FARMERIE, Dr John (1591-1647), of St Peter in Eastgate, Lincoln, and Heapham, Lincs.

Farmerie belonged to a branch of a yeoman or minor gentry family that had established itself in Lincolnshire by the early Tudor period.32Lincs. Peds. 346-8. His father, William Farmery, had entered the ministry and was rector of three Lincolnshire parishes – Heapham, Ludborough and Springthorpe – by the time he died in 1633.33Lincs. Peds. 346. Evidently an able minister, he had also been appointed a chaplain to one of the bishops of Lincoln – probably either Richard Neile (bishop of Lincoln 1614-17 and future archbishop of York) or his successor George Mountaigne.34Al. Cant.

John Farmerie’s education was consistent with that of a future ordinand. Having matriculated from St John’s College in 1607, he was awarded a collegiate scholarship in 1609 and went on to take his BA and MA.35Al. Cant.; St John’s Coll. Archives, Reg. of fellows and scholars 1545-1612. However, he seems to have had no calling in the ministry and chose an alternative route to preferment, that of a civil lawyer.36Levack, Civil Lawyers, 229. Progress in his chosen profession would be rapid. Thus in 1621, three years before Farmerie had completed his doctorate of law, Bishop Mountaigne granted him life tenure as chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln.37Lincs. RO, Red Bk. ff. 142v-144v. Farmerie’s patron on this occasion may have been Mountaigne’s predecessor, Richard Neile, who had helped to advance Farmerie’s career during his three year episcopate at Lincoln.38H. Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs. c.1595-c.1640’ (Cambridge Univ. PhD thesis, 1980), 116.

Within a few months of appointing Farmerie his chancellor, Mountaigne was translated to the diocese of London, and his place at Lincoln was taken by John Williams. One of Williams’s first acts as bishop of Lincoln was to remove Farmerie from office, doubtless with the intention of installing one of his own clients as chancellor.39SP14/124/97, f. 212; Lincs. RO, D&C, Bij/2/6 (Lincoln Dean and Chapter patents, 1609-40), ff. 108v-111v. Determined not to be ousted, Farmerie petitioned the king against Williams’ proceedings and was duly re-instated.40SP14/124/97, f. 212. Farmerie thus managed to retain his office, but only at the expense of making a life-long enemy of the proud and unscrupulous Williams.

Much of the ill-feeling between the two men probably stemmed from their initial clash and the almost inevitable jurisdictional disputes that followed. However, their quarrel also took on strong factional and quasi-political overtones. Williams, although like Farmerie a high churchman, was generally opposed to the programme of church reform favoured by anti-Calvinists like Neile and Archbishop Laud.41Oxford DNB, `John Williams'. In contrast to Laud and his clerical allies, Williams took a generally lenient view of puritan nonconformity and was on friendly terms with several of Lincolnshire’s leading godly gentry.42Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs.’, 129-33, 292. He was also, according to his first biographer John Hacket, ‘very communicable’ with nonconforming clergymen, ‘whom he gained first with kindness and then brought over with argument’.43J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata: A Memorial of John Williams (1693), ii. 43.

Farmerie, on the other hand, was a thoroughgoing anti-puritan. Possibly an agent of Laud as early as the mid-1620s, he was accounted a persecutor of ‘godly and religious ministers’.44E215/1172; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 423-4; Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs.’, 116. In true Laudian fashion, he combined a zeal to reform what he and his friends saw as the ‘profane and irreligious puritanical neglect of divine service’, with a concern to ‘beautify and adorn’ churches ‘as a work intended for decency in the church to God’s glory’.45Lincs. RO, Red Bk., f. 112; CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 64-5. He consistently selected his juridical surrogates from among the Laudian clergy and worked closely on diocesan affairs with Sir John Lambe, Laud’s vicar-general, who was notorious for his severity towards nonconforming ministers.46Lincs. RO, Red Bk., ff. 113, 121v, 145-146v; CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 149, 523; 1635, pp. 293, 328-9; Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs.’, 116-17, 297. Another of Farmerie’s collaborators in the struggle against the ‘puritan faction’ was the Lincolnshire gentleman and future royalist Sir John Monson†.47Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs.’, 116. Monson, a protégé of the Catholic peer George Manners, 7th earl of Rutland, was a local agent of Laud and a fen-drainer with powerful connections at court.48LPL, MS 1030 (Pprs. rel. to Laud and Williams, 1631-40), f. 48; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 512; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 445; C. Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincs. 127-8; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘John Monson’; Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs.’, 116. Farmerie’s involvement with Monson may have extended beyond church politics to the governance and exploitation of the fens. In 1637, he was named to a special sewers commission for the Ancholme Level, where Monson and a consortium of local gentlemen were in the process of draining over 5,000 acres of fenland.49C181/5, ff. 67, 88v; Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincs. 127.

