FOTHERBY, Martin (c.1560-1620)

Fotherby came from a respectable Lincolnshire merchant family, his father being a Grimsby alderman who served as mayor in 1561. Like his elder brother Charles, Fotherby studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, initially during the mastership of John Whitgift^†, another native of Grimsby and reputedly his kinsman.20 T. Fuller, Worthies of Eng. ii. 277; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 290; Al. Cant.; J. Strype, Life and Acts of John Whitgift, i. 4-5; Cassan, 98-9. Whitgift became archbishop of Canterbury in 1583, and evidently used his position to advance Fotherby’s career. Although the latter did not become Whitgift’s chaplain until around 1595, he was appointed to the first of six Kentish benefices three years earlier, and then shifted rapidly from living to living, doubtless in pursuit of larger stipends. Fotherby’s income was further augmented in 1596, when he secured a prebend in Canterbury Cathedral, this time through the patronage of Robert Naunton^‡, a close friend since the days when they were both fellows of Trinity.21 CSP Dom. 1591-4, p. 569; Fasti, iii. 36; Al. Cant.

With Whitgift’s death in 1604 the flow of clerical appointments dried up, though Fotherby and his brother Charles, by now archdeacon of Canterbury, had already achieved sufficient status to secure a grant of arms two years later.22 Grantees of Arms (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 92. Still hopeful of further promotion, Fotherby sought an alternative benefactor, and following the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, he penned a tract defending the use of the sign of the cross during baptisms, an argument calculated to appeal to the new archbishop, Richard Bancroft^*.23 An Answere unto Certaine Objections…Concerning the Use of the Crosse in Baptisme, publ. in 1608 with Fotherby’s Four Sermons; L.A. Ferrell, Govt. by Polemic, 85. This bore no immediate fruit, but in 1607, the year that he obtained his doctorate, Fotherby tried again. Preaching before William Barlow^*, bishop of Rochester on 14 Sept., he once more aligned himself with Bancroft’s ecclesiastical agenda, attacking the excessive emphasis placed by puritans on sermons, at the expense of prayer and private bible study.24 Fotherby, 44; P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Court, 164. This message was duly noted, and Fotherby found himself recruited to preach at Paul’s Cross in London on the second anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. Naturally, the bulk of his sermon was devoted to the continuing Catholic threat, but Fotherby also asserted that the Church must guard against the covert agenda of English puritans, who were ‘endeavouring, by a colourable pretence of reformation, to bring it unto utter desolation and destruction, and to make it an habitation for ostriches and dragons’. This anti-puritan message echoed the Paul’s Cross sermon delivered by Bishop Barlow on 5 Nov. 1606, and was doubtless sanctioned by the government.25 Fotherby, 84; Ferrell, 84.

Buoyed up by this official backing, Fotherby preached before James I at court on 15 Nov. 1607, this time unleashing a torrent of sustained invective against puritans, whom he denounced as hypocrites and schismatics, ‘who for caps, and surplices, holy days, and crosses, and suchlike smaller matters, … have made in our Church a dangerous faction’. In truth, he argued, these minor complaints concealed a much bigger agenda to overthrow the Anglican establishment, and introduce Scottish-style presbyterianism. Comparing puritans to the biblical plague of frogs, which had ‘infested the whole land with their croaking’, Fotherby condemned them as ‘the very gangrenes and cankers of our Church, which will never leave fretting until they be cut off’. Despite the violence of this language, Bancroft promptly authorized the publication of all three of these sermons, along with a fourth preached in July 1607, and the 1604 tract on the baptismal liturgy.26 Fotherby, sig. A2, pp. 89, 96, 98-9, 101-4. By the time this volume appeared in 1608, Fotherby had become a royal chaplain and a member of High Commission for Canterbury province.

In May 1610 Fotherby was appointed a founding fellow of Chelsea College, the government’s scholarly establishment for encouraging theological polemic. Further advancement must now have seemed almost certain, but his career again stalled following Bancroft’s death later that year. In material terms he had done well: at around this time the annual value of his Kentish estate was estimated, probably for tax purposes, at £500. Nevertheless, while his brother Charles rose to become dean of Canterbury in 1615, Fotherby remained little more than a humble prebendary.27 HMC Hatfield, xxii. 13, 503; Fasti, iii. 12. Thus, upon his nomination as the next bishop of Salisbury in March 1618, even seasoned observers such as John Chamberlain were taken aback by the choice of this apparent outsider, ‘a man never dreamt of’. Soon rumours were circulating that the affluent Fotherby had bought the bishopric from the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, for as much as £3,500. These stories became so widespread that at his consecration in April, Fotherby felt obliged to issue a public denial that any money had changed hands.28 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 149, 157; HMC Hatfield, xxiv. 236; A. Weldon, Ct. and Character of King James (1651), 120. There was in fact another, more plausible explanation for his elevation than simony. While it seems likely that Buckingham was largely responsible for Fotherby’s appointment, the marquess almost certainly acted at the request of his client and kinsman, Sir Robert Naunton, who had himself emerged from relative obscurity in January 1618 to become a secretary of state. This would help to explain why Fotherby later lavished praise on his old friend in print: ‘Your love is the greatest: which I have ever found ready to cover my greatest wants; … you have given a noble testimony unto the world, of the incomparable faithfulness of your love towards me.’ It is certainly difficult to believe that this fulsome tribute refers solely to the role Naunton had played in securing Fotherby’s prebend more than two decades earlier.29 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 48; R.E. Schreiber, Sir Robert Naunton, 8, 15; M. Fotherby, Atheomastix (1622), sig. A2v.

Comparatively little is known about Fotherby’s episcopate. In August 1618 he entertained the king at Salisbury during the latter’s summer progress. Four months later, he appointed his own brother-in-law Francis Dee^* (later bishop of Peterborough), as chancellor of the cathedral, a move which smacked of nepotism. Around the same time he launched a vigorous campaign against Wiltshire nonconformists.30 J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, ii. 488-9; Fasti, vi. 10; PROB 11/135, f. 207v; HMC Var. i. 91-2. During 1619 he conducted a visitation of his diocese, basing his articles on the popular set drawn up by Bishop Richard Vaughan^* of London, which in turn were derived ultimately from Bancroft. In his leisure time he completed a treatise against atheism, his Atheomastix, which he dedicated to Naunton.31 Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 26; Fotherby, Atheomastix, sig. A2.

Early in 1620, less than two years after his elevation, Fotherby was taken ill near London. When he drew up his will on 8 Mar., he lamented that his estate had been much reduced by the payment of his first fruits, and by the ‘chargeable fashion’ of his life as a bishop. Nevertheless, he still owned a number of properties in Kent, which he divided between his two sons. To his wife he bequeathed £500 outright, and an £80 annuity. He also assigned a £500 dowry to one daughter for whom he had not yet provided. Fotherby left his substantial library to his eldest son, Charles, on condition that he studied theology and sought ordination. He bequeathed a horse to Naunton, his ‘most honourable friend’, but provided only £7 for the poor residents of Salisbury. Fotherby died three days later without ever sitting in Parliament, and was buried at his own request in All Hallows, Lombard Street, London, where his brother-in-law Dee was rector. A ‘very fair monument’ erected there to him was destroyed during the Great Fire of 1666. The Atheomastix was published posthumously in 1622.32 PROB 11/135, ff. 206-8; Cassan, 103-5. Charles Fotherby later became a prebendary of Exeter Cathedral: Fasti, xii. 63.