Volume 1

A new general biographical dictionary / projected and partly arranged by the late Rev. Hugh James Rose.

  • Hugh James Rose
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new general biographical dictionary / projected and partly arranged by the late Rev. Hugh James Rose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    who thought that he should have spent the remainder of his days in privacy. And such appears to have been his own feelings at the first, since (before his acquittal) he petitioned the king to he permitted to retire and spend the remainder of his days at his own almshouse at Guilford. (Howel’s Letters, p. 123.) He also instituted a monthly Tuesday fast, in memory of this accident; and allowed the widow of the man an annuity of 20/. In Jan. 1623, together with Dr. Moun- tague, the bishop of London, he conse- crated St. James’s church in Aldgate; and the same year signed the ratification of the Spanish match. Against the tolera- tion contemplated in the articles of this treaty, a letter was afterwards circulated in his name. But this letter or speech (for in contemporary copies it is called sometimes by one and sometimes the other name) is unquestionably a forgery, as both Hacket and Heylyn have clearly proved. It was first printed in this country by the no- torious Prynne, from a copy in the French Mercury, (Hidden Works, p. 39; copied thence into the Cabala and various other works, thirty years after the event, and twenty years after the author’s death.) Its original has never been found; no two copies of it agree; it is not mentioned by the archbishop’s con- temporaries, nor in his own narrative ; it is entirely at variance with his act of signing the articles of the Spanish match: and he who had the boldness to address king James in the language attri- buted to him in this letter, would not have scrupled at openly refusing to sign the articles, had he disliked them; since it is well known that at the very tune when they were debated, the king was so per- plexed, and the lords so irresolute, that the least show of opposition on the part of the archbishop would have decided the question. If the letter be genuine, we can scarcely acquit the archbishop of tergiversation, a fault from which he was to all appearance entirely free. In the year 1626, though much broken down in health, and suffering severely from the gout, he assisted at the coro- nation of Charles I.; but his growing in- firmities, and probably a dislike to the dominant party, kept him away from the court. In his narrative, (which is printed in Ruslnvorth,) he says, “ I cannot deny that the indisposition of my body kept me from court, and thereby gave occasion to maligners to traduce me, as withdrawing myself from public services, and therefore misliking some courses tliat were taken; which obstinacy perhaps neither pleased the king, nor the great man [Buckingham, I suppose] that set them on foot. It is true that in the turbulency of some things I had no great invitements to draw me abroad, but to possess my soul in patience, till God sent fairer weather; but the true ground of my abstaining from solemn and public places was the weakness of my feet, proceeding from the gout; which disease being hereditary unto me, and having possessed me now nine years, had debilitated me more and more, so that I could not stand at all, neither could I go up or down a pair of stairs ; but besides my staff I must have the service of one at least of my men, which was not fit to be admitted in every place where I was to come.” These causes induced the king, upon the 9th of Oct. 1627, to issue a com- mission to the bishops of Durham, (Neale,) Rochester, (Buckeridge,) Ox- ford, (Howson,) and Bath and Wells, (Laud), to execute archiepiscopal jurisdic- tion in the place of the archbishop: “ For- asmuch as the said archbishop cannot at this present in his own person attend the services which are otherwise proper for his cognizance and jurisdiction, and which as archbishop of Canterbury he might and ought in his own person to have performed and executed in causes and matters ecclesiastical, in the proper function of archbishop of that province, we therefore of our regal power, and of our princely care and providence that nothing shall be defective in the order, discipline, government or right of the church, have thought fit by the service of some other learned and reverend bishops, to be named by us, to supply those tilings which the said archbishop ought or might in the cases aforesaid to have done, but for this present cannot perform the same.” The act is printed in Rushworth, i. 431. The only reason assigned in this docu- ment for the archbishop's suspension was his present inability for performing his functions ; a fact fully admitted by himself in his own narrative. It appears also that this suspension was onlv temporary, for such time as his inability lasted ;—two circumstances very necessary to be borne in mind. For two different causes are alleged for this proceeding; one by the archbishop himself in his own narrative, resting on his own suspicion, and some court scandal (as he confesses, Narrative,
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