CURLE, Walter (c.1574-1647)

Curle was born at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the son of a senior officer of the Court of Wards. After taking his first degree at Christ’s College, Cambridge, he was ‘pre-elected’ to a Peterhouse fellowship in 1597, taking up the post in the following year. This decision to change colleges may well have been prompted by his religious convictions: Christ’s was strongly puritan at this time, and 1597 saw the start of an exodus of college members hostile to that viewpoint. Certainly, Curle was voicing anti-puritan sentiments by 1603, when his future brother-in-law, John Manningham, recorded him as saying: ‘a puritan is such a one as loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbour with all his heart’.27 Some Account of the Life of … Walter Curll, Bp. of Winchester (1712), 4-5; Peterhouse Biog. Reg. ii. 192; S.A. Bondos-Greene, ‘Camb. Puritanism and the Christ’s Coll. Election of 1609’, HJ, xxv. 200-1; Diary of John Manningham ed. R.P. Sorlien, 219, 268. Having joined Peterhouse, Curle immediately obtained permission from the college to travel abroad for four years ‘to improve himself’, though in the event he was back in Cambridge by mid 1600. Ordained three years later, he is said to have been ‘promoted first in the Church by the Cecillian family’. His conformist opinions doubtless commended him to the chancellor of Cambridge University, Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury) who, as master of the Court of Wards, was a long-standing associate of Curle’s father. Salisbury is presumed to have backed his appointment in 1607 as vicar of Plumstead, Kent.28 HMC Hatfield, x. 224; Ath. Ox. ii. (Fasti), 293; CSP Dom. 1598-1601, p. 508; Peterhouse Biog. Reg. ii. 192-3.

In 1611 Curle was presented to the rectory of Wilton, in Wiltshire, by one of Salisbury’s closest associates, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, whose principal country seat lay nearby. The patronage of this major courtier ensured that Curle’s career did not suffer when Salisbury died in the following year. Pembroke further arranged Curle’s appointment in 1615 as a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral, and provided him with two other Wiltshire benefices in 1620.29 Peterhouse Biog. Reg. ii. 193; Ath. Ox. ii. (Fasti), 293. These posts brought Curle the financial security that he needed to sever his academic ties, and he finally resigned his fellowship in 1616. His selection as the commissary of Salisbury diocese in 1620 indicates that Wiltshire was now his main base. However, Pembroke evidently also promoted him at Court, and by 1621 he had become a royal chaplain. In that capacity, James I presented him that year to the deanery of Lichfield.30 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 233.

As a client of Pembroke, Curle had presumably conformed to the earl’s staunchly Protestant views, but the Lichfield appointment brought him a measure of independence, which he demonstrated in a sermon at court in April 1622. The king was then negotiating a marriage alliance with Catholic Spain, in a bid to end the religious conflicts on the Continent. This policy was unpopular in England, but Curle rallied to James’s cause, dismissing the idea that the kind of military intervention being urged by Pembroke was an easy option:

We have so long fed upon the sweet plenty of peace, that many have taken a surfeit, and grow weary of it…. But did the heat of war beat upon our heads, as it doth upon other nations, we would make more account of the sweet shade of peace, under which we now sit.

Curle applied the same argument to ideological disputes within the Church of England, effectively calling for censorship of anti-Catholic publications: ‘I hold it neither necessary, nor fit, for every man, in defence or pretence of the truth, to answer every dog that barks, with barking again’. Linking such ‘contentious’ literature to puritan agitation for further reformation within the Church, Curle denounced the promotion of such views as potentially seditious, and indeed dangerous. Delighted by this endorsement, the king promptly ordered the sermon’s publication.31 W. Curle, A Sermon Preached at Whitehall on the 28 of April 1622 (1712 edn.), 18-20, 23-5; P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Court, 140-1; A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 50. Nevertheless, no further promotion followed, and once the policy of peace with Spain was reversed in 1624 Curle found his opinions out of tune with the times, though he continued to preach at court in the final year of James’s reign.32 LC5/183, ff.1-2. He was added to the High Commission for Canterbury province in 1626, but received no further public recognition until 1628, when he was chosen as prolocutor of the lower house of Canterbury Convocation.

By now, Curle was firmly identified as an opponent of puritanism. Despite never being noted for markedly Arminian opinions, he attached himself to the rising star of the Church, William Laud^*, bishop of Bath and Wells (later archbishop of Canterbury), who in July 1628 procured his appointment as bishop of Rochester.33 J. Davies, Caroline Captivity of the Church, 41, 99. Having obtained permission to hold his existing lesser benefices in commendam, to supplement his income, Curle was consecrated in the following September.34 CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 224. When Parliament met in January 1629, he took his seat in the Lords, attending just over two-thirds of this brief session. His introduction to the House went unrecorded, and apart from a grant of leave of absence on 29 Jan., he made no mark on proceedings.35 LJ, iv. 15a.

