The Tory firebrand Francis Atterbury was born into a family of Anglican clergymen. His father, Lewis, was a favourite of Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham. As the second son, he did not inherit the family patrimony in Great Houghton, Northamptonshire.¹⁰ Nonetheless, he did inherit from his father property in the Newport Pagnell area of Buckinghamshire, along with other land in Hornsey, north London, and in Little Houghton, Northamptonshire.¹¹

Well known for his arrogance, Atterbury could, on occasion, be subject to furious rages and splenetic outbursts. He was, though, thought highly of by his Christ Church peers and high Tory mentor Henry Aldrich. At Oxford he composed verses in honour of Princess Anne, who visited the city in 1688.¹² He became noted for his prolific Anglican apologetics and ‘forceful’ conservative sermons and tutored a number of establishment figures including Charles Boyle*, 4th earl of Orrery [I] (later Baron Boyle in the British peerage).¹³ Ambitious for preferment, his career advanced steadily through the 1690s through the patronage of Henry Compton*, bishop of London and of Jonathan Trelawny*, bishop of Exeter, a close friend and political ally at Oxford. Making his name as a preacher in London at Bridewell, Atterbury reached a more prestigious audience through his sermons at court in the 1690s.

Atterbury’s fondness for dispute was apparent early on when he provided practical support to Trelawny in the latter’s legal case over the visitation of Exeter College (which did not end until Trelawny’s appeal was dismissed by the Lords on 7 Feb. 1695).¹⁴ He came to prominence when he set off the ‘Convocation controversy’ over the synod’s constitutional role (contrary to the policy of the government and of Thomas Tenison*, archbishop of Canterbury) with his anonymous 1696 pamphlet Letter to a Convocation Man.¹⁵ The dispute assumed an increasingly political edge in relation to the position of the Church alongside the government as Atterbury engaged in such heated polemical exchanges with William Wake*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, that John Moore*, bishop of Norwich, thought it expedient that Convocation cease to meet.¹⁶ Laurence Hyde*, earl of Rochester, on the other hand, used Atterbury’s arguments to insist on Convocation being recalled in return for his willingness to join the administration in the winter of 1700. The affair (which rumbled on between 1696 and 1703) helped make Atterbury the acknowledged leader of the high-flying Tory clique within the Church establishment, and on 23 May 1701 he was asked by the Tories Simon Harcourt*, later Viscount Harcourt, and William Bromley^‡ to preach before the Commons on Restoration Day.¹⁷

Although he would not be made a bishop for another 12 years, Atterbury’s extensive contacts in the Commons and his persistent political activism ensured that he was thoroughly immersed in parliamentary business. He contracted a secret agreement with Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, on 21 Oct. 1702 to challenge Archbishop Tenison’s right to prorogue Convocation and became a key component in Harley’s own political ambitions.¹⁸ An alliance between the lower house of Convocation and the Commons during the session beginning in November 1703 was apparent when Atterbury, Aldrich and George Smalridge*, later bishop of Bristol, attended Harley (as Speaker) to present their thanks for the Commons’ efforts on behalf of the Church.¹⁹ He remained very close to Trelawny and the two frequently exchanged political news and strategies to counter the Whigs.²⁰ In 1704, through the influence of Harley, Sidney Godolphin*, Baron Godolphin and John Sharp*, archbishop of York, Atterbury was appointed to the deanery of Carlisle to help offset the whiggish appointments promoted by the Junto. According to Harley, when Atterbury kissed hands for his new post he was assured by the queen that this was ‘but a beginning of her favour’. He became embroiled immediately in a dispute with William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, with whom he had previously locked horns during the Convocation controversy. The University of Oxford had even refused Nicolson a doctorate at the time of his election as bishop in retaliation for his assault on Atterbury.²¹ Now the bishop demanded that Atterbury renounce ‘three propositions relating to her majesty’s supremacy’ contained in Atterbury’s volume concerning Convocation before he agreed to Atterbury’s institution. Unsurprisingly, Atterbury refused. After a stand-off Nicolson relented, but the affair helped push the bishop further into the arms of the Whigs. Atterbury was still actively engaged in asserting the legality of his position in the summer of the following year.²²

Atterbury’s prominent role in orchestrating the ‘Church in Danger’ campaign of 1705-6 (about which he corresponded with Adam Ottley*, later bishop of St Davids, did nothing to ameliorate relations with his diocesan. He continued to engage in quarrelsome behaviour, engaging Nicolson in dispute over the cathedral chapter.²³ It was worthy of comment by Nicolson when Atterbury waited on him ‘in a peaceful temper’, and in February 1708 Atterbury was ‘peremptory’ in his refusal to agree to Hugh Todd (one of the Carlisle canons, who had been excommunicated by Nicolson) being required to kneel when seeking absolution from the bishop.²⁴ When Nicolson’s cathedrals bill came before Parliament that spring, Atterbury engineered opposition in both Houses, securing the aid of Henry St John*, later Viscount Bolingbroke, in the Commons and of the Tory bishops in the Lords.²⁵ Although Atterbury failed to prevent the bill’s passage, his strategy had further polarized parties in both Houses.²⁶ He continued to use the pulpit to promulgate high Tory political theology: in October 1708 the City of London aldermen refused to print his sermon at the mayoral election because of its theme of passive obedience.²⁷

Atterbury’s identification with the doctrine of non-resistance was again made apparent in the spring of 1710 during the proceedings against Henry Sacheverell. Atterbury was present to hear himself ‘severely reflected on’ by James Stanhope^† later Earl Stanhope, and he was widely believed to be at least partially responsible for the composition of Henry Sacheverell’s speech of 7 March. He later claimed the credit for causing ‘rejoicings to be made at Farnham’ in response to ‘Sacheverell’s escape’, and when he visited Totnes in May to undertake his visitation there as archdeacon, he was accompanied by Sacheverell.²⁸

Following the removal of Godolphin, Atterbury attempted to mediate between the high Tories and Edward Harley^†, communicating to the latter the disappointment some felt at the failure thus far to put out more of the Whigs or to dissolve Parliament. The ill-judged intervention was said to have provoked Harley into a rare demonstration of ‘passion’.²⁹ The subsequent Tory election victory of 1710 provided Atterbury with further opportunities to press his high-flying agenda. He constantly lobbied Members of both Houses of Parliament and conducted a polemical campaign in Convocation and in the press. Tenison made no effort to disguise his loathing for Atterbury, refusing him permission to visit him at Lambeth. His dislike was also made apparent when, in December, Atterbury and Smalridge were said to have made ‘excellent speeches’ on Atterbury’s presentation as prolocutor of Convocation; Tenison’s response by contrast ‘had nothing in it but peevishness and bad Latin’.³⁰ By the close of the year it was rumoured that Atterbury was to succeed his old mentor as dean of Christ Church, following Aldrich’s death in mid December. It was a post to which he felt entitled, though Harley was reluctant to allow the appointment to go forward, fearing the influence of the intemperate Atterbury on Oxford’s most influential college. A temporary solution was arrived at with a resolution that the appointment would be delayed until a suitable position could also be found for Smalridge.³¹

In January 1711 Atterbury produced a draft representation to the Commons from Convocation on ‘the late excessive growth of infidelity, heresy, and profaneness’ and used his friend William Bromley, by now Speaker, to widen the remit of a Commons’ select committee, originally appointed to examine a petition from the parish of Greenwich, to examine the state of London churches.³² His opposition to the Whig bishops (Tenison in particular) in Convocation was planned in meticulous detail.³³ He also drafted the queen’s speech to Convocation that year.³⁴ On 28 Feb. Atterbury and Smalridge were again in discussions with Bromley.³⁵

Atterbury’s continuing prominence was no doubt the reason for Nicolson stunning some dining companions in late February 1711 with his prediction that Atterbury would shortly succeed the ailing Compton as bishop of London. In the event Compton rallied, robbing Atterbury of the chance (if it ever existed) of securing so important a see. Disappointed by the relative ‘moderation’ of ecclesiastical policies of the Harley ministry, Atterbury steadily moved into the orbit of St John and Harcourt, though he continued to operate on Harley’s behalf, assuring Nicolson, for one, that Harley posed no danger.³⁶ His eventual appointment as dean of Christ Church late in the summer of 1711, however, was the result of an ultimatum laid down by St John as well as forming part of Harcourt’s campaign to maintain the dominance of high-fliers within the university. If the earl of Oxford (as Harley had become) was unhappy, though, the appointment of Atterbury to Christ Church held some advantages as Oxford’s heir, Edward Harley*, styled Lord Harley (later 2nd earl of Oxford), was a student at the college and thus able to keep his father informed of Atterbury’s manoeuvres. Smalridge was compensated with the deanery of Carlisle.³⁷

Atterbury’s association with the militant Tory October Club signalled his continuing role at the ‘hectic’ end of Tory politics.³⁸ He ran quickly into difficulties at Christ Church, where his campaigns to reform the college, to assert the power of the dean and to support Harcourt’s ambitions caused a breach in his old friendship with Smalridge and others (including Francis Gastrell*, later bishop of Chester), as well as reverberations throughout Oxford and beyond. Not unusually for one of his obstreperous temperament, Atterbury betrayed signs of a thin skin. He felt clearly the pointed slights of his Whig neighbours keenly and in July 1712 reported to Oxford how John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough, had failed to abide by his usual policy of providing venison from Blenheim for all the heads of houses in Oxford, deciding instead to deliver the gifts to the masters of just two colleges and to two other academics, one of them, John Potter^†, later archbishop of Canterbury, one of the canons of Christ Church. This, Atterbury was convinced, was so that ‘the passing me over might be the more observable’.³⁹

From his bases in Oxford and in Convocation, Atterbury became a vital element in Bolingbroke’s parliamentary ‘confederation’ to outmanoeuvre Oxford in the Lords.⁴⁰ In early 1713 he drafted a bill (to prevent the too frequent denunciation of excommunication) to revive the power of Church courts, recruiting Heneage Finch*, Baron Guernsey (later earl of Aylesford), to introduce the bill in an attempt to bring Tories such as Guernsey’s brother, Nottingham, and Arthur Annesley*, 5th earl of Anglesey, into the Bolingbroke camp.⁴¹ The bill was introduced on 5 May and managed through the House by William Dawes*, of Chester, who reported from a committee of the whole on 19 June.

Already a veteran of parliamentary politics, Atterbury was elevated to the see of Rochester in June 1713 (with which went the deanery of Westminster). His promotion had been urged upon the queen by Harcourt and came with Bolingbroke’s support; it was achieved in spite of Oxford’s extreme disinclination, fierce opposition from Tory grandee William Legge*, earl of Dartmouth, and the ‘reluctancy’ of the queen who now acknowledged Atterbury’s ‘meddling and troublesome’ behaviour.⁴² Playing on the Latin version of his new title, at least one of Atterbury’s opponents subsequently referred to him as ‘Ruffian’. Atterbury made a point of thanking Oxford for the honour, and requested that he might keep his prebend of Exeter as an acknowledgment of Trelawny’s favour to him. It would also offset the loss he would sustain by resigning the deanship of Christ Church, though by that time he was said rarely to be seen in his college, which had descended into acrimonious in-fighting, to a large extent thanks to his abrasive manner of dealing with his colleagues. Lord Harley’s correspondent, Christ Church canon and Atterbury’s antagonist, William Stratford, urged on the patent for appointing Atterbury’s replacement at Christ Church, complaining that the place had ‘suffered enough already’.⁴³

In stark contrast with his time as dean of Christ Church, Atterbury’s tenure of his bishopric is generally assumed to have been both efficient and uncontroversial, but his major focus remained political. On 7 July Atterbury took his seat in the House. He attended each of the remaining nine sittings of the session and made polite overtures to Oxford.⁴⁴

Atterbury attended the House for the first day of the February 1714 session and was thereafter present for some 45 per cent of sittings and was named to the usual sessional committees. On 20 Mar. he registered his proxy in favour of John Robinson*, bishop of London (vacated 27 May); he did not attend at all during April when the House was involved in heated debates and close divisions on the danger to the Protestant succession. On 13 Apr. Atterbury was noted by one source as having voted with the court in the division on the queen’s reply to the address on the danger posed by the Pretender. However, his proxy-holder, Robinson, in common with the majority of the bishops, voted with the opposition, and other sources have assumed that Atterbury’s vote had been cast the same way.⁴⁵ In May 1714 Atterbury drafted the Schism Bill, another measure intended to embarrass Oxford and flush out ‘moderate’ Tories. Heated debate on 4 June was followed by Dawes’ management of the bill through a committee of the whole; Oxford was dismayed when Atterbury’s speech in the Lords denied that Dissent could ever be a valid part of the English ecclesiastical polity.⁴⁶ Atterbury was present on 11 June to vote in favour of extending the Schism Bill to Ireland (he had been waited on earlier in the month by Anglesey, to solicit his support for the extension).⁴⁷ He voted again on 15 June for the passage of the bill. At the end of June William Wake noted ‘Atterbury’s business’ coming before Convocation. The result, according to Wake, was ‘confusion, and heat, and clamour: nothing concluded’. He blamed Atterbury for raising ‘such contentions among us’.⁴⁸

Early in July the Schism Bill passed Parliament, though Ralph Bridges pointed out another schism remained ‘at the height amongst the great ones at court’, with Atterbury one of a triumvirate believed to be ‘the men chiefly concerned in what they call the new scheme’.⁴⁹ It was rumoured at the end of July that Atterbury might be offered (together with Robinson) the post of joint lord high treasurer. It had been suggested earlier that he was to be lord privy seal and Robinson first commissioner of the Treasury. The death of the queen, however, effected a sudden change in his political fortunes.⁵⁰ Aware that the Tories had little alternative but to accept the Hanoverian regime, Atterbury attended on 1 Aug. for the first day of the brief session that met in the wake of the queen’s death. He attended five sittings and used the occasion to attempt personal conciliation with leading Harleians, including Smalridge, begging him to forgive their past disagreements.⁵¹ At the close of August Atterbury presided at the queen’s funeral at Westminster Abbey.⁵²

Atterbury’s loyalty to the new regime was widely suspected especially after writing an (albeit anonymous) electioneering pamphlet before the 1715 general election which included a personal attack on George I.⁵³ His arrival at the House in the second week of the new spring 1715 Parliament heralded the start of his vociferous parliamentary opposition. On 9 July when articles of impeachment against Oxford were brought up from the Commons his attempt to defend his old ally was greeted by a hostile John Campbell*, 2nd duke of Argyll [S], (earl of Greenwich), with the observation that Atterbury had ‘studied more politics than divinity’.⁵⁴ On 18 Aug. together with other leading Tories he entered a dissent to the refusal of the House to enquire whether Bolingbroke had been properly summoned to answer the bill of attainder against him. In November 1715 he refused to sign the abhorrence of the Jacobite rebellion (on the grounds that he was shown the document too late at night).⁵⁵ He constantly challenged government policy, speaking frequently in the Lords and assuming a leading role in the House. He registered his protest or dissent on more than 40 occasions between 1715 and 1722, and he continued to exchange proxies with John Robinson, Smalridge, Trelawny, Gastrell, and Adam Ottley. His parliamentary career after 1715 and trial for Jacobite plotting will be examined in detail in the next part of this work.

Finally betrayed by John Erskine*, 22nd earl of Mar [S], Atterbury was committed to the Tower on 24 Aug. 1722 on suspicion of plotting against the government. The Commons’ motion to bring in a bill of pains and penalties (including deprivation and exile) was carried without a division and the bill received the royal assent on 27 May 1723.⁵⁶ Atterbury went into exile – taking with him £10,000 raised by Allen Bathurst*, Baron (later Earl) Bathurst, from Tory sympathizers.⁵⁷ His position as minister to the Old Pretender proved difficult and unrewarding. Although he maintained as many friendships as possible, the penalties of communicating with Atterbury ensured that he became increasingly isolated. In the autumn of 1728 he quit Paris for Montpellier, driven there in part by a need to retrench but also on account of political pressure.⁵⁸ Already sick and disillusioned, the death of his only surviving daughter Mary Morice in November 1729 was a blow from which he never recovered. He died on 22 Feb. 1732 in Paris.

The full extent of Atterbury’s personal wealth at the time of his death is difficult to determine. Four years earlier he had complained that he had ‘lost near a third part of my income since I came abroad’ and he was more than aware of the difficulties that faced him in settling his property. Even so, he was insistent that should he outlive his brother, the family estates were his by right.⁵⁹ Atterbury’s post was rifled as a matter of routine, and suspicions about his involvement in plotting were such that orders were given for the container holding his remains to be searched on its arrival back in England; his son-in-law William Morice was also ordered to be searched and his belongings taken into custody.⁶⁰ At the insistence of the king, Atterbury’s burial in Westminster Abbey was kept as private as possible.

The elevation in 1675 of Thomas Barlow, fervent royalist and ‘a very Hercules of orthodoxy’, did not meet with universal approval.² According to Wood, Barlow had ‘truckled to the Independents … partly to keep himself safe and secure, and partly to gain popular applause’. He and Gilbert Sheldon*, of Canterbury, had been in rival theological camps at Oxford before the civil wars and Sheldon remained suspicious of Barlow’s ‘thorough-paced’ Calvinism, which refused to bend to the theological emphases of the Restoration Church.³ Barlow’s intellectual and political framework was informed by a strident anti-Catholicism that echoed the prejudices of the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Church.⁴ Hostile to ‘the unbridled profaneness and atheism of our age’, the ‘machinations of papists, nonconformists and fanatics’ and the hypocrisy of Church careerists, he found himself constantly at odds with Restoration religious politics.⁵ As Thomas Bruce*, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, remarked, ‘it is incongruous to say that a bishop of the Church of England should be against prelacy, but so it was’.⁶

Barlow was an interested observer of the two failed comprehension initiatives of 1667 and 1668; his annotated collection of pamphlets on the subject provides one of the best sources for the abortive negotiations.⁷ He did not, however, support the proposals. In January 1669, when a possible dissolution of Parliament seemed likely, he wrote that,

all men believe that the Presbyterians and all nonconformists desire and endeavour the dissolution of this, and the call of another parliament hoping to choose such members as may give a toleration (if not a greater encouragement or establishment) of their sect and way, and also (to ease the people of taxes) give the king the Church lands to raise money out of the church’s ruins; and so rob God, and invest the pious donations of their ancestors to the paying of the public debts … I hope you and I shall not live to see that day. Sure I am this present parliament will never do an Act so manifestly sacrilegious, and if (quod absit) another parliament should endeavour it, I am persuaded his sacred majesty (on whose head may the crown flourish) will never consent.⁸

In February 1673, in the wake of debates in the Commons criticizing the king’s Declaration of Indulgence, Barlow also wrote approvingly to Sir Edward Harley^‡ about ‘the zeal of your House for the protestant religion’.⁹

Barlow’s Calvinist leanings and ability to survive relatively unscathed during the interregnum made him something of an object of suspicion. According to Wood, Barlow’s scholarly merits were exaggerated and he was a friend to none unless ‘the person is in capacity to do him service’. Wood may have been needlessly spiteful but Barlow certainly was careful to avoid making unnecessary political enemies. When he requested information about current affairs in 1669, for example, he explained that he needed it ‘so I might better know how to go myself: not that I mean to go along with world when it goes wrong, but that (being forewarned) I might endeavour to go well when it goes ill’.¹⁰ And two of Barlow’s friends, the secretaries of state Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ and Henry Coventry^‡, were indeed in a capacity to do him service. It was through their influence that, despite the open hostility of Sheldon, Barlow was elevated to a bishopric in 1675.¹¹ George Morley*, of Winchester, also championed Barlow as a supporter of reformed orthodoxy and performed Barlow’s consecration when Sheldon refused to officiate.¹² In a letter to Sir William Morrice^‡, Barlow made his priorities clear: he wanted to tackle ‘the unbridled profaneness and atheism of our age’ and to protect the Church ‘from the unwearied machinations of papists, nonconformists and fanatics, and … some who pretend to be good sons of the Church of England (and as such enjoy great preferments and dignities) and yet publicly impugn her doctrine’.¹³

Over the course of 12 parliamentary sessions held during Barlow’s episcopate, he attended nine. There is no clear indication that he intervened in parliamentary elections and his ability to do so was circumscribed by his reluctance to visit his new diocese. He was, however, active in the business of the House. He was frequently named to the sessional committees and, as an active member of the Journals committee, helped to examine and amend the Journal on several occasions. In the course of his parliamentary career he was also named to more than 40 select committees.

Barlow took his seat in the Lords at the start of business on 13 Oct. 1675 and attended for 86 per cent of sittings. He was present at the contentious opening of the 1677–8 session and attended 51 per cent of sittings thereafter. He opposed in print the denial by Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, of the divine origins of ‘kingly power’.¹⁴ On 6 Mar. 1678 he was one of those named to attend the king with the resolution of the House refusing the claim of John Frescheville*, Baron Frescheville, to precedence as if he were heir to a creation of the late thirteenth century.

After the revelations of a Popish Plot in the summer of 1678, the session that assembled on 21 Oct. was increasingly obsessed with the perceived Catholic threat. Again taking his seat at the start of business, Barlow attended 69 per cent of sittings in the two-month session. When the Test bill came before the Lords he voted that the declaration against transubstantiation should be under the same penalty as the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Four days later, he challenged William Sancroft*, of Canterbury, Peter Gunning*, of Ely, and John Dolben*, then bishop of Rochester, for opposing the declaration in the Test that all image-worship was idolatrous.¹⁵ On 19 Nov. Barlow was one of only 11 members of the House who voted for the removal from Whitehall of the queen and her Catholic retinue. James Stuart*, duke of York, was exempted from the Test Act on 21 Nov., a day on which Barlow (perhaps prudently) absented himself from the House. As the session drew to a close at the end of December 1678, Barlow voted against a Lords’ amendment to the disbanding bill. On 27 Dec. he also voted against the committal of Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds). His support was not unequivocal: Barlow’s name is absent from Danby’s surviving calculations of probable supporters or opponents.

In March 1679 Barlow attended the first six days of the first Exclusion Parliament, when virtually no business was transacted; after the main session began on 15 Mar. he was present for 74 per cent of sittings. His ingrained hostility towards the ‘exorbitant jurisdiction’ of the prelates was revealed in the division on Danby’s attainder on 14 April. When Shaftesbury moved that the bishops were not entitled to vote in ‘cases of blood’, Barlow left the chamber rather than vote in a capital case. He went further, joining with Denzil Holles*, Baron Holles, to argue in print against the bishops’ right to vote in cases of blood. He was dubbed ‘a bitter enemy of episcopacy’, his loyalty to the king was questioned and it was said that the ‘the sound of Tom of Lincoln is very pleasant to the people’s ears’.¹⁶

Early in 1680 Barlow complained of ill health and the frailties of old age.¹⁷ He arrived five weeks into the second Exclusion Parliament, answering a call of the House on 30 Oct. with the excuse that he was travelling to London. As a consequence, this long-time enemy of all things Catholic contrived to avoid upsetting York by missing the crucial vote on exclusion on 15 November. He attended the remainder of proceedings for just under one-fifth of all sittings, but was present every day of the short-lived Oxford Parliament in March 1681. He then chose to re-publish, with caustic annotations, the papal bulls which had pronounced the excommunications of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, demonstrating thereby that the Catholic Church had always denied that the Church of England was a true church and that it was therefore the enemy of Englishmen and English Protestants. Thereafter he largely retreated to Buckden, writing in anonymity as a ‘cordial friend’ of Protestantism.¹⁸ He nevertheless did visit London occasionally. In 1682–3, for example, he sat as a member of the court of delegates on the Hyde–Emerton affair, delivering a decision in favour of the Emerton marriage that was perhaps still influenced by his dislike of Danby.

Early in 1684 Barlow’s continuing crusade against Restoration Church aesthetics led to the commencement of an unsuccessful suit in the court of arches against Moulton parish church, where effigies of the 12 apostles had been set up. An outraged Barlow claimed in his breviate that images were outlawed by the Church and could only ‘defile and pollute’ her worship.¹⁹ Later that year his only response to a ‘sharp order’ made by the Bedfordshire quarter sessions against Dissenters was to send a circular letter to his clergy requiring them to publish the order ‘and diligently to advance the design of it’ by means that included ‘preaching and catechizing (to take away all excuses for their ignorance)’.²⁰ This was in keeping with his tract on toleration, originally written in 1660, in which he had argued that individuals should be persuaded of truth, not forced into it.²¹ It was, however, the sort of response that his critics found deficient. In May 1684 he received a letter from Archbishop William Sancroft alerting him to reports that he favoured nonconformists and neglected his duties. In his response Barlow insisted that the accusations against him had been made ‘not because I am a favourer of non-conformists, but because I am not … a favourer of papists’. In late 1684 he was threatened with a metropolitan visitation for pastoral neglect, and was temporarily reprieved by the ‘undeserved charity and kindness of the excellent’ George Savile*, marquess of Halifax, and the ‘prudence and diligence’ of his friend Sir Peter Pett. He excused his non-residence in Lincoln on the grounds of age and infirmity – in January 1685 he claimed to have been housebound for over a year – as well as the convenient location of Buckden for diocesan business.²²

Following the accession of James II, Barlow composed an address of thanks to the king for the declaration to preserve the Church, explaining to a friend that to court the anger of a Roman Catholic prince was no way to sustain the English Reformation.²³ He attended Westminster for the opening of Parliament on 19 May 1685 and was present for 82 per cent of sittings. On 16 Nov. he was added to the committee for privileges. He was present on 19 Nov. for the controversial debate on the king’s decision to retain Catholic officers in the army, but (perhaps with a sense of self-preservation) does not appear to have contributed to the debate. Nevertheless he found himself under attack. While in London he was accused before Sancroft and many of his fellow bishops of behaving ‘in a way unbecoming a good Christian, a bishop and a brother’, with the result that by the spring of 1686, on the instructions of the king, Sancroft had asked Thomas White*, of Peterborough, to conduct a visitation of Barlow’s diocese. White regretted that ‘so grave and learned a person’ as Barlow should have invited unwelcome attention. James II’s involvement was further underlined when White felt obliged to ask ‘what enquiry should be made about Catholics and whether his majesty will suffer them to be presented though the censures of the Church do not pass upon them’.²⁴ Barlow protested that Sancroft should have given him a chance to rectify any faults before ordering the visitation, declaring that it was strange,

that I should be the only man to be brought upon the stage, and my faults publicly examined; especially at this time, and in those circumstances the Church of England now is; when prudence and Christian charity would rather hide and conceal our faults, then publicly expose them, to the scandal of our Church, and gratification of our adversaries.²⁵

Throughout 1687 and 1688 Barlow was classified as an opponent of James II’s policies. Nevertheless, in 1687 he signed an address of thanks to the king for the first Declaration of Indulgence and encouraged others to do likewise, ‘that he might not seem backward in so acceptable a service’. He was so anxious to appease the king that in July 1687 he offered to omit an argument against idolatry from his latest pamphlet in case it proved offensive. Barely a month later, in the midst of the Magdalen College affair, he presented the son of James II’s appointee, Thomas Cartwright*, of Chester, to a living that had long been promised to one of his archdeacons but which was now withdrawn, ‘he having offended the bishop in the business of addressing’.²⁶ Yet Barlow’s underlying beliefs had not changed. In a letter to the staunch Anglican Christopher Hatton*, Viscount Hatton, in March 1688, he wrote of his frustration at being forced to omit proof of the ‘stupid idolatry’ of Rome in order to get his pamphlet licensed.²⁷ His ability to play both sides of the game was again demonstrated after the second Declaration of Indulgence when, in response to a query from one of his clergymen, he wrote that,

By his Majesty’s command I was required to send that declaration to all churches in my diocese. In obedience whereto I sent them. Now the same authority which requires me to send them, requires you to read them. But whether you should, or you should not read them, is a question of that difficulty in the circumstances we now are, that you cannot expect that I should hastily answer it, especially in writing. For myself I shall neither persuade or dissuade you, but leave it to your prudence or conscience, whether you will, or you will not read it.

He went on to say that, if the recipient decided to read it against his conscience, ‘it will be your sin, and you to blame for doing it’.²⁸ He did not sign the petition of the Seven Bishops and remained hostile to Sancroft’s prelatical leadership of the Restoration Church.²⁹ Perhaps this hostility to Sancroft was enough to secure the king’s support, for in August 1688 it was rumoured that he would be translated to York.³⁰

On 22 Jan. 1689 the 80-year-old Barlow attended the opening of the Convention, but was present thereafter for only 31 per cent of sittings. On 29 Jan. he voted for a regency and on the 31st against a motion declaring the prince and princess of Orange king and queen. When the Lords came to debate the wording of the offer of the crown on 4 and 6 Feb., Barlow remained in the ‘loyal’ camp, opposing both the use of the word ‘abdicated’ and the expression ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’. He was canvassed by Ailesbury, who reported that Barlow was ‘very likely’ to lend his support; in the event, he was one of 54 lords who ‘made all good in the House of Lords, and most strenuously opposed the question’.³¹ Barlow joined Ailesbury as one of the conference managers on the abdication question. When the critical vote was lost on 6 Feb. he was one of 38 to register his protest. He absented himself from the House on 13 Feb. 1689 when William and Mary were proclaimed joint monarchs but attended the next sitting, on 15 February. On 8 Mar. he was named to the delegation to attend the new monarchs with thanks for his answer to the address of both houses. He took the oaths of fealty to the new monarchy and even attended the coronation.³²

Barlow attended the House for the final time on 16 Apr. 1689. On 22 May he was given leave of absence for the last four months of the 1689 session, his proxy having been entered in favour of Henry Compton*, of London, on 7 May. He remained at Buckden, immersed in his books. This conservative bishop viewed the new regime’s religious policy with contempt and he claimed that the passage of the 1689 Act of Toleration served Dissenters despite their having ‘ruined church and state, and murdered their king’.³³ He believed fervently that no state should tolerate any religion ‘which may be destructive to the civil peace’ and was particularly unhappy with toleration for Quakers, whose abrasive behaviour put them beyond the bounds of ‘reason and civility’.³⁴

On 12 Nov. 1689 Barlow registered his proxy in Compton’s favour for the winter 1689 session. There is no record of a further proxy for the sessions from 1690 to 1691. Shortly before his death in October 1691 at Buckden, he made his final will. In 1689 he had valued his personal estate as worth £300.³⁵ The contents of his personal library were divided between the Bodleian and Queen’s College, Oxford. Controversy pursued Barlow even after death. His friend Sir Peter Pett published assorted manuscripts as The Genuine Remains, only to be accused by William Offley and Henry Brougham, Barlow’s executors, of injuring the bishop’s reputation for financial gain.³⁶ His posthumous standing was however irreparably damaged by Anthony Wood, who described the bishop somewhat simplistically as one who had ‘flattered and run with the times’.³⁷

A Cambridgeshire minister and fellow of Peterhouse before the Civil Wars, Barrow suffered ejection in 1644; around this time, with his lifelong friend Peter Gunning*, the future bishop of Ely, he helped to compose a treatise against the ‘utterly unlawful’ aim in the solemn league and covenant to rid the Church of its bishops.² In July 1662, he became bishop of Sodor and Man through the recommendation of Charles Stanley*, 8th earl of Derby, Lord of Man.³ As bishop of Man, Barrow was not entitled to sit in the Lords, but on the death of Henry Glemham*, of St Asaph, he was nominated to succeed him. He took his seat on 26 Mar. 1670 and immediately became involved in the business of the House. On 28 Mar. the bill which would allow John Manners*, styled Lord Roos (the future 9th earl and duke of Rutland), to remarry received its third reading. Thirteen members of the episcopal bench, including Barrow, registered their dissent.

Barrow attended for over half of the sittings during the 1670–1 session and was named to 19 select committees. He was also now more strategically placed to preach at court and on 30 Jan. 1671 he delivered a ‘most learned’ sermon.⁴ At the same time he was absorbed with diocesan business: this included imposing a ban on extempore prayer (Barrow was a strict disciplinarian)⁵ and engaging in active pastoral work, particularly the funding of apprenticeships and scholarships.⁶

As early as 1671, Barrow became embroiled in a dispute with the dean and chapter over the cost of cathedral repairs.⁷ Dean Humphrey Lloyd*, later bishop of Bangor, was castigated by Gilbert Sheldon*, of Canterbury, and the dispute was mediated by another Welsh bishop, Robert Morgan*, of Bangor.⁸ Financial problems were partly due to the poor revenues from existing lead mines. In 1671 Barrow and Morgan therefore moved to exploit their landowning rights in a private bill enabling them to let all lead mines on their lands for 21 years.⁹ Barrow was present when the bill was read for the first time on 11 Jan. 1671. It was committed on 17 Jan. when neither man was in attendance, but the management of the bill nevertheless had a distinctly Welsh flavour. The committee met on 20 Jan. 1671 under the chairmanship of William Herbert*, 3rd Baron Powis, and oversaw amendments. Powis reported back to the House on the 26th, the bill was recommitted and, after two further meetings on 27 Jan. and 1 Feb., it passed the Lords.¹⁰ In the Commons it was committed to Sir Henry Herbert^‡ and ‘all that serve for the several counties of Wales’, finally receiving the royal assent on 6 Mar. 1671.¹¹

By December 1672, following the Declaration of Indulgence, Sheldon was concerned that the ongoing dispute between Barrow and his chapter might interfere with the bishop’s parliamentary duties; his attendance at the House was required as it was ‘like to be so critical a time … that it admits of no ordinary excuse’.¹² Barrow accordingly arrived at the House for the first day of the new session on 4 Feb. 1673 and attended most days until the brief session ended on 29 March. During that time he was named to four select committees. Thereafter, his attendance suffered as a result of poor health and the difficult journeys between north Wales and London. He made eight appearances in the House in the autumn of 1675; Parliament was prorogued two days after his last visit and he never attended again. In July 1676, even though Parliament was not in session, Barrow registered his proxy to Peter Gunning.

In 1677, John Parry, bishop of Ossory [I], informed Secretary Joseph Williamson^‡ that ‘the good bishop’ was ‘past recovery’: Parry solicited the post for his brother.¹³ Barrow survived that winter but felt ‘utterly disabled’ to fulfil his responsibilities. Disillusioned with life in St Asaph, where the gentry had been unenthusiastic about his charitable projects, he moved to Shrewsbury to live with his sister Martha.¹⁴ At the same time, he begged William Sancroft*, of Canterbury, to accept his resignation, but was unsuccessful.¹⁵ In the autumn of 1678 he was reported as being so weak that he was expected to die at any moment.¹⁶

Despite his failing health, Barrow continued to complain about diocesan finances and sought further private legislation to ameliorate a number of structural problems, not least the funding of repairs necessitated by the cathedral’s exposed position.¹⁷ On 27 Feb. 1678 the Lords read for the first time a bill to appropriate the rectories of Llanrhaiadr in Mochnant and Skeiviog to maintain the cathedral and its choir and to unite several sinecures for the augmentation of poor vicarages. The bill was committed the following day under the chairmanship of Henry Compton*, of London. The select committee dealt speedily with necessary amendments, reporting back to the House on 7 Mar., and the bill received the royal assent on 13 May.¹⁸ Barrow thanked Sancroft for supporting the legislation, ‘a work of great charity and indeed necessity’ since Welsh vicarages were poorly endowed and the clergy ‘illiterate and contemptible … for want of books and all improvements for their ministry’.¹⁹ His attempts to address clerical poverty in his diocese often lacked support and he was under considerable pressure (not least from the king himself) to grant leases and award vacant sinecures.²⁰ Nevertheless, on 1 Apr. 1679 he received the king’s blessing for his refusal to renew the valuable lease of Meliden in order to preserve it for the bishopric. His refusal cost him £700 in loss of fines, but he was assured by the king that his successor would be obliged to do likewise.²¹

In the increasingly anti-clerical atmosphere following the popish plot, Barrow faced the enmity of the ‘country’ opposition. Anthony Wood reported that, in April 1679, five bishops, including Barrow, had been accused of involvement in the plot by John Sidway.²² This episode, which coincided with the impeachment of the five Catholic lords, led to a debate in the House on 7 Apr. which resulted in the committal of Sidway to the Gatehouse. Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, headed the list of those who dissented. Barrow’s reputation as a strict churchman, together with his longstanding alliance with his fellow accused, the conservative Gunning, made him especially vulnerable.

Barrow died in Shrewsbury on 24 June 1680 and was buried on 1 July in the churchyard of his cathedral. Five years after his death, his sister and his nephew, the main beneficiaries and executors of his will, became defendants in a lengthy exchequer case.²³ Furthermore, ‘a great noise’ was made about the epitaph that Barrow had composed, which suggested that prayers from the living could benefit the dead.²⁴ Whig anti-clericalists exploited the inscription as confirmation that the bishop had been a closet Roman Catholic.²⁵

Despite his early education under the influence of the puritan divine William Twysse, Beaw ‘out of zeal to my religion and my king … took up arms in the cause of both’ and was subsequently captured and imprisoned by the parliamentary forces. After his release and ejection from Oxford he embarked on a series of military and diplomatic adventures. In his own account of his life he claimed that at the Restoration there was no preferment in the Church that was not his for the asking – except that he was not in orders. It was presumably the ‘long and earnest solicitations’ of Robert Skinner*, bishop of Oxford, that persuaded him to accept ordination; it was certainly Skinner who ordained him deacon and priest on 8 Aug. 1660.

Although Beaw claimed to have been satisfied with the lucrative living of Adderbury, he was, or so he said,

forced … by some who thought it an indignity (other wise than I thought myself) that my past services should continue unrewarded. Whereupon I was sent so to pitch upon any preferment in the Church (I know not whether a bishopric was intended in the message … it was not excepted) and it should be secured with me.⁶

Anthony Wood gave the credit for Beaw’s elevation to John Wilmot*, 2nd earl of Rochester, whose residence at Adderbury House indicates a physical proximity to Beaw. A more recent account emphasizes the importance of the Hyde connection and suggests that it was Laurence Hyde*, created earl of Rochester in 1682, who acted in Beaw’s interest.⁷ In 1699 Beaw was coy about the identity of his patrons, merely confirming that he was persuaded to accept Llandaff by two letters, one ‘from a person of quality yet living to whom I am the most obliged of any in the world’ and who had assured him that it would be merely the start of a career in the episcopate.⁸ Expecting imminent translation out of Wales, he found himself stranded there for 26 years and, despite his valuable living at Adderbury and several commendams, spent much of his episcopate complaining about his poverty and failure to secure further promotion.

On 6 Nov. 1680 Beaw took his seat in the House, two weeks into the second Exclusion Parliament. His parliamentary career of more than 25 years was constrained by both age and the rigours of travel to Westminster. Of 20 sessions, he attended 11 (and of those only three for more than half of all sittings) and was named to fewer than 30 select committees. He attended his first session for 64 per cent of sittings and was a consistent supporter of the king and his fellow bishops. In November 1680 he rejected exclusion and voted against the appointment of a joint committee to consider the state of the kingdom. The following year, he made three appearances at the week-long Oxford Parliament in March 1681 before the dissolution. In the summer of 1683 Beaw suffered a compound fracture of the ankle which permanently impaired his mobility and put him in such ‘great torment’ that he ordered prayers to be said throughout his own diocese and instructed a diocesan official to beg William Sancroft*, of Canterbury,for additional intercessions.⁹

When Henry Compton*, of London, issued a summons for the coronation of James II in April 1685, Beaw refused to attend (citing his difficulty in walking) but indicated that he intended to be present for the new king’s Parliament at the start of the session.¹⁰ He arrived at Westminster on 22 May 1685, the third day of business, and attended the session for just over half of all sittings. Perhaps his attendance was linked to his attempt, in July 1685, to improve his finances under the new regime. At this point he wrote an account of his ‘sufferings’ in the service of two previous kings, asking Francis Turner*, of Ely, to mediate with James II and represent his ‘forlorn’ situation.¹¹ Meanwhile, he ran into difficulties both in Adderbury and in his diocese. The churchwardens of Barford presented Beaw in 1686 for his failure to provide divine service and he was accused of allowing his congregation to lapse into indifference.¹² In 1687 his decision to appoint his son, also named William Beaw^‡, as chancellor of Llandaff in succession to Sir Richard Lloyd^‡, dean of arches, was challenged in the courts by John Jones, who claimed the post under a grant from Beaw’s predecessor.¹³

As the reign progressed Beaw opposed the repeal of the Test Acts and resisted the catholicizing drift of James’s religious policies. In the spring of 1688 he sympathized with the Seven Bishops in their challenge to the second Declaration of Indulgence. When a copy of their petition reached Beaw via Robert Frampton*, of Gloucester, Beaw described himself as being ‘absent in body only’. He forbade the reading of the Declaration in his own diocese and expressed a hope that the bishops should all ‘be of one mind, and dare to do well in evil times’.¹⁴

Following the Revolution, Beaw attended the Convention for 47 per cent of sittings. Although he did not join Sancroft as a non-juror, he was clearly uncomfortable with the new political situation, supporting a regency and voting against declaring William and Mary to be king and queen. On 4 Feb. 1689 he voted with the opposition in the abdication debates and, two days later, joined with 11 of his fellow bishops in the formal dissent. He was nevertheless present at the coronation on 11 April.¹⁵ On 19 June he registered his proxy in favour of Henry Compton and attended the House for the last time that session on the following day. Beaw was now identified with the high church faction in the House. He attended the second session of the Convention for 44 per cent of sittings; on 19 Nov. 1689 he joined the dissent to the third reading of the bill to prevent clandestine marriages, arguing that when a marriage had been ‘religiously contracted and consummated, it cannot be nulled’.

Thomas Osborne*, marquess of Carmarthen classed him as an opponent of the court in a list compiled between October 1689 and February 1690, adding that he was to be approached by the bishop of London to be absent. In the spring of 1690, however, Beaw attended the House more regularly than at any other time in his career – for nearly 83 per cent of sittings. On 8 Apr., as a reliable ally of Rochester, he objected to the wording of the bill that confirmed the acts of the Convention as ‘destructive of the legal constitution of this monarchy’.¹⁶ He was, though, present at the winter session of 1690–1 on only 14 occasions and failed to attend the session at the end of 1691, quite possibly preoccupied with the continuing dispute over the appointment of his son as diocesan chancellor in 1688. In May 1691 Jones won his case; the younger William Beaw then appealed to the Lords, where the case was heard, and dismissed with costs, on 18 Feb. 1692.¹⁷ It was almost certainly this that prompted Beaw to register his proxy in favour of Peter Mews*, of Winchester, on 27 Jan. 1692 (vacated at the end of the session). The Beaws would not accept the decision and perhaps this was why the bishop attended the autumn 1692 session more regularly than usual (63 per cent of sittings). On 19 Nov. 1692 Beaw’s son petitioned the House unsuccessfully for an abatement of costs. Further difficulties arose when Sir Adam Ottley, a master in chancery, pointed out that the younger Beaw, as a diocesan official, could claim protection under his father’s privilege of Parliament. Jones petitioned the House on 9 Feb. 1693 to discharge the offending protection but the bishop’s privilege was upheld.¹⁸ Meanwhile, in January 1693 Beaw had opposed both the Place bill and the committal of the bill to prevent dangers from disaffected persons. On 17 Jan. he also protested against the Lords’ dismissal of the Banbury peerage claim.

Beaw had long had hopes of a translation to Hereford but, unfortunately for him, Herbert Croft* although

old and feeble and sick, and dropping every hour off … thought not good to go out of the world in King Charles’ reign, nor in King James’ reign neither, but deferred his departure till this government when a brother of mine, who was upon the watch, and too quick for me, made the first catch at the bishopric, and caught it.

In 1692 the death of Thomas Wood*, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, encouraged Beaw to try again for translation. Realizing that Lichfield was beyond his grasp he made it clear that he was prepared to settle for St Asaph and sought Compton’s help to secure it, but ‘it had been buzzed into the queen’s ears … that a Welsh bishop ought to be a Welshman’, an argument with which John Tillotson*, archbishop of Canterbury, agreed. Beaw was incensed, claiming that Tillotson had insulted former kings and primates who had imposed English bishops on the Welsh Church. English, he insisted, was the primary language in Welsh market towns, where a sermon in Welsh would not be understood. He claimed that he had tried to overcome his anger towards Tillotson, not least since the archbishop often sat close to Beaw on the bishops’ bench ‘as if to invite’ Beaw into conversation. Tillotson subsequently promised that a ‘worthy’ commendam would be added to the bishopric to ease Beaw’s acute financial difficulties but the archbishop’s unexpected death left Beaw’s hopes ‘extinct’.¹⁹

For the following seven sessions of Parliament, alienated politically from the government and disgruntled with his circumstances, Beaw failed to attend. Nor, according to surviving records, did he ever send a proxy. On 23 Nov. 1696, when the House was enforcing attendance in preparation for the forthcoming proceedings against Sir John Fenwick^‡, he was excused after informing the House that he was almost 80 years old and that his age ought to bring ‘a full discharge from all other labour and sorrow than what itself brings’.²⁰

Beaw again asserted his privilege of Parliament on 27 Feb. 1697 when he petitioned against two men who had ‘forcibly entered’ his estate in an attempt to recover unpaid debts from his tenants. In August 1699 anticipation of an imminent vacancy in the episcopate through the deprivation of Thomas Watson*, bishop of St Davids, prompted him to compile a long letter to Thomas Tenison*, of Canterbury, rehearsing details of his career and his thwarted expectations of preferment, and complaining of the ‘indignity’ of a ‘little bishopric’ where living according to his dignity rather than his income left him in need of charity.²¹

With the accession of Anne in 1702, the 86-year-old Beaw made one last ‘pitch’ at translation. On the day of her coronation he drafted a memorandum to the queen and attended the ceremony, walking ‘all the way both forward and backward’.²² There is no evidence that he delivered this letter or, if he did, that he received any reply. Nevertheless, in April 1702 Beaw reappeared on the episcopal bench but he attended only eight sittings before the end of the session. On 11 Oct. he informed Humphrey Humphreys*, of Hereford, that he had intended to stay away from Parliament but that he now planned to ‘hasten up’, leave a proxy and return to Hereford, where he was staying.²³ He attended the House twice in December 1702 but then absented himself until a final visit three years later. Although William Nicolson*, of Carlisle, recorded Beaw as voting with the Tories on 16 Jan. 1703 on the Lords’ amendments to the Occasional Conformity Bill, he was not listed as being in attendance that day.²⁴ It is possible that he voted by proxy but this cannot be confirmed as the proxy book is defective. A printed list of the division on the bill on 14 Dec. 1703 does indicate that Beaw voted for the bill by proxy. It was probably cast by Henry Compton but again this cannot be confirmed because the proxy book for the 1703–4 session is missing. Beaw’s proxy was registered in Compton’s favour on 6 Oct. 1704; it was vacated at the end of the session. He attended the winter 1705 session on one day only, 12 Nov., his final appearance in the House of Lords. On 28 Nov. he registered his proxy once again in favour of Compton.

From 1697 Beaw had exchanged his pinched life in Monmouthshire for the relative comfort of his Oxfordshire vicarage. The medieval bishop’s palace at Mathern slipped into disuse; Beaw was the last bishop to live there. In 1704 the ageing bishop petitioned the queen for assistance for his ‘destitute’ family; the following spring he approached Sidney Godolphin*, Baron Godolphin, with a new plea for additional income by appropriating to the bishopric the income of a vacant archdeaconry. All he got, in 1705, was a pension of 20 shillings as ‘royal bounty’.²⁵

Beaw died on 10 Feb. 1706 and was buried not in his cathedral but at Adderbury. He bequeathed only five shillings to each of his children and made his wife sole executrix and the residuary beneficiary. Anne granted his widow a yearly pension of £40, but her various costs and debts after the death of the bishop exceeded £500 and she claimed to be owed in excess of £800 by Henry Somerset*, 2nd duke of Beaufort, for a lease granted by her husband. With three unmarried daughters still without provision and Beaufort attempting to avoid payment of his debt, she was reduced to a ‘deplorable condition’.²⁶ Nor did Beaw’s eldest son thrive: he fell into debt and, following a short and lacklustre career as a Member of the Commons, died in the Fleet prison in 1738.²⁷ Beaw himself left a poor pastoral legacy and is not remembered kindly by the Welsh, not least because it was ‘manifest that in upwards of 26 years he never gave any dignity in this Church, but to one native and that on a particular consideration’.²⁸ Browne Willis^‡ also remarked on the poverty of Beaw’s legacy to Llandaff, the bishop having spent ‘not one farthing’ towards the Church.²⁹

A patristic scholar well respected by his fellow high churchmen, William Beveridge is remembered almost exclusively as a pastor and theologian. He was born into a minor clerical dynasty and inherited from his father the Leicestershire estate of Hall Orchard in Barrow. At the time of his death, he bequeathed both Hall Orchard and other properties in Barrow worth an annual rental income of £53, in addition to more than £1,200 in cash. An inventory taken in 1712 revealed that his personal estate was worth over £2,500.⁵ Beveridge enjoyed the patronage of the bishops of London throughout his career, being presented by Gilbert Sheldon*, then of London, later archbishop of Canterbury, to his first living.⁶ As a theologian in the same vein as John Pearson*, of Chester, and George Bull*, of St Davids, he was pivotal to the high churchmanship that developed in the early eighteenth century Church. He helped to develop the martyrology of Charles I and, as an outspoken advocate of Anglican royalist politics and religious uniformity, opposed the comprehension projects of 1668 and 1674. In 1681 he preached his famous sermon on the merits of the prayer book (perennially popular, it had gone into 44 editions by 1824) and he never retreated from the opinion that Anglican public worship fostered political loyalty.⁷

In 1672, Beveridge joined the ranks of influential London clergymen when he was presented to the City church of St Peter Cornhill. On 19 May 1688, he was one of 17 clergymen who gathered in London to co-ordinate their opposition to the second Declaration of Indulgence. He was nevertheless unhappy about the events of the revolution of 1688. In January 1689 he was one of several Tory clergymen who opposed the decision by Henry Compton*, of London to omit the customary prayers for the royal family from the public liturgy. On 13 Sept. of that year Beveridge was named to the ecclesiastical commission to revise the liturgy along the lines agreed between John Tillotson*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, and Hans Willem Bentinck*, earl of Portland. The contentious debates in convocation in December 1689 showed that he was firmly allied to Tillotson.⁸

Beveridge’s elevation to the episcopate was widely anticipated and on 22 Apr. 1691 he was nominated to replace the non-juror Thomas Ken*, at Bath and Wells.⁹ William Sancroft*, of Canterbury, advised him to reject the appointment although he did not expect Beveridge to follow his guidance. Having first accepted the nomination Beveridge then changed his mind, claiming to be worried about accepting a post that was not canonically vacant, although he was also concerned about the strength of support for Ken in the diocese and the threat of an action in king’s bench. His refusal offended the king and provoked an attack in the press (attributed to Edward Stillingfleet*, of Worcester).¹⁰ Beveridge nevertheless continued to make his mark as a Tory clergyman in convocation.¹¹

It was only with the accession of Anne that his career fortunes changed. A favourite with the new queen for his stance on royal authority and supported by John Sharp*, archbishop of York, Beveridge was elevated to St Asaph as one of four Tory bishops to be appointed in the first three years of Anne’s reign. He was consecrated on 16 July 1704 and went into his new diocese determined on pastoral reform. A prolific writer of learned doctrinal expositions and devotionals, he took a pragmatic stance towards the paucity of academically qualified clergy in his new diocese.¹² He encouraged branches of the SPCK and the translation into Welsh of his publications.¹³ In an area dominated by Tories, his contribution to Welsh life was ecclesiastical rather than political. Even when other parts of the country were gripped with election fever in 1705 and 1706, there was no evidence of partisan activity to engage the new bishop.¹⁴

Beveridge took his seat in the House on 24 Oct. 1704, the first day of a new parliamentary session, when he was ordered to preach to the House on 5 November. He was also named to the committee to draw up a congratulatory address on the military successes of John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough. His sporadic attendance during the session (only 12 per cent of sittings) marked the start of a lacklustre parliamentary career. A lack of interest in Parliament did not denote a lack of interest in national politics, however, for he used the pulpit to deliver political sermons of considerable partisanship. On 5 Nov. 1704, his sermon before the Lords foreshadowed the controversial Sacheverell sermon of 1709; he applied his text (Esther ix. 27–28) in such a way as to commemorate only the gunpowder plot and not William III’s landing at Torbay. Beveridge attributed the revolution to providence, rather than William III.¹⁵ On 14 Dec. he registered his proxy in favour of his fellow Tory George Hooper*, of Bath and Wells. The following day, after a four-hour debate on the occasional conformity bill and the division on its second reading, William Nicolson*, of Carlisle, noted that Beveridge (by proxy) was one of the 33 who voted in favour of the bill.¹⁶ Beveridge excused himself from the 1704 Christmas dinner at Lambeth Palace on the grounds of ill health. At the time he was also fretful at the prospect of the case of Thomas Watson*, the deprived bishop of St Davids, coming before the Lords, fearing that it would have divisive consequences whatever the outcome.¹⁷ He returned to the House on 20 Feb. 1705 and attended for a further 12 days before the end of the session.

Beveridge arrived at the October 1705 session six days after the start of business. He attended 30 per cent of sittings and was named to eight committees. On 8 Jan. 1706, he was ordered to give the annual sermon commemorating the execution of Charles I. His sermon (on the Christian martyr Stephen) repeated his apology for the sainthood of Charles I, who, he claimed, had died defending the Church from puritans inspired by the devil.¹⁸ On 1 Feb. the House ordered its publication. Beveridge attended again on 19 Mar. 1706 but missed the last two months of the session.

On 3 Dec. 1706, Beveridge arrived on the first day of the 1706–7 session and attended 35 per cent of sittings (a total of 30 days). Throughout December 1706 he did the social round in London with his nephew Dean William Stanley and with William Nicolson.¹⁹ Parliamentary business in the new year revolved around the union with Scotland. Francis Annesley^‡, the Member for Preston, informed the archbishop of Dublin that Beveridge, Hooper, Compton, and Sharp were opposed to the ‘Scotch Acts’.²⁰ Beveridge in particular feared that Scottish Presbyterianism would in some way contaminate the Church of England. On 3 Feb. 1707, he supported Sharp’s unsuccessful amendment that the Test Act should be an integral part of the Act of Union. On 3 Mar. he was again among the minority trying to block the article that would give official recognition to the Scottish kirk. He thanked George Bull for his speech affirming the Church of England as the ideal Protestant church, wishing that he and Bull had responsibility for writing the bill themselves; faced with arguments that national security was of a higher priority than the Anglican monopoly, however, Beveridge and other like-minded bishops duly voted for the offending article.²¹

Beveridge consistently devoted more time to ecclesiastical than parliamentary business. On 8 Mar. 1707, the fifth anniversary of the queen’s accession, he was not in the House but with the two archbishops in the royal chapel. The House rose on 8 Apr. and Beveridge failed to attend the subsequent short session that began on 14 Apr. 1707. He arrived 18 days after the start of the 1707–8 session. Attending only nine per cent of sittings, he was absent from the House between 12 Dec. 1707 and 20 Jan. 1708 but was seen on Christmas Day receiving communion at St Margaret’s Church, and he attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth.²² His health was now in decline and on 20 Jan. 1708 he attended the House for the final time. He died in his apartments in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey on 5 Mar. 1708 and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral with no memorial inscription.²³ In addition to his bequests of Leicestershire land and legacies to friends, family, and the poor, he bequeathed £100 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, his books to a library for London clergy, and the advowson of Barrow vicarage to his Cambridge college.

Bisse came from a long clerical tradition, being the second of seven children born to a Gloucestershire clergyman descended from an armigerous Somerset family.² He was ordained in 1692 by John Hough*, then bishop of Oxford, but does not appear to have held any ecclesiastical livings before gaining a prestigious chaplaincy to Lady Plymouth. After the death of her first husband she married Bisse but the marriage was not publicly acknowledged until 1706. At least initially, it was not the connection to the extensive Osborne family network that was most influential in shaping Bisse’s career but his kinship to Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford. The Osbornes disapproved of the marriage, presumably because Bisse’s social status was vastly inferior to that of a ducal family, and it was Harley whose support and willingness to own Bisse as his relation and to disclose the marriage to the queen earned the couple’s gratitude.³ Details of both Bisse’s personal relationships and financial circumstances are hazy; by the time of his death, he owned real estate in Herefordshire and Middlesex, although its extent is unknown.

By 1708, Bisse was a prominent Tory clergyman and enthusiastic proponent of the theology of good works. In his sermons and in convocation, he helped to politicize the Anglican doctrinal struggle between the promoters of practical piety – with its perceived advantages of social stability – and diehard Calvinists such as John Williams*, of Chichester.⁴ Early in May 1709 he was said to be a candidate for the vacant bishopric of Chichester but to have little chance of success. By the end of the month his prospects had improved. The queen had been instrumental in effecting a reconciliation between his wife and her father, and had promised Bisse ‘the title of lord’. Bisse also secured the support of John Sharp*, archbishop of York.⁵ His reputation was further enhanced by the rousing fast sermon that he delivered to the Commons in March 1710.⁶ He was thus ideally placed to benefit from his cousin’s political position when the Harley ministry of 1710 saw a dramatic improvement in the career prospects of Tory clerics. By April 1710 it was already rumoured that Bisse, then aged only 43 (and with no previous ecclesiastical preferments), would be elevated to the episcopate. As he later acknowledged, his elevation was entirely due to the ‘favour’ of Oxford (as Harley had become).⁷ As Harley’s client, Bisse’s appointment constituted something of a snub to the ‘hot’ Tories such as Henry Sacheverell and Francis Atterbury*, the future bishop of Rochester.

Bisse was consecrated in Lambeth Palace chapel on 19 Nov. 1710.⁸ As an avowed Anglophile, he acted to the detriment of Welsh culture, refusing to subscribe to Welsh books because it would ‘obstruct the English tongue’. Unlike both his predecessor George Bull*, and his successor Adam Ottley*, he enforced the use of English by erecting charity schools in which only English was spoken.⁹ There is no evidence that Bisse took a prominent role in Pembrokeshire electoral politics, although his elevation to St Davids dovetailed neatly with the collapse of Whig power in Wales when the Sacheverell trial polarized local party opinion.¹⁰ He is known, however, to have acted as Oxford’s agent in the Shropshire elections in 1713.¹¹ On 3 Oct. 1710, Bisse (as bishop-elect) was named in a list of Lords expected to support the ministry. He received his writ of summons on 24 Nov. and took his seat in the House on the following day. ¹² He attended for nearly 70 per cent of sittings during the session and held the proxy of John Robinson*, then bishop of Bristol, from 11 Dec. for three days. The extant diaries of William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle and William Wake*, then bishop of Lincoln, as well as that of the clergyman Henry Brydges, show that Bisse frequently dined with his fellow bishops when in London and that sometimes these meetings had a partisan political flavour. Strategies for parliamentary as well as Church business must have figured in the table talk.¹³

On 6 Dec. 1710, Bisse had voted in convocation for Atterbury to be confirmed as prolocutor and on 21 Feb. 1711 he was named in the queen’s new licence for the convocation quorum (with John Robinson, Offspring Blackall*, of Exeter, and Jonathan Trelawny*, ofWinchester). Many of the existing bishops were offended by the inclusion of such new appointees to the episcopate and by what was in effect an intrusion on the authority of Thomas Tenison*, archbishop of Canterbury. Age and inexperience notwithstanding, Bisse proved to be a shrewd and effective negotiator. He brokered a compromise and persuaded the queen to amend the offending licence. Nicolson, recorded Bisse’s ‘kind wish’ for unanimity on the episcopal bench.¹⁴

Bisse was also involved in non-parliamentary activities. Late in December 1710 he attended a Whitehall meeting of the commissioners of Queen Anne’s bounty, and in March 1711 he was named to a committee of bishops sitting in the heresy case against the Cambridge professor William Whiston.¹⁵ On 15 May 1711, Bisse was ordered to preach to the Lords at the public thanksgiving for the Restoration. His sermon lauded an English constitution established for at least 2,000 years. He looked back (with considerable venom) on the interregnum polity that had been ‘torn to pieces by the republican spirit’ and infiltrated by ‘the very dregs of the people’.¹⁶

Bisse was in the House on 7 Dec. 1711 for the first day of the new parliamentary session, and he attended 80 per cent of sittings. The following day he protested against the resolution to present the address on account of the additional ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause that encroached on the royal prerogative in foreign affairs. On 19 Dec. he was forecast as likely to support claims of James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit as a British peer and on 20th duly voted against the resolution disabling hi from sitting as duke of Brandon. The next day he again received the proxy of John Robinson (vacated at the end of the session). On 26 Feb. 1712, he voted to agree with the Commons’ amendment in the episcopal communion (Scotland) bill, and on the same day he received the proxy of Thomas Manningham*, bishop of Chester (vacated 13 May 1712). On 1 Mar. Bisse supported Greenshields in his appeal before the Lords.¹⁷ Clearly a popular preacher in elevated social circles, Bisse took an increasingly prominent role as Oxford’s friend and ally. Over the course of the year he was deeply involved in the somewhat fraught negotiations for the marriage of Oxford’s daughter Elizabeth to Peregrine Hyde Osborne*, then styled marquess of Carmarthen, later 3rd duke of Leeds. In convocation, a dispute over the validity of lay baptism led him to become involved in ‘anxious’ meetings with Sharp and Atterbury in which they discussed the need for Oxford to press the queen to prohibit all discussion of controversial doctrinal issues.¹⁸ On 11 June 1712, he again received Manningham’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session).

