 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Select bibliography Simon, W. G. The Restoration Episcopate (New York: Bookman Associates, 1965). Smith, A. G. R. ‘The secretariats of the Cecils, circa 1580–1612’, English Historical Review, 83 (1968), 481–504. Smith, D. L. ‘Catholic, Anglican or Puritan? Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset and the ambiguities of religion in early Stuart England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 2 (1992). Smyth, A. ‘Profit and Delight’: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004). —— ‘“Art reflexive”: the poetry, sermons, and drama of William Strode (1601?-1645)’, Studies in Philology, 103 (2006), 436–64. Smyth, A. (ed.). A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2004). Spedding, J. The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, 7 vols (London: Longman, 1861–74). Spenser, E. Selected Letters and Other Papers, ed. C. Burlinson and A. Zurcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Spicer, A. ‘“God will have a house”: defining sacred space and rites of consecration in early modern England’, in A. Spicer and S. Hamilton (eds), Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 207–30. Spurr, J. The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Stephens, I. ‘The courtship and singlehood of Elizabeth Isham, 1630–1634’, The Historical Journal, 51 (2008), 1–25. —— ‘Confessional identity in early Stuart England: the “Prayer Book puritan­­ism” of Elizabeth Isham’, Journal of British Studies, 50 (2011), 24–47. Stewart, A. Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). —— ‘Instigating treason: the life and death of Henry Cuffe, secretary’, in E. Sheen and L. Hutson (eds), Literature, Politics, and Law in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 50–70. Stone, L. The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). Summers, C. T., and T.-L. Pebworth (eds). Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000). Thomson, A. ‘Winchester Cathedral: its clergy and their duties before and after the interregnum’, Southern History, 26 (2004), 38–65. —— ‘Winchester Cathedral: its clergy and their duties before and after the interregnum, part II : the business of the cathedral chapter’, Southern History, 27 (2005), 1–23. Tittler, R. Nicholas Bacon: The Making of a Tudor Statesman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976). Twigg, J. The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625–1688 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990). Tyacke, N. Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminiamism, c.1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). —— ‘The rise of Arminianism reconsidered’, Past and Present 115 (1987), 201–16. Venn, J., and J. A. Venn (eds). Alumni Cantabrigienses, Pt I from the Earliest Times to 1751, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–27).

218 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Select bibliography Walsham, A. Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Webster, T. Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Webster, T., and K. Shipps (eds). The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634–1638 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004). Wood, A. Athenae Oxonienses … to Which Are Added The Fasti, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols (London: Rivington and Others 1813–20). Woudhuysen, H. R. Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

Electronic Resources Bellany, A., and A. McRae (eds). Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources (2005 [www.earlystuartlibels.net/tdocs/index.html]). Bucholz, R. O. ‘The Chapel Royal: chaplains, 1660–1837’, Office-Holders in Modern Britain, vol. 11 (rev.): Court Officers, 1660–1837 (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2006) [www.british-history.ac.uk]. Clergy of the Church of England Database, 1540–1835 [www.theclergydatabase.org.uk.] Folger Shakespeare Library. Union First Line Index of English Verse [http://firstlines. folger.edu]. Isham, E. ‘My Booke of Rememberance’ and ‘Memoranda’, in E. Clarke, E. Longfellow, J. Millman and A. Eardley (eds), Elizabeth Isham’s Lives [www.warwick.ac.uk/ english/perdita/Isham].

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Doctoral Theses Hirschberg, D. R. ‘A social history of the Anglican episcopate, 1660–1760’ (PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1976). Owen, H. G. ‘The London parish clergy in the reign of Elizabeth I’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1957).

219 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Index of names

.

