BUCKERIDGE, John (c.1562-1631)

One of the leading anti-Calvinists of the early Jacobean period, Buckeridge subsequently saw his influence eclipsed by the rise of two other courtier prelates, Richard Neile^* (ultimately archbishop of York) and William Laud^* (eventually archbishop of Canterbury). This may have been partly due to the ill health he suffered during the 1620s, but it was also down to the fact that Neile failed to resign the clerkship of the closet in his favour, as was briefly planned, in 1617. Buckeridge’s death in 1631 deprived Laud, as archbishop, of the opportunity to use his former teacher’s talents.

Early career to 1611

Buckeridge’s family hailed from Wiltshire, but his mother was a cousin of the London alderman Sir Thomas White, one of the founders of Merchant Taylors’ school, which the future bishop is said to have attended. He was certainly a student at White’s other educational establishment, St John’s College, Oxford, where, between 1578 and 1600, he held one of the fellowships reserved for founder’s kin.34 Ath. Ox. ii. 507; Al. Ox.; Biog. Reg. of St. John’s Coll. Oxf. 26. A Marian foundation, the college never fully accepted the ‘Calvinist consensus’ of the late Elizabethan Church. Buckeridge’s sceptical attitude towards Calvinist doctrine and high regard for the formal rituals of worship was easily incorporated within this ethos, and was passed on to his student William Laud.

By the time he resigned his fellowship in 1600, Buckeridge claimed to have been absent from Oxford for five years. Instead of living in college, he spent much of this time in London and at court, where he served as chaplain to Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex from about 1594-5. After two unsuccessful nominations, the earl’s patronage secured Buckeridge the rectory of North Fambridge, Essex in 1596.35 Strype, iv. 341-3; Ath. Ox. ii. 507; E334/12, f. 61. Three years later Essex interceded with the lord keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton^* (later Viscount Brackley) to obtain for him a living at North Kilworth, Leicestershire.36 Bodl. Tanner 179, unfol.; C.M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Eliz. Oxf. 232.

In 1596 Buckeridge was appointed chaplain to John Whitgift^*, archbishop of Canterbury, in whose household he met Lancelot Andrewes^*, a Cambridge don who shared his scepticism about Calvinism. He probably spent much of his time at Lambeth, and, though not a royal chaplain, he was regularly included on the Lent roster of preachers in the Chapel Royal from 1597. Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, he preached at the Temple church on the redemptive power of divine grace, a staple of Calvinist soteriology. However, his suggestion that the practices of the pre-Reformation Church might have some merit was calculated to offend the godly: ‘in times past men were ashamed to commit sin, but ready to make confession; now the world is changed, for now everyone dares commit any sin, but is ashamed to make confession’.37 P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Ct. 106, (suppl. cal. 73, 75, 79-83, 86-7, 90, 94); Diary of John Manningham ed. R.P. Sorlien, 73.

In March 1604, three weeks after Whitgift’s death, Buckeridge was appointed archdeacon of Northampton by Thomas Dove^*, bishop of Peterborough, who shared his theological opinions, and required a man of similar views to enforce conformity on the local puritan clergy. Buckeridge also acquired a prebend at Hereford Cathedral, and was a contender for the vacant deanery of Lichfield, but lost out to a more vigorous lobbyist, William Tooker.38 Fasti, viii. 123; Le Neve, Fasti (1854), i. 499; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 366-7; xxiii. 201; Winwood’s Memorials ed. E. Sawyer, ii. 39; THOMAS DOVE. He was amply compensated for this reverse over the following year, being elected president (head of house) at St John’s, and (following Andrewes’s promotion to the bishopric of Chichester), acquiring the London benefice of St Giles Cripplegate, a living reckoned to be worth £400 a year in 1635. He also secured a canonry at Windsor.39 Le Neve, Fasti (1854), iii. 399-401, 573; CCEd; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 209; CUL, Mm.vi.61, f. 4v.