Thoroughly integrated into the social life of the episcopate, Bisse attended the St Stephen’s day dinner at Lambeth Palace on 26 Dec. 1712.¹⁹ On 6 Feb. 1713, again through Oxford’s influence, he was translated to the see of Hereford, a city firmly in the grip of the Tories. The translation entrenched Bisse as a member of the Harley–Foley political alliance in Herefordshire but it also brought him into opposition with Thomas Coningsby^†, Baron Coningsby [I], the future earl of Coningsby, who later described Bisse as ‘the worst of bishops’.²⁰ Unsurprisingly, on 15 Mar. 1713, Oxford and Jonathan Swift together listed Bisse as a supporter of the ministry in the approaching session. On the first day, 9 Apr. 1713, he took his seat as bishop of Hereford, attending the session for 56 per cent of sittings. On 13 June it was forecast that he would support another Tory measure, the French commerce bill. In mid-July he was named to the committee on new London churches, reporting from the committee on 13 July and recommending that a clause be added to preserve the right of petitioners. That summer, ‘being on the spot and having easy access to the treasurer [Oxford] … as well as his inclination to make his court’, he was tipped as the successor to Henry Compton*, bishop of London.²¹ That the post went instead to Robinson did not dampen expectations of further preferment. In February 1714 Bisse was again being tipped for promotion, this time to be archbishop of York. He was reputed to be so anxious for promotion that he had alienated his Hereford diocese by revealing his enthusiasm to leave them for a better see as soon as possible. He lost out to Dawes of Chester, probably because Bisse’s allegiance to Oxford was firm, while Dawes needed encouraging.²²

Bisse was again in the House on the first day of the next parliamentary session (16 Feb. 1714); he attended this session for some 53 per cent of sittings. On 17 Mar. 1714 he registered his proxy (vacated on 31 Mar.) in favour of his successor at St Davids, Adam Ottley. On 5 Apr. he was named to the committee to prepare an address to the queen that, in conjunction with the States General, the emperor should be asked to guarantee the Protestant succession in the House of Hanover. In forecasts for voting on the schism bill, Bisse was listed as a likely supporter. Bisse dined with Ottley, Nicolson, and George Smalridge*, of Bristol, at the home of John Robinson on 25 May 1714.²³ Two weeks later Bisse, Ottley, Smalridge, and Robinson all voted in favour of extending the schism bill to Ireland. Bisse again voted for the schism bill on 15 June. Six days later, he received the proxy of another of Oxford’s episcopal allies, George Hooper*, of Bath and Wells (vacated at the end of the session).

Bisse arrived three days into the brief session following the queen’s death and attended on one day only. On 20 Oct. 1714, the coronation of George I was greeted with riots in Hereford; Bisse horrified Hereford Tories when he appeared before the clergy ‘with a joyful and entirely pleased countenance’. Yet the previous year, after a sermon delivered by Sacheverell to the sons of the clergy, he had attended a social gathering where the musicians played a popular Jacobite song that was received ‘with universal acclamations’.²⁴ There is also some evidence that, after the accession of George I, Bisse went into opposition and became part of an undercover group that was associated with the Jacobite cause.²⁵ His political and parliamentary career after 1715 will be discussed further in the next phase of this work. He died at Westminster on 6 Sept. 1721, aged 54. Having bequeathed £100 to his Oxford college for its ‘beautifying’, he left the bulk of his real and personal estate to his brother Thomas Bisse (founder of the Three Choirs Festival) and to his sister Joyce Bisse, requesting interment next to his wife, who had predeceased him. Lauded by a contemporary, Abel Boyer, as a man of singular integrity and sweetness, Bisse was buried in his cathedral on 11 Sept. with a ‘sumptuous’ monument.²⁶

A personal favourite of Queen Anne, Offspring Blackall is generally remembered for engaging in religious polemics with John Toland and Benjamin Hoadly^†. Yet his career was also politically significant if only because his controversial elevation to the episcopate ignited a ministerial crisis. Once he became a bishop he found himself one of a Tory minority in an episcopate dominated by Whig bishops and was condemned as a Jacobite by Gilbert Burnet*, bishop of Salisbury. Blackall had a puritan heritage through his maternal grandfather, Charles Offspring (Ofspring). His father, a propertied and armigerous City alderman, was originally from Oxfordshire but had settled in Dalston.⁶ Offspring Blackall inherited property in Minford, Somerset, from his father, who also owned lands in Hertfordshire, Kent, Somerset, Middlesex and London.⁷ It was believed that Blackall never acquired wealth because of his poor diocese and large family but he actually added considerably to his patrimony, investing heavily in government lotteries and stock. By the time of his death, he had acquired considerable assets and was able to bequeath lands in Bristol, Somerset and Gloucestershire, annuities worth over £200 a year as well as cash and bonds (including over £2,000 in South Sea stock) worth nearly £5,000.

By 1693 Blackall had come to the attention of Henry Compton*, bishop of London. At a time when churchmen were increasingly anxious about the effects of the Act of Toleration, a sermon by Blackall against religious sectarianism was particularly well received.⁸ In 1699, in a sermon to the House of Commons, he denounced the deist John Toland and, more broadly, rationalist intrusions into religious doctrine.⁹ In 1705 he delivered a sermon, published as The Subject’s Duty, that identified him as a stalwart advocate of the doctrine of nonresistance and created suspicions of nonjuring sympathies.¹⁰ His high church clericalism and authoritarian approach to civil obedience attracted criticism from all points on the political spectrum: his views were disliked by Whigs, Jacobites and rationalists alike.

In 1707 Anne made a private promise of preferment to Blackall and William Dawes*, the future bishop of Chester, another Tory cleric. When news leaked of her intentions, her ministers, desperate to shore up their parliamentary support by appeasing the Whig Junto, were appalled; the Junto Whigs were furious. John Somers*, Baron Somers, demanded that Thomas Tenison*, of Canterbury, block Blackall’s appointment. Tenison (despite boasting that he would speak ‘freely’ to the queen), prevaricated in the face of the queen’s obduracy.¹¹ Insisting that Blackall was a personal choice, Anne claimed that opposition to the appointment could only proceed from Whig malice, for Blackall and Dawes were ‘very fit for the station I design them, and indeed I think myself obliged to fill the bishops’ bench with those that will be a credit to it, and to the Church.’ She went on to deny that the appointments were influenced by Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, or that they represented a breach with the duumvirs, Sidney Godolphin*, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin and John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough.¹² The duumvirs, certain that Harley was at the root of the problem, continued to pressurize the queen to abandon Blackall. In September Godolphin protested that Blackall’s appointment would ‘hearken and encourage’ the opposition in Parliament, insisting that,

The liberties of all Europe, the safety of your majesty’s person and of these kingdoms, the future preservation of the protestant religion, the strength of your government, and the glory of your reign, depend upon the success of next sessions of Parliament, & indeed upon every sessions of Parliament while this war lasts. … This being truly the case, what colour of reason can incline your majesty to discourage and dissatisfy those whose principles and interest lead them on with so much warmth and zeal to carry you through the difficulties of this war, and have already given you so many unquestionable proofs of their preferring your majesty’s interest and the support of your government, above all others? And what appearance will it have, what reflection will it not cause in the world, that all these weighty things together, cannot stand in the balance with this single point, whether Dr Blackall, at this time, be made a bishop or a dean or a prebend.¹³

However, by October the opening of additional patronage opportunities for churchmen had calmed the situation. Edmund Gibson^†, (later bishop of London) confided in William Wake*, bishop of Lincoln and the future archbishop of Canterbury, that he believed it ‘agreed, on the Whig side, that Dr Blackhall’s going to Exeter shall break no squares.’¹⁴

On 6 Jan. 1708 Anne made a formal announcement of Blackall’s nomination as bishop of Exeter.¹⁵ He received his writ of summons on 2 Mar. 1708 and took his seat in the House on the same day.¹⁶ He appears to have been a diligent pastor but a less than conscientious parliamentarian. Although he put in an appearance at seven of the nine sessions held during his episcopate, he never attended for more than two-fifths of sittings and usually attended for less than a quarter. Rather, he resided almost constantly in his diocese, and is said to have declared that bishops should concentrate on their dioceses ‘where they could do much good, and not be so fond of attending Parliament, where they could do little or none’.¹⁷

Taking his seat four months after the start of the winter 1707 parliamentary session, Blackall attended for only ten days before the session closed on 1 Apr. 1708. There was no effort to enlist his support in the April 1708 Exeter by-election but the situation had changed by the time of the general election a month later. John Poulett*, Earl Poulett, assuming that intervention by the bishop would swing the Exeter electorate, asked Harley to pressurize Blackall into supporting the Poulett candidate, Tory merchant Nicholas Wood^‡. Wood was elected but Blackall’s role in the election is unclear. Blackall’s intervention was also sought by George Granville*, later Baron Lansdown, who wanted the bishop’s assistance in electing Henry St John*, the future Viscount Bolingbroke, for Lostwithiel against the interest of his local rival Charles Bodvile Robartes*, 2nd earl of Radnor.¹⁸

In May 1708 a printed list of party affiliation unsurprisingly marked Blackall as a Tory. He arrived ten days after the start of business for the November 1708 session and attended one quarter of the sittings. On 31 Jan. 1709 he preached a dour sermon before the House of Lords on the sins of the fathers being visited on their children.¹⁹ The second reading of the general naturalization bill on 15 Mar. 1709 split the episcopal bench. In the vote on whether to retain the words ‘some protestant reformed congregation’, Blackall was one of ten bishops who divided on party lines in favour of the much more restrictive phrase ‘parochial church’; seven Whig bishops led by Tenison voted to keep the original wording. On 22 Mar. 1709, in the division of a committee of the whole sitting on the bill to improve the union on a question of Scottish law (whether those accused of treason should be given a list of witnesses five days before their trial), Blackall voted in opposition to the court. On 25 Mar. Blackall voted to postpone discussion of the validity of Scots marriage settlements under the new treason law to the following day, voting with the court Whig William Cowper*, Baron Cowper, and Godolphin against the Junto-led opposition, including Somers and Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland.²⁰

The session ended on 21 Apr. 1709 and Blackall became immersed in a vicious dispute with Benjamin Hoadly^†, the future bishop of Winchest, that sparked debate in Parliament about the concept of popular sovereignty and the constitutional role of the Lords. The altercation arose from Blackall’s sermon at St James on 8 Mar. 1709 (the anniversary of Anne’s accession) in which he took as his text the defining biblical sanction for absolute authority (Rom. 13:4).²¹ The sermon, which repeated the sentiments already voiced in The Subject’s Duty, created anxious ripples in Whig circles. Hoadly responded to it in Some considerations humbly offered to … the Bishop of Exeter, accusing Blackall of attacking the Revolution: the quarrel became so ugly that it was rumoured Blackall would resort to legal action; at least one observer thought that Hoadly risked an action of scandalum magnatum.²² Throughout Blackall reiterated the divine origin of doctrines of subjection and nonresistance, both of which, he maintained, were vital ‘to the honour of Christianity and the security of human society’. To Blackall accountability of human authority to God was a doctrine higher even ‘than the very tip-top of Toryism’.²³ Back in his diocese he set his face against the tactics of the reformation of manners movement; when he preached to the grand jury he chose to take as his subject the ninth commandment (against bearing false witness) and ‘represented how odious and ignominious it was to be an informer and that, excepting the cases of treason, murder or such heinous crimes, no body was bound to detect his neighbour’.²⁴

Although listed as attending the Lords on 25 Jan. 1710 (his only attendance that session), it seems likely that, as Ralph Bridges later wrote he had been at Exeter all winter and had received private instructions from the queen to stay away from the House. Indeed, when the House divided on the question of guilt of Henry Sacheverell on 25 Mar., it was noted that Blackall was in the country.²⁵ In September 1710, after the Tory victory in the general election, Blackall and the cathedral chapter drew up a loyal address.²⁶ The following month Harley’s analysis of the House of Lords listed Blackall as a supporter of the new ministry. The election victory appears to have propelled Blackall to Westminster for the new session of Parliament that began in November 1710 when he put in his highest level of attendance (38 per cent). Blackall arrived two days after the start of the session. Remaining in London over Christmas, he attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth and the meeting for Queen Anne’s Bounty at Whitehall three days later.²⁷

On 5 Feb. 1711 he registered his dissent against the repeal of the General Naturalization Act. The following day, after the queen’s levée, Blackall and William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle dined in Kensington where there was ‘Tory discourse’.²⁸ On 21 Feb. the queen’s new licence named Blackall to the Convocation quorum, thus offending the more senior bishops.²⁹ He attended the House on 1 Mar. for the debate on the appeal of James Greenshields but did not attend the session after 26 March.

On 29 Nov. 1711 (in advance of the new session that opened on 7 Dec.) Blackall excused his inability to attend Parliament by reference to an outbreak of smallpox in the region and once more registered his proxy in favour of Dawes.³⁰ Blackall attended for one-fifth of sittings, but again missed the last ten weeks of business. On 2 Jan. 1712, after the debate on the adjournment (following the creation of Harley’s ‘dozen’), the episcopal bench again split on party lines. Eleven of the bishops present voted with the Junto; the remaining four, all Tories and including Dawes, voted against the Junto. Blackall was not present but his proxy was used by Dawes.³¹ The proxy was vacated on 11 Feb. with Blackall’s attendance. On 26 Feb., in the division on the Scottish toleration bill, Blackall voted to agree with the Commons’ amendment. The Easter dinner at Lambeth on 22 Apr. was marked by another rift between Tory and Whig bishops when the validity of lay baptism was discussed. A horrified Sharp then summoned Blackall and Dawes to a meeting where they agreed that such a recognition would ‘be too great an encouragement to the Dissenter’.³² Blackall attended the House on 28 Apr., but two days later again registered his proxy in favour of William Dawes (vacated at the end of the session on 8 July).

Blackall’s unswerving loyalty to the Oxford ministry was noted in spring 1713 in a party listing compiled by Jonathan Swift. His poor attendance, nevertheless, limited his usefulness to the ministry. On 14 Feb. he responded to a command to ‘hasten to London’ with an excuse about the delays caused by poor weather and an insistence that his inability to make anything other than short journeys would delay his arrival until the end of the month. His attendance record was so poor that he felt obliged to remind Oxford that he had indeed attended the previous session.³³ On 9 Apr., Blackall attended the House for the first day of the new session and attended for nine per cent of sittings (just six days during April). He missed the last 11 weeks of the session. On 13 June he was listed in Oxford’s estimate of support for the bill confirming the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty. The next parliamentary session opened on 16 Feb. 1714 and Blackall arrived at the House on 2 Mar. He attended for some 28 per cent of sittings. Blackall attended the House for the final time on 11 May. Two days later he again registered his proxy with William Dawes, now archbishop of York.

In May 1714 Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, forecast that Blackall would support the schism bill. On 11 June, in the division on extending the schism bill to Ireland, Blackall’s proxy was used by Dawes to carry the vote by 75 to 74. Four days later, in the main division on the bill, Blackall’s proxy was again used in support of the measure.³⁴ He failed to attend either of the short sessions following the demise of the queen or the long session at the beginning of the new king’s reign. It is possible that Blackall deliberately avoided Parliament after the accession of George I on political grounds, but he suffered from tenesmus which probably made the journey to London a daunting prospect. His reluctance to attend was so well known that the declaration of an intention to do so in November 1715 was interpreted as symptomatic of the determination of the Tories to summon ‘their whole strength to fight impeachments and other affairs, inch by inch with the government.’³⁵

On 2 Sept. 1716, while on visitation in Cornwall, Blackall fell from his horse and suffered a serious injury. Gangrene set in and he died on 29 Nov. 1716.³⁶ Before his death he may have tried to set in train a series of resignations in order to be able to transfer his commendams to friends and relatives.³⁷ In his will he requested a ‘very private burial’ without sermon, monument or burial inscription. On 2 Dec. 1716 he was duly given a quiet funeral in Exeter Cathedral. Blackall left a wife (his executrix) and seven children, all well provided for with state lottery tickets, stock and land. He was succeeded as bishop of Exeter by Lancelot Blackburne^†. His works were published with a preface by William Dawes.

Of obscure parentage, but from a family with deep roots in the border between Dorset and Wiltshire, Walter Blandford went up to Oxford as a servitor. He is not reckoned among the ‘suffering’ clergy and initially accommodated himself to the parliamentary regime during the Civil Wars.⁵ By the end of the second civil war his sympathies were clearly with the royalists, and in 1648 he left Oxford to tutor John Lovelace*, 3rd Baron Lovelace. In 1659 Blandford succeeded John Wilkins*, the future bishop of Chester, as warden of Wadham, the Oxford college especially popular with royalist families during the interregnum.⁶ At the Restoration, he was appointed as one of the Oxford University visitors and thus played an important role in the subsequent purge of the university. He also became chaplain to Sir Edward Hyde, the future earl of Clarendon, whose patronage brought him further preferment. In August 1665 Clarendon told Gilbert Sheldon*, archbishop of Canterbury, that he intended to use his influence to persuade Blandford to accept elevation to the bishopric of Oxford. Blandford appears to have been reluctant to accept, in part because of the cost of consecration but perhaps also because his health was not good.⁷ Nevertheless, on 3 Dec. 1665, with the court at Oxford, he was consecrated bishop of Oxford in New College chapel by Humphrey Henchman*, of London, William Nicholson*, of Gloucester, and Seth Ward*, of Salisbury.⁸

Blandford took his seat in the House of Lords on 1 Oct. 1666, and attended for a quarter of the sittings in that session. On 12 Oct. he was named to a committee to prepare for the Lords’ conference with the Commons on French imports. He helped to manage both that and subsequent conferences on 23 and 30 Oct. 1666. He was not, however, named to any other select committees and his last attendance that session was on 10 Nov. 1666, when he entered his proxy (vacated at the end of the session on 8 Feb. 1667) in favour of Sheldon.

A more active period of parliamentary activity started in the autumn of 1667. Presumably spurred by the attack on Clarendon. Blandford attended for some two-thirds of all sittings between 10 Oct. 1667 and 1 Mar. 1669. In addition to the sessional committees he was named to a range of select committees, including that to consider the lead mines bill involving John Cosin*, of Durham. He was present in the House on 20 Nov. 1667 for the debate on the impeachment of his former patron, Clarendon. Assuming that he was in the chamber for the vote, he maintained episcopal solidarity by supporting the chancellor and opposing the king.

The fall of his patron did not damage Blandford’s career. On the contrary, he benefitted from the associated eclipse of Sheldon and his episcopal allies. In February 1668 Blandford replaced Sheldon’s nephew, John Dolben*, of Rochester, as clerk of the closet. Dolben’s duties had been carried out for some months by Ward, now bishop of Salisbury, who expected the appointment himself.⁹ Blandford’s new duties were time-consuming. George Morley*, of Winchester, another who lost favour through his association with Clarendon, added to Blandford’s workload by arranging for the latter to succeed him as spiritual adviser to Anne, duchess of York.¹⁰ Theologically, Blandford stood at the moderate end of the spectrum; it would seem logical for him to have supported a broader national church, but there is no evidence to link him directly to the comprehension projects mooted at this time.

In the parliamentary session from 19 Oct. 1669 to 11 Dec. 1669 Blandford again attended for some two-thirds of all sittings. His pattern of activity remained unchanged and, although he was appointed to the committee for privileges on the first day of the session, he was named to no other committees. His attendance pattern for the session from 14 Feb. 1670 to 22 Apr. 1671 was almost identical to the previous two sessions, but his name started to appear more regularly on committee nominations and he attended when the House went into committee on the second conventicle bill. On both 17 Mar. 1670 and 28 Mar. 1670 he registered his dissent against legislation to grant a divorce to John Manners*, styled Lord Roos (later 9th earl of Rutland). Following the death of Robert Skinner*, of Worcester, court gossip was rife about the likely translation of Blandford to the see of Worcester but the royal directive for this was not issued for almost a year.¹¹

Blandford attended for the first day of the resumed session on 24 Oct. 1670, but on 14 Nov. was excused attendance at a call of the House; he returned the following day. He was again named to a number of select committees, including (on 17 Jan. 1671) the committee on the Welsh lead mines bill promoted by Robert Morgan* of Bangor and Isaac Barrow* of St Asaph. On 10 Feb. 1671 he was again excused attendance when he baptized Katherine, the infant daughter of James Stuart*, duke of York, in the duke’s private chapel.¹² In March he became involved in a controversy surrounding catholicism at court when he was summoned to attend the dying duchess of York.¹³ In the judgment of Gilbert Burnet*, the future bishop of Salisbury, Blandford’s behaviour was habitually ‘modest and humble, even to a fault’ and he failed to say the appropriate Anglican prayers at the bedside. York’s recollection was slightly different. He recalled that he had refused Blandford admission unless he agreed not to try to force a deathbed conversion. Accordingly Blandford simply ‘made her a short Christian exhortation suitable to the condition she was in’. The incident hardened the perception that Blandford was a court stooge, called to the bedside ‘to blind the world’ to her conversion.¹⁴

In April 1671 he joined Peter Mews*,of Bath and Wells, and eight other commissioners to examine charges of abuse at Oxford, and the following month the king issued the directive for his translation to Worcester.¹⁵ Blandford took his seat as bishop of Worcester on 16 Apr. 1672, when the only business was a further prorogation to the following October. During the first session of 1673 he attended for some 30 per cent of sittings, but was named to no committees. Given his deteriorating health, it is perhaps not surprising that he now found himself to be less useful to the court. On 13 Feb. 1673, at a call of the House, he was registered as sick and he did not attend again after 29 March. On 12 Jan. 1674 it was noted that he had registered his proxy (vacated at the end of the session) in favour of Nathaniel Crew*, then bishop of Oxford, two days previously.

From the summer of 1673 Blandford appears to have been confined at Worcester in declining health; by August 1674 he was at Bath as part of his latest attempt ‘to support a frail and ruinous body’.¹⁶ A royal summons in October to consider the interests of the Church with John Pearson*, of Chester, Richard Sterne*, of York, and George Morley*, of Winchester, included a personal proviso that Blandford should not make the journey to London to the detriment of his health, and it is unlikely that he did so for the bishops’ subsequent report does not bear his name.¹⁷ He again registered his proxy in favour of Nathaniel Crew on 8 Apr. 1675, in time for the parliamentary debate on Danby’s non-resisting Test.

Blandford died at Hartlebury on 9 July 1675. He had never married and had already distributed part of his estate to his relatives. The residue – some £1,600 and his library – included a bequest for the refurbishment of Church property, though it is unclear whether the legacy was put to this purpose.¹⁸ His most trusted contacts, Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡, John Fell*, of Oxford, and his dean at Worcester, William Thomas*, then of St Asaph, were appointed executors of his estate. Blandford was buried in his cathedral. Like his predecessor, he left ‘little trace’ of his government as bishop of Worcester, but he appears to have been popular in the region and the mayor of Worcester ordered a special ‘funeral knell’ to be rung throughout the city in his honour.¹⁹

Ralph Brideoake was born into a well-established Lancashire family. A good scholar of ‘mean’ condition, he was employed in several positions before the first Civil War, including a chaplaincy to the royalist earl of Derby. He had a talent for survival: pleading for Derby’s life in 1651, Brideoake impressed William Lenthall and won appointment as the Speaker’s chaplain and client. The relationship with Lenthall survived until 1662, when Brideoake attended his deathbed.⁵ During the Interregnum Brideoake was able to forge a working relationship with Presbyterians and the protectorate and even became a trier for the ordination of Presbyterian ministers. His income increased through his marriage to the eldest daughter of Sir Richard Saltonstall, a man ‘of a very good personal estate’.⁶ By the time of his death his annual income was some £600, enhanced by the valuable commendams of Windsor and Standish. His persistent quest for greater social standing brought him censure for vanity when he decorated the stall of the Salisbury deanery (‘with wit as he thought’) with ‘two hands joining as the emblem of bride holding a bough of oak’.⁷

To his more critical detractors, Brideoake’s ability to ‘elbow’ his way into patronage at the Restoration allowed him a comfortable and undeserved return to the re-established Church.⁸ The prestige of his post-Restoration appointments, together with his preferment in 1667 as dean of Salisbury (where Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, was the influential high steward of the local corporation), suggests that Brideoake had powerful friends in the Clarendon circle. The Stanley interest at court was weak, so it seems likely that Brideoake had acquired other patrons.

According to White Kennet^† (the future bishop of Peterborough) while resident in Windsor Brideoake went out of his way to ingratiate himself with the king’s mistress, Louise de Kérouaille, duchess of Portsmouth.⁹ A contemporary hinted that it was a bribe to the duchess that secured him a bishopric when Peter Gunning*, of Chichester was translated to Ely.¹⁰ Dean Prideaux regretted that ‘such a knave as Brideoake should be made a bishop’ but, as a vocal supporter of the king’s absolute supremacy in matters ecclesiastical and happy to turn a blind eye to the monarch’s infidelities, Brideoake was favoured at court.¹¹

Brideoake’s brief but active parliamentary career began when he took his seat in the House on 20 Apr. 1675. During absences there is no evidence that he ever registered his proxy. He attended for some 60 per cent of the first session of 1675 and over 80 per cent of the second. On 20 Nov. he showed solidarity with the king and with Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds), by opposing the vote on the address to dissolve Parliament. Despite an almost unbroken record of attendance in the session that ran from spring 1677 to July 1678, there is no accessible record of Brideoake’s voting behaviour other than a dissent on 14 Feb. 1678, when he joined Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough, William Howard*, Viscount Stafford, John Frescheville*, Baron Frescheville, and Peter Mews*, of Bath and Wells, to protest against the dismissal of a petition by Dacre Barret.

With high levels of Dissent and ‘very troublesome concerns’ in his diocese, Brideoake fell victim to chapter factionalism, which was itself grafted onto disputes within the town, and found himself in a bitter dispute with George Stradling, dean of Chichester.¹² The bishop’s overbearing personality led him to overreach his proper remit and in 1676 his unlawful excommunication of a churchwarden who had refused an oath tendered ‘in a cause neither matrimonial nor testamentary’ was overturned by the court of common pleas.¹³

At the age of 64, Brideoake died suddenly from ‘a raging fever’. He was buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor, where his widow erected an impressive alabaster monument.¹⁴ Brideoake left three sons, two of whom followed their father into the church.¹⁵ Although the specific nature of his services to the crown is unclear, he was clearly the king’s man through and through: in 1680 the king promoted Brideoake’s son Ralph on account of his father’s ‘zeal, loyalty and many faithful services’.¹⁶

Born into a mercantile family established in Somerset, the theologian George Bull was a fierce opponent of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. His doctrinal works were adopted in the nineteenth century by the Oxford Movement as part of the canon of Anglo-Catholic theology.² Not elevated until he was 71 years old, his career in the House of Lords was brief.

Bull went up to Oxford in 1648 where he formed a close friendship with Thomas Clifford*, later Baron Clifford of Chudleigh. Refusing the oath to the Commonwealth, he left university without his degree, but continued his studies and sought ordination from Robert Skinner*, bishop of Oxford. He later claimed that he had hosted secret meetings of royalists planning to restore the king.³ By 1663 Bull had acquired the patronage of William Nicholson*, bishop of Gloucester.⁴ Bull’s first treatise (Harmonia Apostolica), published in 1670, sparked a theological dispute which split eminent churchmen into two distinct camps over the question of whether it showed Bull to be socinian: Thomas Barlow*, later bishop of Lincoln, George Morley*, bishop of Winchester, and Arthur Annesley*, earl of Anglesey, all opposed Bull, while his supporters included Gilbert Sheldon*, archbishop of Canterbury, John Fell*, bishop of Oxford, Simon Patrick*, later successively bishop of Chichester and Ely, and the Presbyterian, Richard Baxter.⁵ The fall of the Cabal and the death of Nicholson in 1672 left Bull with no obvious patron. Clifford’s career as lord treasurer was short and his efforts on Bull’s behalf were unsuccessful, not just because Bull was a controversial figure but, according to his biographer, because Bull did not understand ‘the art of intriguing for preferment’.⁶

Bull, nevertheless, won the respect of Heneage Finch*, later earl of Nottingham, and his clerical associates. In October 1678, he was made a canon of Gloucester on the recommendation of John Tillotson*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sharp*, the future archbishop of York.⁷ Bull dedicated his Defensio Fidei Nicenae to Nottingham, but a publisher was not forthcoming until John Fell published the treatise at his own cost in 1685.⁸ He was recommended by Robert Frampton*, bishop of Gloucester, to William Sancroft*, archbishop of Canterbury, as a ‘man of vast learning, sound principles and exemplary life’, an ‘ornament to our cathedral’, who needed a greater income to support his ‘very numerous’ family, but his presentation to the well-endowed rectory of Avening was, according to his biographer, a spontaneous act of its patron, Richard Sheppard of neighbouring Minchinhampton; Sancroft provided him in 1686 with the archdeaconry of Llandaff.⁹ In 1686 he was nominated by Fell for a doctorate in recognition of his scholarship, even though he had no academic degree.¹⁰ The Defensio Fidei Nicenae brought Bull a Europe-wide reputation for scholarly theology, and the endorsement of Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, leading light of the Gallican church. His Judicium Ecclesiae Catholicae published in 1694 consolidated his reputation, and Primitiva et Apostolica Traditio (1703) furthered it as an opponent of Socinianism and unitarianism.

Bull’s appointment to the neglected see of St Davids in 1705 came, wrote his biographer, as a surprise to him, and the reasons for it are obscure.¹¹ The Whig cleric Maurice Wheeler was doubtful, writing that though Bull was ‘a very good man’, ‘a life of of hard study, and now a heavy load of many years’ had rendered him now ‘less capable of business, and especially in such a diocese, that has ... lain waste for many years’.¹² He stayed at Brecon, due to the state of the palace near Carmarthen, and, in poor health, he travelled little within the diocese, his son-in-law the archdeacon of Brecon conducting the 1708 visitation on his behalf.¹³ Age and failing health had an impact on his attendance in the House of Lords, too. He appeared in the House on only 22 occasions. In the six sessions held during his episcopate, Bull attended only two, and those for less than a quarter of sittings. He did not attend for the session that began in the autumn of 1705, being excused at a call of the House on 12 November. By the winter of 1706 he was in London keeping company with William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, and John Evans*, bishop of Bangor, and on 3 Dec. 1706 Bull took his seat in the House.¹⁴ On 28 Jan. 1707 he was present in House for the reading of the articles relating to the Union between Scotland and England, the establishment of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and for the bill securing the English Church. He attended the debates on religion in February 1707 but on 7 Feb. 1707, during the reading of the bill on the security of the Church, sat in the lobby of the Lords chamber smoking his pipe.¹⁵ He was present on 15 Feb. 1707 and again on 19 Feb. 1707 for debates on the Union. On 4 Mar. 1707 (when a rider was offered against Presbyterianism being the true Protestant religion) Bull was listed present but did not sign the dissent against the rejection of the rider. Those who did included stalwart churchmen (and members of the Gloucestershire establishment) Henry Somerset*, duke of Beaufort, George Hooper*, bishop of Bath and Wells, and Thomas Thynne*, Viscount Weymouth. Perhaps Bull had left the chamber since there are indications he would have been sympathetic to the rider. Bull’s earliest biographer recounts a debate on the Scottish church during which Bull seconded a motion that the ‘excellent’ character of the Church of England be specified within the bill. When he was thanked for his speech by William Beveridge*, bishop of St Asaph, Bull responded that he regarded it an ‘indispensable obligation’ of all the bishops and prelates of the Church to behave with ‘holy boldness’ in the highest court of England, ‘without being awed or biased by the torrent of the times, or made sordidly to crouch to a prevailing power of worldly politicians’.¹⁶

In May 1707 Bull suffered a serious bereavement with the death from smallpox of his son George, a Christ Church don to whom he had resigned his Llandaff archdeaconry in 1704. It is clear that Bull had been grooming his son as a potential successor and was devastated by his loss.¹⁷ He did not attend the House for the session that ran from October 1707 to April 1708, a period for which the proxy book does not survive. A printed parliamentary list of May 1708 suggested that Bull was of Whig sympathies. In religious and moral affairs, however, he was ‘inflexible’ and saw toleration as a threat to the Church, condemning the ‘impudence of those mechanics that have leapt from the shop-board or plough into the pulpit’.¹⁸ In October 1708, encouraged by Bull, the Carmarthen magistrates began a campaign against immorality. ‘The most vigorous of episcopal greybeards’, Bull founded branches of the societies for the reformation of manners, established schools and libraries and promoted the Welsh prayer book.¹⁹ There is no evidence that he was involved in any of the parliamentary elections during his episcopate. With the revival of the Beaufort interest in Wales, there was little need.²⁰

Bull failed to attend the two parliamentary sessions that began in the autumn of 1708 and 1709. He died on 17 Feb. 1710 and was buried at Brecknock.

Early Career

Brought up by his mother, the sister of the covenanter politician Archibald Johnston of Wariston who had been leader of the protestor movement and close to the English Independents in the 1650s, but rigorously educated by his Episcopalian father, Burnet’s was an ambiguous intellectual and political inheritance. Precociously learned, Burnet made use of time in England in 1663 making connections with London’s religious and scientific circles, followed up by tours of the Netherlands and France. A parish minister from 1665, his forthright criticism attracted the enmity of many of the Scottish bishops and the patronage of John Maitland*, earl, later duke of Lauderdale [S], for whose project of accommodation with moderate Scottish Dissent in 1669 he would become an unsuccessful cheerleader. Burnet turned down the proposal by Lauderdale to make him into a Scottish bishop, and now a professor in the University of Glasgow, he increasingly gravitated into the orbit of the dukes of Hamilton, whose relation he married. In the summer of 1673, Burnet came to London to secure permission to publish his Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton; though he was initially encouraged by the king and the duke of York, Lauderdale’s enthusiasm rapidly turned into hostility. Burnet, concluding that Lauderdale would make his continued career in Scotland impossible, settled in London. Involvement in the opposition to Lauderdale included an appearance before a committee of the Commons during the attempt to remove him in 1675, which contributed to his worsening relationship with the court.¹⁶ By the time his Hamilton memoirs appeared in 1677 Burnet was serving as successful preacher, at the Rolls Chapel and at St Clements, had begun work on The History of the Reformation, and was a frequent contributor to pamphlet religious controversy.

Burnet would become closely linked to country politicians in London and the London clergy who were close to them, but he claimed to have been sceptical of the reality of the Popish Plot, and to have been consulted on several occasions by the king as a result. The publication of the History of the Reformation, on the other hand, gave him a considerable reputation as a defender of the Church of England against its Catholic foes; flirting with the idea of excluding James Stuart*, duke of York, from the throne, Burnet became close to many of the leading Whigs, including Arthur Capel*, earl of Essex, and Lord William Russell^‡, and was tainted by association with them after the Rye House Plot. His service to Russell at his trial and execution in July 1683 cost him any residual royal favour. He lost his posts as a preacher and lecturer.

Soon after the duke of York, succeeded as king in 1685, Burnet left for voluntary exile. After travelling through France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, he reached the Netherlands in 1686 where he was taken into the service of the prince and princess of Orange, being ‘so great a servant of theirs, and gives such characters of them’ as to be seen as an significant promoter of their interest.¹⁷ Burnet played an important part in the exiled community, and came to be seen as a threat by James II, who put pressure on the prince and princess to dismiss him: in compliance he was forbidden their court. He remained in touch with them however, as well as with events in England: by February 1688 he was being delivered ‘such great packets of letters constantly as few receive but public ministers’.¹⁸ Burnet’s anonymous writings on English affairs, including his Reasons against Repealing the Acts of Parliament concerning the Test, published before an anticipated meeting of Parliament in April 1687, incited James to take direct action against him, though Burnet wrote that what really precipitated it was news of his engagement to ‘a considerable fortune at the Hague’. As early as 2 Apr. 1687, Edward Harley^‡ reported to his father that Burnet had indeed ‘married a lady with a great fortune’.¹⁹ A prosecution against Burnet for treason was begun in Scotland in April; Burnet responded by obtaining naturalization from the States General, before it was generally known in the Netherlands. His marriage seems to have taken place in May 1687 to ‘the daughter of a very rich widow’. His mother-in-law died five months afterwards, when reportedly the ‘whole estate is come into hand, it is thought to be full £12,000’.²⁰ Once James II had fled, Burnet became a leading advocate of William assuming the crown. On 20 Dec. 1688 Charles Bertie^‡ told Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby, that he had seen George Savile*, marquess of Halifax, in ‘deep conference’ with Burnet ‘who is the prince’s clerk of his closet and chaplain and a great man of state.’²¹ Morrice, too, thought Burnet to be clerk of the closet in February 1689, but officially he never appears to have been more than the prince’s chaplain; it was John Tillotson*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, who became clerk in April 1689, although Burnet was still being called clerk of the closet by some in 1694.²² On 20 Dec. Burnet introduced four of the seven bishops, William Lloyd*, of St Asaph, Francis Turner*, of Ely, Thomas White*, of Peterborough, and Thomas Ken*, of Bath and Wells, to the prince.²³ On 22 Dec. Burnet preached at St James’s before the Prince and ‘a very numerous assembly of the nobility, gentry and citizens’ delivering ‘a most learned, eloquent and edifying sermon; exhorting to gratitude, first to God and then to his highness for this happy deliverance from popery and slavery’.²⁴ Despite being pestered by ‘many impertinent people that press in upon me’, Burnet was able on 25 Dec. 1688 to send from St James’s an assessment of affairs to Arthur Herbert*, earl of Torrington:

as to the settling of the government, there are two different opinions, for a third, which was for treating with the king, has fallen by his second withdrawing yesterday… Some are for calling together with the peers all such as have been Parliament men, that so they may go to declare that, the king having left his people and withdrawn the pretended prince, the princess is queen, and so proceed to call a legal Parliament by writs in her name. Others think that a Parliament or rather a Convention is to be summoned, which will be the true representation of the kingdom, and that, though they have no legal writs, yet they being returned upon a free choice, this will be upon the matter a free Parliament, and that this assembly is to judge both the king’s falling from the crown and the birth of the pretended prince; and that then a Parliament may be legally held after they have declared in whom the right of the crown lies. This last is liable to this exception that the slowness of it may expose Holland to be lost before England can be settled or ready to act.²⁵

Burnet was also advising William on appointments. A comprehensive list of possible nominees for the whole gamut of government posts exists in the papers of Henry Sydney*, the future Viscount Sydney, as well as a letter containing pen portraits of London clerics to be employed.²⁶ From December 1688, Burnet met a number of times with Henry Hyde*, 2nd earl of Clarendon, though the encounters did not encourage the latter: on 5 Dec., after a discussion about whom William might appoint to his government, Burnet, ‘in wonderful warmth’, denied that there could be a treaty between the king and the prince. Clarendon wrote in his diary ‘Good God, what are we like to come to, if this man speaks the prince’s sense?’ On the following day, Clarendon asked him why he had refused to say the collect for the king in Exeter cathedral, making an ‘ugly noise with his mouth’ instead. On 11 Jan. 1689 Clarendon noted that Burnet ‘is always so bitter in talking of deposing the king.’²⁷ According to Bishop Turner on 11 Jan. it was planned that a group of City clergymen, including Simon Patrick*, the future bishop of Ely, Thomas Tenison*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, Dr William Sherlock and Dr John Scott would meet with himself, Lloyd of St Asaph and White, with Burnet being invited ‘to sustain his notion of the forfeiture’.²⁸ This probably related to a meeting on 14 Jan. when Burnet attended a long conference with various Anglican divines including Turner, in which he justified his stance in support of William.²⁹ Certainly, Clarendon thought that Lloyd of St Asaph had been ‘wheedled’ by Burnet to make ‘the king’s going away a cessation’, and later claimed that Burnet had said he ‘could make the bishop of St Asaph do anything’.³⁰ On 1 Feb. 1689 Sir John Reresby^‡ visited Halifax, where he found Sir Edward Seymour^‡ and Burnet, ‘the great creature of the prince of Orange’, who ‘argued violently for the crowning of the prince’.³¹ Burnet himself believed that he had a ‘great share… in the private managing’ of debates in the Lords, ‘particularly with many of the clergy, and with men of the most scrupulous and tender consciences’.³²

Bishop of Salisbury and the Convention

Initially some believed that Burnet would be rewarded with the see of Durham since Nathaniel Crew*, the incumbent bishop, was expected to refuse the oaths to the new regime.³³ Clarendon thought that Lloyd of St Asaph was instrumental in securing the vacant see of Salisbury for Burnet, even though William had apparently promised it to Jonathan Trelawny*, of Bristol, or to Patrick.³⁴ Years later, Thomas Naish heard the story that Trelawny had ‘kissed hands’ for it, two or three days before Burnet’s appointment, and that this was ‘the first occasion of the grudge and misunderstanding between them’.³⁵ Burnet’s promotion to Salisbury brought him much trouble in the light of his repeated criticism of episcopacy and his refusal to accept a bishopric during the reign of Charles II. Thomas Burnet explained that his father ‘was indeed so little anxious after his own preferment, that when the bishopric of Salisbury became void, as it did soon after King William and Queen Mary were established on the throne, he solicited for it in favour of his old friend Dr Lloyd, then bishop of St Asaph’. William, however, ‘answered him in a cold way, that he had another person in view; and the next day he was himself nominated to that see.’³⁶ The prize was worth having, Elizabeth Burnet later assessing it as ‘one year with another [a] good £2500 a year, ’tis called £3000, but I think it not so much.’³⁷ Recognizing the futility of questioning the king’s decision Burnet ‘set myself seriously to form a method how I could behave myself in that station. I spent a whole week in retirement and sat up the whole night before I was consecrated.’ During his retreat he examined ‘all the thoughts I had at any time entertained of the duty of bishops and made solemn vows to God to put them in practice.’ Amongst many resolutions, in accordance with his earlier criticisms of the episcopate, he wrote that he was determined ‘never to indulge looseness or luxury nor to raise fortunes to my children out of the revenues of the Church’ and ‘resolved to abstract myself from courts and secular affairs as much as was possible, and never to engage in the persecuting of any what side soever on the account of differences of religion’. He also dedicated himself ‘to the functions belonging to the order, preaching, catechizing, confirming, and ordaining and governing the clergy in the best manner I could.’³⁸

On 3 Apr. 1689 Burnet took his seat in the House of Lords as bishop of Salisbury. He was to be an assiduous attender, being present on 88 days of the remainder of the session, a little over 79 per cent of the total. He was named to 36 committees before the adjournment in July 1689, and 22 committees afterwards. On 4 Apr. the House received the report from the committee which had examined the bill for uniting their majesties protestant subjects. As Burnet later recorded, the committee had added a proviso to the bill allowing a group of clergymen and laymen to ‘prepare such a reformation of things, relating to the Church, as might be offered to king and Parliament, in order to the healing our divisions, and the correcting what might be amiss, or defective, in our constitution. This was pressed with great earnestness by many of the temporal lords.’ Burnet admitted that ‘I at that time did imagine, that the clergy would have come into such a design with zeal and unanimity; and I feared this would be looked upon by them as taking the matter out of their hands; and for that reason I argued so warmly against this, that it was carried by a small majority to let fall.’ When another proviso in the bill was being considered he moved ‘that the subscription, instead of assent and consent, should only be to submit with a promise of conformity’. When a violent debate arose about whether to dispense with kneeling at the giving of the sacrament, Burnet took a clear stance in favour because this ‘posture being the chief exception that the Dissenters had, the giving up this was thought to be the opening a way for them to come into employments’, and therefore ‘I declared myself zealous for it: for, since it was acknowledged that the posture was not essential, and that scruples, how ill grounded soever, were raised upon it, it seemed reasonable to leave this matter as indifferent in its practice as it was in its nature.’³⁹

On 8 Apr. 1689 Burnet was appointed one of the managers of the conference on the amendments in the bill for removing of papists out of London. Following the report of Laurence Hyde*, earl of Rochester, Burnet was named to a committee to draw up reasons in support of their proposal that the queen dowager be allowed 30 English servants and was named to a further conference on the bill on 16 April. On 11 Apr. Burnet preached the sermon at the coronation of William and Mary.⁴⁰ On 14 Apr. Reresby found Burnet with Halifax, where he was critical of the slow proceedings of the Commons, the fault for which he imputed to ‘the Church of England party’, who he felt ‘designed the advantage of King James and his service by it’. Both Halifax and Burnet were angry at the address of the Commons of the previous day calling for Convocation to be summoned.⁴¹ On 17 Apr. the House amended the clause which concerned the bishops taking the oaths in the toleration bill, and appointed Burnet and five others to make the rest of the bill agree with the amendments. On 20 Apr. 1689 Burnet was named to report a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill for abrogating the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and then named to draw up reasons why the Lords insisted upon their amendments. He was named to manage the conference on the 22nd. At the conference Burnet was the second of the Lords managers to speak in favour of exempting the clergy from the oaths. He observed that the clergy regularly prayed for the monarchs as required by the Book of Common Prayer and that the communion service contained a protestation of fidelity. Could it be imagined he questioned, ‘that the clergy will so solemnly pray thus, and not obey the king and queen? This is more than an oath, which is but one single act; this is done every day; they themselves pronounce the words in the sacrament service.’ He concluded that the ‘eyes of all England are upon this matter. The Lords are of opinion they have made so much a better security than what you have made, that they hope you will agree with them’.⁴² He was then named to manage a further conference and on 23 Apr. reported that the Commons insisted that all persons should be enjoined to take the oaths; and that there should be no difference between the clergy and the laity. After further debate it was resolved to agree with the Commons. On 24 Apr. Burnet was one of six lords appointed to manage another conference on the bill, at which the Commons accepted the Lords’ proviso. Burnet later commented that ‘I was the chief manager of the debate in favour of the clergy, both in the House of Lords, and at the conferences with the Commons; but, seeing it could not be carried I acquiesced the more easily’. He explained that at the beginning of these debates ‘I was assured, that those who seemed resolved not to take the oaths, yet prayed for the king in their chapels; yet I found afterwards this was not true, for they named no king, nor queen, and so it was easy to guess whom they meant by such an indefinite designation.’ At the same time he ‘also heard many things that made me conclude they were endeavouring to raise all the opposition to the government possible.’⁴³

On 22 May 1689, when a committee of the whole considered the bill of rights, a clause was added to prevent Catholics from succeeding to the crown, to which Burnet ‘proposed an additional clause, absolving the subjects, in that case, from their allegiance... and it passed without any opposition or debate’. Then, at the king’s instance, Burnet proposed ‘the naming the duchess of Hanover, and her posterity, next in the succession. He signified his pleasure in this case also to his ministers; but he ordered me to begin this motion in the House, because I had already set it on foot.’⁴⁴ The amendment adding Princess Sophia, as being the next Protestant in the lineal succession of the royal family, and her heirs, was agreed to by a sub-committee on 24 May when Burnet was in the chair. He played a leading role in the conferences that ensued when the Commons rejected this. According to the report delivered to the Commons he was the ‘chief manager’ at the final conference on 31 July, after which the bill fell.⁴⁵

Burnet’s conduct was much approved at Hanover and his efforts ‘made that illustrious house from thenceforth consider him as one firmly attached to their interests, and with whom they might therefore enter into the strictest confidence.’ According to Thomas Burnet, his father had given early notice of the invasion to the court of Hanover, ‘intimating that the success of this enterprise must naturally end in an entail of the British crown upon that illustrious house’. Princess Sophia wrote that she was ‘very grateful for the warmth you have been pleased to testify for my interests, which is a great personal satisfaction to me, as if your good intentions had been more successful’. As Burnet’s son later observed, this was the beginning of a correspondence that lasted until Sophia’s death, the extant letters ‘all written in her own hand.’⁴⁶

Burnet recollected that he came into Lords ‘when… comprehension and toleration was in debate, and I went so high in those points, that I was sometimes upon the division of the House single against the whole bench of bishops.’ He thought that his standing was enhanced by his opposition to the bill ‘which enacted the taking the oaths’, but he again ‘fell under great prejudices’ when he realized that by praying for an unnamed king the non-jurors were ‘plainly praying for King James’. It was, however, his attitude to the Scottish episcopate and the recognition of the Presbyterian Kirk as the national Church of Scotland that proved the greatest source of disagreement with his English colleagues. Burnet observed that it was ‘generally thought that I could have hindered the change of the government of the Church that was made in Scotland, and that I went into it too easily’, but he was convinced by William that it was a matter of necessity because ‘the whole Episcopal party, a very few only excepted, went into King James’s interest: and therefore, since the Presbyterians were the only party that he had there, the granting of their desires at that time were unavoidable.’⁴⁷

On 25 May 1689 Burnet reported from committee reasons to be offered to the Commons at a conference explaining why the Lords did not agree to leave out their amendment to the additional poll bill. That day Roger Morrice noted that Burnet was the only bishop not to vote Titus Oates guilty of a breach of privilege for distributing a printed account of his case. On 31 May Burnet voted against reversing the two judgments of perjury against Oates, arguing that ‘if such rascals and perjured persons were capacitated to give evidence no honest man was secure of his life’. On 22 July Burnet was named to report on a conference on the bill reversing the judgments against Oates but on the 30th he changed his mind and voted against adhering to the Lords’ amendments to it. On 20 and 21 June Burnet was named to report a conference on the bill appointing commissioners of the great seal. On 2 July he was the only bishop in favour of proceeding with the impeachment of Sir Adam Blair and his co-defendants.⁴⁸ On 13 July, after Carmarthen (the former Danby) and Halifax narrowly escaped censure by the Commons, Burnet noted that he had dined with one of the marquesses, presumably Halifax, ‘who seems not to be much troubled at it; perhaps he thought it was a victory because the debate was adjourned’.⁴⁹

In July 1689 Burnet was unsuccessful in securing the translation of Lloyd of St Asaph to Worcester.⁵⁰ On 13 Sept. he responded to a request for an assessment of his personal estate in England by noting that he had no personal estate in England other than his furniture and his books, along with ‘a debt that is more than twice the value of it.’⁵¹ On 19 Sept. Tillotson attributed his elevation to Canterbury to Burnet, ‘one of the worst and best friends I know. Best, for his singular good opinion of me: and the worst, for directing the king to this method... as if his lordship and I had concerted the matter, now to finish this foolish piece of dissimulation in running away from a bishopric to catch an archbishopric.’⁵²

Meanwhile, Burnet was still pursuing the prize of comprehension. In June 1689 Morrice had noted that Burnet and Lloyd of Asaph together with John Hampden^‡ were in discussions about a bill, which the king was thought to favour.⁵³ In September a commission was appointed by the king to consider reforms to the liturgy, ceremonial, canons and courts of the Church to prepare the way for comprehension. Burnet missed the first two of the 18 meetings of the commission early in October.⁵⁴ Indeed, on 5 Oct. 1689, William Douglas, duke of Hamilton [S], thought that Burnet shunned coming to London, to avoid being lobbied by the many Scots in the capital; ‘he has got a good fat bishopric and now he is so wise as not to meddle.’⁵⁵ Nevertheless, he was present for the remainder of the meetings between 3 Oct. and 18 November. Its demise followed the meeting of Convocation on 20 Nov. 1689.⁵⁶

Burnet was present when Parliament reassembled on 19 Oct. 1689, and for the new session which began on 23 October. He was present on 65 days of the session, just over 89 per cent of the total. At the end of May 1689, it had been reported that Burnet had been one of those asked by the earl of Essex’s widow to desist from investigating his death in the Tower six years before.⁵⁷ The first report of the committee appointed to consider the deaths of Essex, Russell, and others, as well as the surrender of the corporate charters, on 6 Nov. may have been the occasion of the debate reported by Morrice in which Charles North*, 5th Baron North, moved the word ‘murder’ not be used in the terms of reference for the committee, and Burnet counter-proposed that the same word be used as was used in the act reversing their attainder. Also on that day, the thanks of the House were ordered to be given to Burnet for his sermon preached on the previous day. On 23 Jan. 1690 Burnet ‘spoke very well against the surrendry [of corporation charters], but he went out of the House when the question was put’ to leave out the words which declared the surrender to be illegal.⁵⁸

Following the adjournment of Convocation on 14 Dec. 1689 Burnet and Lloyd of St Asaph acted as the intermediaries between the court and the suspended, non-juring bishops in an attempt to broker a compromise involving compensation for the loss of their bishoprics.⁵⁹ On 24 Dec. it was reported that Burnet ‘out of his abundant zeal for the hierarchy and its revenues, has of late frequently appeared at the lobby of the Commons discoursing some leading members about service for the suspended bishops and ’tis said they endeavour to find flaws in their own act that it may not be executed.’⁶⁰ According to Morrice, Burnet attended a meeting (either on 30 Dec. or 6 Jan. 1690) along with Thomas Lamplugh*, archbishop of York and Henry Compton*, bishop of London, with several non-juring bishops, at which it was pledged that the bishops in the Lords would oppose deprivation. In February he was one of the bishops reported to have approached the king on their behalf.⁶¹ In the summer of 1690, Burnet conducted more negotiations with the non-juring bishops under Queen Mary’s direction, which failed over allegations that they were implicated in Jacobite intrigues.⁶²

The Parliament of 1690

Burnet was present when the 1690 Parliament convened on 20 Mar., attending on 36 days, exactly two-thirds of the first session. On 7 Apr. 1690, when the committee of the whole was debating the recognition bill, he was named to a sub-committee to draw a clause relating to recognizing the Convention as a Parliament.⁶³ On 9 Apr. Burnet was given leave to be absent ‘for a while’. Although he did attend on the 10th, he was absent by the time the vote came on whether to erase the words of the protests against the recognition bill, having been ‘at first for this bill and then neither for it nor against it’.⁶⁴ He next attended on 26 April. The tenor of Burnet’s two interventions in the debate on 2 May on the second reading of the abjuration bill was that it should be committed and amended. Morrice noted his support for committal.⁶⁵ On 3 May Burnet opposed the idea that those not subscribing to the new oaths should lose their right to sit in the House. The relevant parliamentary list for the vote on 8 May concerning the use of the words ‘right and lawful’ in the new oaths refers to ‘all the bishops’ rather than recording them individually: Burnet was marked present on the attendance list so if he was still in the chamber for the vote, he voted to leave out ‘right and lawful’. On 7 May, when the Lords inquired into the London lieutenancy, Burnet ‘made a set speech’ against an investigation into the personal qualifications of men, likening it to the Catholic inquisition. He supported continuing the present militia. On 12 May he was named to manage a conference on the regency bill. On 14 May Morrice was unsure whether Burnet had joined Bishop Patrick in voting against the bill restoring the corporation of London.⁶⁶

Burnet was absent when the 1690-1 session began on 2 Oct., first attending on the 9th. In all he attended on 40 days, nearly 56 per cent of the total. On 14 Oct. 1690 he reported that having been in town for a week he was optimistic that the necessary finance for the war would be granted by the Commons, although he did fear that excessive zeal in turning out Episcopalians in Scotland would create difficulties for the government in England.⁶⁷ On 11 Nov. the House voted against Burnet’s use of privilege in a patronage dispute with the dean and chapter of Windsor.⁶⁸ During December the passage of the bill of Thomas Bruce*, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, relating to the Seymour estates, was assisted by Burnet, who was Ailesbury’s ‘great stickler and never missed being at the committees’.⁶⁹ On 5 Jan. Burnet was named to manage the conferences held on the bill that suspended parts of the Navigation Act. By 10 Jan. Burnet was back in Salisbury, apologizing to Robert Boyle for his failure to wait on him on the 5th, because ‘the messages between the two Houses held us so late’ that by the time he had finished other business in London ‘it was not possible to get back before your time of going to bed was past’.⁷⁰ He was still there early in April 1691, but back in London by 31 May when he assisted at the consecration of Tillotson at Bow Church.⁷¹ During the 1691-2 session Burnet was present on 65 days, 67 per cent of the total and was named to 39 committees. On 30 Oct. and 2, 6, 9 and 10 Nov. 1691 he chaired and reported progress from a committee of the whole on the bill preventing clandestine marriages. On 10 Nov. he was named to a committee to consider clauses on the forging of marriage licences and Quaker marriages, which he reported on 11 November. He was named to report conferences on the safety of the kingdom (17 Nov.) and on the amendments made by the Lords to the bill for abrogating the oath of supremacy in Ireland (1 Dec.), following which on 3 Dec. he was named to a committee of five to draw up reasons why the Lords disagreed to the Commons’ amendments to the bill. On 12 and 15 Dec. he reported from the committee for privileges on the claim of Thomas Tufton*, 6th earl of Thanet, to the barony of Clifford; on the cause of Stamford v Suffolk; on the petition of Henry Howard*, 7th duke of Norfolk, relating to the barons of the exchequer; on the request of John West*, 6th Baron De la Warr, for leave to apply to the Commons; on Maynard v Suffolk, Widdrington v Derby and Watt v Hopkins. On 12 Jan. 1692 he reported on two more, on Villiers v Suffolk and on Felton’s claim to the barony of Walden. On 3 Dec. 1691 he had been named to a small committee to prepare a clause for debate in committee of the whole on the bill regulating treason trials; he was named on 17 Dec. to report the subsequent conference, and then to draw up reasons for the Lords’ insisting on several of their amendments. On 18 Dec. he chaired the adjournment of the committee on the bill preserving bay salt for the navy.⁷² On 2 Feb. 1692 Burnet was given leave to go into the country, and he last attended on the following day, three weeks before the end of the session, signing a proxy in favour of John Moore*, bishop of Norwich, on 8 February. 

Over the summer, in May, Burnet was unsurprisingly excluded from James II’s pardon.⁷³ In September he told Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, of the temper of his diocese, particularly on those matters such as ‘the judges bill’, treason legislation and the East India Company, which were likely to figure in Parliament. During the 1692-3 session, he was present on 71 days, nearly 70 per cent of the total and was named to 35 committees. He continued to be an active member of the House, regularly reporting from committees, including, on 18 Nov. 1692, the committee appointed to draw up addresses to the king and queen. On 29 Dec. he was named to a committee to inspect the Journal to see if the Commons had transmitted their vote approving the conduct of Edward Russell*, the future earl of Orford, in the correct manner and to consider heads for the conference which was held on 4 Jan. 1693. On 31 Dec. 1692 Burnet had voted in favour of the committal of the place bill, but on 3 Jan. 1693 he was listed as one of the Lords ‘that went away’, although he was not listed as attending that day.

In February 1692, it had been reported that Burnet had been ‘earnestly’ soliciting in favour of the Norfolk divorce.⁷⁴ Burnet was indeed forecast as a likely supporter of such a bill and on 2 Jan. 1693 he voted for it. During January he chaired two committees of the whole: on the bill vesting superstitious trusts and uses in the crown (4 Jan.) and to consider an amendment to the bill for frequent parliaments (18 January). On 20 Jan. Burnet’s A Pastoral Letter was attacked in the Commons. Although Burnet was defended as a man ‘zealous’ for the government, who had written ‘with no ill design’, merely laying ‘down the several grounds on which this government may be said to be laid for the satisfaction of all persons, and amongst the rest mentions that by conquest’, on 23 Jan. the Commons ordered the work to be burnt by the common hangman.⁷⁵ On 25 Jan. Burnet voted in favour of the committal of the bill to prevent dangers from disaffected persons. He was absent between 14 Feb. and 6 Mar., and last attended on 9 Mar., a few days before the session ended. In May it was reported that he had ‘declared the burning his book was a barbarous usage’, upon which ‘a Parliament man took notice of it, and designs to charge him with it, if they come to sit’.⁷⁶

Burnet attended on the opening day of the 1693-4 session, 7 Nov. 1693, and was present on 100 days, just over 78 per cent of the total, being appointed to 18 committees. He was again active as a chair of committees of the whole, including that on the triennial bill (4 and 6 Dec.) and on the bill for the easier recovery of small tithes (26 March). On 17 Feb. he voted against the reversal of the chancery decree in the case of Montagu v Bath. On 22 Feb. he spoke in the debate on the bill regulating trials for treason, citing historical precedents.⁷⁷ He reported from numerous other committees during March, last attending that session on 31 March.

Burnet spent the summer of 1694 back in Salisbury.⁷⁸ He was back in London by November and attended on 88 days of the 1694-5 session, just over 73 per cent of the total, being was named to 25 committees. According to Narcissus Luttrell^‡ the cause of Tattershall v Fitzherbert heard on 24 Jan. 1695 saw the appeal of the former, ‘put into a living’ by Burnet, dismissed in favour of the latter.⁷⁹ Burnet reported on the Finch estate bill (14 Feb.) and from committees of the whole on 13 and 21 March. During April and May he acted as a manager for four conferences (two of which were on the treason trials bill. On 29 Apr. 1695 he took the oaths in chancery in order to qualify to act as a member of the new commission for disposing of ecclesiastical preferments.⁸⁰ During September he expressed his support for Sir William Trumbull^‡ should he stand for Berkshire in the forthcoming election.⁸¹

The Parliament of 1695

Burnet missed the opening of the 1695 Parliament on 22 Nov., first attending on 2 Dec. 1695. He was present on 74 days, nearly 60 per cent of the total. On 9 Dec. Burnet asked a question in the committee of the whole considering the act of the Scottish parliament in establishing an East India Company, concerning the possible promise of shares to people to get them to invest in the company.⁸² He was appointed to 23 committees and was again active as a chair of the committee of the whole, reporting on the supply bill dealing with annuities (17 Jan.); the recovery of small tithes (25 Jan.); and the East India Company (28 Jan. and 1, 4 Feb.); and preventing frauds and regulating abuses in the plantation trade (24 March). 

