Abstract

The reconstruction of the Church of England's hierarchy after 1660 has attracted extensive scholarly attention. Scholars have evaluated how far the doctrinal and ecclesial positions of the Laudian Church shaped the reconstruction of the episcopal hierarchy up to and beyond 1660, especially the Laudian recourse to theories of Jure divino episcopacy as justifying episcopal status and power. Detailed analysis of two texts, John Gauden's The Looſing of St Peters Bands and Arthur Duck's Life of Henry Chichele (a medieval archbishop of Canterbury) will demonstrate how the restored episcopate was prepared to appeal to its late-medieval past and to its immediate context in order to justify its authority and demonstrate its self-conception as being an agent of reformed authority.

Introduction

During the seventeenth century in England individual bishops and the episcopate in general came under increasingly intense censure for being a popish dreg. As a Romanist relic, the episcopate was perceived by its detractors more as a problem than a solution to the settlement of the English Church. Attacks against bishops culminated in the abolition of episcopal government by the Long Parliament in the 1640s, leaving episcopacy in abeyance until the Restoration of 1660. During the seventeenth century, other challenges came from the often drastic reductions in episcopal revenues made by royal authorities, which themselves impacted on the capacity of bishops to fulfill their functions and exercise their authority.2

Censure provoked defence; from the 1570s onwards, the English episcopate had faced various demands for further reform or else its total extirpation. [End Page 175] These demands for further reform of Church polity and hierarchy persisted into the seventeenth century and would result in the constant re-evaluation of episcopal status and discipline throughout the seventeenth century and the marshalling of arguments for not only the retention of episcopacy but more importantly its authority. Some scholars have further stressed episcopal efforts to locate a valid basis for the existence and authority of bishops. At the Restoration in 1660, the crown and the bishops faced a range of choices about the nature of the ecclesiastical authority to be created after 1660; these choices derived from the reformed episcopate's history as an object of ecclesiastical controversy.

Before the Restoration, a number of bishops, among them John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1576 to 1604, rested content with an Erastian underpinning to their authority and looked to the magistracy and the royal supremacy to make sense of the source and weight of episcopal power. Whitgift's contemporaries, such as Matthew Hutton (Archbishop of York 1596–1606) likewise defended the royal supremacy and looked to it as the basis of his episcopal authority.3 It was not only bishops who advanced these ideas. In 1641, the religious controversialist William Prynne claimed that English bishoprics 'proceded from the Crown and Kings of England'.4 By the 1640s, this Erastian assessment of episcopal power caused affront to Archbishop William Laud (in office 1633–1644), and scholars have since stressed that Laud and his associate clergy held to ideals of episcopal significance and authority which were indebted to jure divino theories of apostolic lineage.5

However, this essay questions the extent to which jure divino ideas, often associated with the Laudian Church, dominated the Church and the episcopate after 1660 in providing explanations for retention and authority. It reconstructs a context in which bishops faced attacks for being unreformed dregs and posits that in this context appeals to apostolic antiquity were not helpful in [End Page 176] justifying the contemporary authority of bishops. Instead, bishops and their defenders more likely resorted to historical rather than spiritual grounds in their defence of episcopacy.6 Restoration churchmen found compelling statements of episcopal power in textual evidence which stressed the distinctively reformed character of the restored English bishops. This essay argues that a distinctively reformed idea of the authority of bishops had emerged by the later seventeenth century, but that this idea of reformed episcopacy also interacted with other explanations of and justifications for episcopal authority which emerged from clerical contexts, including the jure divino authority of bishops. Seventeenth-century statements of reformed episcopal authority by Bishop John Gauden of Exeter (1605–62) and Arthur Duck, the chancellor of the diocese of Bath and Wells (1580–1648), located the power of the episcopate in a specifically reformed context and drew together the implications of exercising episcopal power in post-Reformation England.7

Restoration and Recreation: The Episcopate in 1660

Both Gauden and Duck produced printed commentaries on episcopal history and the restoration of the Church's hierarchy. These were contextualized by a body of works which celebrated the recreation of English church order. Among these were William Sancroft's sermons in Westminster Abbey at the consecration of new bishops in 1660 and Thomas Ken's Ichabod of 1663, which adduced evidence for the suffering of the clergy.8 Gauden made his own contribution to the literature marking the restoration of episcopacy with the Pillar of Gratitude, a text delineating the providence behind episcopal resurrection.9 [End Page 177]

After 1660, bishops had in fact faced a range of choices in asserting and defending their newly-restored authority. The contemporary historian Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, recorded that restored bishops were by no means 'all of one mind' and surviving and newly appointed bishops in 1660 reached different conclusions about the extent and basis of their authority.10 This diversity of opinion reflected earlier debates among bishops regarding their office.11 Archbishops such as the Elizabethan Whitgift were comfortable with the association between magistracy and episcopacy.12 More particularly, claims by bishops during the sixteenth century to be anything more than royal servants alarmed members of Elizabeth's council; churchmen who enunciated such ideas noticeably diverged from the ecclesiastical mainstream. The courtier and politician Sir Francis Knollys protested against writings by the churchmen Thomas Bilson and Richard Bancroft which obliquely suggested the sacramental independence of bishops from the royal settlement.13 Although a layman, Knollys' objections to these claims reflected those of churchmen such as Whitgift, who identified the source of episcopal authority as lying in the royal supremacy.

During the seventeenth century, Erastian underpinnings for episcopal power proved more difficult to sustain. Members of the restoration episcopate confronted a royal supremacy actively opposed to the English episcopate and these bishops expressed belief in alternative sources of episcopal authority. For instance, the divine Henry Dodwell argued that episcopal authority lay not in Erastian connections with state authorities but with the sacramental authority of bishops.14 Charles II and Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon (in office 1663–76) experienced a troubled and strained relationship, an irony given that [End Page 178] in 1660 Sheldon's sermon David's Deliverance celebrated the joint restoration of crown and episcopacy and offered a largely Erastian perspective on the functions of bishops.15 The events of 1688, when English bishops revolted against their sovereign, most emphatically declared the divergence between episcopal and royal priorities after the Restoration.16 The exchange between clergy and King James II preserved in the State Papers captures the King's expectation of the loyalty of the Church of England's senior clergy and his bewilderment at their disloyalty. These exchanges emerged from the Magdalen College election controversy masterminded by Bishop Henry Compton of London, in which college fellows refused the King's order to elect his own nominee as president. The King rhetorically commented 'Is this your Church of England's loyalty?'17 Although he was speaking in the light of a specific crisis, James's words reflect more broadly the different trajectories which royal and episcopal thought followed in the Restoration and reveal that the leaders of the Restoration Church were at the forefront of political and religious crises such as the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution. These crises impaired relations between crown and Church.18 Specific bishops, such as the martial Henry Compton of London, pursued policies which directly conflicted with royal priorities, such as Compton's patronage of anti-Catholic preachers.19