Like most in the Laudian establishment, Farmerie was not shy about exercising temporal office. He was named to numerous commissions for sewers and charitable uses during the 1620s and 1630s and was apparently a member of the packed commission of sewers with which the king forced through the Eight Hundred Fen project – a ruthless fen drainage operation in the Lindsey Level during the early 1630s which netted Charles, as principal undertaker, 8,000 acres.50W. Killigrew, Whereas it Hath Often Been Said at the Committee for the Earle of Lindsey’s Fenns (?1650, Wing K472); Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincs. 128-30. In 1635, Farmerie referred to his role as a ‘commissioner for compounding with the country in his majesty’s behalf for the Eight Hundred Fen’.51SP16/294/44, f. 99. In addition, he was an active member of the Lindsey, and probably the Kesteven, bench during the 1630s.52Lincs. RO, LQS/A/1/8-9, nos. 156, 170; SP16/212, ff. 35v, 37; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 419, 424.

With Laud’s elevation to the see of Canterbury in 1633, the conflict between Farmerie and Williams intensified. In April 1634, Laud began his metropolitan visitation of the diocese of Lincoln by appointing Farmerie one of his commissioners.53Lincs. RO, Red Bk. ff. 155v-157. Anxious to discredit Williams, Farmerie sent Laud, in secret, ‘many several informations’ concerning the ‘great defects’ within the diocese of Lincoln.54SP16/260/90, f. 186; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 471. He expressed particular concern regarding ‘that sort of people that run from their own parishes after affected preachers [i.e. puritan ministers]’.55SP16/271/82, ff. 200-1. The following year, he was summoned as a witness against Williams, who was on trial in star chamber for subornation of perjury.56CSP Dom. 1635, p. 293. The prosecution of Williams, which originated in allegations by Sir John Lambe and the Laudian cleric Richard Sibthorpe that he had countenanced puritans, was promoted chiefly by Laud and represented the culmination of the struggle within Lincoln diocese between Williams and his Laudian opponents.57Rushworth, Hist. Collns. i. 420-1; Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, ii. 111-12; Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincs. 119-21. Williams’ allies in this conflict included the Lincolnshire puritan and future parliamentarian Sir Edward Ayscoghe*.58LPL, MS 1030, f. 48. Laud and the case for the prosecution were backed by Farmerie, Lambe and Sir John Monson.59Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, ii. 111, 116, 123. Farmerie’s testimony was used to discredit one of Williams’s key witnesses, John Pregion, the registrar of the diocese of Lincoln, whom Farmerie had suspended from office in 1634 for fathering a bastard child.60Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 419, 424; Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, ii. 123. Shortly after Farmerie had testified, Williams struck back by effectively removing him from office for a second time.61CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 293, 328-9. Farmerie petitioned the king against Williams and obtained, apparently with the help of Secretary Sir Francis Windebanke* (one of Sir John Monson’s patrons and an enemy of Williams), a royal order continuing him in office, notwithstanding any warrant or commission from Williams to the contrary.62SP16/294/44, f. 99; LPL, MS 1030, f. 48; CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 300-1, 405; Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, ii. 116. The bitter feud between Williams and Laud and their respective Lincolnshire factions ended in July 1637 with Williams being heavily fined and committed to the Tower.63Oxford DNB, ‘John Williams’.