This flurry of preferment suggests that Buckeridge had caught the new king’s eye. In September 1606, James chose Andrewes, Buckeridge and two other English clerics to urge the benefits of episcopacy upon eight leading Scots ministers who were resisting royal efforts to reinstate the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Scotland. When the meeting opened at Hampton Court, Buckeridge preached the first sermon, in justification of lay authority over the Church, the subject of his doctoral theses in 1597.40 Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. A. Clark (Oxf. Hist. Soc. x), ii. pt. 1, p. 200. He began by rehearsing the king’s own views on monarchy: ‘kings and emperors … admit no superior on earth but God, to whom only they must make their accompt’. Furthermore, he argued that the royal supremacy extended to ecclesiastical affairs, seeing kings as ‘God’s immediate ministers, of whom they hold in capite, not man’s, not the pope’s, not the presbytery’s, to draw their swords at their command’. During the exodus from Egypt, he observed that Moses, as civil magistrate, had exercised authority over Aaron, the high priest; he also cited the active role the emperors Constantine and Theodosius played in shaping the early Church. Patristic scholarship, he concluded, offered more reliable precedents than ‘the new cut of those, who have not above the life of a man on their backs, sixty or seventy years’ – clearly a slur directed against the followers of Calvin, Beza and Knox. The four sermons received ‘good commendation’ from their English hearers, although Andrewes, having briefed Buckeridge on the contents of his own forthcoming sermon on Church councils, felt the latter had stolen his thunder.41 J. Buckeridge, A Sermon Preached at Hampton Court (?1606), sigs. B3v, C1, F2v; Chamberlain Letters, i. 232; W.B. Patterson, King Jas. VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, 114. The Scots were naturally less enthusiastic: James Melville considered Buckeridge’s arguments to have been borrowed from the 1585 tract on obedience by the bishop of Winchester, Thomas Bilson^*, and was offended by the tone, ‘where, of ignorance, or malice, or both, he joins divers times the presbytery with the pope’. However, he found nothing objectionable in Buckeridge’s justification of the civil magistrate.42 Autobiog. and Diary of Mr James Melville ed. R. Pitcairn (Wodrow Soc. 1842), 657; McCullough, (suppl. cal. 132). Melville’s account is paraphrased in D. Calderwood, Hist. of the Kirk of Scot. ed. T. Thomson, vi. 571.

Bishop of Rochester, 1611-20

In November 1610, shortly after the death of Richard Bancroft^*, archbishop of Canterbury, Buckeridge and Andrewes were ordered to survey the papers left in the archbishop’s study at Lambeth. These included correspondence with Catholic priests, which needed to be kept secret from the late archbishop’s puritan critics, who would have used this information to damn his reputation.43 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 648. The new archbishop, George Abbot^*, was an orthodox Calvinist but, in the brief vacancy prior to his appointment, Buckeridge secured the bishopric of Rochester in succession to Richard Neile, the most prominent of the Cambridge anti-Calvinists.44 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 108; HMC Downshire, iii. 47, 56. As Rochester was worth only £332 p.a., Buckeridge was allowed to keep his canonry at Windsor and his parish living at St Giles, and also granted the rectory of Southfleet, Kent in commendam. He surrendered his other preferments, including the presidency of St John’s, where he was succeeded by Laud, in the face of strong resistance from the latter’s Calvinist critics.45 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; C58/14; CCEd; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 68-9.

Losses among the diocesan records at Rochester make it difficult to say much about Buckeridge’s churchmanship, beyond the fact that he was a regular visitor to the episcopal seat at Bromley, Kent, where he was ultimately buried. Towards the end of his tenure, he approved the establishment of a weekly lecture at Rochester, an innovation more usually associated with Calvinist bishops. However, this project was hedged with qualifications: preachers were to be cathedral prebends or other beneficed ministers within the diocese; were ordered not to preach against each other, the state or the Church; and required sign an undertaking to avoid discussion of ‘any of the controversies that are now in difference in the Church of England about predestination, reprobation or ceremonies of the Church’.46 LPL, ms 943, p. 59; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 175; 1629-31, p. 368; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., DRb/Ar1/16, f. 65v; Ath. Ox. ii. 509.