Burnet had signed the Association on 27 Feb. 1696 (as he did again in Salisbury).⁸³ Writing to Princess Sophia on 7 Apr. Burnet had remarked that the recent conspiracy ‘has kindled in all men’s minds a zeal for the king and a horror of King James beyond what I am able to express.’⁸⁴ Burnet missed the opening of the next session on 20 Oct. 1696, telling Lady Russell on 31 Oct. that ‘I do not think of coming up yet this fortnight, if I am not called for’.⁸⁵ He first attended on 14 Nov., then being present on 60 days, nearly 53 per cent, and was named to 19 committees. Burnet attended John Hampden following his botched but ultimately successful suicide attempt of 3 Dec. 1696.⁸⁶

As Burnet himself recounted, the ‘great business of this session that held longest in both houses, was a bill relating to Sir John Fenwick^‡.’⁸⁷ Burnet supported the bill at its second reading, there being ‘both a power and a necessity of doing it’.⁸⁸ It was probably on 23 Dec. 1696, on the third reading of the bill, that Burnet made a speech arguing that ‘the nature of government required that the legislature should be recurred to, in extraordinary cases, for which effectual provision could not be made by fixed and standing laws’. He supported his arguments with detailed historical precedents designed to demonstrate that ‘the nation had upon extraordinary occasions proceeded in this parliamentary way by bill.’ Condemning Fenwick would ‘be striking a terror to all that negotiate with France’, and the good in the bill would outweigh the bad.⁸⁹ He was duly recorded as voting for the third reading of the bill. In justifying himself, Burnet explained that the Lords ‘by severe votes, obliged all the peers to be present, and to give their votes in the matter’, and that ‘I thought it was incumbent on me, when my opinion determined me to the severer side, to offer what reasons occurred to me in justification of my vote. But this did not exempt me from falling under a great cloud of censure upon this occasion.’ That said, Burnet claimed to have been helpful to Fenwick who, as he prepared to face the executioner, ‘desired the assistance of one of the deprived bishops, which was not easily granted; but in that, and several other matters, I did him much service, that he wrote me a letter of thanks upon it.’ This brought an end of ‘that unacceptable affair, in which I had a much larger share than might seem to become a man of my profession’.⁹⁰

Burnet was involved in one further consequence of the proceedings against Fenwick: the punishment of Charles Mordaunt*, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), for attempting to manipulate the affair to his own advantage. On 15 Jan. 1697 Burnet argued that although ‘there could no excusing him from being author of those papers’, there should be some note taken ‘of some eminent services he had done for this government’. Nevertheless, according to his own account Burnet then moved that Monmouth be sent to the Tower.⁹¹ Further, on 22 Jan. Burnet intervened in the debate on the petition of Lady Mary Fenwick for a reprieve of one week for her husband, to note that there was a letter dropped in the street ‘which had dark expressions, as if the king would not live to see Fenwick executed’. The effect of his intervention was to alter the address to ask for a reprieve if the king thought it consistent with his safety and the safety of the government.⁹² Rather mischievously, there was a proposal that he accompany Bishop Compton with the address, to which Burnet reacted badly, saying that the House had every right to send him to the Tower, but not to Kensington – remarks for which he had to apologize.⁹³

Burnet last attended that session on 17 Mar. 1697, and on the 18th he signed a proxy in favour of Bishop Patrick. On 17 Mar. James Johnston^‡ wrote that Burnet was ‘of great use in the House of Lords and is at present more in favour with the king than ever he was, or ever I thought should have been’.⁹⁴ In July Burnet was in Salisbury.⁹⁵ He returned to London good time for the opening of the 1697-8 session.⁹⁶ He attended on 82 days of the session, just under 63 per cent of the total and was appointed to 42 committees. Possibly at the bill’s second reading on 24 Feb. 1698 Burnet spoke in in favour of the divorce bill of Charles Gerard*, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, ‘showing the necessity and lawfulness of such extraordinary proceedings in some particular case.’⁹⁷ On 5 Mar. Burnet was appointed to a committee for a conference on the bill to punish Charles Duncombe^‡, and was one of the managers of the resultant conferences on 7 and 11 March. On 15 Mar. Burnet voted for the bill and entered a protest when it was lost. He was named, amongst others, to the conference on the bill for the more effectual suppressing of blasphemy and profaneness on 24 May. On 27 May he explained that under this law ‘men convicted of such crimes are only excluded from public office, and first offences are condoned on a profession of penitence. Nor are any under this law to be condemned, but such as offend of malice prepense and deliberately’.⁹⁸ Burnet last attended the session on 1 June 1698, over a month before it ended. His early departure may have been related to the ill health of his wife, who died in Holland, on 8/18 June.⁹⁹ On 13 July he was described as ‘a most deserted mourner’, although he was coming up to town upon the establishment of the household of the duke of Gloucester, of whom he was soon to be named preceptor.¹⁰⁰

The Parliaments of 1698 and 1701

Burnet attended on the second day of the 1698 Parliament, 9 Dec., and was present on 46 days, nearly 57 per cent of the total, being named to 10 committees. On 4 Jan. 1699 Burnet was ordered to preach the martyrdom sermon on 30 January. The House formally thanked him on 1 Feb., although some were critical that he had said very little about the death of Charles I.¹⁰¹ He was again active as a chair of the committee of the whole. On 29 Mar. protested against the resolution in the cause of the London Ulster Society v. the Bishop of Derry. He was present on the last day of the session, 4 May. As was to be usual during his care of Gloucester, Burnet spent much of the summer at Windsor.¹⁰² In August Burnet was one of the bishops who found Thomas Watson*, bishop of St Davids, guilty of various offences, which led to the sentence of deprivation.¹⁰³

Burnet was present on the opening day of the next session, 16 Nov. 1699. He attended on 55 days, 70 per cent of the total, and was named to 13 committees. James Lowther^‡ noted on 12 Dec. that when the Commons considered the debt due to Prince George*, duke of Cumberland, ‘there were some speeches reflecting upon’ Burnet, and a motion made for an address to remove him as governor to the duke of Gloucester, ‘but let fall for the present’.¹⁰⁴ James Vernon^‡ attributed the attack firstly to Sir John Bolles^‡ and then to Sir John Pakington^‡ in ‘a set speech as if it had been concerted’. Pakington was an old enemy of Burnet’s, having previously remarked of his pamphlet that ‘if they had voted the author to be hanged, he believed the whole nation would have been pleased at it’.¹⁰⁵ When the attack on Burnet was resumed on the 13th, the ‘chief thing’ charged against him was his authorship of A Pastoral Letter and its alleged claim that the king came to the crown by conquest; others thought his being a Scot disparaged the abilities of the English. The bishop was defended as having written so much in defence of the Protestant religion and English liberty that this ‘was more than a sufficient atonement for any slip he might have made amongst the many volumes he had writ’, and that ‘turning him out for being a Scotchman, would not be the way to bring that nation out of the heats they were already in.’¹⁰⁶ He survived the censure by 40 votes.

According to Charles Hatton, ‘in the heat of the debate’ on 10 Jan. 1700 over the Darien colony, the excitable Burnet told Bishop Lloyd (now translated to Worcester) that he was ‘an old dotard, intoxicated with tobacco and Revelations.’¹⁰⁷ On 23 Jan. Burnet protested against the decision to reverse the decree in Williamson v the Crown. On 23 Feb. he voted in favour of adjourning the House into a committee of the whole to discuss two amendments to the bill for continuing the East India Company as a corporation. On 18 Mar. he chaired the committee of the whole House on the bill for the further preventing the growth of popery. On 10 Apr. Burnet favoured the passage of the bill for a land tax and for the sale of the forfeited estates in Ireland, which was the subject of conferences between the Houses, and faced being lost if the Lords were to stick to their amendments. When James Annesley*, 3rd earl of Anglesey, was speaking on the defence of the rights of the peerage, and so in favour of adhering to their amendments, Burnet cried out ‘stuff, stuff, with his cap on at the table, this was so loud, that it drew the eyes of several lords upon him and the ears of the lord a speaking, who took notice of it, and appealed to the House for justice upon such indecent irregularity’. Burnet ‘flatly denied upon honour, conscience and salvation’ his offence, but having been overheard by several peers, ‘so that he was going to the bar forthwith, but was suffered to explain and excuse himself’, which he managed ‘by saying his zeal for the royal cause the princess and duke had transported him beyond his reasonable thoughts and so got off with that fumbling excuse as foreign to the matter as his sermons are usually to his texts.’¹⁰⁸

With the dismissal of John Somers*, Baron Somers, at the end of April 1700, and the consequent rumours of ministerial change, including the possible translation of Burnet to Winchester, Charles Trimnell*, the future bishop of Norwich, thought that Burnet ‘in most peoples’ opinion cannot stand long at St James, and as for his removal to Winchester I believe our Oxford colleges of that bishop’s visitation need not fear any from Dr B.’¹⁰⁹ Meanwhile, on 23 May, Thomas Bateman noted that Burnet had married a widow with a jointure worth £800 a year.¹¹⁰ At some point during the summer of 1700 Burnet’s name appears on a printed list with annotations which may suggest that he was regarded as a potential supporter of the new ministry. 

Burnet was first present at the first Parliament of 1701 on 10 February. He attended on 93 days, nearly 89 per cent of the total and was named to 33 committees. On 8 Mar. Pakington was ordered to bring in a bill into the Commons which included provision to prevent the translations of bishops, apparently prompted by renewed rumours of Burnet’s intended translation to Winchester. The rumour had been current from at least March 1699 when it had been reported that the king had given the ‘reversion’ of it to Burnet.¹¹¹ Burnet chaired and reported from committee of the whole on the divorce bill of Ralph Box (10 Apr.) and on the bill settling the crown (21 May). Burnet’s own recollection concerning the latter was that when the Commons sent the bill up to the Lords ‘we expected great opposition would be made to it’, but this failed to materialize because many ‘of the lords absented themselves on design’. The Act of Settlement having passed, as Burnet wrote later, ‘we reckoned it a great point carried that we had now a law on our side for a Protestant successor; for we plainly saw a great party formed against it, in favour of the pretended prince of Wales.’ Princess Sophia acknowledged Burnet’s support for the Hanoverian Succession in the letter of June 1701, in which she thanked him ‘for the affection which you have testified to me in the affair of the succession, which excludes at the same time all Catholic heirs, who have always caused so many disorders in England.’¹¹² He continued to be active in the management of conferences, including those of 6 and 10 June concerning the impeachment of Whig peers. Later that month he voted to acquit Somers and Orford. 

With a new ministry, and the revival of convocation, Burnet again came under attack for some of his writings. In May 1701 Thomas Naish was told of three charges ready to be drawn up against Burnet in Convocation, relating to heresy, protecting servants guilty of extortion and promoting simony.¹¹³ This was a response to Burnet’s Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1699), which aimed to assist in healing the doctrinal divisions between dissenters and the Church.¹¹⁴ As Burnet himself put it, the censure of his Exposition was for favouring ‘a diversity of opinions, which the articles were framed to avoid’.¹¹⁵ The attack ended with the sudden death of Prolocutor Woodward on 13 Feb. 1702.¹¹⁶ Woodward’s pursuit of Burnet is likely to have been related to an existing dispute between the two men. Woodward was dean of Salisbury; he had been cited for contempt and disobedience, which had in turn led to a complaint from the lower house of Convocation, which the bishops had rejected.¹¹⁷ An attack on Burnet planned for March 1704 was discouraged by George Hooper*, the prolocutor, recently appointed bishop of Bath and Wells.¹¹⁸

In July and August 1701 Burnet was based in Salisbury, and making preparations for a visitation in September.¹¹⁹ He made strenuous efforts to secure the support of his clergy for the two Whig candidates in the Wiltshire election of November 1701. Burnet would later also try to direct his clergy in the 1702 and 1705 elections, and in elections to convocation, though in 1703 he claimed never to do so, merely ‘declaring my own opinion and knowledge of two persons without ever speaking to any person except my own tenants for his vote’. ¹²⁰

Burnet was present when Parliament opened on 30 Dec. 1701. He attended on 65 days of the session (65 per cent of the total) and was named to 23 committees. He reaffirmed his commitment to the Hanoverian Succession at the beginning of the session when he signed the Lords’ address of 1 Jan. 1702. Burnet himself noted that the ‘matter that occasioned the longest and warmest debates in both Houses, was an act for abjuring the pretended prince of Wales, and for swearing to the king by the title of rightful and lawful king, and to his heirs, according to the act of settlement’.¹²¹ On 12 Jan. the Lords gave a second reading to the abjuration bill, which occasioned a great debate in which Burnet responded to the insistence of Nottingham and John Sheffield*, marquess of Normanby, that the term abjuration be defined and the oath limited. Burnet added that he thought the oath ‘as necessary for the securing of our civil rights as that oath of abjuration of the pope’s supremacy’ and that the ‘doctrine of jure divino was a false doctrine and but of 200 years standing.’¹²² On 12 Feb. Burnet was added to the managers of the conference on the bill for the attainder of the pretended prince of Wales.¹²³ On 23 Feb. he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the abjuration bill.

The Accession of Anne and the Parliament of 1702

Following the king’s riding accident at the end of February 1702, Burnet ‘did not stir from him till he died,’ and thought his death ‘was a dreadful’ stroke.¹²⁴ As one newsletter observed, it did not prevent Burnet being the first person to bring Queen Anne news of William’s death. He ‘upon his knees by her majesty’s bedside kissed her hand and assured her he would be her majesty’s loyal and faithful subject, excusing his zeal to the service of his late majesty.’¹²⁵ Parliament was not dissolved immediately after the king’s death and on 18 Apr. Burnet chaired and reported from committee of the whole on the bill enabling the queen to appoint commissioners to treat for a union between England and Scotland. 

Burnet was present when the new Parliament convened on 20 Oct. 1702. He attended on 76 days (over 88 per cent of the total) and was named to 30 committees. On 16 Nov. William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, noted that Burnet was ‘in good heart, not valuing the grins of the lower house of Convocation’. He was certainly engaged in the debates in the upper house of convocation, having on 15 Dec. 1702 ‘sharp repartees’ with Bishop Trelawny over a legal opinion on a paper from the lower House.¹²⁶ In November 1702 the queen asked the Commons to make provision for her husband, Prince George, in case he should outlive her. The Commons voted £100,000 for the prince but a motion was made to exempt the prince from a clause in the Act of Settlement that incapacitated foreigners who had been naturalized from holding office or sitting in Parliament. Although the original provision ‘plainly related only to those who should be naturalized in a future reign’, Burnet observed that making a special case for Prince George implied that a similar exemption was required by those who were already naturalized: it is not clear from his text whether this was because it might have had some bearing on his own situation; certainly it was seen as a ‘prejudice’ to those who had been promoted by King William.¹²⁷ Burnet went to see the queen at St James’s on 31 Dec. 1702 to explain his objections. After his audience he met Bishop Nicolson, who noted that his colleague was ‘in some heat and concern’, and told him ‘that the queen seemed set upon having that bill pass; saying that she had rather an affront were given to herself than to the prince. Yet the bishop was so free as to move for a two days prorogation, that the contents of this might be put into two bills.’¹²⁸

Burnet regarded the provision on office-holding as ‘put in the bill, by some in the House of Commons, only because they believed it would be opposed by those, against whom they intended to irritate the queen’.¹²⁹ The stratagem appears to have worked. A newsletter on 14 Jan. 1703 reported that the previous day the queen had asked Burnet remove from his lodgings in St James’s.¹³⁰ On 19 Jan. Burnet spoke ‘under great perplexity’ in the committee of the whole on the bill. After expressing ‘the highest obligations of duty and gratitude to the prince’, he thought that ‘justice... was to take the place of gratitude, and he thought it would be an apparent injustice to the other foreign lords’, if the bill now passed so that the provision could not be reckoned any honour or dignity to him.¹³¹ When the committee divided about including this clause the votes were equal, so, according to convention, it was removed from the bill, only to be restored when the bill was reported, sparking a protest from Burnet. Burnet concluded that ‘the queen was highly displeased with those who had opposed it, among whom I had my share.’ On 4 Feb. when the House considered the bill enlarging the time for taking the oath of abjuration, it added clauses against any attempt to prevent Princess Sophia from coming to the throne, and extending the oath to Ireland. Burnet noted that all ‘people were surprised to see a bill that was begun in favour of the Jacobites turned so terribly upon them, since by it we had a new security given, both in England and Ireland, for a Protestant successor.’¹³²

Burnet seems to have seen the Test and Corporation Acts as allowing moderate Dissenters to serve in office in return for occasional conformity and was thus opposed to the attempt to outlaw the practice with the occasional conformity bill brought up from the Commons on 2 Dec. 1702.¹³³ On the next day he supported a proposal made by Somers that the committee of the whole on the bill should be instructed that it should be ‘extended to no other persons than the Test Act’. In committee of the whole on 4 Dec., he almost certainly opposed an amendment that all office-holders should receive the sacrament four times a year and attend church at least once a month. Similarly, on the 7th, he almost certainly supported the resolution of the committee to remove the financial penalties from it, effectively a wrecking amendment.¹³⁴ On 9 Dec. when it was rumoured that the Commons were considering adding the legislation to a money bill in order to force it through the Lords, Burnet signed the Lords’ resolution that such a ‘tack’ was ‘unparliamentary’, and tending towards the ‘destruction of the constitution of this government’. Unsurprisingly Nottingham’s forecast drawn up in or about January 1703, listed Burnet as a likely opponent of the bill. That month a number of conferences were held between the two Houses to discuss the impasse over the bill. Burnet acted as a manager of the conference on 16 Jan. 1703, on the eve of which he received a visit from two dissenting ministers, Edmund Calamy and Benjamin Robinson. Calamy later noted that their conversation was reflected in Burnet’s speech at the conference.¹³⁵ The bill was lost in the dispute between the Houses. Burnet wrote that the bishops who had opposed the bill were ‘censured as cold and slack in the concerns of the Church... A great part of this fell on myself; for I bore a large share in the debates, both in the House of Lords and at the free conference.’¹³⁶ In other business that session, Burnet voted against Thomas Wharton*, 5th Baron Wharton, in his cause with Robert Squire^‡ on 12 Feb. 1703.¹³⁷ On 17 Feb., when the Lords gave its verdict on the party controversy over the action at Vigo the previous October, voting that Sir George Rooke^‡, had ‘done his duty, and behaved himself like a worthy and brave commander, with honour to the nation’, Francis Atterbury*, the future bishop of Rochester, noted ‘no bishop was against’ him and that Burnet ‘and nine, there present, were for him.’¹³⁸

Burnet was present when the next session began on 9 Nov. 1703 and attended on 85 days, 86.7 per cent of the total. As was by now automatic for those in the chamber, he was regularly named to committees. In November and early December, Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, forecast that Burnet would continue to oppose attempts to pass a bill against occasional conformity and Burnet did vote against the bill on 14 December. As Burnet noted, the bishops ‘were almost equally divided’ but ‘I had the largest share of censure on me, because I spoke much against the bill’.¹³⁹ During his speech he admitted that ‘I myself was an occasional conformist in Geneva and Holland’ an experience which had convinced him that ‘occasional conformity, with a less perfect church, may well consist with the continuing to worship God in a more perfect one.’ He made it clear that he believed the bill was designed to limit toleration.¹⁴⁰ Following the defeat of the bill Burnet printed his speech ‘which drew many virulent pamphlets upon me, but I answered none of them’.¹⁴¹ Sir Charles Turner^‡ asked his brother-in-law Robert Walpole^†, the future earl of Orford, for a copy to ‘bind up with the bill and Lords amendments which I find the Lords have ordered to be printed.’¹⁴²

Burnet remained an active committee chairman, reporting back on five occasions during January and February 1704. In March a newsletter reported that Burnet, seconded by John Sharp*, archbishop of York, had instigated a debate about James Bourchier or Boucher, one of those implicated in the Scotch Plot. This presumably relates to the debate of 1 Mar. when the House agreed to address the queen for clemency on his behalf if he confessed what he knew of the plot.¹⁴³ On 13 Mar. Burnet reported from committee of the whole on the bill that established the scheme known as Queen Anne’s Bounty. Burnet had long advocated such a scheme, so it was appropriate that he should be involved in the legislation bringing it into effect.¹⁴⁴ On 24 Mar. Burnet entered a protest against the decision not to put the question that the part of the narrative relating to Sir John Maclean, part of the evidence relating to the Scotch conspiracy, was ‘imperfect.’ When writing his account of this session of Parliament, Burnet commented on ‘the discoveries made of a plot which took up much of the Lords’ time, and gave occasion to many sharp reflections that passed between the two Houses in their addresses to the queen.’ Much time and effort was expended on the enquiry and at the end of it ‘the Lords concluded the whole matter with voting that there had been dangerous plots between some in Scotland and the court of France and St Germains; and that the encouragement of this plotting came from the not settling the succession to the crown of Scotland in the house of Hanover.’¹⁴⁵

During the subsequent, 1704-5 session, Burnet was present on 80 days, nearly 81 per cent of the total. Over the summer the Scottish parliament had met and forced the crown to accept the Scottish Act of Security, which threatened to dissolve the personal union of the crowns of England and Scotland at the death of the queen. The queen was present on 29 Nov. when the Lords went into a committee of a whole on the state of the nation with reference to Scotland, Burnet noting that ‘the debate about the Scotch act was taken up with great heat’ in the Lords.¹⁴⁶ Burnet, according to his wife, was no longer in touch with events and individuals in Scotland.¹⁴⁷ Nevertheless he made a long speech in which he examined the misfortunes that had afflicted Scotland since the union of the crowns in 1603.¹⁴⁸

On 15 Dec. 1704, Nicolson recorded that Burnet spoke against giving a second reading to the bill against occasional conformity, and that Heneage Finch*, Baron Guernsey, was ‘hard’ on Burnet, ‘having (accidentally) his Glasgow Dialogue in his pocket, out of which he read two or three pages very severe upon the Dissenters’. He reported from a number of committees and was involved in managing conferences with the Commons. These included the high profile conferences held in February 1705 over the controversial issue of the Aylesbury men, but he was also involved in conferences on lesser issues: the militia bill (named 12 Mar.) and the Peschell naturalization bill (reported 13 March). He was also active in the Journals committee and on 19 and 24 Mar. was recorded as examining the journal up to 1 Feb. 1705.

The Parliament of 1705

In June 1705 Burnet brought several actions of scandalum magnatum, one of which was settled out of court in November by a Mr Smeaton, and another by Henry Chivers^‡, for ‘impudent scandalous lies’.¹⁴⁹ Burnet intervened, unsuccessfully, against candidates who had supported the tack, in the 1705 elections for Salisbury and Wiltshire. He organized a ‘public entertainment’ to publicize the printed list of tackers and declaimed against them from his pulpit, declaring that it was the orders of the queen and John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough, ‘to excite the people against Tackers’. He even sent a circular letter to the inferior clergy of his diocese: ‘gentlemen, I have been a bishop 16 years and never meddled with any elections till now but now the queen seeing which way things are going gave us particular commands to take care and send such persons as will support her and her government’, and therefore recommending Sir Edward Ernle^‡ and William Ashe^‡. Defoe reported that not only had Burnet’s candidate, Harris, lost the election at Salisbury, but ‘the bishop’s friends were very ill treated by the clergy at the county election’. It seems that he ‘was too warm, and disgusted some with his too great zeal’.¹⁵⁰

Burnet was present for the opening of the 1705 Parliament on 25 October. He attended on 82 days, some 86 per cent of the total. On 17 Nov. 1705 Thomas Hearne was informed that Burnet had ‘preached eight or nine times stoutly against occasional conformity. The reasons he supposes are only a means to reconcile him to some persons whom by scandals and disingenuous reports he has very much offended’.¹⁵¹ Apprehensive that Parliament was giving further provocation to the Scots by its actions, Burnet was relieved when the next session of the Scottish Parliament agreed to allow the queen to nominate commissioners to negotiate a union with England provided the provision that designated the Scots as aliens in the event of the failure to settle either the Union or the Succession, was repealed. This was achieved on 23 Nov. 1705 whereupon Burnet, ‘as a Scotchman’ thanked the House ‘for their generous vote; and privately invited all to an £100 treat on this day sevennight, St Andrew’s Day.’¹⁵²

On 3 Dec. 1705 Burnet attended a dinner at Lambeth, along with Nicolson and Humphrey Humphreys*, bishop of Hereford, where they prepared for the forthcoming church in danger debate. Opening the debate on 6 Dec. Rochester suggested that the Church was in peril under the queen’s administration particularly as a result of the ‘danger from Scotland’. Burnet was one of a number of peers who argued and voted to the contrary. Accounts of his speech by Nicolson and White Kennett^†, the future bishop of Peterborough, show that Burnet insisted that the Church was flourishing ‘from the frequent communions; the many emissaries sent to the plantations; the care taken for catechizing; and the queen’s bounty to the poor clergy.’ He attacked the inconsistency between Compton’s current views on resistance and his decision to appear in arms at the Revolution and in an even more overtly partisan swipe suggested that it was necessary to ‘bless God for the danger we have escaped. Bishops imprisoned. Ecclesiastical commissions. And a prospect of ruin if not rescued by King William.’¹⁵³ He was named as one of the managers of the subsequent conferences (7, 12, 14 and 17 December).

Burnet played a full role in the disputes in Convocation; thus on 15 Dec. 1705 he moved for thanks to be given to the minority who had protested against the proceedings of the lower house ‘for their duty and care to preserve the ancient constitution of the Convocation of this province’, which was agreed, with two dissidents, Bishops Trelawny and Hooper.¹⁵⁴ He continued to be active in committee work. On 4 Feb. Nicolson reported a ‘difference’ between Burnet and John Hough*, of Lichfield and Coventry, over the bill for augmenting the number of canons residentiary and for improving the deanery and prebends in the cathedral of Lichfield. On 20 Feb. Burnet (together with Sunderland) was ‘severe’ on William Binckes (dean of Lichfield and prolocutor of convocation) in the committee on the bill and insisted on having the queen’s formal consent to it, whereupon the committee was adjourned.¹⁵⁵ The bill was eventually amended and passed. On 7, 11 and 19 Feb. Burnet was involved in managing conferences on the regency bill, including a role in the committee to draw up reasons why the Lords would adhere to their amendments. On 23 Feb., in committee of the whole House on a bill for restoring to the archbishop of Dublin the town and lands of Sea Town and repaying to him the money he paid for it from the trustees for sale of the forfeited estates in Ireland, Burnet was the only bishop in favour of omitting the ‘repayment’ clause. He was then presumably in favour of reading the bill for a third time on the 25th rather than immediately.¹⁵⁶

Early in March 1706, when the House was considering a bill to prevent the further growth of popery, enquiry was made as to why bishops had not returned lists of papists as requested by the Lords the previous year. Burnet replied that ‘he had written to all his clergy in pursuance of their lordships’ orders but because it was at a time when the country was engaged in disputes about elections of Parliament-men and it happened that the clergymen and papists were generally in the same interest they had neglected to return their names.’¹⁵⁷ On 11 Mar. Burnet was probably named to manage a conference relating to Sir Rowland Gwynne’s^‡ Letter to the Earl of Stamford, as all those present in the House were so named. 

On 15 June 1706, in the aftermath of the victory at Ramillies, Burnet wrote from Salisbury to Tenison, enclosing a copy of a celebratory address to the queen for which he was collecting signatures.¹⁵⁸ According to Thomas Naish, many of the Wiltshire clergy declined to sign it because it stated that ‘none but the confederates of our enemies and those who are deluded by them can imagine our church to be in danger’; they subscribed to the grand jury’s address instead.¹⁵⁹ The death of Peter Mews*, bishop of Winchester, on 9 Nov. 1706, raised the prospect of promotion for Burnet. However Trelawny had long been promised the diocese by Sidney Godolphin*, earl of Godolphin, and it was Trelawny who got it.¹⁶⁰ An embittered Burnet allegedly then went to the queen and charged his rival with mistreating his wife.¹⁶¹

Burnet was in London before the opening of the session, at Lambeth on 23 Nov. 1706 to settle the form of the thanksgiving for the military victories of the previous campaign. He was present when the next session began on 3 Dec., attending on 70 days, just over 81 per cent of the total and was as usual habitually involved in committee business. On 10 Jan. 1707, on the second reading of the bill repealing a clause in the act for the better apprehending, prosecuting, and punishing felons, Burnet moved for the ‘removal of the farce of benefit of clergy’. On 25 Jan. he was in attendance at Lambeth when Tenison unveiled his bill for the security of the Church of England, whereupon he fell out with Nicolson ‘on the time of passing that in Scotland’.¹⁶² On 3 Feb. Burnet chaired the committee of the whole on the resultant bill and was thus in the chair when the Tories tried to insert in it reference to the Test Act. On 15, 19, 21 and 24 Feb. Burnet chaired and reported progress from the committee of the whole which considered the articles of the treaty of Union, and on 27 Feb. he reported the committee’s resolutions. He chaired the committee of the whole on the resultant bill for the Union on 3 March. Burnet claimed to be one of the leading advocates of the treaty in the Lords.¹⁶³ On 17 Feb. Bishop Patrick of Ely signed a proxy in his favour. On 25 Feb. Burnet chaired the committee of the whole on the Jermyn divorce bill, reporting to the House that it should be rejected. He was present on the last day of the session, 8 Apr., when he was named to a conference on the vagrancy bill. Burnet was present for eight of the nine days of the short session of April 1707. On 15 Apr. he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the bill for the relief of bankrupts. During that session, on 18 Apr., he examined the Journal up to 31 Jan. 1707. 

Burnet was present when the next session convened on 23 Oct. 1707, attending on 80 days of the session, nearly 75 per cent of the total. On 5 and 7 Feb. 1708 he chaired the committee of the whole on the bill rendering the Union more complete, reporting it on the 7th. Joseph Addison^‡, presumably referring to the vote on abolishing the Scots Privy Council on 1 May, recorded that Burnet ‘spoke very much against the tyranny of a Privy Council in Scotland and was followed in his vote… by all the bishops’ except William Talbot*, of Oxford, and Trelawny of Winchester.¹⁶⁴ If Mrs Burnet may be taken as an accurate indicator of her husband’s views, the ministerial crisis which resulted in the dismissal of Robert Harley*, the future earl of Oxford, was seen as a victory and ‘had this affair hung in suspense’, not only Burnet ‘but most of the other bishops’ would have offered Marlborough and Godolphin ‘all the service in their power’ and ‘been ready to join in anything’ to show their regard to the duumvirs.¹⁶⁵ During February and March Burnet was again to the fore in matters relating to the Union, chairing committees of the whole on issues relating to the election of Scottish representative peers on 10 and 12 Feb. and 1 and 3 March. During March he also reported on three estate bills and a naturalization bill as well as chairing and reporting from the committee of the whole on the ecclesiastical livings bill (27 March). Unsurprisingly in about May 1708 Burnet was listed as Whig.

The Parliament of 1708

Burnet was present on 16 Nov. 1708, when the Parliament began, attending on 56 days, nearly 61 per cent of the total. He attended the traditional dinner at Lambeth on 28 December.¹⁶⁶ On 21 Jan. 1709 Burnet voted against the resolution that Scottish peers with British titles could vote in elections for Scottish representative peers. On 24 Jan. he supported Johnston in his legal cause before the Lords, presumably that of the Attorney-general v. Crofts et al, which was the only one heard that day.¹⁶⁷ He was absent from 1-28 Feb. 1709 probably on account of the death of his wife on the 3rd, and her interment at Spetchley. During her illness she had been ‘constantly attended by my Lady Marlborough with whom she was to go to Holland, had her grace gone, or to Hanover’.¹⁶⁸ Henceforth, when in London Burnet usually resided at St John’s Court, Clerkenwell, in the house left to him by his spouse.¹⁶⁹

On 15 Mar. 1709 in committee of the whole House on the general naturalization bill, Burnet voted in favour of retaining the provision allowing the new arrivals to take the sacrament in ‘some Protestant reformed congregation’ rather than in a ‘parochial church’. As he himself said, he spoke ‘copiously’ for the bill.¹⁷⁰ When a bill for improving the Union of the two kingdoms went into a committee of the whole on 16 Mar. Burnet was chosen as its chairman. The first head of the bill stated that ‘all crimes which were high-treason by the law of England (and these only) were to be high-treason in Scotland’. His fellow countrymen were very unhappy at this prospect and argued that such crimes should be ‘enumerated in the act, for the information of the Scotch nation; otherwise they must study the book of statutes, to know when they were safe, and when they were guilty’.¹⁷¹ Burnet’s report to the House reflected this concern as the judges were requested to bring in an account of the several laws that related to treason. He was again in the chair on 18 Mar. when the judges delivered in their report. In relation to the first head, a question was put ‘whether the English statutes be particularly enumerated’, which was lost, with Bishop Nicolson recording that there was not one bishop amongst the non contents. Burnet’s chairmanship was described by Nicolson as ‘blundering’ and when the committee met the next day it had a new chair. On 22 Mar. Burnet voted in favour of the ultimately unsuccessful proposal to allow defendants a list of prosecution witnesses five days before trial. On 23 Mar. he was one of two bishops to vote with the Scots in a division, technically over resuming the House, but effectively about forfeitures, as he was ‘against all forfeitures but personal’.¹⁷² On 25 Mar. he voted in favour of the motion that the House be resumed, so that consideration of Scottish marriage settlements could be delayed until the following day.¹⁷³ On 28 Mar. he protested against the rejection of another attempt to require defendants in treason trials to be given a copy of the indictment, and a list of prosecution witnesses at least five days before the trial. He then protested against the passage of the bill itself. When the bill was amended and returned to the Lords on 14 Apr., according to both Charles Hay^†, Lord Yester, the future 3rd marquess of Tweedale [S] and Edmund Gibson^†, the future bishop of London, Burnet joined all the bishops in voting against the amendment to the clause that there be no forfeitures for high treason, which stated that it was not to come into force until the Pretender’s death rather than on 1 July, and was the only bishop to vote against the same change to the clause allowing the defendants to have lists of witnesses.¹⁷⁴ However, according to Nicolson, ‘all the bishops present’, including Burnet, agreed to both the amendments that the statute should not commence till after the Pretender’s death.¹⁷⁵

About this time, as his son later observed, Burnet ‘grew more abstracted from the world, than the situation he had been in during the former parts of his life had permitted. To avoid the distraction of useless visits’, he settled in St John’s Court, ‘and kept up only an intercourse with his most select and intimate acquaintance’.¹⁷⁶ It was probably in October 1709 that Arthur Maynwaring^‡ wrote that Burnet was ‘daily writing a History which everybody will read when he is dead’.¹⁷⁷ In keeping with this resolution, perhaps, Burnet did not appear for the 1709-10 session until 10 Jan. 1710, the second day after the Christmas recess, although he was in London by 2 Jan., when he dined at Lambeth with Charles Montagu*, 4th earl of Manchester, and others.¹⁷⁸ He attended on 47 days, just over 50 per cent of the total.

What seems to have brought Burnet out of his chosen inactivity was the decision to impeach Dr Sacheverell. Burnet judged Sacheverell to be ‘a bold insolent man, with a very small measure of religion, virtue, learning or good sense’, who had ‘resolved to force himself into popularity and preferment, by the most petulant railings at Dissenters, and low-churchmen’. Burnet was particularly stung by Sacheverell’s assertion of ‘the doctrine of non-resistance in the highest strain possible’. He complained that Sacheverell had argued ‘that to charge the Revolution with resistance, was to cast black and odious imputations on it; pretending that the late king [William] had disowned it, and cited for the proof of that, some words in his declaration, by which he vindicated himself from a design of conquest.’¹⁷⁹ The impeachment provoked widespread rioting in London, some of which came uncomfortably close to Burnet. On 1 Mar. he was insulted near his home and on 2 Mar. he complained of his treatment to the Lords but as the Commons took notice of the tumults, the Lords left the matter to them.¹⁸⁰ On 4 Mar. Sacheverell’s counsel was able to use passages from Burnet’s own Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland (1673) to demonstrate the orthodoxy of his opinion, whereupon Burnet responded by ‘sneaking from his place to deliver the managers a book of his own out of his bosom, and directing them to call for a passage to contradict himself’.¹⁸¹

Aware that Sacheverell was also questioning the validity of the Hanoverian Succession, Burnet set himself the task of refuting his assertions in the speech he gave to the House of Lords on 16 Mar. during consideration of the first article of the impeachment. He began with the observation that ‘since it is grown to be a vulgar opinion, that by the doctrine of the Church of England, all resistance in any case whatsoever, without exception, is condemned; I think it is incumbent upon me... to give you... a clear account of this point’. He then embarked on a long, historical account of the doctrine of the Church before concluding that Sacheverell’s assertion of passive obedience and non-resistance in his sermon was ‘certainly a condemning the Revolution: and this is further aggravated from those limitations on our obedience, in an act passed soon after the Revolution, by which, in case our princes turn Papists, or marry Papists, the subjects are, in express words, discharged from their allegiance to them.’ He ended by saying that ‘he was as much against severity to the Dr’s person as any but was for censuring the sermon and settling the doctrine.’¹⁸² There is a possibility that the printed version of Burnet’s speech omitted a section on the ‘spirit of Jacobitism’ which he alleged pervaded the clergy and poisoned the universities. One contemporary printed account, purporting to have been written on that day, judged it to be ‘a sermon in Defence of Resistance’, even to the extent of suggesting that so long as the doctrine of non-resistance was condemned, Burnet would be ‘very well content the Doctor might escape’.¹⁸³

According to Rev. Ralph Bridges, on 17 Mar. 1710 Burnet ‘opened’ the fourth article of the impeachment and ‘having quoted and distorted several words to show the ministry’s being reflected upon’, argued that ‘it was a matter of amazement to anyone to hear such expressions from the pulpit in her majesty’s reign, which was the wonder of the present age and would be so of posterity and which therefore ought to be the object of our idolatry, if possible’. Burnet then told a story of a

hotheaded bishop (at the naming of which words the whole House fell a-laughing) who having by his influence caused a synagogue of Jews at Alexandria to be suppressed and afterwards a good pious lady of that religion coming thither and abounding in works of charity, it enraged the bishop so much that he stirred up the people there and made them tear her all to pieces. And he was the Sacheverell of those days, concluded my Lord of Sarum.¹⁸⁴

Another account had Burnet seconding Wharton on the article, speaking with ‘vehemence’ against Sacheverell, ‘who by inveighing against the Revolution, Toleration, and Union, seemed to arraign and attack the queen herself’. Sacheverell’s attack upon her ministers was plain because he had ‘so well marked out a notable peer [Godolphin], there present by an ugly and scurrilous epithet [Volpone], (which he would not speak) that ’twas not possible to mistake him’. His speech was somewhat ruined by ‘the whole House a-laughing and several Lords cried out name him’, which William Cowper*, Baron Cowper, ruled out of order.¹⁸⁵ On 20 Mar. Burnet voted Sacheverell guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. Upon reflection, he felt that Sacheverell’s punishment in being forbidden to preach for three years and his sermon burnt in the presence of the lord mayor and alderman of London, was a ‘mild judgment’, while on 28 Mar. Ralph Bridges noted that Burnet ‘could not forbear saying that he thought this favourable sentence was returning of him thanks’.¹⁸⁶ However, in keeping with his earlier view, there is evidence that on 21 Mar., following Cowper’s proposal for a seven-year ‘silence’ and three months’ imprisonment, Burnet and Talbot were among the few that supported John Campbell*, duke of Argyll, that he had voted for the impeachment upon a promise that ‘no severe punishment should be insisted on’.¹⁸⁷

Burnet attended the last day of the session, 5 Apr. 1710 and the prorogation of 18 April. On 20 May he wrote to William Wake*, bishop of Lincoln, from Salisbury in fairly optimistic vein, regarding the nomination of two bishops as ‘a good step’. Bristol and St Davids were vacant: John Robinson*, the diplomat, would fill that of Bristol and Philip Bisse*, a relative of Harley’s, that of St Davids; both were moderate Tories. ‘I pray God’, he went on, ‘it may be followed by more that are of a piece with it for how high soever our jury rises a very little management [may] gain it.’¹⁸⁸ On 29 May he preached a sermon in Salisbury Cathedral in support of resistance theory, which led to conflict with some of the corporation, who had been somewhat exuberant in their support for Sacheverell.¹⁸⁹ In September it was reported that Burnet had had a severe fit of the stone.¹⁹⁰ Somers wrote to him on 9 Sept.: ‘I hear you have returned to Salisbury from Bath in a very ill state of health’.¹⁹¹ On 3 Oct. Harley included Burnet among those likely to oppose the new ministry.

The Parliament of 1710

Burnet was in London before the 1710 Parliament opened on 25 Nov., visiting Lambeth on 11 Nov., arriving at the end of a meeting of bishops discussing Convocation.¹⁹² He took his seat on 27 Nov. and was then present on 44 days, a little under 39 per cent of the total. Before the New Year he only sat on 27 and 28 Nov. and on 4 days in December. According to Burnet, in the winter following the change of ministry, the queen encouraged him ‘to speak more freely to her of her affairs than I had ever ventured to do formerly. I told her what reports were secretly spread of her through the nation, as if she favoured the design of bringing the Pretender to succeed the Crown, upon a bargain that she should hold it during her life.’ The queen ‘heard me patiently: she was for the most part silent; yet by what she said, she seemed desirous to make me think she agreed to what I had laid before her, but I found afterwards it had no effect upon her.’ Burnet opposed the attack in the Lords on the conduct of the war in Spain under the former ministry, remarking that ‘I never saw anything carried on in the House of Lords so little to their honour as this was; some who voted with the rest seemed ashamed of it’. He suspected that the defeat at the battle of Almanza in April 1707, was being used to justify the queen changing her ministers because most of what else they had done had been successful. Whilst this seemed to confirm that the queen had ignored his advice he felt no regret at having spoken out ‘since I had, with an honest freedom, made the best use I could have of the access I had to her.’¹⁹³ On 9 Jan. 1711 in committee of the whole, Burnet spoke against the motion that the earl of Peterborough (formerly earl of Monmouth), whose evidence was used to criticize the conduct of the campaign, had given a true, just and honourable account of the council of war in Valencia. Burnet said that ‘he was for as much (honourable) as they pleased, but could not come up to the words (true and just). This occasioned great laughter.’¹⁹⁴ He opposed the motion by voting against the procedural motion to resume the House. On 11 Jan. he protested against the decision to reject the petitions of Henry de Massue, earl of Galway [I], and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], and then he protested against the resolution that the opinions in the council of war of Galway, Tyrawley, and General James Stanhope^†, the future Viscount Stanhope, had occasioned the defeat at Almanza, and the subsequent losses. On 12 Jan. he protested against the resolution censuring ministers for approving and directing an offensive war in Spain. On 3 Feb. he protested against two resolutions further censuring ministers for failures in the supply of the troops in the Spanish campaign. On 7 Feb. 1711 Burnet won £100 in damages in another trial for scandalum magnatum against an apothecary from Salisbury, William Naish, who had accused the bishop of preaching lies.¹⁹⁵ On 24 Feb. Burnet met Wake and several other bishops to discuss Convocation matters.¹⁹⁶ Burnet was recorded as present on 1 Mar. when it was noted that all the bishops supported the vote that the appeal of James Greenshields was regularly brought before the Lords.¹⁹⁷ Sir James Dunbar^‡ specifically noticed that Burnet was one of the majority against adjourning this question until the following day and in favour of proceeding to hear counsel.¹⁹⁸ This being done, the decree was then reversed. On 9 Mar. Burnet chaired the committee of the whole on Jermyn’s divorce bill, and was reportedly ‘ill-treated’ by Argyll, so much so that when the order was read for a committee of the whole on 12 Mar on the divorce bill of Benedict Leonard Calvert^‡, the future 4th Baron Baltimore [I], no Lord was ‘willing to take the chair’ after Burnet ‘had fared so ill’, so the House was resumed.¹⁹⁹ He last sat on 9 May, a month before the end of the session, having signed a proxy in favour of Bishop Moore (now translated to Ely) on 12 May. 

Burnet was increasingly worried about the succession. On 31 Mar. 1711 Nicolson had heard that Burnet had warned the queen ‘on the change of her ministry, the growth of the Pretender’s interest’.²⁰⁰ On 28 Nov. the queen informed David Hamilton that Burnet had told her ‘we are ripening for judgment, and that the Dutch come into the Peace by force’, perhaps in the same interview in which Burnet stressed the danger of all Europe falling under (Catholic) Bourbon control, leading to the murder of the queen and a re-kindling of the fires in Smithfield; he ended, ‘I pursued this long, till I saw she grew uneasy’ and withdrew. On 4 Dec. the queen and Hamilton discussed Burnet’s sermon at Mercers’ Chapel, in which he again declaimed on the imminent dangers from popery and the French monarchy which would see the Pretender restored even in the queen’s lifetime.²⁰¹

Burnet was present on the opening day of the session, 7 Dec. 1711, when presumably he voted for the inclusion of the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause in the Address. On 8 Dec. he was listed as supporting the presentation of the address containing that clause in the abandoned division of that day. About December Burnet’s name appears on a list compiled by Nottingham, possibly concerning his alliance with the Whigs over the peace (or occasional conformity). On 19 Dec. Burnet was forecast as likely to oppose the claims of James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit in the House under his British title, but on the 20th he ‘went out’ of the House before the vote was taken. On 5 Jan. 1712 Burnet was one of nine Whig bishops who dined at Bishop Trelawny’s at Chelsea, though just what was under discussion remains unknown.²⁰² Complaints in the House on 31 Jan. concerning the sermon preached to it by Bishop Trimnell the previous day led Burnet, who had actually heard the sermon, to profess that ‘he never heard a better, and that there was nobody could find fault with it, but those that were against the late happy Revolution’. This led to calls for him to be brought to the bar, but Burnet avoided this fate by moving to the clerk’s table and saying ‘my Lords I do protest before God I meant no one in this House’.²⁰³

Apropos of the legislation that was alleged to be designed to weaken the Presbyterian establishment in Scotland, Burnet observed that those ‘who were suspected to have very bad designs applied themselves with great industry to drive on such, as they hoped would give the Presbyterians in Scotland such alarms as might dispose them to remonstrate that the union was broken.’ The first of these was the Episcopal toleration bill.²⁰⁴ In the committee of the whole on the bill on 13 Feb. Burnet and Halifax both opposed it.²⁰⁵ When the Lords re-considered the bill on 26 Feb. Burnet was noted as disagreeing to the Commons’ amendment to the Lords’ own amendment.²⁰⁶ The bill was followed by another to restore patronages in Scotland. Burnet told a deputation from the Church of Scotland lobbying against it, that ‘I resolve to speak some very free things in the House on that subject, and I will tell them I noticed the king of France to proceed just this way in revoking the Edict of Nantes, and piece by piece, he wore in; and at length took it away, and turned persecutor.’²⁰⁷ On 12 Apr. Burnet spoke and voted against the committal of the bill.²⁰⁸ He asserted that the bill was ‘contrary to the Kirk establishment by the Union’ in a ‘very long historical speech on behalf of the Kirk rights’. He also claimed that the bill ‘was not designed for the benefits of the Church, but to favour the Pretender’, telling Oxford that ‘this is not a time to weaken Protestants and create divisions by such bills, but we ought to unite against popery’.²⁰⁹ Greenshields wrote that Burnet ‘speeched vehemently’ against it, whilst Gibson noted that Burnet was one of four bishops voting with the minority.²¹⁰ Burnet’s opposition may have been counter-productive; Sir Hugh Paterson^‡ thought that Burnet ‘was one of the greatest sticklers against it, which I believe made it not go the worse’.²¹¹

On 22 Apr. 1712, Burnet attended the traditional Easter dinner at Lambeth, where he ‘opened’ with ‘some warmth’ the matter of Thomas Brett’s sermon ‘asserting the invalidity of lay baptism’, a position held by some high-flying divines.²¹² On 28 May Burnet protested against the resolution to reject a humble address that the queen issue orders to James Butler*, 2nd duke Ormond, to act offensively against France in order to obtain a safe and honourable peace, although his name does not appear on the printed list of the division.²¹³ On 29 May he substituted Bishop Moore as his proxy in Convocation.²¹⁴ He last sat on 16 June, shortly before the end of the session, having attended on 64 days, a little under 60 per cent of the total. 

Burnet was one of nine bishops attending the traditional dinner with Tenison at Lambeth on 26 Dec. 1712.²¹⁵ On 22 Jan. 1713 speaking of Burnet, the queen said that ‘he knows all things, and says more than anybody, and that last summer he said the Pretender would be here before six weeks’.²¹⁶ On 16 Feb. Bridges reported that when Parliament met it would order Burnet’s preface to be burnt, presumably a reference to the third edition of A Discourse of the Pastoral Care, which included ‘a new preface suited to the present time’ lamenting the state of religion among the clergy. Bridges added that ‘the bishop, I hear, is very desirous they should, being very eager and forward to show his zeal for the good old cause’. He elaborated on 27 Feb. that the preface was certainly by Burnet ‘being both his style and several of his arguments and expressions he made use of last sessions in the House of Lords, so says our good Lord of London.’²¹⁷

Burnet attended the prorogations on 17 Feb. 3, 10, and 26 Mar. 1713, on the latter occasion being accompanied by Bishop Wake.²¹⁸ Before the beginning of the session, a list compiled by Swift, and amended by Oxford, marked Burnet as expected to oppose the ministry. He was present when the session began on 9 April. He attended on 45 days, a little over 68 per cent of the total. On 1 June he joined the Whigs in supporting the motion of James Oglivy*, earl of Findlater [S] for a dissolution of the Union, at least in so far as supporting a motion for appointing another day to consider of it.²¹⁹ About 13 June, he was classed by Oxford as likely to oppose the bill confirming the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty. He last attended on 15 July, the penultimate day of the session, and by the 24th he was back in Salisbury, as he was in late September 1713.²²⁰

The Parliament of 1713 and the Hanoverian Succession

On 8 Feb. 1714, when Tenison was discussing the names of his commissioners in the licence allowing Convocation to sit, he insisted on including Burnet, ‘the second senior and must not be leaped over, tho’ perhaps, he, being intent on his great work, may not attend’.²²¹ Burnet was present when Parliament opened on 16 February. He attended on 42 days, just over 55 per cent of the total. On 11 Mar. Burnet protested against the decision not to add words to an address on the discovery of the author of the pamphlet, The Public Spirit of the Whigs, to indicate that the author (widely and accurately believed to be Oxford’s ally, Jonathan Swift) pretended to know the secrets of the queen’s administration. On 16 Apr. Burnet opposed the proposal for an address of thanks for the ‘safe, honourable and just’ peace with France and Spain. For Burnet, the ministry had persuaded the queen ‘to break her word in making a separate peace’ and had deserted her allies.²²² Burnet was present sporadically in May and on 29 May signed a proxy in favour of Bishop Moore. He next attended on 25 June, George Baillie^‡ reporting on the 26th that the bishop had returned in good health, contradicting rumours of his death.²²³ This may have been a diplomatic absence, as at the end of May or beginning of June, Nottingham had forecast that Burnet would oppose the schism bill. However, he voted by proxy against extending the schism bill to Ireland (11 June) and against the passage of the bill (15 June). On 8 July he protested against the decision not to proceed with a representation to the queen that the benefits of the Asiento contract had been obstructed by unwarrantable endeavours to gain private advantages to particular persons. He attended on the last day of the session, 9 July.

Burnet was missing from the opening of the session convened on the death of Queen Anne, on 1 Aug. 1714. He first sat on 12 Aug. and attended for four of the 15 days. On 21 Sept., Burnet, General Stanhope, Lord Chief Justice, Thomas Parker^†, the future earl of Macclesfield, and Thomas Pelham*, 2nd Baron Pelham, ‘were all hussaed’, during George I’s arrival into the capital.²²⁴ On 22 Sept. it was reported to Trumbull that Burnet was to be made dean of the chapel royal in place of John Robinson*, bishop of London, but this turned out to be false.²²⁵ As Charlett was informed on 29 Sept., George Smalridge*, bishop of Bristol, and Robinson ‘officiated last Sunday, the one as almoner, the other as dean of the Chapel. ’Tis said the Lord Nottingham has kept them in, declaring in the council that putting them out and Burnet in would disoblige three parts in four of the nation. This not shame or repentance keeps them and others in, but fear’.²²⁶ On 18 Oct. Burnet went with Wake to court and waited on the king, prince and princess of Wales and the young princesses before attending the coronation on the 20th.²²⁷

On 5 Mar. 1715 Burnet preached before George I.²²⁸ Shortly afterwards, he ‘was taken ill of a violent cold, which soon turned to a pleuritic fever’, otherwise described as ‘inflammation of the lungs’, and died on 17 March.²²⁹ He was able to leave to his five children their mother’s estate, plus the money he had invested from his salary as preceptor.²³⁰ In his will he provided for two endowments, which were, as Henry Fletcher of Saltoun (with which family and parish Burnet had been closely associated at the beginning of his career) reported ‘twenty thousand merks to the parish of Saltoun for educating youth, and as much to the College of Aberdeen, but the money is in the public funds and cannot be made good sooner than five year.’²³¹

Soon after his emergence into London society, Burnet had been described by John Evelyn in 1674 as a ‘famous and excellent preacher’, who spoke with ‘such a flood of eloquence and fullness of matter as shewed him to be a person of extraordinary parts’.²³² To these advantages, he added ambition: Denzil Holles*, Baron Holles, regarding him as a ‘forward Scotsman’ with ‘a bishopric in his head’.²³³ Having achieved this aim, Burnet has been perceived as an ‘energetic and reforming diocesan’.²³⁴ He seems to have had a fundamental horror of persecution, arguing that worldly power should never be used to advance Godly belief, and as a consequence he opposed the high-church attack on Dissenters, whilst agreeing that they were proud schismatics who should never have left the Church.²³⁵ As his will proclaimed

I am a true protestant according to the Church of England, full of affection and brotherly love to all who have received the reformed religion tho’ in some points different from our constitution. I die as I all along lived and professed myself to be full of charity and tenderness for those among us who yet dissent from us and heartily pray that God would heal our breaches and make us like minded in all things that so we may unite our zeal and join our endeavours against atheism and infidelity that have prevailed much and against popery the greatest enemy to our Church more to be dreaded than all other parties whatsoever.

Parliamentary historians have seen Burnet as one of ‘a small core of active peers and bishops who regularly took the lead in debates’.²³⁶ Burnet never missed a parliamentary session, undertook a large quantity of committee work and spoke his mind, despite inviting ridicule and getting into trouble for his words. However, his forthright and uncompromising whiggish views made him many enemies to whom his wife once referred as ‘very unreasonable in both inventing false stories and improving any that, by being in any part true, give an advantage of easier belief.’²³⁷ Furthermore, Burnet was a meddler and a gossip, and a man of ‘intense excitability’, who was not good on confidentiality.²³⁸ Edward Stillingfleet*, bishop of Worcester, wrote on 10 Jan. 1696 that ‘it is no easy matter I perceive, to deal with a person of the Bishop of Salisbury’s temper; for the same heat which runs him into mistakes makes him impatient when he is told of them.’²³⁹ Added to this was a disarming (or irritating) frankness with his fellow men, and while gruff sailors like Torrington and Orford were able to treat his moral strictures lightly, others could not.²⁴⁰ Thus, despite his value to William III as a polemicist and ‘a man very close to the heart of Williamite counsels’, William was heard to complain ‘of Burnet’s breaking in upon him whether he would or no, and asking such questions as he did not know how to answer, without trusting him more than he was willing to do; having a very bad opinion of his retentive faculty’.²⁴¹ Indeed, Halifax noted in April 1689 that he had ‘never heard the king say a kind word of him’, and Halifax himself was noted by William Legge*, earl of Dartmouth, to speak of him ‘with the utmost contempt, as a facetious, turbulent, busy man, that was most officiously meddling with what he had nothing to do, and very dangerous to put any confidence in, having met with many scandalous breaches of trust while he had any conversation with him’.²⁴²

Carleton’s father was a member of a Cumbrian gentry family whose relocation to Ireland in the early seventeenth century founded the Anglo-Irish branch of the Carleton family.⁸ Guy may have been related to George Carleton^† (1558–1628), bishop of Chichester, but no such connection is mentioned in the extensive genealogy supplied by Collins Peerage for his relative and namesake Guy Carleton^†, Baron Dorchester. Three of Carleton’s brothers died on active service in the Civil Wars.⁹ He himself also joined the royalist army, as a chaplain. After the Civil Wars, under the patronage of the Gravets of Hartley Court in Berkshire, he appears to have satisfied the assembly of divines in 1648 for a Berkshire living, but was ejected by the triers sometime before 1656.¹⁰ He is said to have become a royalist conspirator, to have been taken prisoner and to have been condemned to death before escaping to join the court in exile.¹¹ The ecclesiastical planning lists drawn up before the Restoration by Edward Hyde*, later earl of Clarendon, included him as one of the ‘Worthy men to be preferred to dignities in the Church’.¹²

For Carleton the Restoration signalled only the temporary defeat of his political enemies; he remained on battle alert for the rest of his life. His ability to ascribe political and religious motives to any opposition (personal or political) led to a series of bellicose outpourings addressed to his archbishops and the secretaries of state. These letters are marked by persistent themes of plotting, treachery and sedition. On 19 Dec. 1663 he wrote to Sir William Blakiston^‡ (later Member for Durham) with information on the ‘late intended massacre of the king’ that was evident in the ‘peremptory carriage and proud language’ of the opposition.¹³ When disappointed with the response to his intelligence, Carleton accused Blakiston of insufficient zeal against a suspected member of the Derwentdale plot.¹⁴ In October 1664 he provided Secretary Henry Bennet*, later earl of Arlington, with an account of the Durham assizes and recommendations to the bench.¹⁵ His interference continued throughout the 1660s. He accused John Cosin*, bishop of Durham, of seizing the estate of the attainted Sir Henry Vane^‡, of packing juries with his ‘creatures’ and of doing too little to combat ‘fanatics’ throughout the north.¹⁶ Carleton may have had a personal interest in the fate of the Vane estate: his daughter Hester later married Vane’s nephew.¹⁷ By November 1665 he had elaborated his complaint into a lengthy accusation of Cosin’s ‘usurpation of his majesty’s rights’ in the exercise of his episcopal and palatine authority.¹⁸ Carleton and Cosin were also at odds over the strength of nonconformity: in December 1668 Cosin’s enquiries numbered one conventicle at 500; Carleton reported the same congregation as 3,000 strong, including the wife of the mayor of Newcastle.¹⁹

Carleton’s appetite for a fight never abated, whether over material affairs or his perception of political loyalty. By November 1671 he was in dispute with the dean and chapter of Durham for rejecting a royal nominee (Robert Collingwood), and he threatened to make considerable political capital at court over the Durham chapter’s ‘dishonourable and dishonest treatment’.²⁰ On 10 Nov. 1671 he left Durham for London, claiming that the king had sent for him. Locally it was suspected that Carleton believed Cosin was dying and was hurrying to London to secure the imminent vacancy.²¹ In reality the death of Gilbert Ironside*, of Bristol, meant that he was about to be appointed to that see. Despite his elevation, the dispute over Collingwood rumbled on. By the time that Carleton had been consecrated bishop of Bristol, William Sancroft*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, was fully aware that Carleton had behaved badly at Durham and that the archdeacon of Northumberland (Isaac Basire) was ‘scandalised at his [Carleton’s] passion and unhandsome expressions of it’.²²

Carleton could not have been elevated to a more polarized bishopric. Bristol cathedral was already in dispute with the corporation over ‘encroachments’ on its jurisdiction, a quarrel exacerbated by the corporation’s ownership of the advowsons of many city livings (consequently conferring power over their incumbents). Further, the common council acted ex officio as justices for the city.²³ Carleton ‘began briskly’ against Dissenters, but his ability to achieve his aims was hampered by his willingness to become involved, alongside Henry Somerset*, 3rd marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort), in factional rivalries within the corporation.²⁴

On 21 Feb. 1673 Carleton took his seat in the House, 17 days after the start of the session. His parliamentary career, unlike his political activity outside the House, is difficult to evaluate because of the paucity of sources recording his behaviour in divisions, debates and committees. Of 12 parliamentary sessions held during his episcopate he attended 10, missing only the very short sessions of March 1679 and March 1681. In his first parliamentary session he attended nearly two-thirds of all sittings and was named to six select committees, including one in which he had a clear personal interest, the committee on the bill involving the dean and chapter of Bristol and George Berkeley*, 9th Baron Berkeley. After attending the adjournment of 29 Mar. he embarked on his primary visitation.²⁵ He was back at the House on 20 Oct. when Parliament was prorogued and again on 27 Oct. for the following, brief session; attending every sitting, he was named only to the sessional committee for petitions.