Some modern scholars have argued that in a context which debated and contested the necessity and functions of bishops and their association with the royal supremacy, members of the seventeenth-century episcopate advanced jure divino theories of episcopal power.20 Kenneth Fincham argues that the pastoral activities of bishops were intended to embody apostolic ideals, especially those which St Paul outlined to Timothy. He notes that a bishop [End Page 179] such as Martin Heton of Ely (in office from 1599) assiduously presided over his diocesan visitations, became personally acquainted with his parochial clergy, and preached often.21 In essence, Fincham shows how Heton could seem to be an apostolic bishop. Other bishops fulfilled their obligations in a similar fashion. The diary of Heton's contemporary at Durham, Tobie Matthew, reveals Matthew to have been in frequent contact with parochial clergy and lay members of his flock.22

The historian Ralph Houlbrooke has also examined the pastoral responsibilities of sixteenth-century bishops, reconstructing the emphasis which they gave to these responsibilities as well as noting the influence of pastoral work in shaping the form and substance of reformed episcopacy.23 R. B. Manning argues that contemporary churchmen gave theoretical cohesion to these actions and asserted episcopal authority through jure divino claims of apostolic authority.24 Likewise, Stanley Archer argues that Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity grounded the episcopate in apostolic origins. In assessing the evidence for jure divino episcopacy, scholars have pointed to the complex relationship between royal supremacy and apostolic episcopacy, arguing that as the seventeenth century progressed individual bishops were more inclined to stress their apostolic origins rather than their functions as royal agents.25

It is useful at this point to address some of the evidence for jure divino episcopacy; doing so reveals some seventeenth-century claims for apostolic episcopacy but also indicates that the reformation of the Church became an immediately compelling argument for the authority of restored bishops. A text written at an unknown date after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 argued that apostolic precedents inhered in the Church of England and declared that [End Page 180] that apostolic authority existed elsewhere than Rome and could inhere in the English episcopate.26 A more explicit assertion of this same point was contained in the 'Sermon defending the honorable function of Biſhops' preached by Dr George Downame in 1608, which asserted the 'divine inſtitution' of the English episcopate.27 Calvinist bishops such as George Abbot also patronized clergy who preached on the topic of 'the Apostolick Bishop'.28

Ideas of jure divino episcopacy reached their fullest expression during Laud's period of power. Archbishop Laud's contemporaries accused him of 'unchurching' non-episcopal churches and of giving undue emphasis to the sacramental origins of bishops.29 The imprisoned Bishop Matthew Wren, Laud's associate, identified the necessity of bishops in the order's apostolic origins, as the order was 'instituted by Christ himself and the apostles'.30 Bishop Joseph Hall's Episcopacy by Divine Right Asserted emerged when the order of bishops was under particular strain. Hall feared that the apostolic line in England would be extinguished by natural attrition as elderly bishops died yet were forbidden by Commonwealth authorities to consecrate successors.31

II. Reformed Episcopacy

Yet a survey of evidence for apostolic episcopacy stresses that these ideas cannot be taken too far, as voices which might be expected to declare the apostolic basis and necessity of episcopacy instead sounded forth clearly on [End Page 181] the reformed basis of episcopacy. Surveys of the ancient origins of episcopacy could more likely uncover evidence to condemn rather than support it. Tudor synods condemned the Bishopric of Rome for error, but also condemned the ancient bishoprics of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch.32 Voices sympathetic to bishops in parliamentary debates in 1640 noted that claims by bishops to rule by divine right merely made the bishops seem popish.33 Less sympathetic participants in parliamentary debates, such as Sir Edward Derring, conceived of episcopacy by divine right as a 'crown', pointing out in a deadly comparison that 'The Pope, they say, has a triple crown.'34 For a fellow speaker, lordliness inhered in apostolic status.35 Great age did not necessarily give authority or justification to the episcopate.

Defenders of episcopacy during a longstanding period of contestation found more compelling statements of episcopal power in textual evidence such as a sermon by Richard Bancroft preached at Paul's Cross in 1588, which addressed the apostolic but also the reformed origins of bishops. Bancroft later became Archbishop of Canterbury (in 1604) and throughout his public career at university, court, and parliament defended the episcopate's singular significance. His sermon was resurrected in the seventeenth century, and so too was his point that 'S. Ierom Ÿaith, and M. Calvin Ÿeemeth … to confeŸse that BiŸhops have had the Ÿaid Ÿuperiority ever Ÿince the time of S. Mark the Evangelift'.36 In this sermon, Apostolic, Patristic, and Reformed (in this case Genevan) authorities all combined to acknowledge the authority of the episcopate; thus Bancroft located episcopal authority in both ancient and reformed contexts.37 [End Page 182]

While Bancroft acknowledged the apostolic as well as reformed authorities for the English episcopate, his citation of these different poles of authority indicates that the notion of a jure divino episcopate could serve as a limited explanation for the power and functions of bishops. Influential Elizabethan defenders of the English ecclesiastical hierarchy, including John Jewel the Bishop of Salisbury and John Whitgift the Archbishop of Canterbury, both rejected ideas of apostolic authority, although both were bishops, declaring they were uneasy with the idea.38 Senior bishops at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tended not to stress divine or apostolic origins of the episcopate.39 Matthew Hutton, appointed Archbishop of York in 1596, although a bishop himself, would only concede that bishops were 'set apart from other ministers', and hesitated to identify the divine origins of the episcopate in the Early Church.40

Elizabethan bishops hesitated to make apostolic arguments in the face of the demands of the Queen's supremacy and the scrutiny of councillors such as Knollys. Yet other voices from within the English Church which might have been expected to make claims for apostolic authority were muffled on the issue. During the debates in the Long Parliament in 1640 for the abolition of episcopacy, regional petitions defended episcopacy, but avoided claims to jure divino status. Petitions from Somerset and Gloucestershire pointed out that episcopacy was ancient, but not actually apostolic.41 This is not to say that the idea of jure divino episcopacy did not exist. A petition in the same period from the City of London to the House of Commons identified that episcopal claims for authority derived 'directly from the Lord Jesus Christ'.42 [End Page 183] Yet the nature of these objections makes clear that apostolic episcopacy became more a problem than a solution to the issues faced by the seventeenth-century episcopate and therefore its supporters resorted to other poles of authority.