The proximity of Buckeridge’s see to London, and his metropolitan residence in St Giles Cripplegate, meant that he routinely sat on the court of High Commission at Lambeth. This presumably explains his inclusion on the commission for the annulment proceedings against Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex, in 1613. The king was keen for the commissioners to reach a swift decision, as his favourite Robert Carr^*, Viscount Rochester (later earl of Somerset), intended to marry the countess, but the grounds for the action – selective impotence – were spurious, and the Calvinist commissioners, led by Abbot, refused to grant a decree, leaving the court deadlocked. Bilson and Buckeridge were added to the commission with the specific purpose of securing a majority for the annulment.47 K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 50-2; Chamberlain Letters, i. 469; Birch, Jas. I, i. 267; SP14/76/60; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xii), 238. The verdict for nullification affected the next round of ecclesiastical preferments, in November 1613, as Neile was promoted to Lincoln diocese, while Robert Abbot^*, brother of the archbishop and later bishop of Salisbury, who had been tipped for the vacancy at Lichfield, was passed over in favour of Buckeridge. In fact, the latter declined the offer, and Lichfield ultimately went to the anti-Calvinist dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, John Overall^* (later bishop of Norwich).48 Chamberlain Letters, i. 478, 486.

Buckeridge’s reluctance to accept a see whose income was almost twice that of Rochester is hard to explain. He may have been expected to surrender all his other livings, which, with the first fruits due upon his translation, would have eroded the value of the transaction; or he may have hoped for something better, following the publication of his most substantial work, De Potestae Papae in Rebus Temporalibus (1614), which was dedicated to King James. Buckeridge’s exhaustive response to Cardinal Bellarmine’s latest salvo in the oath of allegiance controversy refuted the pope’s claims to temporal authority, particularly the right to depose monarchs, arguing that ultimate authority in Christendom lay with a general council, in which all bishops could speak with equal authority. This approach, pioneered by King James and Andrewes, was only nominally anti-Catholic. In fact, it was specifically designed to appeal to conciliarist views which had gained strength within the Roman Church since the Venetian interdict of 1605-6. At least one seminary priest appreciated this, observing that if Buckeridge was not actually Catholic, he was ‘very well affected’.49 P. Milward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age, 101-9; A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed?, 221-5; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 272-3.

Buckeridge attended two-thirds of the sittings of the 1614 Parliament, but played little recorded part in its proceedings. He was one of those ordered to confer with the Commons about the bill to confirm the rights of Princess Elizabeth’s children to the succession, and on 24 May he was one of 16 bishops who voted against holding a conference with the Commons about impositions, a bloc vote which ensured the motion was dashed by 39 votes to 30.50 LJ, ii. 692b, 706b-71; Chamberlain Letters, i. 533. Following the abrupt dissolution, the clergy took the initiative in raising a benevolence in lieu of parliamentary subsidies; Buckeridge contributed £50 from his own pocket, and his diocese raised a creditable £234, three-quarters of the yield of a clerical subsidy.51 E351/1950; SP14/133/13.

In the summer of 1617 Buckeridge was tipped to succeed Bishop Neile as clerk of the closet after the latter was translated to Durham, a position which would have given him control of the preaching roster at the Chapel Royal. Unsurprisingly, however, Neile opted to keep the clerkship in his own hands for another 15 years. In the following year, the Dutch Arminians asked King James to include Neile and Buckeridge on the English delegation to the Synod of Dort. As James’s sympathies lay entirely with the Calvinist contra-Remonstrants, both men were kept in England, although they were included among the group of bishops who drafted a memorandum to the synod on precedents for the resolution of doctrinal disputes within the Church of England.52 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 82; Tyacke, 70; British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618-19) ed. A. Milton (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. xiii), 25-6.

On Passion Sunday (22 Mar.) 1618, Buckeridge preached a court sermon arguing that kneeling during prayer was not merely a convenience, but could also be compelled by the crown, as it recently had been in Scotland, by the Five Articles of Perth. He began by reminding his listeners of the Jacobean position on divine right monarchy:

The king is first among men, and next, or second to God; neither pope nor people stand between God and the king … Lesser than God only, from whom he immediately receives his power over all men, and all sorts of men, priest and people, in all causes civil and spiritual.