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Abbot, George 18, 64, 65, 72, 73, 80, 84, 89, 92, 94, 95, 102, 108 Adlington, Hugh 5, 6, 8 Aldridge, Robert 52 Allured, Thomas 21 Alwood, John 43 Amherst, Geoffrey 11 Andrewes, Lancelot 15, 17, 18 Anselment, Raymond 143 Anstruther, Sir Robert 96 Arscot, Ezekiel 92 Aston, Sir Walter 96 Aubrey, John 127, 143 Auden, W. H. 103 Austin, Robert 80 Aylmer, John 66, 67, 70, 71, 77, 79 Babington, Gervase 38–9 Bacon, Francis, Viscount St Alban 6, 7, 8, 19, 104, 108–10, 115, 116, 123–40 Bacon, Nicholas 125 Bagshaw, Christopher 90, 91, 92 Baker, Samuel 18, 73, 74 Baker, Sir John 23 Balcanqhuall, Walter 16 Baldwin, William 45 Ballard, Henry 110 Bamforth, Oliver 54 Bancroft, John 14, 18 Bancroft, Richard 65, 67, 77, 80 Barker, Christopher 79 Barksdale, Clement 96 Barlow, Thomas 205 Barlow, William 15, 18, 72 Barrington, Thomas 21 Barwick, Richard 52 Basire, Isaac 24 Bastwick, John 20 Bathurst, Ralph 25

Batteley, John 202, 203 Baxter, Daniel 6, 159, 160–1, 163–4, 165–6, 168–75 Baxter, Richard 26 Baxter, Thomas 164 Beal, Peter 153 Bearecliffe, Richard 23 Beaw, William 205 Becher, William 91, 100 Bedell, William 85, 95 Bellany, Alastair 109, 117 Bennett, J. A. W. 150, 154, 157 Berkeley, Charles, 2nd Earl of Berkeley 1 Berkeley, Henry, 7th Baron Berkeley 44, 48 Bernard, Richard 15 Bewley, Thomas 54 Bickley, Thomas 66 Biggs, Geoffrey 39 Bill, John 70, 78, 79 Bilson, Thomas 72 Bing, Thomas 72 Blackerby, Richard 21 Blount, Charles, 1st Earl of Devonshire 13 Bois, John 17 Bold, Samuel 191 Bolton, John 1 Boswell, William 127 Bottrell, Peter 43 Bownest, Arthur 202 Boylston, John 192 Bradshaw, William 21 Bramhall, John 197 Bray, William 18, 73–4 Bredon, William 19 Brideoake, Ralph 26 Bridges, John 67 Bright, Timothy 40, 45 Brome, Richard 9

Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Brooke, William, 10th Baron Cobham 51 Browne, Anthony, 1st Viscount Montagu 43 Browne, Sir Thomas 144 Browne, Thomas, chaplain 74, 80 Browne, Thomas, poet 105 Browning, John 20 Brownrigg, Ralph 15, 25, 197, 204 Bruce, Robert, 2nd Earl of Elgin and 1st Earl of Ailesbury 197 Brydges, Dorothy, Lady Chandos 49 Buckeridge, John 16, 65, 77 Buckingham, George Villiers, 1st Duke of 86, 99, 104, 110–11, 114–18, 122, 143, 148–50, 153 Buckner, Thomas 18 Bunning, Anne 163, 166 Bunning, Thomas 160, 162, 163, 166, 168, 171–4 Burlinson, Christopher 7 Burnet, Gilbert 202 Bushe, Arthur 1 Butler, Andrew 184 Butler, James, 1st Duke of Ormond 197–8 Butler, Richard 168 Byfield, Nicholas 26 Calamy, Edmund 26 Carew, George 100 Carew, Thomas 105, 142, 156 Carey, Henry, 1st Baron Hunsdon 51 Carleton, George 14 Carleton, Sir Dudley 86, 107, 114, 118, 122 Carter, William 66 Cartwright, Thomas 193 Cartwright, William 141 Casaubon, Isaac 101 Caunton, Thomas 163 Cavendish, William, 1st Earl of Newcastle 19 Cawdrey, Zachary 210 Cawton, Thomas 21 Cecil, Lady Frances 91 Cecil, Robert, 1st Earl of Salisbury 14, 20, 91

