CORBET, Richard (1582-1635)

Corbet was born at Ewell, Surrey in 1582, but recorded that his father established a market gardening business at Twickenham, Middlesex, ‘To supply the ingenious wants/ Of soon-sprung fruits, and foreign plants’. The bishop’s memorial displayed the arms of the Corbets of Moreton Corbet, Shropshire, but his father used the surname Poynter, so any kinship between the two families was presumably distant. Corbet’s father was not without means: in his will, drafted in 1603, he left his son £500 and property in London.17 Poems of Richard Corbett, pp. xi-xii, 68; Ath. Ox. ii. 595; PROB 11/133, f. 390.

Corbet attended Westminster School where a contemporary recalled him as ‘a very handsome man, but something apt to abuse, and a coward’. At Oxford – he matriculated at Broadgates Hall, but quickly transferred to Christ Church – he put his mercurial talents to use, acquiring a reputation as a poet, wit, bon viveur and practical joker.18 J. Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. A. Clark, i. 184-6; Al. Ox.; Ath. Ox. ii. 594. Yet one of his early poems, an elegy of 1609/10 on the early demise of Thomas Ravis^*, bishop of London (and a former dean of Christ Church), illustrates his urbane charm: ‘I blame not fame and nature if they gave/ Where they could give no more, their last, a grave’. He was his college’s nominee for junior proctor of the university in 1612, in which capacity he preached funeral orations for Prince Henry and Sir Thomas Bodley^‡.19 Poems of Richard Corbett, 3; Le Neve, Fasti (1854), iii. 491; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 396; T. Birch, Life of Henry, Prince of Wales (1760), 366; Oxford DNB, xiii. 403.

At Easter 1613, preaching in Oxford’s cathedral, Corbet ‘insisted on the article of Christ’s descending into Hell, and thereby grated upon Calvin’s manifest perverting of the true sense and meaning of it’, a challenge which attracted the wrath of the Regius professor, Robert Abbot^* (later bishop of Salisbury, and brother of George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury). Abbot arranged for this sermon to be ‘rattled up’ by another preacher, an incident which aligned Corbet with the anti-Calvinist faction at Oxford. Unlike John Howson^* (later bishop of Oxford and Durham) and William Laud^* (later archbishop of Canterbury), Corbet was not called before the king to explain himself, but several of the poems he wrote at this time mocked his puritan critics.20 P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus (1668), 67-8; JOHN HOWSON; WILLIAM LAUD. During the king’s visit to Cambridge University in 1615, Corbet dismissed the ‘tedious mile of prayer’ favoured by the godly dons of Emmanuel College, while in 1618 he censured the iconoclasm of Banbury’s puritans: ‘all the idolatry/ Lies in your folly, not the imagery’. He also warned against the excessive zeal of an old Oxford contemporary who had taken down a maypole:

The simple wretches say they mean no harm,
They do not, surely; but their actions warm
Our purer bloods the more: for Satan thus
Tempts us the more, that are more righteous.

His ballad ‘The Distracted Puritan’ lampooned the godly fascination with the apocalyptic rhetoric of the book of Revelation, and soteriology: ‘I observed in [William] Perkins’ tables/ The black lines of damnation:/ Those crooked veins/ So stuck in my brains,/ That I feared my reprobation’.21 Poems of Richard Corbett, 13, 48, 53, 56-9, 130-1.

Though ordained in 1613, Corbet was best known as a poet throughout his career. Many of his works were written to secure patronage, particularly that of the lord admiral, Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham. In 1615 Corbet wrote an elegy on the death of the latter’s heir, Lord Howard of Effingham (William Howard^*); and further poems followed, dedicated to the admiral’s relations by marriage, John Mordaunt^*, 5th Lord Mordaunt (later earl of Peterborough) and Sir Francis Stewart^‡. Corbet was presumably introduced to Nottingham’s circle by a Christ Church contemporary, Thomas Aylesbury, the earl’s secretary for naval affairs. When the admiralty passed to the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, in January 1619, these efforts looked to have been wasted, but Aylesbury transferred to Buckingham’s service, and it was almost certainly with the favourite’s backing that Corbet was installed as dean of Christ Church in June 1620. He expressed his gratitude in a poem sent to Buckingham as a New Year’s gift in January 1622: ‘… dearest lord, expect my debt to you/ Shall be as truly paid as it is due./ … nothing pays my lord but what’s above/ The reach of hands, – ’tis virtue and my love’. In a reference to the unhappy ending of the recent Parliament, he insisted that his ‘prayer from the Convocation/ Is better than the Commons’ Protestation’.22 Ibid. pp. xix-xx, 71-2. As a dean, Corbet was ex officio a member of the lower House of Convocation.