On these grounds, a royal injunction sufficed to justify kneeling. Buckeridge then went on to mock those who ‘profess to adore our Saviour, and will not kneel before him; and yet the very devils did bow to him, who they do not adore’.53 McCullough, 138; J. Buckeridge, A Sermon Preached before his Majestie at Whitehall (1618), 4, 17. This sermon was swiftly printed, together with a longer discourse on kneeling to receive communion, which denied the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation but advocated a sacrament-centred form of worship entirely alien to his Calvinist critics:

… reading teacheth the duty of worship, meditation applieth and prepareth the heart to worship; and prayer offereth up and tendereth the worship itself unto God … The sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace … This offering up of ourselves to him, is indeed the true and daily sacrifice of the Christian church … which offereth his mystical body, that is herself, by Christ her high priest and head, unto God.

As in his 1606 sermon, Buckeridge used scriptural and patristic precedents to establish a divine imperative for ceremonies which had previously been regarded as adiaphora.54 J. Buckeridge, A Discourse Concerning Kneeling at the Communion (1618), 35-40, 44; P. Lake, ‘Lancelot Andrewes, John Buckeridge and Avant-Garde Conformity at the Ct. of Jas. I’, Mental World of the Jacobean Court ed. L.L. Peck, 113-33.

Parliament and the search for preferment, 1621-8

Despite the general improvement in the prospects for anti-Calvinist clerics during negotiations for the Spanish Match, Buckeridge’s career stalled in the early 1620s, due to a protracted bout of ill health. He fell ‘very sick’ during the 1621 Parliament, and ceased to attend altogether after Easter. His involvement in the business of the session was commensurately small. He was named to attend conferences about a petition to the king for enforcement of the recusancy laws, and included on committees for half a dozen bills. One of these was to ban the export of ordnance and update militia armaments, a second to improve the navigation of the upper Thames, and a third to confirm leases granted by the duchy of Cornwall.55 Birch, Jas. I, ii. 258-9; LJ, iii. 13a, 17a, 18b, 22b, 26b. In May, Neile successfully claimed privilege for one of Buckeridge’s servants who had been arrested for debt, while on 26 Nov., though not present in the House, Buckeridge was reappointed to the committee for the Thames navigation bill.56 LJ, iii. 106a-b, 113b, 152b, 177a; LD 1621, pp. 53-4. Buckeridge’s health had clearly improved by October 1621, when he was appointed to the committee to consider whether Archbishop Abbot’s accidental slaying of a gamekeeper should lead to his sequestration; it was eventually resolved that the archbishop should be exonerated.57 Cabala, 12-13; SP14/123/15; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 399-400.

After the abrupt dissolution of the Parliament, the king raised a benevolence to support the Protestant forces in the Rhineland. Buckeridge raised £220 from the clergy of his diocese, a yield which represented almost three-quarters of a clerical subsidy, and was well in line with the national average.58 SP14/133/13; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., U269/1/OE1409. Over the following two years, the Spanish Match rose to the top of the political agenda. Buckeridge’s eirenic views about Catholic doctrine should have seen him play a leading role at court at this time, but it was in fact Laud who capitalized on this opportunity, in his public controversy with ‘Fisher the Jesuit’ [John Percy]. The most obvious explanation for Buckeridge’s absence would seem to be continued ill-health.

Buckeridge’s health apparently recovered during the 1624 Parliament, when he attended four-fifths of the sittings in the Lords, and shared with Neile the proxy for John Thornborough^*, bishop of Worcester. However, he did very little before Easter: on 3 Mar. he moved for leave of absence for John Howson^*, bishop of Oxford, but he remained silent during the debates on the breach with Spain, and was included on only three committees, including that for the monopolies’ bill.59 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 24; LJ, iii. 212a, 250a, 267b, 273a. He was considerably more active in the latter half of the session, which tested the king’s resolve about a breach with Spain by petitioning for enforcement of the recusancy laws. On 5 Apr. he agreed that the law for disarming Catholics contained a loophole, because it only allowed the houses of convicted recusants to be searched. Having presumably assisted with the arms searches ordered in 1613, he assured the House that the Privy Council’s orders were ‘executed to the full’, and he was subsequently one of the delegation who delivered the recusancy petition to the king; in the following year, when the Privy Council ordered another search, he is known to have confiscated the arms of John Roper^*, 3rd Lord Teynham, a Catholic who had never been convicted of recusancy.60 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 56; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 175; LJ, iii. 304a; JOHN ROPER, 3rd Lord Teynham.