Cecil, William, 1st Baron Burghley 41–2, 44, 47, 66, 69 Chaderton, William 42 Chadwick, Jordan 14 Chamberlain, John 107–9 Champney, Anthony 90 Charles I 14–16, 21, 23, 24, 74, 104, 110, 111, 117, 114, 119, 122, 123, 126, 128, 143, 144, 146, 148–50, 155, 158, 166 Charles II 14–16, 25, 119, 123, 178–9, 184, 188, 194, 200 Child, Charles 108 Clare, Andrew 25 Clarke, Edward 114 Clarke, Samuel 21 Clay, Matthew 80 Clegg, Cyndia 72, 79 Clifford, Henry, 5th Earl of Cumberland 91–2 Clifford, Lady Anne 11 Clinton, Edward Fiennes de, 1st Earl of Lincoln 51 Clinton, Lady Elizabeth Fiennes de, 51 Cogswell, Thomas 111, 117 Cokayne, George 26 Coke, Sir John 166–7 Cole, Humphrey 71 Collins, Samuel 18, 72 Collinson, Patrick 203 Como, David 75 Compton, Henry 194 Compton, James, 3rd Earl of Northampton 194 Condell, Henry 134 Conham, Abraham 39 Constable, Henry 83, 88 Contarini, Alvise 114 Copcot, John 67, 78 Corbett, Benet 145, 154, 155 Corbett, Richard 7, 141–55, 156, 157, 158 Corbett, Vincent 144, 145 Cosin, John 6–7, 13–14, 25, 27, 198–9, 208 Cosin, John, the younger 199 Cosin, Richard 71, 79 Cottington, Sir Francis 110

221 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Cotton, Edward 18 Cotton, Henry 18 Cotton, Sir Rowland 20 Cotton, William 67, 71, 77 Covell, William 18 Coventry, Thomas, 1st Baron Coventry 19 Cowley, Abraham 178–9 Cox, Richard 77 Crakanthorpe, Richard 94 Crankshaw, David 5, 6 Crewe, John, 1st Baron Crewe 194 Crewe, Nathaniel 194 Crick, Richard 67 Crockett, Roger 52 Croft, Herbert 24 Cromwell, Oliver 25, 26, 27, 195 Crowe, Thomas 65–6 Crowley, Robert 68, 71 Danvers, Henry, 1st Earl of Danby 20 Davenport, George 202, 204 Davies, John, of Hereford 86 Day, Angel 5, 132, 139 Day, John 69, 70, 78, 79 Deane, Thomas 162 Debank, John 52 Dee, Francis 22 Denny, Lady Margaret 6, 8, 167–8, 169, 173 Denny, Sir Edward 167–8 Denton, Henry 85 Devereux, Walter, 1st Earl of Essex 40 Devereux, Walter, 1st Viscount Hereford 45 Dickens, George 71 Digby, Sir John 86, 95, 98, 102 Dix, William 72, 80 Dod, Jane 173 Dod, John 6, 7, 160, 161, 170–4, 176 Doddington, George Bubb, Baron Melcombe 189 Dolben, John 25, 204 Dominis, Marco Antonio de 94, 95 Donne, John 16, 85, 86, 142, 156 Downame, George 72 Drake, Joan 170

Dryden, John 172–3 Dryden, Sir Erasmus 172–3 Du Moulin, Pierre 88, 90, 93, 94, 95, 101, 102 Dudley, Ambrose, 1st Earl of Warwick 44 Dudley, Anne, Countess of Warwick 51 Dudley, Lettice, Countess of Essex and Leicester 40 Dudley, Robert, 1st Earl of Leicester 40, 41, 45, 51 Duncan, Eleazar 15 Duppa, Brian 96, 141, 142, 143 Dyer, Sir James 43 Dyos, Laurence 70, 79 Earle, John 104 Earles, John 25 Edmondes, Sir Thomas 83, 86–7, 89–96, 98, 101, 102 Egerton, Thomas, 1st Viscount Brackley 19, 106 Egglesfield, Anthony 17 Elizabeth I 68, 69, 71, 130 Elton, Edward 20 Erskine, John, 1st Earl of Mar 14 Essex, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of 51, 77 Evans, Rowland 132 Evelyn, John 25 Evelyn, Sir Thomas 26 Favour, John 43 Featley, Daniel 6, 8, 18, 70, 73–4, 81, 83–102 Featley, John 87 Fenton, Roger 104, 105–7, 108 Ferne, Henry 24 Ferrell, Lori Anne 76 Fills, Robert 45 Fincham, Kenneth 5, 6, 7, 108, 146 Fisher, Jasper 15 Fisher, William 67, 70 Fitzalan, Henry, 12th Earl of Arundel 44 Fleetwood, Charles 26 Fletcher, Richard 66 Fludd, William 163