On 7 Jan. 1674, Carleton attended for the start of the next session and thereafter was present at 60 per cent of sittings. He was named to two select committees and to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions, sitting until the penultimate day of the session in February 1674. He then returned to Bristol, whence he complained to Secretary Williamson^‡ that he needed a commendam because his episcopal revenue was ‘scandalous’.²⁶

Carleton’s ‘very cold reception’ on his arrival in Bristol in December 1674 was in marked contrast to the welcome afforded the mayor, who was greeted by more than 70 horse.²⁷ This unpopularity stemmed from his campaign against Dissenters. Appointing attorney John Hellier to his personal staff, he recruited informers, attended raids on meeting houses in person (on one occasion baiting a nonconformist minister ‘with virulent language’), intervened in the legal process to prevent bail and sat with the magistrates on the bench, hectoring counsel, abusing Dissenters’ legal representatives and threatening the magistrates.²⁸ In February 1675, he led a raid on a meeting of Independents.²⁹ The following month, reports reached London that he had been ‘very vigorous in his proceedings against the conventiclers’. Tensions worsened after the Independent leader John Thompson died in custody. Carleton authorized a published ‘narrative’ to counter ‘false reports’ that he had insisted on Thompson’s incarceration in ‘filthy’ conditions, asserting instead that Thompson had died of overeating.³⁰ With 1,500 Bristol citizens under indictment, Carleton worried the king and provoked fierce political opposition from the mayor, Sir Robert Cann^‡.³¹ James Stuart*, duke of York, persuaded the king to pardon Bristol Dissenters, while Secretary Henry Coventry^‡ advised Carleton to adopt a more lenient approach to those who were ‘modest and quiet’ in order to justify severity to the ‘insolent’.

Over the winter of 1674–5 Carleton was probably involved in the pre-sessional meetings of bishops and privy counsellors ordered by the king to develop proposals for ‘some things that might unite and best pacify the minds of people’.³² He attended the House on 13 Apr. 1675 for the first day of the new session and was present for three-quarters of all sittings. He was again named to two select committees and to the sessional committees for petitions and privileges.

Returning to Bristol, Carleton remained in belligerent mood; in August 1675 he wrote to Sir John Nicholas^‡ about his latest differences with the town clerk and aldermen: he would accept mediation only if ‘they act nothing against the king and the Church’.³³ In September an inaccurate report of the death of William Lucy*, bishop of St Davids, led to a rumour that Carleton would be translated there in order to enable John Tillotson*, later archbishop of Canterbury, to replace him in Bristol, the latter’s temperament being thought to be more suited to the volatile political and religious climate there ‘than the hot spirit of the present bishop’.³⁴ Tillotson was reluctant to accept elevation to so poor a diocese and in any case Lucy survived for another two years. Carleton was thus still ensconced in Bristol at the time of the contested Dorset by-election of October 1675. He intervened in support of the court candidate, John Digby*, later 3rd earl of Bristol, against the Presbyterian Thomas Moore^‡, who was backed by Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury. Carleton circulated the clergy with propaganda against Moore, claiming that the latter had ‘dissenting principles … as wide as the other’s loyalty’. As Moore’s success would threaten the interests of king and Church, it was Carleton’s duty to instruct the clergy not only to vote for Digby but also to ‘engage what freeholders you can to vote with you’ out of ‘duty and interest’. Digby secured a landslide victory, though it is likely that this should be attributed more to his family’s local prominence than to Carleton’s intervention.³⁵

Carleton returned to the House for the second day of the brief autumn 1675 parliamentary session. He attended 80 per cent of sittings but was not nominated to any select committees. By November 1676 he was complaining at length to Heneage Finch*, later earl of Nottingham, of Bristol’s negative example to the west country as a whole: the city was ‘the standard by which the fanatic party all take their measures so that if faction prosper here the dependent parts influenced by it clap their wings and crow victory’. Decrying the lack of action by his predecessor, Ironside, he claimed that regional Dissent had developed into a hydra ‘that (Goliath-like) … durst defy … both king and Church’s authority’. Although he had been advised ‘to sit still and … enjoy my quiet as he before me had done’ and although he had ‘one foot in the grave and the other upon the brink’, he could not ignore his duty. Bristol, he claimed, was ‘in a good condition’ until he had had to make a visit to Durham. On his return the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that it ‘needs a stronger hand than mine’. Accordingly he sought the support of the Privy Council to instruct the mayor of Bristol to enforce the Five Mile Act and to inform him that his activities would be reported to the king by Carleton himself: ‘A paper bullet … will do execution enough without further sort of powder’.³⁶ Later in November he was regaling Gilbert Sheldon*, archbishop of Canterbury, with details of John Jekyll (1611–90), a London religious radical who, Carleton claimed, advised the politically disaffected in the city.³⁷

Carleton was back at the House on 15 Feb. 1677 for the start of the new session and attended nearly half of all sittings. In what appears to have been his most active parliamentary session, he was named to 21 select committees (17 on private bills) and to 2 sessional committees. During the long adjournment of the House between May 1677 and January 1678he continued to be engaged in disputes in his diocese. In September 1677 Samuel Crossman, a Bristol prebendary (later dean), described the way in which Carleton had inflamed local relationships. He had created a difficult (and probably unjustified) jurisdictional dispute with the city by forbidding a layman living within the precinct of the cathedral to pay his rates and had then made matters worse by reflecting publicly on the long-standing Bristol custom of praying for the magistrates, mere artisans such as ‘coopers and heelmakers before the most dignified persons in the Church’.³⁸ On 5 Nov. 1677 he was snubbed by Bristol grandees who absented themselves from the customary cathedral worship and attended a chapel outside the town. Even Peter Mews*, bishop of Bath and Wells, who clearly believed that Carleton was technically correct, had to acknowledge that the latter had behaved provocatively: ‘upon the whole matter I could wish my brother had not touched so hard upon that string in a place of so unmusical a temper’.³⁹

The dispute with the corporation continued to fester. By March 1678 Sir John Knight^‡ (by Carleton’s account ‘the great patron of fanatic preachers’ and responsible for the existence of ‘this monstrous many-headed schism’) had composed a litany of the ‘arbitrary and illegal acts’ committed by the bishop. According to Carleton, Knight was ridiculed when he attempted to present his grievances to the Commons shortly after the commencement of the 1678 session, so he was forced to resort instead to a complaint to Sancroft and the threat of a legal action. Carleton remained belligerent, writing contemptuously of his opponents as ‘a peddling pack of as unworthy mechanics as any part of this nation affords’. He did seek Sancroft’s assistance in resolving the dispute but wished for a solution on his own terms, imploring Sancroft ‘for God’s sake allow them not their own way’.⁴⁰ By 29 June 1678, Carleton boasted that the mayor and aldermen had capitulated and would attend cathedral worship and that within six months he would have rid Bristol of Dissenters: ‘none of that kind of vermin shall dare to be seen within the smoke of this city’. He was mistaken. In September Crossman reported that ‘we continue still under very ill habits, and our distempers rather shift than heal’.⁴¹

Having unsuccessfully petitioned for a translation to St Davids at the death of Lucy in 1677, Carleton was prompted by rumours of the imminent death of Isaac Barrow*, bishop of St Asaph, to ask for that see instead in September 1678.⁴² The rumours proved to be inaccurate but Sancroft and Henry Compton*, bishop of London, were nevertheless keen to remove Carleton from Bristol.⁴³ The opportune death of Ralph Brideoake*, of Chichester, on 5 Oct. 1678 provided an opening to translate Carleton to a less contentious see.

On 21 Oct. 1678, Carleton, still technically bishop of Bristol, attended the House for the start of the new session. He was present for 45 per cent of sittings and was named to one select committee and to all three standing committees. For two weeks in November he was confined to bed and unable to attend; he nevertheless composed a valedictory account of his political efforts in Bristol, where he had ‘made the seat easy and quiet’ for his successor.⁴⁴ His election to Chichester was confirmed on 13 Dec. 1678. On 27 Dec. Carleton attended the House but, whether by accident or design, seems to have been absent for the vote that day on the committal of Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds).

On 5 Feb. 1679 Carleton was installed in Chichester by proxy. The general election campaigns were already in full swing and it is unclear what if any influence Carleton could have exercised, but in Chichester as in Bristol he proved to be an ardent opponent of nonconformists. Once again, he complained that the local justices were reluctant to implement the penal laws, although he himself created obstacles to conformity by moving the Sunday sermon from the body of the cathedral to the choir, thus severely limiting the space available for the congregation.⁴⁵ Finally, he soon found himself, as in Bristol, involved in a jurisdictional dispute with the city over the status of the cathedral precinct and the liability of its residents to pay rates to the parish (and subdeanery) of St Peter the Great; once more he identified the vestrymen who disagreed with him as ‘a pack of fanatics’.⁴⁶

Carleton did not attend the first Exclusion Parliament until mid-March 1679. He was present at 46 per cent of sittings in the substantive session, beginning 15 Mar., and was named to three select committees and to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions. On 23 Apr. he attended the House for the last time that session, missing the last month of business. Ten days later he entered his proxy in favour of Peter Mews (vacated at the end of the session). At a call of the House on 9 May he was registered as excused attendance.

Following the dissolution of Parliament on 12 July 1679 and the calling of another general election, Carleton again went into battle against nonconformity, defining himself as a member of the ‘honest party that love our king, Church and country’. He hoped to block the re-election of the radical nonconformist John Braman^‡ by means of excommunication, which would (or so Carleton thought) render ‘him incapable of being chosen, and them ashamed that appear for him’. The difficulty with this strategy was that Braman’s residence fell within a metropolitan peculiar under the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. Carleton sought Sancroft’s authority to proceed and by 23 July 1679 it was reported that Braman had been excommunicated on the grounds of non-attendance at church. A correspondent of the exclusionist Thomas Jervoise^‡ wondered, ‘of what validity that will be to exclude him from the Parliament, I know not, but believe it will not be without controversy’. He went on to warn Jervoise that the bishops were hoping to use excommunication generally as a way ‘to free the House of Commons from some opposites to the court’.⁴⁷ Sir Ralph Verney^‡ similarly believed that Braman’s excommunication would be followed by others, but he was convinced that the Commons would not permit so obvious a political ploy to be successful, ‘for then the bishops (by that trick) may keep out twenty or thirty such men’.⁴⁸ Presumably Verney was right – or the reports of actual excommunication were inaccurate – for Braman became an active Member of the second Exclusion Parliament.

Carleton also supplied Secretary Coventry with information regarding the issuing of electoral writs in Chichester, over which, he claimed, the high sheriff and ‘that grand villain’ Braman had acted illegally. He continued to disseminate propaganda against exclusionists, claiming that their adherents were now boasting that ‘they have now such choice of members for this approaching Parliament that will not be sent back again by the king as the last have been but such as will do their work’.⁴⁹ When Braman was elected, Carleton sent Coventry details of electoral interference by Ford Grey*, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke (later earl of Tankerville), and by ‘the fanatic party’.⁵⁰ Not content with intervening in parliamentary elections, he also monitored elections to convocation to ensure the appointment of politically loyal clergy.⁵¹

In February 1680 Carleton sent Sancroft details of the reception of James Scott*, duke of Monmouth reception in Chichester. Monmouth wore a scarlet suit and cloak, ‘which the great men petitioning for Parliament called the red flag’ (i.e. a symbol of defiance), and was attended by ‘a rabble of brutes’ some 50 or 60 strong. Carleton, who refused to wait on the duke, reported that his failure to ‘bow my knee to the people’s idol’ resulted in an attack on his house by a mob insisting that ‘the bishop was an old Popish rogue’. Whilst he was pleased that the gentlemen of the city also refused to wait on Monmouth, he was dismayed that the duke was welcomed by ‘the great men of our cathedral’ and by James Butler^‡, the Member for Arundel.⁵² Despite this setback, by the following month Carleton professed himself delighted in the attack on Dissenters’ morale, ‘since his majesty began to act like himself, like a king, and to let the people know they are but subjects’.⁵³

In the meantime Carleton had begun yet another local dispute, this time with his diocesan chancellor, Thomas Briggs. On or about 9 Jan. 1680 Briggs complained that Carleton had accused him in open court of taking bribes and of being a ‘knave, rascal and brazen-faced fellow’, before declaring him to be contumacious. Even Carleton had to acknowledge his own intemperate behaviour, his ‘natural and great frailty in … being apt on the sudden to be passionately angry and in that heat to speak unadvisedly’, but he did not withdraw his allegations. In July, after a failed attempt at mediation, Briggs took his case to the court of arches. Carleton pleaded privilege so the case was not heard, but he was nevertheless issued with an inhibition. This made him so angry that he attempted to manhandle Briggs, not only knocking off Briggs’s hat and wig but throwing the hat into the watching crowd. While Carleton originally claimed that he had started to investigate Briggs because of complaints from nonconformists of malpractice, the trajectory of the dispute soon led him to identify Briggs as an ally of Carleton’s dissenting enemies.⁵⁴ Convinced that a victory for Briggs was also a victory for the ‘ill affected party’, he insisted that

If I be butchered by Dr Briggs and his Presbyterian petitioners as the archbishop of St Andrews was by their Scottish brethren of the same leaven I will never depart from my episcopal authority in mine own court, nor suffer Dr Briggs to sit again in the court at Chichester so long as there is breath in my body.⁵⁵

Carleton’s inability to control his temper had, according to Briggs, handed a weapon to his opponents, who were determined to bait him in order to ‘to put him into a passion … he has laid himself very low in the esteem of the country already and the more he shows himself the worse it will be’.⁵⁶ In August 1680 Carleton agreed to abandon his privilege on condition that Sancroft postpone hearings in the case, ‘a great part of my counsel and papers being out of town’. Although the tone of this letter was more careful and considered than his earlier communications, he could not conceal his continuing intransigence for, if he were to lose the case, ‘farewell episcopacy’.⁵⁷

Carleton attended the House on 21 Oct. 1680 for the first day of the second Exclusion Parliament. He was present for just over one-fifth of all sittings and was named to the standing committees but not to any select committees. On 28 Oct. the business before the Lords included the preliminary stage of his jurisdictional dispute with the Chichester parish of St Peter the Great. On 9 Nov. he waived privilege and the case was referred to the next Sussex assizes. Carleton was in the House on 10 Nov. but did not attend for the remainder of the session. On 15 Nov. 1680 he again registered his proxy in favour of Peter Mews.

Following a coaching accident, Carleton was excused attendance at the Oxford Parliament.⁵⁸ In April 1681, anticipating another general election, he again began to consider tactics. He planned to summon Braman before a consistory court ‘to declare his religion, and upon suspicion of living incontinently with a woman whom he calls his wife’, in order once again to excommunicate Braman on the assumption that this would disqualify him from standing for Parliament. Once more, however, jurisdictional problems meant that he needed Sancroft’s assistance – all the more because Sancroft’s surrogate in the peculiar in question was Thomas Briggs, with whom Carleton was still in dispute.

Intransigent as ever, on 14 Nov. 1681 Carleton complained that his rightful authority as bishop had been constantly disturbed ‘by impudent barefaced opposers of monarchy and our church government’.⁵⁹ Further problems surfaced in December when James Butler accused him of laying waste to woodland in Amberley, where Butler was the bishop’s much-despised tenant (as well as a political opponent). Carleton as usual took refuge in an appeal to his rights as bishop, his need to support the dignity of his station and a fresh attack on Dissenters who, he claimed, ‘carry themselves with such insolence and speak so boldly as if they were just drawing their swords and every day expected the hoped-for command to stand to their arms’. The dispute was almost certainly part of a larger quarrel over the renewal of Butler’s lease. This too led to legal action and a declaration by Carleton that Butler ‘shall never swallow this bishopric so long as it hath sixpence of its revenue left to defend itself from such sacrilegious cormorants’. By 1683, with legal costs in the dispute running at £400, Carleton needed royal assistance with the confirmation of leases to outwit his political enemies.⁶⁰

Throughout the ‘Tory reaction’, Carleton continued to attack nonconformity and vent his political prejudices. Defending one ‘true son’ of the Church suspended by some ‘notorious’ men ‘that make a mock of religion … and all of them men of associating principles and practice’, he now condemned the diplomat (and future Jacobite) Sir Richard Bulstrode (‘solicitor-general for the dissenting brotherhood’), whose proximity to the king allegedly provided Dissenters with ‘an exact account of court affairs’.⁶¹ As in Bristol his efforts to combat opposition were ineffective. On 5 Sept. 1682 he was contacted by Sir William Williams^‡ about the ‘spirit of anarchy and sedition’ on display in Chichester during the mayoral election.⁶² His dispute with St Peter the Great over the payment of rates was still ongoing, made all the worse by the ‘malicious hypocritical Presbyterian’ vicar of the parish and by the vicar’s ability to call on the support of the sometime churchwarden, Richard Farrington^‡.⁶³

In his own mind, Carleton was beset by enemies on all sides. Early in 1683 he wrote to the duke of York, alerting him to the ‘true state’ of affairs in Chichester under the recorder, Sir Richard May^‡.⁶⁴ Although May was an anti-exclusionist and had been knighted on presenting a loyal address from Chichester in 1681, he had allied himself with Braman against the cathedral interest at the first general election in 1679, thus earning himself the bishop’s lasting enmity. In March 1683 Carleton forwarded a letter to Sancroft from Heneage Finch*, 3rd earl of Winchilsea, on a scheme to promote uniformity of worship and secure the ‘vigorous suppression of … poisonous pesthouses of faction and schism’.⁶⁵ Complaining in July of the mayor’s prevarication on searches of ‘disaffected’ houses, he supplied the government with details of a ship allegedly used in the escape of Grey of Warke after the Rye House Plot, and complained of the ‘inconsideration’ of sheriff Edward Selwyn^‡ in absenting himself from the county, where, if present, he might have prevented the escape of Monmouth, Grey and other Rye House plotters.⁶⁶

In September 1683 Carleton failed to obtain the office of lord almoner for himself but he was more successful in securing the future of his nephew and secretary (and long-time collaborator), Samuel Carleton, who from about 1681 to at least 1683 had taken on ‘the chargeable as well as most troublesome office of chief constable of the city without whom the most seditious and tumultuous meetings of factious conventicles could not here be suppressed’. Carleton wanted to give his nephew the reversion of the place of registrar for Chichester and Lewes but his relationship with the dean, George Stradling (who ‘hath always favoured the factious party’), and chapter was too contentious to obtain the necessary agreement and he had to appeal to the crown to secure the appointment.⁶⁷

The surrender of Chichester’s charter in August 1684 provided Carleton with an opportunity to settle his long-running dispute with the town over the cathedral’s privileges and to secure the cathedral’s exemption from temporal jurisdiction. Negotiations over the details of the new charter (especially those affecting the ability of the bishop and chapter to vote in city elections) continued for several months and in September, at Carleton’s prompting, the crown ordered the mayoral election to be postponed.⁶⁸ The existing dispute between the city and the bishop was now to be arbitrated by Sancroft and the attorney-general.⁶⁹

Now almost 80 years of age, and coping with the death of another daughter, on 28 Mar. 1685 Carleton excused himself from attending the coronation of James II, claiming to have exhausted himself ‘making interest for Parliament men’ during the recent general election. Nevertheless, two days later he assured Sancroft that he would be in London before the new session opened. Whether through his own efforts or not, the elections in both city and county went well for the court. Sir Richard May was again returned for the city, along with the anti-exclusionist George Gounter^‡. The county returned the court supporter Sir Henry Goring^‡ and the Tory Anglican Sir Thomas Dyke^‡. This result, according to Carleton, was attributable solely to his interest with the clergy ‘and theirs upon my account with the freeholders of their parish’. He told Sancroft that both Goring and Dyke ‘were very sensible that my interest did their work for them, and withall that it was now visible that the bishop and his interest was able to turn the scale and make whom they pleased members in Parliament at such elections in this county’.⁷⁰ Carleton attended the House on 19 May 1685 for the start of the first session of the new Parliament. Despite his recent excuses of frailty and overwork, he was present for 67 per cent of sittings and was named to four select committees and to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions. His final attendance was on 2 July 1685. He died four days later, reputedly having choked on a kidney bean.⁷¹

Carleton’s political legacy was questionable. Unsurprisingly, Samuel Carleton eulogized his uncle as ‘a pious prelate [of] eminent and constant loyalty to the crown, his expensive reformation of those unsupportable abuses this Church groaned under, and his great charity to the poor and needy will remain as everlasting monuments to his immortal honour’.⁷² Others questioned his conduct and his inability to distinguish between personal and political enemies. An account of the life and works of his supposedly factious dean, George Stradling, insisted that Stradling had been defended from Carleton’s attacks by a ‘great minister of state’ and that Charles II had been ‘satisfied that he was both able and willing to promote the king’s service, with as much zeal as his accuser, and with much more sincerity, discretion and success’.⁷³ Even Carleton’s success in rooting out conventiclers was questionable: his successor, John Lake*, found Chichester still ‘singularly … fanatic’.⁷⁴

Thomas Cartwright, staunch political ally of James II, was shunned both in life and after his death by those who assumed that he was part of a conspiracy to reunite the churches of England and Rome. The son of Presbyterian parents and grandson of the famous Elizabethan puritan Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603), Cartwright’s religious background is more easily defined than his social status. By the time of his death he was using the arms of the Nottinghamshire Cartwrights of Ossington, a family that included a former servant of Archbishop William Laud^†.⁴ Yet, apart from the use of similar forenames, there is little evidence of a direct family connection and Cartwright’s immediate family is difficult to trace. His diary speaks of extended family networks and social contacts both in his native Northamptonshire and in Essex.⁵ These latter connections were almost certainly a legacy of his father’s position in Brentwood, his own time as a parish priest in Essex and his second marriage to an Essex woman. In the course of his lifetime, he acquired position, wealth and estates, bequeathing to his large family nine separate properties scattered through Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Essex and money in excess of £3,000.

Cartwright’s active political career has been subsumed into the historiography of the 1688 revolution. As he was deeply unpopular with his contemporaries, it became the received wisdom that he actively undermined the Church of England and was a dynamic force in promoting the catholicizing policies of James II. According to Anthony Wood, as a student at Oxford he identified himself closely with the parliamentary cause.⁶ Yet he sought episcopal ordination and by 1660 it is clear that he was well regarded at court. Ambitious and litigious (he was involved in at least 13 cases in the arches while vicar of Barking), Cartwright advanced rapidly within the Church.⁷

By the early 1670s it was evident that Cartwright’s career ambitions lay in the north of England. His will shows that he had acquired farmlands and stables in the diocese of Durham as well as a share in the Durham collieries on lease from the dean and chapter. In 1673 the king promised him first refusal on the deanery of Ripon and the rectories of Stanhope, Sedgfield and Haughton (all in the bishopric of Durham).⁸ On 1 Jan. 1675, when Cartwright reminded Secretary Joseph Williamson^‡ of the king’s promise and of the assurances of Henry Bennet*, earl of Arlington, that he would expedite the matter, he also laid claim to the living of Northallerton so that he could consolidate ‘all … concerns into the north’.⁹ By the spring of that year, Cartwright had been promised the first of ‘five of the best livings’ in the gift of the bishop of Durham.¹⁰

Cartwright’s diary shows that he was well integrated in the northern political and social elite.¹¹ One of his influential contacts was Sir Edmund Jennings^‡, to whom he dedicated his sermon at the July 1676 York assizes on strong kingship.¹² Jennings strongly opposed the interest of Richard Sterne*, archbishop of York, in the liberty of Ripon and it seems highly likely that, as dean, Cartwright was involved in the quo warranto against the archbishop.¹³ By Christmas 1679, Cartwright, deeply involved in Ripon politics, grumbled to Thomas Belasyse*, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg, that Sterne’s changes to the commission of the peace (which included at least one former nonconformist) were ‘prejudicial both to the king and church’. As a royal chaplain, he claimed, it would be a ‘venial sin’ to stay silent on the matter.¹⁴

With the dissolution of Parliament in 1681, Cartwright orchestrated an address of thanks from the corporation of Ripon.¹⁵ A staunch, even extreme, Tory Anglican, his advocacy of supreme royal power strengthened his existing relationship with James Stuart*, duke of York. Having attended the duke throughout the exclusion crisis in Scotland, he continued to promote the catholicity of the Church of England. At the death of Archbishop Sterne in 1683, Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby, still imprisoned in the Tower, took time out from his own concerns to recommend Cartwright to the vacancy ‘being well assured that he would both be very acceptable to the loyal party in that county, and that he would be highly serviceable to the king’s interest there’.¹⁶ When he failed to get York, Cartwright’s attentions turned to the recently vacant see of Rochester, and when that too failed he made ‘great importunities’ instead for St Davids. With St Davids passing instead to the royalist propagandist Lawrence Womock*, a disgruntled Cartwright excused his ‘vanity in expecting the bishopric’ on the grounds that he had been given firm expectations by the king.¹⁷

Even at the height of the Tory reaction, senior clergymen considered Cartwright’s brand of royal absolutism to be extreme; on learning that Cartwright would not after all get St Davids, the future non-juror, William Lloyd*, of Norwich, wrote to William Sancroft*, archbishop of Canterbury, expressing his joy at the news. John Dolben*, the newly appointed archbishop of York, was similarly suspicious of Cartwright. In August 1685 he wrote to warn Sancroft that Cartwright now had his eyes on Chester, where the incumbent bishop, John Pearson*, was becoming increasingly frail. Cartwright was already boasting of his success. ‘Surely,’ wrote Dolben, ‘(if he must be a bishop) it were better to place him where he may do less harm.’¹⁸

Cartwright was exceptionally well placed to benefit from the accession of James II. Not only were his beliefs about royal power in tune with those of the new monarch, but he was able to regard James’s close friend Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough, as his patron.¹⁹ Pearson of Chester died in July 1686; a month later it was widely known that the king had appointed Cartwright to succeed him. Holding in commendam his rectories of Barking and Wigan (the latter carrying with it the politically important lordship of the manor), Cartwright was consecrated in October 1686.²⁰ Burnet later reported that Sancroft had conducted the consecration through fear that he might otherwise be threatened with a praemunire. That Sancroft stumbled and fell during the ceremony was taken as a mark of the extent to which he was distracted by his opposition to the appointment.²¹

In January 1687 Cartwright mediated between Colonel Roger Whitley^‡ and the Chester gentry (‘whom the late heats had divided’). Whitley, a country opposition supporter, had been excluded from office under the new Chester charter of 1684 but was now taken under the bishop’s wing as a ‘penitent’ and recommended by Cartwright as a deputy lieutenant of Cheshire.²² At the time of the first Declaration of Indulgence Cartwright returned to London to canvass support for the king.²³ On 20 Apr. 1687 he was one of the bishops summoned by George Jeffreys*, Baron Jeffeys, and told that the king expected formal thanks for his promise to protect the Church of England.²⁴ Cartwright duly composed the address and attempted, with varying degrees of success, to rally support for it.²⁵

On 28 Apr. 1687 Cartwright took his seat for the first and only time in the House. On 1 May he attended St James Chapel with the papal vicar-apostolic John Leyburn when the papal nuncio, Monsignor Dada, was consecrated archbishop of Amasea. Although even Anthony Wood claimed that Cartwright went only ‘out of curiosity’, his presence at the ceremony was taken as tacit approval for the king’s religious policies and in June, when he tried to move an address at a Yorkshire feast, he was roundly snubbed when Danby’s son, Edward Osborne^‡, styled Lord Latimer, insisted that the purpose of the feast was not to make addresses but to eat and drink.²⁶ Cartwright’s enthusiastic welcome when the king visited Chester in August did nothing to allay such fears.²⁷ He offered assistance for the establishment of a Catholic chapel in Chester, and allowed the Quaker (and friend of the king) William Penn to preach.²⁸ He was even seen in public with the king’s Catholic adviser, Father Petre.²⁹

In October 1687, Cartwright acquired further notoriety when he was appointed as a special commissioner to impose on Oxford University the king’s preferred candidates. His speech there generated ‘a general noise and humming’ that the judges construed to amount to riot.³⁰ So unpopular had Cartwright become that on 10 Dec. 1687, in a calculated insult that defied the accepted hierarchical rules of etiquette, Sir Thomas Meres^‡ blocked Cartwright’s path, commenting that he had already followed the bishop ‘too long’ and would ‘now go before’ him.³¹ In early December, to the dismay (and fear) of the London clergy, it was rumoured that Cartwright was poised to take over the bishopric of London in place of the suspended Henry Compton*.³² He appears to have scuppered his chances after a drunken outburst when he insulted both Jeffreys and Robert Spencer*, 2nd earl of Sunderland as ‘not being true to their trust’ and accused them of passing secret information to the Dutch. He was subsequently forced to beg forgiveness on his knees.³³

Unsurprisingly, parliamentary observers listed Cartwright as an unequivocal supporter of the king’s religious policies and the repeal of the Test Act. In March 1688 he was presumably complicit in the decision to revoke the charter of Wigan in order to replace the corporation with Catholics who would endorse the repeal of the penal laws.³⁴ In May, after the publication of the second Declaration of Indulgence, Cartwright ordered his clergy to read it, threatening suspension for disobedience. Even so it was read in only one church in Chester and the bishop was unable to convince the clergy of his diocese to support the revocation of the Test.³⁵ On 12 May he dined at Lambeth Palace with Henry Hyde*, 2nd earl of Clarendon, several fellow bishops and senior clergy. So distrusted was he that it was only after he left that those present began to plan the strategy that would lead to the trial of the Seven Bishops.³⁶ After their acquittal, he continued to be identified with royal policy. In July it was even rumoured that he might be promoted to the vacant archbishopric of York. In August he recommended that the recorder of Chester, Richard Levinge^‡, stand as court candidate, and he must surely have had some knowledge of and involvement in the Privy Council’s decision to order the removal of almost all the corporation, and then, when the corporation refused to co-operate, to issue a new charter.³⁷

In December 1688, in the aftermath of the Dutch invasion, Cartwright fled the country.³⁸ The following March he accompanied James II to Ireland, where he died a month later, probably from dysentery. Suspicions that he was a closet Catholic at heart were dispelled by his refusal to undergo a deathbed conversion.³⁹ He was buried in Christ Church, Dublin.

In search of a career

Henry Compton, born into the English aristocracy, was urbane, cosmopolitan, royalist and fiercely anti-Catholic. He slid from the military into the Church in the 1660s and, with equal ease, took up arms in support of the Revolution of 1688. As one of the ‘immortal seven’ who signed the invasion petition to William of Orange, Compton became the heroic defender of the Protestant cause in both post-revolutionary propaganda and Whig historiography. His earliest biography appeared in the year of his death followed by a panegyric in 1715. Both set the tone for subsequent evaluations of his character and career.¹²

Compton’s father and older brothers fought for the royalist cause during the Civil Wars and he himself had travelled in Europe, and may have fought in Flanders, during the Interregnum. He returned to England at the Restoration. He was sent to Tangiers on military service in 1662, but by 1664 he was in France, considering the possibility of journeying on to Rome. He left France in 1666 to return to Oxford and an academic career under John Fell*, the future bishop of Oxford.¹³ He was made master of St Cross Hospital in Winchester through the patronage of George Morley*, bishop of Winchester, and the encouragement of his brother-in-law, Sir John Nicholas^‡, who condemned the failure of the bishops who ‘do not enough consult the interest and concern of the Church in not encouraging the nobility and gentry to be of their profession’.¹⁴ A Christ Church canonry followed, but Compton had little interest in acquiring parochial experience, his livings functioning more as a form of income than employment. Simply and tellingly described as ‘expensive’, Compton was unable to subsist on a clerical income. By the early 1670s, he was in debt to the undersecretary of state, Joseph Williamson^‡, and repeatedly failed to honour promises to repay him. There are indications that Williamson was not his only creditor.¹⁵ Compton had no great reputation either as a preacher or as a scholar, but he clearly had a good command of French and Italian and used his language skills to contribute to anti-Catholic propaganda. In 1666 he published a translation of Gregorio Leti’s Life of Donna Olimpia Maldachini, the notorious adviser to Pope Innocent X, and in 1669 he published a translation of the anti-Catholic diatribe, The Jesuits Intrigues. He remained virulently anti-Catholic and sympathetic to Huguenot, Bohemian, Vaudois and other European strands of protestantism for the rest of his life.¹⁶

Even before he entered the episcopate Compton used his clerical and aristocratic standing to make strategic recommendations to the higher clergy. In 1670 Compton and Nicholas helped to place Herbert Astley in the deanery of Norwich, where he could counter any lingering Presbyterian sympathies fostered by Edward Reynolds*, the bishop there. Compton recommended Astley to Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon*, but Sheldon was out of favour and readily admitted his difficulty in being heard at court; Nicholas then advised Astley to approach Compton’s brother, Northampton, for a recommendation to Henry Bennet*, then Baron, later earl of, Arlington.¹⁷

Allied to Danby 1674-9

By March 1674 Compton, still in his early 40s, was tipped for elevation to the see of Oxford, probably through the influence of Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds). Gilbert Burnet*, the future bishop of Salisbury would later describe him ‘as a property to Lord Danby … [who] was turned by him as he pleased’.¹⁸ Compton was elected prematurely by the Oxford chapter in a bureaucratic bungle and then again, correctly, on 10 Nov. 1674.¹⁹ His consecration sermon was preached by his chaplain, William Jane, a royalist Anglican who perceived both Catholics and Nonconformists as enemies of the Church. Jane would become increasingly important when Compton promoted the highfliers later in his career.²⁰ Sheldon made ample use of his new bishop who was later described by Roger Morrice as the archbishop’s ‘tool and monkey to pull the chestnut out of the fire when he himself thought not fit to do it’.²¹ In November 1674 Williamson issued a warrant allowing Compton to keep several of his offices in commendam.²² He had incurred substantial expenses in the process of elevation and the income of the bishopric, less than £350 a year, was clearly insufficient to meet his needs.

On 13 Apr. 1675, the first day of a new session, Compton took his seat in the Lords, joining his brother, the earl of Northampton. Compton’s parliamentary career spanned 39 years. Of the 36 parliamentary sessions held during his episcopate, he attended every session, was in his seat on the first day for all but one session and took a wide-ranging role in the business of the House, contributing to debates, managing numerous conferences and being named to both select and sessional committees. The frequency with which he reported back to the House from select committees suggests that he not only served on committees but also chaired them. For 17 sessions he attended for more than three-quarters of all sittings and, as a member of the sessional committee, also examined the Journal.

In his first parliamentary session Compton attended 67 per cent of all sittings and was named to 15 select committees including the committee to uncover the publisher of A Letter from a Person of Quality. In the spring of 1675 he attended throughout the abortive attempt by Danby to secure a bill against the politically ‘disaffected’ and impose a ‘no alteration’ test. In July 1675 he was appointed as dean of the chapel royal, a post that placed him in charge of the religious education of Princesses Mary and Anne. The choice was resented deeply by their father, James Stuart*, duke of York.²³

During the brief autumn session of 1675, Compton attended 95 per cent of all sittings and was named only to the sessional committees. On 18 Oct. 1675 he received the proxy of Nathaniel Crew*, bishop of Durham (another aristocratic bishop, whom he had succeeded at Oxford), which was cancelled 8 November. By that time it was already anticipated that he would be appointed to the newly vacant see of London. He was translated in December.²⁴ His annual diocesan income increased to more than £2,000.²⁵ Unusually, he was allowed to keep one commendam to augment that income; the treasury books also detail ad hoc payments (possibly for ceremonial duties).²⁶ Compton now held a pivotal role in Danby’s ministry. His appointment to the Privy Council in January 1676 was part of a general political realignment for as he joined, George Savile*, Viscount (later earl and marquess) Halifax, and Denzil Holles*, Baron Holles, were removed. Concern about possible limitations on his ability to enforce clerical discipline led him to petition for an extension of his jurisdiction to the anomalous area of the Minories.²⁷ He also instituted regular diocesan conferences where he led focused debates on subjects of interest to the parish clergy which both enabled him to impart his own views and provided an opportunity for the clergy to air their problems to their bishop.²⁸

Compton’s relationship with York was damaged in December 1675 when he sought permission to confirm the Princesses Mary and Anne. York refused but the king commanded that the confirmation go ahead.²⁹ The 1676 ‘Compton Census’, set in motion by Sheldon in January 1676, was part and parcel of Danby’s policy to assure the king that nonconformity was of little account and comprehension unnecessary for Protestant unity.³⁰ Compton supported Danby’s policy of suppressing Dissent. In March 1676 Compton is reported to have said that any person could enjoy liberty of conscience in the privacy of his own home with five other people (a comment on the provisions of the Conventicles Act).³¹ On occasion he felt as though he lacked support in his campaign against recusants and Dissenters: on several days during June 1676 he was said to have shown the council a copy of a book reputed to have been written by Andrew Marvell^‡, probably Mr Smirke or the Divine in Mode, hoping to convince others of its seditious nature, but as Marvell reported, ‘none takes notice’ and, indeed, it was not even minuted in the Privy Council registers.³²

On 21 July 1676 Compton was present at the Privy Council when the bookseller Anthony Lawrence was brought before it for printing a translation of the mass entitled The Great Sacrifice of the New Law, and it was to Compton that the wardens of the Stationer’s company were directed to deliver copies seized for destruction. A similar order for ‘popish books’ to be seized and delivered to Compton for destruction was made on 9 August.³³ This second set of books appears to have been an expanded edition of The Great Sacrifice printed at the order of the Portuguese ambassador, Francesco de Mello, and ostensibly intended for the use of the queen’s household. The ambassador claimed that he had authorized the printing of 100 copies for this purpose but that the licence mistakenly specified 900 copies which were accordingly printed. That same month Compton’s anti-Catholic zeal also led him to offend York by complaining to the king that York’s secretary, Edward Colman, had published a book in defence of papal supremacy. Colman denied the charge. York was said to have been all the more offended as Compton had not first consulted him and ‘the duke [having] formerly told him, if he did, he shou’d take it very ill’. As if this were not enough, Compton also complained to the king about Colman’s intervention to prevent the prosecution of nonconformists in Norfolk. The king advised York to discharge Colman which York ‘did highly resent from the bishop and told him as much, and is now afresh provoked’.³⁴ According to a French diplomatic communiqué, Compton was fomenting trouble out of personal ambition: he was young, ‘and the only one, among all the clergy in England, who is distinguished by his birth: he sees that the archbishop of Canterbury is 80 years old, and he is trying to put in a bid for his position’.³⁵ Compton was already effectively deputizing for the ageing archbishop and he (and others) must have been well aware that like Sheldon the previous four holders of the post had been promoted from London. What he does not seem to have realized was the continuing influence of York and the need to maintain a good relationship with him. In the same letter the French ambassador remarked on Compton’s tactless failure to pay ‘compliments’ to the queen and York.

Compton may have been acting as an intermediary between Danby and Sheldon, as in early January 1677 Compton informed Sheldon that a royal proclamation ‘puts some stress upon a full Parliament at the first meeting, so it is thought very requisite that you give my lords the bishops timely notice of sending their proxies up in good time’.³⁶ Before the new session he received the proxy of Herbert Croft*, bishop of Hereford (vacated at the end of the session), and that of William Lucy*, bishop of St Davids (vacated by the latter’s death). On 15 Feb. 1677, after the long prorogation, Compton took his seat for the first time as the bishop of London. He attended the session for 81 per cent of all sittings and was named to 74 select committees on a wide range of public and private business.

On 4 Nov. 1677, during the adjournment, Compton conducted the wedding of Princess Mary and William of Orange, a cause of further irritation for York. Even before Sheldon’s death on 9 Nov. the archbishop’s ailing condition had prompted much speculation about his successor. Most commentators expected Compton to succeed but as early as 16 Oct. Sir Robert Southwell^‡ indicated that Compton was ‘greatly in want’ of favour and that his friendship with Danby would prove insufficient to secure the post. According to Southwell Compton ‘bends all his energies’ in favour of the candidacy of Richard Sterne*, archbishop of York, ‘not only for having been his quondam tutor, but for being a man very positive and intractable in his way, and even older than my lord of Canterbury that is dying’.³⁷ By 19 Nov. ‘common discourse’ in Cambridge (informed by statements from Compton’s domestic chaplain) correctly identified William Sancroft*, currently serving under Compton as dean of St Paul’s, as Sheldon’s successor. According to Edward Lake (chaplain and tutor to the princesses), Danby deserted Compton and secretly promoted Sancroft’s candidacy instead, probably because Compton’s candidacy was opposed by York. Edward Colman made his master’s opposition clear when he ‘openly and freely said, that the bishop of London must not expect to be the man, because of his forwardness in persecuting the Roman Catholics, particularly the Portugal ambassador and himself’.³⁸

On 15 Jan. 1678 the House resumed. On 29 Jan. Compton joined a group of nine, including York, the new archbishop, Sancroft, and Sterne, to dissent to the decision to release of Philip Herbert*, 7th earl of Pembroke. Compton was acutely aware that Danby’s political power was already on the wane. In February he described Danby as ‘a lost man’. He, nevertheless, did his best to help Danby by wrapping up a warning against the influence of George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, in a sermon that was delivered that same month at court. Compton ‘did so particularly explain the dangers of ill-conversation, or the showing any degree of countenance or delight in those who were under marks and blemishes of evil life, that the meaning was very visible to all’.³⁹

In the House Compton immersed himself in business. He chaired the select committee on the bill to appropriate two rectories for the maintenance of St Asaph cathedral, reporting back to the House on 7 Mar. 1678 and the bill passed uneventfully to the royal assent.⁴⁰ During the remainder of the session, he helped to manage conferences on the address for a war with France and for burying in woollen. He reported from select committees on the Protestant strangers bill in May and the bill to increase the revenue of the deanery of St Paul’s in June. On 6 June Compton received the proxy of William Lloyd*, bishop of Llandaff and later of Peterborough, (vacated with the prorogation on 15 July). During the course of the year he made his own contribution to the hysteria of the popish plot allegations by reprinting his translation of the life of Olimpia Maldichini. As a member of the Privy Council Compton was in the forefront of investigating the plot, which served, at least temporarily, to shore up his and Danby’s position, especially during and after the arrest, trial and execution of his old enemy, Colman. In anticipation of the new parliamentary session in October 1678, Compton had received two proxies, the first from Lloyd of Llandaff (vacated with Lloyd’s attendance on 27 Dec.), the second from Richard Sterne, vacated at the end of the session.⁴¹

Compton resumed his seat on 21 Oct. 1678 and attended 91 per cent of all sittings during that session. He was named to 14 select committees, including that to consider the answers of the five impeached Catholic lords and the objections of the Commons. On 26 Oct. the Lords named Compton and Danby, amongst others, to examine Colman and other prisoners in Newgate.⁴² Two days later Compton was ordered by the House to seize any Catholic publications. On 29 Oct., after Danby had reported on the examination of prisoners, a contentious debate followed the motion (not minuted in the Journal) made by Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, that York’s letters be read. Nearly a fortnight earlier, on 16 Oct., Compton had been present when the council considered a report from the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch*, then Baron Finch, later earl of Nottingham. Finch had examined Colman’s papers and concluded that York was not party to his designs.⁴³ Yet on 29 Oct. Compton seconded Shaftesbury’s motion, in direct opposition to York, an action that was scarcely likely to help repair his relationship with the heir apparent.⁴⁴ 31 Oct. On 31 Oct. Compton was added to the subcommittee investigating the death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. The following day, the House ordered that a trunk of Catholic books seized from a bookseller should be delivered to Compton ‘to be disposed of as his lordship shall direct’. That day he was the only bishop named as one of the conference managers on the preservation of the king’s person and the safety of the Protestant state. On 15 Nov. Compton voted in favour of including a declaration against the fundamental Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation in the Test Act. In early December he, together with Sancroft and the two secretaries of state, were appointed to supervise the messengers who were to keep watch and identify unauthorized participants in the Catholic masses at the chapels of the queen and foreign ambassadors.⁴⁵ He appears to have been an active member of the committee investigating the Popish Plot, for an examination taken before him was presented by the committee to the House on 21 December. On 26 Dec. he reported the results of Sterne’s investigations into an alleged nunnery in Ripley. He voted to insist on the Lords’ amendment relating to the payment of money into the exchequer on 26 Dec. and the following day voted against the committal of Danby. On 28 Dec. he was named to the committee to draw up reasons for a conference with the Commons on supply for disbanding the forces, helping to manage the subsequent conference.

The Exclusion Crisis 1679-80

Compton’s anti-Catholic vendetta, carried on in council as well as in the Lords, helped earn the king’s displeasure. The fall of Danby removed his closest ally at court and his precarious position may not have been helped by a quarrel with Arlington over the right to appoint Lent preachers, though the precise date of this dispute is unknown.⁴⁶ Matters were made still worse when Compton failed to pay his respects to the king. On 14 Jan. 1679, fretting that ‘it is a grievous thing for a loyal person to lie under the displeasure of his prince’, Compton asked Sancroft

to let me know whether you have yet acquainted his majesty, that I did not fail at my first coming to town to present my most humble duty and respects by your grace’s mediation. For if it be not done … I find I shall lie under great reflections if I do not immediately take care to have it done some other way.⁴⁷

In November 1678 Compton had been rumoured to be in ‘close counsels’ with Shaftesbury, but if true, the flirtation did not last long, for on 31 Dec. Compton was said to have ‘forsaken’ Shaftesbury.⁴⁸ In the parliamentary elections that followed the dissolution in January 1679 Compton supported his diocesan chancellor, Sir Thomas Exton^‡, as a candidate for Cambridge University. Shaftesbury judged Exton ‘vile’.

Compton attended every sitting of the first week of the new Parliament in early March, when virtually no business other than the taking of the new oaths was transacted. On 3 Mar. 1679 Compton was one of the witnesses to the king’s declaration in council that he had never been married to anyone other than the queen.⁴⁹ He attended every sitting of the first week of the new Parliament in early March, when virtually no business other than the taking of the new oaths was transacted due to problems over choosing a speaker in the Commons. A new session began on 15 March. Compton then attended 98 per cent of all sittings. On 19 Mar. he spoke in the debate concerning the question of whether an impeachment started in a previous Parliament continued in the next. He agreed with Shaftesbury that it was inconvenient to raise disputes between the king and the Lords ‘because of the dangerous consequence’, but considered it vital to deal with the question of injury to a peer and the implications of imprisonment.⁵⁰ On 21 Mar. he took part in the long debate resulting from the Commons’ demand that Danby be sequestered from Parliament and committed to safe custody. When Shaftesbury claimed that he could not forget how Danby ‘dallied with the king’s life’ in managing the Plot and moved that Danby be committed to Black Rod, Compton went on the attack:

our votes are a sufficient reason to the House of Commons; ... I am much confirmed in my opinion, since that lord who is so very able could make nothing but such trivial and slight arguments ... the Commons are so reasonable that when you are satisfied they will be so too.⁵¹

Like others present he interpreted the Commons’ request as posing a potential breach of the Lords’ privileges. Danby’s opponents and supporters alike then called for the debate to be adjourned. In April Compton voted against the passage of the bill of attainder and on 24 Apr. was named as one of the managers of a conference with the Commons on the subject of the five impeached Catholic peers. At the end of April he issued to his clergy an official broadsheet following up conferences he had held with them the previous year on baptism, the communion and catechizing, and urging them to compliance with the canons and rubrics in the Prayer Book.⁵²

Despite his anti-Catholicism and difficult relationship with York, Compton retained his place on the Privy Council when the king dissolved it in April and created a new one. During May 1679, when the House debated the contentious issue of the right of the bishops to vote in ‘blood cases’, Compton intervened to insist that ‘we shall not do anything which our ancestors have not done’.⁵³ On 10 May he voted against the appointment of a joint committee with the Commons to consider the method of proceeding against the impeached lords, but on 26 May was named as a conference manager on the preservation of ‘a good correspondence’ with the lower House.

The prorogation of 27 May 1679 was followed by the dissolution and parliamentary elections. In July 1679 Compton was approached by the justices of Middlesex to support the candidature of former royalist officer and property developer, William Smith^‡, who had acquired a reputation for severity against both Catholic and Protestant nonconformists when chairing the Middlesex quarter sessions. Smith ran a lacklustre campaign and withdrew after polling only three votes.⁵⁴ Meanwhile, the enmity of the duke of York was further exacerbated by information he received that Danby had made overtures to Presbyterians for his own advantage and that he considered the case proven by ‘the bishop of London’s violence against him’.⁵⁵

On 16 July 1680 he was contacted by Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡ with an urgent request from the recorder of London, George Jeffreys*, later Baron Jeffreys, who wanted Compton to intervene in the City elections and engage the clergy so that ‘the good men be chosen and that the ill ones have not so clear a view of their own strength’.⁵⁶ It is likely that Compton complied willingly. In July too he sent out a new printed circular to the clergy of his diocese: in response to ‘the hellish plot of the papists’, churchmen must be found, he advised, ‘in the best posture ... against this common enemy’, and he warned about various subversive Catholic religious practices (including ‘half communion’, reading prayers in a foreign tongue and the invocation of saints, instructing clergy to prosecute the laws vigorously and warning that he would be checking at his forthcoming visitation that ‘not a recusant has escaped our notice’.⁵⁷

With both anti-clericalist and anti-Catholic feelings running high, Compton took steps to promote and consolidate Protestant unity. In the late summer of 1680 he wrote to three prominent European Protestant leaders asking for their opinions about English nonconformity. All three replied that there was no justification for Protestants to separate from the Anglican Church. The following year these responses were included as an appendix to The Unreasonableness of Separation, a pamphlet published by Compton’s ally and dean of St Paul’s, Edward Stillingfleet*, later bishop of Worcester.

The new Parliament opened on 21 Oct. 1680. Compton resumed his seat, attended 86 per cent of all sittings and was named to six select committees, two on the penal laws against Catholics and further investigations into the Popish Plot. In an unminuted Privy Council discussion (the clerks were asked to withdraw) early in October 1680, Compton was one of a small majority who voted that York should not be required to leave England; the king, nevertheless, instructed him to leave for Scotland.⁵⁸ On 12 Nov. 1680, with debate on the exclusion bill imminent, John Pritchett*, of Gloucester registered his proxy to Compton, the proxy being vacated six weeks later at Pritchett’s death. On 15 Nov. Compton spoke in the debate on the bill and voted to reject it on its first reading. On 23 Nov. Compton voted against the appointment of a committee to consider, with the Commons, the state of the kingdom. On 30 Nov., on behalf of the bishops, he requested the leave of the House for them to be absent from the trial of William Howard*, Viscount Stafford, ‘by protestation, saving to themselves and their successors all such rights in judicature as they have by law, and of right ought to have’.

Parliament was prorogued on 10 Jan. 1681. On 27 Feb. the king ordered that no preferment in the Church or favour in the universities should be granted without the approbation of Compton and Sancroft. Nevertheless in June, against their express wishes, he appointed Nottingham’s chaplain, John Sharp*, later archbishop of York, to the deanery of Norwich. In July and August he somewhat insultingly added ‘as referees’ four prominent laymen: Halifax, Laurence Hyde*, Viscount Hyde (later earl of Rochester), Sir Edward Seymour^‡ and John Robartes*, earl of Radnor.⁵⁹ Meanwhile, in April the king ordered the prosecution of all Catholic recusants and at Sancroft’s request, Compton transmitted an attested copy of the order to all the bishops of the province.⁶⁰

The Tory reaction 1681-5

When the new Parliament assembled in Oxford on 21 Mar. 1681, Compton attended every sitting of the week-long session and was again named to the select committee on the Plot. The ensuing four years without a Parliament were nevertheless full of political activity for the bishop. Throughout the Tory reaction Compton was a visible and repressive presence, hounding nonconformists and Catholics alike. Compton retaliated to attacks on his authority from the perpetually controversial cleric Edmund Hickeringill (1631-1708) by pursuing him through the courts, eventually suing him for scandalum magnatum and securing an award of £2,000, which he put towards the fund for rebuilding St Paul’s.⁶¹

In June 1682 Compton was using his ‘very great’ interest to secure the election of a complaisant alderman in the City, though the kudos he received for this from the government was offset by annoyance at his inability to control Dr Wells (probably John Wells, prebendary of St Paul’s) who had gone into the country ‘when he knew that all the nonconformist preachers were doing their utmost by way of solicitation against us in this matter’.⁶² In January 1683 he attempted to have the dissenting physician Sir John Baber banned from waiting on the king and the duke of York since it sent encouraging signals to nonconformists.⁶³ One circular to his diocesan clergy in 1683 concentrated on the enforcement of regular church attendance; the second issued in July, against unlicensed preachers, adopted a distinctly military tone. The ‘body politic’ was under the strictness of martial law and only uniformity would maintain its security from enemy forces:

we are to consider our selves in the state of church-discipline, as watchmen and shepherds to guard and secure our flocks ... we must drive away all erroneous doctrines, and avoid disorderly walkers. We must drive away the bold wolves, the little foxes, and all beasts of prey.⁶⁴

Over the period he helped to monitor county benches and corporations for their political stance and sought to have Whigs replaced with reliable Tories.⁶⁵ In July 1683 Compton officiated at the wedding of Princess Anne and Prince George*, the future duke of Cumberland. In 1684 he was one of those (the other being William Lloyd*, bishop of Peterborough) to whom the dispute between Thomas Wood*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and Sir Andrew Hacket^‡, over dilapidations of the episcopal palace and other matters, was referred. Compton was Wood’s nominee.⁶⁶ In February 1684 he issued a new printed circular to his clergy on Easter communion.⁶⁷

The reign of James II, 1685-8

Within a week of the accession of James II, Compton and Sancroft were summoned to a private audience, at which they were discouraged from all anti-Catholic activism.⁶⁸ Within ten days of James II’s accession, Compton composed a loyal address from his diocese, presenting it in person.⁶⁹ Initially his position seemed secure as the king made a point of reappointing all those who had been members of Charles II’s existing Privy Council. During the subsequent election campaign for a new Parliament, Compton orchestrated support for Tory candidates, telling his rural deans on 21 Feb. 1685 that

You will likewise now have an opportunity to give a real evidence of your professed fidelity by using your utmost interest among the gentry and other freeholders ... to give their voices for such sober and prudent men as will seek the peace of the Church and the State by promoting the king’s and the kingdom’s service. I need not warn you of the great diligence used by the enemies of both, to make choice of factious and turbulent spirits; and I hope the truth and justice of your cause will make you no less industrious to prevent such wicked and pernicious designs, which bear so fatal an aspect upon all honest men.⁷⁰

On 2 May 1685, as the new Parliament approached, Compton discussed tactics with Lloyd of Peterborough (formerly bishop of Llandaff), apparently unaware that Lloyd had already had a similar discussion with Sancroft. Lloyd and Compton ‘agreed that it was the interest, as well as the credit and safety of the bishops, to be unanimous in their votes and that it was not expedient, or perhaps safe, to propose or desire any new laws at the ensuing Parliament, how plausible soever they might seem to be’. Compton initially proposed that Sancroft summon a meeting of the bishops but was persuaded that this might be provocative and that it would be more expedient for them to receive Sancroft’s instructions individually.⁷¹

Compton resumed his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May 1685 and attended 88 per cent of all sittings. He was named to 12 select committees. Despite his recent discussion with Lloyd on the desirability of avoiding new measures, he introduced a bill on small tithes, but on 1 June he was given leave to withdraw it because counsel had made some errors in the draft. On 25 and 26 June he reported from the committee on the Bangor cathedral bill. Although still a member of the council, Compton’s attendance was now infrequent. He did not attend even during the period of the rebellion of James Scott* duke of Monmouth. Whether this was by choice or because he was not regularly summoned is unknown. His record of harassing Catholics was an obvious factor in his alienation from the court. On 16 Oct. he received a warrant for stay of process against 13 recusants.⁷² An undated letter from Halifax which probably belongs to late October or early November 1685 listed Compton as one of the court lords who ‘wear red coats, that have leapt hedge and ditch in everything, but swear they will not give up these bills’ (the Tests).⁷³

Compton ordered the reading throughout his diocese of the act to keep the anti-Catholic anniversary of 5 November.⁷⁴ When Parliament re-assembled on 9 Nov. 1685, the king’s speech made particular mention of his intention to retain Catholic officers in the army, contrary to the Test Acts. According to one account, on 19 Nov., following the king’s acknowledgement of the address of thanks, Compton

courageously moved, in the name of himself and all his brethren, that the House would particularly debate the king’s speech, and the 23rd of this month was accordingly appointed; which as it was extraordinary and unusual in the House, so it was not less surprising to the king and court, who soon showed a particular jealousy at these proceedings.⁷⁵

Another account identifies Compton as seconding the motion. Whether he proposed or seconded, it is clear that he made a long speech in opposition to the king in which he spoke ‘with great respect and deference to his majesty, yet very full and home; and when he ended, he said he spoke the sense of the whole bench, at which they all rose up’.⁷⁶ James II responded by proroguing Parliament the next day.

Compton’s support for Huguenots fleeing from French persecution led to his removal from the Privy Council and other offices in December 1685. The presence of large numbers of such refugees in England and particularly in London was a cause of alarm to the king, who regarded them as fundamentally anti-monarchical. In July 1685 he had tried to have a clause concerning the liturgy inserted into a general naturalization bill presented to the Commons which would effectively have annihilated the French church.⁷⁷ The bill failed when Parliament was prorogued at news of Monmouth’s rebellion. There were also rumours that the king intended to take out a quo warranto against the French church.⁷⁸ The quo warranto was probably not issued; instead the government seems to have given serious consideration to reviving the suggestion first made in 1670 that the method of worship in the French church be brought under closer control by transferring its governing structure to a superintendent. Such plans were subsequently subsumed into preparations for a charitable brief on behalf of the Huguenots.⁷⁹ Compton was not present at the Privy Council on 23 Nov. 1685 when the brief was authorized; nor did he have any part in drafting it. According to Gilbert Dolben^‡, Compton left London in December after receiving a ‘gracious reception’ from the king, but on 23 Dec. in his absence and apparently without his knowledge, the king dismissed him from the Privy Council. Dolben later reported that the king gave as his reasons for Compton’s dismissal, that he ‘cavilled and consulted with disaffected men’.⁸⁰ (It was joked that the dismissal was for travelling to perform a marriage ceremony for his nephew on a Sunday – Lord’s Day observance had been the theme of Compton’s most recent diocesan circular, in April.)⁸¹ At least one modern commentator has suggested that whilst Compton’s dismissal was probably inevitable, its timing may have been influenced by the perception that he was the Huguenots’ champion and that removing him from office would encourage many of them to leave the country.⁸² Compton also lost his posts in the chapel royal and as clerk of the closet. That same month Compton secured a place for William Stanley (later dean of St Asaph) as chaplain to Princess Mary, thus ensuring a continuing ability to receive reliable intelligence from the Dutch court.⁸³ Compton began to cold shoulder some of the king’s more trusted clerics, including Francis Turner*, bishop of Ely, who complained that Compton had given one of his clients ‘a mortifying raillery in public ... and ... will not leave off affronting me perpetually in this manner’.⁸⁴ It was now said that Compton’s ‘fame runs high in the vogue of the people’.⁸⁵ Like others exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Compton found his authority undermined by the king’s intervention in individual cases. In March 1686, for example, the king directed him to halt proceedings against two suspected persons who had produced ‘certificates of the loyalty and sufferings of themselves and their families’.⁸⁶

In March 1686 the brief for the Huguenots was finally issued. Unlike a similar brief issued by Charles II, it included a clause requiring recipients of the charity to take communion according to Anglican rites. Compton found himself blamed for a reluctance to distribute the money thus collected, when in reality he was constrained by the terms of the brief. It was said that only some 4,000 of the 20,000 plus refugees were able to benefit; many of the rest did, as James probably hoped, leave the country.⁸⁷ In May 1686, in response to pressure to enforce greater conformity on the Huguenots, Compton told Sancroft that ‘it would be an insolent demand in me, to require more of the French Church in the Savoy, than the late king himself did in his constitution of them which only requires their conformity according to the usage of Guernsey and Jersey, where never surplice or sign of the cross were ever used or required and where they have always taken care of their churches by consistory.’⁸⁸ English nonconformists were a different matter. That same month, Compton was reported to have sent out a bullish letter to his clergy, instructing them to act against Dissenters and remarking that ‘he would drive the Dissenters either to the Church, or to the devil’.⁸⁹

Compton’s final breach with the king came on 14 June 1686 when James II instructed him to suspend John Sharp*, then rector of St Giles and dean of Norwich (and later archbishop of York), for preaching an anti-Catholic sermon likely ‘to beget in the minds of his hearers an evil opinion of us and our government ... and to lead them into disobedience and rebellion’. Compton refused, insisting that he must ‘proceed according to law and … no judge condemns any man before he has knowledge of the cause, and has cited the party’.⁹⁰ He was then summoned before the ecclesiastical commission, whose jurisdiction to act as what was essentially a court of law was contentious. Compton claimed that he would ‘run all hazards in maintaining the law, and thought it was best to demur to the jurisdiction of the court’. The eminent lawyer, Sir John Maynard, was less certain. He judged ‘it was not very advisable to demur to the jurisdiction of the court, lest it should be interpreted a disowning, or refusing to submit to the king’s supremacy’. Demurring to the court could thus lead to a charge of treason and incur ‘a far greater punishment than can be inflicted ... for the crime alleged by the commissioners’.⁹¹ Between 3 Aug. and 6 Sept. Compton appeared before the commission on four occasions. When he asked for a copy of the commission Jeffreys told him that he could read one in any coffee house, a riposte that shocked contemporaries for ‘that great measure and degree of rudeness and unmannerliness ... was monstrous in him that was lately raised to what he was by the king’s mere favour to treat a person of the bishop of London’s extraction, reputation and interest at such a rate.’⁹²

Roger Morrice feared that Compton might be susceptible to any plan that secured his preferments: ‘whether he has a true principle of moral severity and integrity and honesty to bear him up under such great trials God only knoweth his life has not been free from notorious blemishes’.⁹³ At the final hearing Compton questioned the authority of the court (in the light of the 1641 act for the abolition of the court of high commission) ‘but did not preclude himself from the liberty of pleading over’.