Seventeenth-century debates over the basis of episcopal authority necessarily draw attention to a complex dialogue between the episcopate's past and present. Defenders of English bishops, as well as bishops themselves, stressed the existing reformed character of the order and its authority. In doing so, it can also be claimed that bishops were, ipso facto, claiming an ancient lineage of their order; many reformers in Tudor England as much as on the continent concurred in claiming that their actions were intended to restore the ancient face of the Church.43 It can be difficult to discern distinctions between arguments for their origins as being reformed in character and arguments for them being of divine and apostolic origin since these ideas converge. But contemporaries were alert to some distinctions between ancient and reformed churches. Archbishop Matthew Parker caused consternation during Elizabeth's reign for disparaging the 'best reformed churches overseas', or those of 'Germanical natures'.44 Parker drew meaning in holding high ecclesiastical office from the Ancient Church and clearly demarcated between it and reformed poles of authority.45

For Parker, the comparison between apostolic and reformed was negative, but in other episcopal writings the distinctive character of reformed authority underpinned the powers of bishops and more positive appeals were made to reformed contexts in order to justify the episcopate. The new Archbishop of Canterbury in 1660 was William Juxon (in office 1660–63). Notwithstanding his amicable relations with Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth, after 1660 Juxon attempted to efface the memory of the Commonwealth years.46 He rebuilt those portions of Lambeth Palace that Cromwell had demolished, and commissioned a portrait of himself which echoed Antonis Van Dyck's [End Page 184] portrait of Laud.47 Although Juxon's suffering during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth was slight compared to Laud's, implicit in this portrait was Juxon's reconstruction of the martyred primate's policies and doctrines.48

Juxon's visual and architectural appeals to Laudian influence have fuelled a particular reading of the Restoration episcopate at the time of its reconstruction in 1660 as being indebted to Laudian ideals of jure divino authority and the sacramental significance of bishops. It is certainly clear that the earliest years of the Restoration marked episcopal triumph. The episcopal influence over the Cavalier Parliament elected in 1661 and during the Savoy Conference of 1661–62 was decisive.49 The episcopal view dominated this conference, which was an attempt to resolve tensions between the episcopal and Presbyterian parties, and the Conference made only conservative revisions to the prayer book. At the same time, bishops reclaimed their cathedrals and episcopal revenues and returned to the House of Lords.50 Restored bishops also reasserted their exclusive sacramental significance, enforcing the point of Church polity that entry to the ministry could only be via episcopal ordination.51 I. M. Green's analysis of the restoration of the episcopate and the implications of this restoration for the exercise of Church discipline after 1660 is largely confined to the constitutional and legal recreation of episcopacy, especially the re-appointment of officials such as chancellors, vicars general, registrars, and archdeacons.52 His work reveals how bishops had regained the legal status to enforce the validity of their office and their powers of consecration, and makes sense of the political and legal influence of the restored episcopate. [End Page 185]

Other historians resort to the sacramental functions of bishops to explain the ideas and authority underpinning their restoration. The triumph of episcopal authority by 1662 seems also to mark the vindication and the continuing salience of Laudian churchmanship. Historians point out that an older generation of churchmen, who had known Laud and who knew themselves as the 'sufferers' under the Commonwealth regime, returned from exile or house arrest to exert influence over the Restoration settlement. Old age and death had claimed the actual bishops of the Laudian period, but bishoprics vacant in 1660 gained incumbents including Gilbert Sheldon, George Morley, John Cosin, and Humphrey Henchman, all of whom had served under Laud, although not as bishops.53 There was also the elderly Juxon.54 Robert Bosher's study of the Restoration ecclesiastical settlement endeavoured to demonstrate the continuing influence of Laudian churchmanship as exercised through the appointment to bishoprics of clerics associated with Laud, such as Cosin, the Bishop of Durham.55 As John Spurr also points out, Laudian clerics such as the energetic Gilbert Sheldon, an Oxford don appointed to the diocese of London in 1660, exercised significant influence on the Cavalier Parliament.56

However as Spurr also argues, the years of the Commonwealth produced a younger generation of clergy who had collaborated with the Cromwellian forces yet who also emerged as conforming members of the restored episcopal Church after 1660. Among these were Gauden and other members of the Ussherian circle, whose major preoccupations had been to defend episcopal [End Page 186] rule according to the standards of Protestant ecclesiology.57 It is possible to reconstruct the influence of members of this generation and to identify justifications for episcopal rule based on compellingly reformed ideas of Church polity and discipline.

It is instructive that Juxon's own views contained insights which derived from reformed precedents to define the authority of bishops. In Some Considerations upon the Act of Uniformity, written while he was archbishop, Juxon argued that the reputation of the Church of England under other reformed churches revealed its reformed character.58 He wished to see 'Our ancient Church recovered to that beauty, order, glory, and majesty for which it was spoken of throughout the reformed world.'59

It is also instructive that, at what historians such as Bosher reconstruct as a moment of Laudian triumph and the resurrection of Laudian churchmanship, Charles II offered bishoprics to a number of Presbyterian divines such as Edward Calamy, Richard Baxter, and Edward Reynolds.60 Likewise, an early and anonymous biographer of Archbishop Tillotson, the Restoration prelate, recorded that Charles II offered the Presbyterian divine Edward Calamy a bishopric, and that while Calamy rejected the offer, his response revealed a Presbyterian conceding the ſuperiority of episcopal rule. That 'good old man deliberated about it ſome Conſiderable time, profeſſing to ſee the great inconvenience of the Presbyterian parity of Miniſters'.61 John Gauden also narrated a Presbyterian flirtation with episcopacy in St Peters Bands; only Reynolds accepted the offer (becoming Bishop of Norwich) but these works indicate resort to justifications for episcopal power beyond the Laudian.