222 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Foord, John 88, 91 Ford, Simon 180 Forman, Robert 52 Fotherby, Francis 17 Fotherby, Martin 18 Frampton, Robert 26 Frewen, Accepted 118 Fry, Lesser 15 Fulke, William 67 Fulman, William 154, 158 Gataker, Thomas 20, 21, 94 Gawdy, Sir Thomas 43 Georgirenes, Joseph 85 Gerard, John 38 Gerbier, Balthazar 114, 116 Gibson, William 4, 7, 65, 85, 136, 161, 166 Gifford, George 40 Gilchrist, Octavius 150 Glemham, Henry 205 Glover, Mary 78 Goad, Roger 67 Gondomar, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of 110–11, 130, 148 Goodridge, Richard 142 Goodwin, Thomas 26 Gouge, William 17 Gravet, William 67, 70, 71, 78 Greg, W. W. 68, 78, 82 Gregory, John 141, 142 Grey, Richard 77 Grigg, Thomas 180 Grindal, Edmund 65, 66, 67, 77 Gunning, Peter 20, 25 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden 143, 154, 155 Gwyn, Owen 72, 80 Hacket, John 19, 197 Haigh, Christopher 161 Hakewill, George 16 Hakluyt, Richard 86, 99 Hall, Joseph 74, 81, 85 Hall, Timothy 205 Halloway, Joyce 101 Hammond, Henry 24, 25

Hansley, John 80 Harding, Thomas 44 Hardy, Nathaniel 24 Harlakenden, Richard 169 Harley, Sir Robert 168–9 Harsnett, Samuel 18, 67, 77, 78 Hartwell, Abraham 71, 79 Hastings, Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon 178, 187, 191 Hastings, Henry, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon 40, 43, 45, 51 Hastings, Theophilus, 7th Earl of Huntingdon 7, 178–92 Hatton, Christopher 77 Haviland, John 132, 139 Hawse, Hannah 178 Hay, James, 1st Earl of Carlisle 16, 85, 86, 98 Haywood, William 18, 73, 81 Head, Richard 104 Heavers, John 25 Hellier, William 52 Heminges, John 134 Henchman, Humphrey 180, 205 Henderson, Alexander 24 Henri IV, King of France 87, 93 Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort 14 Henry, Prince of Wales 14, 16 Herbert, Edward, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury 96, 132, 138 Herbert, George 127, 131, 138, 165 Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke 38 Herbert, Philip, 1st Earl of Montgomery 37 Herbert, Sir Henry 73 Herbert, William, 1st Earl of Pembroke 51, 54 Herbert, William, 3rd Earl of Pembroke 37 Herrick, Robert 86, 114 Heton, Martin 71, 80 Heydon, Sir Christopher 19 Heylyn, Peter 15, 16, 20, 24, 74 Hill, Nicholas 190 Hirschberg, D. R. 205 Hobart, Sir Henry 20

223 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Index of names

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Hobbes, Thomas 127 Hobbs, Mary 146, 155, 157 Hoby, Lady Margaret 42 Holdsworth, Richard 52 Holdsworth, Thomas 207 Hollyday, Thomas 51 Holyday, Barten 85, 86, 146 Honywood, Michael 185, 204 Hooke, Henry 15 Hooker, Richard 96 Horsfall, John 42 Horton, Thomas 180–1 Howard, Sir Thomas, 1st Viscount Howard 52 Howe, John 26 Howell, James 110 Hudson, Leonard 26 Hume, David 93, 101 Humphrey, Laurence 86 Hungerford, Sir Edward 73 Hunt, Arnold 64, 68, 69, 72, 76, 80 Hutchinson, William 67, 71, 79 Hutton, Leonard 18, 145 Hutton, Matthew 77 Hyde, Alexander 205 Hyde, Henry, 2nd Earl of Clarendon 204 Hyde, Laurence 99 Isham, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John, 1st Baronet 160, 162–7, 169–73, 175 Isham, Elizabeth, wife of Henry 162–3 Isham, Elizabeth, wife of John, the elder 164 Isham, Elizabeth, wife of Thomas 163, 164, 165, 167 Isham, Eusebius 162 Isham, Henry 162, 163 Isham, John, the elder 160, 162 Isham, Judith, daughter of Lady Judith 166 Isham, Lady Judith 6, 159, 160, 163–6, 169–72, 174 Isham, Richard 162 Isham, Sir John, 1st Baronet 159–60, 162, 163, 164, 171–2, 175