Buckingham and his circle clearly assisted Corbet in securing other preferments. In January 1620 he was collated as a prebend at Salisbury Cathedral, perhaps at the nomination of Buckingham’s adviser John Williams^* (later bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of York), who was then briefly dean of Salisbury. In May 1621 Corbet, as dean of Christ Church, was granted a dispensation to hold the post in commendam with both the rectory of Puttenham, Hertfordshire – which he can only have held briefly, if at all, as another man was collated to the living in 1622 – and the vicarage of Stewkley, Buckinghamshire, which lay in the gift of Bishop Howson of Oxford. The latter also presented Corbet to the vicarage of Cassington, Oxfordshire in 1622. Corbet’s appointment as a royal chaplain – he was included on the roster for 1621 – was presumably arranged by another anti-Calvinist Buckingham client, Richard Neile^*, bishop of Durham, in his capacity as clerk of the closet, although one of Corbet’s early appearances before the king, at Woodstock Palace in 1621, was not a success.23 Fasti, vi. 27; CCEd; Cranfield, 142; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 424-5.

The anti-Calvinists reinforced their position at court during 1622-3 by taking a more accommodating line towards the prospect of a Spanish Match than their critics. Corbet also curried favour with Buckingham after the latter’s mother and sister announced their conversion to Catholicism, sending him a tract intended to persuade the two women to change their minds: ‘if a good stomach come to them’ [i.e. his arguments], he informed the marquess, ‘I make no question but it will turn to nourishment: if an ill, to physic’. While Buckingham and Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales) were in Spain in 1623, Corbet addressed a poem to the favourite (newly created a duke), exhorting him to make his priority Charles’s safe return, regardless of the success of the marriage negotiations:

Then shall I tell my lord [Buckingham], his word and band
Are forfeit till I kiss the prince’s hand;
Then shall I tell the duke, your royal friend [i.e. King James]
Gave all the other honours, this you earned.

These ‘flattering verses’, which clearly circulated, provoked a poetic riposte from one of the duke’s critics: ‘His [Corbet’s] coat’s/ And cassock’s worth have killed his wilder oats’.24 Poems of Richard Corbett, pp. xxiv-xxv, 78-9; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 517. By the time of their return to England, the prince and duke were convinced that the Spanish had not been negotiating in good faith. On 26 Feb. 1624, presumably upon news of Buckingham and Charles’s ‘Relation’ of the breakdown of the Spanish Match, delivered to Parliament only two days earlier, Corbet hastened to assure the favourite of his conversion to the ‘patriot’ cause: ‘… in the point of allegiance now at hand [the breach of the treaties with Spain], all the papists are exceeding orthodox; the only recusants are the puritans’.25 Harl. 7000, f. 146, printed without date in Cabala (1654), 121; T. Cogswell, Blessed Rev. 174-81. While not a member of Bishop Neile’s ‘Durham House’ coterie, Corbet was the most sympathetic candidate the Arminian Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Chichester) could imagine serving as prolocutor [Speaker] of the lower House of Convocation in 1625. In the event, he was not selected, while the attack on Montagu came from the Commons, not Convocation.26 Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 42.

For all of Corbet’s flattery, preferment was slow in coming: financial problems prompted King Charles to keep several bishoprics vacant during 1626-8, and consequently, it was not until August 1628 that Corbet was nominated as Howson’s successor to the bishopric of Oxford. Shortly beforehand, perhaps to remind Buckingham of his versatility, Corbet wrote a pair of poems about the 1628 session of Parliament, one arguing against the dangers of popularity, the other, presented as a riposte, mocking the ambitions of prelacy. Both, however, warned against allowing lay puritans such as John Pym^‡, William Prynne^‡ and Ignatius Jourdain^‡ to dictate the tenets of orthodoxy to lay peers and prelates.27 Poems of Richard Corbett, 82-4. At least one reader assumed the riposte was by another hand (SP16/141/27); some variants in circulation probably were written by others, see Add. 35331, f. 27.