On 6 Sept. 1686 Compton was suspended from office although he was allowed to keep his episcopal income, a decision that suggests concerns at court that deprivation would spark an action at common law. Despite his suspension, in December 1686 Compton issued another of his annual circulars to his clergy, following a diocesan conference. It amounted to a summons to resistance, albeit to passive resistance.⁹⁴ In the very first sentence, he wrote that nothing was more pernicious than to ‘carry the duty of submission beyond the bounds of just reason and due patience’. He continued,

we are forbid to declare, limit or bound the constitutive laws of the realm between prince and people ... because our business is to teach a Christian behaviour upon all occasions, without entering into the merits of any cause betwixt prince and people … But if we exalt the king’s prerogative above the law, we do as good tell the people, that notwithstanding their rights, the king may ravish their wives, spoil their goods, and cut their throats at pleasure ... I look upon it as a rule, that we ought in common prudence to set our selves in this affair; to be as cautious of flattering our prince into tyranny, as of stirring up the people to sedition and tumult … we have a prince of another religion ... and what the mercies of that religion are ... we all very well know. … If we be a lessening, hindrance or discredit to our own religion by disorderly walking, supine negligence, or any other fault ... he will then think it just to abandon us ... the least we can expect from one so wedded to that religion is that he should promote it all he could ... my daily prayer shall be ... that we may be courageous in this day of trial, and behave ourselves like men.

In March 1687 Compton petitioned the king for reinstatement; yet ‘he made no proper submission in it. He does not think that this will put a stop to his deprivation, but he thinks it will make it a little more difficult, and gain him some time’.⁹⁵ As 1687 drew to a close, it was rumoured that the bishop would be deprived and replaced with Thomas Cartwright*, bishop of Chester. In the somewhat feverish and fearful political atmosphere it was also suggested that the king was about to call convocation in order to confirm his supremacy and dispensing power and to command the clergy’s acknowledgement under threat of praemunire.⁹⁶ Unsurprisingly, in the new year Compton was listed by Danby as an opponent of the government. On 12 May 1688 Compton dined at Lambeth, together with Henry Hyde*, 2nd earl of Clarendon, and several bishops and was party to the discussions that led to the petition of the Seven Bishops against reading the Declaration.⁹⁷ Although not a signatory to the actual petition, he signified his approval of its contents on 23 May.⁹⁸ Compton was active on behalf of the Seven Bishops throughout their trial, coordinating intelligence and legal advice, and sending condolences ‘that his majesty has no more confidence in his best friends’.⁹⁹

The Revolution of 1688

On 30 June, the day the Seven Bishops were acquitted, Compton became one of the ‘immortal seven’ who invited William of Orange to invade.¹⁰⁰ In September the king issued a proclamation warning of the intended Dutch invasion. He also reinstated Compton and summoned him to court. Compton meanwhile had travelled north, ostensibly to visit his sister, but actually to recruit and coordinate support for rebellion.¹⁰¹ On 31 Oct., clearly suspicious that Compton might be one of the lords spiritual mentioned in the prince of Orange’s declaration, James II summoned him to a private audience. Confronted with the copy of William’s declaration, Compton obfuscated, telling the king that he ‘was confident, the rest of the bishops would as readily answer in the negative as myself’.¹⁰² On 2 Nov. together with Sancroft, Crew, Cartwright and Thomas Watson*, bishop of St Davids, he attended the king yet again, this time to face the king’s demand that they issue an abhorrence of the Orange invasion. Sancroft may have been prepared to do so but Compton persuaded the bishops otherwise. They called instead for a Parliament.¹⁰³ It was later alleged that in early November Compton had attended a gathering at the lodgings of his nephew, Hatton Compton, together with John Churchill*, Baron Churchill (the future duke of Marlborough), Colonel Percy Kirke^‡ and Sir George Hewitt, where they agreed to deliver the king in person to the invading prince and, if necessary, to assassinate the king’s bodyguard.¹⁰⁴

On the night of 25/26 Nov. Compton engineered Princess Anne’s escape from London, escorting her to Nottingham where they met up with other Orangist sympathizers, including Prince George.¹⁰⁵ His letters for this period read more like those of a soldier than a bishop. He fretted that the forces with him were ‘raw’ and lacked discipline; he sought the prince’s advice; and he wrote to Danby (then in York) begging tactical guidance and cavalry, and sending intelligence about the king’s plans.¹⁰⁶ He even drew up an undertaking for an association to protect the Revolution and to avenge any harm to William by killing all English Catholics.¹⁰⁷ On 15 Dec. he was the only cleric among 15 of the nobility to enter Oxford. In breach of canon law, he rode as commander of Princess Anne’s guards, ‘in a purple cloak, martial habit, pistols before him, and his sword drawn’. His standard bore the motto, Nolumus leges Angliae mutari (we do not want the laws of England to be changed) written in letters of gold.¹⁰⁸

Back in London, Compton met his clergy and agreed an address of thanks to William, which they presented together on 21 December.¹⁰⁹ The same day, in response to William’s summons, he was one of the members of the House who attended the prince in the queen’s presence chamber to advise on how best to carry out the designs of his declaration. The following day he attended the meeting of the provisional government at the House of Lords. In the course of the debate on removing Catholics from London he added that those who held office but had not taken the Test should also be removed.¹¹⁰ Two of the three surviving accounts of the debate also add that he seconded the proposal of William Paget*, 7th Baron Paget, that the king’s flight was a ‘demise’ in law; Mary could therefore be proclaimed queen and issue writs for Parliament in her own name. The third account agrees that Compton considered the government to be dissolved. After the debate, Compton was one of those named to ask the prince to assume the management of public affairs.¹¹¹

Thwarted ambition 1689-91

In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, Compton must have believed that his prospects for advancement were good, although Halifax’s notes of conversations with William suggest that even at this early stage it had probably already been decided that should the archbishopric become vacant, it would go to John Tillotson*, dean of Canterbury.¹¹² Nevertheless, in the short term Sancroft’s self-imposed detachment from public affairs meant that Compton became acting primate by default. On 3 Jan. 1689 he was appointed dean of the chapel royal, and in the course of the month sent a letter to his rural deans extolling ‘the great blessings we enjoy by this wonderful revolution, which has procured to us so full a deliverance from popery and arbitrary power’.¹¹³ He was even said to have instructed his clergy to leave out prayers for the royal family, in contravention of the Book of Common Prayer.¹¹⁴ It was Compton, rather than Sancroft, who officiated at the coronation on 11 Apr. 1689.

Compton resumed his seat in the House at the start of the Convention on 22 Jan. 1689 when he and several other bishops were asked by the House to compose a prayer for a day of thanksgiving. He attended the session for 85 per cent of all sittings. It was reported that Compton told the king in January that it was only illness that kept Sancroft from the Convention and that he was holding the archbishop’s proxy, but no such proxy was entered in the proxy books.¹¹⁵ When the question of a regency was debated on 29 Jan. 1689 in a committee of the whole, he was either (according to one account) the only bishop to vote against it, or (according to two others) one of only two to vote against it.¹¹⁶ Two days later he is somewhat confusingly listed as having voted in favour of declaring William and Mary king and queen, yet also voting against agreeing with the Commons that the throne was vacant. On 4 Feb. 1689 he opposed the use of the word ‘abdicated’ instead of ‘deserted’, helping to manage two conferences against the use of the word ‘abdicated’ on 4 and 5 February. Then on 6 Feb. he changed sides and voted to agree with the Commons that the king had abdicated and the throne was vacant. On the 8th he was named as a conference manager on the declaration of the new monarchs and the oaths and on 12 Feb. as a manager of the conference on proclaiming them. On 13 Feb. 1689, after the declaration of William and Mary as monarchs, Compton preached before them in the Whitehall Chapel, taking as his text Galatians 6:15, ‘For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature’.¹¹⁷ The following day he was appointed to the new Privy Council.¹¹⁸

Compton seems to have been supportive of the new regime’s ecclesiastical policy. In an undated letter that appears to belong to spring 1689, he informed Sancroft that Parliament would consider comprehension and toleration bills: ‘two great works in which the being of our church is concerned … for though we are under a conquest God has given [us] favour in the eyes of our rulers’.¹¹⁹ To signify his assent to the legislation, he took 100 of his own clergy to kiss hands at court; he also thought it expedient that the nonconformist ministers did likewise, ‘the rather because the present conjuncture made it somewhat necessary to give them some countenance who were so universally and inflexibly devoted to the king’. It is unlikely that they needed his encouragement: 90 or more Presbyterian and Congregational ministers had attended the Prince of Orange on 2 Jan. to congratulate him on the success of his ‘hazardous and heroical expedition’. On that occasion they were introduced not by Compton but by William Cavendish*, fourth earl and later duke of Devonshire, Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, and Charles Powlett*, then styled Lord Wiltshire (later 2nd duke of Bolton). A further address, couched in extravagant and visionary language, followed on 28 Feb. after the prince and princess were declared to be king and queen.¹²⁰

On 2 Mar. 1689 Compton was punctual in taking the oaths to the new monarchs. During debates on the oaths he spoke at length against multiplying oaths and forcing the bishops to take them but when he tried to make it clear that he did not speak for himself and said that there ‘was not nor could be made an oath to the present government that he could not take’ the House descended into laughter.¹²¹ On 5 Mar. 1689 he helped to manage the conference on assisting the king and, on the following day registered his protest against the passage of the bill for the better regulating the trials of peers. On 16 Mar. he was named as one of the peers to question the Catholic James Cecil*, 4th earl of Salisbury, about his younger brothers, who had allegedly been sent into France to be educated there. On 8, 16 and 17 Apr. 1689 he was a conference manager on the bill to remove Catholics from the cities of London and Westminster. On 20 and 22 Apr. 1689 he was one of the conference managers on the bill for abrogating the oaths. He was also added to the select committee on simony. On 7 May 1689 he received the proxy of the ageing Thomas Barlow*, bishop of Lincoln (vacated at the end of the session), and the following day helped to manage the conference on the bill for the convicting and disarming of Catholics. On 31 May he voted against the reversal of the two judgments of perjury against Titus Oates. He was named as a conference manager on the bill and subsequently voted to adhere to the Lords’ amendments. On 19 June 1689 he received the proxy of William Beaw*, bishop of Llandaff, although since Beaw attended the House the following day, it was probably not effective until 21 June. During July he was one of seven Tory bishops who dissented from the decision to proceed with the impeachment of the Jacobites Sir Adam Blair and his co-defendants. He helped to manage the conference on the bill concerning the succession on 12 July and, on 25 and 27 July, the conference on the tea and coffee duty bill.

Closely associated with William Lloyd*, then bishop of St Asaph, later successively bishop of Lichfield and Coventry and Worcester, it seems likely that Compton was involved with him in negotiations to prevent a nonjuring schism after 1 Aug. 1689, the date set by the Act for Abrogating the Oaths (by which bishops and other office holders were required to take the oaths to the new monarchs).¹²² A letter from Compton to an Essex clergyman, which by internal evidence must belong to the period between the declaration of the new monarchs and the dissolution of the Convention on 9 Feb. 1690, probably belongs to the summer or autumn of 1689. It reflected the propaganda needs of the new regime, especially with regard to those who either were, or were in danger of becoming, nonjurors. It seems likely that the letter circulated more widely than to its ostensible recipient, for a copy survived to be published in 1710 as part of a different propaganda initiative – the case against Dr Sacheverell. In it Compton argued that ‘all the best lawyers’ had justified ‘our obedience to a king de facto, tho’ he is not de jure’ and that the Convention (‘the body of the nation assembled in the best manner, the present exigencies of affairs will permit’) was the arena in which disputes between king and people should be decided, ‘For if we will not upon such occasion submit to their determination, we set up that private spirit in civil policy, which by experience we have so justly condemned in ecclesiastical’.¹²³ It was probably in response to news of this letter that Compton was accused of

unworthy compliances under all sorts of government ... not contenting yourself to have renounced your faith and allegiance, and the personal homage done the king at his coronation, you ... justify the taking the new oaths, and thereby endeavouring as much as in you lies, to involve the whole nation in the guilt of perjury.¹²⁴

When Archbishop Sancroft was formally suspended on 1 Aug. 1689 as a result of his failure to take the oaths, Compton was upset to discover that the archi-episcopal jurisdiction was to be entrusted to Tillotson as dean of Canterbury. This was in accordance with precedent during a vacancy, but Compton, clearly anxious that Tillotson enjoyed a favoured position at court, argued unsuccessfully that Sancroft’s suspension did not amount to a vacancy in the ordinary sense.¹²⁵

In September 1689 William and Mary issued a commission to Thomas Lamplugh*, archbishop of York, Compton and others empowering them to review the liturgy for approval by Convocation and presentation to Parliament.¹²⁶ The second session of the Convention began the following month. Compton was present for the first day, 23 Oct. 1689, and attended 91 per cent of all sittings. In a list compiled between October 1689 and February 1690, Carmarthen (as Danby was now known) reckoned Compton to be a court supporter, although one to be spoken to. On 8 Nov. 1689 Compton reported from the select committee on the bill to relieve those who had not taken the oaths within the set time limits. Three days later he was added to the Lords’ committee for inspections. On 12 Nov. 1689 he again received the proxy of Thomas Barlow (vacated at the end of the session) and on 15 Nov. reported from the committee on the church rates bill. On 19 Nov. he protested against the third reading of the bill to prevent clandestine marriages on the grounds that once religiously contracted and consummated, no marriage could be annulled.

Events in Convocation impinged directly on Parliament’s own legislative programme. On 26 Nov. Compton was authorized by the crown to preside over Convocation and to lead discussions over alterations to the liturgy.¹²⁷ In elections for prolocutor of the lower House, Compton’s former chaplain, the high Tory William Jane, was elected in opposition to Tillotson. Tillotson had no doubt that Compton ‘was at the bottom of it, out of a jealousy that I might be a hindrance to him in attaining what he desires’. Jane’s election guaranteed that Convocation would reject those liturgical changes that tended to comprehension. Despite failing to meet the August deadline for taking the new oaths, the nonjuring bishops had been given a further six months to comply although the reaction in convocation suggested that any attempt to deprive them risked creating considerable controversy.¹²⁸ Compton and Lloyd of St Asaph continued to negotiate with the nonjuring bishops. In October the nonjurors had refused a suggestion that they give recognizances for good behaviour.¹²⁹ In December further expedients were proposed, one of which was a short act of Parliament to enable the king to dispense with the requirement for taking the oaths. This too was refused.¹³⁰ Such a proposal would have avoided controversy whilst at the same time robbing Tillotson of the primacy, perhaps allowing Compton further breathing space to repair his career chances. Compton’s earlier devotion to Princess Anne provides the background to a complaint to the House on 17 Jan. 1690 that a Stephen Howard was in custody under privilege of Parliament for accusing Compton of plotting to make Anne queen of England. Howard apologized and was released three days before the end of the session.

Shortly before or just after the dissolution, the king sought a change in the London lieutenancy, asking Compton, Carmarthen, Charles Talbot*, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, and Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, to review both the lieutenancy and the commission of the peace. According to Burnet the king wanted them to name some moderate churchmen to the commission ‘so the two parties in the City might be kept in balance’; instead, Compton gave him a list of ‘the most violent Tories in the city, who had been engaged in some of the worst things that passed in the end of king Charles’ reign’.¹³¹ Compton threw himself into the 1690 election campaign on behalf of the Tories, writing at length to both the clergy and the laity and advocating the re-election of the sitting Members for Middlesex, Tories Sir Charles Gerard^‡ and Ralph Hawtrey^‡. He even forbade his clergy ‘upon canonical obedience’ to vote for the Whig candidate Sir John Maynard.¹³² Compton ‘appeared in the field’ at the Essex election, together with a full ecclesiastical retinue, the episode evoking his military escapade during the Revolution. The Tories were nevertheless defeated.¹³³

The new Parliament opened on 20 Mar. 1690. Compton, resuming his seat at the start of business, attended 95 per cent of all sittings, still acting as a quasi-archbishop by collating and presenting the excuses of those bishops who wished to be excused attendance.¹³⁴ On 5 and 8 Apr. he reported back to the House on the small tithes bill. On 8 Apr. the House debated the bill for the recognition of the king and queen, and the legitimacy of the Convention. Much contention was caused by one particular clause and when the clause in question passed unaltered Compton was one of several Tory Members to enter a protest. Two days later, together with Nottingham and others, Compton protested against expunging the reasons for the protest on the grounds that to do so suggested that they had voted against the bill as a whole ‘which is contrary to our sense and intentions’. On 12 Apr. 1690 he registered his proxy in favour of Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, to cover a three day absence. On 30 Apr. 1690 Compton received the proxy of Nicholas Stratford*, bishop of Chester, which was vacated two days later when both Compton and Stratford attended a long debate on the abjuration bill. Compton spoke against the bill, arguing that it offered no security and would merely ‘raise scruples’.¹³⁵ On 6 May 1690 when the bill was discussed in a committee of the whole, Compton and Charles Mordaunt*, earl of Monmouth, proposed a new test ‘which was well received and the former (which caused such great heats) thrown out’.¹³⁶ On 9 May 1690 Compton received the proxy of Gilbert Ironside*, bishop of Bristol (vacated at the end of the session on 23 May 1690).

In the summer of 1690 Compton intervened in Irish church affairs, sending a long list of candidates for preferment to senior posts to Sir Robert Southwell, secretary of state for Ireland. He justified his intervention on the grounds that the primate, Michael Boyle of Armagh, was so partial in promoting his relations that he was in ‘no way fit to advise the king’.¹³⁷ In September he again intervened in English electoral politics. Somewhat oddly, given that received opinion considered that the Church interest in Harwich was dependent on the candidature of Charles Cheyne^‡, Viscount Newhaven [S], he asked Lady Albemarle to allow Cheyne to take his seat as Member for the Cornish borough of Newport (to which he had also been elected). Compton intended to recommend another candidate ‘for the government and Church’s sake’ but his request was unsuccessful.¹³⁸ Equally oddly, an undated note amongst the king’s papers that appears to belong to 1690, referred to Compton as having ‘influence over most of the Whig party’.¹³⁹

The 1690-1 session opened on 2 Oct. 1690; Compton attended 88 per cent of all sittings and on 7 Oct. again received Ironside’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session). On 6 Oct. he voted for the discharge of the earl of Salisbury and of Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower. He spent much of the session engaged in Irish affairs, providing forms of prayer to be used for the Irish day of thanksgiving on 16 Nov. and working with senior clerics on the royal commission to settle the church in Ireland.¹⁴⁰ On the last day of the session, 5 Jan. 1691, he helped to manage all four conferences on the bill for the suspension of the navigation and corn acts.

Following revelations of the possible involvement of Turner of Ely in the Preston Plot, news circulated that Compton, together with Lloyd of St Asaph, Nottingham and Carmarthen, had ‘vehemently pressed’ the king to fill the vacant bishoprics before leaving for Holland.¹⁴¹ In what may have been a last-ditch effort to change the king’s mind over Tillotson’s imminent promotion, he accompanied William to The Hague in February 1691.¹⁴² By mid March he was back in England. According to Sancroft, Compton learned that he was not to get Canterbury as he was on his way into the council chamber on 23 Apr. 1691 ‘when a friend pulled him by the sleeve, and shewed him the whole scheme’. Sancroft, who clearly enjoyed the thought of Compton’s discomfiture, reported that he had then ‘retreated’. If he did retreat, it must have been after the meeting had begun for he is listed in the attendance list that day.¹⁴³

Living with disappointment 1691-1702

Compton appears to have been responsible for ensuring that the popular Robert Frampton*, bishop of Gloucester, remained at his Standish rectory after deprivation—a favour that Sancroft contemptuously regarded as an attempt to persuade the remaining nonjurors that ‘we too might at last have had a feather of our own goose, restored, to stick in our caps’.¹⁴⁴ When Compton visited Lambeth on 29 Apr. 1691, a scornful Sancroft waspishly observed ‘O quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore! [How changed from that Hector] So kind, so debonair, and so obliging, that it would have pleased you to observe it’.¹⁴⁵ Compton was conspicuously absent from Tillotson’s consecration and from his swearing-in at the Privy Council.¹⁴⁶ He buried himself in ecclesiastical affairs, becoming an enthusiastic supporter of missionary work in the colonies and the foundation of Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

He maintained his vigour as a parliamentarian, resuming his seat at the start of business on 22 Oct. 1691 and attending the session for 70 per cent of all sittings. From 24 Nov. until the end of the session, he held Gilbert Ironside’s proxy. On 27 Dec. he signed the bishops’ petition to the king to implement the penal laws against impiety and vice.¹⁴⁷ On 2 Jan. 1692 he dissented from the arguments of the Lords for a conference on the Commons’ decision to publish their desire for an address for the incorporation of the East India Company in their votes and also from the decision not to send for the original record of a precedent cited in a debate on the subject on 18 Dec. 1691. On 4 Jan. 1692 the House gave a first reading to the bill to allow Compton to sell Bushey Manor for the improvement of his bishopric. The bill was committed the following day (with Compton named to the select committee); it passed the House on 8 January.

The most controversial legislation during the 1692 session was the divorce bill for Henry Howard*, duke of Norfolk. Compton was present on 12 Jan. for the initial debate, when counsel for the duchess argued that the case should not be heard until it had come before the ecclesiastical courts.¹⁴⁸ When the House decided to receive the bill, 19 Tories, including Compton, protested against it. On 21 Jan. 1692 Compton received the proxy of Thomas Sprat*, of Rochester. It was vacated by Sprat’s attendance on 16 Feb., the day that the House voted not to use proxies in future divisions on the Norfolk divorce bill. On 17 Feb. Norfolk lost his cause by five votes. Compton voted with the majority against the bill but it was noted that ‘all the new bishops’ supported Norfolk.¹⁴⁹ Meanwhile, on 13 Jan. 1692 Compton reported on the Cambridge University bill and was subsequently added to the new subcommittee. He again reported back to the House on 16 February.

During spring 1692 Compton seemed resigned to his situation. His circular letter to his clergy that year, dated 29 Mar., concentrated at length on problems arising from toleration and a strategy to combat immorality and irreligion through vigorous pastoral activity and by engaging Dissenters in respectful conversation.¹⁵⁰ On 11 Apr., Tillotson convened a pastoral meeting at Lambeth which proved unexpectedly harmonious, Compton concurring ‘cheerfully’ with the proposals.¹⁵¹ In July he became involved in a dispute with the queen over his right to present Dr Peter Birch to St James Piccadilly. Birch had once been one of William’s chaplains but was subsequently regarded as one of the discontented. The queen’s candidate was William Wake*, who became bishop of Lincoln in 1705 and archbishop of Canterbury in 1716.¹⁵² That same month, as relations soured between the court and Princess Anne, it was rumoured that Compton had been forbidden from attending the princess. Nevertheless, he dined with her and Prince George a few days later ‘which is taken notice of’.¹⁵³ In an attempt either to ingratiate himself with the queen or to ensure that Birch was in good standing with her, in October he instructed Birch to obey the queen’s instructions and to snub Anne should she attempt to worship at St James.¹⁵⁴

He resumed his seat in the Lords at the start of the new session on 4 Nov. 1692 and attended 82 per cent of all sittings. On 2 Jan. 1693 Compton again voted to throw out Norfolk’s divorce bill. The following day he voted with the majority of bishops in accordance with the wishes of the court against the passage of the place bill. Meanwhile, in the the Essex by-election held on 10 Jan. 1693 Compton canvassed on behalf of the Tory Sir Eliab Harvey^‡. Harvey lost amidst accusations of electoral malpractice.¹⁵⁵ On 17 Jan. Compton twice dissented from the Lords’ resolutions against the Banbury peerage claim and on the 25th voted to commit the bill to prevent dangers from disaffected persons. On 11 Feb. he was one of the bishops named to the committee to draw up address of advice to the king on the employment of foreigners at the board of ordnance or as keeper of stores in the Tower. On 18 Feb. the bill that would allow Compton and Monmouth to exchange episcopal land in Fulham for other property of a similar value was reported to the House by Thomas Grey*, 2nd earl of Stamford and passed the House. On 14 Mar., the last day of the session, Compton was named as a conference manager on the bill to prohibit trade with France and for the encouragement of privateers.

During the summer of 1693 an energetic Compton conducted a demanding visitation of his diocese during which he again rehearsed his visceral hostility to catholicism.¹⁵⁶ He was back at Westminster for the new session on 7 Nov. and attended 85 per cent of all sittings. On 5 Jan. 1694 after a conference on the place bill, the Commons accepted all but one of the Lords amendments. The Lords then gave way to the Commons, sparking a protest from Rochester and Compton who were unhappy that the Speaker of the Commons should be excepted from the bill, maintaining that the Speaker ‘if he can be capable of being corrupted, may, by himself alone, do much more mischief than a great many of the members can do together’. Another Essex by-election was held in February 1694, resulting in the return of the Church candidate Sir Charles Barrington^‡, with Compton’s support.¹⁵⁷ On 17 Feb. Compton voted in favour of reversing the court of chancery’s dismission in the cause Montagu v. Bath, and on 6 Mar. was named as a conference manager on the mutiny bill. On 3 and 4 Apr. he reported from the select committee on the small tithes bill. On the 5th he helped to manage the conference on the private bill for William Stawell*, 3rd Baron Stawell.

Compton was back in the House at the start of business in the following session on 12 Nov. 1694 and attended for three-quarters of all sittings. At the death of Tillotson on 22 Nov. 1694 the king again overlooked Compton and translated Thomas Tenison*, bishop of Lincoln, to Canterbury.¹⁵⁸ The following month, according to his earliest biographer, Compton experienced ‘unexpressable grief’ at the death of the queen, though his relations with her can scarcely have been close.¹⁵⁹ He waited on the king on 10 Jan. 1695 to express his condolences and, on 16 Jan., having apparently come to terms with his failure to secure promotion, attended Tenison’s confirmation.¹⁶⁰ Over the years many bills for the more easy recovery of small tithes had been introduced and subsequently lost. Compton appears to have been responsible for the one that received its first reading in the Lords on 11 Feb. 1695. It passed the House but was lost in the Commons after as a result of a nonconformist campaign against it.¹⁶¹

The dispute over Compton’s right of presentation to St James came before the House in January 1695. Compton had lost the case in king’s bench and sought to appeal the decision by means of a writ of error. On 11 Jan. the Lords heard counsel for Compton; the verdict in king’s bench was upheld the following day by a majority of ten votes.¹⁶² That same day the king drew up plans for a ‘commission for the better disposal of ecclesiastical preferments’. In what was clearly intended as a snub, and probably a commentary on his growing identification with the Tory highfliers, Compton was omitted from its membership.¹⁶³ On 23 Jan. Compton dissented from the decision to postpone implementation of the bill to regulate treason trials. On 12 Feb. he reported from the select committee on the bill to confirm a grant of St Martin’s churchyard made by the rector of the united parishes of St Michael Royall and St Martin’s in the Vintry, London. He held Ironside’s proxy from 16 Feb. to the end of the session in May. On 16 and 23 Feb. and 15 and 20 Apr. he was one of the conference managers on the trials for treason bill.

After the dissolution in October 1695, Compton was again involved in electioneering, supporting Tory candidates in opposition to the court. He and Sprat supported Sir William Trumbull^‡ at Oxford; he was also actively involved, with varying degrees of success, in the campaigns in Westminster, Essex and Cambridge University.¹⁶⁴ Resuming his seat in the new Parliament on 22 Nov. 1695, Compton attended 84 per cent of all sittings. On 9 Jan. 1696, following a division on the bill to regulate silver coinage, he protested against the rejection of a clause requiring that the deficiency on all clipped coin be made good and, on 31 Mar., dissented to the passage of the bill to encourage the import of plate to the Mint. His continuing loyalty to the regime, irrespective of his opposition to court policies, was demonstrated on 27 Feb. when, in the wake of the discovery of the Assassination Plot, he signed the Association in the House and again on 10 Apr, when he signed the ‘repugnance’ at the absolution by nonjuring clergy of the convicted plotters Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend^‡.¹⁶⁵ On 9 Apr. 1696 he reported back to the House on the bill to encourage ‘charitable gifts and dispositions’.

Parliament was prorogued on 27 Apr. 1696. Compton had meanwhile fallen out with the king over the arrest and imprisonment of the deprived bishop Robert Frampton on suspicion of Jacobite plotting. The arrest warrant was issued on 18 Mar. and according to Frampton’s biographer, he surrendered himself shortly afterwards.¹⁶⁶ Compton is said to have insisted that Frampton was no threat and to have offered to house him in his own lodgings but

The king answered, I have heard his character and know him to be ill affected to my government and I am very sorry that you will protect any of my enemies. If you will keep any of my enemies in your house in private you may. But I desire not in public.¹⁶⁷

Compton attended the 1696-7 parliamentary session for 84 per cent of sittings. The session was dominated by the controversial bill of attainder brought against Sir John Fenwick^‡. There was insufficient evidence to convict Fenwick in the ordinary way and this turned the parliamentary proceedings into both a travesty of justice and a party political issue.¹⁶⁸ Compton, like most Tories, was appalled. On 15 Dec. he dissented from the resolution to read a witness statement that would have been inadmissible in a court of law. Notes taken at the second reading on 18 Dec. show that he argued that the ‘best discouragement to the enemy is to show that notwithstanding such a base attack the country was proceeding according to its laws’. The proceedings might possibly be justified by ‘unavoidable necessity’ but that was ‘not so in this case as the prisoner is too unimportant to have the safety of the king and government in his hands’.¹⁶⁹ When the bill received its third reading on 23 Dec. he observed that if the true intent of the bill was to force a confession from Fenwick, it was ‘equivalent to a torture’. He voted against the bill and registered another protest at its passage.¹⁷⁰

On 23 Jan. 1697 Compton dissented from the rejection of the bill to further regulate parliamentary elections. In early February a bill to allow Compton and Nottingham to exchange a number of advowsons passed rapidly through the House, receiving its third reading on 8 February. It passed equally rapidly through the Commons and received the royal assent on 8 March. On 5 Mar. 1697 Compton helped to manage the conference on the bill to prohibit the import of Indian silks and on 17 Mar. reported back from the committee on the bill to complete St Paul’s and to repair Westminster Abbey. He received Ironside’s proxy on 18 Mar. (vacated nine days later when Ironside resumed his seat). On 25 Mar. he reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to pave and regulate the Haymarket and on 13 Apr. the bill to enable easier land partition held in coparcenary, joint tenancy, and tenancy in common.

On 2 Dec. 1697 Compton conducted the thanksgiving service for the peace of Rijswijk at St Paul’s.¹⁷¹ The following day he took his seat for the start of the new session, attending the session for 73 per cent of all sittings. He held proxies from Jonathan Trelawny*, bishop of Exeter, from 16 May and from Watson from 24 May 1698. Both were vacated by the end of the session on 5 July. He reported from a committee of the whole on 25 Feb. 1698 on the bill for suppressing atheism and blasphemy. On 15 Mar. the bill to punish Sir Charles Duncombe^‡ was lost by a single vote, Compton being one of those who voted against it. The Lords’ bill against atheism and blasphemy having been lost in favour of one that originated in the Commons, on 2 May Compton reported, again from a committee of the whole, on the Commons’ bill. On 13 May he reported on the bill for tea and coffee duties. On 25 May he reported back to the House from the conference on the Lords’ amendments to the blasphemy bill. On 6 June Compton reported on a naturalization bill and, on 20 June, he helped to manage the conference on the Alverstoke waterworks bill for Peter Mews*, bishop of Winchester. Nine days later he reported back to the House on the bill to encourage the Royal Lustring Company and to prevent fraudulent imports of ‘lustrings and alamodes’, the weaving industry (in which Compton’s protégés, the Protestant strangers, had a prominent role) needing protection from the illegal import of silks from the continent. On 1 July 1698 he protested against the second reading of the bill to establish the two million fund to settle the East India trade. Three days later he reported back to the House on the bill to allow the Sally Rose (formerly taken as prize) to arrive, import her cargo and trade as an English-built ship.

Following the dissolution of Parliament on 7 July 1698, Compton was again involved in elections. In a heated campaign for Middlesex, Compton proved ‘a great stickler’ for the Tory Warwick Lake^‡ who ousted one of the sitting Members. In Essex, Compton endorsed the choice of the gentry, supporting Barrington and Edward Bullock^‡. At Cambridge University, Compton sent ‘his chaplain and forty letters’ in support of Nottingham’s favoured candidate the high churchman Anthony Hammond^‡.¹⁷²

Compton took his seat in the new Parliament on 6 Dec. 1698, attending the session for 60 per cent of all sittings. On 8 Feb. 1699 he voted against the committee resolution to assist the king in retaining the Dutch guards and registered his dissent when it passed. On 29 Mar. he also dissented from the address to the king requesting that the bishop of Derry and others be sent for in custody in relation to the case of the London Ulster Society v. Bishop of Derry. On 25 Apr. he was named to the committee to draw up reasons for their insistence on retaining the Lords proviso on the Billingsgate market bill. Whether he participated in the committee’s deliberations is unknown, but he was not in the House on 26 Apr., the day the committee met.

Over the course of the summer he was one of the bishops appointed to assist Tenison in the hearing of the politically motivated case against the Tory, and probable Jacobite sympathizer, Watson of St Davids. When Watson was convicted on 3 Aug. Compton was a dissenting voice. He agreed that Watson was guilty on various lesser charges but found that the most serious accusation, that of simony, was unproven. As a result of the proceedings, Watson was nevertheless deprived of his bishopric. During the next (1699-1700) session (which Compton attended for 72 per cent of sittings) Watson tried to bring his case before the House as a matter of privilege. Compton argued Watson’s case in a lengthy debate on 6 Dec. 1699, but the House ruled that bishops had no privilege against the jurisdiction of the archbishop.¹⁷³

On 8 Feb. 1700, Compton protested against putting the question of whether the Scottish colony of Darien was inconsistent with the good of the English plantation trade. It had been forecast that Compton would support the bill to continue the East India Company as a corporation and, on 23 Feb. 1700, he duly voted for an adjournment during pleasure to allow the House to go into a committee of the whole to discuss amendments to the bill. On 8 Mar. he protested against the second reading of the new divorce bill for the duke of Norfolk. Four days later, Compton dissented to the passage of the bill.

During the recess, Compton was engaged in his usual combination of political and ecclesiastical affairs. Parliament was dissolved on 19 Dec. 1700 and Compton was involved in the elections the following spring. On 7 Jan. 1701, he once again backed the Essex gentry’s choice of Barrington and Bullock, informing his clergy that ‘they cannot do better than to use their interest for them’. Barrington was returned, but Compton’s backing could not help Bullock, who was defeated due to rival East India interests and his own political ambivalence.¹⁷⁴

The new Parliament opened on 6 Feb. 1701 and Compton attended 70 per cent of all sittings. On 17 Feb., he helped to manage the conference on the Lords’ address to the king; on 20 Mar., he protested against the refusal to send the address on the second Partition Treaty to the Commons. Throughout April and June, he registered protests against resolutions concerning the impeachment of the Whig lords. On 17 June he voted against the acquittal of John Somers*, Baron Somers and protested twice about procedural resolutions relating to the trial.

Following the prorogation on 24 June, Compton attended a meeting at Lambeth where he was chosen as a founder member of the corporation to propagate religion in foreign plantations.¹⁷⁵ During the elections that followed the dissolution of Parliament on 11 Nov. 1701 Compton again backed Barrington and Bullock in Essex; once again Barrington was returned and Bullock was defeated.¹⁷⁶

In December 1701 Compton took his seat in the new Parliament but sat for only 36 per cent of all sittings. The parliamentary session was accompanied by a session of Convocation, where party rivalries were being acted out with increasing ferocity. Compton and his protégé Francis Atterbury*, the future bishop of Rochester, were deeply involved in the controversies that encouraged the lower clergy to believe that they had rights independent of the upper House, setting in train a decade of controversy which fed into Parliament.¹⁷⁷ In the Lords, on 20 Feb. 1702, Compton was the only bishop to protest against the passage of the bill to attaint the exiled Mary Beatrice, widow of James II, for high treason. Four days later, Compton and Sprat were the only bishops to dissent from the passage of the succession of the crown bill, which required an abjuration of Jacobite claims, on the grounds that ‘some worthy men ... may be entangled by it’.¹⁷⁸

Reign of Anne 1702-13

The accession of Anne changed Compton’s public and political profile. His first biographer attributed this to the queen’s sense that she ‘knew his heart as well as her own to be entirely English, and that no consideration whatsoever should ever be able to divert him from the true interest of the Church and the crown’.¹⁷⁹ It was clearly also Compton’s expectation that his former loyalty would now be rewarded. On 5 May 1702, in an overt display of favour towards her former rescuer, she visited Compton at Fulham, ‘the first her majesty made since her coming to the crown’, but that was virtually the sum of his rewards.¹⁸⁰ The elections that followed the dissolution of Parliament on 2 July 1702 again saw Compton’s intervention on behalf of the Tory Church interest in Essex, but he had softened in tone, merely asking his rural deans, ‘to let the clergy of your deanery know that I earnestly desire of them to appear at the time, and give their votes according to their conscience’.¹⁸¹ In the Middlesex election campaign, Compton demonstrated his support for Warwick Lake when they both waited on the queen with a delegation of local gentry in early May 1702 to express their support for her foreign and domestic policies.¹⁸²

Over the summer, Compton persuaded the queen not to renew the commission for ecclesiastical affairs which had played so prominent a role in the preferment of whiggishly inclined clergymen. He may have hoped to increase his own influence thereby, but by the end of the year ecclesiastical management had passed to Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford.¹⁸³ Compton took his seat at the start of the new Parliament on 20 Oct. 1702 and attended the session for 62 per cent of all sittings. In Convocation on 25 Nov. 1702, Compton, Sprat and Trelawny broke episcopal ranks in the upper house and voted that the bishops should not deny the lower the additional session they sought. On 3 Dec., back in the Lords, when the bill against occasional conformity had its second reading, Compton voted against the amendment proposed by Somers which limited the scope of the bill to those covered by the Test Act. The following day, Compton voted against another proposed amendment to the effect that office-holders receive the sacrament four times a year and attend Church once a month. To Compton and the Tories this was a ‘farther prostitution’ of the sacrament and they successfully voted to reject it. On 7 Dec. in the ‘grand debate’ on leaving out the proposed financial penalties, Compton voted to keep them in, no doubt well aware that since the bill had originated in the Commons such an alteration would be considered an infringement of its privileges by the lower House and lead to the loss of the bill in its entirety. On 9 Dec., aware that the Commons’ strategy for securing the passage of the bill involved tacking it to a money bill, he voted against the resolution that deemed tacking to be unparliamentary. On 17 Dec., after a conference demanded by the Commons on the amendments to the occasional conformity bill, the House divided on an adjournment. The Tory minority, including Compton, voted for the delay, but the motion was defeated.¹⁸⁴

In or about January 1703, Compton was unsurprisingly forecast as a supporter of the legislation against occasional conformity and on 16 Jan. he voted against retaining the Lords’ wrecking amendment on penalties. Five days earlier Compton had voted with the minority in the division for an adjournment during the debate on a declaratory bill to explain the Act of Succession. On 19 Jan. his name appears in the attendance list, although William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, indicates that he arrived late and came into the chamber during the debate in a committee of the whole on the prince of Denmark’s bill. Nicolson’s account of the voting, which may be unreliable, indicates that Compton voted in favour of resuming the House.¹⁸⁵

During January and February 1703 Compton reported back to the House on a wide range of bills on ecclesiastical and economic matters: to improve ground in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields for the use of the poor; the Gloucester poor bill; the St Paul’s Cathedral bill; to continue acts concerning leather exports and vagrancy; to encourage the consumption of malted corn; and to prevent illegal imports of French and foreign brandy. On 4 Feb. 1703, Compton again revealed his ecclesiastical Toryism when he moved the House that clergymen already instituted into vacant livings should not be deprived if they refused the oath of abjuration. On 8 Feb. he brought a petition into the House from the lord mayor of London and aldermen concerning the appeal brought by Thomas Wharton*, 5th Baron Wharton.¹⁸⁶

In the recess following the prorogation of 27 Feb. 1703, Compton was authorized to seek out in Essex persons suspected of ‘unlawful correspondence’.¹⁸⁷ During November 1703 he was twice forecast by Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, as a supporter of another occasional conformity bill. He attended the 1703-4 session for just over half of all sittings. On 14 Dec. 1703 he voted with the Tories in favour of the new occasional conformity bill, dissenting from the resolution to throw it out before its second reading. On 14 Jan. 1704 he dissented from the Lords’ grant of a writ of error in Ashby v. White and on 3 Mar. from the resolution that the key to the ‘Gibberish Letters’ be made known only to the queen and to the lords examining the Scotch Plot. On 16 Mar. he entered dissents during the passage of the bill for examining the public accounts, one to the removal of the Robert Byerley^‡ from the list of commissioners and another to the resolution to replace him with a further three commissioners. On 21 Mar. 1704 he registered three dissents concerning the bill for raising recruits for the armed forces: against the failure to adjourn the House; against the rejection of a rider that would require the consent of the churchwardens and overseers of the poor; and against the passage of the bill on the specific grounds that it enabled the compulsory conscription of ‘such able-bodied men as have not any lawful calling or employment, or visible means for their maintenance and livelihood’. Four days later he again dissented in the matter of the plotter Ferguson, believing that failure to pass censure or to arrest and prosecute him encouraged the enemies of the crown.

In advance of the 1704-5 session he received the proxy of William Beaw (vacated at the end of the session). He took his seat on 24 Oct. 1704. Now over 70 years of age, his attendance was beginning to decline; he was present for just 47 per cent of sittings. On 9 Nov. he again received Trelawny’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session). He attended the House on 15 Dec. when the queen was present and the Commons brought up the latest occasional conformity bill; Compton spoke for the bill in a lengthy debate and voted for a second reading, using Trelawny’s proxy. When the House voted to throw out the bill, he registered his dissent. As usual he joined the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth, showing solidarity with the Whig bishops only in their shared Protestant evangelism.¹⁸⁸

After the dissolution on 5 Apr. 1705 Compton campaigned vigorously for the Tories, having used his influence to create freemen where possible to affect the franchise. On 10 May, Charles Montagu*, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, complained to the duchess of Marlborough that at Maldon no one could stand for election, ‘or can pretend to stand till the humour is much altered in Essex, for they have made all the persons and creatures of the bishop of London free of the town’. Two tackers won the Maldon poll with Compton’s backing.¹⁸⁹ His success was not repeated in Essex where 16 Tories had been removed from the deputy lieutenancy. Compton’s candidates were defeated amidst rancorous accusations of foul play, not least a suspicious increase in the size of the electorate.¹⁹⁰

Compton attended the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Oct. 1705 but he attended the session for only 19 per cent of sittings. On 20 Nov. in the debate on a regency in the event of the queen’s death, he was one of six Tory bishops who voted against the attempt of Rochester and Nottingham to exclude Sidney Godolphin*, Earl Godolphin, from being an ex officio regent. Compton and George Hooper*, bishop of Bath and Wells alone voted that the lord mayor of London be one of the regents.¹⁹¹ On 28 Nov. he again received Beaw’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session), almost certainly for divisions on the succession. Two days later he dissented from the resolution that no further instructions be given to the committee of the whole on the bill to secure the person of the queen and the Protestant succession (regency bill). On 3 Dec. he protested three times during the passage of the bill on the rejection of riders to prevent the lords justices from repealing what were perceived to be fundamental constitutional laws, including the Habeas Corpus Act, The Toleration Act, the Test Acts of 1673 and 1678 and the Act of Succession.

Loyal to his own Tory principles but determined to protect the queen from the criticism implied in the ‘Church in danger’ campaign, Compton spoke at length in the House on 6 Dec. 1705, venting his anger indiscriminately on a range of issues:

[He] prefaced his discourse with professing his entire confidence in the queen and in the present great ministry at court ... but complained that the minds of the inferior subjects were debauched by atheistical and lewd pamphlets. He lamented his own fruitless struggle with Hickeringill ... he then took notice (in an odd manner) of reports that had passed in relation to briberies in election of members of the other House.

He also raged against Toland’s Memorial of the State of England, the Calves-head club and the Scots, and disparaged the sermons of Benjamin Hoadly^†, later bishop of Bangor, especially one on civil government preached recently in the City.¹⁹² His censure of the Scots infuriated Burnet who responded that Compton could not with integrity criticize any doctrine of resistance or ‘he did not know what defence his lordship could make for his appearing in arms at Nottingham’.¹⁹³ Compton voted against the motion that the Church was not in danger and subsequently registered his protest when it passed. On 31 Jan. 1706, during debate on the repeal of the place clause in the Act of Succession, Compton and Sharp abstained by withdrawing from the House before the division.¹⁹⁴

He resumed his seat in the Lords at the start of business on 3 Dec. 1706, but attended for only 22 per cent of all sittings. Compton may have been involved in the negotiations relating to the crisis caused by the queen’s desire to elevate the Tories William Dawes*, to Chester, and Offspring Blackall*, to Exeter. The sermon preached at his funeral referred obscurely to Compton’s claim to have given the queen ‘such reasonable (and to her own pious inclinations, such agreeable) advice, upon the vacancy of two dioceses, as occasion’d their being well fill’d, when ’twas little expected’.¹⁹⁵ The queen, however, always insisted that she and she alone had taken the decision to promote Dawes and Blackall.

Back in the House on 13 Jan. 1707 for the debate on union with Scotland, Compton voted against the ‘Scotch Acts’, which were perceived as a threat to the Church of England.¹⁹⁶ On this particular issue he was allied to Tenison, supporting the archbishop’s bill for the security of the Church. On 3 Feb. he protested against the resolution not to instruct the committee of the whole to insert a clause declaring the 1673 Test Act ‘perpetual and unalterable’ and on 15 Feb. voted to postpone consideration of the first article of union. Compton attended the debate on the ratification bill on 3 Mar. and voted against it.¹⁹⁷

Compton attended the short April 1707 parliamentary session for 30 per cent of sittings. He took his seat for the next session at the start of business on 23 Oct., attending for 32 per cent of all sittings. Nevertheless, he was increasingly withdrawn from public life, professing an aversion both to London and to business.¹⁹⁸ He joined both archbishops and lord chief justice Sir John Holt^‡ on 12 Jan. 1708 to discuss a bill on libels. He opposed (unsuccessfully) Somers’ church statutes bill (which favoured Nicolson rather than Atterbury in their dispute over the rights of the deanery of Carlisle), defying a directive from Lambeth that he support the legislation.¹⁹⁹ On 19 Mar. 1708 Compton reported back from the committee of the whole on St Paul’s bill. His close alliance with Harley meant that after the latter’s fall from power, Compton was even more distanced from the ministry.

Nevertheless, over the summer of 1708 Compton commuted between Colchester and Fulham, preparing for the general election.²⁰⁰ Although the Essex electorate followed the national trend for Whig success, Compton sustained his influence in Maldon, where Sir Richard Child^‡ was elected following the creation of Tory freemen.²⁰¹ Following the death of Prince George at the end of October 1708, Compton visited the queen to comfort her every day. Her welfare was not his only concern; he was agitating behind the scenes for the election of Atterbury as prolocutor of Convocation.²⁰² When Parliament opened on 16 Nov. 1708, Compton resumed his seat but he came to the House for only 20 per cent of sittings. He was by now suffering from regular attacks of gout and it was gout that kept him from the House on 21 Jan. 1709 for the vote on whether Scots peers with British titles could vote in the elections for Scots representative peers. In April, together with James Douglas*, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], and duke of Dover, he received a report from Nicolson about the case of the episcopal clergy in Aberdeen who were trying to have an address presented to the queen concerning their grievances under Prebysterian domination. Queensberry, the Scottish secretary of state, had proved to be unsympathetic and it was Compton who presented the address to the queen on 25 May.²⁰³

Compton resumed his seat on the first day of the November 1709 session and attended 40 per cent of all sittings. On 25 Feb. 1710 the Lords received an appeal from the court of exchequer concerning Compton’s right to present to the chapel at Hammersmith. The appeal was delayed pending the trial of Henry Sacheverell. Compton, an ardent supporter of Sacheverell, was determined, despite ‘a fit of the gravel’, to attend the trial and to use Trelawny’s proxy in Sacheverell’s favour. The trial began in Westminster Hall on 27 Feb., with Compton attending throughout. On 14 Mar. he voted unsuccessfully to secure an adjournment and entered his protest. He also protested against the resolution that it was not necessary to include in an impeachment the particular words supposed to be criminal. At the start of the debate on 16 Mar. into the impeachment articles, Compton spoke against the first article, blaming Sacheverell for his ‘heat and indiscretion, yet thought he was far from deserving an impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanours’.²⁰⁴ He ‘justified the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance but disapproved of the doctor’s way of maintaining it’.²⁰⁵ He went on to protest against putting the question and against the resolution that the Commons had made good the first article of impeachment. The following day he registered further protests against the measure. He also protested against the resolution limiting peers to a single verdict of guilty or not guilty. On 20 Mar. he found Sacheverell not guilty, dissented against the verdict and, the following day, dissented against the censure. A week later he was ‘a little revived with the distant hopes that this impeachment may turn one day or other to the advantage of the Church’.²⁰⁶

With the Sacheverell case out of the way there was time for the House to settle the Hammersmith case. The dispute clearly reflected a division within what was then the hamlet of Hammersmith. The case against Compton had been dismissed in exchequer, apparently because it was the wrong venue, but sympathetic remarks by the judges encouraged his opponents (said to be ‘the meaner sort of inhabitants’) to take possession of the chapel, and prevent its use until their appeal was determined. An order from the House, issued on 25 Mar., failed to dislodge them so an order for their attachment was issued on 27 March. Compton finally won his case on 1 April. Compton’s chaplain, Ralph Bridges, who thought Compton’s right ‘was as clear as day’ but who nevertheless found it desirable to lobby at least one peer for support, reported that ‘My Lord Wh[arto]n & some other Whig lords did all they could to make a party cause of this private matter, which was carried for my lord [Compton], but by one vote.’²⁰⁷

Later in April 1710 Bridges wrote that Compton had tried to advise Sacheverell on his conduct, but that his guidance had been spurned. Just what the advice was remains a matter for speculation, but Bridges thought that ‘it will be best for us to be silent about it, till the wind turns, which may be very quickly with him as it has been with much greater men before him’ which seems to imply that Compton wanted Sacheverell to keep a low profile. After the prorogation, Compton returned to Fulham and, on 30 Apr. 1710, confirmed three ‘Indian kings’ (converted native Americans).²⁰⁸ Early in August, with a cabinet reshuffle imminent, Compton assured Harley that he would abandon the election campaign and rush to London if his presence were required. Within days he had arranged to travel to London with ‘all haste possible’ but he clearly had no idea why his presence was required, ‘being utterly a stranger to all late transactions, so that I must entreat you to direct somebody to instruct me a little what it is you would have me do’.²⁰⁹

With Godolphin out of the treasury and Harley restored to the ministry, Compton began a series of visits to the clergy. On 21 Aug. 1710, he assembled them at St Paul’s to subscribe an address to the queen, designed particularly as counter propaganda to The Good Old Cause, a ‘very pernicious book’ by Charles Leslie. The address was given greater currency and increased circulation by being published, in a prominent position, in the London Gazette of 22-24 Aug., inserted there at the specific request of the secretary of state, William Legge*, 2nd Baron (later earl of) Dartmouth.²¹⁰ Whigs naturally perceived this as ‘unrestrained Toryism’ and subjected Compton to virulent attack, calumniating such addresses ‘as reproaches unjustly fastened on the Church and more becoming an inflam’d headless mob, than men setting up as the only patrons of religion and, and patriots of the constitution’.²¹¹

With a general election in the offing, Compton wrote to Harley on 31 Aug. 1710 warning him that many of their Tory supporters were worried about Whig domination of local government so that ‘unless the most obnoxious of the justices of peace and deputy lieutenants be left out, and new commissions with some of the queen’s best friends put in, it will not be in their power to choose whom they like best for fear of ill usage from tyrants’.²¹² When Parliament was dissolved on 21 Sept., Compton swung into action for the forthcoming elections. In Essex the Tories gained only one of the two seats but even this was seen as a major victory for the Church. Compton also intervened at Colchester on behalf of William Gore^‡, husband of his great-niece Mary. Gore lost but was subsequently seated on petition.²¹³

Compton also sustained his interest in overseas issues. He wrote to Dartmouth about appointing a chaplain to the English trading factory in Leghorn: ‘so many public transactions are now on foot in the City ... the persons concerned in sending this chaplain over to Leghorn are many of the most considerable merchants in London’.²¹⁴ Maintaining an interest in the fate of the Church in the colonies, in October 1710 he also informed Dartmouth of the ‘great disorderliness of several parishes in the Leeward Islands ... by pretending to a separate ecclesiastical jurisdiction’.²¹⁵

Compton attended the opening of Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710 but, riddled with gout, attended only 17 per cent of all sittings. He was confined at home from 18 Dec. to mid-March 1711, thus missing the queen’s attempts to placate the Tory lower clergy in Convocation and the issue of a licence empowering him and other Tory bishops to ‘expedite’ matters and which was clearly calculated to undermine Tenison. He also missed the Lords’ debates on the Spanish war and the conduct of the previous ministry.²¹⁶ On 6 Feb. 1711, one day after the Tories had failed to secure the repeal of the Whig Act of General Naturalization, he registered his proxy in favour of John Sharp. Compton’s absence meant that the appeal brought by the Scottish Episcopalian minister, James Greenshields, was deliberately delayed ‘because the bishop of London who is his great friend could not come to the House’.²¹⁷ Compton returned to the House on 13 March. On 18 Apr. he attended Convocation to vote on the Whiston heresy charge, protesting against an address to the queen to refer the case to the judges on whether the synod had the power to censure for heresy.²¹⁸ The dispute in Hammersmith rumbled on and was taken to chancery. Early in May Compton won the case there but his opponents promptly applied to the Lords for a writ of error, only to have their case dismissed on 18 May.

Compton planned his summer visitation with half an eye on Tenison’s poor health, apparently sure the queen would translate him to Lambeth in the event of his death.²¹⁹ He also sought the rewards of loyalty from Harley, newly ennobled as earl of Oxford. In June 1711 he asked Oxford to intervene with the queen on behalf of his nephew George Compton*, 4th earl of Northampton; Northampton was re-admitted to the Privy Council in December and made constable of the Tower in the new year. It also seems to have been Compton’s influence that secured the deanery of Christ Church for Atterbury.²²⁰

Compton took his seat at the start of the new session on 7 Dec. 1711. He attended one third of all sittings, receiving Hooper’s proxy on the first day of business and holding it for the whole session. Compton missed the December vote on the Hamilton peerage case and did not return to the House until 14 Jan. 1712. He was again absent on 31 Jan. when the House received his petition complaining that the inhabitants of Hammersmith had failed to pay the costs in their appeal of the previous year. The House ordered the offending litigants to be attached; costs were then paid and the order discharged on 8 February.

In February 1712 Alexander Rose, the nonjuring bishop of Edinburgh, wrote to Compton and others about the Scottish toleration bill, ‘begging them for God’s sake to stop the passing of that bill for it would ruin their interest here’.²²¹ The problem with the bill was that it included a requirement to take the oath of abjuration and would thus exclude nonjurors from its provisions. Nevertheless, on 26 Feb. Compton voted with the majority in favour of the bill as it had been received from the Commons.²²² Three days later he received the proxy of Thomas Sprat (vacated on 6 June).

Compton was now entering his final decline. On 8 Oct. 1712 he wrote to Oxford that although ‘the world believes me to be on the mending hand’ the reality was that his case was dangerous ‘and I must change my address from desiring a pension to beg a charity’. He had hitherto kept his financial embarrassments secret but now revealed them to Oxford. He needed £3,000 ‘immediately to prevent the utmost shame’ and asked for the money ‘as secret service by bank bills’.²²³ Whether the money was paid is as yet unknown. Compton continued to press Oxford for favours for relatives and clients.²²⁴ He was also still actively pursuing the interests of the Church in the colonies. In December 1712 he proposed ‘the building a church in each of the two towns where Indians inhabit in Virginia and maintaining a minister and assistant at each of them with 200l. per an. for that purpose’. In the following April he was involved in plans to send a chaplain to the Leeward Islands.²²⁵

Compton was still seen as one of the leaders of the Tory bishops. On 9 Feb. 1713 Hooper asked him to act as an intermediary in obtaining leave of absence from the House and court duties; he had already tried and failed to contact Sharp of York for the same purpose and he seems to have made no attempt to secure Tenison’s support.²²⁶ Although he was present for the start of the new session on 9 Apr., Compton attended this, his final session, for only 13 per cent of all sittings. He attended on 5 June for the debate on the malt tax bill, presumably voting on the side of the court since John Elphinstone*, 4th Baron Balmerinoch regretted that they had lacked the support of several members including ‘the poor old bishop of London’.²²⁷ Later that month he was estimated by Oxford as a supporter of the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty but by then he was too ill to attend the House. On 4 July Bridges reported that ‘we are preparing ourselves to part with him’.²²⁸ Compton died on the evening of 7 July aged 81. He bequeathed his books to Sion College, St Paul’s and the Free School of Colchester and the impropriate tithes and glebe of Mark’s Tey in Essex for the maintenance of a minister. His residuary heir and executor was his nephew, Hatton Compton, appointed lieutenant of the Tower of London in 1715.

The glowing sermons that were printed after his death testify to the high regard in which Compton was held by his clergy.²²⁹ Compton’s earliest biography began as the sermon delivered at his funeral by one of his chaplains, Thomas Gooch^†, who became bishop of Norwich in 1738 and of Ely in 1747.²³⁰ Gooch regarded Compton as a man who had been let down by those in power after the Revolution, a view that was probably shared by Compton himself but which ignores the extent to which Compton’s aristocratic background provided him with a confidence in his own destiny that was not matched by his political skills.. He was buried on 15 July 1713 in Fulham parish churchyard.

John Cosin, adopted by the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement as one of its most significant influences, was born into a well-established gentry family of Norfolk and married into one of the most ancient houses of county Durham. An autocratic and uncompromisingly regal quasi-prince-bishop of the Durham palatinate (which included the role of lord lieutenant), Cosin successfully suppressed efforts from the local gentry to obtain parliamentary representation in the Commons.⁶ Although he was often on bad terms with his chapter, he was able to appoint like-minded individuals to significant office in the diocese. Some of these were individuals whom he had probably known in Cambridge: his chaplain (appointed in succession to William Sancroft*, later archbishop of Canterbury, in 1662), George Davenport; the treasurer of the cathedral, Canon Richard Wrench; and Archdeacon Isaac Basire (whose son and namesake would eventually become the fourth husband of Cosin’s daughter, Elizabeth).⁷ More surprising was his choice of Miles Stapylton (or Stapleton) as his secretary.Stapylton came from a prominent Presbyterian family. His brother, Henry Stapleton^‡, was knighted at the Restoration but had previously been an opponent of Charles I’s policies, although he was not quite as notorious a critic as their kinsman, Sir Philip Stapylton^‡. Presumably he was the brother of ‘bad principles’ referred to by Cosin in 1669.⁸ The Stapyltons were not the only family divided by religious and political differences: Cosin’s brother-in-law was the regicide John Blakiston^‡; and Cosin’s own anti-Catholicism did not prevent his only son from converting to Rome.

