Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603-1638: An Anthology of Primary Sources

John Donne

301 John Donne (1572–1631) Born into a Roman Catholic family, Donne matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1584, when he was only twelve, probably in the hope that he could finish his BA before turning sixteen, when he would have to take the Oath of Supremacy. In the event, he left Oxford without taking a degree, perhaps to travel abroad. In 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn; it was probably during his years as a law student that Donne began studying “the body of divinity as it was then controverted betwixt the Reformed and Roman Church” (Walton 19).1 Around the same time, his brother Henry was thrown in prison for concealing a Jesuit. Henry died in prison in 1594; the Jesuit was drawn and quartered. Donne had left Lincoln’s Inn by early 1596 when he joined Essex’s successful Cadiz expedition. He also took part in the bungled follow-up expedition, returning to England in October 1597. Shortly thereafter, Sir Thomas Edgerton, the Lord Keeper, made Donne his secretary, which strongly suggests that by this point, Donne had conformed to the Church of England. As is well known, Donne fell in love with Lady Edgerton’s young niece, Anne More, whose secret marriage to Donne in 1601 got him briefly arrested and permanently dismissed from Edgerton’s service. For years thereafter, the Donnes survived on the kindness of a few friends and relatives. It was during this period that most of Donne’s religious poetry (La Corona, “A Litany,” “Good Friday: Riding Westward,” and many of the Holy Sonnets) was written, as well as his treatises on suicide (Biathanatos [1607–8]) and whether Catholics might take the oath of allegiance (Pseudo-Martyr [1610]), plus the anti-Jesuit satire, Ignatius his conclave (1611). Donne’s two Anniversaries, commemorating the death of Elizabeth Drury, likewise date from 1610–11. Donne spent most of 1612 traveling with the Druries on the Continent. Upon their return, Sir Robert Drury provided Donne and his large family with a house, where they lived until 1621. 1 It may be unnecessary to add that a good deal of his best-known poetry also dates from this period. Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603–1638 302 Donne had been an MP in the Parliament of 1601; he was elected again in 1614, but the session (known as the Addled Parliament) was a disaster, and James dissolved it after two months. Soon thereafter, Donne finally abandoned his efforts to find secular employment and, in January 1615, was ordained both deacon and priest, with John King, Bishop of London, officiating. Later the same year James made him a royal chaplain—in which capacity he preached the Lenten sermon below; the King also, against considerable opposition, pressured Cambridge into granting a DD to this new priest sans BA. In 1616 he received two benefices and, far more significant, the readership in divinity at Lincoln’s Inn. The next year he preached his first Paul’s Cross sermon. From 1619 to 1620, Donne served as Viscount Doncaster’s chaplain in James’ eleventh -hour embassy to avert the war threatening to engulf Europe. (His “Hymn to Christ, at the author’s last going into Germany” concerns this journey.) At the Hague, Donne received a medal commemorating the Synod of Dort, but the Doncaster mission was a failure. Donne returned to his readership at Lincoln’s Inn for almost a year, exchanging it in November of 1621 for the deanship of St. Paul’s, where, according to Walton, he at once began “to repair and beautify the chapel” (48). In 1622, as the Protestant armies suffered defeat after defeat, the London pulpits grew increasingly fierce in their calls for a holy war; the King responded with directives forbidding ministers to “meddle” with matters of state and the “deep points of predestination” or to use “indecent railing speeches against the persons of either papists or puritans”—and picked Donne to defend the new rules in a Paul’s Cross sermon. Modern scholarship on this sermon has sought to find a resistant or at least ambivalent subtext to its defense of censorship, but James was pleased and had the sermon printed at once. The rebuilding of Lincoln’s Inn chapel, with its glorious stained glass windows, had begun during Donne’s tenure there, and he returned to preach the consecration sermon on Ascension, 1623.2 Donne’s theological position to this point has proven hard to pin down; however, his Devotions...