John Gauden, the Restoration Bishop of Exeter, was elevated to the episcopate in 1660, serving only briefly until his death in 1662. However, during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth and therefore during the suppression [End Page 187] of the episcopate, Gauden developed a fully thought-out explication of the reformed episcopate's origins and unique powers and character. By 1653, Gauden had been associated with a group intellectually allied to James Ussher, the Primate of Ireland, and was promoting Ussher's scheme for a reduced episcopacy, meaning that Ussher proposed reducing episcopacy to levels of Presbyterian superintendence.62 His work on this theme, Hieraspistes, argued for the preservation of the episcopate; Gauden stressed that the 'ancient and Catholick Government of Godly Bishops' conformed to ancient presbyterial standards of Church government.63 He described the conditions of the Solemn League and Covenant, which required the 'abjuring or extirpating of all Epiſcopacy'. Gauden found this requirement rhetorically inexplicable, for the episcopate thus suppressed was 'reformed and regulated as it ought to be'.64 According to Gauden, English bishops were acceptably reformed.

Gauden's text offered a precise understanding of reformed episcopal authority; the immediate context of his work is important to understanding the claims he made on behalf of episcopacy. In 1660, plans existed to make episcopacy more reformed than it ever had been. Charles II's Breda Declaration had promised that bishops would operate in a more Presbyterian fashion, governing and administering discipline with the advice of other clergy.65 These intentions came to nothing, largely due to the active opposition of newly appointed bishops.66 Gauden's work therefore emerges from a context in which proposals to make the episcopate more reformed were abandoned. In this context his work makes sense as an appeal to the already-reformed character of episcopacy and as appeal against contemporary suggestions to continue reforming the episcopate. He placed the English episcopate in a wider, reformed context of European confessions, including the Calvinists, and therefore acknowledged that reformist principles were often inimical to the government of bishops. Gauden excused the anti-episcopal impulses coming from other Protestant communities andinverted them. As he explained, a few reformed Churches of later daies [End Page 188] were not governed by bishops because the neceſſity of times resulted insuch feelings becoming manifest. Gauden thus sought to make clear the basis on which European Protestants could approve of bishops in England. While foreign Protestants disapproved of their bishops, 'they approve and venerate Epiſcopacy in others'. Gauden argued that continental foreign confessions had no objections to bishops but particular circumstances meant that they were unable to have any bishops themselves.

Gauden stressed that anti-episcopal impulses in other Protestant churches could signify approval for English bishops, a paradoxical argument which he achieved through an historical survey of different reformed communities. He was not the only English episcopal writer to bring European reformed authorities into his work, as Bancroft had earlier cited Calvin as supporting episcopacy when preaching at Paul's Cross in 1588. Earlier still, John Whitgift drew Calvin into the orbit of reformed episcopacy and its relations with magisterial authority.67 Gauden was therefore not alone in finding approval for episcopacy as emanating from non-episcopal confessions and nor was he alone in suggesting that European reformers explicitly expressed approval for English bishops.

Gauden drew evidence from different Protestant communities to demonstrate approval of bishops. According to him, the Church of Scotland 'once enjoyed the beſt conſtitutions of Epiſcopacy in the world'.68 Gauden was disappointed at the evolution of the Presbyterian government of the Scottish Church. The Kirk in Scotland functioned in Gauden's text as an illustration of exemplary Protestant episcopacy; although it had no bishops, it had formerly accepted the government of bishops. Appeals to the Kirk as a model of conservative church government had earlier been made in sermons by Lancelot Andrewes (Bishop of Winchester 1619–26) and Bancroft, who had appropriated words from the Scottish reformer John Knox and transposed them into an episcopal context.69 Gauden's text, written in June 1660 for the benefit of the returning King and government-in-exile, looked to a temporarily un-episcopal Church to argue that a cleric could be both reformed and a bishop.

These points emerged from a long history of condemnation of the English [End Page 189] episcopate. Critics of the Church of England before the Civil Wars evinced rhetorical confusion between Romanist and reformed bishops and for this reason viewed bishops as an unreformed relic of Roman Catholicism. From the 1570s, the English episcopate had faced a full-blown Presbyterian attack which gained intensity and momentum during the seventeenth century; this dispute turned on the question of whether the episcopate could be reformed. By 1572, the Admonition Controversy of the Elizabethan period had come and gone, during which time contesting episcopal and Presbyterian forces clashed on the issue of scripturally endorsed church government.70 Episcopacy prevailed during these disputes until its abolition by the Long Parliament. However lectures delivered in 1570 on ecclesiastical hierarchies by the divinity professor Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603) indicate the substance of arguments made against bishops and argued against unreformed episcopal rule and in favour of congregational episcopacy.71 In the 1570s, the parliamentarian Peter Wentworth spoke in the House of Commons against bishops, denouncing them as mini-popes.72 In 1588, the 'Martin Marprelate' tracts, issued from underground presses outside of London, repeated many of these statements and argued that bishops were an impediment to the settlement and good order of the reformed Church.73 Thomas Rogers (d. 1616), the theologian and chaplain to Richard Bancroft the Bishop of London, also specified the nature of complaints about the Church of England's hierarchy. He noted a widely-held belief that, 'our church, for all the reformation wrought … be much awry, and far from the truth it should profess'.74 Andrew Foster, the modern biographer [End Page 190] of Archbishop Richard Neile of York, draws points such as these together, quoting a contemporary opinion that bishops were 'intolerable withstanders of reformation' and arguing that the imperatives of the Reformation and the reformers conflicted with the authority and the status of the bishops.75

Such was the intensity of criticism of bishops before the Civil Wars that writers fixated on what bishops looked like and episcopal dress became a trope for criticizing the popishness of bishops in general. The letters of the controversialist William Prynne to Archbishop William Laud from the Tower of London in the 1630s dwelt on the traditional garb of bishops. Prynne facetiously observed of Laud's 'unfaithfull dealing' that 'how well it became your Lordship's rochet'.76 An anonymous writer at the time of Archbishop Laud's arrest in the early 1640s referred disparagingly to 'wearing the white Surplice, Lawn Sleeves, Tippet, foure corner cap etc'.77 An anonymous Quaker tract recounted item by item the garb of a bishop, such as 'White coats, or Black coats, Tippets or Hoods, or Square Caps, or Lawn Sleeves', all of which items were deemed to be popish.78 A further work delineated 'the ſcandall of the Rochet, the lawne ſleeves, the foure corner cap, the Cope, the Surpleſſe, the Tippet, the Hood, the Canonical Coat. etc'.79 Given the level of detail in not only condemning but also describing bishops, one contemporary writer ironically observed of 'the pluming of ſome Biſhops' that anti-episcopal writers are 'ſo acquainted with every feather of them'.80 Lord Falkland used 'a paire of Lawne sleeves' as a metaphor to describe the unfortunate transformative effect which episcopal office had on the personalities of clergymen.81 These [End Page 191] references to episcopal choir dress indicate the importance attached to symbolic and ceremonial forms of dress, but as Helen Pierce's recent survey of mid-seventeenth century graphic satire has demonstrated, the appearance and robes of bishops were established as a convenient trope for condemning episcopacy in general by the 1640s.82