During Williams’ imprisonment, which lasted until November 1640, Farmerie was effectively governor of the entire diocese of Lincoln.64Stowe 1058, f. 149v; Hajzyk, ‘The Church in Lincs.’, 149. In recognition of his growing influence in local affairs, Lincoln corporation took the unusual step in January 1637 of making him a freeman. The corporation’s latent hostility towards the cathedral close as a rival jurisdiction within the city, meant that few of its residents, such as Farmerie, had been granted this honour. That same month, the corporation elected the crypto-Catholic and future royalist Charles Dallison its recorder.65Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 276v. Dallison was also a resident of the close and one of Farmerie’s allies in the conflict with Williams.66Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 424; LJ v. 131b.

Building on their support in Lincoln and Farmerie’s authority in diocesan affairs, Farmerie and Dallison stood for Lincolnshire in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640. Doubtless aware that both men were to some extent compromised by their support for Laudian church reforms, their backers attempted to portray them as sound Protestants and defenders of the ‘country’ interest.

Choose no ship sheriffs nor court atheist,
No fen drainer nor church papist,
But if you’ll scour the pope’s armoury
Choose Dallison and Dr Farmerie.67Add. 11045, f. 99v.

In the event, the county’s freeholders were not persuaded of Farmerie’s and Dallison’s credentials as ‘patriots’ and instead returned Sir Edward Hussey and Sir John Wray.68Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. Undeterred by this setback, Farmerie stood for election at Lincoln and was returned along with a local gentry landowner, Thomas Grantham. Farmerie probably owed his election to his interest as de facto bishop of Lincoln and the support of the strong anti-puritan element within the corporation and freeman body.69Supra, ‘Lincoln’. The suggestion that his electoral patron at Lincoln was the earl of Rutland has no basis in the available evidence.70Levack, Civil Lawyers, 45, 229.

Farmerie’s Laudian clericalism had few sympathisers at Westminster, and on at least one occasion it almost landed him in serious trouble. On 20 April 1640, he arrived at a meeting of the ‘committee of religion’, chaired by John Crewe I, only to find himself being denounced with ‘great vehemence’ for excommunicating those who refused examination under the ex officio oath. Farmerie admitted to this practice, but claimed that he was simply following the rule in ecclesiastical courts and was not ‘rigorous in this business’. He pleaded time to ‘recollect himself’, a request supported by John Glynne, and the committee moved on to hear petitions concerning ‘innovations in religion’.71Aston’s Diary, 148-9. Farmerie had recovered his composure sufficiently by 25 April to move that steps be taken to discover whether all MPs had taken the oaths of supremacy and allegiance; and he was subsequently named first to a committee for this purpose.72Aston’s Diary, 60; CJ ii. 12b. In a debate that same day (25 Apr.) on the new Canons being prepared in Convocation, he sought to take the wind out of John Pym’s sails by insisting that the Canons would be legally binding only in so far as the House allowed.73Aston’s Diary, 62. Four days later (29 Apr.), in a lengthy debate over ecclesiastical grievances in which the Laudian church authorities were roundly condemned, he confined himself to remarking upon the poverty of church livings in Lincoln. This provoked the godly Lincolnshire knight Sir Anthony Irby to comment sourly that the problem with Lincoln was not poor churches but too few sermons.74Aston’s Diary, 95. Finally, on 1 May, Farmerie was named to a committee for the reform of abuses in ecclesiastical courts – although Irby and his friends doubtless regarded him as highly culpable in that regard.75CJ ii. 17b.