Isham, Sir Justinian, 2nd Baronet 160, 163, 166 Isham, Thomas 162, 163 James II and VII 180, 190, 194, 204, 206 James VI and I 14–16, 20, 27, 72, 79, 93, 101, 130, 143, 144, 146–7, 148–9 Jaques, Richard 49, 52 Jardine, Lisa 133 Jeffreys, James 206 Jegon, Thomas 125 Jemmat, John 167 Jermyn, Henry, 3rd Baron Jermyn and Earl of Dover 205 Jewel, John 86 Jolife, Lady Mary 187–8 Jones, Inigo 116 Jonson, Ben 83, 84, 87–8, 142, 145, 156 Joynes, John 191 Judson, Richard 71 Juxon, William 16, 24, 25, 65, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80 Kempe, William 161 Kiernan, Michael 108, 130 King, Henry 121, 141, 142, 143, 146, 156 King, John 15, 18, 19, 65, 72, 77, 86, 90, 94, 99, 102, 108, 164 Kingston, Felix 68, 88 Knell, Thomas 40 Knightley, Richard 171–3 Laing, Richard 52 Lake, Arthur 17, 74 Lake, John 205 Lamb, William 71 Lambe, Sir John 68, 70, 73 Lamplugh, Thomas 25 Laney, Benjamin 27, 118 Langdale, Alban 43 Langham, Lady Elizabeth 180–1 Langham, Sir James 180–1 Langman, Pete 124, 137 Latimer, Hugh 42 Laud, William 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21–4, 25, 27, 65, 66, 69, 72–6, 77, 80, 118,

224 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Index of names 122, 146, 150–5, 158, 202 Laurence, Anne 4 Laurence, Thomas 16, 118 Leare, David 155 Lechmere, Edmund, alias Stratford 89 Lechmere, John 89, 100 Lenthall, William 26 Lewis, Elizabeth 187 Lewis, John 119, 122 Lewis, Richard 71 Lewis, Sir John 187 Lewis, William 6, 8, 86, 99, 103–122, 126–7, 157, 158, 189 Lewyn, William 174 Lightfoot, John 20 Linge, Abraham van 157 Litherland (or Letherland), Edward 187, 189 Lively, Richard 52 Llewelin, David 184–5, 189, 191 Lloyd, Hugh 205 Lloyd, John 205 Lloyd, William 204 Lockwood, Tom 5, 6, 8, 99, 158 Lockyer, Roger 114 Loe, William 96, 98, 99 Long, Lady Dolly 174 Longfellow, Erica 6 Love, Harold 105, 132 Lowe, Richard 166–7 Lucas, Sir John 20 Lumley, Anne 180 Lushington, Thomas 143–4, 156 Lyly, Peter 72 Lynsecombe, William 48, 52 Lyttelton, Elizabeth 144 Makin, Bathsua 180 Manne, Thomas 112–13, 121, 142, 146, 156, 157 Manners, Edward, 3rd Earl of Rutland 44, 51, 52 Manners, John 51 Maplecroft, Robert 25 Marprelate, Martin 67 Marsh, Walter 44

Marshall, Stephen 161 Martin, Edward 80 Mary I 66, 193 Mary II 201, 202, 203 Massinger, Arthur 38 Massinger, Philip 9 Masters, Robert 125, 135 Matthew, Tobie 17, 67 Maurice, Henry 202, 203 Mawe, Leonard 16, 148 Mayne, Jasper 141 Maynwaring, Roger, 22 McCabe, Richard 64 McCullough, Peter 4, 146 McRae, Andrew 109, 117, 149–50 Meautys, Thomas 108, 127, 136 Mede, Joseph 20 Milbourne, Robert 88 Milton, John 4 Moffet, Thomas 38 Monck, Nicholas 205 Montagu, Henry, 1st Earl of Manchester 20 Montagu, James 17 Montagu, Richard 73, 74, 81 Moore, Samuel 13 Morley, George 141 Morrissey, Mary 6 Morton, Thomas 23, 94 Mountain, George 18, 65 Mullyns, John 67 Musket, George 92, 95 Napier, Richard 164, 165 Naysshe, George 48 Needham, William 202, 204 Neile, Richard 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 27, 43, 122, 170, 198 Neville, Sir Henry 96 Newcomen, Thomas 20 Newell, Robert 18 Newstead, Christopher 86 Newton, Samuel 191 Nicholas, Sir Edward 115, 121 Noke, William 164 North, Marcy 107