Throughout Cosin’s career in the episcopate there was a tension between the demands of his regional and his parliamentary duties; he resolved this problem by constant communication with Stapylton.⁹ It is clear from the survival of this correspondence that, despite shouldering his share of the parliamentary workload while at Westminster, Cosin’s highest priorities were his palatinate, lieutenancy and commercial interests. Even at a politically volatile period when he was too ill to travel to Parliament, he maintained that he could serve the king more effectively as lord lieutenant than as a vote in Parliament.¹⁰

Wealth

Cosin, as a court pensioner under Charles I, had been reasonably prosperous but he was reduced to penury after the death of the king. By 1644 he had left England for France, where he became dependent on charity from his fellow exiles and from the clergy at home (including his own chaplain, William Sancroft), while his daughters subsisted on a small pension from the Protectorate.¹¹ Returning to England at the Restoration he begged Edward Hyde*, later earl of Clarendon, to ‘reflect upon my necessities’.¹² He rapidly recovered his personal fortune, proving remarkably careful with his money (on one occasion having his secretary obtain estimates for work, on the grounds that a workman would inflate the price for a bishop).¹³ In his first year as bishop of Durham he received £19,800 from leases but he also spent lavishly on rebuilding the episcopal residences and charitable purposes.¹⁴ A matter of constant concern was the requirement, imposed during the reign of Elizabeth, that an annual rent of £880 be paid to the Crown for diocesan lands; the Crown had subsequently allocated this rent as a pension to Queen Henrietta Maria.¹⁵

Cosin spent in excess of £34,000 on public works and refurbishments during the first eight years of his episcopate.¹⁶ Although he claimed in his will that none of his £20,000 episcopal revenue had been diverted to personal expenditure, at his death he was able to bequeath a large amount of real estate, extensive annuities and over £5,000 in money. He was not always able to lay hands on ready cash for his elaborate plans, and at the end of 1664 he sought a loan of £300 in gold from the London alderman Sir William Turner.¹⁷ Thrifty and austere in his personal taste (in sharp contrast to his love of ecclesiastical baroque), he would nevertheless remark of his financial situation 18 months before his death that he could only ‘lament the bishop of Durham’s condition’.¹⁸

Early career, to 1660

A veteran of the Caroline higher clergy, Cosin was an active member, with William Laud^†, of the Durham House Group of anti-Calvinists and polemicists, an Arminian theological grouping that clustered around Richard Neile in the 1620s and 1630s. As a historian of the liturgy, eucharist and canon of scripture he prepared devotional manuals for the Caroline court to counter accusations that Protestant courtiers were less well served than their Catholic counterparts. He continued to produce such works in exile.¹⁹ His zeal for reform, as both a ceremonialist and a musical liturgist, meant that he was vilified by orthodox reformed Protestants.²⁰ His own father-in-law commented ‘take heed of my son Cosin for he will make you all papists, if you look not to yourselves’.²¹ In 1635 he was appointed master of Peterhouse, where he was responsible for elaborate alterations to the chapel and for a marked increase in the use of music in its services. From 1639, as vice-chancellor of the university, his ability to promote controversial Laudian innovations was enhanced still further. He gained a reputation as a domineering administrator and also alienated the corporation of Cambridge.

The calling of a new Parliament in 1640 provided a forum for complaints against Cosin. He became a victim of puritan satire, lost his ecclesiastical and academic positions and joined the court in exile as chaplain in 1644.²² There he sustained a robust defence of the Church of England against Rome and, through his contacts with French Huguenots, developed a more nuanced attitude towards reformed protestantism.²³ His defence of the Church failed to prevent the conversion of his only son, John, to Rome in 1651. In 1652, however, Charles II hoped to ‘reward the service … and the sufferings you have undergone for us’.²⁴

Edward Hyde had planned to make Cosin bishop of Peterborough, although he was uneasy about Cosin’s speedy resumption of the use of the still-proscribed Anglican liturgy.²⁵ Although Gilbert Sheldon*, bishop of London and future archbishop of Canterbury, sought to marginalize strict Laudians, Cosin petitioned successfully for restoration to his livings and to the mastership of Peterhouse.²⁶ In October 1660, he was elevated to the see of Durham. After the resignation of Thomas Belasyse*, 2nd viscount Fauconberg, in 1661, he also became lord lieutenant – effectively ‘prince-bishop’ of Durham.

Bishop of Durham

Cosin embarked on an energetic episcopate, as much secular as it was spiritual. On 2 July 1660, three months before his nomination as bishop, he had already welcomed the royal commission to preserve the mines and coal pits of the see of Durham but was disappointed that it did not extend to the management of woods and game.²⁷ He was severe with both Protestant and Catholic dissenters. He also argued with his dean and chapter and was on perpetually prickly terms with Guy Carleton*, canon of Durham and dean of Carlisle, later bishop of Bristol and ultimately bishop of Chichester.²⁸ Cosin was repeatedly undermined by Carleton’s complaints, not least for seizing forfeitures due to the Crown from the attainted Sir Henry Vane, whose nephew subsequently married Carleton’s daughter Hester.²⁹ There were many competing jurisdictions in the palatinate and Cosin exploited jealousies between them, prioritizing his lieutenancy and the assertion of his own rights and privileges, often in opposition to the gentry (especially those from Newcastle), who feuded among themselves and with whom he waged a constant battle of wills.³⁰ If his attempts to recover his rights were not always successful, he made extensive use of the leases in his gift to benefit his own family, especially his son-in-law Gilbert Gerard^‡, to whom he gave first refusal of Tanfield Colliery. He also appointed Gerard constable of Durham.³¹ Ten days after his consecration, while not yet a Member of the House of Lords, he drafted (unsuccessfully) a proviso to the act to remove wards and liveries, arguing that, because of his ‘jura regalia’ in the palatine, he and his successors should be compensated out of the annual excise for the loss of his jurisdiction. He later estimated the loss to his income at £2,000 a year.³²

Cosin also resented attempts to give parliamentary representation to Durham city and county, arguing that it was unnecessary because incoming bishops of Durham swore an oath to protect the palatine authority’s rights, privileges and immunities.³³ A bill to enfranchise Durham was introduced into the Convention by Sir Thomas Widdrington^‡. Widdrington, a former parliamentarian and kin to William Widdrington*, 2nd Baron Widdrington, was a significant political figure in the region who would shortly add to his influence (and capacity to annoy Cosin) by becoming chancellor of the diocese. His bill passed the Commons on 8 Aug. 1660 and was sent up to the Lords, where it was committed on 24 August. Despite two reminders from the Commons, it was lost with the dissolution.³⁴ The gentry continued to agitate for representation but 18 months later Cosin was delighted when ‘the gentlemen at the sessions were [again] persuaded to pass over that business for knights and burgesses so quietly’.³⁵

Elections to the Cavalier Parliament in the spring of 1661 revealed Cosin’s influence in those boroughs which were permitted to vote. As lord of the manor of Northallerton he put up his son-in-law, Gerard, who was returned with a local cavalier, Roger Talbot^‡. Gerard became one of Cosin’s men of business in the Commons, supporting the bishop’s religious policies and commercial interests.³⁶

Cosin’s liturgical skills, born of a lifelong interest in correcting the Book of Common Prayer, led him, in March 1661, to begin revision of the prayer book, both at the Savoy conference and in convocation. Richard Baxter acknowledged Cosin’s learning and found him ‘more affable and familiar than the rest’ but insisted that he talked ‘with so little logic, natural or artificial, that I perceived no one much moved by anything he said’.³⁷ Although Cosin’s rigour for uniformity won the day, the royal quest for liturgical compromise sidelined the bishop’s attempt to incorporate elements of the Sarum Missal into the revised prayer book; more than half of his proposals were rejected.³⁸

Cosin went north to his bishopric in August 1661.³⁹ He lost the battle to keep Sancroft in the north as his chaplain but was more successful in his recommendations to the deputy lieutenancy.⁴⁰ He had expected to return to London no later than Michaelmas (29 Sept.) 1661 to avoid the chaos of winter travel, not least since Sheldon had made it clear that after the readmission of the bishops the king expected them to take their seats in Parliament promptly.⁴¹ He took his seat in the House on 20 Nov. 1661, the first day the bishops were readmitted to the Lords, and attended his first session for 62 per cent of all sittings.

Prayer book revisions and the Uniformity Bill, 1661–2

Cosin’s parliamentary career was circumscribed by ill health and the difficulties of travel from the far north of England but, once installed in his Pall Mall lodgings, he took a full role in the business of the House, reporting from committees, speaking in debate and helping to manage conferences with the Commons. He was a regular member of the Journal committee, examining the Journal on eight occasions. Of the nine sessions during his episcopate, he attended seven, four of those for more than two-thirds of all sittings. There are no available division lists for votes in which he participated but his voting intentions on numerous matters are clear from his correspondence. In his first session, Cosin was named to 60 select committees and to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions. On 20 Mar. 1662 he reported to the House on private legislation for Sir Thomas Lee^‡. On 29 Apr. he also reported back from the committee on the Wye and Lugg navigation (having chaired the latter the same day).⁴² On 7 Dec. 1661 he was named as a conference manager on the swearing of witnesses to be examined in the Commons.

The prayer book revisions were finally complete by December 1661. Cosin was one of the bishops who, together with Sheldon attended the Privy Council where the liturgy was approved and sent to the House of Lords.⁴³ On 7 Jan. 1662 he was one of the managers of the conference on the joint committee with the Commons concerning the most recent political plot. During this session he was granted (with backdated profits) the estate in Durham forfeited by the late Sir Arthur Hesilrige^‡.⁴⁴ He continued to recover Church patrimony and was clearly maximizing his revenues, dealing harshly with his tenants in Peterborough.⁴⁵ On 25 Jan. it was reported by his secretary that he had spoken in the House about the sum of £25,000 to be recovered for the palatine as reimbursement for maintenance of the Scottish army after the battle of Newburn in 1640, and was confident ‘to bring it to good conclusion’.⁴⁶

On 10 Mar. 1662 Cosin reported back to the House from the select committee on the bill on the religious settlement (‘to confirm three acts’). As a supporter of a narrow Anglican uniformity he antagonized Presbyterians still more by his ‘speaking and carriage in this business’.⁴⁷ Emotive debates erupted in the Lords on 18 Mar. over the uniformity bill and the proposed royal proviso to exempt certain clergy from its provisions. Cosin supported the challenge to Clarendon by George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, who claimed that the proviso was a breach of privilege. Cosin’s strong views on the jure divino nature of the episcopate made his willingness to support such a challenge easily understandable. He had long held strong views on the subject: in 1628 he was reported to have said that the king ‘is not supreme head of the Church of England next under Christ, nor hath he any more power of excommunication than my man that rubs my horse[’s] heels’. Although he denied having said it, the sentiment was technically correct for, while the king was supreme governor of the Church, he lacked sacerdotal power.⁴⁸

Cosin nevertheless insisted that such powers could be wielded only by an archbishop.⁴⁹ The furore deepened when Bristol challenged Clarendon’s reference to Cosin’s speech as a breach of the rules of the House; the House overruled Bristol’s objection but he and Cosin had secured the defeat of the proviso.⁵⁰

On 8 May 1662 Cosin acquainted the House that he, George Griffith*, of St Asaph, and Richard Sterne*, of Carlisle, had authority from convocation to amend a scribal error in the new version of the Book of Common Prayer and did so at the clerk’s table. On 17 May the special privileges of the palatine were again raised when the conference on the northern borders bill was reported by Charles Stanley*, 8th earl of Derby. The bill enabled the justices of the peace for Northumberland and Cumberland to impose a tax or rate in order to fund local units to protect the inhabitants against marauding ‘moss troopers’. The Lords bowed to the Commons’ refusal to agree to their proviso to extend the bill to the county palatine and Newcastle.⁵¹

Diocesan affairs, 1662–4

Cosin attended for the prorogation on 19 May 1662, then returned to his bishopric and maintained that he was ‘hugely busy’. He nevertheless planned to be at Doncaster by the end of May, unless delayed by William Cavendish*, marquess of Newcastle, and intended to be in Northumberland by July.⁵² In the wake of the new Act of Uniformity, he conducted a thoroughgoing visitation of both diocese and cathedral, corresponded with Sancroft and Henry King*, of Chichester, and attempted to raise funds for the redemption of Barbary slaves.⁵³ Sheldon was unimpressed with his efforts (he raised only £300) and urged greater exertion.⁵⁴ Sheldon continued to criticize Cosin: a letter in October warned of complaints about Cosin’s ‘severity’ towards the recusant son of Henry Arundell*, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, which did ‘not well comply with the lenity of his majesty’s government and this present conjuncture’. When Cosin defended himself, Sheldon prickled at what he perceived as Cosin’s ‘ill gloss’ on his advice and warned that he might leave Cosin to ‘other intelligencers’ in the future. Cosin also argued with Philip Herbert*, 5th earl of Pembroke, who was in arrears with his leasehold rent on Durham House in the Strand. Cosin, who chafed constantly about the obligation to pay the queen mother’s pension, contemplated selling off the rental arrears to Pembroke ‘for a good sum and buy off the queen’s pension by act of Parliament’.⁵⁵

Not surprisingly, Cosin’s detailed scrutiny of every detail of secular and pastoral life took its toll on his health and by December 1662 he was complaining of dizzy spells while negotiating with George Morley*, bishop of Winchester, over a vacancy on the Durham chapter.⁵⁶ He was warned by Sheldon on 26 Dec. that the Privy Council had voted for a declaration of indulgence to nonconformists and Catholics. Sheldon insisted that if Cosin were too ill to travel to Parliament (when ‘the Church is like to be in great danger’), he must send his proxy to one of the other bishops but not to Sheldon himself, who, in his own attempt to control the Lords, was already ‘full’. As the February 1663 session approached, Accepted Frewen*, of York, reminded Cosin to send up his proxy. On 1 Feb. it was registered in favour of Matthew Wren*, of Ely (vacated with Cosin’s attendance in April 1663). Sterne expressed concern that Cosin should be absent at a time of ‘men’s ill affections to the church upon all occasions’ but was glad that Cosin had not been present to witness the introduction of the bill to allow the king to dispense with the Act of Uniformity.⁵⁷ By mid-March Cosin planned to leave the north, instructing his secretary to find London lodgings not in Westminster, where they would be too costly, but in nearby Covent Garden. He was almost certainly reluctant to leave his bishopric at a time when officers were in the county intending to distrain the bishop’s tenants for arrears of the annual pension owing to the queen mother since the time of his predecessor, Thomas Morton^†, ‘contrary to … St Albans promise’. Cosin expected Henry Jermyn*, earl of St Albans, the queen mother’s chamberlain, to keep his word ‘that nothing should be done in this arrear’ without first consulting the bishop. He also embarrassed Sheldon by pressing Pembroke and William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury, for their rents.⁵⁸

With rumours of sedition rife throughout the spring of 1663, Cosin reissued instructions to his deputy lieutenants.⁵⁹ The abortive Muggleswick Plot (ostensibly to murder the bishop and overthrow the government) justified (in his mind) his habitual rigour against nonconformists.⁶⁰ He had instructed the deputy lieutenants and militia to keep constant vigilance the previous November, directing Gilbert Gerard to search for Thomas Gore and Paul Hobson, ‘two of the most dangerous fellows in the North’, whose intercepted mail revealed that they were communicating in code. Intelligence suggested that Hobson had been corresponding with anabaptists in Durham.⁶¹ Samuel Pepys^‡ had heard rumours in a London coffee house of a planned rising in the north but on 30 Mar. 1663 Cosin informed the Privy Council that, despite sworn testimony by an informer from Newcastle, the combined forces of bishop, deputy lieutenants, magistrates and militia had arrested only nine men and were unable to find any evidence of a major plot against the government.⁶²

Thus occupied with local difficulties, Cosin did not return to Westminster until 29 Apr. 1663; he attended the session for 55 per cent of all sittings and was named to 23 select committees. On 29 June he chaired the select committee on Witney Free School, reporting back to the House on 1 July.⁶³ He also maintained communication with Archbishop Frewen about the possibility of legislation against conventicles.⁶⁴

By May 1663 Cosin had turned his back on his straightened circumstances in exile and settled into his role as a prince-bishop; the diarist John Evelyn recorded that he had supported Cosin during his exile but was ‘little remembered’ by the bishop ‘in his greatness’.⁶⁵ Cosin continued to restore diocesan finances. In June 1663 he produced a detailed account of revenues and incremental losses under successive monarchs. Having lost an annual £2,000 by the removal of the court of wards and liveries, he again sought reimbursement out of the excise; instead he was awarded remission of the annual rent due to the Crown for diocesan lands – but only after the death of the queen mother.⁶⁶

After visiting Cambridge in early July, Cosin returned to London and attended the session until four days before the prorogation of 27 July 1663.⁶⁷ During the summer months, he employed his extensive powers as lord lieutenant to apprehend political suspects, particularly during the Derwentdale Plot.⁶⁸ By September, Sheldon was insisting that Cosin come to Parliament, where he ‘may do … duty to the Church as well here as in your diocese and perhaps better’, but Cosin remained in Durham, sounding the alarm in mid-October about a ‘fanatic’ rising in the north.⁶⁹ He deemed it unnecessary to keep the militia in readiness, yet seems to have encouraged a belief in the continuing reality of the conspiracy, for in December Thomas Osborne*, later earl of Danby, marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds, was under the impression that Cosin was actively pursuing plotters.⁷⁰ Cosin’s enemies seized the opportunity to accuse him of incompetence; Carleton accused two of the deputy lieutenants, John Tempest^‡ and the Cosin loyalist William Blakiston^‡, of ineffectiveness against the rebels.⁷¹ According to Carleton, Cosin was impotent without the assistance of Charles Gerard*, 4th Baron Gerard, and both commissioners and militia were ineffective. Cosin appeared even less competent when an informant from Northumberland claimed that he had warned the bishop in spring 1663 of another possible rising but had not been believed. On 29 Jan. 1664 Cosin reported the latest round of arrests; none, in his opinion, would be found guilty at trial because of the lack of reliable witnesses.⁷²

Tensions at home and abroad, 1664–5

Although reluctant to leave his diocese, Cosin obeyed Sheldon and was at Westminster for the start of business on 16 Mar. 1664.⁷³ He attended 97 per cent of all sittings and was named to 11 select committees and to all 3 sessional committees. On 6 May he attended the select committee on the conventicles bill and he was present in the House regularly until the prorogation on 17 May.⁷⁴

Growing tensions with the Dutch prompted plans for a rendezvous of militia and volunteers in Durham on 26 July 1664 but it was aborted in response to rumours of a rising planned for 25 July. Blakiston feared that former parliamentarians outnumbered royalists and advised Cosin to conduct a survey of every parish. The bishop duly instructed secret investigations into any parishioners who might have served in parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell^‡ and a report on their current political principles.⁷⁵ Carleton, continuing to furnish the government with his own observations, provided Secretary Henry Bennet*, later earl of Arlington, with an account of the Durham assizes and recommendations to the bench; he accused Cosin of packing juries and doing too little to combat ‘fanatics’.⁷⁶

By October 1664 Cosin had become concerned about the extent of naval jurisdiction in Durham granted to Charles Howard*, earl of Carlisle (lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland). The bishop was questioned by Ralph Delaval^‡, deputy lieutenant of Northumberland, who feared that the palatine could prove a haven for seamen hoping to escape the press. Jealous of his jurisdiction, Cosin secured his own commission to impress seamen throughout the palatinate.⁷⁷ Meanwhile he continued to quarrel with the cathedral chapter, especially over its refusal to confirm a lease of the ‘grand colliery’.⁷⁸

Back in the Lords for the start of the new session on 24 Nov. 1664, Cosin attended for 76 per cent of all sittings and was named to 14 select committees. Despite being at Parliament, he continued to keep an eye on northern affairs. By the spring of 1665, Cosin had learned of plans to cut a 40-foot-wide drainage channel which would affect his land. Marmaduke Langdale*, 2nd Baron Langdale, intended to obtain a parliamentary act to complete the work, which it was suggested would ‘prove to the disadvantage of my lord [Cosin] and his tenants’. No such bill appears to have been introduced into either House, suggesting the distinct possibility that Cosin had succeeded in blocking it.⁷⁹

Cosin attended the House until the prorogation on 2 Mar. 1665, after which he was again able to give his full attention to his own affairs. On 1 May he again tried to secure relief from payment of the queen’s pension.⁸⁰ The outbreak of plague that year created another financial burden for the bishop, as the king ordered additional charitable collections for London victims. Having completed the fund-raising, Cosin made special application for the funds to be given not to the London victims but to those of Cambridge.⁸¹

At the start of the Anglo-Dutch war in May 1665, Cosin’s competence and integrity once again came under scrutiny from Carleton, who informed Secretary Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ in July that not only were nonconformists meeting in numbers but also that Cosin had illegally helped himself to the forfeited estate of Sir Henry Vane^‡. He added that any contesting of the estate should be carried out in London, since Cosin ‘nominates sheriffs and coroner, they are his creatures, and the adverse party fear a packed jury … if the case were in London, the witnesses would neither be overawed nor tampered with’.⁸²

Cosin conducted a visitation over the summer but his primary concerns were political rather than ecclesiastical, especially once he had been warned by Fauconberg of yet another plot, this time a rumoured uprising of Quakers.⁸³ On 8 Aug. 1665, James Stuart*, duke of York, warned Cosin that ‘fanatics’ were again plotting treason; York was unwilling to instruct Cosin to assemble the county militia but gave Cosin due notice that he must be ‘very watchful, to observe the behaviour and correspondences of all dangerous people within your lieutenancy’.⁸⁴ Throughout the autumn of 1665 Sterne supplied reports on engagements with the Dutch and informed Cosin that Sheldon would probably secure leave of absence from the Oxford session of Parliament for the ‘remote bishops’ if they provided proxies.⁸⁵ On 21 Sept. 1665 Cosin’s proxy was registered in favour of Humphrey Henchman*, bishop of London, vacated at the end of the session); it was presumably used in connection with the passage of the five mile bill.

Disputes over the Vane estates and with Denis Granville

On 6 Nov. 1665, Cosin was again attacked by Carleton, who repeated the charge that Cosin had appropriated Vane’s estates in Barnard Castle and Raby, that he had sued the tenants for arrears of rent and that he had, on learning that the estates were to be seized for the duke of York, stationed soldiers in Raby Castle after removing all livestock and household goods. Furthermore, according to Carleton, Cosin had forbidden the tenants to attend the court kept by the royal receiver and had refused to empanel a jury to sit on the king’s commission to investigate Vane’s estates, ‘giving to the disaffected party the bad example of contempt of authority’. Cosin was also accused of a ‘usurpation of his majesty’s rights’ in the exercise of his episcopal and palatine authority.⁸⁶ In January 1666 Carleton issued further warning that if Cosin was not checked in his political ambitions ‘the people will think that the king’s authority must submit to that of the county palatine of Durham’.⁸⁷ However, the Privy Council was more concerned with invasion threats and instructed Cosin to defend the coast. The troops were poorly paid and equipped and Cosin’s remit led to clashes with those deployed by government and the Crown and neighbouring lords lieutenant.⁸⁸

In February, Cosin’s flouting of royal authority in the matter of the Vane estates was again criticized, this time by John Bainbridge, one of the king’s commissioners, who corroborated Carleton’s accusations that Cosin ‘pretends royal rights in the bishopric, has seized all the rents and arrears, and refused to return a jury, in contempt of the writ’. The commission would have failed but for the intervention of the duke of York. Bainbridge forwarded to London depositions which revealed that Cosin had received £1,200 in arrears of rents due to the king since Vane’s death.⁸⁹ The bishop was not easily discredited, however. In March 1666 the king, recognizing that Cosin had as yet received no compensation for the losses caused by the abolition of the court of wards, confirmed three leases, despite the opposition of the Durham chapter.⁹⁰

It was a family matter that finally earned Cosin the rebuke of the king and involved the bishop in greater political scrutiny. By April 1666 he was in dispute with his clerical son-in-law and archdeacon of Durham, Denis Granville, over the latter’s extravagance and his treatment of Cosin’s daughter Anne. Cosin was warned by John Granville*, earl of Bath (Denis’ brother and an intimate friend of the king), that the marriage might have wrecked Denis Granville’s career owing to the king’s dislike of married clergy. Bath’s kinsman and close associate, George Monck*, duke of Albemarle, weighed in to support Denis Granville’s demand for his wife’s unpaid portion. Albemarle claimed that Granville had come ‘to great misfortune’ through his marriage to an unstable woman.⁹¹ A lengthy royal reprimand soon followed:

we are … fully satisfied that he [Denis Granville] deserves that good report which is generally given of him, notwithstanding all that hath been said to the contrary to some of our public ministers of state … cannot but recommend him in most effectual manner unto you, as a person not only well deserving in himself, but relating to a family whose favour you would not do well to condemn, that have done and suffered so much for our royal father as well as ourself, assuring you that in bestowing a fortune on him suitable to his present unhappiness, and helping him out of his distractions occasioned by his debts (which may now prove very injurious to your daughter …) you will not only do yourself a great kindness, but a most grateful and acceptable thing to us, and divers considerable persons who heartily solicit on his behalf … expecting your compliance herein, and an account of the same, (which for your own sake as well as his we shall be very sorry you should fail of) …⁹²

It is likely that Cosin complied with the command but his hatred for his son-in-law endured for years thereafter, not least when his daughter was treated with mercury as a supposed cure for her ‘distemper’.⁹³

Cosin complained of illness and weakness but pressed on with the recovery of what he saw as his financial rights. He sent an account of his dispute with Pembroke to Clarendon and Sheldon, and on 24 June 1666 he informed his chancellor, Sir Francis Goodricke^‡, that he wanted to proceed speedily at common law to preserve the privileges of the see and uphold the act of Parliament that gave him those rights. Sheldon responded that he had spoken with Pembroke’s solicitor but thought Cosin ‘would do little good’ with his persistence.⁹⁴

On 19 Mar. 1666 Cosin refused to travel to Parliament on grounds of ill health. On 27 Aug. he again informed Sheldon that he would not be able to attend the House without risk to his life. He undertook to attend Parliament in the spring but meanwhile maintained that he could best serve king and country by fulfilling his role as lord lieutenant.⁹⁵ A warning from the earl of Carlisle that Quakers were still plotting sedition perhaps helped him to justify this, although Carlisle insisted that the threat was not a formidable one.⁹⁶ On 8 Sept. 1666 Cosin received news of the Great Fire in London, including the suspicions of French complicity and instructions that he would be informed if the militia needed to assemble. Durham troops doubled their guard in anticipation of an attack within days.⁹⁷ Meanwhile, the bishop’s poor relationship with the chapter led to accusations of financial mismanagement of diocesan properties. The matter was still unsettled when it was overtaken by further security instructions from Arlington: with the defeat of rebels in Scotland, Cosin should desist from arresting ‘all disaffected persons in his lieutenancy’ but restrict his activities to those ‘who, on strong presumptions, are concluded to have been in confederacy with the late rebels’.⁹⁸

The lead mines bills, 1666–7

Cosin did not attend the session that opened in September 1666, registering his proxy to Henchman instead. Despite being a conscientious parliamentarian when at Westminster, he undoubtedly preferred to remain in Durham and was probably confident that with his son-in-law Gerard and his chancellor, Goodricke, in the Commons, his personal parliamentary interests would be well looked after. Any confidence that he felt was soon tested. During November Gerard was appointed to the Commons select committee considering a bill to empower Cosin to lease certain flooded lead mines to Humphrey Wharton^‡. Wharton was Cosin’s moormaster, with responsibility for licensing lead mines, and the payment of a royalty on lead ore (‘the bishop’s lot’) meant that Cosin had a commercial incentive to secure the bill. It passed the Commons on 3 Dec. 1666, steered through by Goodricke. The committee that then considered it in the Lords included Humphrey Wharton’s kinsman Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, and was chaired by Cosin’s metropolitan, Sterne.⁹⁹

All was not, however, well. In accordance with established procedure the committee sought the opinion of the dean and chapter, whose interests were also affected by the bill. Cosin deeply resented this. Unwilling to countenance any challenge to his authority, he insisted that, having received his own assent to the bill, the select committee needed to make no further investigation; such a precedent would encourage the chapter ‘to challenge a superintendency over the bishop, and give an ill example to all the deans and chapters in England to take part with any one of their own body against their bishop and his tenants’. The reality was that he and Wharton were both in dispute with the Durham chapter over the lease. By January 1667 Cosin had lobbied his fellow bishops and Anthony Ashley Cooper*, then Baron Ashley, later earl of Shaftesbury, in favour of the bill. Cosin advised his moormaster to comply as far as possible with the chapter’s demands, so that the lead mines bill would pass that session, ‘for if it be stopped or rejected now, how you will bring it on again hereafter, and satisfy all opposition that may arise against it, I do not know’. Isaac Basire, who opposed the bill, learned details of the committee discussions from Edward Rainbowe*, of Carlisle, who made it clear that opposition to the bill came mainly from the bishops (who were concerned about long-term damage to Church interests) but that they had been outnumbered by the lords temporal, who were prepared to negotiate with Wharton. Sheldon had then arrived and threatened to oppose the bill in its entirety.¹⁰⁰ The bill was lost with the prorogation on 8 Feb. 1667.

In July 1667 Cosin travelled south to attend the House, only to discover that Parliament was to be prorogued. He almost certainly remained in London since he was present for the first day of the new session on 10 Oct. 1667. He attended 82 per cent of all sittings and was named to 19 select committees. On 12 Oct., when proposals for toleration were being floated, he wrote to Sheldon, encouraging him to have a copy of the Commons’ address to the king on religious indulgence included as an appendix to the pamphlets that the archbishop had caused to be published.¹⁰¹ On 30 Oct. 1667 Cosin attended the select committee on colliers, wood-mongers and butchers.¹⁰² The major national issue that autumn was the attempt to impeach Clarendon, and Cosin was well placed to keep his associates informed; George Davenport described the bishop as ‘the best intelligence’ in London, after an exchange that discussed how Parliament was ‘about to hum the late lord chancellor’s jig’.¹⁰³ On 20 Nov. Cosin, Lucy and King were the only bishops named to a genuinely select committee on the bill to banish Clarendon.

Meanwhile Cosin was also pursuing personal and regional issues. On 11 Nov. 1667 a new bill to enable him to lease lead mines was brought up from the Commons, where Sir Gilbert Gerard had again assisted its passage.¹⁰⁴ The Lords committed it on 16 Nov. and it then passed rapidly through the House. Despite being in the House that day, Cosin was not named to the select committee (but he did attend it on 23 and 27 Nov.). His adversary, Dean Sudbury, also appeared before the committee and opposed the bill on behalf of the Durham chapter; the objections again centred on the length of the lease (three lives instead of 21 years as mandated by cathedral statutes) and the potential for a long-term loss of revenue. Isaac Basire may have withdrawn his objections; the new text explicitly protected his right (as rector of the parishes concerned) to tithes based on the value of the ore.¹⁰⁵ On this occasion Cosin won; the bill received the royal assent on 19 December.

Cosin and his dean and chapter were also at odds over the payment of subsidies. In December 1667 Sudbury approached Sancroft, hoping that he would present their case against the payment of subsidies to Ashley (in his capacity as chancellor of the exchequer). Not unreasonably, Cosin’s insistence that they were liable was seen as a petty act of revenge, there being no precedent for charging a cathedral chapter with subsidies.¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile, Cosin’s economic interests were also affected by another piece of legislation, the act to regulate the manufacture of broad woollen cloth. Presumably it was his lobbying that secured an order of the House on 22 Apr. 1668 that the rights of the alnager of the see of Durham should not be prejudiced by the new act.

Parliamentary representation for Durham

The question of parliamentary representation for Durham was another issue that concerned the bishop. In February 1668 he wrote that he had heard ‘that there is a great deal of plotting among some men in this country … against me and the rights of the county palatine which I labour to defend’. There was to be a new petition for parliamentary elections ‘and to annex a complaint thereunto that the bishop by his officers keep much of the country money in his own hands, and have not duly paid it in … the rumour runs here too fast and some men are apt enough to give it credit or credulity’.¹⁰⁷ In October 1666, the Durham bench had endorsed a petition from the grand jury for parliamentary representation, the jury maintaining that the subjects of Durham were politically disadvantaged. Cosin, under pressure from Arlington (who wanted to nominate Sir Joseph Williamson to a safe parliamentary seat) had agreed to compromise over elections in Durham as long as any legislation gave him the right of nomination and approval of the franchise.¹⁰⁸ On 23 Nov. 1667 he informed Stapylton that he had not yet seen the county address for knights and burgesses and that he would

stand upon the nomination of one burgess and one knight which they promised should be reserved unto me and my successors and which they are not able to make sure and good but by a clause inserted for that purpose in the act of Parliament, and about this we are now disputing as likewise about the votes of the leasehold and copyholders and customary tenants to have right in the election of one knight and one burgess … but it may cost the country dear to maintain their agents … and to pay all other costs of drawing and passing this bill before the business be ended, but Mr Morland [George Morland^‡] and some others have too good a faculty to drain their purses …¹⁰⁹

Morland, the son-in-law of Cuthbert Carr, another agitator for parliamentary representation, joined John Tempest, the deputy lieutenant, in Cosin’s black books. Tempest was dismissed from his local offices for supporting the scheme.¹¹⁰

On 13 Dec. 1667 the bill for electing two Members for the county of Durham and two for the cathedral city was given its first reading in the Commons.¹¹¹ It did not contain the clauses that Cosin had asked for and the following day he asked the Lords if he might defend those rights either in person or by counsel in the lower House; the Lords left the matter to Cosin’s discretion. In March Cosin made it clear that he feared an encroachment from the ‘Newcastle men’ who aspired to be parliamentary representatives ‘that they may swallow up all the rights if they can of the county palatine’.¹¹²

Despite the bishop’s objections the bill was popular locally. In May 1668 Cosin was disturbed by reports of triumphant celebrations in Durham for the bill’s proponents and by suggestions that at his return his own welcome would be insignificant. He was so upset by the implicit insult that he wondered if there should be a prosecution ‘for the affront thereby done to the king and the bishop as should make them sensible of their presumption herein who can give no just account of such a number meeting together in a troop without orders’.¹¹³ He worked diligently against the bill behind the scenes and it ran into trouble at its third reading in the Commons, where his spiritual chancellor, Thomas Burwell^‡, argued that ‘if this bill should pass, all the bishop’s tenants (which were a great part of the county) would be excluded from having voices, they being copyholders, and so the free-holders, which are not a tenth part of the county, should only be the electors’.¹¹⁴ The bill never reached the Lords: it was defeated by 15 votes in the Commons with Gerard and Burwell telling for the noes.¹¹⁵

Continuing diocesan unrest

Cosin returned to Durham to conduct his visitation; in early June 1668 he was at Newcastle and Tynemouth and, with Basire, consecrated a new church on ground donated by Algernon Percy*, 4th earl of Northumberland.¹¹⁶ In August, in poor health, he conducted what would be his final visitation of the cathedral.¹¹⁷ He continued to give leases to those with whom he had close connections, including Charles Gerard*, Baron Gerard of Brandon (first cousin to his son-in-law), and Miles Stapylton.¹¹⁸ By September he was on his way to London ‘to prepare for a trial the next term in a suit with the town of Newcastle about a ballast shore and other our rights’.¹¹⁹

In mid-September 1668 it was said that Cosin was not ‘in so great favour and power’ as ‘all good men’ might wish. The court preferred the likes of John Wilkins*, bishop of Chester, who told Cosin that political and religious moderation would secure English protestantism more effectively than the latter’s authoritarian tactics.¹²⁰ Cosin attended the House on 10 Nov. for the adjournment to the following spring. Five days later, he deliberately sat on the fence while supporters of the Cabal tussled with former Clarendonians about a dissolution of Parliament. He also helped to consecrate Wilkins at Ely House despite the refusal of Sheldon and Henchman to participate in the ceremony.¹²¹ His willingness to take part in the consecration ceremony did not indicate any sympathy with Wilkins’ quest for moderation. Cosin and the regional authorities remained deeply suspicious of treasonable activity under the guise of nonconformist meetings. On 23 Nov. 1668 he forwarded a complaint received from Newcastle about a religious meeting of 500 people of the ‘congregation of saints’. He complained that the meeting’s devotions were not pious but political: by singing psalm 149, ‘to bind their stately kings in chains, their lords in iron bands … this honour all his saints shall have …’, they were identifying themselves with its text and advertising their seditious intent.¹²² In December Cosin, who frequently damned with faint praise, thanked the mayor of Newcastle for his corporation’s stated determination to prosecute conventicles but regretted their difficulty in finding witnesses; the aldermen, he complained, were ‘very great strangers to the affairs and disturbances of your own town’.¹²³

Carleton continued to undermine Cosin by sending alarmist messages to central government about nonconformity in the region. His perception of the strength of the nonconformist threat was diametrically opposed to Cosin’s: the conventicle that Cosin had reported as having 500 attendees, Carleton declared to be 3,000 strong, including the wife of the mayor of Newcastle. The scale of their differences meant that the bishop felt under constant pressure to demonstrate his competence.¹²⁴ Moreover, he was expected by John Hacket*, of Lichfield and Coventry, to recall Thomas Wood*, who would later replace Hacket at Lichfield, to his Durham prebendal residence in order to rid Hacket of his ‘most intractable and filthy-natured dean’. Such an action would undoubtedly have exacerbated Cosin’s difficulties with the cathedral chapter.¹²⁵

Final years in Parliament, 1669–71

The shift in power at court to Arlington and George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, made Cosin uneasy. In January 1669 he complained to Stapylton that ‘there is a watch over me as there is over other bishops what we do herein contrary to the king’s command … that no lease of 21 years be turned into three lives’. He was also concerned that one of his tenants was procuring the assistance of Buckingham and Arlington for his own benefit against Cosin’s interests. He feared that this would ‘open a gap to all others to rush in after him and continually to disquiet me, till all my tenants that are considerable make themselves masters over me’.¹²⁶

Cosin attended the House on 1 Mar. 1669 for the prorogation and then returned to the north-east, where he recovered better health. By June he was commuting between Auckland Castle and Durham and, with news of a new parliamentary session anticipated as early as October, expected to return to London. The death of the queen mother in September 1669 gave him a renewed incentive to apply for an abatement of the annual pension; by the following summer, he had still failed, despite presenting himself in person at the treasury.¹²⁷ Presumably anxious to preserve relationships with other members of the elite, he acceded to a request from James Compton*, 3rd earl of Northampton, that a Northampton relative jump the queue for a Cosin scholarship at Peterhouse; Northampton, he wrote, ‘must not be denied’.¹²⁸

Six days before the start of the new session, Cosin received the proxy of William Lucy (vacated at the end of the session). He attended the House on 19 Oct. 1669 for the start of business, was present for 67 per cent of all sittings and was named to four select committees and to all three of the sessional committees. For Cosin the main issue of the session was the revival of attempts to enfranchise Durham. By 23 Oct. he had instructed Stapylton to organize the sympathetic gentry ‘to be ready in all such matters as may contribute to quash any such efforts for knights and burgesses’. During the winter months, with his chaplain William Flower in constant communication with Stapylton, Cosin was confident that a meeting at Chester-le-Street about a new attempt to obtain parliamentary representation would misfire. Proponents of reform appear to have counted on the support of Charles Powlett*, then styled Lord St John of Basing, (later 6th marquess of Winchester and duke of Bolton), who had acquired interests in the north-east through his second marriage. Cosin, with earlier differences with Bath presumably mended, was however confident that St John would ‘neither afford them his furtherance in their restless design … nor oppose my lord the earl of Bath between whom and him there is a great dearness of friendship’.¹²⁹ Yet he was dismayed that two of the activists were George Morland and William Bristow of Great Lumley, men whom Cosin had put into the commission of the peace on the condition that ‘they would act nothing against the privileges of the county palatine and the rights of the bishop’s courts and officers at Durham; which if they continue to do … they will extremely disturb the country and give me much trouble’. In the end, Cosin managed to secure the support of St John and instructed Stapylton to orchestrate an opportunity to invoke the statute against tumultuous petitioning.¹³⁰

In November 1669 Cosin expressed dismay over the continuing factional struggles associated with Skinner’s Case.¹³¹ His focus nevertheless remained firmly on his palatinate. On 14 Dec. 1669, administering his northern affairs from London, Cosin warned Stapylton that John Maitland*, duke of Lauderdale [S] (who later sat as earl of Guilford), would be returning from Scotland via Durham and that he must be entertained with full hospitality at the bishop’s castle. He remained angry about the continuing campaign to secure parliamentary representation for Durham and told Stapylton that,

I like not Mr Morland’s answer which he gave you, for it hath some mischief in the belly of it, besides some untruth that there is in it; for when first … the foreman of the Grand Jury brought in the petition about k[night]s and b[urgesse]s and about a contribution made for the promoting that design, Mr Morland protested to myself, who questioned him about it, that he had no hand in it at all, and would never meddle with it, which you may tell him again from me. Nor do I like Mr Bristow’s answer, who it seems would meddle in the matter and not be seen in it; else why did he go to the meeting …¹³²

As the 1670–1 parliamentary session approached, Cosin was confident that the king would stick ‘unto his own party in the Parliament which I make no question will very faithfully and amply serve him in the defence of his kingdom and the Church’.¹³³ Presumably he intended to be in the Lords at the beginning of the session, for on 9 Feb. 1670 he received William Lucy’s proxy; in the event, however, he was ill and did not attend the first two weeks of the session.¹³⁴ He took his seat on 26 Feb., attended 26 per cent of all sittings and was named to 18 select committees. He told Stapylton that on 21 Mar. 1670 the king had attended the Lords for debates on the conventicles bill, insisting that Charles was ‘firm to the Parliament and the Parliament to him: both fast against the conventicles’.¹³⁵ As the bill passed through both Houses, Cosin may have been reflecting on the trouble caused by his seizing of the Vane estates; he objected to the Commons’ clause on forfeitures, which, by reserving them to the palatine courts, made him look greedy, if not corrupt:

I have no desire to get any thing either by their forfeitures or the forfeitures of others upon this score, and therefore I wished my friends in the House of Commons to let the Act stand as it was penned, that the forfeitures should be recovered in any of the king’s courts at Westminster, whereunto if I had added the courts established within the county Palatine of Durham, as they in the Marches of Wales and elsewhere did not, it would have been interpreted to be a greediness and a desire of gain in me, and besides it would have been an envious thing from the justices and other officers or delinquents in our country that I should take their forfeitures to myself, against which you know I have often made profession, and so I pray tell them all …¹³⁶

Cosin’s reluctance should not be construed as a willingness to give up the proposed forfeitures altogether. Later in the summer, he expected Stapylton to co-ordinate efforts among the bishop’s supporters ‘to preserve them to me against the faction that are ready to take them away’.¹³⁷

In March 1670 the divorce bill of John Manners*, Lord Roos, the future 9th earl and duke of Rutland, came before the House. Even before the debate began, it was known that Cosin would defy the majority of the bishops and support the bill.¹³⁸ His careful analysis of biblical teaching on the validity of divorce in cases of adultery was republished and re-examined on several occasions after his death. The strength of his views, and his determination to support Roos, meant that he found himself once again in a somewhat strange alliance with the tolerationist John Wilkins. Cosin and Wilkins were the only bishops named to the select committee on 19 Mar. but not before Cosin, on his own admission, generated another three-and-a-half hours of work for the Lords.¹³⁹ While it is possible that he was diplomatically absent from the House between 24 Mar. (when the bill was reported from committee) and 9 Apr., he does appear to have been genuinely ill, since on 2 Apr. it was reported that he had been ‘extremely pained with the strangury’ for the past week.¹⁴⁰

On 28 Mar. Cosin registered his proxy in favour of Wilkins (thus also vacating the proxy he held from Lucy), presumably anticipating that it would be used in favour of the bill. Proxies had been used at the first and second readings and it seems likely therefore that they were also used at the third reading, though there is no evidence to confirm this. While still absent from the House, Cosin re-registered his proxy in favour of Seth Ward*, of Salisbury, on 4 Apr., presumably for use in any potential vote on the conventicles bill. Ward, unlike Wilkins, could be trusted to oppose it. The proxy was vacated with Cosin’s attendance five days later. Once the bill had passed he sent a copy to Stapylton, instructing him to co-ordinate its implementation. Later that summer Stapylton, despairing ‘ever either to write or doe any thing that shall be pleasing or acceptable’ to the bishop, tendered his resignation. Cosin insisted that ‘his frequent and kind expressions’ proved the contrary and denied Stapylton’s right to resign.¹⁴¹

During May 1670, it was rumoured in York that Cosin had died. He was certainly suffering at that time and was scared of a new attack of strangury, ‘which is so great a torture to be endured that I … do all I can to prevent it’. Now suffering from incontinence, he was advised against travel. Unable to face the journey to Durham, he preferred to remain at his lodgings near to St James’s Park, where he had his papers and books.¹⁴²

Meanwhile, Cosin was becoming increasingly angry with Denis Granville, not only because of his daughter’s unhappiness but also because Granville had absented himself without leave from Durham and, as he later described it, was ‘gadding at Oxford’ on borrowed money. He ordered an action against Granville for debt and for failing to pay his daughter’s trustees. Granville had already consulted five doctors about his wife (‘whom he labours to prove mad’ and subject to ‘maniac passion’) but the London physicians diagnosed her as having ‘fits of the mother’ (i.e. hysterical episodes, possibly accompanied by convulsions). Cosin imputed Granville’s motives to resentment at his obligations to the bishop.¹⁴³

By the end of August 1670 Cosin was anticipating the end of the summer recess. He was named as a commissioner for the union with Scotland but remained pessimistic in the light of objections raised during the reign of James I. Despite his opposition to the proposals, he attended meetings regularly before the commission was adjourned. He had anticipated that its deliberations would move forward very slowly, given the demands of the Scots and the strength of hostility to the plan.¹⁴⁴ On 24 Oct. 1670 he resumed his seat in the House. According to the Lords’ Journal, he did not attend again until 2 Dec. but his letters to Stapylton reveal that he went to the House on 25 Nov., when he spoke to the king and received a royal undertaking that he should have the presentation of the next Durham prebend. Back in Durham, Cuthbert Carr was still agitating for Durham to have parliamentary representatives. Cosin blamed Sir Richard Neile, under-sheriff of Durham, ‘whose nature is to do me all the mischief he can’, for encouraging the proposals, but the county remained without parliamentary representation until after the bishop’s death.¹⁴⁵

Cosin was excused attendance at a call of the House on 14 Nov. 1670. Conducting his business affairs by mail, he fell into a new dispute with the deputy postmaster, Arlington’s older brother, John Bennet*, later Baron Ossulston, about the postage payable on packets (but not letters) during the sitting of Parliament. Cosin insisted that this was a breach of parliamentary privilege. He instructed Stapylton to refuse to pay post-office charges on certain forms of mail since, having spoken to several lords, ‘I shall do the House of Peers much wrong if either I or my officers pay any such tax upon packets whether they contain a leaf of paper concerning rents which ought all to be free as long as I am bound here to attend the Parliament’. During December, at Cosin’s request, Arlington intervened with his brother, confirming that Cosin’s interpretation was correct.¹⁴⁶

Although he was in London, Cosin attended the House less regularly over the winter, being determined to ‘fence’ himself from the cold.¹⁴⁷ On 21 Feb. 1671 a request from the Commons that the Lords agree to a joint delegation to the king on the laws against Catholic recusancy convinced him that a bill against Catholics would follow shortly. During March he reported ‘great agitations in Parliament about the Roman recusants’ and planned to prosecute his own clerks of sessions if they failed to present Catholics.¹⁴⁸ In the meantime, he had forwarded to Durham the royal proclamation for the arrest of those who had tried to abduct James Butler*, duke of Ormond [I], who sat as earl of Brecknock and eventually as duke of Ormond [E]. He also quarrelled with his kinsman Robert Blakiston, who maintained that Cosin lacked the scriptural requirements of bishops (with what Cosin termed ‘a deal of other such Presbyterian stuff’), and in March 1671 he complained that he had been ‘very unkindly used’ by Lord Widdrington over a matter of stolen livestock.¹⁴⁹ He also resumed the mutual animosity with Carleton by accusing the latter of failing to pay for books.

Furthermore, his difficulties with Granville multiplied as the latter disappeared to the continent, leaving Cosin perplexed about ‘the juggle that … is used between the archdeacon and his agents’ and unaware of his daughter’s whereabouts.¹⁵⁰ On 14 Mar. 1671 he consulted ‘an eminent lord of the Parliament’, who explained that ‘neither any convocation man or peer of the realm if he be abroad in another kingdom can be allowed any privilege against the suits of law that are brought for debt; so that we need not trouble ourselves any farther for fear that [Granville] will claim for privilege’.¹⁵¹ He was not present on 17 Mar. when the Lords agreed to hear an appeal from a decree (Haswell v. Gray) in the county palatine court of chancery, but attended early on 1 Apr. following the death, the previous day, of the duchess of York. After a conference with the Commons on the petition to the king about Catholicism, Cosin waited impatiently for the Lords to pass an act against recusants, in order to know the penalties involved. He doubted any legislation would pass both Houses before the end of the session.¹⁵² On 18 Apr. 1671 he attended the House for the final time, three days before the prorogation on Easter Saturday.

Cosin continued with business from London, supporting an unsuccessful attempt by the king to secure the election of Buckingham as chancellor of Cambridge and pressing Arlington to obtain the king’s approval for his nomination of Sir George Vane as a deputy lieutenant of the county palatine. He also demanded that Stapylton check episcopal rights over shipwrecks on the Easington coast, seeking legal confirmation that they belonged not to the vice-admiral but to the bishop.¹⁵³

Death and legacy

A newsletter of early May reported that Cosin was sick and unlikely to recover. Aware that he would be unable to return to the north-east to conduct his visitation, the bishop sought a formal commission for his diocesan officers to perform it in his place.¹⁵⁴ He remained in London where his health deteriorated. By November he was complaining of having trouble breathing, probably the result of his heavy smoking.¹⁵⁵ He survived over Christmas and on 2 Jan. 1672 instructed Stapylton to collect and send on his rents since he needed them for the maintenance of his grandchildren.¹⁵⁶ He died on 15 Jan. 1672 at his Pall Mall lodgings, after ‘violent’ attacks of pain from kidney stones.¹⁵⁷ Over the following days, his body was subject to a post mortem (which revealed kidney stones as well as fluid on the right lung), after which it was embalmed and encased in lead.

There was an interval of three months between Cosin’s death and burial. The funeral was delayed until the roads were passable, as the body, lead and coffin weighed in excess of 500 lbs.¹⁵⁸ His coffin was carried in elaborate pageantry through London, before being conveyed to Durham (for a solemn requiem service conducted by his nemesis, Guy Carleton) and thence to Bishop Auckland, where, on 27 Apr. 1672, he was interred in his own baroque chapel at Auckland Castle. Isaac Basire, the archdeacon of Northumberland, preached the funeral sermon.¹⁵⁹

A statement of benefits conferred on the see of Durham by Cosin showed that he had spent over £16,000 on the episcopal residences in the north-east and £3,000 on his public library, and had founded eight scholarships at Cambridge. Embellishments to his own chapel included at least 20 stained glass coats of arms. His signature woodwork, a unique form of ‘gothic’ embellishment, was introduced into all the churches and chapels that he refurbished.¹⁶⁰ He made many bequests to public bodies and charities in his native Norwich as well as in the north-east; there were also a number of legacies to family members, including £100 to his estranged and ‘lost son’ John, whose conversion to Catholicism had caused the bishop ‘great grief and trouble’. He named as his executors Sir Thomas Orby, John Durell, George Davenport and Miles Stapylton.

Eight years after his death, at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, Cosin’s years of exile in France became the subject of a Privy Council investigation. A committee of intelligence was ordered to enquire into allegations that he had left a ‘black box’ with papers that proved the king’s marriage to the mother of James Scott*, duke of Monmouth. Word circulated that Cosin had left instructions for the box to remain locked until the king’s death but that Sir Gilbert Gerard, opening it anyway, had discovered evidence of the marriage, performed by Cosin while in France. Gerard denied it.¹⁶¹

Distantly related to the crown by kinship to the Stuart earls of Atholl, the court favourite Robert Creighton was an ardent royalist during the civil wars. Imprisoned and sequestered, he eventually joined the king at Oxford as one of his chaplains, thereafter escaping to join the court in exile.² At The Hague, with his expertise in classics and ‘a great deal of combative orthodoxy’ going to waste, he became tutor to the son of Sir Ralph Verney^‡, whose admiration for Creighton was such that he once wrote that if it were in his power he would make Creighton pope.³ He was also set to work by Edward Hyde*, later earl of Clarendon, on a History of the Council of Florence. Creighton, uncomfortable in exile, complained that he would have been ‘better used among … cannibals than at the Hague’ but praised his benefactors, including the ‘miraculous good man’ William Sancroft*, later archbishop of Canterbury.⁴ A prominent figure in exile, he debated with Jesuits, ministered to assembled royalty, and prefaced his Council of Florence with historical precedents for the Church of England.

In May 1660 he was still at The Hague, engrossed in his studies, but soon returned to become dean of Wells, a post that had been projected for him in Hyde’s planning lists for the restored Church.⁵ In June he petitioned for the Cornish living from which he had been ejected and secured an order from the House of Lords to protect the profits until the legal position had been decided.⁶ Over the next decade he disbursed over £2,000 on public and charitable projects and spent liberally on the cathedral.⁷ He was a popular preacher at court, Evelyn finding him ‘a most eloquent man’ with ‘extraordinary’ talent.⁸ In March 1662 Samuel Pepys^‡ was similarly swayed with his comic skill when Creighton protested that the returning ‘poor Cavalier’ was treated worse than a Newgate prisoner.⁹

As a royal chaplain, Creighton habitually delivered ‘honest’ and ‘severe’ sermons, vilifying Dissenters and ‘puritan’ lay magistrates and lamenting the bishops’ lack of effective authority. In January 1661 he even criticized the king, suggesting that is was ‘below the majesty of a king to appear in common playhouses’. He even called into question English courage in the face of Dutch aggression.¹⁰ In 1669, as dean of Wells, he was involved in a jurisdictional dispute between William Piers*, bishop of Bath and Wells,and the cathedral chapter, during which he castigated the prebends’ ‘sullen stubborness’ while blaming the elderly and absentee Piers ‘for leaving his church in this confusion’. His role in the dispute did not endear him to Gilbert Sheldon*, then bishop of London, who resented the adverse publicity generated by such open quarrels in the Church.¹¹

With Creighton long regarded as the natural successor to Piers, in the summer of 1670 the king assented to his election as bishop of Bath and Wells, the first Scotsman to hold an English bishopric. The king also presented Creighton’s son and namesake to his father’s former Devonshire rectory and authorized the new bishop to pay his first fruits over four years.¹² Creighton almost immediately became involved in another local dispute, this time with William Piers, his predecessor’s son, who had sublet his canonical house with the tacit approval of his father. So disgraceful did Creighton consider such conduct that he was convinced ‘Dr Piers’ example will do more mischief than all the wicked times of usurpation’.¹³

In his late seventies and suffering from the ‘tearing vigorous disease’ which he attributed to drinking ‘strong old Rhenish’ wine when in exile in Cologne, Creighton never took his seat in the Lords. On 7 Oct. 1670 he gave his proxy to his fellow royalist exile Benjamin Lany*, of Ely.¹⁴ On 17 Nov. 1672, he made a nuncupative will; among other bequests, he left his library to his son Robert (who followed in his father’s footsteps as a royal chaplain, precentor of Wells, and scourge of Dissenters) and the diamond ring presented to him by the queen of Sweden to his daughter, Katherine, married to Francis Poulett, son of John Poulett^†, Baron Poulett. Creighton died on 21 Nov. 1672 and was buried in Wells cathedral, where a ‘ponderous’ marble tomb and effigy of Creighton’s own design were erected.¹⁵

Herbert Croft’s father converted to Catholicism in 1617 and retired to a Benedictine monastery in France. The young Croft joined him and also became a Catholic. After a decade of study abroad, Herbert returned to the Church of England from what he described in his will as the ‘errors and gross superstitions’ of the Church of Rome. His career in the Anglican Church was then facilitated by the patronage of William Laud^†, archbishop of Canterbury from 1633.

After the fall of Hereford to parliamentarian forces, Croft preached vigorously against vandalism but his audacity almost cost him his life. In a celebrated confrontation in Hereford cathedral, soldiers held their fire only when dissuaded by John Birch^‡.³ After the confiscation of his livings, Croft lived with Sir Rowland Berkeley^‡.⁴ However, he became a Herefordshire magnate in his own right when he succeeded to the Croft Castle estates in 1659. These were said to provide an annual income of £2,000 but in 1689 he claimed that his personal estate for taxation purposes amounted to only £500.⁵

Bishop of Hereford

Within weeks of the Restoration, Croft hectored the king over his Civil War engagement with the Presbyterian Scots, claiming that the royalist defeat at Worcester was providential comment on the king’s desertion of the established Church. Although the king expressed his dislike of the sermon, calling Croft ‘a passionate preacher’, when Nicholas Monck*, of Hereford, died prematurely in 1662, Croft, who was familiar with political configurations in the region, filled the vacancy.⁶ He did not have an active parliamentary career and attended only nine sessions. For the first 13 years of his episcopate, he attended only sporadically and for only four sessions was he present for more than half of all sittings. He did not sit after the 1688 Revolution. He was moderately active in convocation, helping to revise the 1640 canons.⁷

Croft was far more concerned with ecclesiastical than parliamentary affairs, bringing order to cathedral life and music to its liturgy, and ensuring weekly doles to the poor. In the decade after 1660, in a bishopric worth £900 a year, he claimed to have spent over £8,000 on public and charitable uses, but £5,000 of that represented the value of leases transferred to George Monck*, duke of Albemarle, for the benefit of Nicholas Monck’s widow and children (and which Croft confirmed by order of the king), and a further £2,000 was to remove the encumbrances created by interregnum leases issued to Albemarle’s ally, John Birch. Only £400 was spent on building and repairs, with a further £700 to augment livings. In 1681 William Sancroft*, archbishop of Canterbury, made it clear that he expected rather more to have been done in the way of augmentations but Croft excused himself on the grounds of the ‘hard terms’ on which he had accepted the bishopric, its low value and the lack of a commendam.⁸

As a private landowner, Croft had extensive dealings with the local gentry and nobility. In his capacity as bishop, he could neither ignore the Presbyterian presence in his diocese nor conceal his distaste for the schism generated by the Act of Uniformity. He was active in the committee stages of the legislation and on 8 Apr. was one of those appointed to draw up the abortive proviso that would allow the king to provide for the ejected clergy.⁹ Croft did his utmost to persuade his own clergy to conform. In some instances he allowed them breathing space beyond the deadline, informing one minister that it was ‘contrary to his inclination to have such as he removed … it was the law that turned him out and not he’.¹⁰ Required by the Secretary of State, Sir John Nicholas^‡, to supply the names of non-subscribers, Croft reported that he had ‘prevailed with all the considerable persons’ in his diocese except for Dr John Tombes, the ‘proud Anabaptist’.¹¹ Only 23 ministers in Herefordshire were ejected from their livings.¹²

Croft seems to have been able to make a clear distinction between personal and theological failings, one that was probably not appreciated by others. Christian charity, he claimed, obliged the churchwardens of Greet to forgive their ‘drunken, brawling’ but contrite and conformable minister.¹³ In contrast, those who were deficient in ‘right principles in religion’ fared badly: ministers lacking education or loyalty were refused institution in his diocese.¹⁴ ‘Vipers’ such as the dissenting pamphleteer Ralph Wallis or the ‘pitiful’ poorly educated fellows admitted to the ministry by the sons of William Lucy*, of St Davids (‘to whom any fee is welcome’) were distinctly unwelcome.¹⁵ Croft’s careful scrutiny of pastoral provision also extended to Wales: under the terms of the Act of Uniformity, Parliament entrusted him with shared responsibility for providing a revised Welsh book of common prayer.¹⁶

In his first three sessions in the House, Croft was named to numerous select committees on disparate pieces of legislation. He was present for the debates on the Act of Uniformity and it may have been on one of these occasions (or perhaps more probably for the debate on a possible amendment to the act in the summer of 1663) that he told the House that unity in the Church was so important that ‘he should not only be content to part with any of the ceremonies and much more to leave them all as indifferent in their use as they were in their nature but even to dispense with the belief of some things in the creed itself’.¹⁷ On 23 Mar. 1663 the House appointed him as one of four bishops who were first named to prepare a petition to the king for a royal proclamation against Catholics and then to manage conferences with the Commons on 26 and 28 March. Imbued with a puritanical distaste of vice, he chaired all four of the Lords’ committee meetings on the gaming bill in July 1663. In the same week he sat on the committee for the private bill to settle the dispute between John Paulet*, 5th marquess of Winchester, and his son, Charles Powlett*, styled Lord St John, the future 6th marquess of Winchester and Duke of Bolton, and was named as an intermediary in the case.¹⁸

On 24 July 1663 Croft was named to the committee that framed the contentious and ultimately unsuccessful amendment to the Act of Uniformity stating that the declaration of ‘assent and consent’ should be understood ‘only as to the practice and obedience to the said Act, and not otherwise’. He attended the House throughout the passage of the first Conventicle Act in April 1664. At the 1665 session in Oxford he was named to the committee for further provision for the plague; then, on 27 Oct., together with nine of his fellow bishops, he was named to the select committee on what was to become the Five Mile Act, attending until the legislation received the royal assent on 31 October. During the next (1666–7) session, Croft was present for only 27 per cent of sittings, registering his proxy in favour of George Hall*, of Chester, on 15 Dec. 1666 (vacated at the end of the session).

The fall of Clarendon and the Cabal, 1667-8

Croft’s position as a trusted courtier was tested to the full when Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, was ousted from power. On 12 Nov. 1667 the chancellor was impeached at the bar of the House of Lords. Four days later the king, particularly ‘concerned’ at levels of support for Clarendon, claimed that he had ‘one bishop on his side [Croft] and but one’ and was left with George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, and George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, as his ‘only cabinet council’.¹⁹ In the crucial division on 20 Nov. Croft voted against the chancellor and went on to sign the protest when the resolution to commit him was lost. Henry Glemham*, bishop of St Asaph, also signed the protest – but then removed his name as he had missed the vote; perhaps this was why Croft was entrusted with his proxy a few days later.²⁰ Despite his opposition to the Lords’ vote, on 14 Dec. the House appointed Croft and Seth Ward*, bishop of Salisbury, to draw up reasons defending the Lords’ decision and to manage the subsequent conference with the Commons.