The other main business in the Lords after Easter 1624 was the impeachment of the lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, who spent several weeks delaying proceedings in the hope that he could secure the king’s backing against his enemies. Buckeridge was included on the committee which considered the treasurer’s increasingly transparent delaying tactics, and on 13 May, when the question was put to the Lords about the earl’s fine, the bishop quashed any final attempt to delay proceedings by moving that damages due to private individuals affected by Middlesex’s peculations could be resolved later. He was named to the committee to consider the plight of those Middlesex had wronged, and Buckeridge subsequently moved that the treasurer’s accounts be viewed to assess the scale of the damages which might be awarded to his victims.61 LJ, iii. 323b, 325b, 327a, 396a; LD 1624 and 1626, p. 90; Add. 40088, f. 131.

Buckeridge was also nominated to a number of legislative committees. These included measures to allow crown tenants to remain in possession despite rent arrears, to regulate cart-taking for the royal household, and to discourage the practice of referring lawsuits to the Westminster courts by writs of supersedeas and certiorari. He was also named to the committee for the expiring laws continuance bill. On 29 May, the final day of the session, he was appointed to help arbitrate a private dispute over a manor in Glamorgan.62 LJ, iii. 284b, 288b, 296a, 384a, 421b. He was also named, on 14 May, to attend a conference with the Commons, to hear charges brought against another anti-Calvinist, Samuel Harsnett^*, bishop of Norwich, apparently in place of Theophilus Field^*, bishop of St Davids.63 Ibid. 384b; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 76v.

Despite the termination of the Spanish Match, the fortunes of the anti-Calvinist clergy at court remained buoyant: in November 1624 Neile, Buckeridge and Laud were joined with Archbishop Abbot to hear a dispute over a canon’s stall at Hereford Cathedral.64 SP14/174/70; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 155. However, the 1624 Parliament had also seen the Commons investigate the Arminian theological opinions expressed by Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Norwich). At the end of the session, the investigation was referred to Archbishop Abbot, who ordered Montagu to qualify his controversial views in a fresh book, to be vetted for publication by Francis White^*, dean (and later bishop) of Carlisle. Montagu asked Neile and Buckeridge to obtain an advance copy of White’s notes, so that he could alter the text where required. Contrary to his usual caution, Buckeridge urged Montagu to a rapid completion of the new work, Appello Caesarem, which was finished by the time Parliament met in June 1625.65 Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 37, 66; Tyacke, 125-8, 146-9.

Buckeridge attended the Lords on almost every day of the 1625 session, and shared the proxy of Francis Godwin^*, bishop of Hereford with Howson and Laud. However, he did not play a prominent role in the House. At the start of the session he was named to a conference with the Commons about petitioning King Charles for a national fast day, and he was commissioned to help draft the prayers to be used. He was also included on committees for drafting regulations to reduce the spread of the plague in London, and to scrutinize the Sabbath bill.66 Procs. 1625, pp. 43, 72, 79-80, 590; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 135-6. In the brief Oxford sitting, he was included on the committee for the bill to preserve crown revenues, and another to audit the national collection taken for captives in North Africa, an investigation which was belatedly reported to the Lords on 14 Apr. 1628. He was also appointed to committees for the relief of plague victims.67 Procs 1625, pp. 127, 139, 174; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 216.

Montagu avoided investigation in 1625 by failing to turn up to the Oxford sitting, but on 2 Aug., Buckeridge, Howson and Laud wrote to Buckingham, urging him to have Montagu’s views referred to ‘a national synod or Convocation’, and warning him not to endorse Archbishop Abbot’s plan to have the Calvinist articles of the Synod of Dort adopted as the doctrine of the Church of England.68 Harl. 7000, f. 183; GEORGE ABBOT. No action was taken at this juncture, but at the start of the 1626 Parliament, Robert Rich^*, 2nd earl of Warwick and the favourite George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham, convened an informal conference at York House to air these doctrinal differences. Shortly before this conference met, Buckeridge, along with Neile, Andrewes, Laud and George Montaigne^*, bishop of London, repeated the arguments of the earlier letter, signing a certificate which claimed there was nothing in Appello Caesarem, ‘but that which in our opinions is the doctrine of the Church of England, or agreeable thereunto’. At the ensuing conference, Montagu was defended by Dean White, assisted by Buckeridge and John Cosin^†, one of Neile’s closest allies at Durham. It quickly emerged that White had failed to maintain editorial control of the draft of Appello Caesarem, and so found it difficult to counter the criticisms of the leading Calvinist spokesman, Thomas Morton^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. Buckeridge did what he could to assist White, particularly over references to the Church Fathers, but he may have felt uncomfortable debating Calvinist doctrines, especially predestination, which he had never discussed at any length in print. The conference ended inconclusively: the partisan accounts which were quickly circulated resolved nothing, and the Commons continued attacking Montagu.69 Tyacke, 150-2, 165-6, 171-80; J. Cosin, Works, ii. 19-71; Bodl. Tanner 303, ff. 46v-7v.