225 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Index of names North, Sir John 110 Northbrooke, John 44 Norton, Bonham 70, 78 Nowell, Alexander 40

Copyright © 2013. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

O’Day, Rosemary 166, 167, 173 Oates, Samuel 126 Oates, Thomas 120, 126 Oldisworth, Nicholas 143, 154 Oliver, John 80 Orlin, Lena Cowen 116 Osborne, Thomas, Earl of Danby 194 Overton, William 41–2 Owen, Gareth 66 Paget, Thomas, 4th Baron Paget 43, 49 Pagit, Eusebius 162, 163, 164, 174 Paman, Henry 202, 204 Parker, Matthew 47, 51, 52, 66, 67, 71, 79 Parker, Robert 39 Parkes, William 190 Parkhurst, John 96, 102 Parry, Henry 38 Pasfield, Zachary 72, 80 Paulet, William, 1st Marquess of Winchester 125–6 Payne, Robert 19 Peltonen, Markku 115 Percy, John, alias Fisher 95 Perkins, William 164 Peter, Hugh 26 Peterson, William 118 Pickering, Sir John 170, 172 Pierce, Edward 180 Pierce, Thomas 208 Piers, John 77 Playfere, Dr Thomas 131, 138 Pocklington, John 18 Pory, John 83, 87–8, 91, 100 Potter, Christopher 19 Preston, Claire 116–17 Preston, John 164 Price, Robert 205 Prideaux, John 94 Pritchett, John 205 Prynne, William 18, 20, 109–10

Pullen, Josiah 27 Purchas, Samuel 65 Ralegh, Sir Walter 88, 94 Ralegh, Wat 88 Randall, John 164 Randolph, Thomas 105, 145 Rands, Richard 11 Rant, Thomas 88 Rastell, John 1 Ravis, Thomas 80 Rawley, Barbara 123–4, 136 Rawley, Mary 128 Rawley, William 7, 8, 123–40, 189 Rawley, William, the younger 123–4, 131 Rayner, William 83, 88, 90 Redman, William 67 Redworth, Glyn 111 Rees, Graham 124 Reynolds, John 96 Rhodes, Richard 42 Rich, Henry, 1st Earl of Holland 114–15 Rich, Robert, 2nd Earl of Warwick 21 Richardson, Brian 139 Roberts, William 205 Robinson, Richard 69, 70 Roe, Sir Thomas 86 Rogers, Daniel 167 Rogers, Ezechiel 21 Rogers, John 78 Rogers, Richard 164, 167 Rogers, Samuel 6, 8, 167–9, 172–3, 176 Rosewell, Sir Henry 23 Rosse, John 191 Rudd, Sir Richard 23 Rush, Anthony 44 Russell, Francis, 2nd Earl of Bedford 39 Ryves, Bruno 24 Sackville, Richard, 3rd Earl of Dorset 11, 20 Sancroft, William 6–8, 13–14, 188, 189, 193–211 Sancroft, William, the elder 193 Sanderson, Robert 24, 27 Sandford, John 86, 93, 95–6, 101, 102