In his autobiography Clarendon complained bitterly that Croft had behaved towards him with ‘very signal ingratitude’ and recounted the bishop’s attempt to mediate. The king authorized Croft to guarantee Clarendon safe passage abroad and to promise that ‘he should not be in any degree prosecuted, or suffer in his honour or fortune by his absence’. Directed to avoid mentioning the king by name, Croft became increasingly ‘more involved and perplexed’. Clarendon refused the offer outright and the king in turn refused to grant a written pass, each message conveyed via the agitated bishop. Only when James Stuart*, duke of York, intervened to confirm Croft’s offer did Clarendon leave for France.²¹

It was a sign of Croft’s continuing favour with the king that he was invited to preach on Christmas day 1667 in place of Gilbert Sheldon*, archbishop of Canterbury. Then, in February 1668, Croft replaced another Clarendon ally, George Morley*, bishop of Winchester, as dean of the chapel royal. His influence at court was nevertheless limited: in the autumn of 1668 he joined forces with Sheldon in an unsuccessful attempt to oppose the appointment of the natural philosopher, John Wilkins*, to Chester and to secure the appointment of William Sancroft instead.²²

Retirement from court, 1669–75

In April 1669, less than 18 months after his appointment, Croft resigned his position at the chapel royal. No one was quite sure why. Humphrey Henchman*, bishop of London, reported that Croft intended to lead ‘a retired life’ in Herefordshire. He was perhaps more inclined to such a life because of his grief at the recent death of his daughter. There was also speculation that his decision was prompted by having his last sermon ‘evil spoken of’, which suggests that there may have been some truth in the explanation offered by Gilbert Burnet*, later bishop of Salisbury, that the bishop had ‘lost ground quickly’ by using ‘much freedom with the king … in the wrong place, not in private, but in the pulpit’.²³ Yet another possibility is his embarrassment at the revival of a report that his wife had converted to Rome, although, given Croft’s virulent anti-Catholicism, such a conversion seems scarcely credible.²⁴

Croft attended Parliament for the adjournment on 1 Mar. 1668 but was then absent, apart from an appearance at the prorogation on 9 May 1669 and at the opening of the brief 1673 session on 27 Oct., until he began to attend regularly again in 1674. His presence on 27 Oct. 1673 was almost certainly a by-product of a visit to London, during which, together with Morley, he had made a concerted attempt to reclaim the duke of York for the Church of England.²⁵ On 4 Feb. 1674 he delivered a forthright fast sermon to the House, lecturing the assembled lords on their moral laxity. They had been warned of their sins by plague, fire and the audacious attack by the Dutch in home waters, yet continued to behave as ‘lascivious goats’. He warned that, without a commitment to moral reform, famine, fire and brimstone would be next on the providential agenda. The Lords, he went on, should be concerned only ‘for God’s glory … [not their] own privileges’.²⁶

Within days of Croft’s sermon, the Lords were occupied with another bill to invite into the Church ‘sober and peaceably-minded Dissenters’. Although he attended the House more regularly during this session, Croft was not present for the bill’s first or second readings and the proposed legislation was lost with prorogation on 24 February. In April he preached before the king, delivering not a lecture but a classic statement of Protestant faith.²⁷ Throughout 1674, presumably impelled by revelations the previous year of York’s conversion to Rome, he became increasingly absorbed with the threat of Catholicism. Fearful that senior churchmen were betraying the fundamentals of Protestantism, he published an attack on ‘popish idolatry’, warning Englishmen of the need to protect the purity of their Church.²⁸

Croft attended the opening of the 1675 session but was present for only three days, making his final appearance in the House on 26 Apr., the day on which the House debated the contentious ‘no alteration’ oath proposed by Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds). At a call of the House on 29 Apr. 1675 he was excused attendance.

The Naked Truth

As Danby’s alliance with the bishops became more entrenched and the embryonic Whig party made political capital out of anti-clericalism, Croft worked assiduously for Protestant unity. Addressed directly to the Lords and Commons, his pamphlet The Naked Truth appeared anonymously in 1675 ‘like a comet’. This plea for unity and his willingness to abolish the more controversial Church ceremonies fell foul of churchmen and laity alike. The book was distributed at Westminster in advance of the brief session in autumn 1675, carefully timed to create support for a bill for the relief of nonconformists that Buckingham tried to introduce. Anglican hardliners, including Peter Gunning*, bishop of Ely, and Francis Turner*, who would succeed Gunning at Ely, were appalled. It was even rumoured that if his authorship could be proved Croft would be suspended from his bishopric.²⁹

Locally this encouraged the renascent country party to seek Croft’s support by offering his son, Sir Herbert Croft^‡, a seat in the Commons at the next election as Member for Leominster. The offer was refused, perhaps because of a desire to avoid further factional entanglement, especially as political uncertainties seem to have been encouraging anti-clerical sentiments in his own diocese. The chaplain to local country party supporter Paul Foley^‡ found himself under investigation and bound over to appear at the assizes for saying ‘that the bishops should be excluded, that they were a dead weight, and that, whenever they gave their voices for themselves or by proxies, for the most part they were on the crown side’. Such a view is supported by Croft’s decision to register his proxy in favour of Henry Compton*, bishop of London, on 9 Feb. 1677. It is however rather more likely that, as a territorial magnate in his own right, Croft was affronted by arrangements that were intended to secure election for the county for Sir Edward Harley^‡ and to fob Croft off with the offer of a mere borough seat for his son.³⁰

From the Popish Plot to 1688

When Parliament reconvened on 21 Oct. 1678 its business was dominated by the revelations made over the previous summer about a supposed Popish Plot. These included claims that Croft was an assassination target because of his apostasy from Rome.³¹ Croft’s proxy, registered with Thomas Lamplugh*, of Exeter, on 25 Oct., was used in the collective episcopal support for Danby.³² Croft seems to have had no doubts about the reality of the plot, which he linked to the anger of providence against a sinful nation, the Popish Plot being ‘contrived by popish priests for the destruction both of … Church and state’, and he declared that national ‘humiliation’ was necessary to avert a ‘fearful judgment’.³³

Although absent from the House, Croft nevertheless became engaged in parliamentary business. On 7 Dec. 1678 the Lords learned that a property in Combe (Cwm), Herefordshire, was being used as a college for Jesuits and ordered Croft to investigate. On 26 Dec., excusing his absence on account of ‘his great age and infirmities’, he informed the Lords that he had indeed discovered a Jesuit college and would investigate further. Two days later, the Lords committee for examinations heard that the library at Combe had been seized, and required Croft to dispose of the offending material. Writing to Henry Compton in the immediate aftermath of the raid, Croft was anxious about reactions in the House, especially the likely displeasure of Henry Somerset*, 3rd marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort).³⁴ His report of the ransacking of Combe appeared in print the following year, describing the discovery of communion wafers, crucifixes and relics, together with unequivocal proof that one of the priests had sold an indulgence for £30.³⁵ The cause of Croft’s anxiety became clear later when it transpired that the priests had all been harboured by Monmouthshire gentry, from whom the future James II had hoped to form a ‘Catholic political class’, and who were clients of Worcester.³⁶ The episode produced a wave of invective to which Croft contributed, claiming that, since his ‘bloody enemies the Jesuitical priests’ were determined to kill him, there was a pressing need to examine at length ‘all the controversies’ with Catholicism.³⁷

Croft’s desire to avoid public (and potential parliamentary) criticism resulted in particular difficulty in 1682 when he had to handle competing demands about how to deal with Lady Scudamore’s adultery with Thomas Coningsby^†, the future earl of Coningsby. Fully aware of ‘the great clamour of the country and … of the kingdom’, he commenced a prosecution against the couple in the Church courts, insisting that the Church was ‘bound to prosecute such notorious wickedness in great persons as well as in mean’. In his eyes, Lady Scudamore was the more guilty of the two: ‘For both by the laws of God and man adultery is more punishable in the woman than the man.’ Sancroft disagreed: he considered Coningsby to be more worthy of punishment and wanted the matter settled by a private reconciliation in Croft’s chapel. Anxious to avoid responsibility, Croft told Sancroft in August that ‘I heartily wish your grace would make use of your court of the arches and take it out of mine’. By December he was trying to wash his hands of the whole affair, suggesting that Sancroft persuade Lady Scudamore ‘to acknowledge her crime and submit herself to the Church’s discipline before such witnesses as your grace should think fit and perform such other things in your chapel there as your grace proposed to be done in mine here’.³⁸

As the Scudamore/Coningsby affair demonstrated, living a retired life did not mean freedom from personal and political dilemmas. In May 1684, Croft had to defend himself to Sancroft for the delay in sending the Hereford address to the king; the clergy had not appeared to subscribe previous addresses and he wished to avoid being ‘singular’ in the matter.³⁹ He was even challenged directly from the pulpit of his own cathedral: ‘if ever popery breaks in upon us’, the preacher claimed, it would be the fault of those who had advocated comprehension.⁴⁰

After the accession of James II to the throne, Croft’s anti-catholicism gave way in the face of the need to demonstrate loyalty to the new king. An exchange of letters between Sancroft and William Lloyd*, then bishop of Llandaff, suggests that this engendered a considerable level of distrust. Discussing a letter recently sent by Croft to Beaufort, Lloyd accused the former of having moved from ‘naked truth to barefaced flattery’ and feared that he had paved the way for the new king to ‘cancel the obligation of that most gracious … royal promise’ to protect the Church of England.⁴¹ Anxious to secure the king’s goodwill and distance himself from his earlier strictures against Catholics, in March 1687 Croft directed his archdeacon, Adam Ottley*, later bishop of St Davids,

to recommend unto all persons their loyalty and special duty they owe unto our sovereign for his gracious inclinations to us by god’s particular providence and dispensation to suffer us so freely to enjoy our religion which is so contrary to the general inclination of those men of his own persuasion …⁴²

Croft’s name is absent from the various lists compiled in 1687–8 of those who supported the king’s religious policies; but nor was he listed as an opponent. When James II instructed the bishops to disseminate his second Declaration of Indulgence on the first two Sundays in June 1688, there was a widespread expectation that Croft would comply. Indeed, early in June 1688 Croft told the king that

It hath been my great good fortune that I have found no trouble at all in conscience by obeying your Majesty’s commands … A true Church of England man can never rebel or be disloyal in the least, his religion commanding him absolutely to obey, either by acting or by suffering, and to lay himself as a worm under your majesty’s feet …⁴³

Sir Edward Harley, assisted by his son Robert Harley*, the future earl of Oxford, spent several weeks, beginning in mid May, attempting to dissuade Croft, pointing out that ‘whatsoever is read in the Church is by law required to be warranted by the king or the bishop, so that whatsoever is read there, is not merely narrative or rehearsal, but authoritative, consequently implies consent’. Croft nevertheless instructed his clergy to read it ‘on their obedience canonical’. He told Harley that refusing to read the declaration was unnecessarily antagonistic and that the clergy could and should rely on the king’s promise to preserve the Anglican religion.⁴⁴

Croft was appalled to find that he was now suspected of being a Catholic sympathizer and rushed into print to defend his actions, claiming that he had spent a sleepless night in ‘a perfect agony’ as he tried to reconcile his duty to his king with that to his fellow bishops and the Church.⁴⁵ The Dutch ambassador reported, almost certainly inaccurately, that Croft had recanted and had joined the other bishops in opposition to the Declaration. Nevertheless Croft probably did soften his position, for by the end of June it was reported that he was allowing his clergy the freedom to decide for themselves whether or not they should read the Declaration.⁴⁶ In August he began to try to repair the breach with Sancroft, using Archdeacon Ottley to circulate copies of his letter to James II and to make it known that he was resolutely opposed to the repeal of the Test ‘or doing anything prejudicial to the Church of England’.⁴⁷ Heartened by Ottley’s response, on 22 Aug. 1688 Croft wrote to Sancroft directly, reaffirming that his intent in agreeing to distribute the Declaration had been to preserve James II’s goodwill and did not imply approval of its content: ‘And when a man intends no evil, charity will certainly judge no evil of that man, but will rather take it to be a mistake in judgment, easily pardonable, especially in a man of my age’.⁴⁸

Final years

At a call of the House on 25 Jan. 1689, Croft’s absence was attributed to age and he was again excused parliamentary duty. He was clearly too frail to travel to London but he was also unable to reconcile himself to the Revolution. In his will, composed the same month, he wrote of ‘these evil days wherein we have lived to see such sad revolutions and dismal catastrophes’. He failed to take the new oaths and on 22 Apr. 1691 Gilbert Ironside*, bishop of Bristol, was nominated to the see of Hereford in Croft’s place. Early in May Croft’s dislike of the new regime was underlined when he refused to assist local celebrations for the safe return to England of William III. His windows were broken in revenge.⁴⁹

Ironside was not formally translated until October 1691 so Croft was still technically bishop of Hereford when he died on 18 May 1691 and is thus not normally counted among the non-jurors. He bequeathed Croft Castle to his only son, Sir Herbert Croft; his final arrangements were otherwise concerned primarily with charitable donations, including the establishment of a £1,200 trust to provide for the widows of poor ministers. He was buried between the communion rails of his cathedral, to be joined within 15 months by his dean, George Benson. Their conjoined memorial tablets, with two hands intertwined, commemorated a deep and lasting friendship.⁵⁰

Richard Cumberland’s first biographer, his son-in-law and domestic chaplain Squire Payne, described how Cumberland, who had not sought promotion or frequented the court, read of his elevation in a coffee house newspaper.⁴ His reputation had been made in moral and political philosophy rather than ecclesiastical intrigue or polemic. Little of his correspondence survives and he left only one sermon in print and that many decades after his death.⁵ Any account of his life is heavily reliant on Payne and on a short account composed by the bishop’s playwright great-grandson and namesake.

Cumberland was a student at Cambridge during the Interregnum, where his friends included Samuel Pepys^‡. There is no record of his episcopal ordination, whether before or after the Restoration. When preferred to the rectory of Brampton, Northamptonshire, by Sir John Norwich^‡ in 1658, he underwent an interrogation by three presbyterian ‘triers’ but this did not preclude the possibility that he had already been ordained by a bishop.⁶

While at Bampton, he maintained his connections with his Cambridge friends. In 1667 Samuel Pepys regretted that ‘a most excellent person… as any I know… should be lost and buried in a little country town’.⁷ Nevertheless, within a few years Cumberland had become chaplain to lord keeper Orlando Bridgeman, whose patronage obtained him his Stamford vicarage.⁸ Bridgeman’s history of negotiating a comprehension bill must have lent Cumberland an association with religious toleration. His major work of political philosophy, De legibus naturae disquisitio philosophica (1672) was dedicated to Bridgeman. Its argument, in which the doctrines of Thomas Hobbes were seemingly adopted only for them to be used to refute Hobbes’s position, has intrigued many generations of scholars, with Cumberland being variously claimed as a prophet of probability theory or of utilitarianism, and a secularist in ecclesiastical clothing. By the late twentieth century it was becoming recognized that Cumberland was arguing from Hobbes that rational enquiry demonstrated the active involvement of God in ordaining natural law, that human impulses tended towards the upholding of such natural law rather than offering no evidence for it and that the divine role in natural law could be demonstrated without recourse to scriptural authority.⁹ This apparent secularism went further than, but in the same direction as, some arguments made by Cumberland’s eventual ecclesiastical superiors Thomas Tenison*, and John Tillotson*, archbishops of Canterbury. Combining elements of the patriarchicalism beloved of royalists and high churchmen with a theory of knowledge associated with republicanism may explain why Tenison and Gilbert Burnet*, bishop of Salisbury, characterised Cumberland at the time he was considered for elevation as a ‘moderate’.

Pepys had hoped that Cumberland would marry his younger sister Paulina, but he instead married into the Quincy family of Aslackby, Lincolnshire.¹⁰ He performed the response at the Cambridge university commencement in 1680, defending the theses that Peter was not given jurisdiction over the other apostles, and that separation from the Church of England was schismatic.¹¹ Cumberland was so fearful for the future of the Church under James II that on one occasion he is alleged to have developed ‘a dangerous Fit of Sickness, one of the severest Fevers from which ever Man recovered.’ His edition of Sanchoniatho’s Phoenician History constituted a robust defence of Protestantism and though ready for publication in 1688, Cumberland’s bookseller was unwilling to issue so anti-Catholic a text in fear of royal reprisals.¹²

The Revolution created a political and religious context far more amenable to Cumberland. One contemporary claimed that he was ‘so modest and retired’ that he would never have achieved higher office without the intervention of his friend John Tillotson, a fellow rational divine.¹³ Tillotson recommended Cumberland as a clergyman who had experience on the ground in the diocese (but no experience whatever of service in the higher clergy) to replace Thomas White*, bishop of Peterborough, the nonjuror. He was also supported by Gilbert Burnet (with whom he would remain very close throughout their lengthy careers on the episcopal bench) who described Cumberland as a ‘most learned and worthy minister … and always a moderate man’.¹⁴ On 22 Apr. 1691 the king issued the warrant for Cumberland’s election. The royal assent on 9 June was followed by consecration on 5 July.¹⁵

Enthroned in his new cathedral in September 1691, Cumberland travelled to Westminster to begin a parliamentary career in the House of Lords that spanned 25 years. He took his seat in the House on 27 Oct. 1691. He attended 26 sessions between 1691 and 1716, only two of them for fewer than half of all sittings. Usually present at the start of each session (for 22 of his 26 sessions), there was little other discernible pattern to his attendance, except towards the end of his life when travel to the House was clearly more of an effort. Throughout his career, he was named repeatedly to the sessional committees and to a wide range of select committees on both public and private bills. In the reign of William III alone he was nominated to more than 250 select committees and examined the journal on numerous occasions. In the parliamentary session that had opened five days before he took his seat, Cumberland attended 81 per cent of sittings. He was named to 19 committees and remained at Westminster until the end of the session on 24 Feb. 1692. During this session he signed the bishops’ petition to the king calling for the enforcement of laws against impiety and vice.¹⁶

Elevation to the episcopate appears to have made little difference to Cumberland’s lifestyle. He proved a diligent diocesan in the early years of his episcopate, conducting triennial visitations until he was 80 years of age. He insisted that his clergy should feel ‘easy’ and championed the cause of low-paid and overworked curates.¹⁷ He governed himself with a lively work ethic on the grounds that it was better to ‘wear out than rust out’, but consistently refused translation to a larger see.¹⁸ By 1718, when William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, was complaining at his own lack of promotion, Cumberland was the only bishop more senior to Nicolson who was still in his original see.¹⁹ Cumberland showed little interest in parliamentary elections. The dean and chapter of Peterborough were lords of the manor and held a major interest in the city, but they were overshadowed by the Whig Fitzwilliam interest and by the Tory influence of Cecil earls of Exeter, lords paramount of the soke of Peterborough and custodes rotulorum, renewed by John Cecil*, 6th earl of Exeter, after 1710. Nor was Cumberland bound by a narrow Whig political interest in the 1690s. He supported the Church interest in 1695 in the person of Tory Gilbert Dolben^‡, the son of John Dolben*, archbishop of York, although it seems unlikely that Gilbert Dolben would have retained Cumberland’s support after refusing the Association in 1696.

Cumberland was present on the first day of the November 1692 session, attended nearly 84 per cent of sittings, and was named to the sessional committees for privileges, the Journal and petitions and to 31 select committees. Thomas Bruce*, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, forecast he would support the divorce bill for Henry Howard*, 7th duke of Norfolk. On 2 Jan. 1693 Cumberland voted for the reading of the bill. The following day he voted against the passage of the bill for free proceedings in Parliament (place bill). On 17 Jan. he registered his dissent against the resolution that Charles Knollys had no right to the earldom of Banbury. A staunch defender of the revolutionary regime, he voted on 25 Jan. to commit the bill to prevent dangers from disaffected persons.²⁰ Present on 13 Mar., he missed only the last day of business that session.

In the diocese for the summer months, Cumberland was concerned with the payment of his first fruits and with pastoral matters, not least the rooting out (on the orders of Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham) of a Peterborough clergyman who had been preaching that William and Mary had not been appointed as rulers by God, ‘but only permitted them [to reign] as He often does judgments for the sins of a nation.’²¹ Again present on the opening day of the November 1693 session, Cumberland attended 86 per cent of sittings, was named to the sessional committee for privileges and to 19 select committees. On 17 Feb. 1694 he voted against the reversal of chancery’s ruling in the Albemarle inheritance case (involving Ralph Montagu*, earl of Montagu, and John Granville*, earl of Bath). Cumberland remained at Westminster until the House rose on 25 April. He repeated this pattern in the following session, attending for nearly 85 per cent of sittings; he was named to 30 select committees, and to the committees for privileges and for the Journal. On 18 Apr. 1695 he helped to manage the conference on the bill to continue existing legislation, was present on the last day of the session, 3 May, and examined the Journal. On 8 Oct. Cumberland was the only bishop to be present at the prorogation.

Following the 1695 election Cumberland attended for the start of the session beginning in November. He attended 92 per cent of sittings, was named to the committees for privileges and for the Journal and to 32 select committees. On 6 Dec. he was the only bishop to be named to the committee to draw an address to the king for an army and navy list. He signed the Association on 27 Feb. 1696 and, on 10 Apr., the ‘repugnance’ at the absolution by nonjuring clergy at the execution of Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend^‡.²² Little else is known of his parliamentary activity that session apart from his being a manager, on 6 Apr., of the conference on the privateers bill. He attended on 25 Apr. but missed the last two days of business.

Back at Westminster for the start of the next session in October 1696, Cumberland attended nearly 77 per cent of sittings. He was again named to the committees for privileges and the journal and to 21 select committees. On 23 Dec., as a firm adherent to the court, he supported the king in voting for the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡. As a reliable presence in the House, he received two proxies during the session: on 3 Mar. 1697 from Whig John Hall*, bishop of Bristol, and on 8 Mar. 1697 from the Tory Nicholas Stratford*, bishop of Chester (both vacated at the end of the session). He was back at Westminster for the first day of the session that opened on 3 Dec. 1697, again attended for an impressive 87 per cent of sittings, was named to the standing committees for privileges and the Journal, and to 40 select committees. On 15 Mar. 1698 he registered his dissent against the resolution not to commit the bill to punish Tory financier, Charles Duncombe^‡. Receiving the proxy on 16 June 1698 of James Gardiner*, bishop of Lincoln (vacated at the end of the session), he remained at Westminster until the House rose on 5 July 1698.

The December 1698 and November 1699 sessions followed the now familiar pattern. Cumberland was present on the first day of each, attended 69 per cent and 84 per cent of sittings respectively and was named to the sessional committees and to 21 select committees in each session. On 8 Feb. 1699 he acted as teller for the contents in the division in the committee of the whole on the resumption of the House. On 23 Jan. 1700 he protested against the resolution that the judgment be reversed in the writ of error in R. Williamson v. the Crown and a month later, voted against an adjournment during the debate on the future constitution of the East India Company. During the summer recess of 1700 he was recorded on a printed list of party affiliation as a Whig who was a potential supporter of the new ministry. A more pressing concern for Cumberland at that time was the increasingly vociferous debates between high and low churchmen. He was a faithful acolyte of Archbishop Tension, especially in the partisan Convocation of 1701, and sat with Tension when he pronounced the sentence of suspension against Edward Jones*, bishop of St Asaph on 18 June.²³

Cumberland attended the House on the first day of the session beginning in February 1701 and thereafter was present for 79 per cent of sittings. He was named to 19 select committees and to the committees for privileges and the Journal. Cumberland rallied to the support of both John Somers*, Baron Somers, and Edward Russell*, earl of Orford. On 17 June he voted in favour of Somers’ acquittal against impeachment; six days later he followed suit with a similar vote in favour of the acquittal of Orford. At Westminster until the end of the session on 24 June, it is probable that he then returned to Peterborough. He was back on the episcopal bench for the first day of the December session, attending 70 per cent of subsequent sittings. On 26 Feb. 1702, consistent with the opposition to schismatics he had defended in Cambridge in 1680, he registered his dissent against the resolution to continue the 1696 Quaker Affirmation Act.

With the death of William III on 8 Mar. 1702, Cumberland reported from the committee on the address to Queen Anne on her accession. He attended the session for the last time on 19 May, six days before its end. Present for Anne’s first session of Parliament (in October 1702) he attended nearly 69 per cent of sittings. On 22 Nov. he attended the queen’s chapel in the politically mixed company of John Sharp*, archbishop of York, Nathaniel Crew*, bishop of Durham, Jonathan Trelawny*, bishop of Exeter, and Humphrey Humphreys*, bishop of Hereford. He also attended the 1702 St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth.²⁴ The atmosphere at ecclesiastical gatherings clearly transcended partisan politics, but in the House Cumberland was a consistent supporter of the Whig party line. On 3 Dec. 1702, in the division on Somers’ amendment to the occasional conformity bill (to restrict the act to those covered only by the Test), he voted to support the amendment.

Cumberland had retained his scholarly eye for detail and on 8 Jan. 1703 offered an amendment to a private bill during its third reading. He was stopped by Laurence Hyde*, earl of Rochester, on the grounds that this was a procedural irregularity and should have been done at an earlier stage; lord keeper Nathan Wright subsequently allowed the amendment since it related only to a transcription error.²⁵ As predicted by Nottingham, Cumberland voted on 16 Jan. 1703 for the Lords’ wrecking amendment to the penalty clause in the occasional conformity bill. Three days later, still firmly in the Whig camp, he registered his protest against the resolution concerning Prince George*, of Denmark, duke of Cumberland.

In November 1703, after the summer recess, Cumberland was twice forecast by Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, as an opponent of a new attempt to pass an occasional conformity bill. Back on the episcopal bench for the first day of the 1703-4 session (during which he attended for 73 per cent of sittings), Cumberland rejected the passage of the bill on 14 December. Later in the session, on 25 Mar. 1704, he dissented from the decision to put the question on whether the failure to censure Ferguson encouraged enemies of the crown.

In his place for the start of the October 1704 session, he subsequently attended 69 per cent of sittings. On Sunday 5 Nov. he, Nicolson and Archbishop Tension were the only bishops to attend the House before the customary Protestant service of thanksgiving. Ten days later Cumberland received the proxy of Simon Patrick*, bishop of Ely (vacated 16 Nov.) in advance of the reintroduction of the occasional conformity bill in December. Remaining at his London home over Christmas, he again attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth. Frequently in the company of Burnet and Nicolson, the three men attended the committee on 9 Jan. 1705 to discuss the private bill for Sir Robert Clayton^‡ (with Nicholas Stratford and Charles Howard*, 4th Baron Howard of Escrick).²⁶ The House rose on 14 Mar. 1705 and the following day Cumberland returned to ecclesiastical politics. He joined Burnet, John Moore*, bishop of Norwich, John Williams*, bishop of Chichester, and John Hough*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in informing the Tory clergy in Convocation that they must govern themselves according to the rules of the constitution, and not according to their own wishes.²⁷

On 25 Oct. 1705 Cumberland was in the House for the start of the new session (and throughout the session attended nearly 65 per cent of sittings). He was present for the lengthy ‘Church in Danger’ debate of 6 Dec. 1705 and for the various divisions that day in the committee of the whole House. On 12 Jan. 1706 Cumberland and Nicolson together with Burnet attended the Lords’ committee on two naturalization bills. The traditional martyrdom service of 30 Jan. saw Cumberland (again with Burnet and Nicolson) accompany lord keeper William Cowper*, Baron (later earl) Cowper, to the Abbey together with Trelawny and John Evans*, bishop of Bangor. During February he also attended a Whitehall committee of Queen Anne’s Bounty. On 23 Feb., when the committee of the whole House debated the private bill of the archbishop of Dublin, Cumberland and the other bishops present except Burnet supported the archbishop in the division about the refunding clause. The following day he attended matins at Whitehall, the only bishop at a service attended by Robert Bertie*, marquess of Lindsey, Charles Dormer*, 2nd earl of Carnarvon, William Granville*, 3rd earl of Bath, Robert Darcy*, 3rd earl of Holdernesse, and Francis North*, 2nd Baron Guilford.²⁸ On 11 Mar., like the other peers present, he managed both conferences on Sir Rowland Gwynne’s^‡ Letter to Thomas Grey*, 2nd earl of Stamford. Unusually, Cumberland missed the last two months of business, attending the session for the last time on 19 March.

Cumberland, present for the start of the autumn 1706 session, attended 74 per cent of sittings. On Christmas Day he and Nicolson took communion at St Margaret’s Westminster.²⁹ The following short session (opening on 14 Apr. 1707) saw a slight drop in his attendance to 60 per cent of sittings. He attended the October 1707 session for 80 per cent of sittings.

His diocesan regime in Peterborough remained consistently whiggish. In 1707 the politically active White Kennett^†, the future bishop of Canterbury, was installed as dean of Peterborough and Cumberland installed his son Richard (already on the cathedral chapter since 1699) as archdeacon of the diocese. Cumberland remained relatively active in London: aside from his parliamentary attendance he attended the 26 Dec. 1707 dinner at Lambeth and in February 1708 was identified by Nicolson as an ally in his legal proceedings against Hugh Todd, prebendary of Carlisle, over the governance of the cathedral, and so was presented with a copy of the case.³⁰

Cumberland’s Whig affiliations were recorded in A True List of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in May 1708, though this does not seem to have translated into direct involvement with the June 1708 general election. He was in his seat in the House at the start of the November 1708 session and attended 74 per cent of sittings in the course of the session. On 21 Jan. 1709 he voted with the opposition in the division on the voting rights of Scottish peers with British titles created since the Union, siding with Somers, Moore, William Wake*, bishop of Lincoln and Tenison and those Whigs associated with the Junto. On 17 Feb. five bishops, including Cumberland, went to the Abbey with Cowper, 11 lay peers (nine of them Scots) and seven members of the order of the Thistle for a service of thanksgiving preached by Charles Trimnell*, bishop of Norwich. Cumberland continued to vote consistently with the Whig bishops; in the 15 Mar. division on the bill of general naturalization and the clause including the word ‘parochial’, he voted with Tenison, Burnet, Hough, Moore and Trimnell in opposition to the clause proposed by Tory William Dawes*, bishop of Chester. His sympathy for the Union was again demonstrated on 22 Mar. when he supported the northern lords against the court in the division on Scottish law (whether those accused of treason should have a list of witnesses before the trial) in the bill to improve the Union. Cumberland maintained his previous allegiances by voting with Burnet, Nicolson, Williams and John Tyler*, bishop of Llandaff. He was present on 25 Mar. in the committee of the whole House when it debated the treason bill (specifically the question of Scottish marriage settlements); in the division on an adjournment, Cumberland, Nicolson and Burnet voted with Cowper and Sidney Godolphin*, earl of Godolphin, for a resumption of the House. The House rose on 21 Apr. 1709 but Cumberland remained in London to attend the Easter Day service in the Abbey on the 24th.³¹

Back in the House for the first day of the November 1709 session, Cumberland attended 76 per cent of sittings and voted on strict party lines for a guilty verdict in the trial of Henry Sacheverell on 25 Mar. 1710. Meanwhile, Cumberland was coming under criticism for his ecclesiastical conduct. The Trinity ordination in the diocese was allegedly marked by a ‘laxity’ that allowed at least one prospective deacon to bypass the age qualification required.³² It later transpired that Cumberland had conducted a number of ordinations without first assuring himself of candidates’ fitness for a position in the Church.³³

As usual, Cumberland was present on 25 Nov. 1710 for the start of the new session, but his level of attendance was now beginning to decline; he attended this session for 56 per cent of sittings. Throughout the debates on the war in Spain, he helped to defend the foreign policy of the duumvirs’ ministry. On 9 Jan. 1711, he voted, firstly, for a resumption of the House and, secondly, with the non-government Whigs, in opposition to the account of the war given by Charles Mordaunt*, 3rd earl of Peterborough.³⁴ Two days later, with nine Whig bishops (including Burnet), Cumberland twice registered his protest: against the rejection of the petitions of Henry de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], concerning the conduct of the war in Spain and against the resolution that defeat at Almanza was the consequence of their tactics and those of James Stanhope^†, later Earl Stanhope. On 12 Jan., he also registered his protest against the censure of the Whig ministry for having approved military hostilities. On 3 Feb., he protested twice against further resolutions: that the two regiments on the Spanish establishment at the time of Almanza were insufficiently supplied, and that the failure of ministers to supply material amounted to neglect. Five days later he registered his dissent against two more resolutions: to present to the queen a representation concerning the war in Spain and to retain the wording in the representation relating to the grant of ‘vast sums of money’.

Throughout the spring Cumberland continued with his round of parliamentary, ecclesiastical and social activities, examining the Lords’ journals on 24 Mar. 1711 with Nicolson and Tyler, attending the fast sermon in the Abbey and dining in April in Chelsea at the home of Jonathan Trelawny, with his friend Nicolson and staunch Whigs Trimnell, Kennet and Edmund Gibson^†, the future bishop of London.³⁵ In an attempt to quash the stridency of the high-fliers (under the leadership of Francis Atterbury*, the future bishop of Rochester), Cumberland advocated in a letter of 17 June that the crown exercise the royal prerogative in banning the discussion or preaching of any doctrinal issue not contained in the Church articles.³⁶ Cumberland’s whiggery harmed his family’s position in the diocese as towards the end of the year his son, the archdeacon, was purged from the magisterial bench in Peterborough by John Cecil, 6th earl of Exeter.³⁷

Cumberland was back at Westminster on 7 Dec. 1711 for the first day of the new session (which he attended for 58 per cent of sittings) and was listed as a supporter of presenting the address to queen containing the ‘No Peace without Spain’ motion. Later in the month he was forecast as opposing the claim of James Hamilton*, duke of Hamilton [S] to sit in the House under his British title as duke of Brandon but was not listed as present when the House voted on the matter on 20 December. He voted along party lines on 26 Feb. 1712 when he divided against the Commons’ amendment to the Scottish toleration bill. On 21 May he received John Moore’s proxy (vacated 5 June) and on 27 May that of Trelawny (vacated on 2 June). He in turn registered his proxy with Trelawny on 4 June (it was vacated two days later). It is possible that this flurry of proxy giving was related to proceedings concerning Quaker affirmation. Cumberland missed the last five weeks of business and it is likely that he returned to Peterborough. Although the House was not in session during the autumn of 1712, Cumberland was back at Lambeth by 26 Dec. for the annual St Stephen’s dinner and in March 1713, unsurprisingly, was listed by the Robert Harley*, earl of Oxford as an opponent of the Tory ministry.³⁸ In April Cumberland was in his place for the start of the session, but attended only 20 per cent of sittings. During an acutely partisan period of divisions over foreign policy towards France, Oxford assumed that Cumberland would oppose the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty.

In February 1714 Cumberland failed to live up to his usual punctuality and arrived one week after the start of the session. He attended nearly 30 per cent of sittings, including that of 5 Apr. when the House divided over the question of whether the Protestant succession was in danger. It is not known how Cumberland voted, although his previous record suggests that it can be assumed that he was a supporter of the Hanoverian succession; he was not, however, nominated to the Lords’ committee to draw up a suitable address to the queen. He was in the House on 13 Apr. when the Lords considered the queen’s reply to the address on the danger from the Pretender, a danger perceived to be so threatening that even some moderate Tories deserted the ministry. It was reported that only two of the bishops (Francis Atterbury and Nathaniel Crew) supported the court.³⁹ Cumberland attended the House for the last time that session on 4 May, thus missing divisions on the contentious Schism bill. On 8 May he deposited his proxy with Bishop Nicolson. On 27 May Nottingham forecast that Cumberland would oppose the measure, but Cumberland was absent on 11 June for the vote on extending the bill to Ireland. Nicolson claimed that Cumberland’s proxy was used to oppose the bill, but it is not clear from the proxy book who held the proxy on that day.⁴⁰ On 14 June Cumberland registered his proxy with William Wake (vacated at the end of the session) who used it to oppose the passage of the bill on the 15th.

The summer of 1714 saw a watershed in Cumberland’s parliamentary career. After the accession of George I, Cumberland attended the House on only 11 days. He did not attend the session in August 1714 and then attended for a brief period only in April and May 1715. He sat in the House of Lords for the final time on 22 Feb. 1716.

Although it is impossible to determine his overall wealth, he was clearly rich in property, some of which had been owned by his father and bequeathed to Cumberland’s brothers, William and Henry.⁴¹ It is unclear how Richard Cumberland came to have these properties at his disposal (his brothers’ wills are unhelpful in this respect), but at his death he was able to bequeath houses and land in Westminster, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.⁴² Following a period of physical and intellectual decline, on 9 Oct. 1718, at the age of 86, Cumberland suffered a massive stroke whilst reading the newspaper in his study; he died the same day.⁴³

A bookish ascetic from the ‘Laudian heartland’ of Glamorgan, Francis Davies succeeded his royalist friend Hugh Lloyd* as bishop of Llandaff in 1667. While his family background is unknown, he was a member of the ‘high Anglican’ circle at Jesus College, Oxford, in the 1630s, and a friend of Gilbert Sheldon*, later bishop of London and archbishop of Canterbury. As a ‘sufferer’ Davies was assured a place in the Anglican martyrology to which his nephew and namesake contributed.² During and after the civil wars, he was a member of the county royalist network and a natural target for the governing puritan faction. For a while his ‘great piety’ earned him the protection of the parliamentarian commander Colonel Philip Jones but in or about 1656 his precarious financial position obliged him to leave Wales for London, where he became chaplain to the countess of Peterborough, whose husband, Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough, was not only a prominent royalist but a close friend of James Stuart*, duke of York.³

In 1667 Davies’ friendship with Sheldon, his loyalism and his Anglican credentials made him a natural successor to Lloyd. Conscientious in both pastoral and diocesan bureaucracy (providing a full response to Sheldon’s census of conventicles in 1669), he conducted a rigorous visitation in 1671.⁴ His tenure of the episcopate coincided with a particularly volatile period in the politics of religion but there is no record of his contribution to the debates and he was nominated to only a handful of select committees throughout his parliamentary career.

Davies took his seat in the House of Lords at the opening of the contentious 1667–9 session. He was then present on all but three days until the adjournment on 19 Dec. 1667, but he failed to return after the recess, registering his proxy on 6 Feb. 1668 in favour of Edward Rainbowe*, of Carlisle. He attended all but two days of the brief 1669 session and reappeared in the House for the opening of the 1670–1 session, missing only two days before the adjournment of 11 Apr. 1670. He was thus present throughout the debates on the controversial divorce bill for John Manners*, Lord Roos (later 9th earl and duke of Rutland), and recorded dissents against the passage of the bill on 17 and 28 March. He was absent when Parliament re-assembled in October 1670, claiming to be too ‘disabled’ for a journey to London, and again covered his absence with a proxy registered to Rainbowe on 21 October.⁵ He did not return to the House until the opening of the first session of 1673 on 4 Feb., again attending for all but two days. He was present every day of the brief second session of 1673 and for the 1674 session. He made his final visit to the House on 24 Feb. 1674.

Davies died on his seventieth birthday in March 1675, and was buried by ‘some of the fellows’ of Jesus College in Llandaff cathedral.⁶ Being unmarried, he bequeathed his modest estate of some £300 to his extended family. An active antiquarian, he took a special interest in the refurbishment of the cathedral library, donating valuable editions both in his lifetime and in his will. During his lifetime he also spent heavily on repairs to the cathedral and on the augmentation of poor livings.⁷

Before the Civil War, the great-grandfather of Dawes, Sir Abraham Dawes, had been accounted ‘one of the richest commoners of his age’.⁶ In 1643 the estates of Sir Abraham, and his two sons, Sir Thomas and John Dawes, were ordered to be sequestrated, an order not lifted until the end of 1645.⁷ Sir Thomas’s son, also named John Dawes, was advanced from a knighthood to a baronetcy in June 1663 as partial compensation for the family’s losses and generous loans to the court in exile.⁸ It was ‘to repair his damaged fortune’ that he sought to marry a young heiress, Christian Hawkins. Although the earliest biographer of Dawes and the Complete Baronetage have confused both her name and pedigree, it is clear that Christian Hawkins was a woman of substance who had inherited from her father estates in Suffolk and several properties in Lamb Alley, St Giles-in-the-Fields, as well as Bocking.⁹ She was ‘worth £1,000 per annum present good land and some money’, when she absconded at the age of 16 from Sir Andrew Riccard^‡, her wealthy guardian, although her aunt (Riccard’s wife) had given her consent.¹⁰ After Sir John Dawes’s death, in 1678 she married again, to Sir Anthony Deane^‡.

As a younger son, William Dawes was destined for a career in the Church. The death of his two older brothers, Sir Robert Dawes and John Dawes, a lieutenant in the navy, and thus his inheritance of the family estates and baronetcy, did not alter his career path.¹¹ It did mean that he was able to draw upon considerable private resources to supplement his income from ecclesiastical sources. By the time Dawes became a bishop he had ‘a good living or two’ in addition to his Worcester prebend.¹² His marriage in 1692 to a daughter of Sir Thomas Darcy^‡, who died the following year, added to his wealth following the death in 1698 of his wife’s brother; as Ralph Palmer put it, `Sir George Darcy is dead in three days time of the smallpox, Sir William Dawes wife’s brother, so that a good estate comes to the three sisters.’¹³

Early career in the Church

Dawes made steady progress in his clerical career and seems to have made a good impression on William III when he preached before the king on 5 Nov. 1696. It led to the promise of further preferment.¹⁴ On 20 Feb. 1697 Edmund Gibson^†, the future bishop of London, thought Dawes a candidate to succeed Dr William Payne as a prebend of Westminster as ‘he’s very much in the good opinion of the king and the great ones at court’.¹⁵ By May 1697 Dawes was thought to be making an interest for the deanery of York in competition with Henry Finch, brother of Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, and Robert Booth, the uncle of George Booth*, 2nd earl of Warrington.¹⁶ In the event another candidate altogether secured the post and Dawes gained instead a place on the Worcester chapter in July 1698.¹⁷ At some point the parishioners of Bocking apparently petitioned Thomas Tenison*, archbishop of Canterbury, for Dawes to be presented as their minister and on 10 Nov. 1698 he was collated as rector and on 19 Dec. as dean of Bocking.¹⁸

Dawes was re-appointed a royal chaplain upon Queen Anne’s accession, preaching a sermon on 15 Nov. 1702 that William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, thought an ‘excellent discourse’.¹⁹ Dawes’s career prospects had improved markedly, given that Anne’s main religious confidante was his own patron, John Sharp*, archbishop of York. Indeed, on 28 May 1703 Henry St John*, the future Viscount Bolingbroke, noted that Sharp had ‘struggled hard’ for Dawes to succeed as bishop of St Asaph, and a newsletter of 1 June reported this rumour, although the appointment went to George Hooper*, later bishop of Bath and Wells, as part of the court’s strategy for reducing conflict in Convocation.²⁰ Sidney Godolphin*, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, noted on 19 Nov. 1704 that Dawes had preached ‘an admirable’ sermon before the queen that day.²¹ The death of James Gardiner*, bishop of Lincoln, on 1 Mar. 1705 provided another opportunity for his elevation to the episcopate and he was widely anticipated to be the queen’s first choice. By mid April Francis Atterbury*, later bishop of Rochester, was sure that Dawes was to be elevated since Sharp had ‘struggled hard’ for him.²² However, the general political situation in the wake of the ‘tack’ told against Dawes. His outspoken sermon at court on 30 Jan. 1705, in which he made derogatory observations about the Whig Junto, combined with Whig political imperatives following the 1705 parliamentary election, meant that his promotion was blocked.²³ On 16 July 1705 Anne finally succumbed to ministerial pressure and appointed William Wake*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, to Lincoln instead. Dawes dismissed the observation that his sermon had been responsible for his failure to gain the bishopric, with the comment that he never thought to gain one by preaching.²⁴

The bishoprics crisis of 1707

The death of Peter Mews*, bishop of Winchester, in November 1706, and the subsequent vacancy following the expected promotion of Jonathan Trelawny*, bishop of Exeter, to succeed him, plus the death of Nicholas Stratford*, bishop of Chester, in February 1707 saw the queen promise the vacancies to Dawes and to Offspring Blackall*, another Tory. In so doing, the queen created a problem of political management for Godolphin. As the lord treasurer put it,

the misfortune is that [the queen] happens to be entangled in a promise [to Dawes and Blackall] that is extremely inconvenient, and upon which so much weight is laid, and such inference made, that to affect this promise would be destruction; at the same time [the queen] is uneasy with everybody that but endeavours to show the true consequences which attend it.²⁵

Godolphin needed to demonstrate his support for the Whigs in order to ensure the successful management of the next parliamentary session. According to Gilbert Burnet*, of Salisbury, Dawes was ‘looked on as an aspiring man, who would set himself at the head of the Tory party; so this nomination gave a great disgust’ to the Whigs.²⁶ The Whigs already had their own candidates, including Charles Trimnell*, who later became bishop of Norwich. A protracted delay ensued as Godolphin tried to find a solution to the crisis and during the next few months conflicting reports emanated from London. On 19 May 1707, the Rev. Ralph Bridges thought that Dawes would succeed at Chester, and in Chester on the 23rd the deputy registrar, Henry Prescott, received the news that Dawes would be the man.²⁷ Things were less sure on the 26th when Prescott and several companions downed two bottles of claret ‘in votes for Sir William Dawes or his rich competitor’, Dr Samuel Freeman. June saw Henry Prescott’s diary entries preoccupied with the uncertainty.²⁸ Bridges reported on 4 June that Dawes and Blackall were still expected to be appointed to the vacant sees, and also noted the death (on 31 May) of Simon Patrick*, bishop of Ely, and his immediate replacement by John Moore*, bishop of Norwich, a man acceptable to all sides.²⁹ Norwich was now vacant and herein lay the germ of a solution. Meanwhile, in mid-July Charles Montagu*, Baron Halifax, informed his namesake Charles Montagu*, 4th earl of Manchester, that discontent amongst their friends could result in the matter being ‘compounded’ with Dawes’s posting being withdrawn.³⁰ Further, Nathaniel Crew*, bishop of Durham, feared that Dawes would not like Chester ‘since the living is gone from it’, a reference to the rectory of Wigan, commonly used as a commendam for the bishop but which had been taken over by Edward Finch^‡, another of Nottingham’s brothers. On 2 July Sharp wrote to Dawes:

is there any hope of your coming among us? ... we are all here very much pleased with it, but I must confess I shall still be doubtful till we hear of it in the prints that you have kissed the queen’s hand for the bishopric ... will you give me leave to ask you in good earnest whether the bishopric of Chester has been offered you or no ... [and], if it has why you have not accepted it. It is not so mean a bishopric as perhaps you may have represented to you.... it may be valued at £900 per annum without the living of Wigan and if so I take it to be as good as Lincoln.

On 1 Aug. 1707 Dawes sent a tactful reply, hoping that Sharp would consecrate him but doubting that his nomination would be imminent; ‘on the contrary, I have reason to believe, that none will be made, until the queen’s coming to town in winter; and about that time, I hope your grace will be in town likewise.’³¹ It was common knowledge that the promise to Dawes came from the queen in person.³² Indeed, in response to the point made by John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough, that she would have to choose to follow the measures proposed by Godolphin or Robert Harley*, the future earl of Oxford, she claimed to know only those measures laid down by Godolphin and Marlborough when he was in England, adding that ‘my having nominated’ Dawes and Blackall was ‘no breach of them, they being worthy men; and all the clamour that is raised against them proceeds only from the malice of the Whigs’. She flatly denied that Harley had recommended them: ‘these men were my own choice’, and she felt ‘obliged to fill the bishops’ bench with those that will be a credit to it’.³³ On 29 Aug. Gibson thought that

Exeter and Chester will go to Dr Blackall and Sir William [Dawes], and Norwich to Dr Trimnell. ’Tis certain the two first have been in the Closet; and, considering how long that was made a secret, somebody may have been there for Norwich too, for ought we can tell. ... His grace (I find) is in no pain about it. There are those who are sanguine enough to hope well of the other two, especially Chester; but how is it possible for the Court (if they were so disposed) to retire, after the steps the[y], are certainly known to have taken.³⁴

John Somers*, Baron Somers, wrote to Archbishop Tenison on 3 June to complain that ‘when I have remonstrated pretty strongly upon occasion of the talk of supplying late vacancies, to have been told that the Archbishop is principally in fault who does not speak plainly and fully to the Queen, when the Archbishop of York never suffers her to rest.’³⁵ Dawes’s elevation also exercised William Cowper*, Baron (later Earl) Cowper, who, in conference on 1 Sept. with Godolphin, learned that the treasurer had informed the queen of ‘the necessity of agreeing with the Whigs and court’, and ‘did not think it possible to go on with [the] other party’. Godolphin put it down to the queen’s ‘personal inclination and engagements’, and to him ‘not being able when asked to tell her they were obnoxious to any’.³⁶ On 2 Oct. Gibson wrote that the episcopal ‘promotions’ are in a ‘status quo’; ‘with this only difference, that within these eight or nine days, Chester seems to our friends to be in a more hopeful way than before. Norwich and the Professorship [the regius professorship of divinity at Oxford, destined for Dr John Potter^†, the future archbishop of Canterbury, Marlborough’s candidate] are reckon[ed], safe; and it seems to be agreed, on the Whig side, that Dr Blackall’s going to Exeter shall break no squares.’³⁷

When the first Parliament of Great Britain assembled on 23 Oct. 1707 the appointments of Dawes and Blackall had still not been announced officially. Gibson reflected that the present situation could not continue as long as the court, which was ‘thought to be much devoted to the side that thinks itself extremely disobliged by these two promotions’ gave secular offices to the Whigs but ecclesiastical appointments to the Tories like Dawes.³⁸ Dawes’s elevation was finally confirmed on 7 Jan. 1708. He was consecrated in Westminster Abbey on 8 Feb. by Archbishop Sharp. Tenison, meanwhile, consecrated Blackall and Trimnell at Lambeth.³⁹ On 16 Feb. Dawes visited his friend Nicolson (with the gift of a pair of consecration gloves) and read over with approval Nicolson’s legal case against Francis Atterbury (at that point the dean of Carlisle) which led ultimately to Somers’ cathedrals bill.⁴⁰

Bishop of Chester

Dawes took his seat in the House of Lords on 2 Mar. 1708. He attended only eight sittings before the prorogation on 1 Apr. 1708 (30 per cent). Following the dissolution of Parliament in spring 1708, Dawes was unsurprisingly recorded as a Tory in a printed list of the first Parliament of Great Britain. He arrived back in his episcopal palace on 22 May, attended services in Chester cathedral, entertained the mayor and aldermen at the bishop’s palace and spent the summer of 1708 meeting local worthies and performing numerous confirmations. On 16 Aug. he conversed with the nonjuror Peter Legh^‡ on ‘the subject of complying with the government and abjuration’, with discussions continuing over the following days. At one of his convivial dinners he was ‘provoked’ into admitting that he thought the Pretender ‘an imposture’. On 12 Aug. he dined with a group of clergy and gentry, including Cecil Booth (Warrington’s uncle), with whom he held an animated conversation about nonconformity. Dawes maintained that ‘he never knew any Dissenter that differed from [him], upon a principle, but upon humour, pride, prejudice or the like’, satisfying the Tories among the assembled company with his defence of the Church of England. ⁴¹

Dawes set out from Cheshire again about 22 Sept. 1708.⁴² He was present when the new Parliament opened on 16 Nov., attending on 33 days of the session (36 per cent). Dawes may have voted on 21 Jan. 1709 against the motion that a Scottish peer with a British title had the right to vote in the election of Scottish representative peers, but the way the division list was compiled makes it possible that he was one of the bishops in attendance that day who did not vote, especially as Sharp voted the other way. During the consideration of the general naturalization bill in the committee of the whole on 15 Mar., Dawes offered an amendment to enforce worship not in ‘some Protestant Reformed congregation’ but in a ‘parochial church’, a change which would have made Anglican conformity for all Protestant ‘strangers’ a condition of British citizenship. In the division that followed, Dawes had the support of ten bishops but the clause was rejected 45-15.⁴³ Burnet claimed that he ‘spoke copiously’ in favour of the bill, but that Dawes ‘spoke as zealously against it, for he seemed resolved to distinguish himself as a zealot for that which was called high church’.⁴⁴ On 30 Mar. 1709 Dawes attended the session for the last time, missing the last three weeks of business.

During the recess, Dawes went into his diocese, arriving back in Chester on 7 May 1709. On 24 May he delivered his visitation charge, in which, it was reported, he directed his clergy to ‘preserve their people from atheism, socianism, [and] to beware of the popish and Protestant dissenters’, distinguished between ‘toleration and establishment’, and said ‘the schism is schism still’. He then commenced upon his primary visitation. Having proceeded into Lonsdale hundred he took the opportunity of waiting upon Bishop Nicolson at Rose Castle on 12 July.⁴⁵ On the 13th Nicolson recorded the bishop as ‘open against the bishop of Ely [Moore], and Lord Treasurer for the wardenship of Manchester in commendam, great with the queen &c’. After a visit to Carlisle, he left again on the 14th.⁴⁶

As Nicolson wrote on 18 July, ‘our robust brother of Chester’,

came hither the last week from Whitehaven; and went hence to Newcastle upon Tyne. He is now at Durham, from where he comes back to the remaining part of his visitation at Richmond and Boroughbridge about the end of this week. When his own necessary duties are over, he goes into Bishopsthorp, and thence returning (by Nottingham) to Chester, will have visited every county in this whole province.⁴⁷

On 15 Nov. 1709 Dawes was again present on the first day of the new parliamentary session, subsequently attending on 40 days (43 per cent). He attended the House on 27 Feb. 1710 when the Sacheverell trial opened in Westminster Hall, and was consistent in his sympathy towards the doctor. On 14 Mar. he registered his dissent against the resolution not to adjourn the House and subsequently protested against the resolution that it was unnecessary to include in the impeachment the particular words supposed to be criminal spoken by Sacheverell. On 16 Mar. Dawes entered his dissent to the decision to put the question on whether the Commons had proved the first article of their impeachment, and then to the resolution itself, which he was noted as voting against.⁴⁸ On the 17th he again registered his protest against Lords’ resolutions that the Commons had made good its charges in the second, third and fourth articles of the impeachment. The following day he dissented from the resolution limiting peers to a single verdict of guilty or not guilty upon all articles of impeachment and, on 20 Mar., when the Lords finally voted on Sacheverell’s guilt, Dawes voted against the majority verdict and registered his dissent. He attended the session for the last time on 25 March. Dawes then went into his diocese, arriving at Broxton on 19 April.⁴⁹ While there he hosted a visit to Chester from Sacheverell during the latter’s triumphalist progress.⁵⁰ He was still in his diocese in the latter part of July 1710.⁵¹

On 25 Nov. 1710 Dawes attended the House for the first day of the new Parliament and was present on 45 days (40 per cent) of the session. On 3 Jan. 1711 he was ordered by the Lords to preach the sermon on the martyrdom of Charles I at the end of January. In what Nicolson found to be ‘a loyal and honest sermon’ in its appeal against extremism, Dawes took the opportunity to make his most outspoken challenge on the party system.⁵² In one passage he argued that, ‘we ought to take great care never to list ourselves, as thorough members of any party’, because

there never yet was, and I fear, never will be any party upon earth, that has not, or will not ... run into extravagancies. And how few have been ever found of such parties, that have been able to forbear running along with them? that have been resolute enough to endure the shame of forsaking their party, the hard looks, opprobrious language, and malicious usage, of it, and to stick fast to their reason and religion, in spite of them? So small has the number of these heroic souls ever been, such vast toil have they undergone, and so much opposition and contradiction have they fought their way through; that I cannot but think it too great and dangerous a risk, for a man to tie himself to any party. Besides, if there were no danger, yet certainly there is always a great deal of trouble in it: and why should a wise man give himself that trouble, which he may so easily avoid?⁵³

Dawes was thanked by the House the following day.

On 5 Feb. 1711 Dawes dissented from the Lords’ rejection of the bill to repeal the general naturalization act. The following day he hosted Nicolson and Blackall for dinner at Kensington where they joined Sir John Cotton^‡ and his son, John Hynde Cotton^‡, who ‘explained’ the October Club, in what Nicolson described as ‘Tory discourse’. On 7 Feb. he received the proxy of Bishop Hooper. On 14 Mar. he reported from select committees on the Burgoyne, Grosvenor and Poynter estate bills (all three having been referred to the same committee). On 14 Mar. he confessed his shame ‘of having Dr S[acheverell], to read the prayers on Thursday last’ at St Botolph, Aldgate, to celebrate the opening of a charity school. Dawes had preached the sermon, but Sacheverell’s prayers had made ‘a mob and noise’ during the procession to a public hall for dinner.⁵⁴ He last attended on 5 Apr. 1711, when he wrote a letter to the physician, Dr Hans Sloane, asking him to visit his home, ‘because I am to go into the country on the morrow: I live in Church Lane in Kensington, and desire your company after four because I cannot be sure of getting home from the House of Lords before that time’.⁵⁵ He was expected at Broxton on 25 Apr. 1711. He left Broxton again at the beginning of September.⁵⁶

Dawes was in London in good time for the opening of the 1711-12 session, attending the prorogations of 13 and 27 Nov. 1711, and fitting a visit into the ‘country’, presumably his Essex estates, in between.⁵⁷ On 28 Nov. Sharp, not able to attend Parliament, informed Oxford that he had ‘some time ago’ sent his proxy to Dawes who, he was sure, ‘will on all occasions vote honestly’.⁵⁸ Dawes received the proxy, vital for Oxford in his political management of the House, on 1 Dec. 1711; it was vacated on 31 Jan. 1712 by Sharp’s attendance. On 29 Nov. 1711 Dawes also received the proxy of his colleague Blackall, who informed Oxford that he would do everything possible to ensure that his (and the queen’s) voting intentions were ‘punctually complied with’.⁵⁹ The proxy was vacated by Blackall’s attendance on 11 Feb. 1712. Dawes was in the House on 7 Dec. 1711 for the start of the new session, and able to employ the two proxies on the ministerial side in the division on whether to include a reference to ‘No Peace without Spain’ in the address.⁶⁰ Dawes was present on 80 days (75 per cent) of the session.

On 19 Dec. 1711 Dawes was forecast by Oxford as being in favour of allowing James Hamilton*, duke of Hamilton [S] the right to sit in the Lords by virtue of his British peerage, and on the 20th voted against the motion that such peers could not sit in the House. He continued to support the Oxford ministry on 2 Jan. 1712 following the creation of 12 Tory peers and voted in favour of Oxford’s adjournment motion, using Blackall’s and Sharp’s proxies to support the ministry.⁶¹ On 9 Jan. Nicolson visited Dawes’s ‘pleasant house’ in Kensington. On 22 Jan. Nicolson recorded being at the House, where he and Dawes ‘cooked Dr Dent’s bill’, Dent being a canon of Westminster. On 26 Feb. Dawes voted to pass the Scottish episcopal toleration bill, complete with the Commons’ amendments that were more favourable to the episcopalians. On 21 Feb. Dawes had been ordered to preach before the Lords on 8 Mar. to commemorate the anniversary of the queen’s accession. His preaching on this occasion was uncontroversial and he was thanked by the House on 10 Mar. for his ‘excellent sermon’. That day he was also present at a committee meeting in the Banqueting House with Nicolson and William Fleetwood*, bishop of St Asaph.⁶²

Dawes was active in non-parliamentary matters. He regularly attended meetings of the commissioners of Queen Anne’s Bounty in Whitehall.⁶³ More pertinently for religious divisions, he was involved in April 1712 in the baptism controversy and the Tory opposition to Tenison’s proposed letter to the clergy on the validity of lay baptism. Summoned by Sharp (together with Blackall and George Bull*, bishop of St Davids) to discuss the ramifications of Tenison’s proposals, Dawes shared Sharp’s misgivings. Tenison was informed that they could not concur with the letter, since it would be an encouragement to nonconformists. The issue led to further political polarization on the episcopal bench which Dawes did nothing to defuse despite his disavowal of party extremism.⁶⁴ On 13 Apr. he received the proxy of Bishop Blackall and on 7 June that of Archbishop Sharp. On 15 May he examined the Lords’ Journal for a period up to 4 February. On 28 May he voted against the ministry in the division on the ‘restraining orders’ sent to James Butler*, 2nd duke of Ormond, a harbinger of a more critical stance towards the administration. An absent Bishop Nicolson commented on 9 June that he was expecting a busy day at Carlisle, ‘my two great fellow suffragans (Durham and Chester) giving me the honour of their proxies on this occasion, whilst they are personally ratifying the safe and honourable peace at Westminster.’⁶⁵ Dawes was present on the adjournment of 21 June, the effective end of the session.