The 1626 Parliament was dominated by Buckingham’s impeachment, and while the clerical anti-Calvinists were by then firmly in the favourite’s camp, Buckeridge, who was present in the Lords for most sittings, said almost nothing about this key issue. When the Commons delivered their impeachment charges against the duke on 8 and 10 May, their spokesmen, Sir John Eliot^* and Archbishop Abbot’s client Sir Dudley Digges, addressed the charge about Buckingham’s treatment of King James’s final illness in such a way as to suggest malice on the duke’s part. King Charles, who had been present at his father’s deathbed, thereupon had the two men arrested. However, on 15 May many of the peers who had heard Digges and Eliot claimed that the two men had not meant anything detrimental to Buckingham. Although Neile and Laud declined to make any such protestation, Buckeridge, who had been present, expressed the hope that the MPs’ words had ‘had no ill meaning’, a statement which was less helpful to the duke’s cause. Buckeridge later served on the committee which took depositions from witnesses in the king’s impeachment proceedings against Buckingham’s inveterate enemy, John Digby^*, 1st earl of Bristol.70 Procs. 1626, i. 483, 540, 597, 631.

While the impeachment proceedings dominated the session, Buckeridge was also involved in other business in the Lords. On 15 Apr., at the second reading of the scandalous ministers’ bill, he reminded the House that ‘divers [are] very severely punished for these offences in High Commission’, thereby supporting Neile and several other bishops, who disapproved of the common law courts intervening in clerical discipline. He was subsequently named to the bill committee, and to committees on measures to restrict the use of citations in ecclesiastical courts and increase clerical income.71 Ibid. 267-8, 313, 357. He was also appointed to a handful of other committees, including one for the bill to preserve crown revenues, another on the militia arms bill, and a third to draft a petition to the king about the inheritance of the earldom of Oxford.72 Ibid. 43, 53, 251.

In January 1627 Walter Balcanquhall, dean of Rochester, believed that Buckingham had promised him the see of Rochester, which suggests Buckeridge was being considered for promotion, probably at Ely, where the incumbent, Nicholas Felton^*, had died three months earlier. However, the crown’s urgent need for money meant that this diocese was temporarily left vacant.73 SP16/49/40; Fasti, iii. 55. During the collection of the Forced Loan, Laud promoted tracts in favour of prerogative taxation, to the dismay of Archbishop Abbot, who refused to license an outspoken sermon by Robert Sibthorpe. The king referred this work to Neile, Laud, Montaigne, Howson and Buckeridge, who approved its contents, but Abbot, who refused to be swayed, was suspended on 1 July 1627, and had his archiepiscopal functions assigned to the five clerics who had endorsed Sibthorpe’s work.74 CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 157-8; Rushworth, i. 431-3.

Bishop of Ely, 1628-31

The congé d’élire for Buckeridge’s election at Ely was signed on 31 Mar. 1628, just after the quarter day when episcopal rents fell due. However, his installation was delayed until July, shortly after Abbot was restored to office; it may have been felt improper for Buckeridge, as one of the coadjutors of the archiepiscopal functions, to have had a share in arranging his own promotion. Ely was worth over £1,900 a year, five times more than Rochester, and came with its own metropolitan palace just off High Holborn, where Buckeridge now spent much of his time. He was required to surrender all his other preferments, but was handsomely compensated, for during his three year tenure he made £4,300 from entry fines for leases of episcopal lands.75 Fasti, vii. 8; Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 450.