Curle served at Rochester for barely a year, being translated to Bath and Wells in December 1629. In his second diocese he had more impact, personally conducting a visitation in 1630, and antagonizing Somerset puritans by encouraging Sunday sports and the erection of maypoles.36 Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church ed. K. Fincham, i. (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 26; K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 125; Davies, 203. During his time at Wells, the communion table in the cathedral was more richly furnished. The patterns of worship probably also changed, as Curle was accused of interfering in the management of the choir.37 HMC Wells, ii. 395. Nevertheless, he was no doctrinaire Laudian, and allowed the well known city lectures at Bath to continue. Indeed, on a rare occasion when he did discipline a preacher, at Ilchester in 1631, it was at the request of a local gentleman, the godly Sir Robert Phelips^‡. Controversially, Curle continued to grant leases of episcopal property, and to collect the associated fines, after he was nominated for his next see. As a result his successor at Wells, William Piers^*, sued him for alleged loss of revenues, a legal wrangle which dragged on for over three years.38 Davies, 153, 169; P.M. Hembry, Bps. of Bath and Wells 1540-1640, p. 224; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 423.

In November 1632 Curle was translated to the richer and more prestigious diocese of Winchester, again with Laud’s backing. It is questionable whether Curle possessed the talents or strength of character to warrant such a senior position, but Laud presumably recognized in him a competent and loyal ally who was unlikely ever to emerge as a rival. Once the latter became archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, and could finally push forward with his programme of church reform, Curle gave it his firm backing. At Winchester Cathedral he oversaw a major programme of embellishments to the quire, designed to enhance the surroundings of the high altar. He also installed a new, gothic-style ceiling under the tower, featuring corbels in the shape of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. Following the king’s complaints during a royal visit in 1636, the quire’s entrance screen was replaced by a new classical structure designed by Inigo Jones^‡, which featured life-sized statues of James I and Charles himself. The cathedral clergy were made to bow to the high altar when entering or leaving the quire, and were also provided with copes, which most Anglicans saw as Catholic vestments.39 G. Parry, Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation, 53-4; J. Milner, Hist. and Survey of Antiqs. of Winchester, ii. 11. As visitor of several Oxford colleges, Curle again backed the efforts of Laud, the university’s chancellor, to promote the ‘beauty of holiness’. In particular he influenced the embellishment of Magdalen College chapel, where new windows were installed, showing the Last Judgement and figures of saints. Curle also urged Magdalen’s president to promote ‘an uniform reverence’ in the chapel, in imitation of practices in the Chapel Royal.40 K. Fincham, ‘Early Stuart Polity’, Hist. of Univ. of Oxf. iv. ed. N. Tyacke, 205-6; J. Newman, ‘The Architectural Setting’, Hist. of Univ. of Oxf., iv. 165-6; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored, 231. Predictably, the bishop encouraged his diocesan clergy to subscribe towards the restoration of St. Paul’s Cathedral, another of Laud’s projects, and as a personal gesture to his old college, he donated £140 towards the rebuilding of Peterhouse chapel, a notable example of Laudian church design.41 Davies, 77; Peterhouse Biog. Reg. ii. 193.

Curle’s first visitation articles for Winchester diocese, in 1633, were relatively conventional, but in 1636 he added more contentious questions, such as whether the laity bowed at the name of Jesus during gospel readings, and whether royal instructions were implemented promptly.42 Vis. Articles and Injunctions, i. 26, 186-7. Especially punctilious over the latter issue, he ensured the thorough distribution of the king’s 1629 guidelines for regulating preaching, and was one of very few bishops to suspend clergy who failed to read the 1633 Book of Sports to their congregations.43 Davies, 133, 188, 190. Curle is known to have consecrated communion plate, a markedly Laudian practice. Nevertheless, there were limits to his enthusiasm for the archbishop’s ritualistic preferences; for example, he did not insist on people reverencing the altar when entering or leaving a church.44 Fincham and Tyacke, 240, 249-50. By the later 1630s the government was becoming concerned about the rising number of recusants in the diocese, and Curle also annoyed the king in 1635 by trying to get himself and his clergy exempted from Ship Money.45 Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, v. 348, 356, 363; PC2/44, f. 151v; 2/47, f. 124v. However, Charles normally expressed approval of the bishop’s performance. Curle continued to be summoned to preach at court, and in June 1637, at Laud’s request, he was appointed the king’s almoner. It was even rumoured that he might soon join the Privy Council.46 CSP Dom. 1635, p. 237; 1637-8, p. 288; Milton, 365; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 111. In the spring of 1639 he accompanied the king to York during the First Bishops’ War.47 Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 553.

Curle was one of 13 bishops impeached in August 1641 for drafting new Canons and approving a clerical benevolence. Despite this, he continued to sit in the Lords until the following February, just before the bishops were excluded.48 CJ, ii. 235b-6a; LJ, iv. 580a-b; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/8, unfol. (7 Feb. 1642). He was with the royal garrison of Winchester Castle when it surrendered to Oliver Cromwell^‡ in October 1645, but was allowed to retire to his Hampshire manor of Soberton. His health declining, Curle sought medical advice in London, but died there in April 1647. His body was brought back to Soberton for burial. A funeral monument erected there had already lost its inscription by the early eighteenth century.49 Some Account … of … Walter Curll, 7-8; A Coppie of Lieut. Gen. Cromwels Letter; Concerning the Taking of Winchester Castle (1645), 4.