The disastrous outcome of the second bishops’ war in the summer of 1640 probably destroyed any chance Farmerie may have had of retaining his seat at Lincoln that autumn; and in the elections to the Long Parliament, he was replaced by a local puritan squire, John Broxolme.76Supra, ‘Lincoln’. Farmerie’s failure to secure re-election did not spare him the attentions of the Commons committee for religion, where, on 16 November, a petition was presented by the inhabitants of Grantham against Farmerie and another Laudian cleric ‘for putting organs upon the town’ and forcing those that opposed this policy to take the ex officio oath or face excommunication.77Procs. LP i. 156-7. The French and Dutch settlers in Lincolnshire also petitioned against him, alleging that he had extorted £200 from them and had ‘intruded’ a former Franciscan friar, Étienne de Cursol, on them as their pastor.78PA, Main Pprs. 10 Dec. 1640, ff. 93-4; CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 60-1; Holmes, Lincs. 60; R.D. Gwynn, The Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain (2015), i. 255. As a result of these petitions, the Lords had Farmerie taken into custody – releasing him on bail in January 1641 to organise his defence against the charges against him.79LJ iv. 135a. Early in 1642, the inhabitants of a Buckinghamshire deanery within the diocese of Lincoln presented a more comprehensive and damning list of charges against him. Along with Sir John Lambe and other diocesan officials, Farmerie was accused (among other things) of suspending, excommunicating and generally harassing godly ministers, imposing ‘new ceremonies’, punishing those who attended preachers in other parishes, extorting money from parishioners and charging excessive fees.80CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 423-4.

Despite the threat of prosecution by the Long Parliament, Farmerie was one of the most active Lincolnshire magistrates in tendering the Protestation to the county’s inhabitants early in 1642.81Protestation Returns for Lincs. 1641-2 ed. A. Cole, W. Atkin (CD, Lincs. Fam. Hist. Soc. 1996), returns for Aisthorpe, Greetwell, St Mary, Magdalen and St Paul, Lincoln, Snarford and Welton. And in May, he contributed £1 to the collection at Lincoln for Ireland’s Protestants.82SP28/193, pt. 2, f. 47. Nevertheless, in June, he was probably among the ‘popishly-inclined’ residents of the cathedral close who resisted the efforts of Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, the parliamentary lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, to view the city’s arms and rally parliamentarian support.83LJ v. 131b. In July, he was certainly among the 75 future royalists who subscribed to maintain 168 horses ‘fit for war ... for the maintenance and defence of his majesty’s just prerogative [and] the Protestant religion as it is now established’. Farmerie and Dallison promised to maintain four horses apiece, while Sir John Monson offered 12.84Northants. RO, FH133; The Resolution of the Gentry of Lincoln in Setting Forth 168 Horse (1642, 669 f.5.66). It was claimed in August that this subscription was merely for the defence of the county and to promote an accommodation, but its partisan nature is clear.85True Intelligence from Lincoln-Shire (1642), 3-7 (E.113.7). Farmerie was certainly regarded as a committed royalist by Charles, who wrote to him from Nottingham on 28 and again on 31 August, asking him to organize contributions from the loyalist clergy of the diocese.86Lincs. RO, Red Bk. f. 226.

Farmerie seems to have remained a resident of the cathedral close in Lincoln until at least 11 October 1643.87Lincs. RO, COR/M/2 (Corresp. of the bishops of Lincoln and their officers, 1601-43), no. 59: R. Heath to Farmerie, 11 Oct. 1643. At some point thereafter, however, possibly when the city fell to the parliamentarians on 20 October, he abandoned Lincoln for the royalist stronghold of Newark. Shortly after the town’s surrender, on 30 June 1646, he petitioned to compound on the Newark articles.88CCC 1371. But his estate was apparently still under sequestration and he himself a prisoner in the King’s Bench gaol when he died in mid-1647. He was buried at St George the Martyr, Southwark, on 6 June.89St George the Martyr par. reg. In his will, in which he described himself as chancellor of Lincoln, he left the bulk of his estate – which included what may have been reclaimed fenland in the Isle of Axholme – to his wife. His ‘mansion or dwelling house’ in Lincoln had evidently been ‘demolished’ – perhaps destroyed in the civil war.90PROB11/203, f. 234; Lincs. RO, FRISWELL/1/1. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.