226 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Index of names Sandys, Edwin 65 Sanford, Hugh 38, 39 Sarpi, Paolo 95 Savage, George 44 Savile, George, 1st Marquess of Halifax 197 Scattergood, Anthony 181 Sclater, William 17 Scrambler, Edmund 162 Scurfield, John 52 Seymour, Anne, Duchess of Somerset 51 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of 180 Shakelton, Francis 44 Shakespeare, William 45 Sheldon, Gilbert 19, 24, 25, 199, 201, 204, 206 Shepard, Thomas 21 Sherlock, Richard 26 Shirley, Sir Robert 20, 25 Sidney, Robert 38 Sidney, Sir Philip 38 Skinner, Robert 15, 16, 25 Slingsby, Sir Henry 22 Smith, Henry 47 Smith, Richard 83, 84, 87–92, 98, Smith, Thomas 85 Somerset, Edward, 4th Earl of Worcester 92 Sonnibank, Charles 72 Sorocold, Thomas 42 South, Robert 86, 99 Sparke, Thomas 39 Sparrow, Anthony 205 Sparrow, Thomas 125 Speght, James 72, 80 Stafford, Henry, 1st Baron Stafford 45 Stafford, Sir Edward 99 Stallard, Thomas 67, 71 Stanley, Henry, 4th Earl of Derby 41, 45 Stanley, James, 7th Earl of Derby 26 Stephens, Isaac 172 Stern, Richard 73 Sterry, Peter 26 Steward, Richard 16, 24, 25 Stewart, Alan 124, 133

Stewart, Sir Francis 85 Still, John 17, 67 Stockton, Robert 52 Stone, Laurence 45–7 Stow, John 66 Strode, William 7, 8, 141–6, 150, 152–5, 156, 157, 158 Suárez, Francisco 101 Sweeper, Walter 37–9 Sweet, John 95 Swift, Jonathan 1–3, 7 Tapsell, Grant 5, 6, 7, 8 Taylor, Jeremy 25, 96 Temple, Robert 70, 71, 80 Temple, Sir William 2, 3 Temple, Thomas 161–2 Tenison, Thomas 130–1 Terrent, Jeremiel 144 Thomason, George 179 Thomson, Andrew 105 Thorp, George 202, 203 Thorpe, Richard 44 Tilenus, Daniel 93 Tillotson, John 206 Tourneur, Cyril 9 Towers, John 22 Traffles, Edward 120 Travers, William 69 Trevor-Roper, H. R. 150, 154, 157 Tripp, Henry 71 Turner, Francis 204 Turner, Thomas 16 Tyacke, Nicholas 75 Unton, Sir Henry 86 Ussher, James 14 Vale, John 94 Vaughan, Cadwallader 186 Vaughan, Richard 80 Vaux, William, 3rd Baron Vaux 51 Vere, Lady Mary 8, 169 Villiers, Francis 117 Vine, Angus 7, 120

227 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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Index of names William III and II, 201, 202, 203 Williams, Henry 52 Williams, John 19, 74, 81 Wilsha, Henry 44 Wood, Anthony à 87, 99, 115 Wood, Richard 67, 71 Wood, Thomas 187–8 Woodford, James 191 Woodford, John 90, 94 Woodford, Samuel 181, 191 Wotton, Edward, 1st Baron Wotton 93, 101 Wotton, Sir Henry 85, 95, 96 Woudhuysen, H. R. 142 Wren, Christopher 206 Wren, Matthew 16, 22, 27, 104, 148, 158, Wright, Abraham 104 Wright, Stephen 105 Wright, Thomas, Catholic priest 90 Wright, Thomas, embassy chaplain 86 Wriothesley, Henry, 3rd Earl of Southampton 40 Wynn, Sir Richard 121 Young, John 108 Young, Sir Peter 117 Zorzi, Zorzi 114

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Wadsworth, James 86 Waferer, Myrth 89, 92–3, 100 Wager, William 45 Walford, Clemens 39 Walker, John 109, 115 Walsingham, Sir Francis 44 Ward, Samuel 17 Ward, Seth 26, 174 Washington, Thomas 104, 110–13, 148 Watson, Priscilla 169 Watson, Thomas 205 Watts, Thomas 66 Webster, Tom 167, 170 Weekes, Thomas 3, 75, 82 Wentworth, Sir Thomas 14 Westerman, William 18 Wharton, Henry 8, 202, 203, 204, 210 Whitaker, William 96 White, Francis 73–4, 81, 95 White, Jeremiah 26 Whitelocke, Bulstrode 26 Whitgift, John 44, 65, 67, 69, 71–2, 77, 78, 79 Wicksted, John 123–4 Wigmore, Michael 108 Wilkins, John 171 Willes, Samuel 7, 8, 178–92 Willet, Andrew 96

228 Chaplains in Early Modern England : Patronage, Literature and Religion, edited by Hugh Adlington, et al., Manchester University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4706760. Created from nottingham on 2021-04-17 20:43:16.

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