The round of ecclesiastical preferments which took place in the summer of 1628 represented a clean sweep for the anti-Calvinists. However, at his trial in 1644, Laud insisted that he had had nothing to do with Corbet’s promotion, claiming that Buckingham had arranged it at the behest of Edward Sackville^*, 4th earl of Dorset, in order to secure the deanery of Christ Church for the latter’s chaplain, Brian Duppa^† (later bishop of Chichester). Since Laud was not particularly close to Corbet, and Duppa did indeed obtain the deanery, this assertion may well be valid.28 Fasti, viii. 76; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 371-2; Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxvi), 383; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iv. 292. For Laud, Corbet represented another vote in the House of Lords in case there were further impeachment proceedings against the Arminian clergy. In the event, however, the 1629 session was dissolved before any such charges could be brought. Corbet attended two-thirds of the Lords’ sittings, but left no trace on the surviving records of proceedings.

Corbet received a handsome financial settlement as bishop of Oxford: while the bishopric was only valued at £319 p.a., his new commendam (despite his protests of its inadequacy) allowed him to keep his Salisbury prebend, Cassington vicarage and the rectory of South Littleton, Worcestershire (a living owned by Christ Church, which he must have acquired while dean); to these was added Howson’s former rectory of Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire.29 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; CCEd; C58/32; SP16/150/80. Little can be said about his tenure at Oxford: he adopted Howson’s articles of inquiry for his 1629 visitation, adding a few inquiries of his own about recusants; he contemplated, but never initiated, a lawsuit to recover the former episcopal palace of Gloucester Hall, Oxford (it was his successor, John Bancroft^*, who established the bishop’s palace at Cuddesdon); and in October 1630 Archbishop Abbot summoned him to assist at the consecration of William Piers^* as bishop of Peterborough.30 Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church ed. K. Fincham (C. of E. Rec. Soc. i), 198-9; SP16/144/8; 16/174/96; Fasti, viii. 115.

Corbet was said to have been promised the bishopric of Norwich as early as November 1631, but his congé d’élire was not sealed until 29 Mar. 1632. Thus the ‘panegyric sermon’ he preached on the royal prerogative at Paul’s Cross on 27 Mar. was delivered with one eye to promotion. In it he claimed ‘that not only the Scripture did deify kings, in saying I have said, ye are Gods etc., but the common law also doth make our king a God’.31 Harl. 7000, f. 443; Fasti, vii. 38; W.S. Powell, John Pory, microfiche supplement, 237. Valued at £840 p.a., Norwich was considerably wealthier than Oxford, with palaces at Norwich and Ludham, Norfolk. Consequently, though Corbet relinquished his other preferments, he probably gained financially from the move. Once again, the articles for his primary visitation (1632) adapted those issued by an earlier bishop (John Overall^*, 1619). However, he was more active as an administrator in this large and increasingly refractory diocese, although he failed to gain his clergy exemption from Ship Money, which he claimed on the grounds that they were still paying clerical taxation voted in 1628.32 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, 171; PC2/44, f. 151v.

For all the scornful rhetoric of his poetry, Corbet was reluctant to proceed against puritan lecturers. As bishop of Oxford he had licensed a combination lecture at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, later closed down by Bishop Bancroft; and at Norwich he only briefly suspended William Bridge, the puritan minister who ran a lecture at Tombland, just outside the cathedral precincts, doing so only after the diocesan chancellor forced his hand. At Ipswich he reassured the well-known preacher Samuel Ward, ‘I shall never displace you of that room which I have given you in my affection’. It was actually Laud who cited Ward into High Commission, and ultimately forced him into exile.33 M.R. Reynolds, ‘Puritanism and the Emergence of Laudianism in City Pols. in Norwich, c.1570-1643’ (Univ. Kent Ph.D. thesis, 2002), 172-87; Poems of Richard Corbett, p. xxxvi; Works of Abp. Laud, v. 328.

Corbet died at Norwich on 28 July 1635, ‘like a Roman, bravely, as they prayed about him he joined with them; prayers ended, he bid them all goodnight, and died’. His will, drafted three weeks earlier, made provision for his underage children: his daughter Alice received a portion of £1,000; while the rest of his estate went to his son Vincent, whom he intended should go to university. Corbet’s wife having died in 1628, the will was proved by his mother-in-law, Anne Hutton.34 SP16/298/10; PROB 11/169, f. 33r-v. He was buried, as requested, in Norwich Cathedral under a stone with a Latin inscription recording his career as student, dean and bishop of Oxford; his translation to Norwich; and finally, his translation to heaven. After his death, Laud reported the diocese to be ‘much out of order’, and promoted Matthew Wren^† (later bishop of Ely) to instil discipline.35 Ath. Ox. ii. 595; Works of Abp. Laud, v. 334. Collections of his poems, hitherto circulated in manuscript, were published in 1647 and 1648.