III. Reformed and Unreformed Bishops

The often facetious comments on the appearance of bishops made their point that reformed bishops were indistinguishable from unreformed prelates. Yet any sense that English bishops sought to distinguish their actions and conduct from that of unreformed bishops can also be an elusive quality in episcopal writings. Juxon's successor as the primate, Gilbert Sheldon (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1663–76), made clear that he associated episcopal functions with discipline. He recruited King Charles II as a mouthpiece for his justification of episcopal authority. Referring to 'his Ma'ty speaking much againſt these diſorderly meetings' [i.e. conventicles], Sheldon stressed that the King 'had laid some blame upon ye B:ps for want of care in this affair'.83 If Charles II spoke these words, he was merely saying what Sheldon wanted to hear, but the significance of Sheldon's report lies in the perspective it offered on episcopal authority and the place of bishops in disciplining dissent and punishing revolt from the Church of England.84

A further indication of the authority of episcopal office is provided by George Morley (1597–1684), Sheldon's contemporary and the Bishop of Winchester during the Restoration. He wrote of the disorder among the religious communities of New England, a circumstance which he attributed to the absence of episcopal oversight in the colony.85 Likewise John Sudbury, a Restoration prebendary of Westminster Abbey, asserted the importance of bishops for maintaining ecclesiastical order, stressing that there was ‘a neceſity [End Page 192] of this Office to pre erve Truth and Peace and Unity .86 Both Morley and Sudbury noted the importance of bishops to maintaining ecclesiastical order, although Morley was later to be stung by a 'calumny' by the religious controversialist Richard Baxter (1615–91) as Baxter, so Morley wrote, would 'make the world believe, that they were his Flock, and not mine'.87 Episcopal statements on the application of the order's authority can therefore convey a limited impression that bishops were especially concerned to draw out such distinctions.

But some contemporaries did identify the manner in which reformed bishops differed from unreformed bishops. Strikingly, Gauden's understanding of reformed episcopal power was given fuller elaboration in the writings of Sir Arthur Duck, who elucidated his conception of reformed episcopacy by studying the medieval Church. Duck's actual authorship of the ideas on reformed episcopacy is difficult to establish as they are in a text attributed to Duck, but translated and augmented over forty years after his death in 1648.88 Nonetheless, a work with Duck's name on it traced the characteristics of the reformed episcopate back to the fifteenth century and to the archiepiscopate of Henry Chichele, a fifteenth-century archbishop. Duck did not so much judge Chichele to be a reformed bishop because Chichele placed new emphasis on aspects of his office, but rather considered Chichele to be a fully formed reformed bishop in an unreformed context. Duck's means of elucidating Chichele's reformed character was through a comparative analysis of the man and his context.

According to Duck's biography of Chichele, the Archbishop could have been a Protestant bishop and his exercise of office in the fifteenth century gave meaning and substance to the reformed episcopate of the seventeenth century. Duck, a diocesan official and chancellor in the diocese of Bath and Wells, interpreted Chichele's career through the prism of reform of the Church. In his own lifetime, pamphlets and polemic associated Duck with William Laud, Matthew Wren, John Lambe, and other churchmen condemned by the [End Page 193] religious authorities of the Commonwealth.89 As a diocesan chancellor, Duck wrote with insights into diocesan organization and worked closely with the bishops of Bath and Wells. Duck's work therefore rested on the episcopal organization of the Church of England and he discerned in Chichele a reformed bishop more than a century before the Tudor reforms.90 His Life of Henry Chichele was originally a Latin tract published in the 1640s but was eventually translated into English in 1699 (by which time Duck had died). The work in either its earlier or later manifestation was one of the few explorations of this medieval prelate's life to be produced in the seventeenth century.91 The work, specifically its preface, eschewed analysis or interpretation of Chichele's life and instead transmitted biographical data. It is of value here because of the comments which Duck offered in the dedicatory epistle. In this preface, Duck expressed his conception of a reformed Chichele, one who could have offered his allegiance to the reformed Church of England. Archbishop Chichele simply had the misfortune to be born in the fourteenth century and serve as archbishop in the fifteenth, rather than the sixteenth or seventeenth. Except for this impediment, he would have belonged to the Church of England. Duck wrote: 'If this Prelate had lived in happier Times, he would probably have exerted thoſe great Talents which he carried far in ſo dark an Age, in Services of a high nature.'92

Duck's most singular claim about Chichele concerned his metropolitical relations with the papacy.93 In Duck's assessment, Chichele was an early [End Page 194] exponent of reformed episcopacy, for the Archbishop a erted the Rights of the Crown, and the Liberties of this Church againſt Papal Uſurpations'. According to Duck, Chichele's archiepiscopate was strikingly anachronistic for the fifteenth century, for he possessed 'great Qualities, and ſo much the greater, becauſe the Corruptions of the Clergy from the Papacy down to the Begging Orders, were then to an inſupportable degree'.94 In the midst of this corruption, Chichele stood out as an early advocate of reform.

Duck's appeal to a medieval churchman as a herald of reformed religion can be contextualized by earlier appeals to the unreformed Church as containing harbingers of the Reformation. In 1608, Thomas James's An Apologie for Iohn Wicliffe, shewing his conformitie with the now Church of England depicted Wyclif as congruent with the post-Reformation Church.95 But by the seventeenth century, Wyclif had long stood within the ranks of the reformed tradition, in a way a medieval archbishop did not.96 The distinctiveness of Duck's work lies in his choice of subject matter on which to rest arguments for the early manifestations of reformed episcopacy. Duck's political context makes sense of these decisions. Identified in popular polemic with Archbishop Laud and serving as a diocesan chancellor, Duck emerges from a context preoccupied with the claims of bishops to govern their dioceses, and his exploration of the early-medieval Church rested upon the qualities which made a bishop reformed.