Dawes arrived back at his episcopal palace on 3 July 1712. On 8 July he gave his visitation charge, ‘founded on her majesty’s late letter to the bishops’.⁶⁶ On 31 July Nicolson wrote that ‘our brother of Chester is now in my neighbourhood, at Kendal and will be yet nearer the next week. Whether he’ll do this place the usual honour of a call, in his road from Cockermouth to Richmond, is that [sic] he has yet been pleased to notify’.⁶⁷ Dawes left his episcopal palace on 3 September.⁶⁸ By 7 Oct. he was back in London where White Kennett^†, the future bishop of Peterborough, informed Wake that Dawes had been with Tenison to obtain leave ‘for a longer remove in B[ock]ing because of debts on his estate’.⁶⁹ As early as April 1712, Dawes had sought and gained a legal opinion from the attorney general allowing for a new dispensation to be issued for him to hold the rectory of Bocking in commendam with his bishopric.⁷⁰

Dawes and the Whimsical Tories

On 26 Dec. 1712 Dawes attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth.⁷¹ Between 13 Jan. and 26 Mar. 1713, he attended the House on seven occasions for further prorogations of Parliament. On 26 Jan. Sharp hoped (in vain) that since he had ‘appointed so good a proxy’ as Dawes the queen would dispense with his attendance at the House for the remainder of the session.⁷² Blackall was equally trusting of Dawes, informing Oxford in response to a summons to Parliament that until he arrived his proxy was registered with Dawes who would give his vote ‘as shall be most for her majesty’s service, and the public good’.⁷³ Oxford may not have been pleased with their choice, for Dawes was exhibiting more signs of being unhappy with the ministry’s foreign policy. On 3 Mar. the Hanoverian resident Kreienberg reported that Dawes had been publicly voicing his worries over the peace.⁷⁴ This was reflected in Oxford’s assessment of the situation before the session began in a list in Swift’s hand, which placed Dawes among the probable opponents of the ministry. Dawes was present when the session opened on 9 Apr. attending on 42 days (64 per cent) of the session. Oxford’s suspicions of Dawes’s intentions were confirmed when on the opening day of the session, Dawes joined both Nottingham and Heneage Finch*, Baron Guernsey, to vote with the Whig opposition on their motion regarding the peace negotiations, to oppose the address of thanks for the Queen’s Speech.⁷⁵ News of Dawes’s defection spread rapidly; that evening, Jonathan Swift was visiting George Hamilton*, earl of Orkney [S], where he heard that Dawes, despite being a ‘high Tory’, was now in political opposition. According to the account Swift heard there, Dawes had been summoned by the duchess of Marlborough shortly before her departure from court in January ‘to justify herself to him in relation to the queen, and showed him letters, and told him stories, which the weak man believed, and was perverted’.⁷⁶ This story was corroborated by Ralph Bridges who noted that just prior to the departure of the duchess for the continent, Dawes ‘had a private conference with her and they say was her confessor’. He explained though, that in the 9 Apr. debate Dawes had been careful to avoid complete adherence to the Whigs: ‘in the debate about thanking the queen he pretends amongst his Church acquaintance to [ha]ve been guided much by Lord Guernsey’s speech and his stating the words of the question’, and although ‘he voted with the Whigs, yet he refused to protest and attended the Lords with their address at St James’s’.⁷⁷ In September Oxford learned from John Drummond^‡ that upon being told that she had ‘converted’ Dawes by telling him that the queen favoured the Pretender, the duchess denied ever hearing the queen speak favourably of the Pretender.⁷⁸

Bolingbroke’s strategy for uniting the Tories behind his own leadership was to promote legislation which would drive a wedge between the so-called Hanoverian or Whimsical Tories and the Whigs. One such measure was a bill, drafted by Atterbury, to prevent the too frequent use of excommunication in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which was introduced to the Lords on 5 May 1713. Dawes took the chair of the committee of the whole on it on 18 June, reporting it on the following day. The bill subsequently fell at the end of the session as the two Houses could not agree on one of its clauses.⁷⁹ Dawes’s name appears on a second list compiled by Swift, for Oxford, probably in May, which indicated his opposition to the ministry or possibly that he was to be canvassed over the French commercial treaty. About 13 June Dawes was listed as likely to oppose the French commercial bill, and about the same date his name appears on a list of court supporters expected to desert the government over the commerce bill and also on Oxford’s estimate of the voting on the bill.

On 5 June 1713 Dawes chaired the committees on the Harrington, Constable and Chamberlen estate bills, reporting from the first two, although there were no further proceedings on the latter.⁸⁰ On the following day he reported two further bills from committee, an estate bill and the bill allowing for enclosures in the West Riding to endow poor vicarages and chapelries. On 23 June Dawes attended the House for the last time that session. Ensconced at Christ Church Oxford, he missed the contentious ‘Lorraine’ motion of 30 June. His host, Dr William Stratford (son of Dawes’s predecessor, and a friend of Oxford), reported to Edward Harley^†, styled Lord Harley, later 2nd earl of Oxford, that he expected Dawes to let him ‘into the secret of the trade bill’ and to reveal all the ministry’s faults. He also noted that Dawes appeared ‘disinterested’ since he felt able to leave London while Henry Compton*, of London, was reportedly very ill.⁸¹

The Hanoverian envoy Schütz had warned on 23 Oct. 1713 that in the opinion of Dawes, without direct encouragement from the elector, Tories with similar views to his own would not break cover.⁸² Dawes was back in London by 12 Nov., when John Chamberlayne reported that he had an audience with the queen about the rules and regulations of Queen Anne’s Bounty.⁸³ Dawes, assisted by Philip Bisse*, bishop of Hereford, had administered the sacrament to the queen and had then been granted an audience the following morning.⁸⁴ He attended the prorogation on 10 Dec. 1713. Before the appointment of Bishop Thomas Lindsey to the Irish primacy, Charles Talbot*, duke of Shrewsbury, had suggested an Englishman, and named Dawes as a possible candidate.⁸⁵

Archbishop of York

Archbishop Sharp died on 2 Feb. 1714. On 5 Feb. Stratford thought that Dawes and Bisse would be the two competitors for the archbishopric. He told Lord Harley that Dawes

will certainly vote against you if he has not York, and I am afraid will not be firm to you, if he has it. He will then hope for no more from you and think himself at liberty to do as he pleases, and the very best you can hope for from him will be to be whimsical. It is a very unaccountable part that he has taken on him ever since the change of the ministry, to reflect publicly in all companies on your father [Oxford], and for that too for which no other person ever pretended to tax him, for want of sense.⁸⁶

On 10 Feb. Stratford added that in his diocese Dawes’s credit ‘was sunk to a degree, scarce credible, for his votes in the last session’ as not one gentleman ‘would converse with him, of those amongst whom he had been very popular’. Further, Dawes had been fortunate in receiving more in entry fines than the previous bishop had done in 18 years, and had refused to renew one lease that had previously been used to augment the salaries of the petty canons, giving it instead to his own son. Despite being a wealthy man, Dawes had ‘so stripped it’, as to impoverish his successor.⁸⁷

Six days later Stratford wrote again, of having heard of a ‘design in which many Tories have combined to move to bring over Hanover’, in which case Dawes would be one of those implicated.⁸⁸ Dawes attended the House for the first day of the new Parliament that day, 16 Feb. 1714, and was present on 59 days (78 per cent) of the session. A congé d’élire was issued on 20 Feb. for his election as archbishop of York, the queen, without consulting her ministers, having honoured Sharp’s wishes despite the rival candidacy of John Robinson*, bishop of London.⁸⁹ Oxford was not consulted over the appointment. There was a slight hiatus between 6 Mar. when Dawes sat as bishop of Chester and 17 Mar. when he took his seat as archbishop. At least one contemporary was pleased; the dowager viscountess of Irwin thought him ‘a fine young bishop, who is not much above 40 and a baronet and has a good estate’, so much so that she expected the Minster to become ‘a very fashionable place’.⁹⁰

Tories of the stamp of George Lockhart^‡ were as dismayed by the translation of Dawes as they were by the election of Sir Thomas Hanmer^‡ as Speaker of the Commons, since they had ‘in the last session of Parliament voted in most material points against the ministry, which rendered it unaccountable and unexcusable in them, to prefer men of such principles and practices to posts of so great weight in church and state’. Lockhart attributed Dawes’s promotion to the hope that it would ‘draw him off to their interest’, but felt the ‘prelate’s intrinsic worth was not of any equal value to so great a prize’ even if it had succeeded in its attempt.⁹¹

During the Easter recess (19-31 Mar.) Dawes was recruited to an alliance between the Whigs and the Hanoverian Tories to secure the succession. As Schütz reported on 26 Mar., Dawes would meet on the following day with Nottingham and John Campbell*, duke of Argyll [S].⁹² Another meeting was held on 1 Apr. involving Dawes, Nottingham, Hanmer and Arthur Annesley*, 5th earl of Anglesey, at which agreement was reached with the Whigs over a variety of issues, including the succession, the expulsion of the Pretender from Lorraine, trade, and even the need for a treasury commission to succeed Oxford.⁹³

When the Queen’s Speech was taken into further consideration on 5 Apr. 1714, the court sprung a surprise with a motion that the Protestant succession was not in danger. According to George Baillie^‡, Dawes followed Anglesey in speaking ‘well’ against the motion, and when the House divided over the addition of an amendment to add the words ‘under her majesty’s government’ and on the procedural motion that the full question be put, Dawes was able to draw ‘after him the whole bench of bishops, three courtiers only excepted’.⁹⁴ Lockhart noted that Dawes had ‘said he could not say but it was in danger whilst the Pretender was alive and had friends, but if the question was meant [to mean] that it was not in danger under the queen’s administration, he would vote as he had done in the former address’. However, ‘the worthless bishop of York notwithstanding of his speech’ had then ‘deserted’ the Tories.⁹⁵ Following this vote, which showed the strength of the whimsical Tories when allied to the Whigs, the queen closeted Dawes and Anglesey.⁹⁶ The effect of the queen’s intervention was seen on 8 Apr. when the Lords considered their address over the Pretender; the court was able to make the final version more palatable to the queen and Thomas Wentworth*, earl of Strafford, reported that Dawes was one of ‘four straggling lords returned to us’.⁹⁷ When the Lords considered the queen’s answer to this address (in the wake of Schütz’s request for a writ for the future George II*, as duke of Cambridge) on 13 Apr., Dawes was joined by 11 other Tories, including Bishops Robinson, Hooper and George Smalridge*, of Bristol in voting for a second address, a vote won by the ministry only after the proxies had been counted.⁹⁸

Facing opposition not only from the Whigs but also from whimsicals such as Dawes, Oxford penned a memorandum on 19 Apr. 1714 for an audience with the queen in which he advised her to ‘send for such persons of the clergy and laity, Lords and Commons, and she in her great wisdom shall think fit, and let them know from her own mouth her majesty’s thoughts about the succession’.⁹⁹ On 1 May James Johnston^‡ reported that Oxford had got the queen ‘to send for the Archbishop of York and solemnly declare herself for Hanover and that she was ever so’.¹⁰⁰ Nevertheless, rumours circulated that Dawes had in fact told the queen that he was against the present ministers.¹⁰¹ On 27 Apr., John Chamberlayne wrote to the Electress Sophia that Dawes (‘there is no man in England more devoted to your interest’) had informed him of his meeting with the queen, wherein the queen had permitted Dawes had ‘with great liberty, and with that candour and sincerity that is natural to his grace, to lay before her his thoughts of the people’s fears and jealousies concerning the Pretender, and the dangers to the succession so much apprehended by all good Protestants’, after which the queen had assured him of her unalterable support for the electoral family.¹⁰² As Thomas Bateman reported it on 27 Apr.:

I hear that the Archbishop of York had a free conference with the queen last Friday [23 Apr.], and one point was the Hanover Succession, for which she made a very solemn declaration, which may satisfy some fears that have been expressed, tho’ they say it may fall hard on Lord B[olingbro]ke, and that our friend [Oxford], may be safe.¹⁰³

Almost immediately, Dawes wrote to the Electress Sophia to express not only his personal loyalty but that of the English clergy:

Madam, I want words to express my deep sense of the great honour, which your royal highness has done me, in vouchsafing to take notice of, and kindly accept, my poor endeavours, to serve your illustrious house, and, in that, the protestant interest, in general, and our own happy constitution in church and state, in particular. ... I hope your royal highness will, every day more and more, have the satisfaction of seeing that, not only I myself, but the whole body of our clergy, are faithful and zealous, as becomes us, in this respect; and that the same good spirit is still amongst us, which so laudably, and through the blessing of God, successfully opposed and got the better of the attempts of France and popery in King James’ reign ... I ... pray to God ... that he would guard and maintain your right of succeeding to the crown of these realms, as now by law established.¹⁰⁴

When Dawes’s conversation with the queen was reported to the duchess of Marlborough, she thought it ‘disagreeable what [Dawes] says himself, that he introduced the discourse with the q[ueen], by saying it was not merely noise and faction the fears of popery. What a way that is of treating men of consideration that are struggling to save their country’. She then mentioned hearing ‘a very strange account’ of one of Dawes’s recent sermons in which he mentioned not only the war but ‘the gainers by it’ which she described as ‘monstrous ... and only to bring in malice … when he allowed there was but few that got and one of them that he meant I suppose, the chief, was the duke of Marlborough at Antwerp’. Dawes, according to the duchess, had entertained no such scruples when the duke was in political favour.¹⁰⁵ On 7 May William Cadogan^†, the future Baron Cadogan, wrote to the Hanoverian diplomat Bothmer that if Prince George did not come to England, then ‘our new allies’, namely Anglesey, Dawes and Hanmer ‘will leave us soon: for they declare publicly enough, that the succession cannot be secured but by the presence of the prince’.¹⁰⁶

Other legislative matters engaged Dawes during the session. On 7 May 1714 Dawes reported from the committee on the act to remove mortuaries in the diocese of St Asaph. Presumably, he was instrumental in passing a series of amendments to the bill which annexed valuable livings to university colleges, including his own.¹⁰⁷ The bill that received the royal assent on 5 June had a much wider scope, reflected in its amended title: ‘an act for taking away mortuaries, within the dioceses of Bangor, Landaff, St Davids, and St Asaph, and giving a recompence therefore to the bishops of the said respective dioceses; and for confirming several letters patents granted by her majesty, for perpetually annexing a prebend of Gloucester to the mastership of Pembroke College in Oxford, and a prebend of Rochester to the provostship of Oriel College in Oxford, and a prebend of Norwich to the mastership of Catherine Hall in Cambridge’. With Bishop Robinson he was forced to dissociate himself from a story that ‘they applied to the queen in favour of [the nonjuror Hilkiah] Bedford, but the ministry give the last the lie in express words.’ James Johnston wrote on 14 May 1714 that ‘the papists’

have trumped up a new title to make void my brother’s grant and have restitution etc. visibly upon the supposition of the Pretender’s being in possession and upon the same foot an appeal from Scotland was to be heard before the House of Lords on Wednesday last [12 May], but the matter made such a noise that the Court interposed and the archbishop of York, in the queen’s name, made the appellant desist, which the adverse party would not agree to without security, so the Lords reconfirmed their decree without hearing the cause.¹⁰⁸

This related to the estates of the Jacobite exile Sir Roger Strickland^‡, which Johnston claimed, although this was contested by General George Cholmondeley^‡ and Strickland himself, who hoped for a pardon.¹⁰⁹ On 13 May Dawes received Blackall’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session).

On 27 May 1714, the day after the Lords resumed after an adjournment of two weeks, Dawes presented to the House (with the queen’s consent), a bill to secure the maintenance of poor clergy (part of Queen Anne’s Bounty). About this date he was forecast by Nottingham as a supporter of the schism bill. In part, this bill was promoted by Bolingbroke to unite the Tory party, and Dawes duly supported it at its first reading on 4 June.¹¹⁰ Dawes chaired the committee of the whole on the schism bill from 9th to the 11th, reporting back to the House on each occasion that they had made progress but needed further time to deliberate. On the 11th the committee requested the power to receive a clause extending the bill’s provisions to Ireland, which was carried by a single vote, with Dawes casting his own vote, and Blackall’s proxy, in favour.¹¹¹ Dawes reported the bill on the 14th, and the bill with the amendment extending it to Ireland was agreed to. On 15 June Dawes voted with the majority of bishops present in favour of bill and it passed the House by eight votes.¹¹² He last attended the House on 8 July, the day before the prorogation. Dawes was still championing James Greenshields, more specifically his quest for a pension which the queen had apparently granted in 1711, but which had not been paid. According to a later petition, the queen assured Dawes on 11 July that it would be paid, but events overtook the order.¹¹³

Reign of George I

At the end of the July 1714 Dawes had travelled north following the prorogation and had just arrived at his palace when he learnt of the queen’s death.¹¹⁴ He joined the lord mayor of York in proclaiming the king, and then returned to London.¹¹⁵ By 9 Aug. he had arrived back in the capital when he first attended the parliamentary session summoned on the death of the queen. Dawes was in an important position, having been named (albeit ex officio as archbishop of York) by George I as one of the regents to govern the kingdom in his absence.¹¹⁶ One indication of this appears in a memorandum by Oxford which indicated that the former lord treasurer had already paid a courtesy call on the archbishop by 10 August.¹¹⁷ On 13, 21 and 25 Aug. Dawes also sat in the House as one of the lords justices. On 13 Aug. it was reported that Dawes and Hanmer had recommended Samuel Hill for the vacant bishopric of Ely.¹¹⁸

Dawes attended for further prorogations on 23 Sept. and 21 Oct. 1714 and was now embarking on a career as political advisor to George I. Having already secured his position with the Hanoverians, unlike many of his less flexible colleagues, Dawes was one of the Tories to remain in favour at the start of the new reign. Ralph Palmer reported on 30 Oct. that Dawes had told a ‘great man’ that ‘he might depend upon it, that among the Tories he wanted not able and hearty friends (however he might be misinformed) that would be faithful and zealous to serve him’.¹¹⁹ In an account of the king’s Lutheran faith Dawes attempted to persuade Lutherans that the Church of England was no threat and, in essence, little different.¹²⁰ On 26 Jan. 1715 he was listed as a Tory still in office. His subsequent parliamentary career will be considered in the next phase of this work.

Dawes died suddenly on 30 Apr. 1724 in Cecil Street, London, of an acute attack of ‘inflammation of the bowels’.¹²¹ He had outlived his wife and most of his children, naming as the executors of his will his son-in-law Sir William Milner^‡ and Peniston Lamb of Lincoln’s Inn. He placed his entire real and personal estate in trust for the benefit of his only son, Darcy Dawes. According to his own wishes, Dawes was buried next to his wife in a family vault in the chapel of St Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge.

Dawes rose through the Church hierarchy to the archbishopric of York earning the praise of one biographer as ‘the most complete pulpit orator of his age’.¹²² Socially and financially, the urbane Dawes was hardly typical of the early modern episcopate. One contemporary scribbler commented on his patrician charm:

Sir William does in every church display
the air of something new and something gay
’tis heaven, at least, to hear him preach or pray
He dignifies his pulpit, see, and lawn,
and is a very angel of a man.¹²³

In parliamentary terms, Dawes was most important as a leading Hanoverian Tory during the last years of Anne’s reign. Indeed, Arthur Onslow^‡ later noted that ‘he always adhered very strongly to the protestant succession’, and was one of the ‘chief’ Hanoverian Tories.¹²⁴

John Dolben was born into a clerical dynasty based in Wales. His family appears to have settled in Denbighshire under Henry VII but the place of Dolben’s birth is given variously as Denbighshire or Stanwick in Northamptonshire where his father was rector. His mother was niece to John Williams^†, archbishop of York.⁹ Dolben’s own marriage to a niece of Gilbert Sheldon was key to Dolben’s future career in the Church and offered him a wide network of supportive relatives.¹⁰ Dolben was also related to Sir Thomas Meres^‡, a prominent supporter of the Country party (with whom he acted over tithes disputes in their Welsh properties) and to the Wynns of Gwydir.¹¹ Although the majority of Dolben’s sermons have not survived in print, he left numerous personal papers. From the time of his translation to York, he engaged in lengthy exchanges of correspondence with his diocesan chancellor, Sir William Trumbull^‡ about a range of subjects including court gossip, diocesan affairs, and patronage.¹²

Dolben’s family wealth was augmented when his wife Catherine became a beneficiary under Sheldon’s will.¹³ By the time of Dolben’s death, he was able to leave a large estate to his son and heir, Sir Gilbert Dolben^‡, bt.¹⁴ He had been allowed the deanery of Westminster in commendam with the bishopric of Rochester and united the see to the deanery, giving the impoverished bishopric a town residence and additional income.¹⁵ He spent considerable sums from his own pocket in repairing the bishop’s palace at Bromley and in 1683 consecrated a new chapel at the palace.¹⁶ His two sons each married co-heiresses to the Northamptonshire Finedon estates, thus handsomely augmenting the Dolben patrimony and extending the family’s political network.

Early career

Dolben took up arms for the royalists in the Civil Wars and was twice wounded in battle. He was deprived of his Oxford fellowship in 1647. Ordained covertly by Henry King*, bishop of Chichester, until the Restoration, he lived with his Sheldon in-laws in Oxford, where he read the proscribed Anglican liturgy with Francis Turner*, the future bishop of Rochester and Ely, Thomas Ken*, the future bishop of Bath and Wells, and John Fell*, the future bishop of Oxford: an act of loyalism of which he was able to make rhetorical use after the return of the king.¹⁷

At the Restoration, Dolben petitioned successfully for the canonry of Christ Church, Oxford.¹⁸ His military service and illustrious relations guaranteed him status at court (and as such he was satirized by Dryden).¹⁹ In 1662 he succeeded to the prestigious Westminster deanery, where he maintained the abbey’s jurisdictional independence from diocesan control.²⁰ Dolben was also reputed to have made much of his place at court and to have behaved with marked familiarity in the king’s presence.²¹ At least three of the sermons he preached before the king during this period were subsequently printed by royal command.²² He also proved an effective leader at the outbreak of the Great Fire, when he assembled the king’s scholars at Westminster and organized them into an ad hoc fire-fighting force to protect the abbey.²³ In October 1666 his emotive sermon before the Commons on the fire’s providential origins impelled the lower House to appoint a committee to examine the penal laws against atheism.²⁴

Bishop of Rochester

On 31 Oct. 1666, the king directed Dolben’s election as bishop of Rochester. The following month, a warrant was issued granting him permission to retain his deanery in commendam.²⁵ At least two observers hoped that Dolben would follow the career path of most bishops of that poverty-stricken see and achieve translation to something more attractive.²⁶ Four days after his consecration, Dolben took his seat in the House of Lords. There he proved to be one of Sheldon’s most effective parliamentary allies. Having missed the first nine weeks of parliamentary business, he attended his first session for 51 per cent of all sittings and was named to 15 committees in addition to being nominated one of the lords commissioners for accounts (24 Jan.) and to a joint committee (28 Jan.) to wait on the king with an address relating to complaints from French merchants. His subsequent career in the House revealed that Dolben was a keen parliamentarian and political operator. Of 16 parliamentary sessions held during his episcopate he attended every one, none for fewer than half of all sittings, 13 for more than three-quarters of all sittings and, of those, eight for more than 80 per cent of sittings. He was always in his seat on the first day of business and for only two sessions failed to sit until an adjournment or prorogation. As such a regular presence at Parliament, he helped to manage conferences with the Commons, received several proxies in the course of his episcopate and also chaired and reported from both select committees and committees of the whole house. He also examined the journal on numerous occasions. In early January 1667 Dolben’s help was solicited by John Cosin*, bishop of Durham, in the private bill to grant lead-mine leases to Humphrey Wharton^‡.²⁷ Dolben was subsequently named to the select committee on the bill and attended the committee on 3 and 16 January.²⁸ On 4 Feb. he was nominated one of the reporters of a conference on a private bill concerning James Bertie*, 5th Baron Norreys, later earl of Abingdon, and again on 7 Feb. on the bill to rebuild the city of London.

Dolben’s role as an important figure in Sheldon’s political and parliamentary strategy soon became clear. On 24 Aug. 1667 he assisted in the consecration at Lambeth of another of Sheldon’s political allies, Francis Davies*, bishop of Llandaff.²⁹ The following month John Hacket*, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, warning Sheldon of his possible absence from Parliament, informed the archbishop that he would register his proxy in favour of Dolben if necessary.³⁰ On numerous occasions Dolben also held the proxy of Robert Morgan*, bishop of Bangor, another Sheldon loyalist who was wracked by poor health and preferred to avoid a daunting journey from his bishopric in north Wales.

On 10 Oct. 1667 Dolben was present for the start of business. He continued to attend the session for 77 per cent of sittings. He was named to 21 committees and on 17 Oct. attended the committee on the bill to punish atheism, where he was asked to bring in a replacement clause ‘to make it more plain to a country jury’.³¹ On 27 Nov. Dolben was nominated one of the managers of the conference with the Commons on the impeachment of Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon. Clarendon’s fall from grace had direct implications for those bishops most closely associated with the Restoration regime. It certainly provided a convenient excuse for removing Dolben from his post of clerk of the closet. Over the Christmas period, Sir Ralph Verney^‡, bt. became aware of an ‘ugly, shameful report all over London (and I doubt the country too)’ explaining Dolben’s anticipated dismissal. Verney reported that it had greatly saddened Dolben’s uncle, Sheldon, and that ‘whether it be true, or false, it will be too much credited’.³² The rumours related to Dolben’s alleged homosexuality. A newsletter elaborating on the ‘very foul story’ about Dolben’s ‘being too familiar’ with Charles Mohun*, 3rd Baron Mohun, deemed the rumours as ‘supposed false, the king having questioned him about it, and he denies it utterly, and is so much troubled at it, that he can hardly eat or drink’. The king, apparently wishing ‘to do right to the bishop of Rochester, who hath been brought under a most infamous and malicious scandal of late hath ... appointed to have the imputation heard and severely examined by a committee of the council’.³³

In spite of the king’s public support for Dolben, at the beginning of February he was dismissed as clerk of the closet.³⁴ Rumours of his sexuality continued to circulate. Samuel Pepys^‡ learned that the bishop had been accused of being ‘given to boys and of his putting his hand into a gentleman ... his codpiece while they were at table together’.³⁵ The Italian diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti spared no details in his accounts of court life, while acknowledging the political context. Dolben had made, he reported:

a lively attempt ... to put his hand into the front of the hose of Lord Mohun, a boy on account of his age, but not on account of the beauty of his face, who is apt to confirm the evil interpretation given to the intentions of this prelate. The result is that the poor man is in a very miserable state because of the universal scandal that the indiscreet gossip of this young man has sown among that Presbyterian rabble, who have not only acted to have him dismissed from the office that he had ... but want to make him lose his church. It is quite true that if he had not been a close friend of the chancellor, the thing would not have been publicly known as much as it has; and they tell me that it is a fact, that this is not the first sign that there has been of the inclinations of this prelate. However, the thing is there, and from this standpoint he is paying more for his steadfastness to an old friend [Clarendon] than for his fragility towards the young man....’ ³⁶

Dolben’s brother, William, attributed the rumours of the bishop’s sexual inclinations to those who envied Rochester’s position; he was certain that no sober man would give the story any credit.³⁷ Once ignited, though, the story gave ample scope to satirists and continued to haunt Dolben for the remainder of his life. In 1680 one ballad made reference to this affair and how Dolben had been ‘cashier’d for carnal arsery’, another gloated how ‘fat Dolben loves Sodom for fear of a clap’.³⁸ The scandal was also raised at Westminster. During discussions on the putative comprehension bill (being negotiated by Richard Baxter and a handful of bishops), it was said to have featured in the conversation of a ‘solemn Presbyterian’ with the bishop’s brother. The Presbyterian:

protested that the Catholics ought not to be excluded, maintaining this with effective reasons. When he had finished [Dolben’s brother] said to the man beside him, but in such a way that it could be overheard, “it seems that this man has the pope in his body”. The Presbyterian rose. “Certainly”, he replied, “I’d much rather have the pope in my body than the bishop in my backside”’.³⁹

Dolben’s allies appear to have turned a blind eye to his supposed activities. Hacket, unwilling to move from his bishopric to attend Parliament, ignored the gossip (if indeed it ever reached him), informing Sheldon on 20 Jan. 1668 that he hoped for the archbishop’s approval in entrusting Dolben, his ‘most intimate friend’, with his proxy for the session.⁴⁰ With Dolben’s uncharacteristic absence from the House until early February, Hacket’s proxy went instead to Benjamin Laney*, bishop of Ely. Dolben returned to the bishops’ bench on 10 Feb., receiving the proxies of Bishop Morgan and Gilbert Ironside*, bishop of Bristol. Later in February, Dolben was visited by Pepys, who found the bishop, despite being ‘under disgrace at court’, living ‘like a great prelate’ with his wife and two young sons, one ‘fat and black’ just like his father.⁴¹

Rehabilitation at court

On 24 Apr. 1668, Dolben was named as one of the conference managers on the impeachment of Sir William Penn^‡. Adjournments from May 1668 to March 1669 absolved Dolben of parliamentary attendance and in September 1668 he conducted his primary visitation of the see of Rochester.⁴² By the close of the year his rehabilitation was well on the way. It became apparent that the court factions had been ‘reconciled’ when Sheldon returned to favour at Christmas 1668.⁴³ Even so, it was not until 30 Aug. 1669 that Dolben returned to court.⁴⁴ His rehabilitation was also signalled by his nomination as one of the 15 commissioners to examine the complex dilapidations case concerning Rose Castle.⁴⁵

Three days before the next parliamentary session, Dolben again received the proxy of Bishop Ironside. Taking his seat at the start of business on 19 Oct. 1669, he attended the session for three-quarters of all sittings, but was named to only three select committees in addition to the standing committees. He was also one of those named on 9 Nov. to the committee considering papers submitted to the Lords by the commissioners for accounts. He chaired the committee on the charitable uses bill relating to John Warner*, the previous bishop of Rochester. The committee met on several occasions throughout December and again the following March.⁴⁶

On 7 Feb. 1670 Dolben again received Ironside’s proxy. A week later he resumed his seat in the House for the start of the new session, attended thereafter for 76 per cent of sittings and was named to nearly 50 select committees. On 17 Mar. 1670 when the House gave a second reading to the divorce bill of John Manners*, styled Lord Roos, the future duke of Rutland, Dolben joined Sheldon and the majority of the bishops in opposing the bill on doctrinal grounds.⁴⁷ He then dissented against the second reading. On 5 Apr. he was named as a conference manager for the bill to repair the harbour and piers at Great Yarmouth. At the end of October he again received the proxy of Bishop Morgan until cancelled by Morgan’s attendance on 23 Jan. 1671. On 10 Nov. 1670 Dolben and Joseph Henshaw*, bishop of Peterborough, were added to the select committee for the bill to prevent the burning of corn and destruction of cattle. Dolben was present in the chamber on 3 Feb. 1671 but the same day a note was made that he was undertaking parochial visitations. He was back in his place the following day when he was added to the committee on the bill concerning brandy.⁴⁸ On 27 Feb. he chaired the select committee on the bill to unite the vicarage and parsonage in the Herefordshire parish of Ross.⁴⁹ On 1 Mar. he was named to the committee to prepare heads for a conference on the growth of Catholicism, a subject on which Dolben and George Morley*, bishop of Winchester, harboured growing fears following the conversion to Rome of the duchess of York.⁵⁰ The following day Dolben was nominated a manger of the conference on the subsidy bill. On 15 Mar., after an appeal to the House from a judgment in the court of king’s bench in Ireland, Dolben and Morgan were the only bishops to dissent against the resolution to suspend the judgment against John Cusack in Cusack v. Usher. The petition had caused ripples of unease since it was unclear whether the English Lords could hear an appeal from the Irish court of chancery and had sought the expert opinion of the Irish judiciary. Towards the end of the session, Dolben, together with Buckingham, Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Baron Ashley (and later earl of Shaftesbury), and George Savile*, Viscount Halifax, was said to have been one of those blamed for the loss of the foreign excise bill: Dolben was a member of the committee appointed on 29 Mar., and with Ashley and Halifax, was among the managers appointed on 10 April for a conference on the bill which ended in a series of acrimonious exchanges.⁵¹

Concerns about the duchess of York’s conversion were brought to an end by her death in the spring of 1671 and in early April Dolben, as dean of Westminster, presided at the burial service.⁵² The same year he participated in a more controversial interment involving the infant son of Buckingham, and the dowager countess of Shrewsbury, whom they had honoured (without authority) with the honorific title, earl of Coventry.⁵³

Occupied throughout 1671 and 1672 on diocesan, deanery and pastoral affairs (including the correction of liturgical papers for under-secretary Sir Joseph Williamson^‡), following the death of Bishop Cosin in January 1672, Dolben was considered for translation to Durham (which remained vacant until October 1674). ‘Great interest’ was made for him, not least by Sheldon, and at one point he was told by the earl of Shaftesbury to put on his boots and spurs for he was to go to the north. In spite of this, it was thought that the ambitious Dolben, ‘most fair’ to succeed Sheldon at Canterbury, would be loath to take up a post so far from court.⁵⁴

Dolben took his seat at the opening of the new session on 4 Feb. 1673 and attended for 81 per cent of sittings; he was named to 13 select committees in addition to the standing committees. On 5 Feb. he was one of the Lords appointed to wait on the king to present the House’s thanks for the King’s Speech and on 18 Feb. he was added to the committee for the bill concerning Sir Ralph Bankes^‡. Dolben was later added specifically to the committee for the bill concerning Bankes' trustees on 4 Feb. 1678. On 10 Mar. 1673 Dolben received the proxy of Bishop Morgan (vacated by Morgan’s death in September). On 15 Mar. the sub-committee for the anti-Catholic Test Bill included Dolben.⁵⁵ Following a request from the Commons on 24 Mar. for a conference, Dolben was named as one of the conference managers.

Richard Baxter wrote that Dolben, with Seth Ward* and Morley had talked late in 1671 about comprehension as a means of strengthening the Church against the threat of Rome, though Baxter was sceptical about their motives and true intentions, claiming that Dolben and his colleagues employed pious rhetoric never matched by their actions.⁵⁶ Dolben was involved, though, in the proceedings on the bill for the ease of Protestant dissenters which was committed to the whole House on 21 March. After several sessions in committee, the House named Dolben as the only bishop among eight lords to manage both conferences with the Commons on the 29th. A prompt adjournment of Parliament the same day put the matter on hold and when the House resumed on 20 Oct. 1673, with Dolben in attendance, Parliament was prorogued. He was again in his seat on 27 Oct. 1673 for the first day of the week-long session, during which he attended on two days and was named to the sessional committees. 

Resuming his seat at the start of the session on 7 Jan. 1674, Dolben attended for 93 per cent of sittings and was named to seven select committees. On 16 Jan. he was ordered to preach a fast sermon in the abbey on 4 February. Two days after the start of the session, possibly in anticipation of two new bills (to secure the Protestant religion and to invite ‘sober and peaceably-minded Dissenters into the service of the Church’), Dolben received the proxy of Edward Reynolds*, bishop of Norwich. That Reynolds, a former Presbyterian, should entrust his proxy to Dolben at this time might suggest either that Sheldon had specifically instructed Reynolds to do so, or that Reynolds knew of Dolben’s support for the comprehension bill. On 5 Feb. Dolben was thanked for his fast sermon of the previous day and on 6 Feb. he was one of a number of Lords appointed to oversee the complaint brought by the family of the young Charles Talbot*, 12th earl of Shrewsbury, against Buckingham concerning the killing of Shrewsbury’s father and Buckingham’s co-habitation with Shrewsbury’s mother. Dolben was present on 13 Feb. when Bishop Morley introduced the comprehension bill. He lent Morley his support on the 19th, when the bill was read for a second time and the Lords had a ‘great debate’ in which Dolben was ‘for the commitment and spoke for the thing’.⁵⁷ It was reported that Dolben was one of the bishops to support the propositions that no minister be obliged to wear the surplice or use the cross in baptism, and that the clauses in the Act of Uniformity relating to assent and consent to the liturgy, and the renunciation of the covenant, be repealed, and that the latter was carried by almost 20 votes.⁵⁸ The bill was lost with the peremptory prorogation on 24 Feb., the day before the House was due to debate the comprehension bill in committee. Meanwhile, during February, Dolben had offered a clause on the performance of stage-plays in the bill to suppress atheism and profaneness, another bill scuppered by the prorogation.⁵⁹

In January 1675 Dolben, with Sheldon, Morley, Ward and John Pearson*, bishop of Chester, was present at the meeting at Lambeth initiated by Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby, to formulate proposals ‘to suppress popery and establish the Church of England’.⁶⁰ The Venetian ambassador recorded that five bishops subscribed the outcome of their deliberations; Ward and Morley were the most enthusiastic, together with Danby and Heneage Finch*, Baron Finch. Dolben, Sheldon and Pearson, ‘three good and quiet ones’, merely gave ‘silent consent’. The findings had a mixed reception at the Privy Council, where the allies of James Stuart* duke of York perceived an opportunity to divide the episcopal bench and the resulting proclamation was perceived as very mild towards the nonconformists.⁶¹

Alliance with the duke of York

Dolben took his seat in the Lords on 13 Apr. 1675 at the start of the new session. He attended 92 per cent of sittings and was named to nine select committees, holding Bishop Reynolds’ proxy for the whole session. Dolben began to distance himself from the majority of the bishops in their hostility to Catholicism. On 30 Apr. he joined with York in seconding the amendment moved by Charles North*, Baron Grey of Rolleston, to distinguish between legal and illegal methods of altering the government, in answer to Danby’s ‘no alteration’ bill. They were opposed by Danby and the amendment was rejected, but the bill was lost with the prorogation.⁶² Towards the close of the session Dolben was named a manager of the conferences of 17, 19 and 21 May over Sherley v. Fagg and again on 28 May for that concerning the Commons’ privileges.

In September 1675 fresh rumours circulated of Dolben’s expected promotion, this time to the see of London. In the event it was Danby’s candidate, Henry Compton*, who was given the coveted bishopric. During the autumn Dolben, with Sheldon and Meres, became involved in a tithe dispute against Henry Bridgeman, bishop of Sodor and Man, and his predecessor Isaac Barrow*, bishop of St Asaph, which involved his own aunt, Lady Grace Wynn. Dolben ‘mortified’ Bridgeman in a public forum and ‘made him promise her full satisfaction’.⁶³

In advance of the next session, Dolben was again entrusted with Reynolds’ proxy. Five days after the start of business on 13 Oct. 1675, he also received that of Humphrey Lloyd*, bishop of Bangor. He attended 91 per cent of sittings and was named to five select committees. Within days of the new session’s opening, Dolben’s influence at court was signalled by his appointment as lord almoner.⁶⁴ On 19 Nov. he was again named manager of the conference on the preservation of good understanding between the two Houses (an attempt to head off a revival of the Sherley v. Fagg case). During the lengthy recess, he preached at court on 5 Nov. 1676.⁶⁵ He also secured for his brother, William, the king’s nomination as recorder of London, despite the opposition of the City.⁶⁶

Dolben took his seat in the House on 15 Feb. 1677, after the contentious long prorogation, in a session in which Danby’s programme of measures to secure the Church in case York succeeded to the throne was a prominent theme. Dolben attended the session for three-quarters of all sitting days and was named to nearly 60 select committees. He was present on 22 Feb. when the House debated heads of bills to secure the Protestant religion, but no evidence has been found to support the claim that on 1 Mar. it was Dolben who introduced one of these, the bill for further securing the protestant religion, which may have been Richard Sterne*, archbishop of York.⁶⁷

On 2 Mar. 1677 Dolben attended a select committee on the private bill for Sir Edward Hungerford^‡, lodging a complaint on behalf of the Westminster deanery that Hungerford’s proposed leases would interfere with his own tenants’ passage to their houses. In the event a compromise was reached.⁶⁸ Six days later he received the proxy of his old friend Bishop Fell of Oxford, which was cancelled on 21 May. On 13 and 15 Mar. Dolben was twice named as a conference manager on the address to the king for the preservation of the Spanish Netherlands. On 29 Mar. he reported from a committee of the whole House with the recommendation that the bill ‘for the better observation of the Lord’s Day, the baptizing of infants, and the exercise of catechism’ be divided into two separate bills and that the House go into committee the next morning to start with the bill to better observe the Sabbath. On 4 Apr. he reported from the committee on the naturalization of Jacob David and others, recommending that the bill pass without amendment. The same day he reported from the committee of the whole House on the Sabbath observation bill.

Dolben continued to attend the House until the adjournment on 28 May 1677 and subsequent adjournment 16 July. During the recess he was engaged in his usual round of ecclesiastical and personal activities, including mediating with William Sancroft*, the new archbishop of Canterbury, over the contents of Sheldon’s library.⁶⁹ He attended the House on 3 Dec. but Parliament was again adjourned to the following January. On Christmas Day he preached at Whitehall chapel before the king.⁷⁰ Shortly after the resumption of the session, Dolben again received Bishop Lloyd’s proxy. In the new year, Dolben was in correspondence with John Paterson, bishop of Galloway, about the state of disaffected forces in Scotland.⁷¹ On 21 Mar. 1678 Dolben was one of three bishops added to the committee for the bills concerning servants and highways and on 26 June he was named as a conference manager on the bill to grant supply to the king for disbanding the forces raised since September of the previous year.

The increasingly poor health of James Margetson, archbishop of Armagh, through the summer of 1678 prompted James Butler*, duke of Ormond, to raise the possibility of Dolben being translated to Ireland. In June Ormond mooted various possibilities that he hoped might appeal to Dolben and which he hoped the king would approve. One was Dolben’s promotion to the primacy in Ireland. Ormond thought that Dolben ‘would fit the place well and discharge it with great ability.’ Failing that he suggested Dolben might take on the archbishopric of Dublin and the office of lord chancellor in Ireland, with the present incumbent moving to Armagh. In spite of Ormond’s warm recommendation, and apparently to the surprise of the king, Dolben declined the offer.⁷² Dolben’s interest in the law was again hinted at on 5 July when he was the only bishop to join 18 protesters against the resolution in the cause Darrell v. Whichcot. The case clearly had implications for the judicial business of the House and during the first Exclusion Parliament, on 18 Mar. 1679, when Arthur Capell*, earl of Essex, reported to the House from the committee of privileges concerning the validity of appeals and impeachments left over from the previous Parliament, Dolben maintained that they should read the reports of the House on the receipt of appeals in Darrell v. Whichcot the previous spring.⁷³

Dolben was present, as usual, for the first day of the new session on 21 Oct. 1678, attending thereafter for 79 per cent of sittings. The session found him closely involved with committees relating to the Popish Plot, including that appointed on 23 Oct. to examine information regarding the Plot and witness statements regarding the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, which he chaired from 23-30 Oct. and on 1 and 8 Nov, and from which he reported on 26, 30 Oct. and 1 November.⁷⁴ On 8 Nov. he reported to the House that Robert Walsh should be acquitted of all suspicion regarding the plot, on 16 Nov. he was named to the committee considering which papers should be presented at Coleman’s trial and on 20 Nov. he was nominated to that concerning the Conyers attainder bill.

On 15 Nov. 1678 Dolben voted against making transubstantiation part of the Test bill, which would thereby disable Roman Catholics from sitting in Parliament. In this he was joined by Sancroft and Peter Gunning*, bishop of Ely, Sir Robert Southwell^‡ opining that the Test had ‘it seems some new clause about idolatry or adoration which did so far stumble’ them that they voted against it.⁷⁵ Although York was exempted from the new test in a later division, Dolben remained one of the bill’s ‘chief opposers’, leading to speculation as to why any bishop of the Church of England should oppose such a bill.⁷⁶ On 26 Dec. he voted against a motion to insist on retaining the Lords’ amendment in the supply bill disbanding the army relating to the payment of money into the exchequer. The same day he joined his fellow bishops in voting against Danby’s committal. He attended for the prorogation on 30 Dec. but there is little detail of his activities during the recess apart from being contacted in his capacity as royal almoner by James Scott*, duke of Monmouth.⁷⁷

Dolben took his seat in the House at the start of the new Parliament on 6 Mar. 1679 and attended five sittings of the short-lived session, being named to the sessional committees and to the select committee on information regarding the Popish Plot. After a short prorogation, he returned to the House for the beginning of the next session on 15 Mar. 1679, during which he was present on 79 per cent of sitting days. He was named to nine select committees, including the committee on 17 Apr. to examine the bill for better securing the liberty of the subject (habeas corpus) preparatory for it being considered in a committee of the whole and on 24 Apr. to that considering objections raised by the Commons to the answers delivered by the five impeached lords. On 22 Mar., Dolben joined Bishop Compton in reporting to the House that the king had appointed the following Monday at the Banqueting House to receive a parliamentary address concerning a fast.⁷⁸ He joined his fellow bishops in voting against Danby’s attainder on 1 and 4 Apr., and on 14 Apr. he opposed agreement with the Commons over the attainder bill.⁷⁹ On 11 Apr. Dolben preached the fast sermon at the abbey and was thanked by the House the following day.⁸⁰ The same month he spoke in Ormond’s defence over criticism of the duke’s administration in Ireland occasion for speech.⁸¹

During the involved debates that dominated the attention of the Lords between 6-20 May on the rights of bishops to vote in capital cases, Dolben spoke out for the bishops. He argued that they were:

not willing to have that power which it is thought [we] desire – we cannot say or do any thing in this case but it will offend a great many of you. My lord Shaftesbury gives with one hand and takes with the other. We are trusted not for our posterity but our successors ... my see is ennobled though my person is not. 

He later cited the legal precedent of the trial of Thomas Cromwell^†, earl of Essex. On the final day of the debate, when Buckingham maintained that judges could not vote in their own cases, Dolben responded that the Catholic lords had recently voted in a division that resulted in their own expulsion from the House. His statement was challenged by Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, and after further speeches Dolben and Wharton made the concluding remarks.⁸² Two days later, Dolben was named as a manager of the conference on the supply bill to pay arrears to the army and of the conference concerning the trials of Danby and the five lords imprisoned in the Tower. On the 10th he was appointed one of the managers of the conference on the petition received from Danby. On 26 May he was again nominated a manager of the conference to preserve ‘a good correspondence’ between the houses. 

Dolben continued to preach regularly, both at Whitehall and in prominent London churches. According to John Verney when he preached in the church at Covent Garden on 19 Nov. (at the height of the debates on the bishops’ role in trials) a gold fringe with tassels had been cut off from the cloth covering the pulpit.⁸³ He attended the House for further prorogations throughout 1679 and 1680. During 1680 he was involved in a chancery dispute with his diocesan registrar John Stowell, who had charged him in the ecclesiastical court with financial irregularities.⁸⁴ Dolben also found himself at odds with Ormond in the second half of the year over the office of high bailiff of Westminster. Ormond (on the authority of the Privy Council) sought the dismissal of Essex Strode^‡ from the post after Strode’s bungled invasion of the Savoy and arrest of Ormond’s kinsman, Sir James Butler^‡. Dolben eventually capitulated, though with considerable reluctance, because he thought it an unlawful action, ‘it being a judicial as well as a ministerial office’.⁸⁵

On 21 Oct. 1680 Dolben attended the House for the start of the new Parliament and attended the session for 86 per cent of sittings; he was named to three select committees. On 15 Nov. he voted to reject the exclusion bill on its first reading and on the 23rd opposed the appointment of a committee to consider, in conjunction with the Commons, the state of the kingdom. He then attended each day of the brief Oxford Parliament in March 1681. In May 1682 he foiled an attempt to dismiss his brother from the judiciary.⁸⁶

Archbishop of York 1683-6

Dolben was said to have been second choice, after Nathaniel Crew*, bishop of Durham, for translation to York, but by June 1683 news had reached the York chapter of Dolben’s nomination.⁸⁷ Following the official directive from the king, Dolben was elected on 28 July and the news was widely known by the time of the royal assent in August.⁸⁸ Bishop Fell was summoned to London to assist in the formalities of translation.⁸⁹ In the week of 20 Sept. Dolben, always given to the high life, left London ‘with a very great train’.⁹⁰ Five days later he entered York, where he met with an enthusiastic reception.⁹¹ Richard Grahme^‡, Viscount Preston [S], sent Dolben warm congratulations when he learned of Dolben’s translation, noting that ‘the trouble of it will be to your Lordship, but the advantage will be to the Church and to us’.⁹² Dolben informed Sancroft by the end of October of his plans for the diocese, noting the need to prepare the bishop of Durham for what he wished to do. These included the weekly communions that he had previously rejected and additional celebrations of saints’ days. The latter resulted in his having to defend himself from ‘Romish superstition’.⁹³ He had misgivings about his equally ‘furious’ deans at York and at Ripon, Tobias Wickham and Thomas Cartwright*, later bishop of Chester, and predicted stormy relations between York Minster and the corporation.⁹⁴ He was also at odds with Halifax; the governor of York, Sir John Reresby^‡, bt., observing that differences between the two men were now expressed ‘with more animosity than before’.⁹⁵

Within a week of arriving in the diocese, Dolben had appointed his son, Gilbert, to the office of seneschal of the liberty of Ripon for life at the salary of £6 a year.⁹⁶ The following month he consolidated his family’s connection to the Mulso family of Finedon by securing the marriage of his second son, John Dolben^‡, to Elizabeth Mulso, the daughter and coheir of Tanfield Mulso of Finedon: his eldest, Gilbert, had already married the other Mulso sister, Anne.⁹⁷ By 16 Nov. 1683 Dolben had returned south from his diocese and surrendered his almoner’s place at Windsor. He had earlier expressed concerns about the choice of his successor, Francis Turner, bishop of Rochester, whose appointment so soon after being elevated to the bishopric he feared might ‘bring envy with it’. Once Turner had been confirmed, though, he welcomed him as his ‘successor throughout’. He proceeded to regale Turner with a detailed exposition of the workings of the office of almoner, recommending officials on whom he could rely while warning him that his deputies were ‘generally knaves’. Fearful that Yorkshire politics were ‘refining mightily’ on Danby’s ‘new honour’ and his alliance with Halifax, Dolben wanted Sancroft to use his influence to prevent Danby ‘from any design to the prejudice of the Church’. In March 1684, Dolben tried to secure the translation of the northern bred and ‘well-principled’ John Lake*, the future bishop of Chichester, to Carlisle.⁹⁸ He ‘invited and encouraged’ Lake to apply for the vacancy, but the ecclesiastical commissioners ignored Dolben and sent Lake to the politically volatile city of Bristol instead.⁹⁹ Following a visitation of the West Ridng, he returned to York in May ‘disordered’ with diarrhoea to find that his innovation of weekly communion was still proving unpopular.¹⁰⁰

By the beginning of June 1684 Dolben appears to have been regretting his elevation to York. He complained to Turner that the ‘little diocese’ of Ely (to which it was thought Turner would soon be translated) would have suited him much better ‘and you would better have traversed this vast tract of ground, much of which will not abide a coach’.¹⁰¹ Dolben was also unhappy at the elevation of Thomas Smith*, bishop of Carlisle, on account of Smith’s suspected simony, even though he professed ‘both kindness and esteem’ for him. He was assisted by Lake and Crew in Smith’s consecration at York.¹⁰² By July, he was expecting the arrival at York of the lord chief justice, George Jeffreys*, later Baron Jeffreys, ‘where they say he will do greater things as a privy councillor than as a judge’. He also hoped that Bishop Compton would visit him since they had much to discuss that Dolben would not commit to writing.¹⁰³ It was rumoured across London in late July that Dolben was dead, because of his ill health.¹⁰⁴ He blamed overwork, having ‘undertaken too much at once, to visit Chester diocese, metropolitically, and [his] own diocese together’.¹⁰⁵ He learned from Sir Hugh Cholmley^‡ 4th bt., that Compton was definitely coming to York, but the anticipation of a visit did not dispel his gloom.¹⁰⁶ He was also concerned that Reresby had become ‘a creature’ of Halifax.¹⁰⁷

During the campaign to remodel corporations by quo warranto, it was decided to surrender Ripon’s charter into Dolben’s hands ‘to the use of his majesty’, it being judged by the aldermen that ‘to have the concurrence of the archbishop with them in this act was thought a good means, not to allay all jealousies, but to procure some advantages to the town’. In spite of this aspiration, by the time of the accession of the new king, Ripon was still without a charter, possibly on account of Dolben’s opposition.¹⁰⁸ Probably with reference to an anticipated session of Parliament, Dolben corresponded with Bishop Turner in the autumn of 1684, noting that ‘coming up’ would be ‘very grievous to me in many respects’. He concluded that his vote ‘will be as useful in your hand, as my own presence can make it’ and also commented self-deprecatingly on his impetuousness in debate: ‘my bolt is soon shot, at random, and to small purpose’.¹⁰⁹

Freed from the need to make another journey to London, Dolben concentrated on affairs in York. He relied on his wife’s mediation to improve his relations with Reresby.¹¹⁰ The period witnessed feverish activity in the city in preparation for a visit by the duke of York on his way north to preside over a planned Scottish parliament in the new year. All this was overtaken by events. Dolben was actively engaged in conducting a controversial visitation of the cathedral chapter shortly before learning from Reresby at a meeting in York Minster that the king was ill.¹¹¹ The following day (6 Feb. 1685), they both processed to the castle yard with the gentry to proclaim the accession of James II.¹¹² Dolben published the declaration ‘with tears’, but within days had warned Sancroft to ‘prepare for trouble’.¹¹³ He thought it best to remain in York where he could be of use in the imminent general election. On 16 Feb. a meeting of the gentry and clergy at York agreed to subscribe an address wherein both laity and clergy would express their thanks for the king’s declaration to preserve the Church of England. Universal agreement was not forthcoming. Although Dolben agreed to fall in with the majority of the country in the address, many were loathe to offer thanks. Others, such as the dean, seemed to Dolben to be acting without integrity, ‘designing to please, the later to vapour’. In March he ordered Bishop Smith of Carlisle to attend the coronation.¹¹⁴

In the general election campaign, Dolben put forward his son, Gilbert, for Ripon. On 6 Mar. 1685 he received an address from the inhabitants expressing their delight at the recommendation.¹¹⁵ On 20 Mar. Gilbert Dolben, was returned together with Sir Edmund Jennings^‡, the archbishop having secured generous support for his son and promising to choose the second candidate of ‘good affections to the crown’.¹¹⁶ He also promised Henry Fairfax^‡, 4th Baron Fairfax of Cameron [S], support for Hon. Thomas Fairfax^‡ insisting if his ‘little interest in Yorkshire can serve Captain Fairfax he is master of it’; he assured Fairfax that he had already helped Reresby by circulating his tenants in several places and would be ‘at least as zealously active for the captain’.¹¹⁷ Fairfax was duly elected for Malton; the city of York returned Reresby with Sir Metcalfe Robinson^‡, bt.¹¹⁸ Early in May 1685 Dolben complained to Reresby about the lack of activity shown by Richard Boyle*, earl of Burlington, in attempting to prevent some of the York aldermen being turned out of their places. By the close of the month, Dolben appears to have lost his appetite for the struggle too, leaving it to Halifax to defend them. The effort proved in vain and the aldermen were removed.¹¹⁹

Travelling to London to rejoin the bishops’ bench for the start of parliamentary business on 19 May 1685 (and to take his seat as primate of York), Dolben attended the session for 88 per cent of sittings and was named to nine select committees. He attended until Parliament was adjourned on 2 July, returning to Bishopthorpe on 17 July and instructing his clergy, in the wake of the Monmouth Rebellion, to preach ‘to make the people sensible of the great deliverance ... that they should exhort them earnestly to loyalty according to the principle of our common Christianity, and the peculiar doctrine of our church’. Despite having received no formal instruction to celebrate thanksgiving he went ahead anyway. The cathedral, he claimed, was never fuller; inclined to ‘tremble’ at the thought of more rebellions, he advised Sancroft to speak with the king privately as the latter was more likely to be susceptible to reason if not disturbed by onlookers. He reminded Sancroft that he had already succeeded with James in another (unspecified) personal matter.¹²⁰

By August 1685, the king’s religious politics were alarming the episcopate. Dolben was anxious about the future: ‘no man hath more need of being assisted by worthy and able men, being so deficient in myself as I am’. He asked Sancroft to block the elevation of Thomas Cartwright, whose ambitions for the see of Chester were matched only by the noise of his boasting to friends in York before the formal announcement; Dolben wanted Cartwright posted ‘where he may do less harm’. He also sought Sancroft’s assistance in discouraging the presentation to ‘that excellent living at Prestwich’ of one Mr Ashton, through the patronage of John Digby*, 3rd earl of Bristol, as Ashton already possessed a living in Nottinghamshire, which Dolben considered too far away to justify him holding both at once. A fellowship in Manchester, he considered, might be more suitable.¹²¹ By the end of September he confided in Trumbull that he wished he ‘were so fit to die, as I am unlike and indeed unfit to live, useless and unprofitable in my station’. It is unclear whether his mood reflected personal or pastoral concerns, but he clearly fretted for the future of the established Church, ‘notwithstanding all our provocations’ and wished Sancroft well in his attempts to protect them.¹²²

Sir John Reresby, the governor of York, took the whole Dolben family to dine at the castle in early October, treating them to the diversion of a company of men exercising and firing grenade shells (Reresby noted that Dolben had himself been a military man).¹²³ Despite his enervated mood and the trials of travelling, he was determined to attend Parliament ‘in obedience to his majesty’s commands’ and planned to leave York on 29 October.¹²⁴ He met up with Reresby and Sir Henry Goodricke^‡, 2nd bt., at Doncaster, where he learned that Halifax had been dismissed and that a bill in favour of Catholics might come before Parliament.¹²⁵ By 4 Nov. Dolben had nearly reached London, bringing with him (according to Gilbert Dolben) ‘his good look and his good stomach’.¹²⁶ Soon after his arrival in London, Dolben appears to have had a meeting with the king at which James informed him that he was relying on Dolben’s vote in favour of taking off the test, not least as Dolben had opposed its imposition previously. Dolben answered that although he had formerly been opposed to it, he now felt that it was important that the measure be retained. It was widely accepted that Dolben, Fell and Compton would support the London clergy in their opposition to the king’s religious policies.¹²⁷ During the debate on the king’s speech on 9 Nov., Dolben and Compton ‘spoke much’ about retaining Catholic officers and it was reported that together they ‘did well in Parliament’.¹²⁸ On 19 Nov. William Cavendish*, 4th earl of Devonshire, backed by Halifax, moved the Lords to consider the king’s speech, but was opposed by Dolben on procedural grounds, as it had not been set down as the business for that day.¹²⁹ The House was prorogued the following day.

Ten days later Dolben dined with Compton. He remained in the capital where, on 6 Dec. 1685, ‘the princess’ (presumably Anne) received the sacrament ‘with extraordinary devotion’ from Dolben. He enjoyed the usual social round, especially frequent visits from Turner.¹³⁰ He also kept his ear to the ground for political gossip, informing Reresby, falsely, that Halifax was to be reinstated. More accurate was the news he received on the 29th about Compton’s dismissal from the Privy Council for his speech against Catholic officers.¹³¹ In January 1686, Dolben waited on the king to wish him well for the new year. The king informed Dolben of his intention to defer the sitting of Parliament until after the following autumn and explained his removal of Compton. Dolben finally left London on 22 Mar. 1686. According to Gilbert Dolben, he had only lingered in London as his daughter was on the verge of giving birth. The day after she had been churched, Dolben intended to head back to the north.¹³² On the journey back he stayed in an inn infected with smallpox. He preached at York Minster on Good Friday 1686, but fell ill the following week of a ‘lethargic distemper’. With an ‘utterly hopeless’ prognosis, he died in the early hours of 11 Apr. before his wife could return to York to be with him.¹³³

News of Dolben’s condition remained confused for several days. Narcissus Luttrell^‡ had reported him dead several days before he finally expired.¹³⁴ John Verney^‡ (later Viscount Fermanagh [I]) reported that Dolben had suffered an apoplectic fit; others thought him still alive but suffering from smallpox. Thomas Comber, his precentor at York, said that he had died ‘rather of grief at the melancholy prospect of public affairs, than of the smallpox’.¹³⁵ The day after his death Dolben was buried in the south aisle of York Minster. A marble monument with Dolben’s effigy dressed formally in his episcopal cope and mitre was later erected to mark the place.¹³⁶ Both Comber and the archbishop’s son, Gilbert (whose wife also contracted smallpox), informed Sancroft promptly of his death and within two days, the news had reached London.¹³⁷ Although letters of administration were granted to Dolben’s wife, his son and heir Gilbert bore the brunt of probate duties and the removal of the household from Bishopthorpe to the family home at Finedon.¹³⁸ Dolben’s second son, John, later became a driving force in the prosecution of Dr Henry Sacheverell.¹³⁹

Dolben’s reputation, perhaps unsurprisingly, was mixed. Even Gilbert Burnet*, bishop of Salisbury, whose customary bias against Tory Anglicans was almost certainly exacerbated when Dolben refused to assist his academic research, praised the archbishop, but not without some caveats: he was a ‘man of more spirit than discretion, an excellent preacher, but of a fine conversation, which laid him open to much censure in a vicious court’.¹⁴⁰ Trumbull eulogized him as a great parliamentarian with greater ‘interest and authority’ in the House of Lords than any other bishop at this time. He had, Trumbull wrote,

easily mastered all the forms of proceeding. He had studied much of our laws, especially those of the Parliament, and was not to be brow-beat or daunted by the arrogance or titles of any courtier or favourite. His presence of mind and readiness of elocution, accompanied with good breeding and an inimitable wit, gave him a greater superiority than any other lord could pretend to from his dignity or office.¹⁴¹

Other eulogies did nothing to prevent scandal pursuing Dolben beyond the grave: the licenser of Anthony Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses found in it ‘horrible reflections’ on the archbishop.¹⁴²