The 1628 parliamentary session was dominated by debates on the liberties of the subject, which came to a head when the Lords attempted to add a clause justifying the prerogative to the Commons’ draft Petition of Right. On 23 May the Commons rejected this ‘saving clause’, whereupon Archbishop Abbot urged the Petition be accepted as it stood. However, Buckeridge suggested that it should be referred to the judges instead, ‘that they may deliver their opinions whether anything in this Petition do entrench upon the king’s prerogative; and their opinion to be entered upon the roll, and then this Petition can no way prejudice the king’s right’. His motion was ignored, and the Lords accepted the Petition unaltered.76 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 514; C. Russell, PEP, 373-4.

As well as this modest intervention in the Petition debates, Buckeridge was also involved in much routine business. Named to the standing committee for petitions at the start of the session, he also helped to make arrangements for a general fast, and was included on committees to discuss Buckingham’s proposals for coastal defence and to draft a petition to the king to enforce the recusancy laws. Other appointments included perennial bills on militia arms, preserving the crown’s revenues and maintaining the ministry.77 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 78-9, 86, 88, 96, 103, 112, 146. His membership of the committee for a bill to improve the navigation of the Medway, which ran through Rochester diocese, reflected an obvious local interest, while his recent appointment as a governor of the London Charterhouse doubtless explains his appointment to the committee for the bill to confirm the hospital’s foundation. On 18 June he moved that peers be required to discipline their recalcitrant pages.78 Ibid. 264, 474, 664; Davies, 352.

Archbishop Abbot was restored to office at the end of the 1628 parliamentary session. However, the price for his reinstatement was presumably his confirmation of ecclesiastical preferments involving his adversaries, including Buckeridge’s translation to Ely. On 24 Aug., Neile, Buckeridge and White were with Abbot at Croydon for the consecration of Richard Montagu as bishop of Chichester, when the news of Buckingham’s assassination arrived.79 Rymer, viii. pt. 2, p. 264; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 371-2; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 208. However, the duke’s death had little effect upon the balance of power within the Church, as King Charles was resolved to continue supporting Neile, Laud and their adherents.

Buckeridge missed all but two days of the 1629 parliamentary session through illness, but was named to the committee for petitions in his absence.80 LJ, iv. 6a-b, 25b. He remained active in public life for about a year thereafter. In May, for instance, he was asked to intercede with Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was visitor, to secure a fellowship for Gerardus Vossius, son of a Dutch Arminian theologian. Six months later, Sir Robert Cotton^‡ was detained at Ely House after being charged with circulating a tract advocating that the king circumvent Parliament and rule by decree.81 CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 548; C115/105/8119; L.J. Reeve, Chas. I and the Road to Personal Rule, 158-9. In the same year, at the behest of the king, Laud and Buckeridge published a collection of 96 of Andrewes’s sermons. Much of the editorial work was doubtless undertaken by their chaplains, but their selection amounted to a model for non-Calvinist preaching within the Church of England.82 L. Andrewes, XCVI Sermons (1629), sigs. A2-A4.

In October 1630 Abbot reported that Buckeridge was ‘very sick of the dropsy in London’, but the latter did not draft his will until 16 Apr. 1631. This included a lengthy preamble which owed nothing to Calvinist soteriology:

O Lord, wash me thoroughly in the blood of thy Son from all my sins, and sanctify me by thy grace and holy spirit, and though my sins be as crimson, yet let it please thee to make them as white as snow by the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ.

He left St. John’s College, Oxford £500, books and a communion service from his private chapel, and provided smaller bequests as a stock for the poor in the parish livings he had held. His signet ring he left to his mother, quantities of plate to his four brothers and sister, and, having never married, he left the profits of Bromley rectory in Kent, and lands in Tottenham, Middlesex to his nephews and nieces. He bequeathed a bed to Bishop Neile’s wife and son, and two gilt bowls to the royal physician Sir William Paddy^‡, who may have treated him in his final illness. He was buried at Bromley, Kent on 31 May 1631, and his brothers Arthur and George proved his will two days later.83 CSP Dom, 1629-31, p. 368; PROB 11/160, ff. 16v-17v; Ath. Ox. ii. 509.