Duck's work stands in tension with Gauden's assessment of the basis of episcopal rule. Gauden's work identified the distinguishing features of reformed bishops and filled in characteristics of reformed episcopacy by drawing comparative points from European reformations. Duck's attempt to delineate reformed episcopacy differed from Gauden's. Duck's argument complicates the approach which Gauden had taken, which was to distinguish between medieval and reformed episcopacy. Duck blurred what were for Gauden separate ecclesiastical realities, bringing a member of the medieval prelacy into the orbit of reformed episcopacy. [End Page 195]

Conclusion

Justifications for the authority and status of the English episcopate became implicated in challenges posed to the rule of bishops and the question of whether one could be reformed and be a bishop. Defences of episcopal authority transmuted over the course of the seventeenth century, incorporating citations of Erastian, Apostolic, and reformed authority. John Gauden proposed that the reformed character of English bishops was reflected in the ecclesiastical polities of contemporary European churches. For Duck, such reflections came from a distinct historical personage. Bishops' detractors (and often their victims) traced a largely negative continuity in episcopal rule, rhetorically failing to find divergent conduct between unreformed to reformed bishops. But neither Gauden nor Duck summoned up in writing an episcopate which had dropped from the sky fully reformed. Rather, the reformed episcopacy was a matter of emphasis, a point made by Duck's delineation of a medieval prelate who stood out markedly from his brethren. Seventeenth-century writers identified the reformed basis of their power and offered statements reconciling their office and the reformation of the English Church. Gauden wished to convince firstly the religious authorities of the Commonwealth and then the returning royal court that reformed approval could be found for the exercise of episcopal authority. The ambiguous circumstances of the translation and publishing of Duck's work make questions of actual authorship as uncertain as questions of audience, but in casting Chichele as a harbinger of reform, his point on the distinction between reformed and unreformed bishops was clear. However, his making these points does not mean that these perspectives prevailed. The reputation of the episcopate and of individual members of the bench of bishops for being popish dregs persisted throughout the seventeenth century. But this reputation merely gives added significance to episcopal statements of reformed authority, as bishops stressed not merely their power but their purpose, one which they insisted could cohere with the imperatives of reform. [End Page 196]

Marcus Harmes
History Discipline
The University of Queensland

Acknowledgment

An earlier version of this paper was read at the 2008 ANZAMEMS Conference at the University of Tasmania. I am grateful to the reviewers of Parergon and to Dr Sarah Ferber who read an early draft of this work.

Footnotes

2. On the revenues of the reformed episcopate see: Felicity Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: aStudy of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Heal, 'The Bishops and the Act of Exchange of 1559', Historical Journal, 17.2 (1974), 227-46; Heal, 'The Archbishops of Canterbury and the Practice of Hospitality', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33.4 (1982), 544–63 (p. 544); and Sybil M. Jack, 'English Bishops as Tax Collectors in the Sixteenth Century', Parergon, 14.1 (1996), 129-63 (p. 130).

3. On Hutton's attachment to the Royal Supremacy see Peter Lake, 'Matthew Hutton – A Puritan Bishop?', History, 64 (1979), 182–204 (p. 186). Hutton also exercised the presidency of the Council of the North and therefore maintained the authority of Elizabeth I in northern England (R. R. Reid, The King's Council in the North (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921), p. 347).

4. The Substance of a Speech Made in the Houſe of Commons by Wil. Prynne of Lincoln's Inne Eſquire, 4th Dec. 1648 (London: Michael Spark, 1649), p. 47.

5. See especially Robert S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement: The Influence of the Laudians 1649-1662 (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1951), pp. 82-87.

6. John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 135.

7. Arthur Duck, The Life of Henry Chichele, Archbiſhop of Canterbury, Who lived in the Times of Henry the V. and VI. Kings of England (London: Ri. Chiſwell, 1699); John Gauden, Analysis: The Looſing of St Peters Bands; Setting Forth the True Senſe and Solution of the Covenant in Point of Conscious So Far as it Relates to the Government of the Church by Episcopacy (London: J. Beſt for Andrew Crook, 1660).

8. Thomas Ken, Ichabod: or, Five Groans of the Church (Cambridge: J. Greaves, 1663); William Sancroft, A Sermon Preach'd to the Houſe of Peers, Novemb. 13th 1678. Being the Feast Day Appointed by the King to Implore the Mercies of Almighty God in the Protection of his Majesties Sacred Perſon, and His Kingdom (In the Savoy: Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Robert Beaumont, 1678).

9. A Pillar of Gratitude Humbly Dedicated to the Glory of God (London: F. M. for Andrew Crook, 1661).

10. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Continuation of his Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1827), vol 2, pp. 119–20.

11. Charles Carleton points out that the majority of bishops appointed in the mid-sixteenth century were sympathetic to the supremacy (Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520–1559 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995)).

12. Robert Ashton, The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution 1603–1649 (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 113.

13. Claire Cross, 'Churchmen and the Royal Supremacy', in Church and Society in England:Henry VIII to James I, eds Felicity Heal and Rosemary O'Day (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 15–34 (p. 30).

14. Cited in Martin Greig, 'The Thought and Polemic of Gilbert Burnet, ca 1673-1705' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Cambridge University, 1991), p. 111.

15. Gilbert Sheldon, David's Deliverance and Thanksgiving: A Sermon Preached before the King at Whitehall (London: Timothy Garthwaite, 1660). Jeffrey R. Collins points to the mutual hostility between Charles II's court and the Restoration episcopate in 'The Restoration Bishops and the Royal Supremacy', Church History, 68.3 (1999), 549–80.

16. The earlier obedience of bishops to James II is revealed by their presence at his coronation; Lambeth Palace Library: Sancroft's Register fols 336–37.

17. S/P.31/2, p. 39.

18. For a summary of Restoration political crises see John Spurr, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain: The Post-Reformation 1603–1714 (Harlow: Pearson, 2006), p. 174.

19. Bodl. MS Tanner 31, fol. 268.

20. For a study of Jure Divino episcopacy see J. P. Somerville, 'The Royal Supremacy and Episcopacy "Jure Divino", 1603-1640', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 34.4 (1983), 548-58.

