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  • George Herbert and Cambridge Scholars
  • Elizabeth Clarke

Although Izaak Walton is concerned to give George Herbert royal and aristocratic patrons during his career at Cambridge University, there are a fair number of Cambridge scholars in the biography he constructed in 1670. Herbert's deputy as University Orator, Herbert Thorndike, is mentioned, as is Robert Creighton, Herbert's successor as Orator. James Duport, Master of Trinity until 1664, is given credit for the publication of Musae Responsoriae, Herbert's epigrams in answer to Andrew Melville. It is no coincidence that all of the men mentioned by Walton as important to Herbert's career hold positions in the post-Restoration Anglican church. In 1670 Herbert Thorndike is Prebend of Westminster, while James Duport is "the learned Dean of Peter-borough."1 Creighton had been Dean of Wells until early in 1670 but Walton carefully revises the 1675 edition of his Lives to take note of his promotion of to Bishop of Wells in May 1670.2 Walton is rather less interested in university promotion, however: by the time the first edition of his Lives was published, James Duport was Master of Magdalene and Vice-Chancellor of the University.3 Walton's concern for ecclesiastical protocol above all else confirms the impression that this sketch of Herbert's Cambridge friends is composed with one eye on the Church of England hierarchy in the years that his Life was being published.4

In 1670 there had only been ten turbulent years since Charles II returned to the throne and the process of reestablishing the Church of England began. Anglican Royalists still felt the need to assert the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England in contradistinction to the beliefs of the Puritan regime of the Interregnum. The nature of Protestant culture was under intense discussion in pamphlets such as Samuel Parker's Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity and Independent John Owen's answer to it, Truth and innocence vindicated. This perhaps explains Walton's hostility to the Jacobean Presbyterian Andrew Melville in the Life of Herbert, lambasting him as "a man of an unruly wit, of a strange confidence, of so furious a zeal, and of so ungoverned passions, that his insolence to the King . . . lost him . . . his liberty."5 Anti-Puritanism and loyalty to the King are of course hallmarks of the [End Page 43] Restoration Church of England. It is clearly very important that Walton produces Herbert as a loyal conformist, and he does his best. Herbert's liturgical practice as described in the "Life" is dictated by the political concerns of the Restoration Church, rather than an accurate reading of The Country Parson: Walton freely invents details which Herbert does not supply, such as the importance of standing for the recitation of the Creed, and kneeling for communion. Herbert himself in The Country Parson is rather less dogmatic, asserting that "Contentiousnesse in a feast of Charity is more scandalous then any posture."6 As for the church calendar, which, suggests Walton, Herbert defended feast by feast from Christmas to Whitsunday, it is hardly mentioned in Herbert's text. But Walton was actually quoting Hooker, whose Life he had recently written, rather than Herbert when, for example, he asserted the importance of beginning the calendar year on March 25.7 The needs of the Anglican church of 1670, when liturgy and calendar were disputed by a large body of dissenters outside of the Church of England, were clearly dictating the context in which Walton wanted George Herbert to be seen, and indeed, read.

The sense of a political "spin" here is reinforced not only by Walton's treatment of Herbert's writing but also his casual attitude to historical events. On the very day of Herbert's ordination, apparently, Archbishop Laud personally overcame Herbert's doubts that he was fit for ordination, and took him to buy a new suit of clothes. Amy Charles questions whether Laud was anywhere near Salisbury on April 26 1630,8 but the reasons why Walton should want to adopt Herbert into Laud's personal acquaintance are transparently obvious in the religious politics of 1670, when persecution by Anglicans of Nonconformists reached a new height. Walton is...

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