21. 'Ramifications of the Hampton Court Conference in the Dioceses', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36.2 (1985), 208–27 (p. 210). A contrasting account of Heton is in Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, pp. 227–28.

22. York Minster Library Additional Manuscripts 18: The Diary and Journal of his Grace Toby Matthew, Lord Archbishop of York from the 3rd Sept. MDLXXXIII to the 23rd Sunday after Trinity MDCXXII.

23. 'The Protestant Episcopate, 1547–1603: The Pastoral Contribution', in Church and Society in England, eds Heal and O'Day, pp. 78–98.

24. 'The Crisis of Episcopal Authority During the Reign of Elizabeth I', Journal of British Studies, 11.1 (1971), 1–25.

25. Stanley Archer, 'Hooker on Apostolic Succession: the Two Voices', Sixteenth Century Journal, 24.1 (1993), 67-74 (p. 71).

26. Anon., 'England's Mourning Garment, Worn Here by Plain Shepherds, in Memory of their Sacred Mistress, Elisabeth', in The Harleian Miscellany; or, a Collection of Scarce, Curious and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts (London: for Robert Dutton, 1808), pp. 481-507 (p. 496).

27. Downame's sermon was subsequently refuted (anonymously) in a tract of 1609; Anon., An Ansvvere to a Sermon Preached the 17 of April Anno. D. 1608 (1609). For background on Downame and his views see Austin Woolrych, 'Puritanism, Politics and Society', in The English Revolution 1600–1660, ed. E. W. Ives (London: Edward Arnold, 1968), pp. 87-100 (p. 91).

28. Cited in Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: the Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 11.

29. Spurr, Restoration Church of England, p. 135.

30. Matthew Wren, A Petition to Parliament in Defence of Episcopacy, cited in Peter King, 'The Episcopate during the Civil Wars, 1642–49', English Historical Review, 83.328 (1968), 523-37 (p. 525).

31. See Collins, The Restoration Bishops, p. 554.

32. Edward Cardwell, Synodalia: A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons and Proceedings of Convocations in the Province of Canterbury from the Year 1547 to the Year 1717 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1842), vol. I, p. 25.

33. CSP Dom Charles I 1640–41, ed. William Douglas Hamilton (London: Longmans and Co., 1882), p. 295.

34. CSP Dom Charles I, p. 295. On Derring's statements in Parliament see J. P. Salt, 'The Origin of Sir Edward Derring's Attack on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy', Historical Journal, 30.1 (1987), 21–52.

35. CSP Dom Charles I, p. 498.

36. Dr Reignolds His Letter to that Worthy Councellor, Sir Francis Knolles, Concerning Some Paſſages in D. Bancroft's Sermon at Pavles Croſſe, Feb. 9. 1588 in the Parliament time (London: W. I., 1641), p. 8.

37. Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1604. The Pauls Cross sermon of 1588 was preached in retaliation to the publication of the Marprelate Tracts. The sermon was published in 1588 but the comments from Reynolds to Knollys may have come from the 1634 re-issue; Bancroft, A Sermon Preached at Pavls Crosse (London, 1634). On Bancroft see Stuart Barton Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London: SPCK, 1962), pp. 23–24.

38. Archer, 'Hooker on Apostolic Succession', p. 68.

39. Cross, 'Churchmen and the Royal Supremacy', p. 177.

40. Cited in John Strype, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, D.D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1829), vol. 3, pp. 224–28.

41. Judith Maltby, 'Petitions for Episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer on the Eve of the Civil War 1641–42', in From Cranmer to Davidson: A Church of England Miscellany, ed. Stephen Taylor (Boydell Press/Church of England Record Society vol.7, 1999), pp. 103-69 (p. 109).

42. Cited in S. R. Gardiner, The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 138.

43. Mark E. VanderSchaaf, 'Archbishop Parker's Efforts Towards a Bucerian Discipline in the Church of England', Sixteenth Century Journal, 8.1 (1977), 85–103 (p. 101).

44. The Correspondence of Matthew Parker D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury, eds John Bruce and Thomas Thomason Perowne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), p. 125.

45. Patrick Collinson, 'The Reformer and the Archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian', Journal of Religious History, 6.4 (1971), 305–30 (p. 313).

46. Thomas A. Mason, Serving God and Mammon: William Juxon, 1582–1663, Bishop of London, Lord High Treasurer of England, and Archbishop of Canterbury (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), p. 149.

47. Tim Tatton-Brown, Lambeth Palace: A History of the Archbishops of Canterbury and their Houses (London: SPCK, 2000), p. 77. Samuel Pepys admired the results when he visited Archbishop Sheldon (Pepys: Extracts from the Diary, ed. Robert Latham (London: Bell and Hyman, 1978), p. 229 (entry for 14 May, 1669)).

48. John Ingamells, The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835: A Catalogue (published privately by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1981), p. 250. The only significant difference between the portraits was that Juxon was holding the thin white wand which betokened his office of High Treasurer.

49. Bosher, Making of the Restoration Settlement, p. 207.

50. Norman Sykes, Old Priest, New Presbyter: Episcopacy and Presbyterianism Since Reformation with Especial Relation to the Churches of England and Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), Chapter 3.

51. See The Savoy Conference Revisited, ed. Colin Buchanan (Cambridge: Grove, 2002).

52. The Re-establishment of the Church of England 1660-1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 120-30.

53. Claire Cross, Church and People 1450–1660 (Glasgow: Collins, 1976), p. 224.

54. See C. P. Hill, Who's Who in Stuart Britain (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1988), p. 81. The late-seventeenth-century clergyman John Walker collected biographical data on the clergy who suffered under the circumstances of the Commonwealth and he gave cohesion to the idea of a distinct generation of 'sufferers' (see Walker, An Attempt Towards Recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England, Heads of Colleges, Fellows, Scholars, &c. who were Sequester'd. Harrass'd, &c. in the Later Times of the Grand Rebellion: Occasion'd by the Ninth Chapter (now the second volume) of Dr. Calamy's Abridgement of the Life Mr. Baxter: Together with an Examination of that Chapter (London: by W.S. for J. Nicholson, R. Knaplock, R. Wilkin, B. Tooke, D. Midwinter and B. Cowse, 1714)).

55. Making of the Restoration Settlement, pp. 183, 233–35.

56. Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, p. 146. For a narrative of Sheldon's actions as Bishop of London see Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, I, ed. Martin Joseph Routh (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), pp. 349-50.

57. Spurr, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, p. 146; Gauden's place in episcopal debates of the 1650s is discussed in William Abbott, 'James Ussher and "Ussherian" Episcopacy, 1640–1656: The Primate and His Reduction Manuscript', Albion, 22.2 (1990), 237–59 (p. 256).

58. In Memoirs of Archbishop Juxon and his Times, ed. William Hennessey Marah (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1869), pp. 202-42 (p. 203). On the popularity of van Dyck's portrait and the frequency of its reproduction see Michael Jaffé, 'Van Dyck Studies I: The Portrait of Archbishop Laud', Burlington Magazine, 124.955 (1982), 600–07.

59. Juxon, Some Considerations, p. 204.

60. Cross, Church and People, p. 224.

61. BL Birch MS 4236 fol. 92.

62. Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology. History, and Politics in Early-Modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 235-44.

63. John Gauden, Hieraspistes: A Defence by Way of Apology for the Ministry and Ministers of the Church of England (London, 1653), p. 219.

64. Gauden, Analysis: The Looſing of St Peters Bands, p. 8.

65. English Historical Documents vol. VI: 1660–1714, ed. Andrew Browning (London: Routledge, 1966), pp. 367-68.

66. Green, Re-establishment of the Church of England, p. 127.

67. John Whitgift, Works, III, ed. J. Ayre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853) p. 400.

68. Gauden, Analysis: The Looſing of St. Peters Bands, p. 9.

69. Peter McCullough, Lancelot Andrewes: Selected Sermons and Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 342.

70. Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 20.

71. Robert Bucholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England 1485–1714: A Narrative History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 120.

72. Michael A. R. Graves, 'Thomas Norton the Parliament Man: An Elizabethan M.P., 1559– 1581', Historical Journal, 23.1 (1980), 17–35 (p. 29).

73. 'Martin Marprelate', The Epistle [September–November 1588], ed. Edward Arber (London: English Scholars Library of Old and Modern Works, 1880); Joseph Black, 'The Rhetoric of Reaction: the Martin Marprelate Tracts (1588–89), Anti-Martinism, and the Uses of Print in Early Modern England', Sixteenth Century Journal, 28.3 (1997), 707–28; and Black's edition of the tracts, The Martin Marprelate Tracts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), especially p. xvi on 'Martin's references to earlier debates on hierarchy.

74. An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England [1621], ed. J. J. S. Perowne, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1854), pp. 12-13.

75. 'The Function of a Bishop: The Career of Richard Neile, 1562–1640', in Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church of England 1500–1642, eds O'Day and Heal (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1976), pp. 33-54 (p. 34). The actual words are from one of the Marprelate Tracts.

76. S. R. Gardiner, 'Documents Relating to the Proceedings Against William Prynne, in 1634 and 1637', Camden Society, n.s. XVIII (1877), p. 39.

77. Anon., Englands Reioycing at the Prelats Downfall (1641), p. 3.

78. Anon., A Test and Protest against Popery, from the Conscientious Chriſtian Proteſtantscalled Quakers (London: Benjamin Clark, 1680), p. 7.

79. Helen Pierce, 'Anti-Episcopacy and Graphic Satire in England, 1640–1645', Historical Journal, 47.4 (2004), pp. 809–48, pp. 819–20.

80. George Digby, The Third Speech of the Lord George Digby, to the Houſe of Commons, Concerning Bifhops, and the Citie Petition, the 9th of Febr 1640 (for Thomas Walkley, 1640), p. 9.

81. Aubreys Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949), p. 474.

82. 'Anti-Episcopacy', pp. 819–20.

83. BL Add MS 4358.

84. There were also notable deficiencies in episcopal authority, for which see: H. Gareth Owen, 'The Episcopal visitation: its limits and limitations in Elizabethan London', Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 11.2 (1960), 179–85 (p. 180), and William Sheils, 'Some Problems of Government in a New Diocese: The Bishop and the Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1560–1630', in Continuity and Change, eds O'Day and Heal, pp. 167–87.

85. A Modest Advertisement Concerning the Preſent Controversie about Church-Government; Wherein the Maine Grounds of that Booke, Intituled, The Unlawfulnese and Danger of Limited Prelacie, are Calmly Examined (London: for Robert Botock, 1641), p. 11.

86. A Sermon Preached at the Conſecration of the Right Reverend Fathers in God, Gilbert Lord Biſhop of London, Humphry Lord Biſhop of Sarum, George Lord Biſhop of Worceſter, Robert Lord Biſhop of Lincolne, George Lord Biſhop of St Aſaph (London: R. Royſton, 1660), p. 5.

87. The Biſhop of Worceſter's Letter to a Friend For Vindication of Himſelf from Mr. Baxter's Calumny (London: R. Norton for Timothy Garthwaite, 1662), p. 3.

88. For some details of Ducks life and career see Pierce, 'Anti-Episcopacy', p. 824.

89. See Pierce, 'Anti-Episcopacy', p. 824.

90. On the period assessed by Duck see B. Wilkinson, 'Fact and Fancy in Fifteenth-Century English History', Speculum, 42.4 (1967), 673–92 (p. 673).

91. Chichele and other medieval primates including John Morton and John Peckam also received attention in Archbishop Parker's history of the archbishopric of Canterbury, De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae & Priuilegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70 (Londini : In aedibus J. Daij, An. Dom. 1572), and in other catalogues of bishops produced in the seventeenth century, including: Anon., Catalogue of All the Bishops Which Have Governed in the Church of England and Wales, .ince the Converſion of the Saxons. Together with the Honourary Offices Which They or Any of Them Have Enjoyed in the Civil Government (London, 1674), John Harington, A Supplie or Addicion to the Catalogue of Bishops to the Yeare 1608, ed. R. H. Millar, (Potomac, Maryland: Jose Porrua Turanzas S.A., 1979).

92. Duck, The Life of Henry Chichele, dedicatory epistle.

93. In his own lifetime, Chichele had been accused of anti-papalism, a charge which he denied and which emerged from a complex controversy regarding parliamentary legislation concerning Church lands (E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century 1399-1485 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 235).

94. Duck, The Life of Henry Chichele, dedicatory epistle.

95. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1608.

96. See Marcus Loane, Pioneers of the Reformation in England (London: Church Book Room Press, 1964), pp. ix, 24.

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